Few would dispute the imaginative powers of Andy and Lana Wachowski. They probably got a free pass from Warner Brothers after creating The Matrix, one of those culture-changing movies that come along so rarely. I was leery of Jupiter Ascending, their newest original science-fiction opus, when Warner Brothers delayed its summer release by nine months. The trailers and commercials were also doing a dandy job of hiding what exactly the movie was about besides cool visuals. I was holding out hope, thinking that maybe Jupiter would be silly but fun in a Fifth Element way, but instead ladies and gentlemen, we have an heir to 1980’s campy Flash Gordon.

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is an unhappy maid who cleans toilets for a living. Then one day she becomes the most important person in the universe. She discovers she is the reincarnation of the matriarch of House Abrasax, whose three children, Titus (Douglas Booth), Kalique (Tuppance Middleto), and Balem (Eddie Redmayne), are fighting over their inheritance. The biggest prize of them all is Earth, and now the appearance of Jupiter complicates ownership. Various alien species are sent to kill her, but Jupiter has a savior in disgraced galactic solider Caine Wise (Channing Tatum). He’s a “splice,” a result of gene splicing people with animals. He rescues Jupiter and they head off world to explore the much larger, much stranger universe.

Oh look, she’s falling again.

Right away, mere moments after leaving the theater, I knew the first step to make Jupiter Ascending a significantly better movie: completely remove the title character. First off, her name is awful and makes me think she’d be a character in the Jetsons universe. Mostly, she’s a terrible protagonist because she is merely a fairy tale wish fulfillment masquerading as a person. Her normal life is miserable but secretly she’s a space princess who is the reincarnation of a space queen. Allow me to momentarily pause and question this line of monarchy and inheritance law. Apparently Jupiter shares some genes with the deceased Lady Abrasax, but she has no direct bloodline. Does that automatically thrust her into another family’s inheritance squabbles? Why should they even consider her claim valid? Why does that place her at the top of the pecking order? When did we start recognizing reincarnation with inheritance law?

Back to the matter at hand, Jupiter is an annoyingly weak character that’s supposed to follow the arc of weak to strong, inactive to active. Except she doesn’t. Beyond accepting her incredible new position, there’s really not much that changes for her. She remains, from start to finish, weak-willed, gullible, always in need of saving, and so wretchedly annoying and without merit. Her cousin arranges her with a doctor for Jupiter to donate her eggs, but he expects a majority of the money. Why does she need this middleman in this arrangement? It’s another reminder how dim the character is and devoid of agency. And then all of a sudden a romance materializes between her and Caine because of course it does. I use “materializes” because there is no actual setup of any kind beyond the fact that Kunis and Tatum are attractive specimens. Their romantic dialogue will produce dangerously violent eye rolls.

The Wachoswkis are certainly imaginative filmmakers but their ambitious world-building impulses get the better of them and their story. The imagination is on full display when it comes to the visuals, the production design, costumes, and alien designs. There’s a grand mixture of creatures big and small, and even an elephant pilot because why not? However, the storytelling meant to house these cool things is notably deficient. Jupiter Ascending feels less like a story that naturally develops and whose complications arise in a semi-logistical fashion. It feels like somebody guiding you on a tour of Weird Stuff. It’s not so much a story as a collection of Weird Stuff, Weird Incidents, Weird Places, and Weird Creatures. You feel like you’re being skipped off from one exhibit to another, especially when Jupiter is kidnapped and threatened by each of the three Abrasax children in a row. Seriously, the entire scenario is on repeat, so when Jupiter continues making naïve choices, you can slap yourself extra hard having been through this purgatory just moments before. It’s only a matter of time before she gives in to whatever Abrasax demands again. There’s a general sense of repetition to the plot compounded by Jupiter’s incessant need to be saved (she seems to be falling a lot, out of spaceships, buildings, vehicles, etc., which also gets tiresome). The scheming Abrasax children seem to just slide in and out as the plot requires, with little in the way of resolution.

It’s impossible to discuss the film without acknowledging how damn goofy the whole enterprise comes across. Caine is part wolf, part albino, part human, and apparently part angel since he got his wings removed as a punishment. Does that seem like a good combination of elements or like the aftermath of a drunken writing session? Let’s just run down some of these names: Jupiter Jones, Balem, Kalique, Stinger, Gemma Chatterjee, Phylo Percadium, Chicanery Night (!). To be fair, it’s not like Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader are less preposterous names. Caine has a pair of anti-gravity boots but they’re really just hovering rollerblades. There’s just something silly about watching a guy rollerblade, even if you attach a futuristic spin to it. There’s a hidden factory beneath the stormy Eye of Jupiter, and yet this same important factory seems ready made to fall apart if the slightest projectile pierces its exterior (it’s the Death Star all over again). There are weird small aliens, weird alien bounty hunters who can turn invisible but don’t, weird space police that are really bad at their jobs, weird robots with human faces, and there’s also weird stereotypical Russian immigrants for Jupiter’s obnoxious family. Perhaps all the goofy camp will enchant you but I never got onboard mostly because the story and central characters left me so thoroughly unengaged.

