Jupiter Ascending with Summer Farah

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Jupiter Loftus and Cain Durante? That didn't even really connect for me, but in a way, we're kind of meant to be. I'll just keep being like, what's this? And then you'll tell me, and then we'll go to another room and I'll be like, what's this? And then you'll tell me. And then sometimes you'll be like, can we make out right now? And then I'll be like, no. I do feel weirdly, I mean, it's obviously a mess, but there are certain times in life where you're presented with an existential problem and your response to it is, hmm, should we kiss? You're like, focus, focus, dude. You were just told you own the world and your response was, should I kiss my wolf boyfriend? And I think that we have had emotional situations, not us specifically, but also us specifically, where you're like, you're presented with an existential question and you're like, let's focus on something manageable, like should we kiss? And already I've put more emotional thought into the character of Jupiter Jones, who came out I think the same year as Jessica Jones. I kept Jupiter Jones, Jessica Jones. I really liked that show and it first came out. Yeah, I forgot about that. For some reason, wow. I didn't. Welcome to the Bechtel cast. My name's Jupiter, lost us. And I'm Kane Durante and together we will ascend. We will ascend. To where? I don't know. I don't know. And neither does the movie. Something eugenics. Yeah. Oh my gosh. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechtel test simply as a jumping off point. But Jamie, what on earth is that? Earth that is owned by Jupiter Jones. Jupiter Jones, not that she understands what that means or has much interest in it, which is maybe proxies, I don't know. I don't know. So the Bechtel test is a media metric created by friend of the show, our dear pal, Alison Bechtel. It is a media metric that's existed since the 80s, but it has since been adapted into a mainstream metric. Our version requires that two characters of a marginalized gender speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue. And this is actually, the Bechtel test is gonna be an amazing tool to use today because how many times can a movie pass the Bechtel test and it just be Mila Kunis introducing herself to another blonde woman. That is, I would say a good 75% where the Bechtel test passes in this movie. And sure, two characters meeting is technically important, but it is less than ideal. And that's the episode, we did it. The end, bye. But yes, that's the Bechtel test. And today we have been brought the challenge of a lifetime, we have been brought to ascend and we have an incredible returning guest to ascend us, to ascend with us, to ascend us. All of the above. She is a Palestinian American writer from California. She is the author of The Hungering Years. You remember her from our episode on Julie and Julia. And she is calling on you to recommit yourself to the liberation of the Palestinian people every day. It's Summer Farah. Hello and welcome back. Hi, oh my goodness. I've been keeping my giggles silent. You don't have to silence yourself anymore. Don't silence yourself. Yay, hi. Welcome back, welcome back. Thank you for having me. Wow, Julie, Julia, Jupiter, I'm sensing a pattern. Oh my goodness. Names that start with J-U. Yeah, Julia and Julia and Jupiter. I mean, that's how we can connect them. Well, before we get into this, because we could barely contain ourselves off mic, there's so much to talk about. First, you just had a new poetry collection come out, The Hungering Years. We wanna hear all about it. Aw, yeah, I had a collection called The Hungering Years come out with host publications. They are a small press based in Austin, Texas. And it is poems about being obsessed with things, poems about food, poems about hanging out with your friends and the kind of orienting philosophy of a lot of it is like excess and too muchness, which is why I thought Jupiter ascending would be a great thematic tie. I'm seeing the connection. I, the last time I saw you, we discussed this movie and I couldn't wrap my head around it. And now having seen it, I can't wrap my head around it. I'm so excited to, because this is, I think I was mixing this movie up with something else. First of all, I don't know who I thought directed this, but this is a, this is Wachowski's joint. Oh yeah. This is like the big leagues. Yeah. And yet. Incredibly respected directors. And it's like, you know why everyone said yes to doing this. Oh, absolutely. Right, like, you know, it's like, yeah, of course. Like I would, I would do literally anything they asked me to. It's kind of interesting and heartbreaking is too strong or worried in retrospect, watching interviews, like cast interviews, particularly with Channing Tatum, who I carry a torch for, who he's like so excited. And he is like, I would have done anything that the Wachowskis would ask. I'm like the biggest matrix fan in the world. This was such a cool opportunity. I was so excited. And then like eight years later, I think he was asked about it in an interview and he was like, well, that shoot was really hard. Wait, can I quote it? Can I say what he said? Because he uses a turn of phrase that is so funny. He says, Jupiter sending was a nightmare from the jump. It was a sideways movie. All of us were there for seven months busting our hump. How old is he? Okay, people busting our hump. I'm never going to stop laughing about that. I've never heard that expression before. What does that mean? I've only heard it from like senior citizens, genuinely. Wow, anyway. Busting our hump. Wow, Channing Tatum. He's old. I don't even know how old he is. Maybe he's just- He's only a few years older than me, I think. Ian, you've never busted your hump? That is not true. I have. I bust my hump, okay? Hey, hey, hey, okay, sorry. I didn't mean to. I'm not so virgin. I bust my hump. Well, that's not what he's saying. I will say this movie is many things. Horny is not one of them. That's really interesting. Because I don't know. I feel like- I think it is horny. I think it is horny. Really? I don't know. I think it wants to be. I definitely think it aspires to be horny. It's like incestuously horny. And so you kind of like don't want it to be, but I don't know. They kind of all want their mom. Yeah, they all do when I have sex with their mom. There's like edipist stuff happening. There is bestiality kind of, if you consider chanting him to be a wolf man. I'm so unclear. I'm like, why is I, okay, first of all, what stood out to me about this movie is that the razz-y winning performance to me is what I'm holding closest to my heart. And that is the Eddie Redmayne performance, which everyone hates. But I kind of love it. The more I sit with it, every word comes out unlike you've ever heard a word. He's like, planet earth, it won't be mine. He sounds like when Spongebob is out of the water. And he's all dried up. Oh! Like he sounds like Spongebob dry. I like it. And then he won a razz-y for, this was also around the time he won an Oscar for the theory of everything. And Eddie Redmayne's Oscar record, we can talk about because it is... It is bleak. Sorted and bleak. It was the theory of everything Oscar, right? Yes. Okay, yeah. Yeah, but the Danish girl comes out this same year in 2015. And I guess that Lana Wachowski and Eddie Redmayne were discussing that role and she was advising him on the set of Jupiter Ascending, which is both sweet. And I'm like, I can't deal with that today. I... No. But it was happening and on the set of Where? Eddie Redmayne saying, I create life. And I just... And I just... I live life. Yes! Yeah. I will harvest the planet tomorrow. No, he's my favorite. Wait, okay. So Summer, tell us about your relationship, your history with this movie. Yeah. How did this get on your plate? What happened? Yeah, so I remember the trailers for this movie really clearly. And I remember the sort of like internet discourse around it when it was in theaters and like coming out and just sort of like in the conversation, very much maligned right away. And I was like, oh, it looks dumb. I don't think I'm gonna see that. But then I read like, I think it was like a Tumblr post that was like, Jupiter Ascending is like, if a nine-year-old girl got all of her fantasies turned into a film and I was like, I gotta go see that. It is kind of true. Cause that's very interesting to me. And so my friends and I parted it and then we watched it in someone's house. And I loved it. I honestly don't remember if the people I watched it with liked it. I think that they like, to this day will humor me when I talk about it. But it just became like a movie that I would show people. Anytime I was making a new friend, I would show them Jupiter Ascending because I was so fascinated by it. Like I like things that are bad. I like bad movies. I like bad TV shows. Like my taste in visual media is like, I think something that is like bad and has weird contradictions and it's confusing is like more interesting to me. I think that's like good. We all have those. And I feel like you, I don't know, you talk about media that people overlook better than almost anyone in the entire world. Like truly. Thank you. So even though the first 20 minutes of Jupiter Ascending, I'm like, what has she done? Yeah. I don't know. It's a text. It's a text. It's a text. And yeah. And so it just, yeah, it just became a movie that I would show to people. It became like something that I really like telling people about without them seeing it. Like after rewatching it for this, I like sent a buddy a voice note about it and they were like, Jesus Christ, I thought it was about something else. You know, like, and I love that reaction. It's so much fun. And yeah, for a long time, I would say Jupiter Ascending is my favorite movie. If you asked me what my favorite movie was, but I kind of had a re, I don't know, reorienting of my relationship with it because of the, of Mila Kunis. Like I was a big that's so many show head, but she loves to raise money for the Israeli army. She really does. She's really dying. I did not know. I do know that she's good friends with Natalie Portman. So this actually tracks. Well, who almost got the role of Jupiter. So it really was like, yes, it was almost Zionist V. Zionist for Jupiter. But she would have been so good at it. She certainly would have been better. Yeah. But I also loved, I loved, I was a big, channing Tatum person. And I still hold fondness for him. And Eddie Rendemain really impressed me. But yeah. And like, I mean, I really liked the movie. Like this came out when I was my senior year of high school. And so like, That is impactful. Yes. I just kind of just learned what like a movie was. Um, and so yeah, it has shaped a lot of me and my life. Um, yeah, I just, I'm very happy to share it with the two of you and see if we can figure it out. I'm so excited. We're going to. We're going to get to the bottom of this. Yeah, we gotta. This, I really love that, you know, to quote Wikipedia, despite praise for the visual effects, the narrative was criticized as confusing. And I, and it's not untrue, but I also did enjoy looking into it. Because the, the Wachowskis, even though they are not like a hundred percent hit, you can never accuse their work of being under thought. Yes. And there, it was interesting learning about like where they were pulling from. And the reference points, some of which I was familiar with, some of which I weren't like, they're brilliant. It just doesn't always translate to a successful movie. Sometimes there's the matrix one and then some of the other. And then sometimes there's the matrix three and they made both. And somewhere in between is Jupiter ascending. Yeah. It is fascinating. It is fascinating. Yeah. I still haven't seen Speed Racer. Nor have I, but I think I would like it. I've heard great things about it. It's very underrated, but the people who ride for it, ride for it hard. So it's on my, it's on my watch list. I think I would really like it. Yeah. Jamie, what is your relationship with Jupiter ascending? I had never seen this. Of course I had never seen this, but I, and I also, I had only heard of it via summer. I don't, this movie completely missed me. It's, and it is because I've never been a big sci-fi person. So it's not something that would have come across my desk upon release. I, I will figure out the second we finished recording what I was confusing this movie from. I was confusing it with a different mid-2010s sci-fi box office flop. And I cannot remember what it was. Okay. I was confusing this with Valerian in the city of a thousand planets. Oh, I was. I know what that is. Cause that's sex criminal Luke Basson. Is that the one Rihanna is in? Is Rihanna, I just remember Rihanna being in battleship. Oh, okay. Oh, and oceans eight. I was thinking about how she was the hacker in oceans eight. Recently there's a few as smurfette, not that anyone saw it. Do you remember when LA was covered in billboards that said Rihanna is smurfette and it was just like, what an awesome, is that poetry summer? Let me, let me, is, uh, yeah, I think so. Rihanna is smurfette. It felt like it to me. I don't remember that, but I do remember the Zendaya is, is Michi Michi. Yes. That was big. That was huge. Culturally enormous. But I remember the Zendaya is, is Michi Michi. That was huge. Culturally enormous. Sometimes you're like, this person is this. And you're like, wow, no one cares, but it is interesting that it's everywhere. Yeah. I had not seen this movie either. I'm very much a like sci-fi action movie person for sure. But I think I missed it in theaters because I knew about the generally negative reviews. So I, I kind of passed on it, but I had, aside from having a very difficult time following it the first time I watched it, truly my, my like draft of the recap after my first watch was, and then they go somewhere. And why they go there is not wrong, clear to me, but they go there. And then on the second watch, I started to be able to fill in the gaps, but yeah, it's definitely, you know, it has some exposition problems. I would say that information is not delivered particularly clearly. There's also some weird editing choices between scenes. Well, I also think that sometimes like tonally it's like we're, especially at the very beginning. Well, we'll get into it, but like it feels like we are also adding between a rom-com that came out in 2002 and the movie Jupiter Ascending is so wild watching Mila Kunis cleaning a toilet being like, I hate my life. I'm like, is this a Garfield comic? Like what, what is this? But it's awesome. Yeah. I do think ultimately this is awesome. Yeah, I think that's what's important. I think that it feels like a movie where it's like, maybe they thought they would never make a movie ever again. I, I'm like, I've looked for, I haven't been able to find a lot of, I mean, it's only 10 years old. So, but I would be curious whenever the Wachowskis released their retrospective, you know, like cumulative interviews, what was going on because most of what I found is like, Oh, our budget got cut, which I believe, but also their budget was $200 million. And I'm like, surely, surely $400 million wouldn't have fixed. Isn't the difference between Mila Kunis just being like, what is this? Where am I? And, and not. I don't know. I don't know. We don't know. