Lana and Andy Wachowski’s Jupiter Ascending

Baaaaaaarf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoCyL_Pqzu8#t=50

Looks like a horrible even bigger budget remake of "The Fifth Element." They must have gotten this one green lit before the receipts for "Cloud Atlas" came in.

dammit they stole my Channing Tatum idea only mine was called Keebler Rising

I'm going to write an action movie right now whose lead is named Keebler Rising.

Aaaaaannd ... it's done. It's called "Keebler Falling."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpgoqew5FNc&t=2m47s

aw that was supposed to start at 2:47

looks AWESOME! :-D

NYT review headline:

Cleaning Lady Has No Idea of Her Crucial Role in the Cosmos

Channing Tatum's blond facial hair is really creeping me out.

hearing a zillion fifth element comps, sort of considering paying $13 to see it

First 45 mins are pretty amusing. Kinda peters out after that. Redmayne's perf already the stuff of camp legend.

redmayne is pretty unbelievable. kunis isn't bad and tatum doesn't suck. story makes sense, and apart from a couple pacing issues -- overlong chase/fight scenes, and a weird 'hunger games'-style wedding digression -- this is so much better than i was led believe. the effect is sort of like reading a really good graphic novel. how 'interstellar' and 'guardians of the galaxy' get slobbed over while this gets shit on is beyond me

I have an irrational affection for Speed Racer, so I figure I might as well check this out on DVD

special effects are spectacular. wish i'd seen it in 3D. there were only two showings though (cuz this bombed so hard?) compared to the billion of '50 shades of gray' at the same theater

the effect is sort of like reading a really good graphic novel

like Bottomless Bellybutton or The Diary Of A Teenage Girl?

i'm thinking more jim starlin, dreadstar

how 'interstellar' and 'guardians of the galaxy' get slobbed over while this gets shit on is beyond me

Yeah - me too. As you say there a few overlong chase scenes, but overall I thought this not bad at all.

reposted from the "last (x) movies" thread, with edits...

I'm a fan of the Wachowskis and, like Moodles, of Speed Racer, so I rushed out to see Jupiter Ascending on opening weekend, knowing it wouldn't last long in 3D. It's bad: colorful & campy enough to pass the time, but underwhelming overall. The inert heroine, repetitive structure (capture, rescue, chase, repeat), and chemistry-free romance fight hard to negate the tiny flicker of goodwill earned by gorgeous special effects and the occasional lateral into oddball nerdery. Like an extended homage to Terry Gilliam's Brazil for...uh, some reason?

Though it's obviously an expensive and therefore an "important" film, at lest so far as its creators' careers are concerned, the story seems awfully ramshackle, like something thrown together in last minute desperation. Like all that senseless business with the bees. And are the Wachowki's really so bereft of ideas that they have to recycle The Matrix's "awful truth" concept? Disappointed, even relative to diminished expectations.

How many huge sci fi flops are they allowed before they are cut off? I can't believe this is the same team that did Bound.

colorful & campy enough to pass the time

I've got low standards!

(Not far from the truth today: it's valentines day, I was desperate to go to the cinema, I didn't want to see 50 Shades of Grey, and I've seen every other half-decent film...]

not bad. solid B- imo, not completely coherent, but interesting enough to be worth the time in you're a genre fan (and of Speed Racer too)
honestly, I wish every sci-fi flop had at least this much heart and effort into it

in a lot of ways this is a much less successful Fifth Element

So if I can only recall shots of cameras twirling around shouting heads and being annoyed when I think of speed racer, should I bother with this?

eddie redmayne was terrible casting for this - his performance was sooooooo fucking intense and OTT and doesn't didn't fit the rest of the movie's vibe at all. some pretty weak dialogue too, with jupiter's whole 'oh my defective gene must be i'm always drawn to the wrong guy' so lame. channing tatum is my WS-hall-of-shame, but he looked terrible in this. costumes and fx were pretty cool. and i really liked the funny beauracracy montage.

i appreciated that they weren't taking this all that seriously. the tone of this movie was pretty evocative of a comic book. i was also reminded a little of 'dr. who', not least during the gilliam-cameo bureaucratic odyssey. not saying this is 'on the waterfront' or anything but sure seems like people (critics) are out for blood for some reason when it comes to this movie. maybe there's an industry quota for good reviews of sci fi movies, and 'guardians of the galaxy' and 'interstellar' already elicited those for FY 2014-15?

I did think it's quite beautiful visually in places. The basic idea is quite interesting, it's a shame the script wasn't a bit more more developed. I also liked the bureaucracy sequence.

The wachawhatevers have been dropping turkeys for years and somehow they got 170m to dress Channing tatum like a elf so critics are primed to ignore whatever half-decent-if-you-liked-an-earlier-turkey qualities this film might have.

