Saw it. Review: Eh, it was ok, I suppose. The movie snobs seem to hate it with a passion, but I thought it was entertaining enough.
Technical note: there are two types of science fiction moves. There’s the type like “Interstellar,” which tries to be scientifically accurate; in these cases, the engineer in me finds all the science and logic flaws in the flick, and kinda obsesses about ’em. And then there’s the type like “Jupiter Ascending” or “Star Wars” or “John Carter,” where no pretense towards scientific accuracy is made, and the engineer in me takes a little nap, and willing suspension of disbelief takes over. You need a *lot* of that here.
The short form for the world of Jupiter Ascending: Humanity did not evolve on Earth, but some other world…a *billion* years ago. Humans found Earth some 65 million years ago and apparently promptly bombed the dinosaurs into extinction; 100,000 years ago, the local pre-human species were genetically tinkered into modern humans. The reason: bajillions of worlds are seeded with humans. When the world gets populated sufficiently, the Space Humans come along and “harvest” the planet, which process was not shown but results in the complete genocide of the humans on the world. The humans are processed for a Magical Youth Serum which is a glowy liquid (100 people are needed to make about a liter) and the most valuable substance in the universe, and people fight for it and dynasties are based on it, the spice must flow, blah, blah, blah. Point is: the larger Space People Culture is a horrible stratified and ossified society of aristocratic assholes who live 90,000 or more years due to Magic Youth Serum.
Yeah, you can pick that apart a hundred different ways: any Magic Youth Serum can probably be analyzed and stamped out by the metric ton via replicators and humanity is probably going to go *way* beyond meatspace long before a billion years are two that jump out at me.
But you don’t watch a flick like this for the rational discourse of logical probabilities; you watch it for the flashing lights and pretty colors, which this has in spades. The artists went absolutely bonkers in designing the ships here; I don’t know what a billion-year-old civilization would look like (my guess: dust), but this does look like a civilization so advance as to not give a damn about energy or mass. Plus, you can see “2001’s” Space Station V in one scene…
There was one genuinely funny sequence that bore a striking resemblance to “Brazil.” The fact that it ended with an appearance by Terry Gilliam was thus rather fitting.
So, if you watch it for what it is, it’s not bad. It’s gorgeous if somewhat befuddling space opera… without the sense of fun that “Guardians of the Galaxy” had. My prediction: it’ll tank.