Jupiter Ascending
Saw this on opening weekend. I was interested in it since I saw the trailer and the visuals looked stunning. Plus the directors did Matrix so I had a bit of a hope that this might be good. I only glanced at the ratings before going to see it in theaters, and I have to say that the reviews are very right with this movie. The visuals, world building, and concept is amazing and interesting but the characters and writing were lacking and did not even meet the level of quality and effort of the former.The movie starts with how the main character's parents met, and it felt a bit forced and sudden at how her father died. Then it fast forwards to Jupiter as a young woman who hates her life as she works at cleaning rich people's homes with her mother and aunt. Jupiter is very much a stereotypical young woman, and almost teenager-ish, but her age is not at all stated. Then things turn bad quickly when aliens appear and try to kill her. The plot is that Jupiter has the same exact gene as a previous Queen to be practically her reincarnation that she is now the new ruler. Because of this, 3 royalties are after her for their own personal gain. Well, really just 2 since the 3rd just explains things to Jupiter. They say Jupiter is the reincarnation of their mother, and that time is the most valuable commodity in the universe. And the Earth is a very valuable real estate that the two brothers are fighting for.
Its a very confusing thing for Jupiter but it all seems secondary to her since she seems to just want to kiss the hunter that one of the royalties' hired to find her. The hunter seemed oddly attached to her so he just kind of follows her around as her bodyguard of sorts. I find their whole romance very unnecessary, but the story does need someone to cherish Jupiter to help her out of this mess. Jupiter goes through a lot of different clothes which is weird. I'm not really into the costumes in this movie. Jupiter as a character just didn't impress me much. I didn't feel she was all that interesting since she just a bit cliche. Nothing is unique about her. And her love interest, Cain, was even worse. He does practically all the fighting. The side and supporting characters have a lot more personality than those two.
The fight scenes were too long in this movie. The story developing scenes seemed so rushed while the action scenes seemed more effort and time went into those. Especially the one where Cain has Jupiter on his back while he tries to escape and fight off Jupiter's attackers all over the city. The last action was good, but Jupiter seem to just be running around aimlessly. The movie does have a good amount of humor though. Not a lot, but its good enough and they weren't even bad.
Overall, this movie was OK. Definitely see it for the visuals if you're into scifi. Though it is hard to watch a scifi movie like this and not compare it to Star Wars or Star Trek. This movie would have been really great if it was written better.
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