Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Channing Tatum plays a shirtless wolf man on roller skates and Eddie Redmayne whisper-screams about bureaucracy. This should be perfect but it’s just… fine.

I want to respect this film and there are parts I really admire. This is an audacious, wildly expensive, ambitious sci-fi opera made by some of the most creative sci-fi visionaries of our lifetime - and yet it still feels boring and drags in places. That shouldn’t be possible, but here we are.

I know they filmed a lot of this practically. That famous Chicago gravity-surfing sequence? They spent six months capturing real light and real locations to make it feel tangible. And that effort does not translate to the final product at all. It looks like CGI nonsense that could have been filmed entirely in a green screen studio. All that work and care, completely invisible. That’s heartbreaking.

This is like Star Wars but with way, way, way more exposition. Characters stop every five minutes to explain the universe-building, the economics of immortality, the genetic hierarchies. It grinds the momentum to a halt. I probably would have loved this when I was 9 years old - the spectacle and world-building would have blown my mind. But as an adult, it doesn’t grab my attention the way it should.

I do love some of the underlying themes though. The Wachowskis are always interested in togetherness, empathy, and connection across humanity, and that’s present here. Those themes are a key tenet of their work and it shines through even when the plot gets muddy.

Okay, let’s talk about the performances. Mila Kunis is a bit dry. She’s playing the audience surrogate - the normal person thrown into this insane universe - and she never quite sells the wonder or terror of it. I didn’t love her here.

Channing Tatum’s performance I actually liked, and I felt genuinely bad for him having to be shirtless on set nearly every day. But he does look incredible, so I get why they did it. What a risk playing a genetically modified wolf man though. He looks weird. I’m gonna say it. The elf ears, the facial hair, the roller skate gravity boots - he looks weird and I don’t like it. But he commits, and I respect that.

Eddie Redmayne has a much-maligned performance in this, and I think he’s the only one who got the tone the film needed. He’s playing an over-the-top space villain and he gives it so much ham - the whisper-screaming, the theatrical rage, the absurd line readings. He understood this is a camp space opera and leaned all the way in. Everyone else is playing it too straight. Redmayne is the only one having fun, and his scenes are the most memorable as a result.

I wish the whole movie had his energy. Instead, it’s a beautiful, expensive, ambitious mess that I respect more than I enjoy.

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