This Jupiter Ascending TV Spot Highlights The WTF Nature Of The Wachowski’s Latest

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Since The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1 hit theaters a few weeks ago, there’s not much in the way of new sci-fi coming to movie theaters for the remainder of the year as studios are more interested in getting their awards contenders qualifying runs. Fortunately for us, we won’t have to venture too far into 2015 before we get more genre fare. The Spierig Brothers’ Predestination hits January 9 (and you should all go see it), and after being delayed multiple times, the Wachowski’s Jupiter Ascending drops shortly after on February 6. The film looks absolutely bonkers, and this new extended TV spot only drives that point home.

This is basically a condensed version of the trailers we’ve already seen, and it lays out the general story. Earth is not the birthplace of the human race, and there are various intergalactic corporate interests with interest an eye on the planet. It also happens that Jupiter (Mila Kunis), a lowly cleaning woman, has the exact same genetic profile as the Queen of the Universe, which means she’s the reincarnated ruler of everything. You can imagine this comes as quite a shock. There are, of course, those who don’t want her to show up and take control, like Balem (a batshit crazy overacting Eddie Redmayne), but lucky for her, there’s an albino wolf/man hybrid soldier, Caine (Channing Tatum), who has taken a shine to Jupiter and protects her using his handy dandy rocket boots. Told you it was nuts.

There’s not much in the way of new footage or information in this U.K. TV spot, but the video really does highlight the WTF nature of Jupiter Ascending. After the financial disaster that was Cloud Atlas (a movie that, for all of its faults, I still enjoyed quite a bit), the Wachowski’s could use one in the win column, at least monetarily, but I don’t know if this is the one. Personally, I think it looks absolutely incredible, in a crazy ass, what-the-hell-are-they-thinking kind of way, like it might just be the most fun you’ll have at the movies all year, but I don’t know that general audiences are going to flock to their local cinema. Maybe I’m wrong, and I certainly hope that I am, but I’m starting to suspect that this might be another flop. Honestly, I don’t really care if this is successful or not (it doesn’t impact my daily life one bit), as long as the movie is fun, but I’d like to see the Wachowski’s keep making big ambitious films, and I can’t help but feel that for every sci-fi bomb that gets released somewhere development on three others gets cancelled.

Are you looking forward to Jupiter Ascending or are you thinking of sitting this one out?

Channing