Thanks to the fab Frog Stone, we have some concrete information on who’s related to who in the Bolotnikov family. Essentially, Frog confirmed that Vassily is the first cousin of Aleksa and Nino, making him Jupiter’s first cousin once removed (Vassily’s actor, Jeremy Swift, had said he was playing Jupiter’s uncle). She also confirmed that the little boy, Moltka, is Vassily’s youngest son and thus the brother of Vladie (AD guy had implied Moltka was Vladie’s son).
This really clears things up, and it backs up input I had from people of actual Russian heritage who basically said that, in Russia, extended families are much more interconnected and close than is the norm in Western countries. While he’s really ‘only’ a distant cousin to her, Vassily is very protective of Jupiter and the whole family is clearly close and interdependent despite their squabbles.
I had suggested that it made more sense for Vassily to be the brother of Aleksa and Nino, since, as I saw it, that close relationship would make him more likely to be Aleksa’s first port of call in a time of crisis. With the benefit of hindsight, I can appreciate that that was me speaking from my thoroughly Western, nuclear family-oriented perspective. While I can’t track down the original discussion posts about this matter right now, thanks to everyone who contributed – you were dead right, and I’m really glad for all your contributions.
I really love Mila’s acting here, and I only recently realised that the red marks on her cheek aren’t unfortunate acne scars – that’s the mark left by Balem’s slap. That the slap left such a vivid mark indicates the force with which he must have struck her and how painful it must have been.
You can truly see Jupiter suffering here, struggling to reconcile her love for her family with her responsibility towards the Earth. Mila manages to convey a strong sense of pain and injustice, and I think this is the point where she begins to realise that she’s going to have to let her loved ones die.
I find this moment very powerful, and it annoys me that this crucial scene is often disregarded or dismissed because it doesn’t fit with the prevailing narrative of Jupiter as a weak-willed dimwit.
Speaking of ‘Jupiter Ascending’, I remember when that movie first came out and the *white feminist* section of the Internet was all “this is such a fun movie for girls! it’s just like that fanfiction you wrote when you were 14! it even passes the bechdel test in the very first scene!!! FLYING WEREWOLF ALIEN CHANNING TATUM BOYFRIEND <3333”
but my reaction was just… “okay I’m glad we agree that this movie is so beautifully bad it’s good, but are we all just going to pretend that Jupiter isn’t a terribly-written female character?? and there’s something a little patronising and messed up with excusing the bad elements re: the plot/acting/characters because ‘it’s for girls!!!’ i know we’re all thirsty for female representation in Hollywood, but please love yourselves” :|
You fail to understand that the people who really love Jupiter Ascending, the people still engaging with it and creating/re-blogging tumblr posts, do not – for the most part – consider it a bad film. I think most of us can accept that it’s flawed, but flawed does not equal bad – personally, I’d much rather have an ambitious but flawed film (like JA) over a safe corporate blockbuster created to appease stockholders (every Marvel movie).
Along similar lines, we do not all agree that it’s “beautifully bad” – some people think that, certainly, but that view isn’t particularly prevalent anymore. As a rule, the people who saw the film in that light had a chuckle about it, shook their heads and moved on. That the film still has people writing meta, producing gifs and creating fanart is testament to the fact that Jupiter Ascending’s fans – the one to have really stuck with it, anyway – don’t consider it sparkly crap. On the contrary, we consider it to be worth our time, interest and love.
And I presume you’re playing the ‘Jupiter was weak because she got saved a lot’ card by saying that Jupiter was a terribly written character. I’ve remarked on this extensively elsewhere, but I will say this – Jupiter is only weak in terms of her physical strength and lack of understanding, and that she has been so widely scorned and dismissed says more about our depressingly limited concept of heroism (as something masculine that demands physical accomplishment, savviness and stoicism) than the character. Jupiter is brave and courageous, and always tries her best to make the right choices according to the knowledge she possesses. She makes mistakes but that’s natural since she’s entirely out of her depth. It’s far more honest to show her struggling and requiring help than it would be to have her magically gain superpowers – that would have been the easy, well-trodden, route, but the film refused to take it. Instead, it presents Jupiter as a character with human weaknesses and limitations that she has to overcome in order to rise.
