OMG I HATED IT SO MUCH

That was what I’d call a “sensationalist” headline.

I’m about, I think, to write my first movie review in about five years. I’m not sure I remember how. I mean, if you ask my adoring fans from my Urban Tulsa Weekly days, I never actually knew how to review movies in the first place.

Ahem.

Back when I was a film critic, I’d regularly go to the movies by myself. It was usually a movie I didn’t expect to be any good, and also one Steph had no desire to see. She’d send me into the maw alone. Of course, back then, I had to watch a lot of shitty movies. It was part of the gig.

In 11 years, I think I only walked out of three or four. I thought about walking out of Jupiter Ascending Sunday night. And I don’t know that it was awful, it’s just that I have so much less patience for these things than I used to.

Why see it at all? Allegedly, Insurgent is awful, too, and I wasn’t in the mood for an Oscar flick. Already saw The Kingsmen (which was awesome) and Focus (which was actually kinda fun). And Steph had told me to get out of the house, go see a movie or something.

Jupiter Ascending it was. I wanted to see it. Despite all the bad reviews. Despite all the bad movies the Wachowskis have made since 1999’s The Matrix. I have a soft spot in my heart for them. I keep hoping they can recapture the magic. (See, I do have some small amount of optimism.) Yeah, not going to happen.

What next? Ooooh, right. Plot Synopsis. See, this is what I hated about traditional movie reviews, and why I always opened a column with an anecdote of some kind. You’ve seen the trailers already! You know what the spoiler-free synopsis is! THE MARKETING PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY FORCE FED IT TO YOU!

Sorry.

Let’s try to do this in as few words as possible. Jupiter Jones (really?) (Mila Kunis) is human, but not actually human, but human. She’s the reincarnation of one of the queens of one of the royal families out in the universe, which basically makes her the same person. I guess. They have the exact same genes, so she inherits the kingdom.

Word gets out in the royal house that Jupiter exists, so her scions/aunts/uncles/genefamily/whateverthehelltheyare seek to control her. One of them sends a Hunter (Channing Tatum) — a genetic splice of a wolf and human called a Lycantant (sounds like a dog accountant) — to bring her in.

EVERYONE WANTS THE NAIVE EARTH GIRL!

They fall in forbidden love. He has to rescue her as she blunders from one Machiavellian plot to another. Happy Hollywood ending. In the middle, there’s some pretty spectacular special effects scenes and a lot of really, really bad acting.

Don’t get me wrong; I loved the look of the film. I liked some of the tech, though a lot of the ships and whatnot seemed to be borrowed right from video games and anime (which you’d expect from the Wachowskis).

But it was kinda boring. The characters were paper thin, more caricatures and stereotypes than anything. And (incoming D&D reference), what the hell was up with the Draconians?

What they wanted, it seems, was to make their version of Dune, which might’ve been the first problem. There’s never been a successful attempt to bring Dune to life. The SyFy mini-series was okay. The David Lynch movie … yeah, there’s that.

I hate, hate, hate the whole “Damsel in distress” storyline these days. Women don’t need rescuing. They are heroes in their own right, and their stories are just as compelling and captivating as any with a male protagonist. The movie isn’t about Jupiter Jones. It just sort of happens to her. As such, the film is fucking lame. Mila has charisma. She can carry a flick. Give her something to do other than stand around and say, “I can’t believe this is real.”

Fuck this movie. It has no soul. Visually, it’s beautiful, but at points in the film, that was just so much noise. Yeah, yeah, he has to battle the whole armada in his glowy mech spaceship to save the girl. (This happens TWICE for fuck’s sake). Lazy writing.

Sigh. You’ve already skipped it, but I don’t think it’d be a good rental either. Go watch Edge of Tomorrow if you want some actual fun sci-fi action. And once you have, ask yourself this question: Did they really get the happily ever after, or did they just get reset even eariler?

Thanks for reading.

Cory