Jupiter Ascending -- what a gorgeous disappointment

I'd given this a pass when it came out due to poor reviews. The wife does like the Wachowskis and wanted to give it a shot.

The idea of an otherwise post-scarcity consumer economy turning human beings into the ultimate commodity is quite frightening. They had a great opening premise there. Grafting that onto an inheritance spat brings it back to the conventional tropes of rich people melodrama, which can still be made interesting. But so much falls so short.

Jupiter is a cabbage protagonist -- as in she has as much agency as a head of cabbage other characters are fighting for possession of. She effectively contributes nothing to the story. She can't fight, she can't think, she can't take any action to save herself. Her only hope is waiting for others to intervene.

I'm sure there are tons of notes in their movie bible but not much made it to the screen which leaves us with little information about how this interstellar society operates. The question I always ask with "life here began out there" stories -- how do you explain the fossil record? Not the greatest of the movie's sins but something that always sticks out to me.

Given how masterful and comprehensible the action scenes in the Matrix were (forgetting the sequels), the action scenes in this film were incredibly disappointing because of the CGI overload and shakycam. There's so much going on that the actors are bystanders in their own scenes and there's no sense of place or flow of action, it's just visual noise.

It feels like there's a better film in here than the one they actually made. It's a shame this is what we got. It could have been more.

Submitted November 29, 2019 at 11:54PM by jollyreaper2112 https://ift.tt/2QZ3B3D