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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘Jupiter Ascending’: victim of high expectations?

Dan Webster

"Jupiter Ascending," the latest film by the Wachowski siblings, has been playing for a couple of weeks now. And the world-wide box-office take of a mere $97.2 million ($38.5 million domestic take) is a bit underwhelming — especially for a film boasting a reported $176 million production budget.

That disappointing news, though, is likely as much caused by expectations as by any real reaction to the film. That's a point I key on in the review that I wrote for Spokane Public Radio, a transcription of which follows:

Fame and fortune are not, it has been proven time and again, always a good thing. We hope for it, we dream of it and some of us even work for it. But sometimes, if it comes, it carries burdens and expectations we aren’t equipped to handle.

Take M. Night Shyamalan as an example. With his third film, “The Sixth Sense,” Shyamalan became a sensation – riding an intriguing storyline and pristine production values to both critical and popular success. But belying the mantle of genius that had been bestowed upon him, Shyamalan proved with his subsequent, less and less successful movies that he wore the filmmaking equivalence of the emperor’s new clothes.

Now, consider the Wachowski siblings, Lana (formerly Larry) and Andy Wachowski hit it big with their second film, 1999’s “The Matrix” – that rare-but-powerful Hollywood blend of imagination, originality and quality. Like Shyamalan, the Wachowskis’ two “Matrix” sequels and their stand-alone follow-ups – “Speed Racer” and “Cloud Atlas” – proved disappointing both with critics and fans.

Unlike Shyamalan, though, whose filmmaking quiver seems empty, the Wachowskis are merely proving to be … well, if not great then at least better than average. The evidence: their latest big-screen offering “Jupiter Ascending.”

Firmly sci-fi, a genre the Wachowskis specialize in, “Jupiter Ascending” is nearly as political a statement as the 2005 movie they wrote and produced: “V for Vendetta.” It involves the Abrasax family, controlling partners in a galactic business empire that buys, develops and harvests planets for … well, let’s just say the Abrasaxes adhere to the “Soylent Green” business model.

The family, sister Kalique and brothers Titus and Balem – the latter played by Oscar-nominee Eddie Redmayne – place their business interests aside to vie over a seemingly ordinary Earthling named Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis). Jupiter, we gradually learn, is more than she seems – which, in her daily life, involves working as a toilet-cleaner with her extended Russian-American family. She is, actually, galactic royalty, a fact she becomes aware of only after the alien Abrasaxes and their minions try either to kidnap or kill her.

Thanks to the fighting skills of Caine Wise – a genetically engineered ex-soldier played by Channing Tatum – Jupiter stays alive, giving her time to figure out what the Abrasaxes are up to. And, with the help of Caine and a force of galactic police, to try to foil their plans.

All of this plays out competently enough. The acting is better than average, with Kunis and Tatum doing the obligatory mismatched-lovers dance, and Redmayne, Douglas Booth and Tuppence Middleton outshining them as the gleefully duplicitous and murderous Abrasax siblings. If it were directed by anyone else – Zack Snyder, perhaps – “Jupiter Ascending” would likely be judged as a quick-moving and clever, CGI-smooth cinematic space opera.

But this is the Wachowskis, you see, the pair responsible for a film that one reviewer called a “genuinely original vision of our cyberfuture.” And we expect more from those who, even if only once, give us something that feels completely and utterly fresh.