Film Review - Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Jupiter Ascending is the newest film from Andy and Lana Wachowski and this tells the tale of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) a lowly house cleaner from a Russian family who is later saved by an alien creature named Caine (Channing Tatum) who also tells her she may hold the key to saving the Earth.

Going into this film I was very optimistic primarily because of my love of Sci-Fi films but also the Wachowski's have rarely impressed me since their 2 Matrix sequels in 2003 were badly handled misfires, could this film right their ship once more or is it another case of hitting the creative iceberg.

Sadly this is another misfire and there are a number of reasons for this but before I delve into those I will talk about what I did like and that is the music score by Michael Giacchino, the Production Design and the Visual Effects all of these make this a good big screen experience.

But as I said this was a misfire for me for these reasons:

- The first reason is that the script here is very muddled and at times I thought I was watching a bad Game of Thrones knockoff with all of its talk of duelling family members and deadly weddings and various other goings on plus there is the whole thing with the industry which didn't really make much sense and I felt had to go as all it did was muddy the storytelling river.

- The second is the casting, Kunis is a real bore to watch as most of the time she's either falling from great heights or screaming at the top of her lungs and I just got sick of her after a while, Tatum shows off his physical prowess but is pretty dull here (hopefully this won't be the case when he becomes Gambit) while Sean Bean does the jaded mentor role and Eddie Redmayne turns everything up to 18 on the OTT scale first by whispering his dialogue THEN SHOUTING SOME OF HIS LINES LIKE THIS!!!! and unlike Joel Edgerton's I AM THE GOD!!! from Exodus last year it isn't even worth a bad laugh.

- And lastly the climax is very cliched with the ticking clock and the exploding place and the race to freedom at the last minute and that as well as a fair chunk of the film just left me bored somewhat and checking my watch.

And so that was Jupiter Ascending sadly a Sci-Fi misfire from a creative team who really need to stop being given blank cheques at this point as they have increasingly failed to deliver and also sadly that with the exception of Neill Blomkamp's upcoming Chappie there may not be much Sci-Fi coming out before we all feel the force again with the new Star Wars film in December, 1 out of 5.