Jupiter Ascending
released 2015
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“Jupiter Ascending” is an American, scifi, action film produced by Bruce Berman, Grant Hill, Roberto Malerba, Steven Mnuchin, Terry Needham, Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski. Both Lana and Lilly Wachowski wrote and directed the film. It stars that Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Christina Cole, Nicholas A. Newman, Ramon Tikaram, Ariyon Bakare, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Frog Stone, David Ajala, Bae Doona, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Edward Hogg, Tim Pigott-Smith, James D’Arcy, Jeremy Swift, Kick Gurry, Larissa Kouznetsova, Demetri Theodorou, Lieve Carchon, Oleg Nasobin, Emily Renee, Vanessa Kirby, Spencer Wilding, Andy Ahrens, Charlotte Beaumont and so many more. The cast on this film project is huge and very talented.

Jupiter Ascending IMDb webpage

“Jupiter Ascending” is the story of a young Russian immigrant woman named Jupiter Jones, played by Mila Kunis, who lives in the USA and toils through a hard and humble life cleaning people’s apartments. Jupiter is named after her deceased father’s favorite planet. As it turns out, Jupiter is much more than a simple Russian immigrant living in Chicago. She comes from a kind of galactic royalty and is due to inherit a sizable piece of the ‘mined and exploited’ universe. After the death of the matriarch of House Abrasax and under the Abrasax line of succession laws Jupiter is the rightful owner of planet Earth. This creates a power struggle within the family and it is with the help of a soldier called Caine Wise , played by Channing Tatum, that she is able to survive kidnapping and assassination attempts.

The first great story element that comes to mind is the home life of Jupiter. That is to say, her humble beginnings. Jupiter’s family is charming and hard working, They are the hard working immigrant story so many people have lived and continue to live today, That is why it rings so well with the audience. The atmosphere around her family reminds me a little bit of the musical by the Broadway great Leonard Bernstein called “West Side Story”. The film captures the feel of a hard working immigrant family in such a good light and with a genuineness. I love that story element.

An obvious element I enjoyed was the story. Yes. The writing is very good. And, as in the case of s many well written films, we end up taking it for granted. The themes in the story are many of those you’d find in the fantasy genre of literature, and it works. The world building is fun too. The different characters and planets are fun. I also loved the lizard people that behaved very much the way contractors behave. For anybody that has dealt with contractors you will see what I mean. This is a film with great world building.

There is also a more serious idea behind this story and that is the idea that we, the human species and our entire environment, are a kind of farm. This implies that we have much less control over our destiny and the problems we struggle with. If you give the idea any thought you will soon realize that it is a terrifying idea. The same way a chicken on a farm will eventually end up on a dinner table, the human species will have an expiration date that is beyond our control or ken. The greatest thinkers, occultists, military and science people have pondered this thought and most have come to the conclusion that it is a possibility. This theme of humanity being lower on the food chain than we would like to be is very present in storytelling but almost always in the background. Exceptions include Arthur C. Clarkes novella named “Childhood’s End”, which is probably the best example of this idea and the most positive one. On the other end of the spectrum, a terrifying example of this idea is the manusript called “All Tomorrows” by C.M. Koseman. It is not necessarily well written but the idea in Koseman’s manuscript hits like a gut punch and is quite possibly the most terrifying future for the human species I have ever read.

But “Jupiter Ascending” is an action packed story and not one that fits in the category of the horror genre. “Jupiter Ascending” is a fun film with a great story that is worth the watch. So, check it out.

John Ink2Quill

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