10 Years Ago, The Wachowskis Made A Sci-Fi Flop That Was Wildly Misunderstood

Creating new science fiction movies is hard. In the current decade, science fiction sequels and franchise installments are far more common than original films. And when it comes to massive space opera franchises in the mode of Star Wars, standalone sci-fi romps that feel like franchise films are practically unheard of. Before the true explosion of the MCU in 2011, the closest thing to an impressive non-franchise space opera film was The Chronicles of Riddick in 2004, which of course, was technically a sequel. Today, if one is looking for a non-Star Wars space opera, the closest thing we got was Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon films in 2023 and 2024, which even he admitted were just R-rated Star Wars movies with the serial numbers shaved off.

So, if you consider Avatar an outlier, then somewhere in the middle of The Chronicles of Riddick and Rebel Moon sits the Wachowskis’ strange, brave film, Jupiter Ascending. After The Matrix trilogy and their live-action Speed Racer, the famous filmmaking siblings dropped a massive space opera, made in the mold of very old-school sci-fi. And it was utterly misunderstood.

Released on February 6, 2015, Jupiter Ascending was generally considered a commercial and critical failure. But it’s not that Jupiter Ascending was ahead of its time — if anything, it should have been released in the 1950s. And that’s a compliment.

Ten years ago, I, too, joined the chorus and gave Jupiter Ascending a fairly scathing review. My problem back then was that I felt that the “originality” defense for Jupiter Ascending wasn’t good enough because the movie was too derivative to distinguish itself from its franchise/sequel competitors. But that was before I’d really gotten into watching and loving the old Flash Gordon serials from the 1930s. Because that’s what Jupiter Ascending really is: a pulp sci-fi space opera in the mode of the references George Lucas was cribbing from to make Star Wars. But Jupiter Ascending is more like Flash Gordon than Star Wars is, and as such, it’s more old-fashioned, corny, and straight-up weird.

If you’ve forgotten what this movie is about, here’s a quick refresher: Ordinary girl Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is working as a maid and struggling to make ends meet. Then, some aliens show up to try and kidnap her, but luckily, a half-dog man named Caine (Channing Tatum) appears to rescue her, using flying boots, which sort of scan as flying roller skates. Turns out, Jupiter is the heir to a solar system-wide kingdom. The royals in this kingdom subside on an eternal youth substance known as RegeneX, made by the Abrasax Industries. Because Jupiter is the rightful heir to Abrasax, she can defeat the scheming and warring families and bring peace. The problem is that RegeneX is a substance made from human bodies, so the real big baddies like Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne) want to harvest people on Earth and keep their eternal youth thing going on forever.

The way this unfolds is clumsy, on-the-nose, and over-the-top. But, what many critics missed ten years ago (including me) is that it’s a beautiful approximation of Flash Gordon. Like Flash, Jupiter lives on Earth and is brought to the stars, only to quickly realize there are very nearby planets all locked in various political squabbles. The other characters aren’t exactly all analogous for the world of Flash but Redmayne’s Balem Abrasax is a pretty good stand-in for Ming the Merciless, and the Abrasax empire is close enough to the planet Mongo in Flash Gordon.

And just like Flash Gordon, what makes Jupiter Ascending move forward is its relentless drive to tell a story that has an obvious ending. The revelation that RegeneX is made from human bodies isn’t supposed to be a big twist, it’s simply a comic-strip plot device designed to move everything forward and make it impossible for Jupiter not to win.

Because here’s the thing about Jupiter Ascending. Unlike the slightly nihilistic heroism in The Matrix, this movie is relentlessly upbeat and optimistic, because Jupiter herself is presented just like a Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon hero insofar as we know she can’t lose. Am I saying Jupiter Ascending is more like a Disney movie for children than it is a serious science fiction movie? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying, and it’s for that reason that it should be praised.

Any social commentary about the rich eating the poor is so obvious and borrowed from other narratives that dwelling on that plot point is a bit silly. In Jupiter Ascending, good and evil are not relative ideas: There are heroes, and there are villains, and the movie relies on your belief that one woman is the true savior of the cosmos. And just in case you’re confused as to the profound undeepness of the film, our protagonist’s name is Jupiter, and one of the final confrontations of the movie takes place in the Great Red Spot of the literal planet Jupiter.

This childish layering wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t a miscalculation. The Wachowskis knew exactly what they were doing. If The Matrix was a dorm room conversation where you got stoned with your friends and thought about how reality was really unreal, then Jupiter Ascending was a sobered-up trip to a Saturday matinee. The beautiful, nostalgic magic of the adventure was the point. It’s not that deep. And that’s okay.

Jupiter Ascending streams on HBO Max