This weekend sees the release of a space opera and a D&Desque fantasy. Both revolve around a Chosen One; both have been chosen for largely negative reviews (though Jupiter‘s F/X look great).
This would be the place to defend, diss, and discuss these genre Valentines.
Jupiter Ascending: Eh, it was entertaining. I thought the ‘verse they created was interesting, with a lot of larger possibilities beyond the scope of this one movie, which was great. Overall, it was worth seeing on the big screen, but I couldn’t justify spending full price.
I thought the writing was… eh. Okay, I guess? There were some choices made that I thought could have been better. For example, I thought the voiceover at the beginning was a bad choice. Show us the info, how things happened – you don’t need to blatantly tell us. That’s not as entertaining or as interesting. The intro voiceover actually gave away a surprise that was about to happen, in fact. Late in the movie, a character literally tells the audience what Caine is thinking (as though talking to Caine), which felt really stupid and poorly thought out, as though they thought Tatum couldn’t act well enough to convey his thoughts / emotions.
But there were good moments of intelligence in the writing: the way characters react to things, the way Jupiter grows as a character, the use of some of the tech (not all – they couldn’t decide if Caine’s boots were jets or gravity manipulators).
There is a lot of “telling” (versus “showing”) in this. I have a feeling much of that is because they have to tell Jupiter the info she needs to understand – we as the audience are just along for the ride – but they still could have done more showing than they did.
I liked the use of real people with the special effects, instead of CGI versions of characters. After watching The Hobbit trilogy, it was obvious here that the actual people were being used, and that was great. Some of the action was really just too fast to follow, but it was still interestingly done. I wish they had slowed some of it down.
Rule of Thumb: If a studio schedules (or worse, moves) a film to February, it’s because they think it stinks and they need to offload it into theaters so as to honor their contracts with the filmmakers. I think both of these movies were due out last year and their studios shunted them to February.
The exception to the February rule are romantic films because of the St. Valentine’s day “holiday.” Of course, one could argue that these films are horrifically bad and therefore do not prove the February Rule to be false (50 Shades of Gray, anyone?)
Jupiter Ascending was originally scheduled as a summer release, so that tells us something.
As for 50 Shades, its following means that, no matter how bad the film, it will still make loads of cash. Future anthropologists can maybe figure out how a shoddily rewritten Twilight fanfic exploring the BDSM fantasies of someone who doesn’t understand BDSM became one of the best selling books of our time.
I narrate audiobooks and one of the issues that’s driving the narration community nuts is the proliferation of erotica and how well it’s selling. We’re talking really poorly written stuff that features torture, rape, and (I kid you not) dinosaurs. Dinosaur erotica. Let that sink in.
Most of my colleagues that have done this stuff make a lot of money, but they insist on using pseudonyms and I don’t blame them.
Women, disturbingly, love this stuff. Mommy porn. It’s here (maybe to stay).