Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast. The questions asked if movies have.
Speaker 2: Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 2: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
Speaker 2: Beast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: Hello, Jupiter Loftis, it's me Capricorn Dorante.
Speaker 4: Wait, don't you mean Cane Dorante o Caine?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Cane Jupiter.
Speaker 4: Loftis and Cane Durrante. That didn't even really connect for me,
Speaker 4: But in a way we're kind of meant to be.
Speaker 4: I'll just keep being like, what's this, and then you'll
Speaker 4: tell me, and then we'll go to another room and
Speaker 4: I'll be like, what's this? And then you'll tell me.
Speaker 3: And then sometimes you'll be like can we make out
Speaker 3: right now? And then I'll be like, no.
Speaker 4: I do feel weirdly. I mean, it's like it's obviously
Speaker 4: a mess. But there are certain times in life where
Speaker 4: you're presented with an existential problem and your response to
Speaker 4: it is, hm, should we kiss? You're like focus, focus, dude.
Speaker 4: You were just told you own the world and your
Speaker 4: response was should I kiss my wolf? Boyfriend? And I
Speaker 4: think that we have had emotional situations not us specifically,
Speaker 4: but also us specifically, where you're like, you're presented with
Speaker 4: an existential question and you're like, let's focus on something manageable,
Speaker 4: like should we kiss? And already I've put more emotional
Speaker 4: thought into the character of Jupiter Jones, who came out
Speaker 4: I think the same year as Jessica Jones. I kept
Speaker 4: Jupiter Jones Jessica Jones. I really liked that show when
Speaker 4: it first came out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I forgot about that for some reason.
Speaker 4: Wow, I didn't welcome to the Bextel cast. My name
Speaker 4: is Jupiter.
Speaker 3: And I'm Cain Durante, and together we will ascend. We
Speaker 3: will ascend to where I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know. Neither does something eugenics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh gosh, this is our show where we demon
Speaker 3: movies through an intersexual feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test
Speaker 3: simply as a jumping off point. But Jamie Wood on
Speaker 3: Earth is that Earth that is owned by by Jupiter Jones.
Speaker 4: Jupiter Jones, not that she understands what that means or
Speaker 4: has much interest in it, which is maybe praxis. I
Speaker 4: don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: So the Bechdel test is media metric created by friend
Speaker 4: of the show, our dear pal, Alison Bechtel. It is
Speaker 4: a media magic that's existed since the eighties, but it
Speaker 4: has since been adapted into a mainstream metric. Our version
Speaker 4: requires that two characters of a marginalized gender speak to
Speaker 4: each other about something other than a man for more
Speaker 4: than two lines of dialogue. And this is actually the
Speaker 4: Bechtel test is going to be an amazing tool to
Speaker 4: use today because how many times can a movie past
Speaker 4: the Bechdel test and it just be Mila Kunis introducing
Speaker 4: herself to another blonde woman. That is I would say
Speaker 4: a good seventy five percent of the Bechdel test passes
Speaker 4: in this movie. And sure, two characters reading is technically important,
Speaker 4: but it is less than ideal. And that's the episode
Speaker 4: we did it and bye. But yes, that's the Bechdel test.
Speaker 4: And today we have been brought the challenge of a lifetime.
Speaker 4: We have been brought to ascend, and we have an
Speaker 4: incredible returning guest to us, to ascend us, to ascend
Speaker 4: with us, to ascend.
Speaker 3: Us all of the above. She is a Palestinian American
Speaker 3: writer from California. She is the author of The Hungering
Speaker 3: Years You remember her from our episode on Julie and Julia,
Speaker 3: and she is calling on you to recommit yourself to
Speaker 3: the liberation of the Palestinian people. Every day it's summer Farah,
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome back.
Speaker 1: Hi. Oh my goodness, I've been keeping my giggles silent.
Speaker 4: You don't have to do silence anymore. Don't silence yourself. Yay, Hi,
Speaker 4: welcome back.
Speaker 1: Welcome, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: Wow, Julie, Julia, Jupiter. I'm sensing a pattern.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, names that start with Jay you you, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Julia and Julia and Jupiter.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's how we can connect them.
Speaker 4: Well, but before we get into this, because we could
Speaker 4: barely contain ourselves off, Mike, there's so much to talk about. First,
Speaker 4: you just had a new poetry collection come out, The
Speaker 4: Hungering Years. We want to hear all about it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had a collection called The Hungering Years come
Speaker 1: out with Host Publications. They are a small press based
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas, and it is poems about being obsessed
Speaker 1: with things, poems about food, poems about hanging out with
Speaker 1: your friends, and the kind of orienting philosophy of a
Speaker 1: lot of it is like excess and too muchness, which
Speaker 1: is why I thought Jupiter is Snding would be a
Speaker 1: great thematic tie.
Speaker 3: I'm seeing the connection.
Speaker 4: I The last time I saw you, we discussed this
Speaker 4: movie and I couldn't wrap my head around it, and
Speaker 4: now having seen it, I can't wrap my head around it.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited too, because this is I think I
Speaker 4: was mixing this movie up with something else. First of all,
Speaker 4: I don't know who I thought directed this, but this
Speaker 4: is a this is what Chowski's joined. Oh yeah, this
Speaker 4: is like the big leagues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yet incredibly respected directors, and it's like icons, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know why everyone said yes to doing this? Oh?
Speaker 1: Absolutely right, Like you know, it's like, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: like I would. I would do literally anything they asked
Speaker 1: me to.
Speaker 4: It's kind of interesting and heartbreaking is too strong a word.
Speaker 4: In retrospect, watching interviews like cast interviews, particularly with Channing Tatum,
Speaker 4: who I carry a torch for who He's like so
Speaker 4: excited and he's like, I would have done anything that
Speaker 4: the Witchowskis would ask I'm like the biggest Matrix fan
Speaker 4: in the world. This was such a cool opportunity. I
Speaker 4: was so excited and then like eight years later. I
Speaker 4: think he was asked about it in an interview and
Speaker 4: he was like, well, that shoot was really hard.
Speaker 3: Wait can I quote it? Can I say what he said?
Speaker 3: Because he uses a turn of phrase that is so funny.
Speaker 3: He says, Jupiter sending was a nightmare from the jump.
Speaker 3: It was a sideways movie. All of us were there
Speaker 3: for seven months busting our hump?
Speaker 4: How old is he? Okay, people busting our hump.
Speaker 3: I'm never gonna stop laughing about that. I've never heard
Speaker 3: that expression before, Like, what does that mean?
Speaker 4: I've only heard it from like senior citizens, genuinely wow,
Speaker 4: busting our hump? Wow, chanting Tatum, he's old. I don't
Speaker 4: even know how old he is. Maybe he's he's only
Speaker 4: a few.
Speaker 3: Years older than me, I think.
Speaker 4: And you've never busted your hump.
Speaker 3: That is not true. I have I bust my hump.
Speaker 4: Okay, hey, hey, hey, okay, sorry.
Speaker 3: I'm not so virgin. I bust my hope.
Speaker 4: That's well, that's not what he's saying. He's this. I
Speaker 4: will say, this movie is many things, horny is not
Speaker 4: one of them.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting because I don't I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I feel like I think it is horny.
Speaker 1: I think it is horny, really, I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it wants to be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely think it aspires to be horny.
Speaker 1: It's like incestuously horny, and so you kind of like
Speaker 1: don't want it to be. But I don't know.
Speaker 4: They want their mom, but yeah, they all do. When
Speaker 4: I with their mom.
Speaker 3: There's like Oedipus stuff happening. There is bestiality kind of
Speaker 3: if you consider chanted him to be a wolf man.
Speaker 4: I'm so unclear. I'm like, why is I okay? First
Speaker 4: of all, what stood up to be about this movie
Speaker 4: is that the Razzie winning performance to me is what
Speaker 4: I'm holding closest to my heart, and that is the
Speaker 4: Eddie redmain permance, which everyone hates. Yeah, but I kind
Speaker 4: of love it the more I sit with it, Like
Speaker 4: every word comes out unlike you've ever heard a word.
Speaker 4: He's like, it won't be mine. He sounds like when
Speaker 4: SpongeBob is out of the water and he's all dried up,
Speaker 4: Like he sounds like SpongeBob dry. I like it, And
Speaker 4: then he won a Razzie for it. This was also
Speaker 4: around the time he won an Oscar for the Theory
Speaker 4: of Everything, and Eddie Redmain's Oscar record we can talk
Speaker 4: about because it is uh, it is sordid and bleak.
Speaker 1: It was the theory of everything Oscar, right, yes? Or
Speaker 1: is it okay? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah. But The Danish Girl comes out this same year
Speaker 4: in twenty fifteen, and I guess that Lana Wachowski and
Speaker 4: Eddie Redmain were discussing that role, and she was advising
Speaker 4: him on the set of Jupiter Ascending, which is both
Speaker 4: sweet and I'm like, I can't deal with that today,
Speaker 4: know what was happening? And on the set of where
Speaker 4: Eddie Redman saying.
Speaker 5: I create life. Yeah, I will harvest the planet tomorrow.
Speaker 1: He's my favorite.
Speaker 3: Wait okay, so Summer, tell us about your relationship, your
Speaker 3: history with this movie.
Speaker 4: Who did this get on your plate? What happened?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I remember the trailers for this movie really clearly,
Speaker 1: and I remember the sort of like internet discourse around
Speaker 1: it when it was in theaters and like coming out
Speaker 1: and just sort of like in the conversation, very much
Speaker 1: maligned right away, and I was like, oh, look, dumb,
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm going to see that. But then
Speaker 1: I read like I think it was like a tumbler
Speaker 1: post that was like Jupiter Ascending is like if a
Speaker 1: nine year old girl got all of her fantasies turned
Speaker 1: into a film, and I was like, I gotta go
Speaker 1: see that. It is kind of true because that's very
Speaker 1: interesting to me. And so my friends and I worded
Speaker 1: it and then we watched it in someone's house and
Speaker 1: I loved it. I honestly don't remember if the people
Speaker 1: I watched it with liked it. I think that they,
Speaker 1: like to this day, will humor me when I talk
Speaker 1: about it. But it just became like a movie that
Speaker 1: I would show people, like anytime I was making a
Speaker 1: new friend, I would show them Jupiter Ascending because I
Speaker 1: just I was so fascinated by it. Like I like
Speaker 1: things that are bad. I like bad movies, I like
Speaker 1: bad TV shows like I my taste in visual media
Speaker 1: is like I think something that is like bad and
Speaker 1: has weird contradictions and confusing, it's like more interesting.
Speaker 4: To me than yeah, good all we all have those.
Speaker 4: And it's like you, you, I don't know, you talk
Speaker 4: about media that people overlook better than almost anyone in
Speaker 4: the entire world, like truly.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: So even though the first twenty minutes of Jupiter Ascending,
Speaker 4: I'm like, what has she done? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's a text. It's a text.
Speaker 1: It's a text. And yeah, and so it just, yeah,
Speaker 1: it just became a movie that I would show to people.
Speaker 1: It became like something that I really like telling people
Speaker 1: about without them seeing it. Like after rewatching it for this,
Speaker 1: I like sent a buddy a voice note about it,
Speaker 1: and they were like, Jesus Christ, I thought it was
Speaker 1: about something else, you know, like and I love that reaction.
Speaker 1: It's so much fun. And yeah, for a long time,
Speaker 1: I would say Jupiter Ascending is my favorite movie if
Speaker 1: you asked me what my favorite movie was. But I
Speaker 1: kind of had a real I don't know, reorienting on
Speaker 1: my relationship with it because of the of my Lacunis.
Speaker 1: Like I was a big that Seminy show head. But
Speaker 1: she loves to raise money for the Israeli Army.
Speaker 4: He really does.
Speaker 1: She really died.
Speaker 3: I did not know. I do know that she's good
Speaker 3: friends with Natalie Portman, so this actually.
Speaker 4: Tracks well, who almost got the role of Jupiter. So
Speaker 4: it really was like xiety. Yes, it was almost Zionist
Speaker 4: v Zionist for for Jupiter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but she would have been so good at it.
Speaker 4: She certainly would have been better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I also loved, I loved I was a
Speaker 1: big chanting Tatum person, and I still hold fondness for
Speaker 1: him and Eddie Redmain really impressed me. But yeah, and like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I really liked the movie. Like this came
Speaker 1: out when I was my senior year of high school,
Speaker 1: and so like I kind of impact.
Speaker 4: Yes, I kind of just.
Speaker 1: Learned what a movie was, and so yeah, it has
Speaker 1: shaped a lot of me and my life. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I'm very happy to share it with the two
Speaker 1: of you and see if we can figure it out.
Speaker 4: I'm I'm so excited we're going to We're going to
Speaker 4: get to the bottom of this because we got this.
Speaker 4: I really love that, you know, to quote Wikipedia. Despite
Speaker 4: praise for the visual effects, the narrative was criticized as
Speaker 4: confusing and I and it's not untrue. But I also
Speaker 4: did enjoy looking into because the Witch House kis. Even
Speaker 4: though they are not like one hundred percent hit, you
Speaker 4: can never accuse their work of being underthought. Yes, and
Speaker 4: there it was interesting learning about like where they were
Speaker 4: pulling from and the reference points, some of which I
Speaker 4: was familiar. With some of which I weren't like. They're brilliant,
Speaker 4: it just doesn't always translate to a successful movie.
Speaker 3: Sometimes there's the Matrix one, and then sometimes there's the
Speaker 3: Matrix three, and they made both, and.
Speaker 4: Somewhere in between is Jupiter Ascending. It is fascinating, it
Speaker 4: is fast. I still haven't seen speed Racer.
Speaker 3: Nor have I, but I think I would like it.
Speaker 3: I've heard great things about it. It's very underrated, but
Speaker 3: the people who ride for it ride for it hard,
Speaker 3: So it's my It's on my watch list.
Speaker 1: I think I would really like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jamie, what is your relationship with Jupiter Ascending?
Speaker 4: I had never seen this? Of course I had never
Speaker 4: seen this, but I and I also i'd only heard
Speaker 4: of it via Summer. I don't this movie completely missed me.
Speaker 4: It's it is because I've never been a big sci
Speaker 4: fi person, so it's not something that would have come
Speaker 4: across my desk upon release. I will figure out the
Speaker 4: second we finished recording what I was confusing this movie from.
Speaker 4: I was confusing it with a different mid twenty tens
Speaker 4: sci fi box office flop, and I cannot remember what
Speaker 4: it was.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was confusing this with Valerian in the City
Speaker 3: of one Thousand Planets.
Speaker 4: Oh, I was I know what that is?
Speaker 3: A sex criminal? Luke Bison.
Speaker 1: Is that the one Rihanna is in.
Speaker 4: I just remember Rihanna being a battleship Oh okay, oh
Speaker 4: and Ocean's eight. I was thinking about how she was
Speaker 4: the hacker and Oceans eight recently there she was Smurfett,
Speaker 4: not that anyone saw it. Do you remember when La
Speaker 4: was covered in billboards that said Rihanna is Smurfett and
Speaker 4: it was just like, what an awesome is that poetry? Summer?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so Rihanna is Smurfett. It felt like
Speaker 4: it to be.
Speaker 3: I don't remember that, but I do remember the Zendaea
Speaker 3: is is Michi Michi?
Speaker 4: Yes, that was big.
Speaker 3: That was huge, culturally enormous.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you're like this person is this and you're like, wow,
Speaker 4: no one cares, but it is interesting that it's everywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had not seen this movie either. I'm very much
Speaker 3: a like sci fi action movie person for sure, but
Speaker 3: I think I missed it in theaters because I knew
Speaker 3: about the generally negative reviews, so I kind of passed
Speaker 3: on it. But I had aside from having a very
Speaker 3: difficult time following it the first time I watched it. Truly,
Speaker 3: my like draft of the recap after my first watch
Speaker 3: was and then they go somewhere, and why they go there,
Speaker 3: I mean are clear to me, but they go there.
Speaker 3: And then on the second watch I started to be
Speaker 3: able to fill in the gaps. But yeah, it's definitely
Speaker 3: you know, it has some exposition problems. I would say
Speaker 3: that information is not delivered particularly clearly. There's also some
Speaker 3: weird editing choices between scenes.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: I also think that sometimes, like tonally, it's like we're
Speaker 4: especially at the very beginning, Well we'll get into it,
Speaker 4: but like it feels like we are oscillating between a
Speaker 4: raw that came out in two thousand and two and
Speaker 4: the movie Jupiter Ascending is so wild watching me Lacunas
Speaker 4: cleaning a toilet being like I hate my life. I'm like,
Speaker 4: is this a Garfield comic? Like what what is this?
