It’s been about 4 weeks since I watched Jupiter Ascending.  It took every moment of that 4 weeks to come up with an idea as to how this $176,000,000 masterpiece got made.  I think I’ve finally got it figured out.

In the third grade as part of a social studies curriculum the class was assigned a year-end history fair project.  Part of the project was to create a display board or a diorama; something for people to look at in addition to reading the several page long description of whatever historical event we were assigned.  The project was assigned a full two months in advance of the history fair.  I went home and told my mother all about the project and that very evening  she took me to the local arts and crafts store and let me pick out whatever I wanted to make my diorama.  I was so excited to get the expensive colored pencils, the super thick stock cardboard and all sorts of other nice materials to make project great.   I went home from the store that day and immediately forgot about the project.  The night before the history fair, I finally got to work using all those expensive materials to assemble a pile of garbage, haphazardly assembled diorama.  I knew I had to turn in something, so I showed up to the history fair with my shitily written paper and my even more shoddy display board and just smiled and acted like I tried hard and had put a lot of work into the project.

I’m now convinced this is how Jupiter Ascending was made.  They gave a third grader $176 million bucks and said go nuts.  He picked as his leading characters a hybrid wolf man (apparently when you cross a wolf with a man, you get a regular looking human man with pointy ears and shitty facial hair) played by that muscly guy that he heard his mom talking about in that “magic” movie (Channing Tatum) and a Russian – American toilet cleaning woman played by Mila Kunis (as if there is a universe that exists in which Mila Kunis would ever clean toilets for a living).  Eddie Redmayne was thrown in for good measure and apparently told to act as annoying as humanly (or whatever alien race he was supposed to be) possible.  The story was thrown together the night before and gussied up with some expensive visual effects that didn’t even end up looking good.   All for only $176,000,000!

Everything about Jupiter Ascending is a complete mess.  Kunis’s character, Jupiter Jones, was born to two Russian university professors.  Jupiter’s father was killed for some reason while Jupiter was in-utero and then her mother (keep in mind she is a university professor) decided to immediately get on a really shitty boat to the United States while pregnant.  Big surprise, she goes into labor and has a difficult birth while at sea.  Cut to modern day Chicago and Jupiter Jones is rubbing toilets with a rag next to her mother.  Hey, did you know Jones is a traditional Russian surname?   This is the most cohesive portion of the story.  Meanwhile, on JUPITER (the planet – yeah, Jupiter Jones is going to cross paths with some fuckers on JUPITER)  there is an ancient alien / human race that is planning to harvest all of humanity on Earth so they can stay young and not mutate into weird lizard monsters.  Through some cockamamie connection, these aliens need Jupiter Jones’ DNA.  Also Jupiter is a princess on Jupiter for some reason.  The bad guys send some folks to go get Jupiter Jones from Earth and  Wolfman Tatum has something to say about that and tries to protect her.  Wolfman Tatum has the ONLY pair of jet boot in the whole movie.  With his jet boots he can fly as fast as the alien spaceships and evade the bad guy laser guns.  Also, did I mention he’s part wolf.  Part Space wolf?  Jupiter wolf?  Timber wolf?  No one knows, but he’s part wolf.  You can tell by his pointy ears and facial hair.

I’m not going to attempt to describe the plot or characters anymore.  I’m describing the movie as best I can but frankly the filmmakers did such a horrible job, they should have to describe it to you themselves.  They sure as shit didn’t do it in the actual movie, so maybe they’ll put together an explanatory compendium that explains to the poor souls that sat through this film what the hell it is they actually saw.  At no point did I think I knew what was going on – and it wasn’t because I wasn’t paying attention or I’m not clever enough.  I’ve seen plenty of movies that I couldn’t follow because I’m an idiot.  This is not one of them.  This movie was impossible to follow because the script was awful, the acting was terrible and the special effects were distracting (but not distracting enough to keep you from realizing this movie is a steaming glob of cat shit).

My blood pressure is rising as I write this.   I want my 2+ hours back (yes, this film is over 2 hours because you couldn’t possibly tell the tale of the princess Jupiter Jones on Jupiter in 90 minutes).  I want someone to explain to me how $176M was spent making this.  I would have had a much better time watching someone light $176M in cash on fire.  The Wachowskis have been coasting on the Matrix for too long.  The Matrix series was great, but after watching Jupiter Ascending I won’t see another Wachowski written movie again until at least 10 people I know see it and tell me it’s good.  I won’t hold my breath.