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back for the recap. We're back. We're back. We're ascending into the recap of Jupiter ascending. We start with backstory of the character, Jupiter Jones, played by Mila Kunis. Backstory about how her parents met in Russia and fell in love, how her astronomy professor father was obsessed with the planet Jupiter, hence wanting to name their daughter, that. I will say, okay, already, but like, I was waiting for the whole movie, because this is the first scene, and the Wachowskis, I mean, I was thinking of the Matrix one, not to put them in a box, but that's the big one. And I was thinking about like, what a strong introduction to the world that is. And so I went in thinking, oh, this first scene is gonna be coming back in a big way throughout the movie. The father, I will say, never comes back, except for an eBay telescope. That is, I kept waiting to find out that Eddie Redmayne was secretly, like someone was secretly her father, it seems like the kind of movie where that would happen. But spoiler alert, he was just a weird guy with a telescope. He died rubbing Vaseline on his wife's pregnant stomach, and that's all you're ever gonna need to know about this guy. I kept waiting for him to come back. No, he's dead. He's gone. That's it, that's it for him. Yup. Jupiter is barely relevant, you know? It's so awesome. Yeah. And in a movie that really relies on her being like, I need to get back to my family. Boy, does she seem indifferent to them. She does not seem to like them very much. Yeah, and they're in space, and yeah, anyway. Right. But yeah, don't get attached to the father. Don't look for him, he's not coming back, he's dead. Planet name doesn't mean anything. Telescope doesn't mean anything. Oh, I didn't even occur to be that Jupiter doesn't really mean very much, except like an astrology joke, kind of. Well, before I saw the movie, I thought that it would take place on or near the planet Jupiter, but it's truly just that that's her name. Yeah. And it, this written. And speaking of, it's so interesting, somewhere that you saw like the post saying that this is a nine year old girl's dreams coming true, because the first like long extended stories I wrote were probably around the time I was nine, and the name of my main character was Neptune Starlet. Exactly. So this was happening. Yeah. This was happening. Yeah, I was obsessed with Saturn. I was writing little personified, like anthropomorphization stories about Saturn when I was nine. Like, this is, this is true. So maybe this is just like the Wachowskis. They were young girls once. Maybe they were like Jupiter Jones, right? You guys and everyone's like, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so her father, he's a guy. But don't get used to him because he's dead. He's about to die because one night, some like thugs come into their home, steal money and her father's prized telescope, and then kill her father. So her mother flees to the US and gives birth to Jupiter along the way on a ship crossing the Atlantic, probably pretty much the same journey that Titanic took, I'm guessing. So true. Jupiter's aunt, Nino, says that she's destined for great things, but Jupiter doesn't believe her because we cut to her as an adult. She, her mother and her aunt work. Like the beginning of Made in Manhattan. Yes. It's so bizarre. Yeah, because they work as house cleaners for rich people, I think, and Jupiter hates her life, which she repeats several times. She says almost to camera. She almost goes to camera and says, but she says it more than once, I hate my life. And you're like, oh right, Mila Kunis not very good at acting. Yeah, but that's, you know, live, laugh, love. Oh, that's so wild that, yeah, she, that her co-star in Black Swan was almost cast in this. That didn't even occur to me until just now. Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman were in Black Swan together. Well, they both suck, but Natalie Portman can act. Yes. Yeah. Well, I wonder if, I mean, I think she didn't do the movie because of like scheduling conflicts, but I'm like, she was already a space queen. She was Queen Amidala. Oh yeah. She had her shot. Yeah. Anyway. Give another woman a shot. We all get to be space queens. Yeah, let some other people try. I guess it's still happening. I don't know what Dune is. Does being a Dune count as being a space queen or is that is Dune on earth? Is not. What is Dune? Dune is definitely. I assume it was space. Is definitely space. So Zendaya space queen? You know, I don't think she's a queen. Oh, okay. She's space working class. Oh. Yeah. Someday I'm gonna get the flu and figure out what's going on with Dune. Well, good luck with that because it's really hard to follow. I would say maybe just as hard to follow as. They drink their pee, right? Yes, I forget. I mean, that definitely happens in Waterworld. I don't remember if it happens in Dune. The movie has been compared to. Oh, interesting. And one of the at the time reviews of Jupiter Ascending, which I think was pretty unfair to Jupiter Ascending, but they said every generation gets its own Waterworld. And I'm like, I've never seen Waterworld, so I'm not sure what that means. Oh, that's probably referencing how Waterworld was a huge budget movie that critics hated and was a box office flop. Is Waterworld the one at Universal Studios? Yes. Have you seen the show? The show's awesome. Awesome. I don't know what happens in Waterworld, but that show is, I followed all the stunt actors on Instagram. I'm like, these people are geniuses. They're so cool. They should update it with Jupiter Ascending. That would be great if they're like, let's invest a ton of money into a different movie that flopped. And then people will, maybe it will give a well needed shot to the arm with Jupiter. I think it's a Universal movie too. I think it was. It's Warner Brothers. Oh, okay. But there's, I mean, there's a Warner Brothers property at Universal, aka Harry Potter. Oh, yeah. God, will we ever know peace? So her dad's dead and she hates her life. I hate my life. Yeah. Me too. Wow, my dad's dead and I hate my life. That's wild. Damn. She's relatable. Yeah. Okay. So then we cut to a faraway planet in another solar system. There we meet the Abresics siblings. This is Titus, played by Douglas Booth. Kaleek, played by Tupens Middleton. And Balum, Balaam, I forget how to say his name, played by Eddie Redmayne. Woohoo! Wee! We're like, yeah. I love these siblings because even though they're obviously all together, they're all acting like they're in separate rooms and I love that. They're crazy. They have sub-zero chemistry. It is like awesome. Yeah, they've never, they've been siblings for thousands, tens of thousands of years, but they've somehow also never met before. No, Riz. Yeah, they're just like, hey, so how are you? Oh, our sister is ugly. Yes. Anyways, goodbye. That's kind of the whole thing. So these three siblings are members of a powerful intergalactic empire that owns and controls a bunch of planets, including Earth, which their late mother has left to Balum in her will. So keep that in mind. Then we meet Cain Wise, played by Channing Tatum. He's an alien who is on Earth looking for someone named Catherine Dunleavy, although we don't yet know why and it takes a while to figure it out. It's Vanessa Kirby. Oh my God, that is who that is. Oh yeah, yeah. I was like, she's familiar, but I don't know who she is and then I forgot to look it up, but you're so true. One of the many blonde women you meet that it's like, don't get attached to her. She'll be gone soon. But that's her. Yeah. Okay. So Cain is looking for her. Balum is also looking for her. And in this case, we do know why because he wants her found and killed. Then we reveal that Catherine Dunleavy is a friend of Jupiter's. They are together when a group of like spindly little evil aliens come in and attack them and aliens that literally look like alien dot JPEG. I do appreciate that. Like, I don't know as the movie as we get deeper into the movie Eddie Redmayne is mainly like scolding dinosaurs at at his house and you don't really understand why, but it's like the I don't know. Again, you're like not to over expect things from the Wachowskis, but you're like, oh, that dinosaur looks like dinosaur dot JPEG. That alien looks like alien dot JPEG. And you don't really understand what they want or what they're up to. But the dinosaurs are wearing leather jackets. So the dinosaurs are really cool and they are capable of experiencing shame. Yeah. And so I'm interested, but like, yeah, what's their whole deal? And we and we won't find out. But it is fun to just every time Eddie Redmayne sounding like dryspun fobs scolding a dinosaur and you're like, how could you hate this performance? This is awesome. Because each of the siblings and it took me forever to figure out like which minions worked for which siblings, but they each have a group or at least one servant or minion. Eddie Redmayne's character has a whole army of people. He's got the like giant lizard dinosaur army. He also has someone named Mr. Night who is wearing like a George Washington wig. Don't know what's going on there, but I was like, yep, Mr. Night. Let's not do a second pass at that name. No. Then there's and I left most of these people out of the recap because I'm like, they don't matter. But not to erase the woman who works for Titus who has like enormous mouth ears. Yeah, she's my favorite. She's pretty cool. I can't just like another like we couldn't do a second pass at that and and maybe that's for the best for their like, okay, what if this person were completely normal looking otherwise, but just had gigantic mouth. Yeah, it's awesome. It's cool. I love her. Okay, so Jupiter and her friend Catherine are attacked by these aliens. They disappear and then Catherine and Jupiter, I think they like passed out because they kind of like come to and they don't seem to have any memory of what happened. Then we learn that Jupiter is planning to sell her eggs. It seems like at the behest of a cousin of hers, cousin Vladdy who I mistook for a boyfriend at first. I was not clear that he was her cousin. It's unclear. And also because I just don't I can't imagine. I mean, and maybe this is on me. I can't imagine being persuaded to sell my eggs in a like 75-25 deal with my cousin. With your loser cousin. Yeah, I'm like, I would need to be like being pretty severely gaslit for that to happen and that's not really a cousin's game. But I don't know. It's confusing. Maybe my cousins aren't persuasive enough. Maybe. But she is willing to go through with it because she wants money to buy a telescope just like the one her father used to have. What is she going to do with it? Don't worry about it. I mean, don't know because the ultimate thing is we don't know what Jupiter Jones wants out of her life. She has no goal, which is compelling and a protagonist. Look, let let aimless women be protagonists too. No. Okay. You're right. You're right. Okay. So she goes to this clinic for the egg extraction using the name of her friend, Catherine Dunleavy. And we get a reveal that the doctors are actually the same evil little aliens in disguise and they're about to kill Jupiter because it turns out that it is her who they actually want. They just thought they were looking for Catherine Dunleavy because Jupiter was using her name, which is a detail that might have been in the first draft of the script, but they should have changed it to make it way more clear. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but good for Vanessa Kirby got a check and all she had to do is be basically naked for all of her screen time. Yes. Yes. Okay. So then so she's about to be killed by these aliens, but then Cain comes in to save her. We learned that he was hired by Titus to find Jupiter and bring her to him for reasons that will eventually maybe become clear. And then Cain explains that he is an alien from another planet, but he's also this hybrid of like half human half wolf. And now this is like starting to be like, oh, this is like kind of like porn, you know, like this is kind of like a vertical series. This is kind of like, you know, wait, I know I've brought this up before Caitlin. I read some like wolf porn book once and also if this is if this is your shit like truly all power to you, it was recommended to me. It was called like the Alpha's rejected mate or something. Yes, you have brought this up. I have brought up the Alpha's rejected mate. It's something that is, oh no, it's the Tyrant Alpha's rejected mate. That was my first and only wolf porn novel I've read, but I will say it did make me feel things, but they were not things I wanted to feel. And so I had to stop. Yeah, that's fair. But but when Cain was introduced, I was like, oh, this is a gateway for future readers of the Tyrant Alpha's rejected mate. Yeah, because they even go through this like, I do feel like Wachowskis have a knack for this where famously the Matrix, an incredible movie was like really, you know, the red pill ideology that comes from the mate, the matrix, right? There are people who willfully misunderstand the work of the Wachowskis to the point where the Wachowskis have had to openly state this, which has to be very frustrating. But I do feel like they have a knack for like identifying these really potent ideas. And there is something about Cain that feels very like Sigma male, like before Sigma males were a thing. Whereas like I'm a lone wolf and it's not that I couldn't have anyone I want. It's that I just I just don't need that. I'm so awesome that I'm just I'm behaving like an incel, but it's not that it's a secret third thing. And that's kind of what Segmas are. And that's kind of what Cain is. I just the Wachowskis really have a way with tapping, tapping that vein. I hadn't considered that fully, but well, yeah, it's been a long day sitting with this movie, my friends. And I've reached a lot of irrational conclusions. No, I love it. Keep them coming. You know, I was thinking about like Omega verse, like wolf totally more stuff, which I don't I don't really know why I didn't think about it any of the other times I've watched this movie since like, you know, those things have been on my mind in the entire 10 years since this movie has come out. But of course, it's it's interesting because you know, he's like, I'm a dog, but does he display any dog traits? I don't know. I mean, it's I was like, well, summer, he