I first saw Jupiter Ascending in the theater with my girlfriends (and am I the only one who keeps wanting to call it Jupiter Rising?). Loved it. This is not a popular opinion. There has been a great deal of criticism about the movie, and I’d wanted to watch it again to deconstruct it because I felt like I missed a lot the first time. Last night my husband and I watched it (he hated it), and I realized I missed a lot because…yeah, it’s not there. A lot of the necessary narrative links simply don’t exist, and there are seeds planted that never grow to fruition. And don’t even get me started on how Jupiter accepts all this with the least amount of freakout from a human finding out we aren’t the only intelligent life in the universe, EVER. There are UNQUESTIONABLY lots of problems with the plot.
But here are 5 reasons I loved Jupiter Ascending, despite all that.
- The score by Michael Giacchino. Take away the story entirely and just listen to the music. It’s big, bold, and screams adventure. I really dig that.
Anti-gravity boots. So Cain Wise (Channing Tatum) has these anti-gravity boots that are one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a sci-fi movie in a long time. They enable him to truly bring the fight to all 3 dimensions rather than being limited by the usual physics, and it made for some really awesome fight choreography that wasn’t like all the fight scenes I’ve seen before (and I love me a good fight scene). Not gonna lie, I love love love watching that man fight.
It’s very much sci-fi romance. I am a romance author and reader. Give me somebody to ship, and I’ll watch…a lot. Give me a legitimate relationship to root for and I will be more invested. Make the relationship central to the plot and have the hero continually fight through hell to save his woman? You have officially skipped over most of the mainstream sci-fi movie ouvre and given me something I desperately love. Don’t mind me, I’m over here mentally filling in the blanks that the Wachoswki brothers left out in how they executed said romance. Also, those wings are HOT.- Sean Bean lives! Nuff said.
- Channing Tatum. Yeah okay, it’s completely shallow of me, but he’s pretty. Sue me. In a Hollywood full of a bunch of short, scrawny guys, with lean ropy muscles, Channing Tatum actually fits the bill of what I like in the body type of my heroes. Tall, broad shouldered, muscular. And I’m not about to complain about that half hour stretch where he’s fighting without a shirt. Just like with Chris Hemsworth in Thor, his abs make me willing to overlook a lot of plot sins. What? I’m only human.
So what about you? Was there anything you liked about the movie, despite its legion failings?
2 thoughts on “5 Reasons I Loved Jupiter Ascending (Even Though The Plot Is A Hot Mess)”
Yes, I keep wanting to say Jupiter Rising, too. Hmm.
I loved this movie so much, I didn’t care about plot problems. I really, really loved it. And I honestly think the biggest reason was the romance. I do want to watch it again and see if I see anything differently, but I know I’ll still love it. I never pick movies apart because I WANT to love them. I work hard almost every day, and when I’m ready for entertainment, I don’t want to work at that, too. I just want to enjoy.
Loved the wings. That was awesome!
Picking stuff apart is totally an occupational hazard for me. Books, movies, TV shows. I compulsively pick them apart to figure out what works and what doesn’t and then bring that back to my work. But yeah, it made me happy that the romance was a focal point instead of a secondary plot or afterthought (which is more typical in sci-fi). I think this was really a sci fi movie geared more toward a female audience. And not that there weren’t issues with that too (lots of discussion of lack of agency for Jupiter), but still, it was an effort, which is more than a lot of directors bother with.