Essay: 'Jupiter Ascending' (2015)
My masculinity is elf ears
I stream movies while I putter around at home because my last full-time job was in an open office, and that experience ruined me. I can’t concentrate anymore without noise and movement in the background.
The streaming industry is aware of this growing habit—I'm not the only one with a broken brain. In my opinion, the ideal movie for peripheral viewing is one with vibrant visuals and dramatic emotional peaks. For instance, one of my favorite movies to stream while I work is The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I’ll be hunched over my laptop type-typing, then turn around in time for Gandalf to shout, “You shall not pass!”
It helps if the movie I’ve put on is good—for lack of a more precise word. You know, original. I need noise and movement, but a Transformers movie won’t do. They’re too loud and derivative. I enjoy zoning out to The Fast and The Furious franchise, but I prefer Vin Diesel's Riddick flicks—they're wild. Bonkers. They make perfect TV wallpaper.
But recently, I chose a movie I had never seen: Jupiter Ascending. It’s a big-budget space opera from 2015 directed by the Wachowski siblings, the filmmakers who directed The Matrix.
The pair have also directed quirky and dazzling blockbusters like Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas, but those two movies, beloved by many, were box-office flops, like Jupiter Ascending.
The Matrix, however, was a blockbuster. Some consider it a masterpiece. Dudes, mostly. The sunglasses and shiny leather and slow-motion kung-fu, they love that shit. I was really into The Matrix when I first saw it in 1999.
I pressed “play” on Jupiter Ascending because I assumed it was two hours of aliens, lasers, and explosions. It looked like something I didn’t have to pay attention to—a movie I could watch out of the corner of my eye.
But the moment Channing Tatum shows up, wearing pointy elf ears and early aughts emo band eye makeup, to rescue housekeeper-slash-secret galactic queen Mila Kunis, I was hooked. Was this movie better than The Matrix? Does every movie conversation have to devolve into a stark binary choice? I don’t know.
The Matrix is a movie for teenage stoners who think they live in a video game. Jupiter Ascending is for intergalactic werewolves who know the universe is run by an all-powerful 1% who stay forever young by soaking in bathtubs full of dead human goo.
Both movies revolve around Messiah-like characters who don’t know they’re special. As struggling Russian immigrant Jupiter Jones, Kunis is more charismatic and, more importantly, smarter than Neo. She is witty, and he is not. I have nothing against Keanu Reeves, but Neo is a ‘whoa” inside a “whoa,” forever. Jupiter Jones is a blue-collar wiseass who shrugs when she’s told she is a reincarnated monarch.
In The Matrix and Jupiter Ascending, our heroes meet fairy godmothers who help them on their journeys to defeat evil. In The Matrix, Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus famously offers Neo a choice: swallow the red pill or the blue. One reveals reality and the other returns you to a dream.
If you’ve ever used the internet, even for five minutes, you’ve probably seen someone reference the red and blue pills. I wish I could take a pill that would help me forget the red and blue pills.
Then there’s Cain Wise, played by Channing Tatum, who’s a thinking man’s hunk. Tatum is more than just a hammock full of bowling balls. He’s got depth, man. Feelings. In Jupiter Ascending, he is a brooding half-man, half-wolf ex-special forces soldier forced to work for one of the galaxy’s most flamboyant crime families. He had cyborg wings once but lost them after a fall from grace. When I learned that, my first thought was, “Truly, Cain Wise, no matter your crime, I hope you earn those wings back one — day, a.k.a. The end of the movie.”
I also preferred the big reveal at the heart of Jupiter Ascending to The Matrix.
My entire life is the story of me learning that I don’t know anything, so I love a story that turns the world upside down. In The Matrix, people live in a computer simulation created by sentient machines who use human bodies as living batteries. But in Jupiter Ascending, humans are unknowing slaves of planet-destroying immortals who rule a vast capitalistic bureaucracy that stretches across the cosmos. Between you and me, that last one seems more plausible.
When it comes to villains, however, The Matrix and Jupiter Ascending are evenly matched: on the one hand, there’s Hugo Weavings Agent Smith, the well-dressed, slow-talking henchman of the evil machines. On the other Eddie Redmayne, as Balem Abrasax, is a pouty demigod with creepy fingers. These two baddies are equally over-the-top human circuses.
Ultimately, I like the galaxy the Wachowskis built in Jupiter Ascending—a galaxy where bodies are modular. Wings can be attached and detached. Different strands of DNA can be spliced together. Everyone is half-this, half-that. The Matrix is a reality-bending story about a war against machines with a terrific twist. I think I prefer colorful fairy tales with rocket boots. Go ahead and change my mind. Movie opinions aren’t binding legal contracts, you know?
If you haven’t watched Jupiter Ascending, I recommend it. I’m rewatching it right now as I write this essay. Hold on, I must catch the scene where Kunis’ Jupiter Jones is told that bees can smell royalty. Yes, bumblebees. This movie is a sci-fi nerd giving tree. I also forgot to mention there are cat people and space bikes, and zero-gravity orgies, but this essay isn’t about all of the many reasons why Jupiter Ascending is amazing. That essay would be too long. Oh, I forgot, the spaceships all look like elegant insectoid sailboats.
Oh, I forgot: the spaceships all look like giant insectoid sailboats! Cool.
No, this essay is about how Channing Tatum makes me want to be a better man. Or, rather, Cain Wise makes me want to be a better wolfman with cyborg wings who wears mascara. I’ve never wanted to cosplay — you know, dress up like a character in a comic book or movie or video game — but Jupiter Ascending tempts me. I want to dress up like Cain Wise. That’s who I am on the inside. And I’m a real manly man for admitting it.
I suppose I could start by shaving all my body hair. Cain Wise is hairless. That’s just how it is. He’s hairless. He wears make-up. He has a forcefield shield and a pair of rocket boots.
If I had a choice between rocket boots or cyborg wings, I’d pick wings. Yes, I can fly using either rocket boots or cyborg wings. Both would help me escape bounty hunters. But you can’t compare them aesthetically. A pair of rocket boots is just that, but wings? Beautiful wings? Do you know who has wings? Eagles. Falcons. Chickens. Do you know a chicken is basically a dinosaur?
Wings would be great for expressing myself. I can spread them out when I’m proud. Fold them back when angry and cover my face with both wings if sad. Flap them hypnotically on the dance floor during a slow jam. My friends and family would know how I’m feeling just by looking at my wings. I could soar, glide, hover. When I’m happy, I’d open my wings and fall up towards the sun.
GIFs That Keep On Giving
Grief. Friendship. Jazz hands.
My debut memoir, ‘Theatre Kids’, comes out June 18th. You can preorder now on Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble.
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All of that is true, but the pacing of the movie didn't work for me. I wanted it to be a little faster, a little more witty, and to have fewer extended sequences of people falling and needing to be rescued while falling.
That said, there's no reason for you to apologize for liking it.
I saw that in the theater with my husband forever ago... we saw both it and Kingsman on the same day. Kingsman is a legitimately great action flick--so much fun. Jupiter Ascending was nuts and a half with a scene chewing Redman and a plot that doesn't quite work. Kunis is great, I agree. When Cain tells her that he's more like her dog than a person she manages to say, with a straight face, "I like dogs!" And it is ridiculous and sincere and sweet. The ending kinda ruined it for me--it struck me as totally unbelievable. The whole intergalactic capitalist ruling class? Totally believable. A woman who finds out she's a queen in that ruling class deciding to return to Earth and go back to her AND HER FAMILY living in near poverty scrubbing toilets? Um. No. Still, I need to go watch that again, because whatever else it was, it was gorgeous.