has pointy ears and yeah, where's eyeliner like like some dogs do. I just also like it's not even a universal dog thing as as a as a proud mother to a Cocker Spaniel. That is not our story. Yeah, I think if Channing Tatum had had those fly if you're a dog, be a dog. Give me those floppy Cocker Spaniel ears. Well, you know, there was like the the goat woman ears like, yeah, I don't know. There was a guy with a whole elephant face. Yeah, as far as we're going, if it's like monster fucking adjacent bestiality, it's like, it's kind of weak. Like there's not much happening here. It's a bit that feels taboo. Yeah, it's kind of just a guy. It's just a guy. I do feel like ultimately the closest I've gotten to my personal Omega verse is Mr. Tumnus. Yeah, that is. Wow. That's that's like where I'm like, okay, no, I see the vision. I see the vision and I would make it work if given the opportunity. Well, you know, I was I mean, this is this is the last shot of the movie, but it does connect. But like, you know, when she's like Jupiter's like up in like, she's like observing her city, you know, like from from high up. I was thinking about the Jessica Alba series Dark Angel, yes, which almost every episode of that show ends with her like on the because takes place in like a dystopia Seattle, like her on top of the Space Needle observing and like, you know, talking about one day I'll find my family or whatever. And in that show, she's like a genetically modified human and she's like spliced with canine DNA, which makes her go into heat. And so she just like really needs to fuck. Yeah. And that's like she needs to bust her hump. And that's where like Omega verse like is inspired by because Jensen Ackles was in that show. And then, you know, you take it and then you make anyway, we don't need to talk about those things. No, we have to talk about Jensen Ackles. You're you're here somewhere. You're here. We have to talk about. But yeah, I was like, wow, like he doesn't even go into heat. Like, it feels like a really half-hearted commitment to to the bit. It feels yeah, humanoid, but give us full dog. Yeah. Give us those. Give us those big stinky floppy ears. Yeah, I agree. Okay, so Cain has more or less abducted her, but she's like pretty fine with it and they're about to leave to head to where Titus is, I think, but it's not really specified. I never know really where they're going. I never know where they're headed to. But luckily, Jupiter is constantly asking where they are. So you do get the answer, but you're like, well, where the hell is that? Like, sometimes, sometimes you look like you're in another planet and then Cain is like, no, we're still in Chicago. And you're like, really? Okay. Oh, yeah. Yes, that does happen. And that's right here in the story. They're about to leave Chicago, but then the little bad, long legged aliens start chasing them. Jupiter and Cain eventually get away with the help of Cain's gravity boots that allow him to roller blade around the sky. Channing Tatum writing his journal every night. It sounds silly. I feel silly doing it, but I trust the Wachowski's vision. I know it'll end up looking cool. Love Channing. Busting my hub over here. I'm sorry, Summer. I know you dearly love this movie. No, it's great. No, I just, I feel bad for Channing Tatum. It's okay. He rallied. Yeah. He did like Hail Caesar the next year. That was true. I love his little tap dance and that. What a performance. This is also the same year as Magic Mike XXL kind of a world for him. Yeah. Yeah. He's fine. He's a shut up about busting his humps. Okay. Grow up. Yeah. Okay. So they get away. Meanwhile, Balm gets word from his giant winged dinosaur lizard minion. Yeah. The cane intervened in the killing of Jupiter and he saved her and Balm is acting like he knows Jupiter personally. He seems to think they go way back and we're like, hmm, what's that all about? Back on earth, Kane drives Jupiter to his friend's house Stinger played by Sean Bean because they need his help. I love Sean Bean. He, he's great and he plays exactly the character that he always plays in this movie. Yeah. But they need his help to do something. Unclear. Unclear. Maybe it's to get to whatever planet Titus is on, but we're not sure. Anyway, they hang out at his house for a while where there are a bunch of bees which do not sting Jupiter. And it almost. I love this. It almost. This is, this is like when this sequence happens, you're like, oh, this is camp. This is amazing. And this is also a nine year old's dream. Bees will not sting me because I am royalty. And like that is, I mean, that is the fantasy, right? It's like that you're, that there is something amazing about you that doesn't require that you know or do anything differently and that there's just something inherently special about you that is so undeniable that even bees will not sting you. This is what happens to Jupiter. And they kind of start to figure out like, wait a minute, is she royalty? I also love that there is, we do meet a character, another blonde woman in this scene. Oh, right. I forget. We do meet her by name. Disappears immediately. It seems like she might be Kane's ex-girlfriend. No, no, no, no, it's Stinger's daughter. Yeah. What? She's a daughter. Yeah. Oh my God. This is inscrutable. Okay. She literally says like one thing while Kane and Stinger are fighting and then I don't, I don't know where she goes. She says, I'm going to go out to get groceries. And then she never comes back. To make dinner because women be making dinner. But then we, but then I think that they fuck off before she comes. She comes back with no one to make dinner for. Oh yeah. She's like, where's my dad? Literally where's her dad? I didn't realize that was. He literally doesn't come back. So, and that is the first example of many where we technically passed the Bechtel test. This one's hilarious. Although you could argue because this character disappears immediately that maybe it's not an important interaction, but it is one of the Bechtel test passes that is just Jupiter saying, hello, I am Jupiter. And the other character says, hello, I'm this character. And it's punctuated by the fact that they are literally having this conversation in front of Sean Bean and Channing Tatum getting into a violent physical altercation as they're passing the Bechtel test. Yeah. Uselessly. Correct. I liked it. Yeah, it was pretty sick. Okay. So then Stinger tells Jupiter more about Cain and his checkered past also about the history of earth and how the Abraxas, Abraxix, I don't know how to say it, dynasty that controls earth deliberately makes sure that the human population reaches an unsustainable number so that the planet can be considered ripe for harvest, whatever that means, but it's pretty obvious that it's not great. Then the evil aliens find them again as do a couple like human hybrid bounty hunters. There's this big fight scene and a couple of the bounty hunters capture Jupiter and fly her away on a spaceship. Jupiter wakes up in the home of the sister, Kaleek, Abraxix. By the way, this becomes a running joke in the movie that Jupiter is regularly passing out and waking up somewhere again and has been changed into a different set of clothes. Yes. And doesn't remember it. This is presented as an adorable joke, even though the love interest does this at one point. Yeah, that people are while she's unconscious either because of medicine or combat, she wakes up in another place in a different outfit. And the joke is usually that she just doesn't like the outfit, but the subtext of the joke is that she has been stripped and redressed while unconscious. And you're like, Lily, Lana. What? What is this joke? What is the joke? Come on. You have final cut. No excuses. Yeah. Yeah, it's not great. Anyways, it's very like wing wig, na na of like, well, hopefully at this time I get to pick my outfit and I'll be awake when I put it on and you're like, wild. Yeah. Anyway, Jupiter meets Kaleek who tells her that Jupiter is what they call a recurrence, which is basically a genetic reincarnation of the late mother of Kaleek, Titus and Balim, which means that Jupiter is essentially a queen slash like kind of their mother, but kind of not. She's just like a genetic replica recurrence of this late queen who Kaleek mentions was 91,000 years old when she died, but she would have lived longer except that she was murdered, but they don't know by whom. I'm so confused about this. Well, so we're all of us. Say more. Yeah. Okay. Look, I guess it's like, it's, well, okay. There's so many elements of this movie that is like, okay, there is technology in this world beyond my wildest imagination. So why can't they explain this to me? Because they, they, the closest they get to being like, we know you're our mother and we know you're a recurrence is like, because you kind of look like this statue. And I'm like, we don't have better technology than you kind of look like this statue. Okay. So like, I thought it was that like, I don't know, maybe I'm extrapolating too much. No, you know this movie far better than I do. I was just trying to figure out like, it's, there seems like a lot of guesswork for this very high tech universe. So like, I thought it was because like when you're, I don't know, theoretically when you're going to donate eggs, you give some sort of like DNA sample and perhaps on all of their planets, they like are keeping track of like all of the DNA records. And so she's like a genetic match of the mother when she like went to the hospital and like registered under her friend's name. And so that's why they thought Vanessa Kirby's identity for some reason. Yeah. And so they, they were like, Oh, like, ding, ding, we found a match time to go to like this medical specific medical record. But I don't know why like, has she never gone to the doctor before? Like, I don't know why like, never given a blood sample. Yeah. Like, why do they not? And I was like, and again, I've seen this movie many times. How long ago did the mother die? Was it? Did she just die? That's a really good question. That's not clear. They're acting as if she did, but time is so fluid to them. I'm like, maybe she gets like reborn when the mother dies and like her DNA is like re recycled on their holdings. I'm creating. Rules of it felt very like, I guess, yeah, with the abrasive group, it's like, it seemed like so much was within their control, but then the things that weren't within their control, I didn't understand. Like, yeah, I don't know. I, the other thing, and this is like more spectral, cast-y stuff, but that in this world where anything can be true and like we're being encouraged by the story to be like, the world is completely different. If you just look just beneath the surface, which is so much of what the Wachowskis are doing, even in this world, the ultimate goal across millennia, across planets and galaxies is to be a young attractive woman. Yeah. And to not appear old or age in any way. And it's just presented as a universal truth. And as it just made me kind of sad. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could argue that that's what the villains want. I, but I don't think that there's anything applied. The, there's no pushback on that being a good thing from our heroes. They're just sort of like, oh, weird. Got it. Well, we're already young and hot. So anyways, like, I don't know, shrug, but I liked the movie, you guys. No, no, I, no, I feel the same way. And I think like, again, this watch especially, like, I think maybe this is the first time I've watched it with like a fully grown brain. Okay. And was kind of like, all right, like this is what the great wishes. This is what it all is about. Presumably Mila Kunis now, like in her inheritance as Queen gets this power too, but she doesn't, she doesn't seem interested in using it, but she'd also doesn't seem uninterested in using it. Right. It's all so vague with her. It's like, because again, like, we don't know what she wants. She's just sort of here for the ride. Yeah. Another one of the awesome Jupiter moments where you're like, Jupiter is an iconic apathetic character. She is like on the apathy Hall of Fame because even after she's been abducted, this is going back a little bit by Kane and Sean Bean. She calls her cousin on the phone and says nothing about what is going on. She's like, Hey, sorry, something went wild at the egg situation and I'm busy now. And you're like, so, so to be told over an hour later, all Jupiter wants is to be with her family. I'm like, I don't know. It seems like she was abducted and had no interest in returning just for something to happen to her. I know that like, and this is all like pulled into focus with for me when I learned that the Wachowskis were pulling from Dorothy a lot for Jupiter's character and pulling from the Wizard of Oz. Yeah. But it hasn't quite come together. But I mean, compare it to again, the Matrix, one of the finest films ever made. I think. True. They're both chosen one narratives in the sense that it's someone who is an ordinary person who is actually special and destined for great things. And they discover this along the way and have to decide what to do with all of that information. And for Neo, he's actively seeking out answers. He's actively trying to figure out like, what is the Matrix and and do I want to be a part of the resistance against it? And then with Jupiter, she's just sort of like. Oh. Shall we kiss? What's so interesting about her is that she's like from a working class immigrant family and undocumented to she's documented. Yeah, that was that was that was one of the things that like on this watch. I was like, this is like refugee imagery of like in the like bottom of like the cellar of a boat, the harsh journey across the waters. Like that's they're very much pulling from that kind of iconography. Yeah. And I and I feel this kind of like, well, my family is everything is like the like tagline for like immigrant family stories, but there's no like grounding or anything to hold on to with that. She's not a fully fledged character grounded in that kind of reality or family structure or family dynamic or tie at all, which I think is very funny. I don't know. It makes it makes it feel like her family is in a completely different movie. And when they are pulled in to the narrative, it's like, what is going on? But yeah, it's so interesting. It's like, what do you mean? She's undocumented. What do you mean? That's the story that's being told. Right. Say more, say more, say more. And like, how does it connect to like realizing that you are the reincarnation of like the ultimate colonizer? Like that's crazy. And that she doesn't seem to have any opinions on that. We're, I mean, this is fast-forwarding to the literal end of the movie, but I was like, yeah, kind of a Gog one might say that at the end, she's like talking with Cain and he's like, so you own the world. And she has no, I mean, it