Jupiter Ascending

I hate having to say this, especially considering how much I like the Wachowskis' movies, but Jupiter Ascending was a bit of a mess of an action movie. It's an entertaining mess, but it's still a mess.

It suffers a problem that many sci-fi/fantasy movies suffer, where it tries to have a deep and complex mythology underlying the story, but the end result is something that's more complicated than complex. In Jupiter Ascending, there is a trio of siblings that own multitudes of planets. One of them owns Earth, which is apparently one of the most valuable planets, and his brother and sister want it for themselves. Except their mother has (sort of) been reincarnated on Earth as a cleaning lady named Jupiter Jones (played by Mila Kunis.) The Earth had previously belonged to Jupiter, (or her sort of previous incarnation,) and now it's hers again to claim. The siblings each decide to use various means to convince Jupiter to hand ownership of the Earth over to them.

This is a movie where politics play a central role, although it is more in the form of political infighting, as opposed to trade negotiations. On top of that there is a massive, unwieldy bureaucracy lurking in the background, full of rules and regulations about how transfer of ownership of planets goes about. It should come as no surprise that there's a Brazil inspired scene about obtaining the proper paperwork. Then there's also scores of rules an regulations in play about who can attack who, and when.

As if the underlying political system weren't enough to keep track of, there's also all the characters with shifting allegiances. As the film went on, I not only had trouble remembering who was double-crossing who, but also which characters were supposed to be allied with each other in the first place.

Jupiter Ascending's underlying issue is that the plot is severely underdeveloped. I get the sense that the Wachowskis had a rough vision for what they wanted this movie to be, full of spectacular battles and fantastic set pieces. The spectacle aspect of the film is fully realized, but the story never felt like it was more than an idea. Granted, it wasn't as bad as Transformers: Age of Extinction, a movie where I suspect the special effects scenes were created first, then the script was thrown together to accommodate the CGI. With Jupiter Ascending, it felt more like the script needed to go through many more drafts to be more workable. Buried in the film is the potential for a great story, but not enough time was spent enhancing the great moments, and shedding away the bad ones.

On the plus side, the Wachowskis' writing skills may have gotten a bit rusty, but they still know how to direct. I'm not saying anybody is going to win an Oscar for their performance in this movie, but if you were to watch scenes from the movie out of context, you might actually get the impression it was a solid movie. At any rate, there aren't any moments of overt badness from the actors, and it's actually quite fun seeing Eddie Redmayne revel in playing a pompous, aristocratic villain.

That's the thing, actually. I can't completely discount this movie because in spite of its many, many flaws, it is fun to watch. The moments that work, manage to work surprisingly well even against the bad parts. The humor lands on point, and not in a groanworthy, bad movie sort of way. There's plenty of genuinely funny moments in the film. The action scenes are exciting, from the arial battles along the Chicago river, to crazy fight sequences that have Channing Tatum flipping about on levitating boots.

Then there's the production design. This film has some of the most gorgeous and original set pieces and costumes I've seen in a while. Jupiter Ascending will probably be long forgotten by the Academy when next year's Oscars roll around, but the production design of this movie is something that awards should be given out for. It just makes for such a visually fun world, that you wish the story in the film lived up to the universe imagined for it.

Usually a film like Jupiter Ascending is the type you'd pass on in cinemas, but maybe get around to catching when it gets to home video. This would be such a film, if it weren't for the 3D effects. From their previous films, I suspected that the Wachowskis would take well to filming in 3D, as their visual style is already well suited to it. They use lots of steady camera shots and keep every part of a scene in focus. In fact, somebody watching Speed Racer for the first time might be shocked to realize that it was never released in 3D, despite all of its visual pop, and I don't think I'd object to a 20th anniversary 3D rerelease of The Matrix.

The 3D in Jupiter Ascending takes it from being an okay sci-fi movie to being a thrill ride. The Chicago River battle feels like a roller coaster. There's a wedding scene with overhead shots that actually induce a sense of vertigo. Finally, there's a fight near the end that takes place in a room with a translucent floor. In 2D, it would just be an alright shootout, but with the 3D effects, it feels absolutely immersive. You actually get the sense that you're in this impossible, futuristic space.

This might be the first time I've found myself advocating going to see a movie in cinemas just for the 3D aspect of it. It's not really a movie that's worth the price of a ticket, but perhaps paradoxically, if you are going to see it in a cinema, it's the sort of movie that you might as well go all-in for, and watch it on IMAX 3D. I can see Jupiter Ascending being one of those movies where clips from it are constantly being played on TVs at electronics stores as a way of showcasing how good a TV is. Stripped of a big screen and killer sound system, this film's weaknesses become far too apparent, but with all the bells and whistles in place, it's a reasonably enjoyable movie. It's unlikely that it will happen, but a part of me wouldn't mind seeing a sequel to this, provided they do a much, much, much better job of coming up with good story.

Interstellar

There is a scene at the start of Interstellar that feels uncomfortably prophetic. Cooper, an astronaut turned farmer (played by Matthew McConaughey) is brought to his daughter's school for a parent teacher conference. His daughter, Murph, has gotten in trouble for bringing an old textbook to school. The teacher explains that they now use corrected textbooks, which accurately explain that the Apollo missions were really an effective propaganda tool to get the Russians to bankrupt themselves, but that humans have never actually been to the moon.

