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So, yes, that article about how Jupiter Ascending is the movie my sixteen year-old self wanted is pretty much completely and utterly true.
I would have worshipped this movie at age 16. Since it's some twenty years too late for that, I merely love it. It is, IMO, not as enjoyable as Pacific Rim which keysmashed its way through most of my personal id, but Jupiter Ascending managed to snag most of my id, and where it didn't, I can overlook it.
We'll start with the one thing I would absolutely have changed if it had been my story: I would have made Sean Bean's character a non-white woman. That is the only thing I would have changed - not the backstory, not the character's actions or motivations or storyline: just the gender and the colour.
Also: Channing Tatum, mate, I'm sorry, but with that chinscruff you look pretty much interchangeable with Charlie Hunnam as Jax Teller to me, so my brain was screeching RALEIGH BECKET at me for a helluva lot of the movie. Which works pretty well because Caine is a soldier, he meets Jupiter, she shakes his solid ground and pretty much owns him by the time she wakes up and points her gun at him. (Kwoon, anyone?)
Jupiter Jones - can I say just how much I love that she goes back to her old job with her family, that she's still cleaning toilets while she works out who she wants to be? I mean, you hear the ravings about how this is a Chosen One movie - but I don't remember any other Chosen One narratives where the central character goes back to their old life, even as a facade over the new one.
There's a part of me that's disappointed at the lack of physical competence in Jupiter's storyline - that's my own internal preference for Action Girls. Jupiter isn't an Action Girl; she's more of a True Queen (or becomes one by the end of the movie) - the actions she takes are to protect and serve, not to defy and conquer. That part of her destiny is very much Chosen One territory, but her ultimate goal is not to stand triumphant before the massed crowds, taking in their adulation (Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, even Neo, at the end of their introductory stories), but to make sure that everything keeps on keeping on.
However, when she chooses between her family and the whole earth? That was a GOOD moment. A moment that I've been wanting in movies for oh so long - where the heroine chooses the world over the individual: as then-Lance-Corporal Carrot says, It's personal, not important. And Jupiter chooses the lives of Earth over the lives of her family. That "ruthlessness"? Is a wonderful thing and we don't get to see it often enough in heroic women. (Liz's choice in Hellboy 2? For her lover over the future of the world? RAGE. INCANDESCENT FRUSTRATED RAGE FOR STUPIDITY OF LOVE.)
I think the thing with Jupiter is that she works with what she has: she's not trained military like Caine or Stinger, she's just a cleaning lady from Chicago who's the genetic reincarnation of a woman from one of the most powerful families in the universe. She knows how to kick a boy in the balls (oh, Eddie Redmayne, you do camp evil so well - your character and Geoffrey Rush's Casanova Frankenstein from Mystery Men would "go up, get down, and boogie" over a glass of Abraxis and the corpse of Captain Amazing), knows her limits (shooting him dead, no, shooting him in the leg, yes), and deals with what she can with the coping mechanisms that she has.
So, yeah, she's not suddenly going to become a military whiz, or a soldier, or recognise treachery even when it's staring in the face. She's still a young woman (an illegal immigrant, no less) with the instincts trained to apologise, to trust, to take things that pretty people say at face value and not look for the gun aimed at her spine.
And yes, I liked that - that in spite of everything else, Jupiter Jones, more-or-less Queen of the universe by genetic fiat, is still a young woman of modern America.
I kind of wish there was the chance of a sequel - hell, why not two? Jupiter Apogee and Jupiter Regnant.
There's a lot of stuff to parse in the movie - a lot of terminology and technology, and I'm very definitely going to have to see it a second time in the movies to get a better feel for the world before I write it. If I write it.
--
...and I've had my very first glimpse of the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie. I've basically avoided all spoilers up until now. And I think I'm gonna keep on that way.
April, huh? They seem to be moving the releases earlier and earlier in the year. Presumably to take as much advantage of the northern hemisphere summer as possible.
I would have worshipped this movie at age 16. Since it's some twenty years too late for that, I merely love it. It is, IMO, not as enjoyable as Pacific Rim which keysmashed its way through most of my personal id, but Jupiter Ascending managed to snag most of my id, and where it didn't, I can overlook it.
