Recently, writer Emily St. James took to Letterboxd to review Speed Racer and observed that “Iron Man (a movie I really like!) eating this movie’s lunch at the box office increasingly feels like a ‘two roads diverged in a wood’ moment for, like, human civilization.” A similar phenomenon transpired seven years after Speed Racer when directors Lana and Lilly Wachowski, Jupiter Ascending. After this Mila Kunis/Channing Tatum feature was delayed seven months from its original July 2014 release date, Jupiter Ascending debuted the same year as Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
In 2015, audiences firmly chose which vision of sci-fi cinema they wanted on the big screen. The Force Awakens became the biggest movie of all time domestically. Jupiter Ascending, meanwhile, crashed and burned over its first weekend. Critics trashed it while the Golden Raspberry Awards (one year after delivering tired transphobic jokes to announce various Transformers: Age of Extinction nominations) bestowed upon it six nominations, including Worst Picture and Worst Director.
Sci-fi originality lost the cinematic war that year. For the next decade, revivals of old properties treating every familiar piece of 70s/80s nostalgia with excessive reverence dominated pop culture. Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Bladerunner: 2049, Men in Black: International, Alien: Romulus, and so many more have replayed the hits and digitally resurrected the dead. Lana Wachowski even skewered this phenomenon with The Matrix Resurrections in 2021! The increased reliance on yesteryear and fan service makes it easier to appreciate Jupiter Ascending a decade later. Yes, it’s a jagged, messy movie, but that’s just the kind of thing we need more of in pop culture.
Since Jupiter Ascending’s release, CinemaSins-style nitpickers have taken over the culture. Obsessions with Rotten Tomatoes scores and “plot holes” have suffocated any discussion of ambiguity or storytelling adhering to visual impulses rather than the laws of reality. The ubiquity of generative A.I. even seems to stem from wanting to “iron out flaws” in art. No wonder something like Jupiter Ascending repelled so many on its initial release. Here was a feature gladly reveling in spectacular imagery related to coronation ceremonies and Tatum in zero-gravity boots zooming around an Earthbound city.
“Plot holes” are there, sure, but the imagery on-screen is so stirring it’s hard to care. Such visuals service a bonkers saga chronicling ordinary Earthling Jupiter Jones (Kunis) discovering she’s actually intergalactic royalty that technically owns the Earth. Hordes of bees help her make this revelation while the half-man/half-dog Caine Wise (Tatum) is always by her side. Gigantic lizards chase after our heroes. A prominent character is introduced engaging in a zero-gravity orgy. And don’t forget a dramatic third-act moment is punctuated by an elephant alien bellowing their trunk in fear. It’s all cosmic nonsense often tripping up over exposition and lore.
This material also radiates originality and creative conviction that’s easier to appreciate ten years later. Jupiter Ascending is many things, including flawed. It’s not, however, just resurrecting dead actors through CGI to recreate scenes from decades-old movies. This is an unabashedly original work containing a scope that makes The Matrix look like it could fit inside a petri dish. In early 2015, it was easy to dismiss Jupiter Ascending as nonsense too wrapped up in its own mythos. Cut to 2025 and we’re staring down the barrel of ANOTHER Jurassic Park legacy sequel. Suddenly, a movie like Jupiter Ascending overflowing with fresh lore previously unseen sounds dandy.
You know what else aged like fine wine in this movie? Eddie Redmayne’s performance as the nefarious Balem Abrasax. Even if you don’t usually like his on-screen work, chances are you’ll appreciate his bizarre style of speaking where he constantly whispers and then sporadically shouts SO! LOUDLY!! More importantly, Balem Abrasax graced movie theater screens just before a deluge of blockbuster villains that amounted to hastily assembled pixels and glowering frowns. Suicide Squad, Black Adam, It: Chapter Two, Eternals, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the list goes on and on of post-2015 blockbusters culminating in generic CG villains tormenting live-action protagonists.
Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending, meanwhile, is a fully tangible foe. He’s a flesh-and-blood person making striking choices as an actor. Everything from his richly-textured costumes to his boldly distinct vocal flourishes radiate somebody committing to grand swings. It’s not a character that will work for everyone, but such audacity will be rewarding for many viewers. In an age of CG blockbuster foes that elicit shrugs from most, this villain is at least memorable!
It’s also fantastic that Abrasax, like the baddies of The Matrix and Speed Racer before him, is another Wachowski antagonist explicitly defined as evil because of his loyalty to capitalism and societal norms. “My mother made me understand that every human society is a pyramid and that some lives will always matter more than others,” Abrasax remarks at one point. “It is better to accept this than to pretend it isn’t true.” His rhetoric sounds like it could’ve come from an average Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg social media post.
Jupiter Ascending defines evil with opulence. Opposing this cosmic 1%-er is a working-class woman (and, per her opening voice-over narration, an undocumented immigrant in America). Most blockbusters from the last decade bend over backward to find “good” CEOs, politicians, and agents of the state. Jupiter Ascending, meanwhile, centers its entire plot on Abrasax’s wicked indifference to genocide in the name of personal gain.
Redmayne’s Abrasax character is a microcosm of what makes Jupiter Ascending so interesting and compelling ten years later. This is an erratic, messy movie that hasn’t even cultivated the cult followings of other Wachowski movies. Isn’t it a miracle that trans women got such a big canvas to make something that wasn’t perfect? Wouldn’t it be lovely if trans folks got more opportunities to make flawed or messy art rather than constantly worrying if one shortcoming will inspire all trans people to get jettisoned from pop culture?
Two months after Jupiter Ascending’s opening, Caitlyn Jenner came out as a trans woman. This along with a new wave of “bathroom bill” hysteria (partially driven by GOP lawmakers needing a new queer boogeyman after gay marriage’s legalization) inspired a new kind of decade of trans existence in American pop culture. Trans lives were more visible than before, but there was also a new level of constant surveillance to prevent transness and gender fluidity from getting any more normalized. The very concept of trans women swimmers generated idiotic right-wing pearl-clutching. Meanwhile, trans kids have experienced relentless demonization from both sides of the political aisle. Even rich trans folks like Jenner joined in on horrific rhetoric targeting trans athletes and working-class people.
Navigating all that is a nightmare. Sometimes it feels like the only option for modern trans existence is to be a perfectly model citizen. But trans people are just people. We’re messy. Dramatic. Imperfect. Jupiter Ascending, for one fleeting moment, offered a glimpse into a different timeline. Here, trans artists regularly receive big budgets to make goofy messy sci-fi nonsense that’s not interested in winning over cis critics.
Jupiter Ascending’s fascinations lie in realizing the jagged yet passionate imagination of the Wachowski sisters. The concept of Channing Tatum playing a half-man/half-dog that also has massive angel wings, for instance, is utter madness. Having Mila Kunis subsequently softly whisper to Tatum “I love dogs, I’ve always loved dogs,” even more so. It’s all bound to make people go “WTF?,” a response so many trans artists never get the chance to evoke. As 2024 trans cinema hits like I Saw the TV Glow or The People’s Joker imaginatively epitomized, trans art doesn’t have to be perfect or resonate with every single person to be worthy of admiration. There is meaning in the messiest corners of art.
Jupiter Ascending is streaming on Max.
