Ryan_MYeah

There really are no directors like The Wachowski's, and ever since their surprise smash hit with The Matrix, the good will towards their names never seem to stop. It's actually surprising considering how the two are always able to secure elaborate mega-budgets, and yet a lot of their movies, original in concept but out of control and utterly strange in execution, feel like wastes of those budgets. That said, even when their movies are terrible, they don't strike out as much as they create fascinating misfires that can be enjoyed in their own right. Their track record is flimsy, but I'd say their only total failure is The Matrix Revolutions.

As for Jupiter Ascending, I feel genuinely terrible for criticizing it, as I respect the vision here. This is an ode to every epic space opera the filmmakers have ever loved, and it's clear a lot of painstaking detail has gone into it. There's some admitted creativity with how the two are always trying to pull the rug out from the viewer, but it does so at the cost of coherence. The film feels like a two hour compilation of a full season TV show, dropping numerous plot threads and characters just as quickly as they're established, and serve little to no actual purpose to the main narrative. It also seems designed as an alternative to the string of Young Adult novel adaptations, but ironically ends up becoming exactly like one of those movies, simplifying the characters, skimping out on necessary exposition, and leaving this entire universe to operate on whatever logic it feels like at the time.

On top of that, it's burdened with some of the worst acting I've seen this year. As Channing Tatum is forced to play straight faced and charmless and Eddie Redmayne consistently mumbles in monotone whispers, they're both forced to pick up the slack for Mila Kunis' passive and needy damsel in distress. By the time a major action set piece between enemy ships finally takes place 25 minutes through, this film has genuinely given me no reason to care.

That said, it's a film whose craft can be admired where the story can't be. The visual effects are beautiful, the sound is creative (even if that random dog barking gun effect is annoying), and Michael Giacchino pays glorious tribute to every classic Sci-Fi score he's ever loved. Outside of those bright spots, though, this is another interesting misfire from the directing duo, but a bad movie by any other name is still a bad movie.

You ever wonder what it would be like if Terrence Malick vacationed in Walt Disney World, drank moonshine and had an acid flashback while on It's A Small World, and then immediately afterwards stared at Spaceship Earth while a bunch of kids ran by? That's pretty much this film.

I like the idea of the film fine, and it's cool to see all the little areas in Walt Disney World that I know so well (I may have been in this film and not even known it), but the film gets lost in its own thematic context. Is it's message that our instabilities will follow us even in so-called safe havens? Is it a pandemic allegory? Is it a sexuality parable? Not that it can't be all of those, but I don't think even the movie knows what it's talking about.

Beyond that, the film is positively horrendous, with laughable attempts at psychological terror and ambiguity, unbearable dialogue and acting, groan inducing imagery (Don't make me mention the Siemens "semen"), amateurish photography and editing (which I do still understand given the film's shooting circumstances), appalling special effects, ear grating music choices, and structuring so incompetent, it can't even keep its own locations straight. If the movie is taking place in Disney World, WHY ARE YOU ALSO JUMPING TO DISNEYLAND FOOTAGE?! I could spend hours picking apart the geographical errors alone, but that's secondary at this point. Escape From Tomorrow is a classic example that it doesn't matter how original your story is if the actual execution (which should matter above all else) is awful.