‘Jupiter Ascending’ Is Every Bit As Terrible As You Thought It Would Be
As the reviews pour in for sci-fi epic Jupiter Ascending, it’s easy to understand why Warner Bros. has been slow to quell rumors that the movie will feature a teaser trailer for the highly anticipated Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
It’s clear from the 22 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes that Jupiter Ascending needs all the help it can get.
Jupiter Ascending is a beautiful hot mess. http://t.co/J15qROxRIe pic.twitter.com/YfixxnprpN
— Polygon (@Polygon) February 6, 2015
Having famous faces in the form of Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, and Eddie Redmayne was clearly not enough, as the audience which saw and reviewed Jupiter Ascending had a mixed opinion (53 percent) about how good it was.
Enough people have pointed out that the trailer itself was a warning that this movie would be less than stellar. If that weren’t enough to indicate that Jupiter Ascending would disappoint, consider the release date.
Jupiter Ascending arrived just a little after January, a month that has long served as an infamous dumping ground for terrible movies.
Is Jupiter Ascending a terrible movie? Yes, according to most reviewers who’ve seen it.
Bryan Bishop of the Verge called for an intervention for the Wachowskis outright.
“Perhaps I should have been better prepared for the latest film from the Wachowskis, which opens today. ‘Jupiter Ascending’ has been troubled for some time; the initial trailers didn’t exactly inspire confidence, and that was before the movie’s release got moved from last summer to the dumping ground of February.
“[N]one of their movies have coalesced into a cohesive whole.
Jupiter Ascending’ is somehow the worst of both worlds.”
The movie fell flat as far as Christopher Orr from the Atlantic was concerned, even though he admitted to moments of “charm and almost-charm.” At the same time, one wouldn’t consider “third-rate Guardians of the Galaxy” to be much of a compliment.
“The plot of [‘Jupiter Ascending’] is cursory at best, with a narrative coda so insipid it made my head hurt. The dialogue is comically bad (‘Bees are genetically designed to respond to royalty’; ‘In our world genes have an almost spiritual significance’), and the action sequences are repetitive to the point of redundancy.”
The reviews seemed to echo one another when it comes to this movie, in that the plot is terrible, the acting is sub-par, but the visual effects are on point.
There had previously been concern that Christopher Nolan was in danger of following M. Night. Shyamalan off the cliff into “once great director is now box office poison” territory. Given how far the Wachowskis have fallen since bringing us a revolutionary film called The Matrix, it’s fair to say they are closer to joining Shyamalan than Nolan.
Even so, not everyone has lost faith in these directors.
Angela Watercutter at Wired admits that Jupiter Ascending is “really stupid.” But she thinks movie lovers should put this opinion aside and opt to watch the movie anyway.
“Do it because ‘Jupiter Ascending,’ despite all that I’ve said so far, is a big, beautiful space movie — the kind we get entirely too few of. Because Mila Kunis (the eponymous Jupiter) is charming. Because Channing Tatum (as Caine Wise, a name that somehow manages to be more ridiculous than Jupiter) is a half-dog-but-mostly-guy who seems to resent wearing a shirt. Because there are sweet-ass intergalactic space battles.
“Because you get to see a giant summer movie in February. Because it’ll be the biggest thrill you get until ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ arrives in May.”
Fans of the Fast And Furious series may have something to say about that last remark.
In any case, the general consensus is that Jupiter Ascending is terrible, and it looks like the movie will not begin to earn nearly enough money to break even.
Unfortunately for Jupiter and the Wachowskis, next week brings us the controversial and widely anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey movie. Discussion and buzz should hold that movie over until better movies make their way into their theaters.
This leaves Jupiter Ascending with a relatively tiny window to make Warner Bros. a profit off of a movie that reportedly cost $175 million.
If you combined budgets, Jupiter Ascending and Seventh Son cost about $310 million to produce. And they're both gonna get beat by a sponge.
— Scott Weinberg (@scottEweinberg) February 7, 2015
Perhaps Warner Bros. should strongly consider adding that Batman v Superman teaser ahead of Jupiter Ascending after all.
[Image Credit: MOVIECLIPS Trailers]