Another ongoing problem is that the Wachowskis are constantly telling you things rather than showing you and allowing the story to organically develop. There are no less than three times when Character A looks at Character B and literally verbalizes what they are thinking or feeling in this moment. It’s lazy screenwriting, beholden to constantly having to explain everything to an audience because either you think they are dumb or your plot is far too convoluted; either way, a problem. Such sample pieces of dialogue include these informational asides: “Bees are genetically programmed to recognize royalty,” and, mere seconds later, “Bees don’t lie.” There you have it; bees don’t lie. Now you know.

The most frustrating part of Jupiter Ascending is that there is a genuinely interesting movie buried under so much of this silly nonsense and ear-clanging noise. The starting premise that Earth is nothing more than a stock portfolio for an alien species, that’s good. The idea that a trio of siblings is squabbling over who gets their galactic inheritance, which includes the deed to Earth, that’s good. The idea that human life is seeded on planets merely to be harvested into an eternal youth elixir for the rich and powerful, that’s even better. It’s not exactly a nuanced critique of capitalism but it’ll do. I’m disappointed that we don’t find out more about a larger market for this rejuvenation technique. There has to be more customers for such a miracle product than one rich family. If this were an intergalactic King Lear or even a space version of Margin Call, it would be far more exciting and creative. Instead, the bigger ideas are grounded into pulp so that we can have more CGI-drenched action sequences. There’s one segment that tonally breaks away from the film, diving headlong into Douglas Adams-style satire on bureaucracy. Like most of the film, it has its moments of entertainment, but it comes from nowhere and has trouble fitting with everything else. I’ll give credit where it’s due and praise the special effects, as well as the overall production design. It’s too bad that the action too often feels like a bunch of pixels exploding, failing to provide a sense of immersion. It’s hard to get a feel for most of the action and its use of space, save for portions of the finale. There is one very fun and well-choreographed fight between Caine and a… dragon… sentry guy (I don’t really know what to call these winged henchmen). That fight is exciting. It’s a shame there aren’t more of them. Bring on more dragon sentry guys.

Kunis is certainly miscast on the part, though I doubt any actress could pull off such a lackluster heroine who is always needing to be rescued. Kunis is more adept in the realm of comedy (Ted) or seduction (Black Swan), neither of which is featured with Jupiter. Let me say one more reason this Jupiter Jones character is awful; part of her struggle concerns whether or not to marry a playboy space prince. I don’t know if the Wachowskis believed that Jupiter was supposed to be a “strong” figure, but reducing feminine value to her being married feels rather reductive for sci-fi (not that there isn’t a storied history of women being treated as objects of fantasy in the genre). Tatum’s (22 Jump Street) remarkable charms are dulled by his silly albino beard and general guard dog characterization. He’s less a character than a protector who inexplicably instantly falls in love with his charge. Both actors will no doubt rebound in short order.

Reserve some pity for poor Eddie Redmayne, a man who will be experiencing the highs and lows of acting this month. He’s the frontrunner to win Best Actor for his stirring work as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, which is what makes his performance here even more astonishingly awful. He speaks in this effete whisper for the entire movie, one that is hardly audible at all, except for the occasional line where he screams and spasms, making the contrast all the more funny. He constantly holds his head back like he’s in danger of nosebleeds. This is a performance of such startling misdirection that I physically felt bad for Redmayne. He seemed to be reaching out to me, pleading through his glassy eyes, communicating, “Help me, help me.” Even if his character’s vocal range wasn’t so nonthreatening, Balem makes for a terrible main villain. As a rich lord with power at his disposal, he works, but late in the movie all of that is removed, and he has to be a physical threat. After 90 minutes of watching him on screen, you will never be able to see him as a credible physical threat, and even the movie doesn’t fully treat him this way, and yet the plot still places him in this role. He’s not a heavy. Balem is laughable but he’s another component of a generally laughable movie.

Jupiter Ascending is a rarity in Hollywood, a big-budget epic that overpowers you with a singular sense of style and imagination; it just so happens that so much of the creative fireworks are laughably terrible. The Wachowskis don’t do anything in half-measure, and the film is put in overdrive. There’s a mess of characters and peculiar details to make this world feel larger than life and tethered to the idea of fun. Then why oh why did we have to be saddled with such boring, one-dimensional characters and a secret princess storyline lifted from countless sources? In the past, the Wachoswkis have found ways to turn pop philosophy and pop-culture into an entertaining alchemy that separated them from the sci-fi pack of imitators, which were legion. I still have great fondness for the original Matrix (you can keep the sequels), V for Vendetta, and especially Cloud Atlas of late. The Wachowskis are ambitious filmmakers and they have the imagination and narrative sensibilities to achieve great things. It’s just that with Jupiter Ascending it feels like their real passion was in all the background artifacts, the minutia of the worlds, the alien costumes and makeup, the histories of worlds. It certainly wasn’t on a story or characters or a credible romance. And yet even after all of these words, I have to admit that Jupiter Ascending is entertaining, just not in the way its creators may have intended. It reminds me of 2014’s disastrous Winter’s Tale, a passion project that was so baffling and bafflingly terrible. If you’re curious and willing to part with some money, gather some friends and check out Jupiter Ascending. Just make sure you’ll have suitable time planned afterwards to discuss its particular brand of big screen lunacy.

Nate’s Grade: C