And we love ourselves plenty, dear. That’s what makes it so wonderful to finally have a sci-fi heroine who’s not some distant icon of bland heroism, a heroine whose behaviour any of us could emulate if put into a situation where we have to make a difficult choice. Jupiter doesn’t need any superpowers to do the right thing and make a difference, and that’s why she’s wonderful.
Also, she’s an immigrant, she’s poor, she’s a cleaning lady, and she’s undocumented. That’s not exactly the sort of hero Hollywood spits out on a regular basis. There’s a LOT more going on than “oooh, she’s a girl who can’t defend herself from aliens.”
Edited to add: Also, she’s not the only female character in there. There’s also Diomika, Kalique, Razo, Famulus, Aleksa…. I think Jupiter Ascending has more female speaking parts than both Avengers films put together, as well as having a hell of a lot more diversity in its cast. That’s got to count for something.
Another neat thing–I’m pretty sure Jupiter Jones is Jewish. Her (Earth) family are eating latkes in their meal together. And Mila Kunis is also Jewish from an Eastern European family.
I am 99% sure I can hear someone say “Is he Jewish?” when Jupiter tells her family about Caine, too!
We wanted Mila Kunis’s character, Jupiter, to be the most complex in the movie. We didn’t want another action movie where the woman ends up being just an armpiece for the man. We wanted to make the man into her armpiece! “The Wizard of Oz” was a big reference. I thought, How great it is that Dorothy has Toto, he’s always at her side, defending her? We wanted Jupiter to have a protector like Toto.’
Now, I don’t mean to blame any individuals here – Jupiter Ascending is a very difficult film in that it defies easy categorisation, which makes it very hard to market. I can envisage the WB marketing team collectively breaking out into a cold sweat after seeing it for the first time (”err, sir, how do we market all the creepy incestuous stuff?” “You don’t! Not a word about it! Okay? Not a damn word!”).
Despite that, I think we can all agree that the marketing campaign for the film (such as it was) failed badly in that it didn’t capitalise on the film’s strengths. Here, I run down the main things the marketing campaign got wrong/failed to do at all:
1. Presenting the film as a typical action-oriented sci-fi flick/constantly name-checking The Matrix
While Jupiter Ascending does have several big action set pieces and people punching things, it’s almost entirely atypical as far as modern sci-fi films are concerned. It’s sci-fantasy and entirely unashamed of that, creating its own bonkers universe and splashing around in it happily like a pig in muck. The world-building in Jupiter Ascending is every bit as important, if not more important, than the action. If the marketing campaign had really pushed the weird and wonderful world of Jupiter Ascending to the fore rather than the action, people probably would have gone into it more willing to be immersed and drawn into the mythology. Instead of that, people were looking for slick action a la The Matrix (while I felt the action in JA was great, varied and nicely executed, it’s very different from the action in The Matrix on multiple levels – anyone expecting something in the same vein as The Matrix will have been sorely disappointed). Instead, they got flying rollerblades.
2. Not putting out an art book
The one aspect of Jupiter Ascending that almost everyone could agree on was its visuals – they were bloody beautiful and were marvellously realised by an exceptionally talented pool of VFX artists. I’ve read comments from people essentially saying that while they didn’t enjoy the film, they adored the visuals and would love to own a book exploring them. Such a book would have really celebrated one of the strongest aspects of the film, emphasising its visual beauty and grandeur.
3. Airbrushing Eddie Redmayne’s freckles into oblivion (see image)
Look at the comparison pics above and you’ll hear a million graphic artists crying out in agony at seeing their profession so cruelly defamed. While this is obviously a small thing in terms of the bigger picture, it seems deeply foolish to render your Academy Award-nominated/winning lead villain unrecognisable on account of excessive airbrushing.
