Arcaneya

Tag: jupiter ascending

  • Jupiter Ascending (2015): The Arc That Could Have Been

    When Jupiter Ascending was first announced, expectations soared. A big-budget, original sci-fi epic from the Wachowskis — the visionary minds behind The Matrix — was rare in a landscape saturated with sequels, reboots, and comic book franchises. With its sprawling galactic dynasties, lavish visuals, and a star-studded cast, it had all the ingredients to be the next space opera phenomenon.

    Instead, it crashed under the weight of its own ambition.

    Critics called it convoluted, messy, and hollow. Audiences found it difficult to follow, emotionally distant, and ultimately forgettable. And while the movie has since found a small cult following, it never lived up to its potential. Beneath the noise, there was a decent story — clever sci-fi concepts about reincarnation, genetic dynasties, and the commodification of life — but that story never found its footing.

    And at the heart of that failure was one fatal flaw: Jupiter Jones herself.

    A Hero With No Journey

    Jupiter is introduced as a humble maid, scrubbing toilets and resenting her life. But rather than being bitter or restless, she’s strangely… gracious. Humble, kind, self-effacing — already displaying the maturity and wisdom of someone who’s supposedly going to grow. When she learns she’s not only special, but the genetic reincarnation of a space queen and rightful owner of Earth, she reacts with mild confusion, but little conflict. She declines a throne she didn’t ask for, gets whisked from place to place, and mostly lets others explain what’s happening.

    The issue isn’t that she’s unlikable — it’s that she’s underwritten. She’s passive, reactive, and never really seems to want anything, which makes it hard to invest in her journey. Her character arc is essentially flat. There’s no temptation, no internal struggle, and no transformation.

    In a genre that thrives on evolution — Luke learning the Force, Neo waking up from the Matrix, even Sarah Connor becoming the warrior her future demands — Jupiter doesn’t evolve. She just floats through.

    What Her Arc Should Have Been

    There’s a version of Jupiter Ascending that could have worked beautifully. And it starts by flipping Jupiter’s starting point.

    Instead of being humble and kind, Jupiter should begin the story resentful and selfish. Not cartoonishly evil — just a person beaten down by life, desperate for more. She hates her job. She envies the rich. She dreams of luxury. She’s tired of being invisible and underappreciated.

    So when someone tells her she’s galactic royalty? That she owns a planet and is heir to unimaginable wealth and power? She wants it. She grabs it. She believes she deserves it.

    This version of Jupiter would enter the world of the Abrasax siblings not as an outsider, but as someone who resonates with their twisted values. She’d feel at home with their decadence, their obsession with power, their casual disregard for “lesser” lives. For a while, she might even start to become one of them.

    But over time, she’d see the cost. She’d witness the exploitation behind the empire. She’d discover that the very luxury she once craved is built on suffering. And slowly, painfully, she’d begin to change.

    The climax wouldn’t be about rejecting a throne she never wanted. It would be about walking away from one she once desired — and finally choosing humility, responsibility, and connection over control.

    In the end, she wouldn’t just inherit the Earth. She’d become one with it. Grounded. Human. Changed.

    Why It Matters

    Great sci-fi stories don’t just wow us with visuals or elaborate lore — they anchor us with human truth. They give us heroes who reflect our flaws and show us how to rise above them.

    The tragedy of Jupiter Ascending is that it had the ingredients. The bones of an epic were all there — vast empires, moral complexity, even a spiritual subtext about identity and value. But without a strong, evolving character at the center, it never landed.

    If Jupiter had truly changed — if she had started selfish and learned selflessness through loss, through temptation, through revelation — she could have been one of the great sci-fi heroines.

    Instead, we got a queen with no crown, no fire, and no journey.

    Thank you for reading and following! 🙂

    Ira

  • Jupiter Ascending (2015): How a Different Opening Scene Could Have Saved the Movie

    When Jupiter Ascending was first announced, it sounded like exactly the kind of movie science fiction fans were starving for — an original, big-budget space opera not tied to a franchise, made by the Wachowskis, the same minds that gave us The Matrix. The premise promised intergalactic dynasties, flying cities, alien bounty hunters, and a secret war over the fate of Earth, all wrapped around the story of an ordinary woman who discovers she’s galactic royalty.

    But what we got was something far messier.

    The film is visually stunning and undeniably ambitious, but narratively overstuffed and archetypally totally confused. Important concepts are handed to us through long-winded exposition dumps — convenient shortcuts for storytelling sinners. Action scenes explode across the screen before the audience has any idea what’s at stake. And Jupiter herself feels like a passenger in her own story, learning what the plot means only after we’ve already been lost in it for 30 minutes. Unfortunately, that passivity never really leaves her — it lingers through almost the entire film. Even when she takes action independently, it doesn’t feel like she was meant to be in that position in the first place. But that’s a whole new subject for another article.

    It’s not that Jupiter Ascending lacks an interesting plot — it actually has some genuinely clever sci-fi ideas. The film imagines a universe where genetic recurrence determines inheritance, where interstellar corporations treat planets like crops, and where human life is just another resource to be traded. That’s rich material. But it needed a better launchpad — something to ground the audience, explain the rules of this universe, and set the tone before the gravity boots kicked in. Without any early context, the movie throws viewers into a galaxy crowded with unfamiliar factions, hierarchies, and motivations — winged bodyguards, lizard men, space dynasties — all without telling us what any of it means. The result isn’t wonder, it’s confusion. Instead of building intrigue, it overwhelms. We’re supposed to care about who’s chasing Jupiter before we even know why she matters — or who she really is. Bottom line: the story desperately needed a better opening.

    Alternative opening proposal

    Opening: A pair of bored alien bureaucrats sift through endless genetic profiles on their space computers, casually chuckling over a notorious war criminal who’s been reborn as a toddler on some backwater, low-tech planet. One jokes about how many times this particular troublemaker has come back, each time more ridiculous than the last — maybe this incarnation will finally teach him to behave. Then they scroll past more files: a famous ancient poet now working as a low-level fast-food cashier, a celebrated philosopher reincarnated as a karaoke lounge singer, and a galactic princess reborn as a particularly mischievous house cat or something like that. Each reincarnation is treated like a bureaucratic headache and source of dry humor. It’s a funny throwaway gag that hints at a vast bureaucracy tracking reincarnations across the galaxy, treating reincarnation more like annoying paperwork than cosmic destiny. Then, just as the scene leans into this dark humor, the tone abruptly shifts. A new alert pops up: a perfect genetic match for Seraphi Abrasax. The room goes silent. The stakes suddenly become real.

    Now that would be an opening!

    In just two minutes, the film could establish its rules, its tone, and its stakes — while also winking at the audience and deflating the “chosen one” trope in a way that sets us up to actually care when the lasers start flying. Here’s why that one opening joke could have made all the difference.

    Smash cut to Earth

    Jupiter Jones is scrubbing a toilet in a dim, fluorescent-lit bathroom, her face blank with routine. No dreamy narration, no mystical birth sequence, no hints at greatness — just rubber gloves, a sponge, and a dead-end job. It’s a hard cut from a sleek alien lab to a world of dull repetition and invisible lives. And that’s the point.

    By skipping the melodramatic birth scene and starting with the grit of Jupiter’s day-to-day boredom, the film would build a stronger emotional contrast. Boredom — or spiritual darkness — is one of the best places to begin character development towards her light.

    And with that kind of groundwork — a clear, humorous introduction to the universe’s rules, followed by a grounded and relatable look at Jupiter’s life — the story would have been far easier to follow and, more importantly, easier to enjoy.

    Thank you for reading,

    Ira