Movie of the Week: Jupiter Ascending

[jacey]

This is a film that poses one huge question: how will Sean Bean die?

I read a couple of bad reviews of this which almost put me off going, but that would have been a pity because although it's fluff, it's entertaining fluff with gorgeous visuals and a sequenmce of events (maybe i won't call it as plot) that fairly zip along. The bad review complained of the plot being hackneyed - poor earth girl, Jupiter Jones, is actually alien royalty: hijinks ensue - but it works on an entertainment level, which is exactly what I was after on a chilly Wednesday afternoon. Yes, Jupiter has to be rescued a few times, but to be fair she's not set up as a kick-ass heroine. She's an illegal immigrant in Chicago who cleans toilets for a living. And when it comes down to it she does manage to rescue herself a couple of times.

There's a lot of explody chase sequences and not too much soul searching even though it's mostly about Jupiter trying to stop her inherited family from harvesting Earth's humans for less than great reasons.

Eddie Redmayne is the scenery-chewing pantomime villain, only slightly worse than his two screen siblings. Mila Kunis does well enough as Jupiter. Channing Tatum is the hero/space cop/love interest, which is a pity because, well, Channing Tatum. Sorry, but personality-wise and everything else-wise he doesn't do it for me, but Sean Bean just about rescues it as Tatum's one time seargeant in the military. He still has a Sheffield accent of course, and I'm reminded of the Dr Who episode in which we were reminded that: 'Every planet has a north!'

So this is a Wachowski sibling movie, so Jupiter's life changes, but ultimately she has a choice of whether to buy into that or to go her own way.

And the big question? Does Sean Bean die? Sorry, you'll have to go and see it for yourself.