We'll start with the one thing I would absolutely have changed if it had been my story: I would have made Sean Bean's character a non-white woman. That is the only thing I would have changed - not the backstory, not the character's actions or motivations or storyline: just the gender and the colour.
Also: Channing Tatum, mate, I'm sorry, but with that chinscruff you look pretty much interchangeable with Charlie Hunnam as Jax Teller to me, so my brain was screeching RALEIGH BECKET at me for a helluva lot of the movie. Which works pretty well because Caine is a soldier, he meets Jupiter, she shakes his solid ground and pretty much owns him by the time she wakes up and points her gun at him. (Kwoon, anyone?)
Jupiter Jones - can I say just how much I love that she goes back to her old job with her family, that she's still cleaning toilets while she works out who she wants to be? I mean, you hear the ravings about how this is a Chosen One movie - but I don't remember any other Chosen One narratives where the central character goes back to their old life, even as a facade over the new one.
There's a part of me that's disappointed at the lack of physical competence in Jupiter's storyline - that's my own internal preference for Action Girls. Jupiter isn't an Action Girl; she's more of a True Queen (or becomes one by the end of the movie) - the actions she takes are to protect and serve, not to defy and conquer. That part of her destiny is very much Chosen One territory, but her ultimate goal is not to stand triumphant before the massed crowds, taking in their adulation (Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, even Neo, at the end of their introductory stories), but to make sure that everything keeps on keeping on.
However, when she chooses between her family and the whole earth? That was a GOOD moment. A moment that I've been wanting in movies for oh so long - where the heroine chooses the world over the individual: as then-Lance-Corporal Carrot says, It's personal, not important. And Jupiter chooses the lives of Earth over the lives of her family. That "ruthlessness"? Is a wonderful thing and we don't get to see it often enough in heroic women. (Liz's choice in Hellboy 2? For her lover over the future of the world? RAGE. INCANDESCENT FRUSTRATED RAGE FOR STUPIDITY OF LOVE.)
I think the thing with Jupiter is that she works with what she has: she's not trained military like Caine or Stinger, she's just a cleaning lady from Chicago who's the genetic reincarnation of a woman from one of the most powerful families in the universe. She knows how to kick a boy in the balls (oh, Eddie Redmayne, you do camp evil so well - your character and Geoffrey Rush's Casanova Frankenstein from Mystery Men would "go up, get down, and boogie" over a glass of Abraxis and the corpse of Captain Amazing), knows her limits (shooting him dead, no, shooting him in the leg, yes), and deals with what she can with the coping mechanisms that she has.
So, yeah, she's not suddenly going to become a military whiz, or a soldier, or recognise treachery even when it's staring in the face. She's still a young woman (an illegal immigrant, no less) with the instincts trained to apologise, to trust, to take things that pretty people say at face value and not look for the gun aimed at her spine.
And yes, I liked that - that in spite of everything else, Jupiter Jones, more-or-less Queen of the universe by genetic fiat, is still a young woman of modern America.
I kind of wish there was the chance of a sequel - hell, why not two? Jupiter Apogee and Jupiter Regnant.
There's a lot of stuff to parse in the movie - a lot of terminology and technology, and I'm very definitely going to have to see it a second time in the movies to get a better feel for the world before I write it. If I write it.
--
...and I've had my very first glimpse of the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie. I've basically avoided all spoilers up until now. And I think I'm gonna keep on that way.
April, huh? They seem to be moving the releases earlier and earlier in the year. Presumably to take as much advantage of the northern hemisphere summer as possible.
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ok so late but can't resist a comment
YES THIS. She wasn't a superheroine badass, and I like Action Girls too, but in a way that made her a little more badass, that she was so untrained and vulnerable and dropped right in this shitstorm, but still the movie hinged on her decisions and she made the right ones. Loved it.
Also, since it was a Wachowskis film, I am CONVINCED they probably plotted it out as a trilogy like they seem to do most things and I will be forever sad we won't get it. (But we get endless Batman and Spiderman! SIGH.)
Re: ok so late but can't resist a comment
*makes growly noises and sets off a nuclear explosion in movie exec testicles*
Re: ok so late but can't resist a comment
I'D SEE THAT FLICK
Re: ok so late but can't resist a comment