would have been like easy to the point of like bad writing to be like, well, I don't think anyone should own the world. You can't really own the world. But she was like, yeah, I do own the world. And I'm still trying to figure out what that means. And you're like, yeah, I guess I am too. Jupiter, you and me both. Like, I think especially it's interesting that the way that her father dies is also so like anti-climactic. It's just like some random people. We don't, I don't know. I don't know if I would like want this out of my Jupiter ascending, but it's like, what, what is, what is the, what's their situation in Russia? What are the vibes? Like what, when is, when does this happen? Like, what is their, like, what is their context? And I think that that's such an, there's no like, political, like sociopolitical grounding for any of their movements, of their migration, of anything. And so when you have this overarching theme or like kind of like motif of the film is essentially about like colonization and like annihilatory violence and harvesting of resources. It's just kind of like, what an interesting character to put at the heart of it who also like does nothing at the end. I, I, you know, at the early in the movie, she says something like, yeah, like no one should own the world or something like that. Right. And so if that came back, that would be interesting. But the, the, and she owns the world. She's like, this is weird. She's also not tuned into any of society's ills either. She's not like, oh, like the oppression of the working class. You know, she's just like, I hate my life. You know, like what, what was, you know, it's just so funny. I don't know. Like, but there's such a nothing, nothingness to it where there are so many points where it's like, well, it could have been like a weird, heavy-handed, cheesy sort of like liberal posturing, but it's not. It's really interesting. Yeah. Cause it's like, I, I have to imagine there were drafts of this where her family was more meaningfully included because the specifics are too specific to have never meant anything. Right. Like, but then her family kind of becomes cartoon characters and in the final product, I just, I'm like, I wonder who was at the charge of that? Cause you know, the Wachowskis have quite a bit of like influence over the final product, but also they still get studio notes and all that stuff. Like I just, I'd be so curious. I don't know. Well, the other thing about it is that with other chosen one heroes journey type narratives, there are many where there's a call to adventure in the sense that like it falls in their lap and they, unlike Neo where like they're not actively searching for answers, something comes to them and falls in their lap and then they have to decide what to do about it. But in a lot of those stories, whatever it is ends up like radicalizing them to realize, oh, like Luke Skywalker, let's take that example. Things fall in his lap. He decides to go and join the resistance. He doesn't really know a whole lot of what that specifically means at first, but then he's like, Oh yeah, I hate the empire. I hate Darth Vader. Like this experience has radicalized me. And this movie was said to be heavily influenced by Star Wars enough that Sean Bean has said that his character, his that Stinger, a Peony, his half human, half honeybee character he plays wait, a Peony Hans. It says Stinger, a Peony. I don't know if they ever say his last name out loud. I'm just looking at Wikipedia. Stinger, a Peony, comma a Han Solo type character. Oh, he's nuts. I will say he is way more of a Han Solo type. I was not getting Han Solo from Stinger, a Peony, but I just, you know, dare to dream. Dare to dream. I mean, yeah. I would say that about myself, you know, sure. Exactly. Yeah, I'm a Han Solo type. I'm a Han Solo type. Anything is a Han Solo type. Half honeybee is just like, it's just so funny. Wait, okay, sorry. Back up a second. He's, he's a honeybee hybrid. Is that why he has all the bees? Yeah. So he's a bee. Yeah. You know how Chinatowns have dog while Sean Bee is half bee and there's no, yeah, does he just look like a man? Well, yeah. Yeah, 100% just looks like a man. But let's not worry about it. Also going back to the Wizard of Oz stuff, like just, I don't know, this movie is so chaotic where there are quotes about this that I was like, what the hell? Maybe I'm being too close minded. No, go for it. This is a quote about, because the Wachowskis have repeatedly said this is influenced by the Odyssey, the Wizard of Oz and Star Wars. Sure. The big influences. You can definitely feel those often in conflict with each other, right? But this is a quote from Lana Wachowski comparing Kane to a character from the Wizard of Oz. She says, we were like, can we bring a different kind of female character like Dorothy or Alice characters who negotiate conflict and complex situations with intelligence and empathy? Yes. Dorothy has a protector, Toto, who's always barking at everyone. And that was the origin of Kane. So this movie asks, what if Dorothy and Toto were fucking like, it's so weird. Like to, I love the Wachowskis. I'm like, why would you say that? Why would you say what if Dorothy was fucking Toto? And that's kind of the whole idea. And then, okay, so that's, we're already getting into the discussion, but yeah, there's just so much to unpack. I think the reason Jupiter's character doesn't end up being radicalized by her learning about this very large scale colonial capitalist genocidal project is she, you know, at the end, she does say like, no, I'm not going to let you do this. But through most of the movie, she's not really asking the right question. She doesn't seem curious about what's going on. She's just sort of like, you might even say she put on some gravity boots and is just sort of coasting along. And I wrote down, she's on dial up internet. Yes. And it's because I think the main arc that seems to be written for her character rather than any sort of like political ideological shift or anything like that. It's like hetero romance where in the very beginning there's like mention in her voiceover of something about not finding love. And then she's talking to her friend Catherine and she's like, well, my mom always told me that fairy tales were ridiculous and the love isn't. I don't know if it's real. And then when she's talking to Cain in various situations, she's like, I always seem to go after the wrong man who doesn't love me back. So everything that revolves around her arc, which we have no context for. Like we don't know that. And you're also like, yeah, Mila Kunis, I'm sure you're getting turned down right and left. But like, but it is, it is interesting. Again, where I have to feel like her mom because this movie wants to be about mothers a lot. And so it also does feel weird that Jupiter's mother is so estranged from the movie. Because at the end, again, because her family is kind of operating in a totally different movie than the rest of the movie, especially her cousin, Vladdy. Oh my God. Her cousin is like a fairly brothers movie. He's like somewhere else. He's like in 1999. But separate, like you're saying, like all of the groundwork is laid for them to be actively engaged with the story. So I'm wondering if like when and if that was severed. But at the end, her mother is just like, oh, by the way, I'm over your father's death. And like you should have a telescope. Sorry. And you're like, surely at one point this was more of an arc between Jupiter and her mother because it feels like it's like even the opening sequence establishes some tension between them. But then she just kind of disappears. Yeah, for sure. Anyways, I like it. Yeah. Best movie ever. Yeah, it is. What happens next, Kate? I would love to tell you. Okay. So Jupiter is with Kaleek. Kaleek is trying to buddy up to our friend Jupiter. He like strokes her face. Oh yeah, it's intimate. Awesome. Kaleek explains that to her people, time is the most valuable resource and that she and her family can live for so long because they use this advanced technology that they've created to replace their dying cells with new ones. But where do they get the new cells? Hmm, I wonder if we'll find out. And then we see Kaleek go through this like rejuvenation process where she takes a dip in a pool and comes out looking much younger. She has washed all the oldness off. Right. Because looking young is the ultimate goal of not just humanity of all living beings throughout time. Is looking hot in 2015. Yeah. And then Kaleek is like, by the way, my mother wrote in her will that any recurrence of hers, which again is what Jupiter is, will inherit the earth. So technically, Jupiter owns like is the rightful heir to earth, even though it was Balim who was originally supposed to inherit the earth. And that's why he wants Jupiter dead so that he can keep earth. And we're not really sure how Jupiter processes this, but there's a lot of cliffhangers with Jupiter about to form an opinion. But the important thing is that she thinks Kaleek is kind of nice and on her side, but then Kane shows up to be like, I'm not too sure about that. That's probably not true. Then Jupiter is like, yeah, so should we kiss? And she's suddenly very horny for him, but he rejects her. Well, she's the Tyra Delphos rejected mate, one might say. Yeah. I really, I mean, yeah, truly to fans of that book, I literally got horny and had to stop because I was like, I don't want to know. I don't want it. Sometimes you just don't want to uncover that part of yourself. So if you're like, if I'm into this, I really cannot. I'm I've got a lot going on right now. I can't know this. Is this when she says, I love dogs. I've always loved dogs. And then yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then her like, she like her strange like to herself like, I love dogs like kind of realizing something. And it's like, I don't know. I don't know what emotion you're expressing. I do feel like there is an actor that could have sold that line. It just be like, who this is not that actor. Natalie Portland. Let's see it. Natalie Portman maybe could I love dogs? Like, you know, like there, there is someone who or were even a Jennifer Lawrence type could have made it funny. You know, like, yeah. Well, I think I think the way you're supposed to read this is her repeating the ridiculous line. She just said to herself as if to say like, you idiot. Why did you say I love dogs? But then she does not quite how Mila Kunez delivers it. So she just sort of says, I love dogs again. Yeah. She says must love dogs and I love dogs. The West Anderson movie. Wow. Make you think I'm thinking I've never seen that movie, but I love that it is just I love dogs. I think it's also 2015. Maybe. Wow. It might be 2014. Huge year for movies I didn't watch. Okay. So Jupiter owns earth. She is working it out. Yes. A cyborg named Bob starts on the paperwork that's required so that Jupiter can access the title to earth the way that you like, you know, have a title to a car or a deed to the house. She's trying to get that. I wrote down if this came out today, this part would be played by John Early because this actor is strongly channeling John Early. So true. Yeah. 100%. Okay. So Bob is helping her. There's a ton of bureaucratic red tape, but she finally gets the title to earth and now she owns the planet. This makes her even hornier because once again, Jupiter lays it on real thick on Kane. She wants to smooch him so bad. And she likes to be called queen and this is like a wish fulfillment thing. But I'm begging Jupiter to think more critically about what's happening. He says like your majesty and she's like, uh-huh. Say it again. And they're like, okay, Jupiter, but what are you going to do with the deed to earth? Yeah. But she's too horny for that. And it seems like Kane might be kind of reciprocating these feelings, but the moment is ruined when twist stinger betrays them. And we're like, oh, a Sean Bean character turning on someone and betraying them and being a bad guy the whole time. I would have never thought. Just kidding. This is the character he plays every time. But unlike every other time, it doesn't have too much of an effect on the plot because later Kane just comes back and he's like, Oh, well, right, your daughter. So whatever. Yeah, I liked it. I that felt like the twist on the Sean Bean character is that he betrayed him and guess what? It doesn't affect the plot. Nothing. And actually he's, he is a good guy. He just betrayed them for reasons, but now he's good again. I thought Kane was real for that. I was like, yeah, you know what? Life is hard and, you know, we're put in compromising positions and yeah, let's just keep things moving. True. Compare it to his character in, for example, National Treasure when he betrays Nicholas Cage's character, whose name is Benjamin Franklin or something. Benjamin Franklin Gates. Gates. Sorry. I hate that I had that ready. You had that locked and loaded. Yeah. Anyway, he betrays Benjamin Franklin Gates and then is a bad guy the whole time, the whole rest of the movie. So yeah, he's only a bad guy for half of the time. Much like he's only half of a honeybee. Yeah. Truly which half. I just, and it's also like if you're casting a part and I love Sean Bean, but I don't look at him and I'm like, oh, right. He's so be like, like, you know, like you would think of maybe casting a type that you're like, oh, like, I don't know. I don't think of bees as like muscular and gruff. Yeah. I know. I know. Wait. Okay. Was were his parents Renee Zell Wickers character from B movie and the B from B movie? No, I really can't. Sean Bean. Sean Bean. Maybe that's what they were thinking. Sean B. Much like Larry B King from B movie or Larry Beely. Is that anything like Larry G. B and who is that joke for? But it's for me. Thank you so much. Okay. The thread. I wouldn't wish I wouldn't wish Sean Bean being the spawn of Jerry Seinfeld. Like there's I want better for him. But yeah, but but summer the question stands. He's half B where exactly? And it's also like surprising that he's able to betray the Queen when he is part B. You'd think that. Oh my God. Yes. He would sooner die. Wouldn't allow him. Oh my God. They didn't even think of that. It's just like, I mean, okay. So technically Jupiter ascending is giving the same deference to bees that B movie is because the movie makes bees a patriarchy still. