In many ways, Jupiter Ascending is an accomplished piece of work. After all, it takes something special to turn the plot ‘Chicago-based cleaning woman discovers she is an intergalactic monarch’ into something even dafter than it sounds. Even more impressive though, is that not only is the film utterly silly (where else could you hear Sean Bean deliver the line ‘bees are genetically designed to recognise royalty’?), it is also incredibly dull – and in myriad different ways. Boring action, tedious characters and, everybody’s favourite, space bureaucracy! You know, just in case you were starting to have fun.
The story revolves around Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), whose name and time of birth were supposed to dictate she would be destined for great things, but who instead finds herself scrubbing rich people’s toilets. That is until mysterious half-man, half-wolf warrior Caine (Channing Tatum) skates into her life on his hover boots, informing Jupiter that she is actually a genetic match for the recently killed alien matriarch of the Abrasax Dynasty. With the heirs to her newfound fortune desperate to obtain the spoils for themselves, Jupiter must foil their evil schemes and prove her claim to the throne in order to save the Earth.
The villains in question are the film’s saving grace; not because they’re well drawn or interesting characters, but simply because their unbridled campness is by far the most entertaining thing onscreen. Indeed, though much of the film may carry a neon-on-black TRON: Legacy aesthetic, from the moment Eddie Redmayne’s Balem teleports onto the blue-gravelled planet of Zantar (yes, really), grand drapes hanging from his sleeves, it’s the Flash Gordon influence that truly shines through. His siblings Titus (Douglas Booth) and Kalique (Tuppence Middleton) have their moments (the former even bestows Jupiter with a revealing and perfectly-fitted space-dress to wear, before attempting to force her into an alien wedding), but the bizarre edge Redmayne lends his performance – speaking in an effete, unexplained whisper with his eyes half-closed for most of his screen time, screaming with his eyes wide-open for the rest – is what keeps your attention.
Sadly though, there are large sections of the film where he disappears, the plot’s structure cut into clunky episodes, rather than a cohesive whole: a preface about Jupiter’s parents that serves little purpose, an incident involving one of Jupiter’s clients that is never fully explained, then mini-arcs as she meets each of the three siblings in turn. There are some impressively rendered action sequences to link things together of course (this is the Wachowskis, after all), but they invariably outstay their welcome. By the end, we’re supposed to believe that chemistry has developed between Channing Tatum’s well-acted but bland wolfman and Mila Kunis’ damp squib of a space princess – presumably demonstrated by the umpteen moments where he catches her after she falls off something high – but the audience’s hearts will belong to Redmayne. Because if you have to be bad, you might as well be interesting.