Jupiter Ascending is a 2015 space opera film written, directed and co-produced by the Wachowskis. Starring Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis with Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne and Douglas Booth in supporting roles, the film centers on Jupiter Jones (Kunis), an ordinary cleaning woman, and Caine Wise (Tatum), an interplanetary warrior who informs Jones that her destiny extends beyond Earth. Supporting cast member Douglas Booth has described the film's fictional universe as a cross between The Matrix and Star Wars, while Kunis identified indulgence and consumerism as its underlying themes.Total Film, Summer 2014, issue 221
The film was produced by Grant Hill and the Wachowskis, making Jupiter Ascending Hill's seventh collaboration with the Wachowskis as producer or executive producer. Several more longstanding Wachowski collaborators since the creation of the Matrix films contributed to the picture, including production designer Hugh Bateup, visual effects supervisor Dan Glass, visual effects designer John Gaeta, standby propman Alex Boswell, sound designer and supervising sound editor Dane A. Davis and costume designer Kym Barrett. Other notable past collaborators include Speed Racer music composer Michael Giacchino, Cloud Atlas director of photography John Toll along with its editor Alexander Berner and hair and make-up designer Jeremy Woodhead, who worked on both.
Jupiter Ascending was released in the United States on February 6, 2015, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received negative reviews from critics; despite praise for the visual effects, the narrative was criticized as confusing. It grossed $184 million against a $176–210 million budget during its theatrical release.
Plot
Earth and countless other planets were established by families of transhuman and alien royalty to harvest the resulting organisms to produce a perpetual life-extending youth serum for the elites on other planets. After the matriarch of the House of Abrasax, the most powerful of the alien dynasties, dies, her children — Balem, Kalique, and Titus — quarrel over the inheritance. Balem inherits control of the Abrasax business empire, while Kalique inherits the planet Cerise and Titus spends his inheritance on a lavish spaceship. None of them are named Sovereign of Abrasax. Instead, they are styled First, Second and Third Primary.
After Maximilian Jones is killed in a robbery, his wife Aleksa (née Bolotnikov), whom he met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, names their daughter Jupiter after his favorite planet, and they relocate to Chicago to live with her family. Years later, Jupiter makes a modest living as a housekeeper to her wealthy neighbors. Desiring a telescope, she agrees to sell her egg cells and uses her friend Katharine Dunlevy's name as a pseudonym. At Katharine's house, extraterrestrial "Keepers" attack the women. Jupiter photographs them, but they erase both women's memories of the incident immediately afterwards. She later notices the strange photograph on her phone while waiting at an egg donation clinic, but cannot recall anything about it. During the procedure, the doctors and nurses are revealed as Keepers sent to kill her, but Caine Wise, a former soldier dispatched by Titus to bring her to him, rescues her. As Caine and Jupiter flee, a squad of Keepers destroys their spaceship, but he fends off the attack and kills them before hijacking one of their vehicles, realizing that Jupiter must be highly significant to Titus and Balem, who are revealed to have dispatched the Keepers to Earth.
Caine takes Jupiter to the hideout of Stinger Apini, another former soldier living in exile on Earth. After learning she can control the bees in Stinger's residence, Jupiter discovers that she is galactic royalty. Stinger agrees to help Jupiter, but she is captured by Balem's hunters and bribed by Kalique to bring Jupiter to her alcazar on Cerise. There, Kalique explains that Jupiter is genetically identical to the House of Abrasax's long-dead matriarch, and therefore she is the Earth's rightful owner.
Supported by Captain Diomika Tsing of the intergalactic police force, Aegis, Caine retrieves Jupiter from Kalique and takes her to the capital planet, Orous, to claim her inheritance as Sovereign of Abrasax. Once claimed, Jupiter would gain control of Abrasax Industries and displace Balem as titleholder of Earth. In another attempt to lure Jupiter to him, Balem sends Greeghan to kidnap her family. On the way back to Earth, Titus's henchmen capture Jupiter and detain Caine as punishment for not bringing her to him. Titus reveals to Caine his plan to marry Jupiter, kill her, and claim Earth. Titus then throws Caine into the void of space and attempts to seduce Jupiter, declaring his intention to dismantle the youth serum trade, of which Earth is the next intended source. Caine survives being spaced and returns with Stinger to save Jupiter at the altar before she is married. Jupiter asks to return home but learns that her family has been taken hostage by Balem.