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. He shouldn't. Okay. First of all, I thought you I thought you were getting at something far sillier, which is that if he's half B, he should be able to get between those bars. Oh yeah. You know, like shape shift. And I do love it. Like, yeah. Well, is it I can't even remember this movie is blurred in my head. Like I know that it's a big deal for Kane to get his wings back, which is not something I associate with wolves or dogs. But sure. Yeah. So shouldn't Sean Bain be trying to get his wings back? Is he also trying to get his wings? I was thinking about his bee wings. Like he's trying to get back bee wings, not angel wings. I guess. Why don't we get to see him with bee wings? The little ones. Yeah. Yeah. There should have been like a post credits scene where he's buzzing around in his little bee wings. Yeah. That is so. Oh my God. Wait, I cannot stop. Like summer. He should not be able to betray the queen. That's like that should be his whole thing. Yeah. That's infuriating. Why didn't they think of that? Why go out of the way to make Jupiter Queen if the only bee in the story is going to betray her with no consequence? It's like, I don't know. How is he the outside of the name Stinger? I don't know. I mean, we can talk about this later, but I am interested in Kane as a name, but that's that's for after that's for after Kane, Kane, I'm K9. I was thinking. Okay. But the biblical Kane. Also a Peony I just learned is just like a Latin word for bee. So his name is Stinger bee. Yes. And okay, yet he is just a tattooed man man. Yeah. At least the at least they put Channing Tatum in again pointy ears. He's wearing eyeliner because dogs famously wear eyeliner. Yeah. And he I think he does have kind of sharper, more pronounced K9 teeth. The bleached brows or something, which is like all things I associate with dogs. Uh-huh. They're just trying to make Channing Tatum look fucky in a way we haven't seen him before. Yeah. I think kind of and that's and that's good to be clear. That's good. Just like Eddie Redmayne sort of looks Kardashian-esque in a way that I was like, is this what is this? What am I looking at? I love why isn't he opening his mouth? His long neck. Oh, yeah. The longest neck that's ever been seen. How dare they give him a rasi? I just I guarantee that this is a more interesting performance than both of his Oscar performances. Yeah, I agree. Yes. I saw a theory of everything and I saw Jupiter ascending and let me tell you what do I remember? And what are we talking about in the back to the cat? What are we talking about? Tell you that much. That's the most culturally relevant. Exactly. The Oscars don't matter. Who has stood the test of time? And was Stephen Hawking not named in the Epstein files multiple times? Exactly. So you know who wasn't? Baylor. Roxas. Makes you think makes you think. Okay. Back to the story. Okay. Stinger has just betrayed them. Jupiter is detained and brought to Titus, the youngest of the three siblings. And she's like, you're violating space code and you have to bring me back to earth and he's like, okay, fair, but first you must dine with me. And he puts her in a patent leather cat woman style dress. Yeah. Really like it reminded me of in the recent weathering heights adaptation, which, but when like Margot Robbie, all of a sudden randomly looks like Cruella Deville and you're like, what? Like it just, I mean, it's an interesting outfit, but it's so like the tone of this movie is so inconsistent because Mila Kunis is still playing like I'm just a regular girl. So she's like, this dress isn't really my style. I'm like, do it or don't Jupiter. Come on. It's a, it's a weird dress though. And even more bizarre is that Titus is like hubba hubba, even though it's been established that Jupiter looks exactly like his mother. So he wants to fuck his mom. Question mark. Great. Well, Caitlin, you've heard of that one before. Come on. Have you heard this one before? I mean, guy wants to fuck a lady that looks like his mom, but, but rarely the proven incarnation of his actual mom. Right. But then it turns out just kidding. For some reason, just kidding. Yeah. We'll find out more about that in a moment, but in the meantime, he, he shows Jupiter all these canisters of this liquid. It's the same thing that Kaleek bathed in earlier and he explains that it's made from humans that earth is a farm that they harvest people from to create this like rejuvenating youth juice. But he's trying to put a stop to all this because that's wrong as was his mother and he's just following in her footsteps. And he's like, but enough about all that. Will you marry me, Jupiter? And we're somehow left on a cliffhanger for this. Yeah. She gasps and then there's another hard cut to the next scene. And you're like, Jupiter, what's in it for you? She, I, I, this becomes and again, I'm like, is there like a Wizard of Aussie? I was trying to like see, I have not read the Odyssey. I'm not looking forward to the Christopher Nolan Odyssey. I have to say. So I, I only know the broad strokes. I can see the Wizard of Oz episodic nature of like, what if instead of meeting three friends on your way to Oz, you were kidnapped by three diabolical siblings on the way to nowhere or on the way back to home, right? Technically. Yeah. If Chicago is Kansas, something like that, like it is episodic, but, but the episodes don't really advance the plot. They kind of just continue it. I don't know. I was trying to get there. The tightest one at very least, I will say was, was interesting. Yeah. I didn't see brother proposal coming. Yeah. No, this is really where it all starts like really falling apart for me. Okay. This is where I'm really like, I don't know what's happening. I don't know. There's like a, there's a continually shifting allegiance of Jupiter to different characters and it's like, why, why are you with this person now? What? Like, I don't, she's, well, she's very, very gullible and she just sort of like becomes best friends with whoever the next sibling she meets is. Yeah. And we're like, have a little bit more discernment of character. And like, I think she should be more weirded out or more excited. You know, like, she just has like sub reactions to again, like that's, it's part of why she's such a frustrating character where like Lana Wachowski said in different interviews, like, Oh, well, Dorothy. Well, first of all, I think she kind of misreads the character Dorothy, where she's like, Dorothy doesn't change that much from the beginning to the end. And you're like, well, that's not true at all. But like Dorothy is maybe not the most active protagonist, right? There's, it's a lot of things happening to her. But Dorothy is consistently making emotional choices. She is consistently stating where she stands with things. And these are qualities. Jupiter lacks. Like, yeah, I wouldn't characterize her as a particularly empathetic. I wouldn't characterize her as anything. I don't like, she just seems to be like, wow, this is like, it's like, she's talking to an audience that isn't there, both figuratively and if box office seats are to be indicated literally, being like, this is so weird. Wow. Like you're just like, how do you feel about this? It's impossible to feel nothing. Dorothy and Alice of Alice, they're both little girls. So that also, I know adult women. Part of it, like they're, they're little girls. She's an adult woman with a job and like, oh, life and is donating her eggs. You know, I don't know. Like there is like just an incredible passivity that also doesn't seem to be like noticed by the narrative either. Like it's not a passive character in a interesting way. Like, you know, but it's just like, she's like in a river and she's being knocked around. I feel like she's weirdly kind of subject to these like tropes I would normally and this is kind of like old hat at this point, but that I would like attribute to like a born sexy yesterday character, except she wasn't born sexy yesterday. She was, she was born like, we know so much about her origin story. We know so much about her. And so it's like, with all that being true, it's really bizarre that she has no reaction to anything that's going on. I do like, okay, I just scroll past this note and I don't know if I'll find it again because I have so many notes that even in deep space, the poorly constructed H&M v-neck will find its way to you. Everyone is wearing an H&M v-neck at some point in the movie, including billionaire aliens. Yeah. And I celebrate that. That's monoculture in a way we no longer have. So true. Yeah. So yeah. So her brother is like, marry me and she bafflingly is like, yeah, maybe her son, her son, she all right, marry me and she's like, and she's about to do it. And they literally, I thought they were going to do like a series of unfortunate events thing where she's like secretly kind of playing a trick and she's like, I'm going to sign the contract with the wrong hand or like somehow, but like, no, she's just going to marry him and wait for Channing Tatum to interrupt the wedding. Yes. Which is more or less what happens next. Uh, Taitis disposes of Cain by like launching him into space, but Cain uses his nifty gravity boots and a magical oxygen suit that he happens to have right there to survive until he is rescued by like they're described as space cops who we've seen before. They're like buds with Stinger, Stinger, a Peony, of course. So he gets rescued. He's Stinger Stinger is a Peony. Yes. Jupiter, meanwhile, is going through with this marriage. So Cain and Stinger reconcile and then they go to the wedding to stop it. And Cain is starting to realize that he's in love with Jupiter too. And so they go in and they crash the wedding and it's very Shrek crashing in to stop the Fiona Farquad wedding. Sure. Except we know what Fiona wants. Yes. That is the big difference. And also there's a huge matrix reference in Shrek. There is featuring Fiona. It's all connected. Yeah. Her web connects them all. It sure does. I think maybe the only person who said with love, the only person who maybe could have been worse in the part of Jupiter is Dakota Johnson. Yeah. Dakota Johnson is maybe the only living actor who could have given less in this role. Yeah. Yeah. This this movie is pretty like Madame Webby in, I think, in its sensibility. She really could have. But but maybe Dakota Johnson could have sold me on apathy as a as a character choice. Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's remake it. I want to see it. I would love to see another Jupiter's ending. All they needed was $400 million. And that would have fixed every step. That would have fixed it. That would have made the story a need. Sounds. Yeah. Yeah. We all know that money equals good story. Exactly. For sure. Okay. So then Kane, who has rescued Jupiter from the wedding, takes her back to Earth. But when she goes into her house, her family is gone because they've been abducted by Bollum's giant space lizard man. And then that other servant of Bollum's Mr. Knight, Black male. Remember him? Yeah. Remember him? He had completely forgotten about him. He Black males Jupiter saying that if she relinquishes her title to Earth so that Bollum can have it, they'll let her family live. So she agrees to go with Mr. Knight to keep her family safe. She meets with Bollum who demands that she hand over her title to Earth. And she's like, well, if I do that, you're just going to harvest and kill everyone there. And he's like, yeah. Yeah. And she's like, well, I guess I should form an opinion about that later. And she does, I guess. And she says, no, don't do it, Bollum. But before she can like really do anything on her own, Cain and his buddies attack Bollum and I think the like the refinery where they make the youth juice at. So things are kind of like crashing down around them and Jupiter and Bollum fall into a hole and they're like plummeting downward. One could one could even call it. Okay. Horrible incoming. A plot hole. Oh, wow. Oh, wait, I thought you were going to say Jupiter descending. Oh, God. If I if I only had a bigger brain, thankfully you do. I do. I got you covered. Thank you so much. Anytime. Okay. So they're falling. Cain is, I don't, he's doing something. He's battling the giant lizards. He's busting his hump. He's buzzing his hump. Jupiter starts to make her way back to Cain, but then Bollum attacks Jupiter again, they're fighting, they fall again. They're descending again. Um, but then finally Cain swoops in with his gravity boots and saves Jupiter. I think this is the fifth or sixth time he has saved her throughout the movie. Yeah. Oh, not to mention, I mean, she's also been saved by characters we never really get full context for thinking of you, Mrs. Pony tales. Yeah. The hell you were. You also saved Jupiter at some point. Wait, who? She has like, it's like purple hair. Yeah. She has like purple pig tails that are like crimped and she's got this cool outfit and she, but like, I have no idea who she is. I don't know. Besides she's on. We see her once or twice. Oh, wait. No, isn't she one of the, she's kind of character you see and you're like, yeah, she's going to be awesome, but then you just never really figure out who she is. Isn't she one of the bounty hunters who captures her? I don't think she saves. Who told you that? Who told me that? Yeah. Wait, I want to, I want to know who that character is. I mean, if you, if I'm thinking of who you're describing, I think she, she like abducts Jupiter, not saves her. Well, she does. But Jupiter, I guess I'm thinking like Jupiter is like unconscious and someone wakes her up. Did she wake Jupiter up for being unconscious? Maybe. I can't remember. She's in the like really long scene at the beginning. That's like, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then she's in that scene with Jupiter in the field. