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tgv1975
Reviews
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Utterly bad, unwatchable crap
This movie reaches that mythical degree of bad that prompts a lifelong lurker to come out and actually review it in writing. "Worst" is not nearly enough a superlative to describe how bad this is. And that is precisely because of the bits that people found "still pretty good" in it. Those are only rubbing it in. In fact, those bits are completely detachable from the whole, because we're talking CGI exclusively. The rest is no more than appalling dead weight.
I won't go into the world building in the movie, which is in itself a huge missed opportunity, by the way, because there's no point, really. The story and characters (you know, the two most freaking important and sine qua non facets of any narrative, ever) are less than amateurishly crafted, they are plain dumb to an amazing degree. As I watched this, the predominant sentiment was disbelief: How did this mess ever leave the My Documents folder of some talentless eleven year old, and made its way onto the desks of big Hollywood hotshots? I forced myself to watch it in full, and not only did it not improve, but it got so, so much worse.
Everything (except the CGI, but that in isolation is for six-graders) is wrong with this humongous failure, besides those measly things that are story and characters. The pacing is jerky, the dialogue is absolutely idiotic and unbelievable at most times, and the acting, oh my God, the acting - the leads act so bad, to the point you can't actually understand what they're mumbling! The acting is littered with nauseating clichés, from silly poses and stances to boring gestures and verbal utterances. It makes you wonder how the hell this movie got out of the studios in this sorry state. The whole impression is of an amateur crew's first draft of the film school graduation project, at best.
Even the action/battle scenes become boring and repetitive very fast. Almost all action scenes are poorly directed, which translates into a blurry, flashy, borderline incomprehensible mess most of the time. A far cry from the superbly done Matrix fights.
I see my awarding it one star as a sacred duty to the art of cinematography and to the idea of science-fiction. I hope the overall rating plummets under 5, so that this sorry production will become a timeless lesson in how not to make movies, even if you're already famous and have tons of money. May it also be a lesson to all movie makers of our days: The public is not as stupid as you think. In the end, CGI can only take you so far. Stop relying on its magic already! Truly bad movies cannot be salvaged by it, or marketing, or hype.