Also the film was pushed back so of course people who have to watch every single would be blockbuster smell blood

plus it's bad, sometimes risibly so (e.g., the apparently innate ability of bees to recognize royalty)

To be clear I'm not saying its good critics are prone to kneejerk follow-the-studio reactions on which popcorn movie to treat respectfully, just that it's not hard to see why said folks would sit down for this movie feeling insulted before it even started

i suppose it goes without saying that someone would have to have a raging sense of entitlement to be mad about watching a movie they're paid to review, and that that sense of entitlement is a subject of 'jupiter ascending''s "message"? if the movie were as bad as everyone's saying, fine. but it's really not. de gustibus non est disputandem and everything but for real, when i'm reading reviews of this movie, it's like they didn't even watch the thing. i'd rather have more movies like this than less, so critics poisoning the well sort of pisses me off

you know there are like 100 people in the world who get paid to review movies now right

maybe if the world were made more star-trek-like by a blossoming of awesome socialistic sci fi movies, there'd be more money flowing around (instead of concentrated in fewer bank accounts) to pay more people to review art? "realism" has failed us, critics! go wachowski brother/sister!

but anyway I agree, more weird blockbusters pls

I've seen quite a few critics say that the majority of critics can be very sheeplike whenever a possible public punching bag of a film comes along. They maybe just get too excited about the collective ridicule to do their job properly?

This isn't a "weird blockbuster" though its bombing, and critics have nothing to do with that

i'd rather have more movies like this than less, so critics poisoning the well sort of pisses me off

― reggie (qualmsley), Sunday, February 15, 2015 8:18 AM (1 hour ago)

but anyway I agree, more weird blockbusters pls

― Simon H., Sunday, February 15, 2015 9:07 AM (39 minutes ago)

luke had obi wan to train him. maybe she'll meet the beekeeper in the sequel? this was meant to be (?) and i hope still is part 1 in a series despite all the hating

wedding sequence is handled really hastily and is pretty shitty as a result, for sure. plays like a flawed homage to jennifer lawrence getting dolled up for the hunger games. it's part of a hyper-allusive mania (aliens, brazil, looper, signs, the terminator, etc) that is more interesting though than people are giving this film credit for. main character's name itself alludes to another helpless protagonist -- the leader of alfred hithcock's "three investigators": jupiter jones. this gender inversion is a kinda interesting choice for a tranny screenwriter, in a movie about motherhood . . .

please don't use the word 'tranny'

"transsexual", sorry!

ehhhhhhhhh

anyway I really liked this movie, I don't even think it was bad

I'm going to try to see this once it hits the neighborhood cheapie theater

Lilly Wachowski has now also come out as trans, although it's seriously troubling that she had to do so to forestall being non-consensually outed by journalists: http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/m/APPredirect.php?AID=54509

Worth reading just to confirm the monstrousness of everyone who works at the daily mail - the editorial mentioned halfway down was by noted bigot & shithead richard littlejohn.

I like the Wachowskis (I guess the Wachowski Sisters now) and usually I think their movies are flawed but interesting and fun, but this movie was just... bad. Sometimes I liked what was going on (Redmayne's super hammy performance, the bureaucracy scene) but the story was too simple, and the action scenes were surprisingly dull for how expensive-looking they are and what they've done in the past. Cloud Atlas was way better: I'd rather these two fail by going too far rather than not far enough

I adored cloud atlas, it's bombastic grand ideas seemed tie together at the end like the 5th element or something, and it didn't mind being bonkers. Apart from redmayne there's little to love in this tho, it's dull in the way that CL seemed it was going to be but wasn't. Did I read somewhere that they don't want/ aren't able to make any big budget movies anymore? I hope they stay weird, and maybe the lack of budget will add a little focus.

i watched this with some pals the other night and it was actually pretty fun, with light heckling

Redmayne's part seems bound for impersonations and references.

Thought Sean Bean's explanation of Bees was hilarious.

Another oddity that you wouldn't get in other blockbusters (not that I'm thankful or anything) is the way Kunis remarks on Tatum's wings and liking when he calls her "Your Majesty" and maybe even when he compared himself to a dog. Seemed pretty fetishy.
I'm sure his character is in Tumblr fan art orgies with Link from Zelda and One Direction.

It does seem very much part of the wave of YA science fiction with girl protagonists and films like Hunger Games and Divergent.

Hadn’t seen this mentioned at all on the TL but this new LBGT showtime comedy is co-written by Lilly Wachowski: https://t.co/cXNe706FU0

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) November 1, 2019

Thought Sean Bean's explanation of Bees was hilarious.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 24 May 2016 20:13 (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's on tv right now and just reached this very good moment

BEES DON'T LIE

that is absolutely true, in my experience

have never been lied to by a bee

afaik

now that i think about it i have never factchecked a bee’s claims! panicking a little tbh; have i been led down the garden path?