Speaker 4: But it's awesome. Yeah, I do think ultimately this is awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think I agree.
Speaker 1: That's what's important. I think that it feels like a
Speaker 1: movie where it's like maybe they thought they would never
Speaker 1: make a movie ever.
Speaker 4: Again, I'm like, I've looked for I haven't been able
Speaker 4: to find a lot of I mean, it's only ten
Speaker 4: years old, so I would be curious whenever the Wachowski's
Speaker 4: released their retrospective, you know, like cumulative interviews, what was
Speaker 4: going on, because most of what I've found is like, oh,
Speaker 4: our budget got cut, which I believe, but also their
Speaker 4: budget was two hundred million dollars, and I'm like, surely
Speaker 4: surely four hundred million dollars wouldn't have fixed, isn't The
Speaker 4: difference between Meila Kunis just being like, what is this?
Speaker 4: Where am I and not? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know, we don't know. Let's take a quick
Speaker 3: break and we'll come back for the recap. We're back.
Speaker 3: We're as sending into the recap of Jupiter Ascending. We
Speaker 3: start with backstory of the character Jupiter Jones played by
Speaker 3: Mila Kunis. Backstory about how her parents met in Russia
Speaker 3: and fell in love, how her astronomy professor father was
Speaker 3: obsessed with the planet Jupiter, hence wanting to name their daughter.
Speaker 4: That I will say, okay already, but like I was
Speaker 4: waiting for the whole movie. This is the first scene
Speaker 4: and the witch house kis I mean I was thinking
Speaker 4: of the Matrix one, not to put them in a box,
Speaker 4: but that's the big one. Sure, And I was thinking about, like,
Speaker 4: what a strong introduction to the world that is. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: And so I went in thinking, Oh, this first scene
Speaker 4: is going to be coming back in a big way.
Speaker 4: Throughout the movie, The Father, I will say, never comes
Speaker 4: back except for an eBay telescope. Yeah that is. I
Speaker 4: kept waiting to find out that Eddie Redmain was secretly
Speaker 4: like there was that someone was secretly her father. It
Speaker 4: seems like the kind of movie where that would happen.
Speaker 4: But spoiler alert, he was just a weird guy with
Speaker 4: a telescope. He died rubbing vasilin on his wife's pregnant stomach.
Speaker 4: And that's all that ever you're ever gonna need to
Speaker 4: know about this guy. I kept waiting for him to
Speaker 4: come back. He No, he's dead.
Speaker 3: He's gone.
Speaker 4: That's it. That's it for him.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Jupiter is barely relevant, you know, so awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, movie that really realized on her being like, I
Speaker 4: need to get back to my family. Boy, does she
Speaker 4: seem indifferent to them? She does not seem to like
Speaker 4: them very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm space and yeah, anyways, right.
Speaker 4: But yeah, don't get attached to the father. Don't look
Speaker 4: for him. He's not coming back. He's dead.
Speaker 1: Planet name doesn't mean anything, Telescope doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 4: Oh, I didn't even occur to you that Jupiter doesn't
Speaker 4: really mean very much except like an astrology joke kind of.
Speaker 3: Well, before I saw the movie, I thought that it
Speaker 3: would take place on or near the planet Jupiter. But
Speaker 3: it's truly just that that's her name, yeah, in it this.
Speaker 4: R and speaking of I, it's so interesting somewhere that
Speaker 4: you saw like the post saying that this is a
Speaker 4: nine year old girl's dreams coming true. Because the first
Speaker 4: like long extended stories I wrote were probably around the
Speaker 4: time I was nine, and the name of my main
Speaker 4: character was Neptune Star exactly. So this was happening. Yeah,
Speaker 4: this was happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was obsessed with Saturn. I was writing little
Speaker 1: personified like anthropomorphization stories about Saturn when I was nine,
Speaker 1: Like this is this is true?
Speaker 4: So maybe this is just like the Witch housekis they
Speaker 4: were young gals once. Maybe they were like Jupiter Jones,
Speaker 4: right you guys, and everyone's like yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so her father he's a guy.
Speaker 4: But don't get used to him because no, he's dead.
Speaker 3: He's about to die because one night some like thugs
Speaker 3: come into their home steal money and her father's prized telescope,
Speaker 3: and then kill her father. So her mother flees to
Speaker 3: the US and gives birth to Jupiter along the way
Speaker 3: on a ship crossing the Atlantic, probably pretty much the
Speaker 3: same journey that Titanic took, I'm guessing. Jupiter's aunt, Nino,
Speaker 3: says that she's destined for great things, but Jupiter doesn't
Speaker 3: believe her, because we cut to her as an adult.
Speaker 3: She her mother and her aunt.
Speaker 4: Works like the beginning of Maid in Manhattan. Yes, it's
Speaker 4: so bizarre.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they work as house cleaners for rich people,
Speaker 3: I think. And Jupiter hates her life, which she repeats,
Speaker 3: she said several.
Speaker 4: Times, almost to camera, like she almost goes to camera
Speaker 4: and says, but she says it more than us. I
Speaker 4: hate my life. And you're like, oh, right, Millicuna is
Speaker 4: not very good at acting, but that's you know, live
Speaker 4: laugh love. Oh that's so wild that. Yeah, she that
Speaker 4: her co star in Black Swan was almost cast in this.
Speaker 4: That didn't even occur to me until just now. Miliicunas
Speaker 4: and Natalie Portman. We're in Black Swan together. Yeah, well
Speaker 4: they both suck, but Natalie Portman can an act.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 3: Well, I wonder if I mean, I think she didn't
Speaker 3: do the movie because of like scheduling conflicts. But I'm like,
Speaker 3: she was already a space queen queen Amidala.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, she had her shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, give another woman at we all get to be
Speaker 1: space queen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let some other people try.
Speaker 4: I guess it's still happening. Does I don't know what
Speaker 4: Dune is. Does being a dune count as being a
Speaker 4: space queen? Or is that is dune on Earth?
Speaker 3: What is definitely is definitely space?
Speaker 4: So zindea space queen.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think she's a queen. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: she's space working class.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, someday I'm going to get the flu and
Speaker 4: figure out what's going on with Dune.
Speaker 3: Well, good luck with that, because it's really hard to follow.
Speaker 3: I would say, maybe just as hard to follow as
Speaker 3: they drink. They drink their pea, right, yes, I forget.
Speaker 3: I mean that definitely happens in water World. I don't
Speaker 3: remember if this movie has been compared to Oh Interesting
Speaker 3: and One of the at the time reviews of Jupiter Ascending,
Speaker 3: which I think was pretty unfair to Jupiter Ascending.
Speaker 4: But they said every generation gets its own water World.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I've never seen water World, so I'm not
Speaker 4: sure what that means.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's probably referencing how water World was a huge
Speaker 3: budget movie that critics hated and was a box office flop.
Speaker 1: Is water World the one at Universal Studios?
Speaker 4: Have you seen the show? The show is awesome, awesome.
Speaker 4: I don't know what happens in water World, but that
Speaker 4: show is. I followed all the stunt actors on Instagram.
Speaker 4: I'm like, these people are geniuses.
Speaker 1: They're so cool. Updated with Jupiter Ascending.
Speaker 4: That would be great. And they're like, let's invest a
Speaker 4: ton of money into a different movie that flopped and
Speaker 4: then people will maybe it will give a well needed
Speaker 4: shot to the arm with Jupiter. I think it's a
Speaker 4: Universal movie too, Warner Bros.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, but there's I mean there's a Warner Brothers
Speaker 3: property at Universal aka Harry Potter.
Speaker 4: So oh yeah, well we ever know peace. So her
Speaker 4: dad's dead and she she I hate my life me too, Wow,
Speaker 4: my dad said, and I hate my life. That's why
Speaker 4: she's relatable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So then we cut to a far away
Speaker 3: planet in another solar system. There we meet the Abras
Speaker 3: six siblings. This is Titus played by Douglas Booth, Khalik
Speaker 3: played by Tuppence Middleton, and Balam Balem I forget how
Speaker 3: to say his name played by Eddie Redmain.
Speaker 4: We're like, I love these siblings because even though they're
Speaker 4: obviously all together, they're all acting like they're in separate rooms,
Speaker 4: and I love that they have sub zero chemistry. It
Speaker 4: is like awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've never they've been siblings for tens of thousands
Speaker 3: of years, but they somehow also never met before.
Speaker 4: No is Yeah, they're just like, hey, so how are you. Oh,
Speaker 4: our sister is ugly? Yes, anyways, goodbye. That's kind of
Speaker 4: the whole thing.
Speaker 3: So, these three siblings are members of a powerful intergalactic
Speaker 3: empire that owns and controls a bunch of planets, including Earth,
Speaker 3: which their late mother has left to Baalum in her will,
Speaker 3: so keep that in mind. Then we meet Caine Wise
Speaker 3: played by Channing Tatum. He's an alien who is on
Speaker 3: Earth looking for someone named Catherine Dunlevy, although we don't
Speaker 3: yet know why. And it takes a while to figure
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 4: It's Vanessa Kirbye.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that is who that is. I was like,
Speaker 3: she's familiar, but I don't know who she is, and
Speaker 3: then I forgot to look it up. But you're so true.
Speaker 4: One of the many blonde women you meet that it's like,
Speaker 4: don't get attached to her, she'll be onnesome. But that's her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, huh okay, So Kin is looking for her. Balam
Speaker 3: is also looking for her, and in this case we
Speaker 3: do know why because he wants her found and killed.
Speaker 3: Then we reveal that Catherine Dunlevy is a friend of Jupiter's.
Speaker 3: They are together when a group of like spindly little
Speaker 3: evil aliens come in and attack them.
Speaker 4: And aliens that literally look like alien dot jpeg. Like
Speaker 4: I do appreciate that, Like I don't know. As the movie,
Speaker 4: as we get deeper into the movie, Eddie Redmain is
Speaker 4: mainly like scolding dinosaurs yea at his house and you
Speaker 4: don't really understand why. But it's like the I don't
Speaker 4: know again, You're like not to over expect things from
Speaker 4: the wachousekis, but you're like, oh, that dinosaur looks like
Speaker 4: dinosaur dot jpeg. That alien looks like alien dot jpeg.
Speaker 4: You don't really understand what they want or what they're
Speaker 4: up to.
Speaker 1: The dinosaurs are wearing leather jackets, so.
Speaker 4: The dinosaurs are really cool and they are capable of
Speaker 4: experiencing shame yea, and so I'm interested, but like, yeah,
Speaker 4: what's their whole deal? And we and we won't find out,
Speaker 4: but it is fun to just every time Eddie Redmains
Speaker 4: sounding like dry SpongeBob scolding a dinosaur, and you're like,
Speaker 4: how could you hate this performance? This is awesome.
Speaker 3: Because each of those siblings, and it took me forever
Speaker 3: to figure out like which minions worked for which siblings,
Speaker 3: but they each have a group or at least one
Speaker 3: servant or minion. Eddie Redmain's character has a whole army
Speaker 3: of people. He's got the like giant lizard dinosaur army.
Speaker 3: He also has someone named mister Knight who is wearing
Speaker 3: like a George Washington wig.
Speaker 4: I don't know what's going on there, but I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: mister Knight, let's not do a second pass at that name.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: Uh, then there's and I left most of these people
Speaker 3: out of the recap because I'm like they don't matter,
Speaker 3: but not to erase the woman who works for Titus
Speaker 3: who has like enormous mouths ears.
Speaker 1: I yeah, she's my favorite.
Speaker 4: She's pretty cool. I can't just like another, like we
Speaker 4: couldn't do a second pass at that, and maybe that's
Speaker 4: for the best. But they're like, Okay, what if this
Speaker 4: person were complete, completely normal looking otherwise, but just had
Speaker 4: gigantic mouth ears. Yeah, it's awesome, it's cool. I love her.
Speaker 3: Okay. So Jupiter and her friend Katherine are attacked by
Speaker 3: these aliens. They disappear, and then Catherine and Jupiter I
Speaker 3: think they like passed out because they kind of like
Speaker 3: come to and they don't seem to have any memory
Speaker 3: of what happened. Then we learn that Jupiter is planning
Speaker 3: to sell her eggs. It seems like at the behest
Speaker 3: of a cousin of hers cousin Vlattie.
Speaker 4: Oh I mistook for a boyfriend at first, I was
Speaker 4: not clear that he was her cousin.
Speaker 3: It's unclear.
Speaker 4: And also because I just don't I can't imagine, I mean,
Speaker 4: and maybe this is on me. I can't imagine being
Speaker 4: persuaded to sell my eggs in a like seventy five
Speaker 4: twenty five deal with my cousin.
Speaker 3: Your loser cousin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm like, I would need to be like being
Speaker 4: pretty severely gaslight for that to happen, And that's not
Speaker 4: really a cousin's game. But I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's confusing.
Speaker 4: Maybe my cousins aren't persuasive enough.
Speaker 3: Maybe, but she is willing to go through with it
Speaker 3: because she wants money to buy a telescope, just like
Speaker 3: the one her father used to have.
Speaker 4: What is she going to do with it? Don't worry
Speaker 4: about it. We don't know, because the ultimate thing is
Speaker 4: we don't know what Jupiter Jones wants out of her life.
Speaker 4: She has no goal, which is compelling and a protagonist.
Speaker 3: Look, let aimless women be protagonists too. No, okay, you're right, right,
Speaker 3: you're right, Okay. So she goes to this clinic for
Speaker 3: the egg extraction using the name of her friend Catherine Dunlevy,
Speaker 3: and we get to reveal that the doctors are actually
Speaker 3: the same evil little aliens in disguise, and they're about
Speaker 3: to kill Jupiter because it turns out that it is
Speaker 3: her who they actually want. They just thought they were
Speaker 3: looking for Catherine Dunlevy because Jupiter was using her name,
Speaker 3: which is a detail that might have been in the
Speaker 3: first draft of the script, but they should have.
Speaker 4: They should have just changed it.
Speaker 3: To make way more clear. Yeah exactly, yeah.
Speaker 4: But but good for you know, Vanessa Kirby got a
Speaker 4: check and all she had to do is be basically
Speaker 4: naked for all of her screen time.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, okay. So then so she's about to be
Speaker 3: killed by these aliens, but then Cain comes in to
Speaker 3: save her. We learned that he was hired by Titus
Speaker 3: to find Jupiter and bring her to him for reasons
Speaker 3: that will eventually maybe become clear. And then Cain explains
Speaker 3: that he is an alien from another planet, but he's
Speaker 3: also this hybrid of like half human half wolf.
Speaker 4: And now this is like starting to be like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is like kind of like porn, you know, like
Speaker 4: this is kind of like a vertical series. This is
Speaker 4: kind of like you know, wait, I know I brought
Speaker 4: this up before, Caitlin. I read some like wolf porn
Speaker 4: book once. And also if this is if this is
Speaker 4: your shit, like truly, all power to you. It was
Speaker 4: recommended to me. It was called like the Alpha's rejected
Speaker 4: mate or something.
Speaker 3: Yes, you have brought this up I have brought up The.
Speaker 4: Alpha's Rejected Mate. It's something that is Oh no, it's
Speaker 4: the Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate. That was my first and
Speaker 4: only wolf porn novel I've read. But I will say
Speaker 4: it did make me feel things, but they were not
Speaker 4: things I wanted to feel, and so I had to stop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 4: But when Caine was introduced, I was like, oh, this
Speaker 4: is a gateway for future readers of The Tyrant Alpha's
Speaker 4: Rejected Mate. Yeah, because they even go through this, Like
Speaker 4: I do you feel like the witch Howskis have a
Speaker 4: knack for this, where famously The Matrix, an incredible movie,
Speaker 4: was like, really you know the red pill ideology that
Speaker 4: comes from the Matrix, Right, there are people who willfully
Speaker 4: misunderstand the work of the witch Howski's to the point
Speaker 4: where the witch Howskis have had to openly state this,
Speaker 4: which has to be very frustrating. But I do feel
Speaker 4: like they have a knack for like identifying these really
Speaker 4: potent ideas. And there is something about Cain that feels
Speaker 4: very like Sigma Male, like before Sigma males were a thing,
Speaker 4: whereas like I'm a lone wolf and it's not that
Speaker 4: I couldn't have anyone I want. It's that I just
Speaker 4: don't need that I'm so awesome that I'm just I'm
Speaker 4: behaving like an insult. But it's not that. It's a
Speaker 4: secret third thing, and that's kind of what sigmas are,
Speaker 4: and that's kind of what Caine is. I just the
Speaker 4: wach Howskis really have a way with tap tap in
Speaker 4: that vein.
