Jupiter Ascending is a gloriously inept space opera

You really want to root for the Wachowskis. After creating the genre-defying Matrix trilogy, Andy and Lana Wachowski, the brother and sister writer / director team, seemed to flounder in the Hollywood studio system, churning out visually stunning but uninspired features like Speed Racer, as well as their ambitious but lambasted take on David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas novel. So the announcement that their next feature, Jupiter Ascending, would be a Wachowskis affair through and through, seemed to offer some hope that the duo might rekindle some of that initial wonder from the Matrix franchise.

Unfortunately, Jupiter Ascending is a completely perplexing mix of space drama and romantic comedy, one which aims to be a sweeping epic about fate and love, but falls closer towards The Adventures of Pluto Nash territory.

The film’s heroine and titular character is Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), a Russian cleaning lady left fatherless before her birth. Following her regular routine of scrubbing toilet bowls and dreaming of a better future, she is convinced to sell her eggs by a desperate family member. Once at the clinic, her procedure is interrupted when the medical staff are revealed to be aliens, and a buff hero named Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) appears on flying boots to rescue her.

In an exposition-heavy scene, Jupiter learns from Caine, a genetically-modified quasi-human bred with the DNA of a wolf (which for some reason gives him Spock ears), that the Earth has been seeded millions of years ago by an inter-galactic alliance of space elites, who are now looking to kill her. Caine then brings Jupiter out to the Midwest to meet an old military accomplice (Game of Thrones‘ Sean Bean) in order to secure passage off of Earth.

Following a battle with a colourful set of alien bounty hunters, including a woman with blue dreadlocks who looks like she just strolled in from the infamous rave scene in Matrix Reloaded, Jupiter is brought to meet the three siblings of The House of Abrasax, the universal elite she will be joining. The family is led by the delightfully campy Prince Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne), who seems to be the only actor who realizes what type of movie he’s been cast in.

In order for Jupiter to ascend to her new title (get it?) she must compile the proper space paperwork, which brings her into contact with various wacky departments of interstellar bureaucracy. In a fun turn, The Wakowschis frame these alien office drones in intense close ups facing the camera, backed by a quirky soundtrack that seems culled form a long-lost reel of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. The movie actually seems like it might go off the rails at this point and turn into a screwball space comedy, but instead we get an hour or so of a nearly endless barrage of CGI property destruction, as Jupiter and Caine fight to save the fate of humanity.

Without a doubt, Jupiter Ascending has some tremendous visuals, and there are some interesting ideas hidden within the needlessly complicated plot, but the film never coalesces into anything resembling a cohesive narrative. The tone of the movie is wildly inconsistent, and tries to be everything at all times, from a rollicking sci-fi serial homage to an intense action film, all the while flirting with being a romantic comedy about a love affair between a housecleaner and an intergalactic wolf/human hybrid warrior with magic space boots.

You have to respect the Wachowskis’ scope of imagination, and their determination to make such a beguiling film on this massive a scale. Hopefully they will be given the keys to the kingdom once again, as it would be a shame if this jumbled mess of a movie is the last big studio picture we see from the ambitious filmmakers.

Jupiter Ascending opens Friday, February 6.