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So she's a bounty hunter. Don't the two bounty hunters like join them? No. I thought she ended up on their side. Really? I thought so too, but it was unclear. Well, I mean, Summer, you've seen this movie way more than me, but I would, I like, I was so locked in. I was like, I have to understand this. No, you're doing so good. I was really wondering. I was like, you can't. Okay. We're, we're almost done. So given us the ultimate challenge. Yeah. Canaan and Jupiter are making their way back to the ship, but oh no, something's about to explode. Will they make it in time? They do. And then Jupiter returns to Earth. She's safe and sound with her mom and aunt and the rest of her family. Though she's back to cleaning toilets, but now it's awesome, but now she's the queen of Earth. So that's, she loves her life. And now that's what I call a, you can't say that. I mean, at the beginning she hated toilets, but now she likes them. And that's an arc. If I've ever seen one, that's an arc that counts. Then her family gifts her the telescope that she was hoping to buy. And then the movie ends with her not using it at all. Instead, she's canoodling with Kane who has wings now like a dog would, right? Right guys, right? Exactly. And then she has his gravity boots on and then they're flying around together. The end. So an hour and a half into the episode, let's take another break and we'll come back to discuss. At Costa, we've served you coffee for over 40 years. And now we're serving you matcha. Yes, matcha. We're making it as every day as grabbing your sonnies up and down the UK. Indodler. Yep. Abercrombie's got it. Even Enfield. Even Enfield. All of those places and tons in between. Try our new iced cherry vanilla matcha today. Matcha at Costa made with heart. And we're back. And we're back. I do feel like we've had a large portion of the discussion during the recap as is increasingly common on this show. But summer, where would you like to begin? Let's talk about the mother-daughter relationship. Jupiter's mother-daughter relationship. Absolutely. I feel like there are movies when you rewatch them every time you watch it. You're kind of like, oh, I forgot it starts like that. And this is one of them. I'm always like, oh, yeah, it doesn't start with the toilets. It starts with the parents. And I think something that always throws me off is when her family buys her the telescope at the end. I always wonder when did her mom tell her about the telescope? Like when did she get any kind of access to her family history? She says like my mom like pushed away all of her family except for her sister. And it seems like maybe she doesn't talk about her dad very much. Maybe she only knows the origin of her name. But I don't know. I always found that to be such a dropped thing. It's like, why does she know what telescope her dead dad had? How is it relevant to any of this? How do we spend so much time in space and then like her astronomer father isn't relevant? He never comes back. That's right. Yeah. I felt this. I just I have to believe and I would I did not have a lot of luck finding out like what happened in earlier drafts of this script. But that her mother had to like especially at the end where it feels throw away in the version of the movie that we get where she's like, you know, I've real like she says something akin to like, I've realized like you should be able to use a telescope and explore your passions and blah, blah, blah. And like says something that you're like, well in a movie where this character was a character that could be really impactful and could have really like symbolize an arc that mother and daughter have been on. But like, I don't know. Yeah. Like somewhere like you're saying there's a lot established about the mom that I find it very hard to believe that there wasn't originally intention to have that mother daughter story running throughout because that would also track with how dysregulated the Abrasus family is with their dead mother. And then you have like, why don't we know how I mean, whatever it's like, you know, Jupiter never knew her father and we don't really know how much or when she learned about him. But there are ways that you think that Jupiter could connect with in contrast to the Abrasus family where they have a dead parent, they have mommy issues. Yeah. But none of these similarities are explored. And like thinking about the Wizard of Oz comparison, so much of like Dorothy's journey, right, is seeing the parallels of the Auseans to the troubles that she has in her life at the start of the movie, right? Like the mean lady is the wicked witch and on and on and on, right? And so it's it's very funny. I don't know to be to say Wizard of Oz as an influence, but have such a drastic disconnect between these two narratives, especially with like Eddie Redmayne murders his mom. Like what? What? I don't know. Like what does that do to a person to be faced with a person who is like killed their parent? Does it make you think about your relationship to your parent at all? It would make me. Right. And it's like, but that's kind of not Jupiter's style. Jupiter is like brain off. She's not really asking questions or being curious about anything. And that's actually self care. And she's like touching grass or something. But yeah, I guess something that I wonder that I'm like, maybe I'm really kind of like off the deep end here. But at the end, when you find out randomly, like Eddie Redmayne murdered his mother, but he also says that she was begging for him. She wanted it. If not begged him to. Do we believe him there? Like I think we're supposed to believe him, but it just feels like again, like if true, so underexplored. Yeah. And such a last minute thing to learn about a character before they fall into a literal void, never to be seen again. I believed him and I thought it was meant to say that there is like something in the genetics that she possesses that like, oh, you hate your life because my mother hated her life. And so you're genetically predisposed. I interpreted it as their mother realized the atrocities that she committed by harvesting humans from. Couldn't live various planets, but that would be awesome. But why see like that would be great. Like imagine that like an interiority of like your, I don't know, like the creed, the being that you're reincarnated from like teach like like like an avatar cycle kind of thing, like teaching you the harm of that past life or whatever that would have been sick. Which right. Yeah. But then even so, why would you force your son to do that? That doesn't feel like the way to do that. Teddy little son. Right. You're like Eddie Redmayne is having clearly enough issues as it is. I, the genetics of it all, I don't really have that much to say that isn't extremely obvious, but there is a sort of, I don't know. I don't know. Cause it's like, you know, we have two iconic trans filmmakers making this film. So I'm like, who the fuck am I? But you know, when genetics are brought up too much, you kind of have to start tilting your head a little bit and being like, uh, I don't know. Again, it is the villains who are obsessed with this whole genetic thing. And well, but yes, but again, it's like, but there's no pushback on the hero side. Like at the end, Mila Kunis due to genetics owns the deed to earth and seems fine with that. Because she will be a benevolent ruler to earth. Right. So well, like, you know, functionally, what does it mean to own the earth at that point? Like seemingly she doesn't, I don't know if she has, she continues to have access to the technology of the Brax's family. I don't know. It's, it's, it's, I mean, it's, it's poorly done. So there's many questions. But I think that there is such a strange sort of like she is happy now, I guess because she has a dog boyfriend, but also because she is the owner of earth. But I think there, you know, there is a, there is like, oh, like she wants to buy things and she has to work really hard. But does ownership of earth give her wealth? I don't know. I don't know what it gives her. This seemingly nothing. I don't really know what she gets out of it. And also just, I don't know. Jupiter bless her heart. She is like unbelievably vague to the very end where the last time we see her with her family, she's like, sorry, everyone, I've got a date tonight. And then her aunt, cause her aunt's whole thing is she's like a caricature of like, I love astrology, which you think would become plot relevant, but don't worry, it never does. Um, and she's like, what's his sign? And Jupiter says, ha, ha, I don't know. End of scene. And see you. Awesome. Well, to go back to your point, Summer, about her relationship with her mother and how there were opportunities to characterize Jupiter either by like setting up an arc or giving her a desire or motivation or something like that. Because she wants to buy this telescope, but we have no specific indication of why like, yeah, did her mother tell her about her father's telescope? I have to believe there's a draft where, where that was a why, right? Because she was going to spend $4,000 on it. Yeah, that's, that is no small purchase. Yeah. But there's no indication that like, maybe she wants to buy this telescope to feel closer to the memory of her father. Maybe she wants it because she legitimately has an interest in space. If so, that could explain why when she gets abducted and taken to space, she's like, this is actually cool. The way that like Moana, another hero's journey, chosen one style narrative that came out right around this time, it's very clearly established that Moana longs to be out on the ocean and to explore. Yeah. If there's a similar thing for Jupiter where like she longs to explore space, but she, it doesn't seem conceivable because she's a working class woman who will never have access to that. And then when she finally does, again, that could explain why she's so enamored by, oh, I'm on this new planet. I'm meeting these aliens. This is all so cool. This is what I dreamed of. But because none of that is established, we have no idea how she feels about her situation. We have no idea what she wants or what motivates her choices. Like, it reminds me of this is very random, but a recent criticism I saw of Belle from Beauty and the Beast in a YouTube video that I liked was that she is kind of a bizarre protagonist on the grounds that we know what she doesn't want, but we don't know what she does want, which makes her whole journey rather confusing and sort of serves to make someone else the protagonist in her story, which is something I was thinking about with Jupiter and Cain, where I think Cain more clearly fits the role of a protagonist in that he grows and changes and has a specific motivation, a specific desire. Yeah. He wants his wings, which is vague, but a tangible goal. Whereas we really are only told what Jupiter doesn't want and it's her life. Yeah. Yeah, she wants much more than this provincial life. Right. Yeah. Which is that's the whole bells I want. It was just like, I don't want this, but you're like, okay, but what do you want? Yeah. And so you could sort of give that character anything and be sort of like, I guess, maybe, I don't know. And then with Jupiter, it's like nothing really changes. I think that's the thing that's like always just so cookie at the end of the movie. Like she's so much happier. She's more upbeat. She's full of life and it's like, but things are the same. Is it really just the boyfriend? I don't know. Like it's so it is so in some ways it's kind of it's kind of. Fun to be like all she needed is this like little secret that she owns the earth and she's good, but I don't know. I kind of, I mean, I wanted to give the movie that like and maybe, I don't know. Again, I'm like, maybe I'm overthinking it, but like that at the end, I feel like there's, I mean, it's feels sort of similar to Dorothy where Dorothy technically ends up exactly where she started with a whole new appreciation. Right. For what she has. Maybe that's what it's supposed to be. Yeah. She's like, oh, I could have been harvested. Yeah. And I wasn't. So I'm grateful now. And it's just, I just want more for her than to be satisfied that she hasn't been harvested. I don't know. I mean, although it's like, there are a lot of really interesting ideas and like going back to like the, the Wachowskis like. Yeah. They're not under thinking the mythology they're pulling from, they're pulling from these movies, but they're also pulling from a bunch of folklore, specifically like Gnostic ideas. What's that? And the, okay. I was, I was afraid you would ask that. Sorry. I'm so sorry. So like basically ideas of transhumanism, of Gnosticism, of reincarnation. There's something I learned about called the Gaia Hypothesis. I was really, I was, I summer, maybe you know all of this way better than I do. Do you know about the Gaia Hypothesis? I was afraid that I was like, I'm like mother earth. Mother Gaia. Yes. Exactly. That Jupiter is, and I guess that the, the Wachowskis gave some interviews to this effect, but there's also just been a lot of speculation for people who are interested in folklore like this, that Jupiter is supposed to be a representation of earth itself and is supposed to embody all of the Gaia like beautiful qualities of earth. I'm going to quote from, bravely from a medium.com interview here. So take with a grain of salt, but there's just really not a lot of good info about the background of this. This is from golden age timeline. Jupiter ascending, Gnostic themes of transhumanism versus soul embodiment, spiritual awakening and the divine feminism. One of the main themes in Jupiter ascending relates to Gnosticism, an ancient religious movement associated with the Azenes that views the material world as a lower density learning ground for souls to evolve. According to Gnostic beliefs, human souls are divine beings who choose to get trapped in the physical world that is controlled by evil archons. It's starting to give Scientology. And Archon is defined as a technological ruler that enslave through mind control, frequency implants and military strategies and works through controlling more embodied sources such as corrupt humans or nonhumans, perhaps bees or dinosaurs only through attaining Gnosis or esoteric spiritual knowledge. This is absolutely some Elrond Hubbard shit. Can the soul transcend its earthly prison and reach liberation? So it's pulling from ancient ideas that Elrond Hubbard would later steal. And again, like when I was reading stuff like this, I was like, oh, I kind of see how the siblings fall into that idea and that Jupiter is theoretically a foil to that idea. But again, she's so inactive that it's like hard to telegraph those ideas effectively because she's not, if she's embodying earth, I don't think earth is coming off particularly well. Like it's just sort of like, here's this because the idea of like harvesting humans for fuel is so horrific and potent, but it's kind of just like left there in this story. I don't know. I was thinking about it starts with her theoretically donating her eggs. And I don't know. There's something interesting there too with a sort of kind of like exploitation of a working woman in like having to resort to donating your eggs in order to afford things that you want and need. And also, I don't know, like the cousin thing is like, it's absurd. Like why is she letting her cousin take the bulk of the money she's going to earn? But I think there is something interesting there of like the sort of patriarchal exploitation continuing and then when she becomes a queen, there is a weird empowerment to it, but it just doesn't, it doesn't work well, right? And like, I think that, I don't know, there is hearing you read these like spiritual themes and like, well, it's so beautiful. I wish it was coming through. I know. Yeah. Wait, sorry. Can I tell you more about the Gaia hypothesis? Yeah. Cause I was like, I, because I do believe like I edit it. The Wachowskis, I fully believe they are well acquainted with the Gaia hypothesis. This all feels very within their wheelhouse. And this is where I was like, wait, this really could have been something. The Gaia hypothesis posits that the earth also known as Gaia, along with the planets and the stars are sentient beings on their own evolutionary journey. Humans and other life forms on the planet are like cells within her body. Her desire to understand the origins of creation led her to bring the