Speaker 3: I hadn't considered that fully.
Speaker 4: But well, yeah, it's been a long day sitting with
Speaker 4: this movie my friends, and I've reached a lot of
Speaker 4: irrational conclusions.
Speaker 3: No, I love it. Keep them caring.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking about like Omega verse, like
Speaker 1: Wolf totally stuff, which I don't I don't really know
Speaker 1: why I didn't think about it any of the other
Speaker 1: times I've watched this movie since, Like, you know, those
Speaker 1: things have been on my mind in the entire ten
Speaker 1: years since this movie has come out. But of course
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting because you know, he's like, I'm a dog,
Speaker 1: but does he display any dog traits? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean it's I.
Speaker 3: Was like, well, summer, he has pointy ears and he wears.
Speaker 4: Island like like some dogs. Do you know? I just
Speaker 4: also like it's not even a universal dog thing as
Speaker 4: a as a proud mother to a cocker spaniel. That
Speaker 4: is not our story. Yeah, I think if Channing Tatum
Speaker 4: had had those fly if you're a dog, be a dog,
Speaker 4: give me those floppy cars. Her spaniel ears.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there was like the goat woman ears
Speaker 1: like yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: There was a guy with a whole elephant face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as we're going, if it's like monster
Speaker 1: fucking adjacent bestiality, it's like it's kind of weak, like
Speaker 1: there's not much happening here that feels taboo. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: kind of just a guy.
Speaker 3: It's just a guy.
Speaker 4: I do feel like ultimately, the closest I've gotten to
Speaker 4: my personal Omega verse is mister Tumnus.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: That is wow. That's that's like where I'm like, Okay, no,
Speaker 4: I see the vision. I see the vision, and I
Speaker 4: would make it work if given the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I was, I mean, this is this
Speaker 1: is the last shot of the movie, but it does connect.
Speaker 1: But like you know, when she's like Jupiter's like up
Speaker 1: in like she's like observing her city, you know, like
Speaker 1: from from high up. I was thinking about the the
Speaker 1: Jessica Alba series Dark Angel, which almost every episode of
Speaker 1: that show ends with her like on the because it
Speaker 1: takes place in like a dystopia seattle, like her on
Speaker 1: top of the space needle observing and like you know,
Speaker 1: talking about when Dale'll find my family or whatever. And
Speaker 1: in that show, she's like a genetically modified human and
Speaker 1: she's like spliced with K nine DNA, which makes her
Speaker 1: go into heat and so she just like really needs
Speaker 1: to fuck and that's like.
Speaker 3: Say, she needs to bust her hump.
Speaker 1: And then that's where like Omega Verse like is inspired
Speaker 1: by because Jensen Ackles was in that show, and then
Speaker 1: you know, you take it and then you make anyway,
Speaker 1: we don't need to about those things.
Speaker 4: I know we have to talk about Gensen Ackles. You're
Speaker 4: you're here somewhere, you're here, we have to talk about them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I was like, wow, Like he doesn't even
Speaker 1: go into heat.
Speaker 4: Like it feels like a really half hearted commitment to
Speaker 4: the bit. It feels, yeah, humanoid, but give us full dog. Yeah,
Speaker 4: give us those give us those big stinky floppy ears.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay, so Cain has more or less abducted her,
Speaker 3: but she's like pretty fine with it, and they're about
Speaker 3: to leave to head to where Titus is I think,
Speaker 3: but it's not really specified.
Speaker 4: I never know really where they're going.
Speaker 3: I never know where they're headed to.
Speaker 4: But luckily Jupiter is constantly asking where they are, so
Speaker 4: you do get the answer. But you're like, well, where
Speaker 4: the hell is that? Like sometimes sometimes you look like
Speaker 4: you're in another planet, and then Cain is like, no,
Speaker 4: we're still in Chicago, and you're like, really, okay.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yes, that does happen, and that's right here
Speaker 3: in the story. They're about to leave Chicago, but then
Speaker 3: the little bad long legged aliens start chasing them. Jupiter
Speaker 3: and Caan eventually get away with the help of Cain's
Speaker 3: gravity boots that allow him to roller blade around the sky.
Speaker 4: Channing Tatum writing his journal every night. It sounds silly.
Speaker 4: I feel silly doing it, but I trust the butch
Speaker 4: house Keys vision. I know it will end up looking cool.
Speaker 4: Love Channing busting my hump over.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry somewhere, I know you dearly love this movie.
Speaker 1: No, it's great. No, I just I feel bad for
Speaker 1: Channing Tatum. It's okay, he rallied, Yeah, he did like
Speaker 1: Hail Caesar. The next year that it's true. I love
Speaker 1: his little tap dance and that what a performance.
Speaker 4: This is also the same year as Magic Mike XXL
Speaker 4: kind of a wild room.
Speaker 3: Yeah he's fine, he's a shut up about busting his humps.
Speaker 3: Oh come up, Yeah, okay, So they get away. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Balum gets word from his giant and winged dinosaur lizard
Speaker 3: Minion that Caine intervened in the killing of Jupiter and
Speaker 3: he saved her. And Balam is acting like he knows
Speaker 3: Jupiter personally. He seems to think they go way back,
Speaker 3: and we're like, hmm, what's that all about? Back on Earth,
Speaker 3: Caine drives Jupiter to his friend's house, Stinger played by
Speaker 3: Sean Bean, because they need his help.
Speaker 4: I love Sean Bean.
Speaker 3: He he's great and he plays exactly the character that
Speaker 3: he always plays in this movie. But they need his
Speaker 3: help to do something unclear unclear. Maybe it's to get
Speaker 3: to whatever planet Titus is on, but we're not sure. Anyway,
Speaker 3: they hang out of his house for a while where
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of bees which do not sting Jupiter,
Speaker 3: and it almost love this.
Speaker 4: This is this is like when this sequence happens, you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is camp. This is amazing, and this is also
Speaker 4: a nine year old's dream. Bees will not sting me
Speaker 4: because I am royalty, and like that is I mean,
Speaker 4: that is the fantasy, right. It's like that there is
Speaker 4: something amazing about you that doesn't require that you know
Speaker 4: or do anything differently, and that there's just something inherently
Speaker 4: special about you that is so undeniable that even bees
Speaker 4: will not sting you.
Speaker 3: This is what happens to Jupiter, and they kind of
Speaker 3: start to figure out, like, wait a minute, is she royalty?
Speaker 4: I also love that there is We do meet a character,
Speaker 4: an other blonde woman in this scene. Oh I forget.
Speaker 4: We do meet her by.
Speaker 1: Name disappears immediately.
Speaker 4: It seems like she might be Caine's ex girlfriend.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, it's Stinger's daughter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is daughter?
Speaker 4: Oh my god? This is inscrutable. Okay.
Speaker 1: She literally says like one thing while Kane and Singer
Speaker 1: are fighting, and then I don't I don't know where
Speaker 1: she goes.
Speaker 3: She says, I'm gonna go out to get groceries, and
Speaker 3: then she never to make dinner because women be making dinner.
Speaker 4: But then I think that they fuck off before she comes.
Speaker 4: She comes back with no one to make dinner for
Speaker 4: She's like, where's my dad? Literally, where's her dad? I
Speaker 4: didn't realize that was so. And that is the first
Speaker 4: example of many where we technically pass the Backel test.
Speaker 4: This one's hilarious, although you could argue because this character
Speaker 4: disappears immediately that maybe it's not an important interaction, but
Speaker 4: it is one of the Bechdel test passes. That is
Speaker 4: just Jupiter saying hello, I am Jupiter, and the other
Speaker 4: character says hello, I'm this character, and it's punctuated by
Speaker 4: the fact that they are literally having this conversation in
Speaker 4: front of Sean Bean and Channing Tatum getting into a
Speaker 4: violent physical altercation as they're passing the Baxtel test uselessly
Speaker 4: correct I liked it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was pretty sick. Okay. So then Stinger tells
Speaker 3: Jupiter more about Cain and his checkered past, also about
Speaker 3: the history of Earth and how the abraxis a brassics
Speaker 3: I don't know how to say it, dynasty that controls
Speaker 3: Earth deliberately makes sure that the human population reaches an
Speaker 3: unsustainable number so that the planet can be considered ripe
Speaker 3: for harvest, whatever that means. But it's pretty obvious that
Speaker 3: it's not great. Then the evil aliens find them again,
Speaker 3: as do a couple like human hybrid bounty hunters. There's
Speaker 3: this big fight scene and a couple of the Bounty
Speaker 3: Hunters capture Jupiter and fly her away on a spaceship.
Speaker 3: Jupiter wakes up in the home of the sister callique
Speaker 3: A Brassis.
Speaker 4: By the way, this becomes a running joke in the
Speaker 4: movie that Jupiter is regularly passing out and waking up
Speaker 4: somewhere again and has been changed into a different set
Speaker 4: of clothes yes, and doesn't remember it. This is presented
Speaker 4: as an adorable joke, even though the love interest does
Speaker 4: this at one point. Yeah, that people are while she's unconscious,
Speaker 4: either because of medicine or combat. She wakes up at
Speaker 4: another place in a different outfit that and the joke
Speaker 4: is usually that she just doesn't like the outfit, but
Speaker 4: the subtext of the joke is that she has been
Speaker 4: stripped and redressed while unconscious, and you're like, Lily, Lana,
Speaker 4: what is this joke? What is the joke? Come on,
Speaker 4: you have final cut, no excuses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 4: Anyways, It's very like win Wigna not of like, well,
Speaker 4: hopefully at this time I get to pick my outfit
Speaker 4: and I'll be awake when I put it on, and
Speaker 4: you're like, uh wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, Jupiter meets Khalik, who tells her that Jupiter
Speaker 3: is what they call a recurrence, which is basically a
Speaker 3: genetic reincarnation of the late mother of Calikue, Titus, and Balam,
Speaker 3: which means that Jupiter is essentially a queen slash like
Speaker 3: kind of their mother, but kind of not. She's just
Speaker 3: like a genetic replica recurrence of this late queen, who
Speaker 3: Khalik mentions was ninety one thousand years old when she died,
Speaker 3: but she would have lived longer except that she was murdered.
Speaker 3: But they don't know by whom.
Speaker 4: I'm so confused about this.
Speaker 1: Well there, yeah.
Speaker 4: Okay, look, I guess it's like it's well, okay, there's
Speaker 4: so many elements of this movie that is like, okay,
Speaker 4: there is technology in this world beyond my wildest imagination,
Speaker 4: So why can't they explain this to me? Because they
Speaker 4: the closest they get to be like, we know you're
Speaker 4: our mother, and we know your recurrence is like because
Speaker 4: you kind of look like this statue and I'm like,
Speaker 4: we don't have better technology than you kind of look
Speaker 4: like this statue.
Speaker 1: Okay, So like I thought it was that, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe I'm extrapolating too much.
Speaker 4: No, you know this movie far better than I do.
Speaker 4: I was just trying to figure out, like it's there
Speaker 4: seems like a lot of guesswork for this very high
Speaker 4: tech universe.
Speaker 1: So like I thought it was because like when you're
Speaker 1: I don't know, theoretically, when you're going to donate eggs,
Speaker 1: you give some sort of like DNA sample and perhaps
Speaker 1: on all of their planets they like are keeping trapped
Speaker 1: of like all of the DNA records, and so she's
Speaker 1: like a genetic match of the mother when she like
Speaker 1: went to the hospital and like registered under her.
Speaker 4: Friend's name, why they under Vanessa Kirby's identity for something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they were like, oh, like ding, ding,
Speaker 1: we found a match. Time to go to like this
Speaker 1: medical specific medical record. But I don't know why, Like
Speaker 1: has she never gone to the doctor before? Like I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: Why, like a blood sample?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like why do they not? And I was sure,
Speaker 1: and again I've seen this movie many times. How long
Speaker 1: ago did the mother die? Was it.
Speaker 4: Did she just that's a really good question.
Speaker 3: That's not clear.
Speaker 4: They're acting as if she did, but time is so
Speaker 4: fluid to them.
Speaker 1: I'm like, maybe like she gets like reborn when the
Speaker 1: mother dies, and like her DNA is like re recycled
Speaker 1: on their holdings.
Speaker 4: I'm creating the rules of it felt very like I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 4: With the Abrassics group, it's like it seemed like so
Speaker 4: much was within their control, but then the things that
Speaker 4: weren't within their control I didn't understand, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 4: don't know the other thing, and this is like more
Speaker 4: Bechtelcasti stuff, but that in this world where anything can
Speaker 4: be true, and like we're being encouraged by this story
Speaker 4: to be like, the world is completely different if you
Speaker 4: just look just beneath the surface, which is so much
Speaker 4: of what the Wachowskis are doing. Even in this world,
Speaker 4: the ultimate goal across millennia, across planets and galaxies is
Speaker 4: to be a young attractive woman. Yeah, and to not
Speaker 4: appear old or age in any way. And it's just
Speaker 4: presented as a universal truth and as it just made
Speaker 4: kind of sad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess you could argue that that's
Speaker 3: what the villains.
Speaker 4: Want I but I don't think that there's anything applied.
Speaker 4: There's no pushback on that being a good thing from
Speaker 4: our heroes. They're just sort of like, oh oh, weird,
Speaker 4: got it. Well we're already young and hot, so anyways,
Speaker 4: like I don't know, shrug, but uh, I liked any
Speaker 4: movie you guys, No, no.
Speaker 1: I know, I feel the same way. And I think,
Speaker 1: like again, this watch especially, like I think maybe this
Speaker 1: is the first time I've watched it with like a
Speaker 1: fully grown brain. Okay, it was kind of like, al right,
Speaker 1: like this is what the great wishes, this is what
Speaker 1: it all is about. Presumably Mila kunis now like in
Speaker 1: her inheritance as Queen, gets this power too, but she doesn't.
Speaker 1: She doesn't seem interested in using it. But she also
Speaker 1: doesn't seem uninteresting.
Speaker 4: Right, It's all so vague with her. It's like because
Speaker 4: again don't know what she wants. She's just sort of
Speaker 4: here for the ride, like another one of the awesome
Speaker 4: Jupiter moments where you're like, Jupiter is an iconic apathetic character.
Speaker 4: She is like on the Apathy Hall of Fame because
Speaker 4: even after she's been abducted, this is going back a
Speaker 4: little bit by Cain and Sean Bean. She calls her
Speaker 4: cousin on the phone and says nothing about what is
Speaker 4: going on. She's like, hey, sorry, something went wild at
Speaker 4: the eggs situation and I'm busy now, and you're like,
Speaker 4: so to be told over an hour later, all Jupiter
Speaker 4: wants is to be with her family. I'm like, I
Speaker 4: don't know. It seems like she was abducted and had
Speaker 4: no interest in returning just for something to happen to her.
Speaker 4: I know that, Like, and this is all like pulled
Speaker 4: into focus for me when I learned that the witch
Speaker 4: House Keys were pulling from Dorothy a lot for Jupiter
Speaker 4: character and pulling from the Wizard of Oz. Yeah, but
Speaker 4: it hasn't quite come together.
Speaker 3: But I mean, compare it to again The Matrix, one
Speaker 3: of the finest films ever made. I think they're both
Speaker 3: chosen One narratives in the sense that it's someone who
Speaker 3: is an ordinary person who is actually special and destined
Speaker 3: for great things, and they discover this along the way
Speaker 3: and have to decide what to do with all of
Speaker 3: that information. And for Neo, he's actively seeking out answers.
Speaker 3: He's actively trying to figure out, like what is the
Speaker 3: matrix and do I want to be a part of
Speaker 3: the resistance against it? And then with Jupiter, she's just
Speaker 3: sort of like, oh.
Speaker 4: We kids.
Speaker 1: What's so interesting about her is that she's like from
Speaker 1: a working class immigrant family.
Speaker 3: And undocumented too specializes that she's undocumented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was that was That was one of the
Speaker 1: things that like on this watch, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is like refugee imagery of like in the like bottom
Speaker 1: of like the cellar of a boat, the harsh journey
Speaker 1: across the waters, like that's they're very much pulling from
Speaker 1: that kind of iconography, and I feel this kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: my family is everything is like the like tagline for
Speaker 1: like immigrant family stories, but there's no like grounding or
Speaker 1: anything to hold on to with that. She's not a
Speaker 1: fully fledged character grounded in that kind of reality or
Speaker 1: family structure or family dynamic or tie at all, which
Speaker 1: I think is very funny. I don't know, it makes
Speaker 1: it makes it feel like her family is in a
Speaker 1: completely different movie, and when they are pulled in to
Speaker 1: the narrative, it's like what is going on? But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting. It's like, what do you mean she's undocumented?