4. Limited promotion
The film had an unusually limited promotional trail, with the main cast members only showing up at a single premiere (the LA one). While there were various other screenings in London, Chicago and Tokyo, they weren’t really major events and didn’t generate much coverage. Cast interviews were also limited, with only Mila Kunis, Douglas Booth and Sean Bean really pulling their weight when it came to the promotional treadmill. I can only think that the film’s marketing budget ended up being very small indeed given the size of the film, since a film with a budget of $178 million would normally have a full-on marketing blitz to back it up and multiple major premières around the world. In short, the studio lacked faith so didn’t back the film up with the marketing resources it sorely needed.
5. Not targeting the film at women
This is perhaps the single biggest mistake of the campaign, since it’s absolutely fundamental. A make-up kit and a few fashion dolls aside, Jupiter Ascending was pretty much marketed as a typical sci-fi action flick – the trailers, advance clips and interviews emphasised the action. Working off the promotional materials alone, it would be easy to mistake Caine for the lead. Jupiter Ascending is the story of Jupiter Jones and her personal growth, and it’s unique and really rather wonderful because of that. The marketing campaign for Jupiter Ascending didn’t really respect or cheerlead for the film’s main character, shoving her aside so the spotlight could rest on a bankable male star (Tatum). In the end, all of the hype and excitement from women came from the grassroots level – from tumblr, twitter and female-run blogs and podcasts. In failing to capitalise on the film’s appeal to women, the marketing campaign effectively missed Jupiter Ascending’s in-built audience.
But it’s not all bad. Jupiter Ascending is gradually finding an audience, and the person running the WB tumblr gets it (I will forever be grateful for “intellectually fascinating”). Learn from your mistakes, WB – it’s not too late to put out an art book!
We’re having a whole lot of fun here on Tumblr, and on the Internet in general, with the movie Jupiter Ascending. I don’t think I’ve read a single review of it that’s failed to compare the movie to a 14 year old GIRL’s fanfic, but you know what?
There is nothing ‘wrong’ with Jupiter Ascending that was not equally ‘wrong’ with Star Wars. Not a goddamned thing. You want the breathless, restless, destiny ridden poor kid who will save the universe? I see your Jupiter Jones and raise you Luke Skywalker, and don’t you EVEN tell me he didn’t get rescued by his mates at least as often as Jupe did.
You want the exposition spilling, disgraced elder who doesn’t seem to do much but explain things? I see your Stinger and raise you an Obi Wan Kenobi AND a Yoda.
You want a ranting, caricaturish, uninetlligibly over the top bad guy? Here — have two, because for all the James Earl Jones goodness, Darth Vader is still chewing the scenery, and Emperor Palpatine was never anything less than a melodramah hiss-magnet.
You want the hunky bad boy dreamboat who’s probably decent on the inside but will still shoot first and doesn’t pay his debts? Yeah, so Han Solo’s got some better one liners, but he still fills the same story role that Caine does, and he’s actually more of a Gary Stu about it when you get right down to the baseline. You can practically hear Lucas describing his eyes as ‘orbs’ in the early series.
But Star Wars is a teenage BOY’s breahtless fantasy, and so we nod, wink, call it a classic, and leap to ship its leading male characters with all our little fangirl hearts. Jupiter Ascending’s about he Princess rather than the Jedi, and so we poke fun at it, talk it down, and congratulate ourselves on our taste.
Well I call bullshit on that.
The ONLY thing that’s a singular flaw in Jupiter Ascending, is that they made it ONE movie, and not three, so the pacing is rushed to its conclusion. And if we’re being honest, taking a look at the derision being offered to Jupiter Ascending really makes you understand why the Watchowski siblings didn’t try and spool out this storyline to the three films that would have let them make the pacing awesome — they knew Hollywood, and the American viewing public in general, was gonna spend more time complaining about being shown an adventure story about a GIRL than actually thinking about the unbalanced double standard we were all gonna be buying into.
I’m not buying into it. I’m gonna say it again and again, and I’m gonna use capslock to make sure there is no doubt of things — JUPITER ASCENDING IS EVERY BIT AS GOOD AS STAR WARS.
So let’s stop deriding the taste of the people who enjoy it, okay? It doesn’t have to change the world to be fun. Lucas proved that pretty handily.