At his refinery inside the Great Red Spot, Balem demands Earth in exchange for Jupiter's family. Realizing that Balem cannot "harvest" Earth without her permission, Jupiter refuses. Caine infiltrates the refinery and damages its gravity hull, causing the refinery to begin collapsing. While the occupants evacuate the refinery, Tsing's ship moves in and rescues Jupiter's family. Jupiter survives the collapsing structures, only to land at the feet of Balem, who tries to kill her; she fights him off before Balem falls to his death. Caine saves her as the refinery is in its final stages of collapse. Tsing opens a portal to Earth and prepares to evacuate, potentially leaving Caine and Jupiter behind. However, she is relieved that they have survived and crossed the portal, along with Tsing's ship. Jupiter's family returns home with no memory of their disappearance, while Jupiter secretly retains ownership of the Earth. Caine's rank in the Legion is restored, and he and Jupiter begin a relationship.
Cast
In addition, Terry Gilliam makes a cameo appearance as the Seal and Signet Minister, the bureaucrat who confirms Jupiter's title to Earth, in a scene calling back to Gilliam's 1985 film, Brazil.
Production Development In 2009, Warner Bros. president Jeff Robinov approached the Wachowskis about creating an original intellectual property and franchise. Development began two years later, with the production and visual effects teams doing pre-production work based on a first draft of the script, while the Wachowskis were shooting the future-set segments of Cloud Atlas. The story was partly inspired by Lana's favorite book, the Odyssey. "It was making me super-emotional", Lana has said. "The whole concept of these almost spiritual journeys and you're changed." Another inspiration was The Wizard of Oz which Lana contrasts to the Odyssey. "Dorothy is pretty much the same at the end as she is at the beginning. Whereas Odysseus goes through such an epic shift in his identity." The Wachowskis themselves describe the plot of the film as an effort to reverse the classical science-fiction trope of the hero who is "emotionally withholding and strong and stoic". Instead, they tried to create a new form of female space opera hero. "We were, like, 'Can we bring a different kind of female character like Dorothy or Alice? Characters who negotiate conflict and complex situations with intelligence and empathy?' Yes, Dorothy has a protector, Toto, who's always barking at everyone. And that was sort of the origin of Caine."
Production design Producer Grant Hill and visual effects supervisor Dan Glass have noted that the Wachowskis never repeat themselves. Hill has described the design as an original take on the look of space environments, while Glass mentioned it was influenced by cities around Europe rather than science fiction touchstones. Examples include Renaissance architecture, modern glass and Gothic art.
Filming The film was a co-production between the United States' Warner Bros. Pictures and Australia's Village Roadshow Pictures, with both studios providing 40% of the budget and RatPac-Dune Entertainment the remaining 20%. Roberto Malerba and Bruce Berman served as executive producers. Principal photography commenced at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden on April 2, 2013, on an initial budget of US$130 million. Filming also took place at Ely Cathedral in England. The production remained in the London studio through June, then moved to various locations in Chicago, Illinois, throughout late July and August. Minor reshoots to clarify plot points took place in January and early May of the next year, the latter of which took place in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. Star Channing Tatum later stated: Jupiter Ascending was a nightmare from the jump. It was a sideways movie. All of us were there for seven months, busting our hump. It was just tough." The opening scenes show the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Dancing House in Prague, both of which were designed by Frank Gehry. This was the second feature that cinematographer John Toll shot digitally, using Arri Alexas and Codex Recorders, after Iron Man 3, in part due to the visual effects element. Legend3D handled the stereoscopic conversion of the film, having recently integrated the Mistika post-production software into their pipeline. Vision3's Chris Parks is the stereoscopic supervisor of the film. An eight-minute-long pursuit sequence, code-named "Fifty-Two Part" by the film's crew, depicts Jupiter and Caine fleeing from aliens and spaceships in downtown Chicago shortly after they first meet. It was the longest sequence in the script, involving some of the film's most difficult stunts. To complete it, Kunis and Tatum had to film every day for six months.
Visual effects The filmmakers, wherever possible, employed stuntwork rather than CGI. Tatum has noted there was minimal use of digital doubles. Most stunts were done by the principal actors or stuntmen attempting to match the pre-vis sequences. For the scenes of Tatum's character flying using antigravity boots, Glass has stated that his team invented a way to use stuntmen instead of doing them digitally, despite the limited available time to shoot them. They created a rig of six cameras, called the Panocam, which was mounted on a helicopter and covered nearly 180 degrees of the action. During post-production, the directors could combine the overlapped filmed footage, essentially creating a camera that could swing around the action independently of the helicopter's actual flying path. The technique piqued the interest of other directors who have subsequently used it in their own movies. Visual effects company Framestore used Vicon T40 cameras for pre-vis and motion-capture purposes, the same camera system they used in the 2013 film Gravity, which was critically acclaimed for its cinematography and visual effects.
Music