Speaker 1: What do you mean that's the story that's being.
Speaker 4: Told, right, Say more, save more, say more.
Speaker 1: And like, how does it connect to like realizing that
Speaker 1: you are the reincarnation of like the ultimate colonizer, Like
Speaker 1: that's crazy, right.
Speaker 4: And that she doesn't seem to have any opinions on that.
Speaker 4: We're I mean, this is fastwording to the literal end
Speaker 4: of the movie. But I was like, yeah, kind of
Speaker 4: agg one might say that. At the end, she's like
Speaker 4: talking with Caine and he's like, so you own the
Speaker 4: world and she has no. I mean, it would have
Speaker 4: been like easy, to the point of like bad writing,
Speaker 4: to be like, well, I don't think anyone should own
Speaker 4: the world. You can't really own the world. But she
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, I do own the world, and I'm
Speaker 4: still trying to figure out what that means. And you're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess I am too. Jupiter, are you and me both.
Speaker 1: Like I think? Especially it's interesting that the way that
Speaker 1: her father dies is also so like anti climactic. Is
Speaker 1: just like some random people we don't I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would like want this of
Speaker 1: my Jupiter ascending, but it's like, what what is what
Speaker 1: is the what's their situation? In Russia. What are the vibes?
Speaker 4: Like what when is when?
Speaker 1: Like what is there? Like what is their context? And
Speaker 1: I think that that's such an there's no like political
Speaker 1: socio political grounding for any of their movements, of their
Speaker 1: migration of anything. And so when you have this overarching
Speaker 1: theme or like kind of like motif of the film
Speaker 1: is essentially about like colonization and like annihilatory violence and
Speaker 1: harvesting of resources, it's just kind of like what an
Speaker 1: interesting character to put at the heart of it, who
Speaker 1: also like does nothing at the end. I I you know,
Speaker 1: earlier in the movie she says something like yeah, like
Speaker 1: no one should own the world or something like that, right, right,
Speaker 1: And so if that came back, that would be interesting.
Speaker 4: But she owns the world. Yeah, She's like this is weird.
Speaker 1: But she's also not tuned into any of society's ills either.
Speaker 1: She's not like, oh, like the oppression of the working class.
Speaker 1: You know, she's just like I hate my life, you know,
Speaker 1: Like what was she You know, it's just so funny.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like that there's such a nothingness to
Speaker 1: it where there are so many points where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: it could have been like a weird, heavy handed, cheesy,
Speaker 1: sort of like liberal posturing, but it's not.
Speaker 4: It's really interesting, yeah, because it's like I have to
Speaker 4: imagine there were drafts of this where her family was
Speaker 4: more meaningfully included, because the specifics are too specific to
Speaker 4: have never meant anything, right, like yeah, but then her
Speaker 4: family kind of becomes cartoon characters and in the final product,
Speaker 4: I just am like, I wonder who is at the
Speaker 4: charge of that, because you know, the Wachowskis have quite
Speaker 4: a bit of like influence over the final product, but
Speaker 4: also they still get studio notes and all that stuff,
Speaker 4: Like I just I'd be so curious. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, the other thing about it is that with other
Speaker 3: Chosen One hero's journey type narratives, there are many where
Speaker 3: there's a call to adventure in the sense that like
Speaker 3: it falls in their lap and they unlike Neo, where
Speaker 3: like they're not actively searching for answers, something comes to
Speaker 3: them and falls in their lap and then they have
Speaker 3: to decide what to do about it. But a lot
Speaker 3: of those stories, whatever it is, ends up like radicalizing
Speaker 3: them to realize. Oh, like Luke Skywalker, let's take that example,
Speaker 3: things fall in his lap. He decides to go and
Speaker 3: join the resistance. He doesn't really know a whole lot
Speaker 3: of what that specifically means at first, but then he's like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I hate the Empire, I hate Darth Vader,
Speaker 3: Like this experience has radicalized me.
Speaker 4: And this movie was said to be heavily influenced by
Speaker 4: Star Wars, enough that Sean Bean has said that his
Speaker 4: character that Stinger a ped his half human half honey
Speaker 4: bee character he plays pie Hans. It says Stinger a Penie.
Speaker 4: I don't know if they ever say his last name
Speaker 4: about Loud. I'm just looking at Wikipedia. Stinger a Penie
Speaker 4: Comma a Han solo type character.
Speaker 3: I will say it is way more of a Han
Speaker 3: solo type.
Speaker 4: I was not getting Han solo from Stinger a Penie.
Speaker 4: But I just, you know, dare to dream mean, yeah.
Speaker 1: I would say that about myself, you know, sure, like you.
Speaker 3: Know exactly, Yeah, I'm a Han solo.
Speaker 4: Anything is a Han solo type. Half honey bee is
Speaker 4: just like it's just so funny.
Speaker 3: Wait, okay, sorry, back up a second. He yes, he's
Speaker 3: a honeybee hybrid. Is that why he has all the bees?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So he's a bee?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know how a dog while Sean Bee is
Speaker 4: half bee and there's no yeah, does he just look
Speaker 4: like a man? Well, yeah, looks like a man, but
Speaker 4: let's not worry about it. Also, going back to the
Speaker 4: Wizard of Oz, stuff like just I don't know, this
Speaker 4: movie is so chaotic. There are quotes about this that
Speaker 4: I was like, what the hell, Maybe I'm being too
Speaker 4: close minded. This is a quote about because the Wochowskis
Speaker 4: have repeatedly said this is influenced by the Odyssey, the
Speaker 4: Wizard of Oz, and Star Wars, the big influences. You
Speaker 4: can definitely feel those often in conflict with each other. Right,
Speaker 4: But this is a quote from Lana Wachowski comparing Cain
Speaker 4: to a character from the Wizard of Oz. She says,
Speaker 4: we were like, can we bring a different kind of
Speaker 4: female character like Dorothy or Alice, characters who negotiate conflict
Speaker 4: and complex situations with intelligence and empathy. Yes, Dorothy has
Speaker 4: a protector, Toto, who's always barking at everyone, and that
Speaker 4: was the origin of Cain. This movie asks what if
Speaker 4: Dorothy and Toto were fucking like it's so weird, Like too,
Speaker 4: I love the Waitchousekis. I'm like, why would you say that,
Speaker 4: why would you say what if Dorothy was fucking Toto?
Speaker 4: And that's kind of the whole idea.
Speaker 3: And then okay, so that's we're already getting into the discussion.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there's just so much to unpack. I think
Speaker 3: the reason Jupiter's character doesn't end up being radicalized by
Speaker 3: her learning about this very large scale colonial capitalist genocidal
Speaker 3: project is she you know, at the end she does
Speaker 3: say like, no, I'm not gonna let you do this,
Speaker 3: but through most of the movie she's not really asking
Speaker 3: the right question. She doesn't seem curious about what's going on.
Speaker 3: She's just sort of like you might even say, she
Speaker 3: put on some gravity boots and is just sort of
Speaker 3: coasting along and.
Speaker 4: Maarda, she's on dial up internet.
Speaker 3: Yes, And it's because I think the main arc that
Speaker 3: seems to be written for her character, rather than any
Speaker 3: sort of like political ideological shift or anything like that.
Speaker 3: It's like hetero romance where in the very beginning there's
Speaker 3: like mention in her voiceover of something about not finding love,
Speaker 3: and then she's talking to her friend Catherine and she's like, well,
Speaker 3: my mom always told me that fairy tales were ridiculous,
Speaker 3: and the love isn't I don't know if it's real.
Speaker 3: And then when she's talking to Kine in various situations,
Speaker 3: she's like, I always seem to go after the wrong
Speaker 3: man who doesn't love me back. So everything everything that
Speaker 3: revolves around her arc.
Speaker 4: Which we have no context for, like we don't know that.
Speaker 4: And you're also like, yeah, Meili Kunnas, I'm sure you're
Speaker 4: getting turned down right and left. But like, but it is.
Speaker 4: It is interesting again where I have to feel like
Speaker 4: her mom because this move he wants to be about
Speaker 4: mothers a lot. And so it also does feel weird
Speaker 4: that Jupiter's mother is so estranged from the movie because
Speaker 4: at the end, again because her family is kind of
Speaker 4: operating in a totally different movie than the rest of
Speaker 4: the movie, especially her cousin's Flattie, Oh my god, her
Speaker 4: cousin's Flatty is in like a fairly Brothers movie. He's
Speaker 4: like somewhere else, He's like in nineteen ninety nine. But
Speaker 4: like you're saying, like all of the groundwork is laid
Speaker 4: for them to be actively engaged with the story. So
Speaker 4: I'm wondering if, like when and if that was severed.
Speaker 4: But the end, her her mother is just like, oh,
Speaker 4: by the way, I'm over your father's death and like
Speaker 4: you should have a telescope. Sorry, and you're like surely.
Speaker 4: At one point, this was more of an arc between
Speaker 4: Jupiter and her mother, because it feels like it's like
Speaker 4: even the opening sequence establishes some tension between them, but
Speaker 4: then she just kind of disappears.
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 4: Anyways, I like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, best movie ever? Yeah, what happens next? King?
Speaker 3: I would love to tell you. Okay, so Jupiter is
Speaker 3: with Colique Khaliku is trying to buddy up to our
Speaker 3: friend Jupiter.
Speaker 1: It what strokes her face?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's intimate awesome. Colique explains that to her people,
Speaker 3: time is the most valuable resource and that she and
Speaker 3: her family can live for so long because they use
Speaker 3: this advanced technology that they've created to replace their dying
Speaker 3: cells with new ones. But where do they get the
Speaker 3: new cells? I wonder if we'll find out? And then
Speaker 3: we see Colique go through this like rejuvenation process where
Speaker 3: she takes a dip in a pool and comes out
Speaker 3: looking much younger. She has washed all the oldness off.
Speaker 4: Right, because looking young is the ultimate goal of not
Speaker 4: just humanity, of all living beings throughout time is looking
Speaker 4: hot in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then Khalik is like, by the way, my
Speaker 3: mother wrote in her will that any recurrence of hers,
Speaker 3: which again is what Jupiter is, will inherit the Earth.
Speaker 3: So technically Jupiter owns like is the rightful heir to Earth,
Speaker 3: even though it was Ballam who was originally supposed to
Speaker 3: inherit the Earth, and that's why he wants Jupiter dead
Speaker 3: so that he can keep Earth. And we're not really
Speaker 3: sure how Jupiter processes this, but.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of cliffhangers with Jupiter about to form
Speaker 4: an opinion.
Speaker 3: But the important thing is that she thinks Kalek is
Speaker 3: kind of nice and on her side. But then Kane
Speaker 3: shows up to be like, m I'm not too sure
Speaker 3: about that. That's probably not true. Then Jupiter is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: so she'll be kiss and she's suddenly very horny for him,
Speaker 3: but he rejects her.
Speaker 4: She's the Tyra Dolpha was rejected mate. One might say, yeah,
Speaker 4: I really, I mean yeah truly to fans of that book.
Speaker 4: I literally got horny and had to stop because I
Speaker 4: was like, I don't want to know. I don't want it.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you just I don't want to uncover that part
Speaker 3: of yourself.
Speaker 4: Such as you're like, if I'm into this, I really cannot.
Speaker 4: I'm I've got a lot going on right now.
Speaker 1: I can't know this is this when she says I
Speaker 1: love dogs. I've always loved dogs, and then yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: okay yeah, and then her like she like her strange,
Speaker 1: like to herself like I love dogs, like kind of
Speaker 1: realizing something, and it's like, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what emotion you're expressing.
Speaker 4: I feel I do feel like there is an actor
Speaker 4: that could have sold that line. It just Mila Kunas
Speaker 4: is not that actor.
Speaker 1: Natalie Portland.
Speaker 4: Let's see it, Natalie Portman. Maybe could I love dogs?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: You know, like there there is someone who or or
Speaker 4: even a Jennifer Lawrence type could have made it funny,
Speaker 4: you know, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think I think the way you're supposed
Speaker 3: to read this is her repeating the ridiculous line she
Speaker 3: just said to herself, as if to say, like, you idiot,
Speaker 3: what did you say? I love dogs? But that's not
Speaker 3: quite how Mila Kunaz delivers it.
Speaker 4: So she just sort of says I love dogs again. Yeah,
Speaker 4: she says, must love dogs and I love dogs. The
Speaker 4: Wes Anderson movie.
Speaker 3: Wow makes you think.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking, I've never seen that movie, but I love
Speaker 4: that it is just I love dogs.
Speaker 1: I think it's also twenty fifteen maybe, oh wow, it
Speaker 1: might be twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4: Huge years either, huge year for movies. I didn't watch.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Jupiter owns Earth.
Speaker 4: She's working it out.
Speaker 3: Yes, a cyborg named Bob starts on the paperwork that's
Speaker 3: required so that Jupiter can access the title to Earth
Speaker 3: the way that you like, you know, have a title
Speaker 3: to a car or a deed to the house.
Speaker 4: She's trying to write it down. If this came out today,
Speaker 4: this part would be played by John Early, because this
Speaker 4: actor is strongly channeling John Early.
Speaker 3: Oh true. Okay, so Bob is helping her. There's a
Speaker 3: ton of bureaucratic red tape, but she finally gets the
Speaker 3: title to Earth and now she owns the planet. This
Speaker 3: makes her even hornier because once again Jupiter lays it
Speaker 3: on real thick on Cain. She wants to smooth him
Speaker 3: so bad.
Speaker 4: And she likes to be called queen. And this is
Speaker 4: like a wish filment thing. But I'm begging Jupiter to
Speaker 4: think more critically about what's happening.
Speaker 3: He says, like your majesty and she's like, oh.
Speaker 4: Say it again, and you're like, okay, Jupiter, but what
Speaker 4: are you going to do with the deed to Earth?
Speaker 3: Yeah? But she's too horny for that, and it seems
Speaker 3: like Caine might be kind of reciprocating these feelings, but
Speaker 3: the moment is ruined when twist Stinger betrays them and
Speaker 3: we're like, oh, a Sean Bean character turning on someone
Speaker 3: and betraying them and being a bad guy the whole time.
Speaker 3: I would have never thought, just kidding, this is the
Speaker 3: character he plays every time.
Speaker 4: But unlike every other time, it doesn't have too much
Speaker 4: of an effect on the plot because later Kine just
Speaker 4: comes back and he's like, oh, well right, your daughter,
Speaker 4: so whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I liked it. That felt like the twist on the
Speaker 4: Sean Being character is that he betrayed him and guess what,
Speaker 4: it doesn't affect them.
Speaker 3: That way, and actually he's he is a good guy.
Speaker 3: He just betrayed them for reasons, but now he's good again.
Speaker 4: I thought Caine was real for that. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know what, life is hard, and you know we're
Speaker 4: putting compromising positions and yeah, let's just keep things moving.
Speaker 3: True. Compare it to his character in, for example, National Treasure,
Speaker 3: when he betrays Nicholas Cage's character whose name is Benjamin
Speaker 3: Franklin or.
Speaker 4: Something, Benjamin Franklin Gates Gates. Sorry, I hate that I
Speaker 4: had that ready, that.
Speaker 3: Locked and loaded. Anyway, he betrays Benjamin Franklin Gates and
Speaker 3: then is a bad guy the whole time, the whole
Speaker 3: rest of the movie.
Speaker 4: So yeah, he's only a bad guy for half of
Speaker 4: the time, much like he is only half of a
Speaker 4: honey bee. Yeah, which like truly which half? I just
Speaker 4: And it's also like if you're casting a part and
Speaker 4: I love Sean Bean, but I don't look at him
Speaker 4: and I'm like, oh right, he's so b like like
Speaker 4: you know, like you would think of maybe casting a
Speaker 4: type that you're like, oh, like a uh, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't think of bees as like muscular and gruff. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: Wait, okay, was were his parents Renezel Wigger's character from
Speaker 3: B Movie and the Bee from B Movie?
Speaker 4: No, I really can't Sean Bean Sean Bean. Maybe they're
Speaker 4: thinking Sean Bee much like Larry B. King from B
Speaker 4: Movie or.
Speaker 3: Larry Bealy Is that anything like Larry geely.
Speaker 4: Be and who is that joke for? But it's for me,
Speaker 4: thank you so much. Okay, the thread I won't wish,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't wish Sean Bean being the spawn of Jerry
Speaker 4: seinfeldt like there's I want better for him, but but
Speaker 4: but some are the question stands he's half be where exactly?