material world into existence without approval from supreme creator of the universe, AKA Eddie Redmayne. And so there is this massive cosmic story that is being referenced. But of all the things that are explained to us in the course of this story, this is something I could have actually really used. I don't know if that is what they're referencing, but it's interesting. I was like, Oh, I want more about the Gaia hypothesis. Something I think the movie does handle pretty well is its criticism of genocidal colonial capitalism, because the villains are this royal family who control this empire where they implant human DNA on various planets, wait till the population grows basically out of control and becomes unsustainable and then harvests them, AKA kills everybody on the planet to create their youth juice. And the movie presents this as like, this is absolutely horrible and these, they need to be stopped. And Jupiter is kind of the one to stop them, but she barely does. And in therein lies the problem. But where I think the movie missteps with this is that the cops and the military of this movie are poised as the good guys actually because with Cain being this like ex military soldier character and then with the Aegis, which is the like cops, they're running around with Stinger and they help Cain and Jupiter with different things. They're always like, Oh, no, they're the good guys. They're helping. They're doing good stuff. And maybe, maybe in this world, these sort of like intergalactic police and military are maybe doing good things and like holding the horrible genocide committers accountable. But it seems like the rest of the world reflects ours enough that probably not. Exactly. The far more likely scenario would be that the cops and the military are working to protect the property of the ruling class and carrying out the genocide on behalf of the ruling class. So yeah, the way these entities are portrayed in the movie does not track. I think there's just like a broader problem with sci-fi often where genocide is kind of like this sort of like singular event. And, and I think it, it's sort of like, and this happens in Star Wars happens in like, there was like a novel I read like a year after this. It was like a, like a YA novel that was like, Earth becomes inhabitable and so ever most of space and like, there's like a genocide of like the space Arabs and it's like the inciting incident for the, the novels. And it's just so casual of like the kind of aftermaths of like what genocide is and it's often just this kind of like singular event. And I think that similarly this movie is doing that, which I think is sort of why we have those sort of broader, I mean, of course, I don't know, we're not, how often we're going to get movies that are anti-military, anti-cop, like very, very rarely if we're watching films that are $200 million budget, right? Like that you're not going to get that. But I think that like it is kind of like the Royals are bad because they do this one singular act and so there are no reverberations of this event. Right. And so the, I don't know, it's like so interesting what, who, who does this like intergalactic space force answer to also is interesting. It's like who, who is, who's in charge, which also makes them feel like, I don't know, I can't even like fathom a criticism of them because I'm like, they're nothing. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, like speaking to, to your point, like how this is presented in a very movie like way of, oh, well, if you get rid of these three people, everything will be fine. Right. And it's not like it's like, I don't need Jupiter ascending to be like, and here's what this is going to look like on a longer timeline. But I don't think it's unreasonable to want like something that felt like such a gaping hole in this plot is like that we don't even really feel at the end from Jupiter stated intent to do better. Yeah. Right. Or that her, I mean, we know that she, she disagrees with the, I want to keep using the do name, a, a traities. I'm thinking of. Paul. Abrasics. Oh yeah. We know that she knows that what the Abrasics family represents and their genocidal ideology is horrific, but we don't know what she is going to do. Yeah. And that is like, it's very frustrating and bizarre in a movie that seems to want us to leave feeling like this character is going to do better and do differently. But we're just sort of told like, and now she has a boyfriend. Yeah. Right. Well, we learned that Earth is one of many planets. Yeah. That this dynasty harvests from. So is she going to, so wouldn't this be the beginning of a revolution? Like exactly. Like wouldn't she try to, and maybe, I mean, this movie, this movie was planned to be the first of a franchise. So maybe in, in sequels that would never happen because this movie was a flop at the box office. I feel like, I don't know. I should try again. It's time. It's time. Want to know what's. They were just about to tell us. We swear. Just about to show her being the leader of a revolution, but oops, they forgot. Worth mentioning, and this is something we've talked about on many past episodes. So we don't necessarily need to harp on it a ton, but this is an action movie with a protagonist who is a woman who is not allowed to participate in the action. Most of the time. Oh, we should talk about it because it's. Yeah, absolutely. This movie. Yeah, she does nothing. Like not only just like, as we've already talked about, she doesn't really make any active choices that propel the narrative forward, nor does she participate in the actual like action sequences, any fight or chase sequences or anything like that. She is either having to be rescued. She is clinging to Kane who is doing all of the action. Yeah. And I did count like, I think five different times where she needed to be rescued by Kane usually. Yeah. And again, going back to a comparison to The Matrix. Movie starts with Trinity. It starts with Trinity kicking ass. It's about Neo who again, chosen one had no prior combat experience, but in that movie, he trains and he becomes a fighter and then he fights in a bunch of fight scenes. Jupiter also had no prior fighting experience, but then is never trained. It never fights, never participates. And I have to imagine it's because Neo is a man and Jupiter is a woman. And which is all the more frustrating having this come from women filmmakers who are historically feminist filmmakers. They made bound. Yeah. Right. What do you mean Jupiter isn't doing anything? Yeah. I know. You know, thinking back to the weird undressing while she's unconscious and putting things on, even something like that, I feel like is asking for some kind of like, like outfit montage, like, you know, however corny or like silly that would have been, I feel like, like, you know, you get Princess Diaries, you find out your royalty, you get a little makeover montage and I don't want a makeover montage necessarily. But even that is something that is less abhorrent than being like total loss of agency of like you being undressed well unconscious and then changed where like, I don't know, it feels like it feels in line with, well, of course, she also doesn't get to learn to fight because she can't even try on outfits of her own free will. Well, yeah, I mean, with that in mind, it's like one of the few things a lot of women protagonists do have is a way to telegraph their personality through what they're wearing. And Jupiter doesn't even get that because other people are undressing her arguably via assault. So we don't even know like what her personal style is other than like what we see her wearing at work. I, ah, man. Yeah, I, I, I that point about Neo makes so much sense because I was thinking a lot about how in the mid 2010s, there was a lot of talk about Mary Sue characters. Yeah. And like how I think it was sort of a kind of nothing argument in the case of some where yes, there are definitely Mary Sue characters that are, you know, maybe frustrating, but I think that that exists with men as well and is not pushed back on half the same amount and that it's an overcorrection, usually weaponized by male critics. But it almost felt like with Jupiter, it was like, Oh, well, of course, you know, she's just a regular girl. She wouldn't know how to fight. And you're like, yeah, Neo was a regular guy. He was a computer programmer or something, but he learned how to fight and it was awesome to watch. But and also like part of this could be solved by writing is like if we knew that even if Jupiter didn't have the ability she needed at the beginning, if she had the interest in astronomy feels like the obvious thing. If she had an interest in something that could translate to a usable skill, right, but she's not given an interest or an ambition and it's not translated to a usable skill. They don't even bother to give her an interest that doesn't really come up ever. They kind of even just like giving her like a gun or something. I don't know. Like what is this like advanced technology? She doesn't even get like a laser gun or something. I don't know. She doesn't even get to lay it like she. Yeah. Yeah. Her big moment is telling Eddie Redmayne, I'm not your mother and you're like, like hitting him with like a crowbar. What a home victory. That is the one scene where she does some combat in this movie full of combat where they're scuffling, she picks up a pipe or something, gets a few good hits in, but then for some reason tosses her weapon aside and he's still there. He could still very easily overpower her. I mean, Eddie Redmayne really just like pops up wherever the plot needs him to where he's just like, Boink, here I am. He's like, boink. He's so weird. He disappears for like a full hour in the middle of the movie. Well, he's scolding lizards at his masculine. What do you think he's doing? He is so funny in this. I, he, to be fair, I appreciate, I watched a video he gave, a video of an interview he gave on the red carpet at the Oscars where he was about to, I think win for theory of everything. Again, haven't seen it, but he, he did have a very good attitude about. Winning the razzie. He said, quote, I gave what I thought was a very bold performance, but it turned out to be a bit disastrous. No. First of all, don't be so hard on yourself, King. And second of all, I just appreciate when someone takes something like that in stride and it wouldn't be his last big swing that people didn't care for. If you recall him recently appearing in cabaret where a lot of people did not appreciate Eddie Redmayne's swing, I can't speak to it, but, um, yeah, he, uh, he swings me misses. Well, he was just doing what all of them were doing for seven months. Busting their homes. Look, a hums for being busted. Uh, I appreciated the swing. Yeah. I would say that like, I don't know, I, I, as much as I am like, you know, this movie's bad, I love it in all of the ways that it's bad. I think Eddie Redmayne is doing exactly like what you want him to be doing. What's the movie calls for? Yeah. And it's really fun. Like I find it very compelling. I enjoy the choices he's making and like, I don't know, like it's, it's weird and it's kind of like, well, why not? I don't know. Like let's go for it. That's just like, that's a Wachowski movie too of like, yeah, you're, you're a weird villain. I don't know. Yeah. I thought it was fun. I look, I think that as you're talking about this summer, it feels like, I don't know, this is how I feel a lot about like, I Frankenstein sometimes where you're just like, it is, it is unquestionably a swing and a miss, but everyone is, you can really feel everyone being like, we're going to do something cool here. And I just like cannot help but be charmed by it even though it never comes together. It's like, isn't it so cool to try something? You know, it's beautiful. Yeah. I don't know. I just, I think that they should give the razi to someone else. Yeah. There's a few other, there was other women in this movie. The were not many that we really get to know very well, but I did want to shout a family. Character played by Google Mbatha raw, who has been in a bunch of things. She is a half human, half deer. Oh, those are deer ears. Yes. Those are deer ears. They look like gigantic mouse ears, but they are deer ears laid by a very talented actor who was being underused. We also have captain of the ages. Dya Mika. I think I don't know if we hear her name spoken out loud very often, but we do like you call her like captain sing. Yes. Yeah. But we see her a number of times. She is generally just commenting on what others are doing, but hey, so is Jupiter. And she, she has, I think a fair amount of presence in the movie. She's there. Yeah. That might be it. That's more or less it's, it did seem like casting wise. There was a commitment to casting not just white people. It's mostly white people in the main roles. I was going to say with characters who have impact on the plot. I do think it is still majority of the white characters. This is true. Like the bee people didn't need to be white. You know, certainly not. Why? Yeah. Why is Sean B? There they go. I it's all just, it's just like, yeah, who would I wish into this scenario? I don't know. Who was Mr. Knight? What? What is that character? Who is Mr. Knight? I was not quite, I gave up on trying to figure out who Mr. Knight was and just decided to enjoy the ride. Well, think of it like, think of it in terms of minions. I love to. Balaam is grew. Uh-huh. Mr. Knight is probably like Kevin, Kevin LeMignon. He kind of is kind of Kevin coded, isn't he? He reminded me of summer. Did you ever read Cirque du Freak? Mm-mm. Oh, I loved Cirque du Freak when I was a kid. That was my like pre Twilight vampire book. It was like that for pre teens and there's a villain in there that even when I was a kid, I was like, all right, this is getting ridiculous. There was a character named Desmond Tiny, aka Des Tiny. Destiny. And even at the time I was like, all right, all right, this is too much. Great. And I'm 10. Mr. Knight feels like that. Really? Like it's like, what do you look? Sure, I'm 10, but I'm not, I can read. Yeah, I can handle something more complicated than Mr. Knight, but they didn't believe it. Yeah. Des Tiny. I will never stop thinking about Desmond Tiny. I'll never stop thinking about Stinger, a Peanie Stinger P. Thinking about the women, I think it is a bummer that the sister of the family kind of has the least amount to do of the siblings. I guess she does reveal like how their youth works and that's like important plot relevant, but I don't know. Like they all have a weird like erotic relationship with this woman that looks like their mom couldn't she have tricked the married? I don't know. I don't know. I know. It's like, I feel like I want more. Give her more. Yeah. I was like, the other two are being so evil that it's like, it does feel like she mostly just sets up the plot and she's