As depicted in Interstellar, humanity's future is pretty bleak. Blight has wiped out all but a handful of crops, and even those are dying out. The space program has to operate in secret because people don't think space exploration is a useful way to spend taxpayer money when famine is imminent. However, it appears that humanity's only hope is to begin colonizing other planets.

In the film, possible salvation for humanity comes in the form of a wormhole that has opened up near Saturn. Astronomers have determined that there are three potentially habitable worlds on the other side of it, but they do not know which, if any, is the most suitable for colonization. A team of astronauts, led by Cooper, have to decide for themselves which planet may be the key to the continuation of the human race.

The idea that humanity may have to colonize other planets to survive as a race is a possible future scenario that may await us. In fact, it may not just be probable. It may be inevitable. With that in mind, director Christopher Nolan aimed to depict the events in this movie as realistically as possible. While the film does employ some "cheats," such as having the characters go into suspended animation, it strips away a lot of sci-fi tropes in favor of brutally honest physics. As a result, Nolan has created a film that shows a version of space travel we rarely see on film. This isn't like the worlds of Star Trek or Star Wars, where traveling between planets is as easy as taking a road trip. This is a film where space travel is dangerous and untested, and missions are just as likely to fail as they are to succeed.

Although a wormhole plays a critical role in the film, space ships in the film don't have means of faster-than-light travel, so moving through space is still a long and arduous journey. The relative nature of time is also addressed, meaning that time passes differently for some characters in the film because of the effects of speed and gravity. However, the most brutally honest aspect of interplanetary colonization that Interstellar addresses is that for those first colonists, it will likely be a one way trip, and there is the possibility that nobody else will follow after.

Against this setting, Christopher Nolan crafts an intensely emotional film about humanity's drive to survive, and the consequences that come from characters forced to choose between taking actions to be with the ones they love versus possibly saving the human race. On paper, it may seem like an easy choice, that you go with saving humanity, because if the human race dies out, so do your loved ones. However, in the film it's clear that the mission has a very low chance of success, so if humanity is going to die out anyway, do you make that impossible effort to try to save it, or do you spend those last moments with the ones you care about?

Nolan is known for being an adamant supporter of using practical visual effects (meaning effects done on set, and not through computer generated imagery,) and it's something that helps keep the story as a character driven drama. The alien worlds look fantastical, but also plausible. You really feel that the actors are on these far off worlds, because they didn't shoot their scenes on a green screen trying to imagine what they look like. The result is that you're focused on the challenging dilemmas posed to the characters.

There's no denying that Interstellar is heavily influenced by Stanley Kubrick's film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, instead of being a film that rips off from it's predecessor, Interstellar feels like a movie that's a response to 2001. When 2001 came out, it was the height of interest in NASA's space program. We had not yet landed on the Moon, and were already dreaming of missions to go beyond it. Computers were becoming an increasing part of every day society, but we didn't yet trust relying on machines for crucial tasks. Now, we have a space program that's fighting for funding, and has to constantly justify its existence to critics. We inherently rely on machines for every day tasks. It's other humans we've come to distrust.

This difference of mentalities over the year is reflected in both films. 2001 is a tale of wonder and exploration, where the greatest obstacle proves to be a homicidally sentient computer. Interstellar is a tale of desperation and necessity, where sentient machines are the most reliable characters in the story, and the greatest obstacle proves to be humans' ability to trust and communicate with each other.

Speaking of the robots in Interstellar, I dare say they were one of the more unexpectedly intriguing parts of the movie. Throughout the film are robots with names like T.A.R.S. and C.A.S.E., and which bear a striking resemblance to the monoliths of 2001. Yet, despite their bulky and rigid shape, their voices sound natural and human. It actually took me a moment to realize that the human voice of T.A.R.S. was not an off screen character, but the faceless monolith appearing onscreen. The result is that even though the robots are as un anthropomorphic as a robot can get, they feel as much of full bodied characters as their human counterparts. Perhaps this is due in no small part to the fact that for most of their onscreen appearances, they are portrayed by puppets that were actually on set with the actors, and directly interacted with them, and not CGI'ed in afterward.

Like Gravity, this is one of those films that is meant to be watched on the largest screen possible. The panoramas of outer space and other planets have their full effect when they take up your whole field of vision. Christopher Nolan, being the fan of analog filmmaking that he is, decided to shoot Interstellar on actual film, not digitally, so the movie looks grainier than we've become accustomed to lately, but it does add a touch of timelessness to it. The slightly old-fashioned look of the film suggests that just as 2001 is a film that is still being watched 50 years down the road, that Interstellar may be a movie that people still watch 50 years into the future.

Overall, Interstellar feels like both a thank you letter to the pioneers of space exploration, and a plea for the continued existence of space programs. The film sends the message that space exploration is hard, and as we push out further into space, it will only get harder. More will be demanded of the men and women who take the voyages into deep space than has ever been demanded of anybody in human history, but the payoffs will be invaluable.

Whatever career path you've chosen in life, it's hard to walk out of Interstellar and feel a tinge of regret for not having pursued a career in physics or as an astronaut. (Unless of course you are a physicist or astronaut, in which case this film will surely make you feel emboldened about your career choice.) This is one of those films you should take your kid to to inspire them to study science, (once you think they're old enough to sit through a three hour epic). The truth is, we need more films like this. Pulp science fiction films are fun, but we also need more films that explore hard science and that generate a public dialogue of what can it can accomplish. In other words, we need more movies that take the wonder and amazement that is found in fantasy films, and asks the audience, "How much of this can be done for real?"