Speaker 1: And it's also like surprising that he's able to betray
Speaker 1: the queen when he is part B. You'd think that,
Speaker 1: Oh my.
Speaker 4: God, yes, and he would sooner.
Speaker 1: Die wouldn't allow him?
Speaker 4: Oh my god. They didn't even think of that. It's
Speaker 4: just like, I mean, okay, so technically Jupiter Ascending is
Speaker 4: giving the same deference to Bees that B movie is
Speaker 4: because B movie makes bees a patriarchy. Still yeah, wow,
Speaker 4: yeah he shouldn't. Okay, first of all, he I thought you.
Speaker 4: I thought you were getting at something far sillier, which
Speaker 4: is that if he's half B, he should be able
Speaker 4: to get between those bars.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know like shape shift and I.
Speaker 4: Do love that, Like, yeah, well is it? I can't
Speaker 4: even remember. This movie is blurred in my head, Like
Speaker 4: I know that it's a big deal for Caine to
Speaker 4: get his wings back, which is not something I associate
Speaker 4: with wolves or dogs. But sure, yeah, so shouldn't Sean
Speaker 4: Bean be trying to get his wings back?
Speaker 2: Is he?
Speaker 4: Also?
Speaker 1: I was thinking that his bee too, Like he's trying
Speaker 1: to get back bee wings, not angel wings.
Speaker 6: I guess why don't we get to see him with
Speaker 6: bee wings the little ones?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there should have been like a post credits scene
Speaker 3: where he's buzzing around in his little bee wings.
Speaker 4: Yeah that is so oh my god, wait, I cannot stop,
Speaker 4: Like Summer, he should not be able to betray the queen.
Speaker 4: That's like that should be his whole thing. Yeah, that's infuriating.
Speaker 4: Why didn't they think of that? Why go? Why go
Speaker 4: out of the way to make Jupiter queen? If if
Speaker 4: the only bee in the story is going to betray
Speaker 4: her with no consequence.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know, how is he the outside
Speaker 1: of the name stinger? I don't know, singer?
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah, I mean we.
Speaker 1: Can talk about this later. But I am interested in
Speaker 1: Cain as a name. But that's that's for after.
Speaker 3: That's for after Cain K nine K nine that I
Speaker 3: was thinking, Okay, but the biblical.
Speaker 4: Cane also a peenie I just learned is just like
Speaker 4: a Latin word for b. So his name is stinger
Speaker 4: b yes, and Okay, yet he is just a tattooed
Speaker 4: man man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least the at least they put Channing Tatum
Speaker 3: in again pointy ears. He's wearing eyeliner because dogs famously
Speaker 3: wear eyeliner, and he I think he does have kind
Speaker 3: of sharper more pronounced can nine teeth.
Speaker 1: The bleached brows are something.
Speaker 3: Which is like all things I associate with dogs.
Speaker 4: They're just trying to make Channing Tatum look fucky in
Speaker 4: a way we haven't seen him before. Yeah, I think
Speaker 4: kind of and that and that's good to be clear,
Speaker 4: that's good, just like Eddie Redmain sort of looks kardashian
Speaker 4: esque in a way that I was like, is this?
Speaker 4: What is this? What am I looking at? Why isn't
Speaker 4: he opening his mouth?
Speaker 1: His long neck, the longest neck that's ever been seen?
Speaker 4: How dare they give him a razzie? I just I
Speaker 4: guarantee that this is a more interesting performance than both
Speaker 4: of his Oscar performances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I saw a theory of everything, and
Speaker 1: I saw Jupiter sending and let me tell you when
Speaker 1: do I remember?
Speaker 4: And what are we talking about? In the Bechdel theory
Speaker 4: and everything tell you that much.
Speaker 1: That's the most culturally relevant exact the oscars don't matter.
Speaker 4: Who has stood the test of time?
Speaker 3: And what's Stephen Hawking not named in the Epstein files here?
Speaker 4: And you know who wasn't.
Speaker 3: Makes you think?
Speaker 4: Makes you think?
Speaker 3: Okay, back to the story. Okay, Stinger has just betrayed them.
Speaker 3: Jupiter is detained and brought to Titus, the youngest of
Speaker 3: the three siblings, and she's like, you're violating space code
Speaker 3: and you have to bring me back to Earth and
Speaker 3: he's like, okay, fair, but first you must dine with me,
Speaker 3: and he puts her in a patent leather catwoman style dress.
Speaker 4: Yeah really like it reminded me of in the recent
Speaker 4: Weathering Heights adaptation, which but when like Margaret Robbie all
Speaker 4: of a sudden randomly looks like Kula Deville and you're like,
Speaker 4: what like it is? It's an interesting outfit, But it's
Speaker 4: so like the tone of this movie is so inconsistent
Speaker 4: because Mila Kunis is still playing like I'm just a
Speaker 4: regular girl. So she's like, this dress isn't really my style?
Speaker 4: I'm like, dude, or don't Jupiter? Come on? It's a
Speaker 4: weird dress though, And.
Speaker 3: Even more bizarre is that Titus is like Hubba hubba,
Speaker 3: even though it's been established that Jupiter looks exactly like
Speaker 3: his mother. So he wants to fuck his mom question.
Speaker 4: Mark, Great, well, Caitlyn, you've heard of that one before.
Speaker 4: Come on, well have you heard this one before? I mean,
Speaker 4: I wants to fuck a lady that looks like his mom,
Speaker 4: but rarely the uh proven incarnation of his actual mom. Right,
Speaker 4: But then it turns out just kidding for some reason,
Speaker 4: just kidding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll find out more about that in a moment.
Speaker 3: But in the meantime, he shows Jupiter all these canisters
Speaker 3: of this liquid. It's the same thing that Kaliku bathed
Speaker 3: in earlier, and he explains that it's made from humans,
Speaker 3: that Earth is a farm that they harvest people from
Speaker 3: to create this like rejuvenating youth juice. But he's trying
Speaker 3: to put a stop to all this because that's wrong,
Speaker 3: as was his mother, and he's just following in her footsteps.
Speaker 3: And he's like, but enough about all that, will you
Speaker 3: marry me? Jupiter?
Speaker 4: And we're somehow left on a cliffhanger for this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she gasps, and then there's another hard cut to
Speaker 3: the next scene.
Speaker 4: And you're like, Jupiter, what's in it for you? She
Speaker 4: this becomes and again I'm like, is there like a
Speaker 4: Wizard of Ozsie? I was trying to, like, see, I
Speaker 4: have not read the Odyssey looking forward to the Christopher
Speaker 4: and noll In Odyssey, I have to say, so I
Speaker 4: only know the broad strokes. I can see the Wizard
Speaker 4: of Oz episodic nature of like what if instead of
Speaker 4: meeting three friends on your way to Oz, you were
Speaker 4: kidnapped by three diabolical siblings on the way to nowhere
Speaker 4: or on the way back to home? Right technically if
Speaker 4: Chicago is Kansas something like that, Like it is episodic,
Speaker 4: but but the episodes don't really advance the plot. They
Speaker 4: kind of just continue it. I don't know. I was
Speaker 4: trying to get there. The tightest one at very least,
Speaker 4: I will say, was interesting. Yeah, I didn't see brother
Speaker 4: proposal coming.
Speaker 1: M M.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is really where it all starts, like really falling
Speaker 1: apart for me. Okay, this is where I'm really like,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know what's happening. I don't know
Speaker 1: there's like a there's a continually shifting allegiance of Jupiter
Speaker 1: to different characters, and it's like, why why are you
Speaker 1: with this person now? Why?
Speaker 3: Like I don't she's she's very very gullible and she
Speaker 3: just sort of like becomes best friends with whoever the
Speaker 3: next sibling she meets is yeah, and we're like, have
Speaker 3: a little bit more discernment of character.
Speaker 1: And think she should be more weirded out, more and
Speaker 1: more excited, you know, like she.
Speaker 4: Just has like sub reactions to again, like that's it's
Speaker 4: part of why she's such a frustrating character. Where like
Speaker 4: Lanava Chowski said in different interviews, like oh, well Dorothy, Well,
Speaker 4: first of all, I think she kind of misreads the
Speaker 4: character Dorothy, where she's like Dorothy doesn't change that much
Speaker 4: from the beginning to the end, And you're like, well
Speaker 4: that's not true at all. But like Dorothy is maybe
Speaker 4: not the most active protagonist, right, There's it's a lot
Speaker 4: of things happening to her, but Dorothy is consist making
Speaker 4: emotional choices. She is consistently stating where she stands with things,
Speaker 4: and these are qualities jupid relax, Like, yeah, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: characterize her as a particularly empathetic I wouldn't characterize her
Speaker 4: as anything. I don't like she just seems to be like, wow,
Speaker 4: this is so like it's like she's talking to an
Speaker 4: audience that isn't there, both figuratively and if box Office
Speaker 4: receets her to be indicated literally being like this is
Speaker 4: so weird. Wow, Like you're just like, how do you
Speaker 4: feel about this? Critical it's impossible to feel nothing.
Speaker 1: Dorothy and Alice of Alice, they're both little girls, so that's.
Speaker 4: Also adult women part of it.
Speaker 1: Like they're little girls, and she's an adult woman with
Speaker 1: a job and like a life and is donating her eggs.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know, Like there is like just
Speaker 1: an incredible passivity that also doesn't seem to be like
Speaker 1: noticed by the narrative either, Like it's not passive character
Speaker 1: in an interesting way, like right, you know, but it's
Speaker 1: just like she's like getting a river and she's being
Speaker 1: knocked around.
Speaker 4: I feel like she's weirdly kind of subject to these
Speaker 4: like tropes I would normally and this is kind of
Speaker 4: like old hat at this point, but that I would
Speaker 4: like attribute to like a born sexy Yesterday character, except
Speaker 4: she wasn't born sexy yesterday, she was she was born, Like,
Speaker 4: we know so much about her origin story, we know
Speaker 4: so much about her, and so it's like, with all
Speaker 4: that being true, it's really bizarre that she has no
Speaker 4: reaction to anything that's going on. I do like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I just scrolled past this note and I don't know
Speaker 4: if I'll find it again, because I have so many
Speaker 4: notes that even in deep space, the poorly constructed H
Speaker 4: and m V neck will find its way to you.
Speaker 4: Everyone is wearing an H and M V neck at
Speaker 4: some point in the movie, including billionaire aliens, and I
Speaker 4: celebrate that that's monoculture in a way we no longer have.
Speaker 3: So true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so yeah, So her brothers like, marry me, and
Speaker 4: she bafflingly is like, yeah, maybe her son.
Speaker 3: Her son's marry me, and she's like.
Speaker 4: And she's about to do it, and they literally I
Speaker 4: thought they were gonna do like a series of unfortunate
Speaker 4: events thing where she's like secretly kind of playing a
Speaker 4: trick and she's like, I'm going to sign the contract
Speaker 4: with the wrong hand or like somehow, but like no,
Speaker 4: she's just gonna marry him and wait for Channing Tatum
Speaker 4: to interrupt the wedding.
Speaker 3: Yes, which is more or less what happens next. Titus
Speaker 3: disposes of Cain by like launching him into space, but
Speaker 3: Cain uses his nifty gravity boots and a magical oxygen
Speaker 3: suit that he happens to have right there to survive
Speaker 3: until he is rescued by Like they're described as space
Speaker 3: cops who we've seen before. They're like buds with Stinger.
Speaker 3: Stinger a penie, of course, so he gets rescueees Stinger
Speaker 3: is a penie. Yes. Jupiter meanwhile is going through with
Speaker 3: this marriage. So Cain and Stinger reconcile, and then they
Speaker 3: go to the wedding to stop it. And Caine is
Speaker 3: starting to realize that he's in love with Jupiter two,
Speaker 3: and so they go in and they crash the wedding
Speaker 3: and it's very Shrek crashing in to stop the Fiona
Speaker 3: Farquad wedding.
Speaker 4: Sure, except we know what Fiona wants.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is the big difference.
Speaker 4: And also there's a huge matrix reference in Trek there
Speaker 4: is featuring Fiona.
Speaker 3: It's all connected, web connects them all, it sure does.
Speaker 4: I think maybe the only person who said with love
Speaker 4: the only person who maybe could have been worse in
Speaker 4: the part of Jupiter is to go to Johnson's to
Speaker 4: go to Johnson is maybe the only living actor who
Speaker 4: could have given less in this role.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this this movie is pretty like Madam Webbian.
Speaker 1: I think it's.
Speaker 4: She really could have but but maybe Dakota Johnson could
Speaker 4: have sold me on apathy as a as a character choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's remake it. I want to.
Speaker 4: I would love to see another Jupiter's ending. All they
Speaker 4: needed was four hundred million dollars and that would have That.
Speaker 1: Would have fixed it, that would have made the story
Speaker 1: made sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we all know that money equals good story exactly
Speaker 3: for sure. Okay. So then Kine, who has rescued Jupiter
Speaker 3: from the wedding, takes her back to Earth, but when
Speaker 3: she goes into her house, her family is gone because
Speaker 3: they've been abducted by Balam's giant space lizard man. And
Speaker 3: then that other servant of Balam's, mister Knight, blackmails.
Speaker 4: Had completely forgotten about him.
Speaker 3: He blackmails Jupiter saying that if she relinquishes her title
Speaker 3: to Earth so that Balam can have it, they'll let
Speaker 3: her family live. So she agrees to go with mister
Speaker 3: Knight to keep her family safe. She meets with Balam,
Speaker 3: who demands that she hand over her title to Earth,
Speaker 3: and she's like, well, if I do that, you're just
Speaker 3: gonna harvest and kill everyone there, and he's like yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: and she's like, well, I guess I should form an
Speaker 3: opinion about.
Speaker 4: That later, and she does.
Speaker 3: I guess and she says, no, don't do it, Balam.
Speaker 3: But before she can like really do anything on her own,
Speaker 3: Cain and his buddies attack Balum and I think the
Speaker 3: like the refinery where they make the youth juice at
Speaker 3: So things are kind of like crashing down around them,
Speaker 3: and Jupiter and Balom fall into a hole and they're
Speaker 3: like plummeting downward.
Speaker 4: One could one could even call it, okay, horrible in
Speaker 4: coming a plot hole. Oh wow?
Speaker 3: Oh wait, I thought you were gonna say Jupiter descending.
Speaker 4: Oh god, if I only had a bigger brain. Thankfully
Speaker 4: you do.
Speaker 3: I do, so I got you covered. Thank you so
Speaker 3: much anytime. Okay, So they're falling. Cain is I don't know,
Speaker 3: he's doing something. He's battling the giant lizards.
Speaker 4: He's busting as hump, He's busting us up.
Speaker 3: Jupiter starts to make her way back to Caine, but
Speaker 3: then Balum attacks Jupiter again. They're fighting, they fall again,
Speaker 3: they're descending again, but then finally Caine swoops in with
Speaker 3: his gravity boots and saves Jupiter. I think this is
Speaker 3: the fifth or sixth time he has saved her throughout
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not to mention, I mean she's also been saved
Speaker 4: by characters. We never really get full context for thinking
Speaker 4: of you, missus ponytails, where the hell you were? You
Speaker 4: also saved Jupiter at some point?
Speaker 3: Wait? Who she has?
Speaker 1: Like the it's like purple hair.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she has like purple pigtails that are like crimped,
Speaker 4: and she's got this cool outfit and she but like,
Speaker 4: I have no idea who she is. I don't know
Speaker 4: how beside she's on We see her once or twice.
Speaker 4: Oh wait, no, isn't she one of She's the kind
Speaker 4: of character you see and you're like, yeah, she's gonna
Speaker 4: be awesome, but then you just never really figure out
Speaker 4: who she is.
Speaker 3: Isn't she one of the bounty hunters who captures her?
Speaker 3: I don't think she saves.
Speaker 4: Who told you that?
Speaker 3: Who told me that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Wait, I want I want to know who that
Speaker 4: character is.
Speaker 3: I mean if you if I'm thinking of who you're describing,
Speaker 3: I think she she like abducts Jupiter, not saves her.
Speaker 4: Well, she does Jupiter, I guess. I'm thinking, like Jupiter
Speaker 4: is like unconscious and someone wakes her up. Did she
Speaker 4: wake Jupiter up for being unconscious?
Speaker 3: Maybe I can't remember.
Speaker 1: He's in the like really long scene at the beginning
Speaker 1: that's like yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And then she instruction Yeah yeah, she's a bounty.
Speaker 1: Join don't the two bounty hunters like join them?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: On their side?
Speaker 1: Really I thought so too, but it was unclear.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, Summer, you've seen this movie way more
Speaker 3: than me. But I was like, I was so locked in.