like, we would get along great. Yeah. And then she's gone and you're like, me and all her brothers are, you know, well, especially I think Titus Titus is the weirdest of all. So Titus is the youngest, right? Yes. Okay. I've been, I've been, I've been very Bridgerton pills lately. Um, and so I was thinking about like, you know, like the inheritance in a royal family or like a wealthy family and it's like, oh yeah, I guess, I guess the, the youngest son would be the most evil because he doesn't, he has the least inheritance. Or like the most heads to chop to arrive at an inheritance. Yeah. Yeah. He, he definitely, I was like, wow, he really makes to me because Balum is so, I mean, iconic, but his, his goals are vague. And I think part of what makes Titus diabolical is that he's also like too horny, which is a great quality and a villain. Balum is just kind of pacing around his office yelling at dinosaurs. And his whole thing is I start a sentence loud and then I ended very quiet. And I like, he's just doing something totally different. Yeah. But Titus I feel like is to me the scariest of the three. And I agree that like, you know, not that I, whatever, like if we're going to have three villains, then don't make the woman of them kind of just like vaguely threatening. Yeah. I know. She's kind of just there. I don't know. Like I don't know where her goals are necessarily. I don't know. They all want to manipulate Jupiter in some ways so that they can have access to earth. Yes. They go about it different ways and many of those ways don't really make any sense. But it seems like Coleeks goals being or like the information Coleek in parts being related to physical beauty also feels very gendered. Yes. Because this is not something that the men are really bringing up in the same context again. So whoever is editing this Wikipedia page clearly shares our opinions because in the description, the character description for Coleek, Tupens Middleson as Coleek Abrasax, second primary of the Balamin Titus, a sister whose motives appear to be less business oriented than her brothers, which I think is a polite way of saying, so what does she want? Like it seems like she might just want a friend. Yeah. Also, I didn't know that Terry Gilliam has a cameo in this movie. Whoa. Is who? The seal insignia minister, the bureaucrat who confirms Jupiter's title to earth and I like Terry Gilliam. I wouldn't wreck it, but that's Terry Gilliam and that was like a big deal for the Wachowskis because they love Terry Gilliam. So that's kind of fun. Good for them. Yeah. That's sweet. He directed one of my favorite movies over in 12 Monkeys. He's great. And definitely like a big influence on the Wachowskis. So I thought that was sweet. Wish it was in a different movie, but also kind of awesome because Terry Gilliam has also like the Wachowskis made a lot of swings, some of which have connected and some not so much. And that's what I missed. Also, the fact that they were making, I haven't seen Cloud Atlas before, but that the fact that they were sort of, they were working, they were finishing Cloud Atlas at the time that they were working on Jupiter ascending and you're just like, they just had a rough 2010s. Like there's no way around it. Yeah. I saw Cloud Atlas and it's maybe not their best work to put it lightly. That's okay. But we all just have to go watch Speed Racer to. Yeah. Let's go to Speed Racer. Let's do it. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to talk about? Just the loose, the like aerial fight at the beginning between the bounty hunters in Kane so long, so long. And it's like, there's your Star Wars. You know, it's like very, very much like Pod Racer Phantom Menace vibes. It is. It is. It is. It is very prequels vibes. It's so funny to be like, let's take the thing that people famously hated. And do it too. Do it again. And much like the prequels, my eyes glazed over immediately and you're like, unfortunately, there goes probably $150 million and I just like, I'm like, okay. So where's Channing Tatum Doug? Well, especially because it's characters who we do not know what role they play in the story. Yeah. Channing Tatum is there. His character will become, we will come to understand his significance, but at this point, we don't know who the fuck he is. And the movie doesn't make it clear. So now we're just watching a bunch of random ass people flying around on gravity boots. And we're just like, why am I watching this? Who are these people? What? Well, and the fact, and this is again, like we're, we're like snagging it's on tail at this point, but I'm having so much fun. Like the two characters we meet in the introduction have no bearing on the plot. Jupiter's parents. Yeah. No bearing on the plot. The father, at least of all. Yeah. Yeah. And the mother may be in some draft, but not in what we get. So it's like, we meet two characters very intentionally and basically never interact with them again, except very superficially in the case of Jupiter's mom. Yes. And then like you're saying, like then we meet all these other characters who we have no attachment or stakes to. And unless you watch this movie five times, you don't even know that Sean Bean is half a honeybee. And I really feel like they should really bash you over the head with that information because that's so awesome. Yes. I do love the scene of all of the bees like coming to her. I find it very pretty with the like the, the plants. Yeah. I, it's like, all right. Another like 50 million right there. Cause they must be CGI bees, right? They got it. Oh yeah. What if they just threw a hive of bees at Mila Kunis? That would be so wild. They did do that on Supernatural. Whoa. Say more. Wait. Okay. For listeners that may somehow not know, Summer is the, I was a premier Supernatural scholar. Thank you. Yes. Um, in, in, um, and episode in season one, they sick a swarm of bees on to Jensen Eccles and Jared Padalecki. Um, it is an episode called bugs. There's lots of bugs in it. Um, and they're like real, real bees and they are in enclosed space. Um, and then it didn't show up well on camera. And so they did CGI the bees anyway. Um, and so they just like threw bees on these guys. Um, and this is like season one. And so it's like, you know, you can't, what, what can you, what can you say? You know, you don't have that much power. Right. They're forcing me into a room with bees. And I think about it every time I see bees in any film, any movie. And I'm just like, yeah, I remember. Wow. My friend Nina texted me today and was like, cause she saw that I had logged Jupiter ascending on Letterbox. And she was just like, I think of this movie every time I see bees 10 out of 10. I was like, that's beautiful. A movie. And now I will think of Jupiter ascending every time I see bees. I really will. I don't, I mean, I, and I do. I think of bees are genetically designed to recognize royalty. Like that's my B movie script. Just like, it's just in there all of the time. Um, yeah, I do. I think it's, I think it's a lot of like cool looking things in this movie. I mean, visually, like I think the world building, the production design. Yeah. Visually, like the movie is pretty good. Yeah. I mean, it's like you are getting the Wachowski treatment. Like it is a visual feast. Yeah. I always think about Jupiter's like wedding dress, the, um, like the head piece and like how her hair is so cool. Like very like pop star, you know? I love that. I feel like I always misremember the outfits as like more fabulous than they are. Like they're kind of the dresses themselves are kind of like simple, but yeah, just that, that hair. So gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it passes the back to us. Technically. It does. Look, look, there's no way around it. Mila Kunis meets a lot of blonde women in this movie and there are comfort, like brief exchanges she has with her mother, with her aunt, with the sister, colleague, with colleague. Colleague. I will say that like most interactions that Mila Kunis has with anyone of any gender in this movie, it is mostly her just being like either saying, hello, I'm Jupiter Jones or saying, hello, where am I? What is this? But those are important interactions because I would also like to know where she is and what is this? And then there's that one scene where she says, call me jupe. And then no, it's like, what do you mean? What do you mean? What? Since when do you go by jupe? She like just decided that, surely. Well, she's in space now. She's reinventing herself. It's like when you go to college and you're like, I have a, I'm a new person. It reminded me of a very humiliating like week in middle school for me where I both tried to get people to call, to call me JJ and when that didn't stick, I was like, how about Mimi? And neither of them stuck. Jay, me, me, and I get it. I've never had a nickname that's really worked out for me in my life, but that's okay. It's okay. It's a short name. It's fine. It does pass the bag to test. What about our nipples scale? The scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Summer, I almost want to let you go first. You're the expert like tell us. Oh my God. It's like, it's like the Jupiter is sending in my head. Oh, five. But it's got to be like one. Like there are women present and they talk to each other, but and you know what, I think I'll give it to any redneck. I paradoxically, it's like, I do think. I don't know. He's pulling. He's putting his he's giving it his all. He's he's busting his hump over there. Yeah, I think I'll meet either. I might go one and a half because it's like you can feel intent. I want to believe there's a draft of this script that that really gets it there. The witch house keys are feminist icons, which makes this movie very confusing. I think going back to your earlier point, Summer, that this movie that is like is trying to say something about colonization, but then really kind of refuses to at the end is bizarre, especially because we are like given a character that you would think would have strong feelings about this. It's just a weird one. Women are there. And so one and a half. I'm giving one to Eddie Redman and I'm giving half to the bees. I will give the movie, I think also one and a half because. Oh, no, this is the episode that breaks the system. We're like, what does what do things mean? What does it mean? Because of reasons. And that's exactly what I kept writing in my recap. The first time I watched this movie, they do things because of reasons. And sometimes the reasons become clear with time. Yeah. And sometimes not so much. So I'm going to I'm going to keep it vague, but also we just we just talked for over two hours. So I've already said my piece. It felt it felt earned. I'm like there. I could have kept going there. There's I have more questions. Did telescopes really cost $4,000? I mean, so many more questions. Great question. I'm going to give one nipple to the scene where Titus is having a floating space orgy. Yeah. I can't believe we didn't even talk about that. It's that kind of movie. It's that kind of movie. Yeah. And then okay. And then my half nipple goes to the scene where Jupiter puts a pad on Cain's bleeding wound. Oh my God. How do we not talk about that? Clearly this car. Lucky. What is it? Lucky for you. This car belongs to a woman and then she pulls out of like an overnight maxi pad unwrapped out of the glove compartment and then she sticks the adhesive side side on his wound, which what the hell is that going to do? That's not absorbent. And then it hurts covered in blood, which also feels very systematic for a movie made by two trans women. It's just, I can't believe we did. There's that much going on in Jupiter ascending and he's the side up. I'm like, does she hate him? Wait, who's the bee? Does she hate him? That's going to make the problem far worse. Way worse. Yeah. And yes, it happens right before the bees. Yeah. It just, it's cinema. It's cinema. It's a movie. It is a movie that feels like a movie. Yeah. It really does feel like a movie. Oh. Summer, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. This is so much fun. This was a blast. I feel like I could do this episode again and have it completely new thoughts. I feel like I have ascended to a new plane of existence. So thank you for that. Tell us where people can buy your book, find your work, plug away. So my book, you can buy it through host publications website or check out your local bookstore. We distribute through asterism. You can follow me. I'm still on Twitter, not really at some of this, but you can follow me on Instagram at Borders bookstore. I guess I'm on Blue Sky too at some, I don't know. I don't use that. But Instagram, where does bookstore? That is my crowning achievement. So, um, yeah. Hell yeah. That's, uh, thank you. Also, thank you so much. I good luck finding another movie with, uh, protagonist whose name starts with J. You, I believe you will do it. That'll, that'll, that'll really like narrow it down for like, yeah. Yeah. You're not allowed to come back on the show until you find that movie. But also for, for yes, anything, this was like, oh, yes. There's, sometimes you see a movie like Jupiter ascending and you're like, I think I've, I think we've talked about it all and I, and then you're stumped. Yeah. I'm so glad that was my goal. Yeah. Thank you for being here. Come back anytime. And you can find us on our Patreon, aka matrion, where we do two bonus episodes a month for $5 a month, always on an amazing theme. You get to choose the movies, matrons, a lot of the time, and it's the best way to support the show and you get access to the entire back catalog of now over 200 bonus episodes. So what a damn good special. Hell yeah. And with that, should we put on our gravity boots and roller blade around the sky? But don't worry. If you don't have your boots, we also have wings for some reason, like all dogs, like all dogs. Yeah. Bye. Bye. The Bechtel cast is a production of iHeart Media, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus and me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichterman and edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them? That's me. And our logo and merch and all of our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus, ever heard of her? Oh my God. And our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskrasinski. Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Bechtel cast. No gloss. No filter. Just stories, spoken without fear. A person who is not generous cannot be an artist. The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhachow on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty. Stay for the fire. Three, two, sun. EasyJet's big orange sale is now on with up to 400 pounds of package holidays and up to 20% off flights. Book now at easyjet.com. Get out there. Selected dates and flights sale on 5th of May. 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