Speaker 3: I was like, I have to understand.
Speaker 1: No, you're doing so good. I was really wondering.
Speaker 3: I was like, reare, Okay, we're almost done, So given
Speaker 3: us the ultimate challenge. Yeah, Cain and Jupiter are making
Speaker 3: their way back to the ship, but oh no, something's
Speaker 3: about to explode. Will they make it in time? They do,
Speaker 3: and then Jupiter returns to Earth. She's safe and sound
Speaker 3: with her mom and aunt and the rest of her family.
Speaker 3: Though she's back to cleaning toilets.
Speaker 4: But now it's awesome.
Speaker 3: But now she's the Queen of Earth, so she loves
Speaker 3: her life.
Speaker 4: And now that's what I call You can't say that.
Speaker 4: I mean, at the beginning she hated toilets, but now
Speaker 4: she likes them.
Speaker 3: And that's an arc if I've ever seen one.
Speaker 4: That's an arc that counts.
Speaker 3: Then her family gives her the telescope that she was
Speaker 3: hoping to buy, and then the movie ends with her
Speaker 3: not using it at all. Instead, she's noodling with Cain,
Speaker 3: who has wings now.
Speaker 4: Like a dog would right, right, guys, right.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and then she has his gravity boots on and
Speaker 3: then they're flying around together the end. Yes, so an
Speaker 3: hour and a half into the episode, let's take another
Speaker 3: break and we'll come back to discuss.
Speaker 4: And we're bad, We're back. I do feel like we've
Speaker 4: had a large portion of the discussion. Ye starting the
Speaker 4: recap as is increasingly common on this show. But summer,
Speaker 4: where would you like to begin?
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's talk about the mother daughter relationship, Jupiter's
Speaker 1: mother daughter relationship. Absolutely, I feel like there are there
Speaker 1: are movies when you rewatch them. Every time you watch it,
Speaker 1: you're kind of like, oh, I forgot it starts like that,
Speaker 1: and this is one of them. I'm always like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't start with the toilets, it starts with the parents.
Speaker 1: And I think something that always throws me off is
Speaker 1: when her family buys her the telescope at the end.
Speaker 1: I always wonder when did her mom tell her about
Speaker 1: the telescope? Like, when when did she get any kind
Speaker 1: of access to her family history. She says, like, my
Speaker 1: mom like pushed away all of her family except for
Speaker 1: her sister. And it seems like maybe she doesn't talk
Speaker 1: about her dad very much. Maybe she only knows the
Speaker 1: origin of her name, but I don't know. I always
Speaker 1: found that to be such a dropped thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: why does she know what telescope her dead dad had?
Speaker 1: How is it relevant to any of this? How do
Speaker 1: we spend so much time in space? And then like
Speaker 1: her astronomer father isn't relevant?
Speaker 4: Really he never comes back. That's really yeah. I felt
Speaker 4: the same. I just I have to believe and would
Speaker 4: I did not have a lot of luck finding out
Speaker 4: like what happened in earlier drafts of this script, but
Speaker 4: that her mother had to like, especially at the end
Speaker 4: where it feels throwaway. In the version of the movie
Speaker 4: that we get where she's like, you know, I've really
Speaker 4: like she says something I can to like, I've realized,
Speaker 4: like you should be able to use a telescope and
Speaker 4: explore your passions and blah blah blah, and like says
Speaker 4: something that you're like, Well in a movie where this
Speaker 4: character was a character that could be really impactful and
Speaker 4: could have really like symbolized an arc that mother and
Speaker 4: daughter have been on, but like, I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 4: like somewhere, like you're saying, there's a lot established about
Speaker 4: the mom that I find it very hard to believe
Speaker 4: that there wasn't originally intentioned to have that mother daughter
Speaker 4: story running throughout, because that would also track with how
Speaker 4: disregulated the Abrasis family is yea with their dead mother,
Speaker 4: and then you have like why don't we know how
Speaker 4: I mean whatever, It's like, you know, Jupiter never knew
Speaker 4: her father and we don't really know how much or
Speaker 4: when she learned about him, But there are ways that
Speaker 4: you think that Jupiter could connect with In contrast, the
Speaker 4: Abrasis family, where they have a dead parent, they have
Speaker 4: mommy issues, yeah, but none of these similarities are explored.
Speaker 1: And like thinking about the Wizard of Oz comparison, so
Speaker 1: much of like Dorothy's journey, right is seeing the parallels
Speaker 1: of the Ossians to the troubles that she has in
Speaker 1: her life at the start of the movie, right, like
Speaker 1: the mean Lady is the wicked Witch, and on and
Speaker 1: on and on, right, And so it's it's very funny,
Speaker 1: I don't know to be to site Wizard of All
Speaker 1: as an influence, but have such a drastic disconnect between
Speaker 1: these two narratives, especially with like any redmaking murders his mom,
Speaker 1: Like what I don't know, Like what does that do
Speaker 1: to a person to be faced with a person who
Speaker 1: has like killed the parent. Does it make you think
Speaker 1: about your relationship to your parent at all? It would
Speaker 1: make me right.
Speaker 4: And it's like, but that's kind of not Jupiter's style.
Speaker 4: Jupiter's like brain off.
Speaker 3: I was not really asking questions or being curious about anything.
Speaker 4: And that's actually self care. And she's like touching grass
Speaker 4: or something. But yeah, I guess something that I wondered
Speaker 4: that I'm like, maybe I'm really kind of like off
Speaker 4: the deep end here. But at the end when you
Speaker 4: find out randomly like Eddie Redmain murdered his mother, but
Speaker 4: he also says that she was begging to ask you,
Speaker 4: if not begged him to do we believe him there?
Speaker 4: Like I think we're supposed to believe him, but it
Speaker 4: just feels like again like if true, so under explored. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and such a last minute thing to learn about a
Speaker 4: character before they fall into a literal void never to
Speaker 4: be seen again.
Speaker 1: I believed Tim, and I thought it was meant to
Speaker 1: say that there is like something in the genetics that
Speaker 1: she possesses that like, oh, you hate your life because
Speaker 1: my mother hated her life, and so you're genetically predisposed.
Speaker 3: I interpreted it as their mother realized the atrocities that
Speaker 3: she committed by harvesting humans from various planets.
Speaker 1: But see, like that would be great, like imagine that
Speaker 1: like an interiority of like your I don't know, like
Speaker 1: the being that you're reincarnated from, like like like like
Speaker 1: an Avatar cycle kind of thing, like teaching you the
Speaker 1: harm of that past life or whatever that would have
Speaker 1: been sick.
Speaker 4: Which is right, Yeah, But then even so, why would
Speaker 4: you force your son to do that?
Speaker 6: That doesn't feel like a the way to do that,
Speaker 6: steady little son, right, You're like Eddie Redmain is having
Speaker 6: clearly enough issues as it is the genetics of it all.
Speaker 4: I don't really have that much to say that. It
Speaker 4: isn't extremely obvious, but there is a sort of I
Speaker 4: don't know, I don't know because it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: we have two iconic trans filmmakers making this film, so
Speaker 4: I'm like, who the fuck am I? But you know,
Speaker 4: when genetics are brought up too much, you kind of
Speaker 4: have to start tilting your head a little bit and
Speaker 4: being like, ah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Again, it is the villains who are obsessed with, yeah,
Speaker 3: this whole genetic thing.
Speaker 4: Well but yes, but again it's like, but there's no
Speaker 4: pushback on the hero side. Like at the end, Mila Kunas,
Speaker 4: due to genetics, owns the deed to Earth and seems
Speaker 4: fine with that. Yeah, because she will be a benevolent
Speaker 4: ruler to Earth.
Speaker 3: Right, so well, like.
Speaker 1: You know, functionally, what does it mean to own the
Speaker 1: Earth at that point? Like seemingly she doesn't, I don't
Speaker 1: know if she has she continues to have access to
Speaker 1: the technology of right, hey, the Braxist family because I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's it's very I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: poorly done. So there's many questions, but I think that
Speaker 1: there is such a strange sort of like she is
Speaker 1: happy now I guess because she has a dog boyfriend,
Speaker 1: but also because she is the owner of earth. But
Speaker 1: I think there you know, there is a there is
Speaker 1: like oh, like she wants to buy things and she
Speaker 1: has to work really hard. But does ownership of earth
Speaker 1: give her wealth?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it gives.
Speaker 4: Her really know what she gets out of it? And
Speaker 4: also just I don't know. Jupiter, bless her heart, she
Speaker 4: is like unbelievably vague to the very end where the
Speaker 4: last time we see her with her family, she's like, sorry, everyone,
Speaker 4: I've got a date tonight. And then her aunt, because
Speaker 4: her aunt's whole thing is she is like a caricature
Speaker 4: of like I love astrology, which you think would become
Speaker 4: plot relevant, but don't worry, it never does. And she's like,
Speaker 4: what's his sign? And Jupiter says, ha ha, I don't know.
Speaker 4: End of scene and see yup. Awesome.
Speaker 3: Well, to go back to your point summer about her
Speaker 3: relationship with her mother and how there were opportunities to
Speaker 3: characterize Jupiter, either by like setting up an arc or
Speaker 3: giving her a desire or motivation or something like that
Speaker 3: because she wants to buy this telescope, but we have
Speaker 3: no specific indication of why, Like, yeah, did her mother
Speaker 3: tell her about her father's telescope.
Speaker 4: I have to believe there's a draft word where that
Speaker 4: was there.
Speaker 3: Why true? Right, because she's gonna spend four thousand dollars
Speaker 3: on it, Yeah, that's that is no small purchase, But
Speaker 3: there's no indication that, like, maybe she wants to by
Speaker 3: this telescope to feel closer to the memory of her father.
Speaker 3: Maybe she wants it because she legitimately has an interest
Speaker 3: in space. If so, that could explain why when she
Speaker 3: gets abducted and taken to space, she's like, this is
Speaker 3: actually cool the way that like Moana another hero's Journey
Speaker 3: chosen one style narrative that came out right around this time,
Speaker 3: it's very clearly established that Moana longs to be out
Speaker 3: on the ocean and to explore if there's a similar
Speaker 3: thing for Jupiter, where she likes she longs to explore space,
Speaker 3: but she it doesn't seem conceivable because she's a working
Speaker 3: class woman who will never have access to that. And
Speaker 3: then when she finally does again, that could explain why
Speaker 3: she's so enamored by Oh I'm on this new planet,
Speaker 3: I'm meeting these aliens. This is also cool, this is
Speaker 3: what I dreamed of. But because none of that is established,
Speaker 3: we have no idea how she feels about her situation.
Speaker 3: We have no idea what she wants or what motivates her.
Speaker 4: Choices, Like it reminds me of this is very random.
Speaker 4: But a recent criticism I saw of Belle from Beauty
Speaker 4: and the Beast in a YouTube video that I liked
Speaker 4: was that she is kind of a bizarre protagonist on
Speaker 4: the grounds that we know what she doesn't want, but
Speaker 4: we don't know what she does want, which makes her
Speaker 4: whole journey rather confusing and sort of serves to make
Speaker 4: someone else the protagonist in her story, which is something
Speaker 4: I was thinking about with Jupiter and Cain, where I
Speaker 4: think Cain more clearly fits the role of a protagonist
Speaker 4: in that he grows and changes.
Speaker 3: And has a specific motivation, a specific desire yea.
Speaker 4: He wants his wings, which is vague but a tangible goal,
Speaker 4: whereas we really are only told what Jupiter doesn't want,
Speaker 4: and it's her life.
Speaker 3: Yes, she wants much more than this provincial life, right ye,
Speaker 3: which is that's the whole bells I want. It was
Speaker 3: just just like I don't want this, but you're like, okay,
Speaker 3: but what do you want?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so you could sort of give that character
Speaker 4: anything and be sort of like I guess maybe I
Speaker 4: don't know.
Speaker 1: And then when Jupiter, it's like nothing really changes. I
Speaker 1: think that's that's the thing that's like always just so
Speaker 1: kooky at the end of the movie, Like she's so
Speaker 1: much happier, she's more a beat, she's full of life,
Speaker 1: and it's like that things are the same. Is it
Speaker 1: really just the boyfriend? I don't know, Like it's so
Speaker 1: it is so in some ways, it's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of fun to be like all she needed is
Speaker 1: this like little secret that she owns the earth and
Speaker 1: she's good.
Speaker 4: But I don't know, I kind of I mean, I
Speaker 4: wanted to give the movie that like, and maybe I
Speaker 4: don't know. Again, I'm like, maybe I'm overthinking it, but
Speaker 4: like that at the end, I feel like there's I mean,
Speaker 4: it feels sort of similar to Dorothy, where Dorothy technically
Speaker 4: and up exactly where she started with a whole new
Speaker 4: appreciation for what she has. Maybe that's what it's supposed
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, She's like oh, I could have been harvested and
Speaker 3: I wasn't, so I'm grateful now.
Speaker 4: And it's just I just want more for her than
Speaker 4: to be satisfied that she hasn't been harvested. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, although it's like there are a lot of
Speaker 4: really interesting ideas and like going back to like the Wachowski's, like, yeah,
Speaker 4: they're not underthinking the mythology they're pulling from. They're pulling
Speaker 4: from these movies, but they're also pulling from a bunch
Speaker 4: of folklore, specifically like gnostic ideas and the Okay, I
Speaker 4: was I was afraid you would ask that. Sorry, sorry,
Speaker 4: not so like basically ideas of transhumanism, of gnosticism, of reincarnation.
Speaker 4: There is something I learned about called the Gaya hypothesis.
Speaker 4: I was really, I was summer. Maybe you know all
Speaker 4: of this way better than I know. Do you know
Speaker 4: about the Gaya hypothesis? I was afraid that. I was, like,
Speaker 4: I'm like Mother Earth, yes exactly, that Jupiter is and
Speaker 4: I guess that the Witch Housekis gave some interviews to
Speaker 4: this effect. But there's also just been a lot of
Speaker 4: speculation for people who are interested in folklore like this
Speaker 4: that Jupiter is supposed to be a representation of Earth
Speaker 4: itself and is supposed to embody all of the gaya
Speaker 4: like beautiful qualities of Earth. I'm going to quote from
Speaker 4: bravely from a medium dot com interview here, So take
Speaker 4: with a grain of salt. But there's just really not
Speaker 4: a lot of good info about the background of this.
Speaker 4: This is from Golden Age timeline. Jupiter is said gnostic
Speaker 4: themes of transhumanism versus soul embo, spiritual awakening, and the
Speaker 4: divine feminism. One of the main themes in Jupiterous ending
Speaker 4: relates to Gnosticism, an ancient religious movement associated with the
Speaker 4: Es Senes that views the material world as a lower
Speaker 4: density learning ground for souls to evolve. According to gnostic beliefs,
Speaker 4: human souls are divine beings who choose to get trapped
Speaker 4: in the physical world that is controlled by evil archons.
Speaker 4: It's starting to give scientology here, and archon is defined
Speaker 4: as a technological ruler that enslaves through mind control, frequency implants,
Speaker 4: and military strategies, and works through controlling more embodied sources
Speaker 4: such as corrupt humans or non humans perhaps bees or dinosaurs,
Speaker 4: only through attaining gnosis or esoteric spiritual knowledge. This is
Speaker 4: absolutely some l Roone humbridshit. Can the soul transcend its
Speaker 4: earthly prison and reach liberation? So it's pulling from ancient
Speaker 4: ideas that el Ron Hubber would later steal. And again,
Speaker 4: like when I was reading stuff like this, I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: I kind of see how the siblings fall into that idea,
Speaker 4: and that Jupiter is theoretically a foil to that idea.
Speaker 4: But again, she's so inactive that it's like hard to
Speaker 4: telegraph those ideas effectively because she's not if she's embodying Earth,
Speaker 4: I don't think Earth is coming off particularly well. Like
Speaker 4: it's just sort of like, here's this because the idea
Speaker 4: of like harvesting humans for fuel is so horrific and potent,
Speaker 4: but it's kind of just like left there in this story.
Speaker 1: I don't know I was thinking about. It starts with
Speaker 1: her theoretically donating her eggs, and I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: something interesting there too, with a sort of kind of
Speaker 1: like exploitation of a working woman in like having to
Speaker 1: resort to donating your eggs in order to afford things
Speaker 1: that you want and need. And also I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the cousin thing is like it's absurd, like why
Speaker 1: why is she letting her cousin take.
Speaker 3: The bulk of the bulk it's going to earn.
Speaker 1: But I think there is something interesting there of like
Speaker 1: this sort of patriarchal exploitation continuing, and then when she
Speaker 1: becomes a queen, there is a weird empowerment to it.
Speaker 1: But it just doesn't it doesn't work well right, And
Speaker 1: like I think that I don't know there is hearing
Speaker 1: hearing you read these like spiritual themes, like that's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I wish I wish it was coming through.
Speaker 4: I know, yeah, I think, Wait, sorry, can I tell
Speaker 4: you more about the guy A hypothesis? Yeah, because I
Speaker 4: was like, I because I do believe, like I I
Speaker 4: don't know the Wachowski's, I fully believe they are well
Speaker 4: acquainted with the guy A hypothesis. This all feels very
Speaker 4: within their wheelhouse. And this is where I was like, wait,
Speaker 4: this really could have been something. The Gya hypothesis posits
Speaker 4: that the Earth, also known as Gaya, along with the
Speaker 4: planets and the stars, are sentient beings on their own
Speaker 4: evolutionary journey. Humans and other life forms on the planet
Speaker 4: are like cells within her body. Her desire to understand
Speaker 4: the origins of creation led her to bring the material
Speaker 4: world into existence without approval from supreme creator of the
Speaker 4: universe aka eddie Redmain. And so there is this massive
Speaker 4: cosmic story that is being referenced. But of all the
Speaker 4: things that are explained to us in the course of
Speaker 4: this story, this is something I could have actually really used.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that is what they're referencing, hmm,
Speaker 4: but it's interesting. I was like, Oh, I want more
Speaker 4: about the Gaya hypothesis.
Speaker 3: Something I think the movie does handle pretty well is
Speaker 3: its criticism of genocidal colonial capitalism, because the villains are
Speaker 3: this royal family who control this empire where they implant
Speaker 3: human DNA on various planets, wait till the population grows
Speaker 3: basically out of control and becomes unsustainable, and then harvests
Speaker 3: them aka kills everybody on the planet to create their
Speaker 3: youth juice. And the movie presents this as like, this
Speaker 3: is absolutely horrible and these they need to be stopped,
Speaker 3: and Jupiter is kind of the one to stop them,
Speaker 3: but she barely does, and therein lies the problem. But
Speaker 3: where I think the movie missteps with this is that
Speaker 3: the cops and the military of this movie are poised
Speaker 3: as the good guys actually, because with Cain being this
Speaker 3: like ex military soldier character, and then with the Aegis,
Speaker 3: which is the like cops, they're running around with Stinger
Speaker 3: and they help Caine and Jupiter with different things. They're
Speaker 3: always like, oh no, they're the good guys. They're helping,
Speaker 3: they're doing good stuff. And maybe maybe in this world
Speaker 3: these sort of like intergalactic police and military are maybe
Speaker 3: doing good things and like holding the horrible genocide committers accountable.
Speaker 4: But it seems like the rest of the world reflects
Speaker 4: ours enough that probably not exactly.
Speaker 3: The far more likely scenario would be that the cops
Speaker 3: and the military are working to protect the property of
Speaker 3: the ruling class and carrying out the genocide on behalf
Speaker 3: of the ruling class. So yeah, the way these entities
Speaker 3: are portrayed in the movie does not track.
Speaker 1: I think there's just like a broader problem with sci
Speaker 1: fi often where genocide is kind of like this sort
Speaker 1: of like singular event, and I think it it's sort
Speaker 1: of like and it's happened in Star Wars, happens in
Speaker 1: like there was like a novel I read like a
Speaker 1: year after this. It was like a like a y
Speaker 1: novel that was like Earth becomes inhabitable and so ever
Speaker 1: moves to space and like there's like a genocide of
Speaker 1: like the space Arabs, and it's like the inciting incident
Speaker 1: for the novels, and it's just so casual of like
Speaker 1: the kind of aftermaths of like what genocide is, and
Speaker 1: it's often just this kind of like singular event. And
Speaker 1: I think that similarly, this movie is doing that, which
Speaker 1: I think is sort of why we have those sort
Speaker 1: of broader I mean, of course, I don't know, we're
Speaker 1: not how often we're gonna getting movies that are anti military,
Speaker 1: anti cop, like very rarely. If we're watching films that
Speaker 1: are two hundred million dollar budgets right like that, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna get that. But I think that like it
Speaker 1: is kind of like the Royals are bad because they
Speaker 1: do this one singular act and so there are no
Speaker 1: reverberations of this event, right, and so the I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like so interesting, what who who does this? Like
Speaker 1: intergalactic space force answer to also is interesting. It's like
Speaker 1: who who is Who's in charge? Which also makes them
Speaker 1: feel like I don't know, I can't even like fathom
Speaker 1: a criticism of them because I'm like, they're nothing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's it's yeah, the speaking to
Speaker 4: to your point, like how this is presented in a
Speaker 4: very movie like way of, oh well, if you get
Speaker 4: rid of these three people, everything will be fine, and
Speaker 4: it's not like it's like I don't need Jupiter ascending
Speaker 4: to be like and here's what this is going to
Speaker 4: look like on a longer timeline. But I don't think
Speaker 4: it's unreasonable to want like something that feels like such
Speaker 4: a gaping hole in this plot is like that we
Speaker 4: don't even really feel at the end from jupiter stated
Speaker 4: intent to do better or that her I mean, we
Speaker 4: know that she she disagrees with the I want to
Speaker 4: keep using the dune name a Tredees, I'm thinking of Abrassics. Oh,
Speaker 4: we know that she knows that what the Abrassics family
Speaker 4: represents and their genocidal ideology is horrific, But we don't
Speaker 4: know what she is going to do. And that is like,
Speaker 4: it's very frustrating and bizarre in a movie that seems
Speaker 4: to want us to leave feeling like this character is
Speaker 4: going to do better and do differently, but we're just
Speaker 4: sort of told like and now she has a boyfriend.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, Well we learned that Earth is one of
Speaker 3: many planets, Yeah, that this dynasty harvests from. So is
Speaker 3: she going?
Speaker 4: So wouldn't this be the beginning of a revolution?
Speaker 3: Like exactly, Like wouldn't she try to? And maybe I
Speaker 3: mean this movie, this movie was planned to be the
Speaker 3: first of a franchise, so maybe in in sequels that
Speaker 3: would never happen because this movie was a flop at
Speaker 3: the box office.
Speaker 4: I feel like, I don't know, I should try.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 3: It's time.
Speaker 4: It's time.
Speaker 1: What I know.
Speaker 4: They were just about to tell us.
Speaker 3: We're just about to show her being the leader of
Speaker 3: a revolution, but oops, they forgot worth mentioning. And this
Speaker 3: is something we've talked about on many past episodes, so
Speaker 3: we don't necessarily need to harp on it a ton.
Speaker 3: But this is an action movie with a protagonist who
Speaker 3: is a woman who is not allowed to participate in
Speaker 3: the action most of the time.
Speaker 4: Oh, we should talk about it because it's egregious. Yeah,
Speaker 4: she does nothing like.
Speaker 3: Not only just like, as we've already talked about, she
Speaker 3: doesn't really make any active choices that propel the narrative forward.
Speaker 3: Nor does she participate in the actual like action sequences,
Speaker 3: any fight or chase sequences or anything like that. She
Speaker 3: is either having to be rescued. She is clinging to Cain,
Speaker 3: who is doing all of the action. And I did
Speaker 3: count like I think five different times where she needed
Speaker 3: to be rescued by Cain usually and again, going back
Speaker 3: to a comparison to the Matrix.
Speaker 4: Movies, starts with Trinity.
Speaker 3: It starts with Trinity kicking ass. It's about Neo, who
Speaker 3: again chosen One, had no prior combat experience, but in
Speaker 3: that movie he trains and he becomes a fighter, and
Speaker 3: then he fights in a bunch of fight scenes. Jupiter
Speaker 3: also had no prior fighting experience, but then is never trained.
Speaker 3: It never fights, never participates, And I have to imagine
Speaker 3: it's because Neo is a man and Jupiter is a woman.
Speaker 4: And which is all the more frustrating having this come
Speaker 4: from women filmmakers who are historically feminist filmmakers. They made
Speaker 4: bound right, What do you mean Jupiter isn't doing anything? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I know, you know, thinking back to the weird undressing
Speaker 1: while she's unconscious and putting things on. Even something like that,
Speaker 1: I feel like is asking for some kind of like
Speaker 1: mon taught, like outfit montage. You know, however corny or
Speaker 1: like silly that would have been. I feel like, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you get princess Diary's, you find out your royalty,
Speaker 1: you get a little makeover montage. And I don't want
Speaker 1: a makeover montage necessarily, but even that is something that
Speaker 1: is less abhorrent than being like total loss of agency
Speaker 1: of like you being undressed, well unconscious and then change
Speaker 1: where like I don't know, it feels like it feels
Speaker 1: in line with well, of course, she also doesn't get
Speaker 1: to learn to fight because she can't even try on
Speaker 1: outfits of her own free will.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, I mean with sad in mine, it's like
Speaker 4: one of the few things a lot of women protagonists
Speaker 4: do have is a way to telegraph their personality through
Speaker 4: what they're wearing. And Jupiter doesn't even get that because
Speaker 4: other people are undressing her, arguably via assault, so we
Speaker 4: don't even know like what her personal style is other
Speaker 4: than like what we see her wearing at work. I ah, man, yeah,
Speaker 4: I I that point about Neo makes so much sense
Speaker 4: because I was thinking a lot about how in the
Speaker 4: mid twenty tens there's a lot of talk about Mary
Speaker 4: too characters. Yeah, and like how I think it was
Speaker 4: sort of a kind of nothing argument in the case
Speaker 4: of some where, yes, there are definitely Mary Sue characters
Speaker 4: that are, you know, maybe frustrating, but I think that
Speaker 4: that exists with men as well, and is not hers
Speaker 4: back on half the same amount, and that it's an
Speaker 4: over correction usually weaponized by male critics. But it almost
Speaker 4: felt like with Jupiter it was like, oh, well, of course,
Speaker 4: you know, she's just a regular girl. She wouldn't know
Speaker 4: how to fight, And you're like, yeah, Neo was a
Speaker 4: regular guy.
Speaker 3: He was a computer programmer or something.
Speaker 4: But he learned how to fight and it was awesome
Speaker 4: to watch. But and also like part of this could
Speaker 4: be solved by writing, is like if we knew that
Speaker 4: even if Jupiter didn't have the ability she needed at
Speaker 4: the beginning, if she had the interest in astronomy, feels
Speaker 4: like the obvious thing. If she had an interest in
Speaker 4: something that could translate to a usable skill. But she's
Speaker 4: not given an interest or an ambition, and it's not
Speaker 4: translated to a usable skill. They don't even bother to
Speaker 4: give her an interest that doesn't really come up.
Speaker 1: Ever, they couldn't even just like given her like a
Speaker 1: gun or something. I don't know, Like what is this
Speaker 1: like advanced technology. She doesn't even get like a laser
Speaker 1: gun or something. I don't know.
Speaker 4: She doesn't even get to lay it like she yah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Her big moment is telling Eddie Redmain, I'm not your mother,
Speaker 4: and you're.
Speaker 1: Like they're hitting him with like a crowbar.
Speaker 3: That is the one scene where she does some combat
Speaker 3: in this movie full of combat where they're scuffling. She
Speaker 3: picks up a pipe or something, gets a few good
Speaker 3: hits in, but then for some reason tosses her weapon aside,
Speaker 3: and he's still there. He could still very easily over
Speaker 3: power her.
Speaker 4: I mean any Redmid really just like pops up wherever
Speaker 4: the plot needs him to, where he's just like wink,
Speaker 4: here I am, and he's.
Speaker 1: Like I it.
Speaker 3: He's so weird because he disappears for like a full
Speaker 3: hour in the middle of the movie.
Speaker 4: Well he's scolding lizards at his last feeling what do
Speaker 4: you think he's doing? He is so funny in this
Speaker 4: he to be fair, I appreciate I've watched a video
Speaker 4: he gave a video of an interview he gave on
Speaker 4: the Red Carpet at the Oscars where he was about
Speaker 4: to I think win for thory of Everything. Again, I
Speaker 4: haven't seen it, but he he did have a very
Speaker 4: good attitude about winning the Razzie. He said quote, I
Speaker 4: gave what I thought was a very bold performance, but
Speaker 4: it turned out to be a bit disastrous. And first
Speaker 4: of all, don't be so hard on yourself, King, And
Speaker 4: second of all, I just appreciate when someone takes something
Speaker 4: like that in stride. And it wouldn't be his last
Speaker 4: big swing that people didn't care for. If you recall
Speaker 4: him recently appearing in Cabaret, where a lot of people
Speaker 4: did not appreciate Eddie Redmain's swing. I can't speak to it,
Speaker 4: but yeah, he uh, he swings and he misses.
Speaker 3: Well, he was just doing what all of them were
Speaker 3: doing for seven months, busting their humps.
Speaker 4: Look, humps were being busted. I appreciated the swing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say that, like I don't know as
Speaker 1: much as I and like, you know, this movie's bad,
Speaker 1: I love it in all of the ways that it's bad.
Speaker 1: I think Eddie Redmain is doing exactly like what you.
Speaker 4: Want what the movie for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's really fun, Like I find it very
Speaker 1: compelling I enjoy the choices he's making and like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like it's it's weird and it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: well why not. I don't know, like let's go for.
Speaker 4: That's us Like that's a Wachowski movie too of like yeah,
Speaker 4: you're you're a weird villain. I don't know. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: thought it was fun. I like I think that as
Speaker 4: you're talking about this summer, it feels like, I don't know,
Speaker 4: this is how I feel a lot about like I
Speaker 4: Frankenstein sometimes where you're just like it is unquestionably a
Speaker 4: swing and a miss, but everyone is. You can really
Speaker 4: feel everyone being like we're gonna do something cool here,
Speaker 4: and I just like cannot help but be charmed by
Speaker 4: it even though it never comes together.
Speaker 1: It's like, isn't it so cool to try something? You know?
Speaker 4: It's beautiful? Yeah, I don't know. I just I think
Speaker 4: that they should give the Razzie to someone else. There's
Speaker 4: a few out there. There's other women in this movie.
Speaker 4: There were not many that we really get to know
Speaker 4: very well, but I did want to shout out. Familists
Speaker 4: character played by Googa, who has been in a bunch
Speaker 4: of things. She is a half human half deer.
Speaker 3: Oh those are deer ears.
Speaker 4: Yes, those are deer ears. They look like gigantic mouse ears,
Speaker 4: but they are deer ears played by a very talented
Speaker 4: actor who is being underused. We also have Captain of
Speaker 4: the aegis Diamika. I think I don't know if we
Speaker 4: hear her name spoken out loud very often, but we.
Speaker 3: Do, keeping her like captain singh.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, but we see her a number of times.
Speaker 4: She is generally just commenting on what others are doing.
Speaker 4: But hey, so is Jupiter, and she she has I
Speaker 4: think a fair amount of presence in the movie. She's there. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that my it.
Speaker 3: That's more or less. It's it did seem like casting wise,
Speaker 3: there was a commitment to casting not just white people.
Speaker 3: It's mostly white people in the main roles.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, with characters who have impact on
Speaker 4: the plot. And I do think it is still majority
Speaker 4: of the white characters.
Speaker 3: This is true.
Speaker 1: Like the Bee people didn't need to be white, you.
Speaker 3: Know, certainly not Why yeah, why is Sean Bee would
Speaker 3: be there? They can you know.
Speaker 4: I It's all just it's just like who would I
Speaker 4: wish into this scenario. I don't know who is mister Knight.
Speaker 3: What what is that? A character who.
Speaker 4: Is mister Knight? I was not quite I gave up
Speaker 4: on trying to figure out who mister Knight was and
Speaker 4: just decided to enjoy the ride.
Speaker 3: Well, think of it like, think of it in terms
Speaker 3: of minions. I love to Balamist group. Mister Knight is
Speaker 3: probably like Kevin Kevin Lemgnon.
Speaker 4: He kind of is kind of Kevin coded, isn't he?
Speaker 4: He reminded me of Summer. Did you ever read Circu Freak?
Speaker 4: I loved circ to Freak when I was a kid.
Speaker 4: That was my like pre Twilight Vampire book. It was
Speaker 4: like for preteens and there's a villain in there that
Speaker 4: even when I was a kid, I was like, all right,
Speaker 4: this is getting ridiculous. There's a character named Desmond Tiny
Speaker 4: aka des Tiny Destiny, and even at the time, I
Speaker 4: was like, all right, all right, this is too much
Speaker 4: and I'm ten. Mister Knight feels like that where you're
Speaker 4: like it's like, what do you look? Sure? I'm ten,
Speaker 4: but I'm not. I can read. I can handle something
Speaker 4: more complicated than mister Knight, but they didn't believe it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: does Tiny. I will never stop thinking about Desmond tiny.
Speaker 3: I'll never stop thinking about stinger a Penie stinger pee uh.
Speaker 1: Thinking about the women. I think it is a bummer
Speaker 1: that the sister of the family kind of has the
Speaker 1: least amount to do of the siblings. I guess she
Speaker 1: does reveal like how how their youth works, and that's
Speaker 1: like important, plot relevant, but I don't know, like they
Speaker 1: all have a weird, like erotic relationship with this woman
Speaker 1: that looks like their mom. Couldn't she have tricked the marriage?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I know, it's like it's not like I more. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I was like the other two were being so evil
Speaker 4: that it's like it does feel like she mostly just
Speaker 4: sets up the plot and she's like we would get
Speaker 4: along great, yeah, and then she's gone, and you're like me,
Speaker 4: of all her brothers are you know, well especially I
Speaker 4: think Titus Titus, Titus is the weirdest of all.
Speaker 1: So Titus is the youngest, right, Yes, Okay, I've been,
Speaker 1: I've been. I've been very Bridgerton pilled lately. And so
Speaker 1: I was thinking about, like, you know, like the inheritance
Speaker 1: in a royal family or like a wealthy family, and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh yeah, I guess. I guess the youngest
Speaker 1: son would be the most evil because he doesn't he
Speaker 1: has the least inheritance.
Speaker 4: Or like the most heads to chop to arrive at
Speaker 4: an inheritance. Yeah, yeah, he he definitely. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 4: he really makes to me because Baalam is so I
Speaker 4: mean iconic, but his his goals are vague, and I
Speaker 4: think part of what makes Titus diabolical is that he's
Speaker 4: also like two horny, which is a great quality and
Speaker 4: a villain. Ballum is just kind of pacing around his
Speaker 4: office yelling at dinosaurs, and his whole thing is I
Speaker 4: start a sentence loud and then I ended very quiet,
Speaker 4: and I like, he's just doing something totally different. But Titus,
Speaker 4: I feel like, is to me the scariest of the three.
Speaker 4: And I agree that, like, you know, not that I whatever, like,
Speaker 4: if we're gonna have three villains, then don't make the
Speaker 4: women of them kind of just like vaguely threatening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And she's kind of just there. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I don't know where her goals are necessarily, I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: They all want to manipulate Jupiter in some ways so
Speaker 3: that they can have access to Earth. They go about
Speaker 3: it different ways, and many of those ways don't really
Speaker 3: make any sense.
Speaker 4: But it seems like Kaliku's goals being or like the
Speaker 4: information collique in parts, being related to physical beauty also
Speaker 4: feels very gender yes, because this is not something that
Speaker 4: the men are really bringing up in the same context. Again,
Speaker 4: so whoever is editing this Wikipedia page clearly shares our
Speaker 4: opinions because in the description. The character description for Khalik
Speaker 4: tuppens Middleson as Khaleik Abersach's second primary of the ballum
Speaker 4: and Titus's sister whose motives appear to be less business
Speaker 4: oriented than her brother's, which I think is a polite
Speaker 4: way of saying, so what does she want? Like it
Speaker 4: seems like she might just want a friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also, I didn't know that Terry Gilliam has a cameo
Speaker 4: in this movie. Whoa who the seal insignet minister, the
Speaker 4: bureaucrat who confirms Jupiter's title to Earth, And I like
Speaker 4: Terry Gillium. I wouldn't recon it, but that's Terry Gillium.
Speaker 4: And and that was like a big deal for the
Speaker 4: Wochowskis because they love Terry Gillium. So that's kind of
Speaker 4: fun good for those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's sweet.
Speaker 3: He directed one of my favorite movies ever, Earned Twelve Monkeys.
Speaker 4: He's great and definitely like a big influence on The Wachowski.
Speaker 4: So I thought that was sweet. I wish it was
Speaker 4: in a different movie, but also kind of awesome because
Speaker 4: Terry gilliam has also liked the Wachowski has made a
Speaker 4: lot of swings, some of which have connected and some
Speaker 4: not so much. And that's what Also the fact that
Speaker 4: they were making I haven't seen Cloud Outless before, but
Speaker 4: that the fact that they were they were working, they
Speaker 4: were finishing Cloud out Lists at the time that they
Speaker 4: were working on Jupiter Ascending, and you're just like they
Speaker 4: just had a rough twenty tens, Like there's no way
Speaker 4: around it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw Cloud out Lists and it's maybe not
Speaker 3: their best work, to put it lightly, that's okay, But
Speaker 3: we all just have to go watch speed Racer too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's go to speed Racer.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Does anyone have anything else they'd like
Speaker 3: to talk about?
Speaker 1: Just the loose the like aerial fight at the beginning
Speaker 1: between the Bounty Hunters came so long, so long, and
Speaker 1: it's like there's your Star Wars, you know, It's like
Speaker 1: very very much like pod Racer, Phantom Menace vibes.
Speaker 4: It is, it is, it is, It is very Prequels vibes.
Speaker 1: It's so funny to be like, let's take the thing
Speaker 1: that people famously hated.
Speaker 4: And do it too, do it again, much like the Prequels.
Speaker 4: My eyes glazed over immediately, and you're like, unfortunately, there
Speaker 4: goes probably one hundred and fifty million dollars, and I
Speaker 4: just like, I'm like, okay, so where's Channing Tatum dug.
Speaker 3: Well, especially because it's characters who we do not know
Speaker 3: what role they plan the story. Yeah, Channing Tatum is there.
Speaker 3: His character will become we will come to understand his significance,
Speaker 3: but at this point we don't know who the fuck
Speaker 3: he is, and the movie doesn't make it clear. So
Speaker 3: now we're just watching a bunch of random ass people
Speaker 3: flying around on gravity boots and we're just like, why
Speaker 3: am I watching this? Who are these people? What?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: And the fact and this is again like we're like
Speaker 4: snake eating it's on tail at this point, but I'm
Speaker 4: having so much fun. Like the two characters we meet
Speaker 4: in the introduction have no bearing on the plot. Jupiter's
Speaker 4: parents no bearing on the plot, the father least of all.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the mother may be in some draft, but
Speaker 4: not in what we get. So it's like we meet
Speaker 4: two characters very intentionally and basically never interact with them again,
Speaker 4: except very superficially in the case of Jupiter's mom. Yes,
Speaker 4: and then like you're saying, like, then we meet all
Speaker 4: these other characters who we have no attachment or stakes too.
Speaker 4: And unless you watch this movie five times, you don't
Speaker 4: even know that Sean Bean is half honey bee. And
Speaker 4: I really feel like they should really bash you over
Speaker 4: the head with that information because that's so awesome.
Speaker 1: Yes, I do love the scene of all of the
Speaker 1: bees like coming to her. I find it very pretty
Speaker 1: with the like the the plants. Yeah, it's like, all right,
Speaker 1: another like fifty million right there, because they must be
Speaker 1: cgi bees, right, they got it?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, what if they just threw a hive of
Speaker 4: bees at Mailicunis? That would be so wild?
Speaker 1: They did, do you that? On Supernatures?
Speaker 3: Whoa?
Speaker 4: They say more wait, okay for listeners that may somehow
Speaker 4: not know Summer is the I was a premier supernatural scholar.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: In an episode in season one, they sic a swarm
Speaker 1: of bees on to Jensen Acles and Jared Padaluki. It
Speaker 1: is an episode called Bugs. There's lots of bugs in
Speaker 1: it and they're like real, real bees and they are
Speaker 1: in enclosed space. And then it didn't show up well
Speaker 1: on camera and so they did SEEGI the bees anyway, Andy,
Speaker 1: just like through bees on these guys, and this is
Speaker 1: like season one, and so it's like, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't what can you? What can you say?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: You don't have that much power, right, They're forcing me
Speaker 1: into a room with bees. And I think about it
Speaker 1: every time I see bees in any film, any movie,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, yeah, I remember.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: My friend Nina texted me today. It was like because
Speaker 4: she saw that I had logged Jupiter Ascending on letterbox
Speaker 4: and she was just like, I think of this movie
Speaker 4: every time I see bees. Ten out of ten. I
Speaker 4: was like, that's beautiful a movie. And now I will
Speaker 4: think of Jupiter Ascending every time I see bees.
Speaker 1: I really will, I mean, and I do. I think
Speaker 1: of bees are genetically designed to recognize royalty, Like that's
Speaker 1: my b movie script, just like it's just in there
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, I do. I think it's I
Speaker 1: think it's a lot of like cool looking things in
Speaker 1: this movie.
Speaker 3: I mean visually, like I think the world building, the
Speaker 3: production design. Yeah, visually like the movie is pretty good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's like you are getting the Wachowski treatment,
Speaker 4: like it is a visual feast.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I always think about Jupiter's like wedding dress, the
Speaker 1: like the head piece, and like how her hair is
Speaker 1: so cool, like very like pop star. You know, yes,
Speaker 1: I love that. I feel like I always misremember the
Speaker 1: outfits as like more fabulous than they are, Like they're
Speaker 1: kind of the dresses themselves are kind of like simple.
Speaker 1: But yeah, just that that hair so gorgeous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well it passes the Bactels test. Actually it does.
Speaker 4: Look look, there's no way around it. Mila Kunis meets
Speaker 4: a lot of blonde women in this movie, and there
Speaker 4: are like brief exchanges she has with her mother, her aunt,
Speaker 4: with the sister.
Speaker 3: Khaleiku and Khalik.
Speaker 4: I will say that, like most interactions that Miela Kunas
Speaker 4: has with anyone of any gener in this movie, it
Speaker 4: is mostly her just being like either saying hello, I'm
Speaker 4: Jupiter Jones or saying hello, where am I? What is this?
Speaker 4: But those are important interactions because I would also like
Speaker 4: to know where she is and what is this.
Speaker 3: And then there's that one scene where she says call me.
Speaker 1: Joop, Like what do you mean?
Speaker 3: Since when do you go by Joop?
Speaker 1: She like just decided that surely.
Speaker 3: Well, she's in space. Now she's reinventing herself. It's like
Speaker 3: when you go to college and you're like, I have
Speaker 3: a I'm a new person.
Speaker 4: It reminded me of a very humiliating like week in
Speaker 4: middle school for me where I both tried to get
Speaker 4: people to call to call me JJ and when that
Speaker 4: didn't stick, I was like, how about mem? And neither
Speaker 4: of them stuck j me me and I get it.
Speaker 4: I've never had a nickname. This really worked out for
Speaker 4: me in my life. But that's okay. It's okay, it's
Speaker 4: a short name. It's fine.
Speaker 3: It does pass the Bechtel test. What about our nipple scale,
Speaker 3: the scale where we rate the movie zero to five
Speaker 3: nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens.
Speaker 4: Summer, I almost want to let you go first. You're
Speaker 4: the expert, like tell us, oh my god.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like the jubiter ascending in my head five,
Speaker 1: But it's got to be like one, like there are
Speaker 1: women present and they talk to each other. But and
Speaker 1: you know what, I think I'll give it to any
Speaker 1: red name.
Speaker 4: Paradoxically, it's like I do think, I don't know he's
Speaker 4: he's putting his he's giving it his own, he's busting
Speaker 4: his hump over there. Yeah, I think I'll be either.
Speaker 4: I might go one and a half because it's like
Speaker 4: you can feel intent. I want to believe there's a
Speaker 4: draft of this script that really gets it there. The
Speaker 4: witch housekis are feminist icons, which makes this movie very confusing,
Speaker 4: and going back to your earlier point Summer, that this
Speaker 4: movie that is like is trying to say something about
Speaker 4: colonization but then really kind of refuses to at the
Speaker 4: end is bizarre, especially because we are like given a
Speaker 4: character that you would think would have strong feelings about this.
Speaker 4: It's just a weird one. Women are there, and so.
Speaker 3: One and a half.
Speaker 4: I'm giving one to Eddie Redmond and I'm giving half
Speaker 4: to the Bees.
Speaker 3: If I will give the movie, I think I think
Speaker 3: also one and a half.
Speaker 4: Because oh no, this is the episode that breaks the
Speaker 4: system where you're like, what what do things for me.
Speaker 3: Doesn't mean because of reasons. And that's exactly what I
Speaker 3: kept writing in my recap the first time I watched
Speaker 3: this movie. They do things because of reasons.
Speaker 4: And sometimes the reasons have become clear with time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and sometimes not so much. So I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 3: gonna keep it vague. But also we just we just
Speaker 3: talked for over two hours, so I've already said my piece.
Speaker 4: It felt it felt earned. I'm like there, I could
Speaker 4: have kept going there. There's I have more questions. Did
Speaker 4: telescopes really cost four thousand dollars? I mean, I have
Speaker 4: so many more questions.
Speaker 3: Great question. I'm gonna give one nipple to the scene
Speaker 3: where Titus is having a floating space or Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't believe we didn't even talk about that.
Speaker 4: It's that kind of movie. It's that kind of movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then okay, and then my half nipple goes to
Speaker 3: the scene where Jupiter puts a pad on Caine's bleeding wound.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, how did we not talk about that clearly?
Speaker 3: This car?
Speaker 4: What is it lucky for you? This car belongs to
Speaker 4: a woman's time. And then she pulls out like an
Speaker 4: overnight MAXI pad unwrapped out of the glove compartment.
Speaker 3: And then she sticks the adhesive side on his wound, which,
Speaker 3: what the hell is that gonna do?
Speaker 4: That's not absorbent, hurts kind of blood, which also feels
Speaker 4: very astormative for a movie made by two trans women.
Speaker 4: It you see, I can't believe did there's that much
Speaker 4: going on in Jupiter Ascending and he's a side up.
Speaker 4: I'm like, does she hate does she hate him? That's
Speaker 4: going to make the problem.
Speaker 3: Far worse, way worse. Yeah, and yes, it happens right
Speaker 3: before the bees. Yeah, it just it's it's cinema. It's cinema.
Speaker 1: That's a movie.
Speaker 4: It is a movie that feels like a movie.
Speaker 3: It really does feel like that movie. Summer. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. This is so
Speaker 1: much fun.
Speaker 4: This was a blast. I feel like I could do
Speaker 4: this episode again and have it completely new thoughts.
Speaker 3: I feel like I have ascended to a new plane
Speaker 3: of existence. So thank you for that. Tell us where
Speaker 3: people can buy your book? Find your work plug away.
Speaker 1: So my book. You can buy it through host Publications
Speaker 1: website or check out your local bookstore. We distribute through Asterism.
Speaker 1: You can follow me. I'm still on Twitter, not really
Speaker 1: at some of this, but you can follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Borders book Store. I guess I'm on the
Speaker 1: Blue Sky too at some I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: use that, but Instagram bores bookstore. That is my crowning achievement.
Speaker 4: So yeah, hell yeah, that's thank you. Also, thank you
Speaker 4: so much. Good luck finding another movie with protagonists whose
Speaker 4: name starts with ju. I believe you will do it.
Speaker 1: That'll, that'll, that'll really like narrow it down.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you're not allowed to come back on the
Speaker 3: show until you find that movie.
Speaker 4: But also for guess anything, this was like, oh yes,
Speaker 4: sometimes you see a movie like Jupiter Ascending and you're like,
Speaker 4: I think I've I think we've talked about it all
Speaker 4: and then you're stumped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so glad. That was my goal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for being here. Come back anytime, and
Speaker 3: you can find us on our Patreon aka Matreon, where
Speaker 3: we do two bonus episodes a month for five dollars
Speaker 3: a month, always on an amazing theme. You get to
Speaker 3: choose the movies matrons a lot of the time, and
Speaker 3: it's the best way to support the show, and you
Speaker 3: get access to the entire back catalog of now over
Speaker 3: two hundred bonus episodes. So what a damn good special.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and with that, should we put on our
Speaker 3: gravity boots and roller blade around the sky.
Speaker 4: But don't worry if you don't have your boots. We
Speaker 4: also have wings for some reason, like all dogs.
Speaker 3: Like all dogs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia,
Speaker 4: hosted and produced by Me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 3: And Me Caitlyn Durante. The podcast is also produced by
Speaker 3: Sophie Lichtermann and.
Speaker 4: Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of them?
Speaker 3: That's me? And our logo and merch and all of
Speaker 3: our art work, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus,
Speaker 3: Ever heard of her?
Speaker 4: Oh my God? And our theme song, by the way,
Speaker 4: was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski
Speaker 4: Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only
Speaker 4: Aristotle Acevedo.
Speaker 3: For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash
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