Another Pass at Jupiter Ascending

We are joined by CeeJay from the Below Freezing podcast to talk about the Wachowskis’ visually stunning film about an ordinary person who discovers that they are the chosen one and that the world they knew was only a facade meant to distract them as they were cultivated as commodity. That’s right! We’re talking about Jupiter’s Ascending!

CeeJay on Twitter: @ceejayperiod

Below Freezing on Twitter: @Below32Pod

His newsletter: monoplex.substack.com

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Transcript

(Subject to Error)

00:00
CeeJay
And I think because of the world building, Jupiter ascending feels the need to be very complicated. Just like the idea, just out of my. Just pulling this out of a hat, the idea that, like, these human, the human race existed on another planet and came to terraform Earth. And in order to do so, they had to kill all the dinosaurs.

00:28
Speaker 2
Welcome to certain point of views, another pass podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

00:38
Case Aiken
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another pass podcast. I am case Aiken. As always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alicea.

00:45
Sam Alicea
Hi, everyone.

00:46
Case Aiken
And we have a returning guest today. We've got CJ coming from the below Freezing podcast.

00:52
CeeJay
Hello, how are you?

00:55
Sam Alicea
Welcome, CJ.

00:57
CeeJay
Thanks for having me back on.

00:59
Case Aiken
And, CJ, you were recently talking on below freezing about a movie that you thought was really fascinating but flawed, which is the mo of the show. And as soon as you mentioned it, I was. Yeah, yeah. Why haven't we talked about this? Oh, it's because no guests wanted to talk about it. So I reached out to you being like, hey, you want to come on? Because I really want to talk about this movie. So today we are talking about Jupiter ascending.

01:21
CeeJay
Yeah. Jupiter ascending. I saw this movie for the first time on a date, and my date had no idea what was happening from when Channing Tatum showed up for the first time to the end of the movie. And I sat there sort of in awe of this thing because it came out. Did it come out in 2015 or 2014? It came out around there.

01:44
Case Aiken
I want to say 2014.

01:45
CeeJay
So it comes out.

01:47
Case Aiken
Oh, no. It was the winter of 2015. It was February. So it's like, right before I moved from New York.

01:52
CeeJay
Nice. Okay. So it comes out in the midst of, I think, the height of a multiplex, having 14 screens, and twelve of those screens are being filled by giant blockbuster IP. Right. And this thing comes out and it is big and weird, but it features big stars and it has real money behind it, and it's sort of just doing what it wants. And I am always a sucker for that kind of thing happening just because it doesn't happen as often as I would like. And if there's any movie to describe as swings for the fences, it's definitely Jupiter ascending.

02:39
Sam Alicea
Oh, yeah.

02:39
CeeJay
So I'm excited to discuss it.

02:43
Sam Alicea
It is definitely a very ambitious work. And I actually think that my biggest criticism of this work is that I feel that sometimes the characters get lost in the ambition of the story. Right. It's like this world building that is kind of incredible, right? The scope of it. This would actually make a really great series, like, a really great show so that you could actually give the characters.

03:09
CeeJay
I have that exact thought. Yeah, I have that thought with this.

03:11
Sam Alicea
Watch so that you could give these characters room to breathe. But between the costumes, which are some of the most incredible costumes, I think, created for film, between the costumes, the special effects, the spaceships. I am a sucker for anything with spaceships. And just, like, all of the elements and all of the elements that I would love, it checks all of my boxes. And still I did not love this film. It is an okay film, but I was not like. I was like female protagonist. Check. She becomes a queen. Check. Wonderful costumes, check. What is that? Like, air blades, I guess we would call them. They're like roller blades for the sky. Awesome. That's great. And there's all these different alien species, and there's this whole feeling that this world is very complete outside of.

04:18
Sam Alicea
And so they did a really good job with world building, just not with the characters in the world, if that makes sense.

04:26
CeeJay
I agree with you on the characters, and it's mostly due to the actual character of Jupiter Jones, played by Mila.

04:33
Sam Alicea
Agree.

04:34
CeeJay
However, I think there is a way to read this movie in which the sort of flatness of her character makes sense. Person, to me.

04:46
Case Aiken
Go on.

04:49
CeeJay
Because you get all these movies and these stories about chosen ones and stuff like that, and how they know they're destined for greatness. Some of us have greatness thrust upon us or whatever, and then they have to rise to the occasion and be the hero that whatever the land or universe or whatever needs. And I so enjoy that. Jupiter Jones is the most basic bitch in the history of the world. I so enjoy that. This is a movie about a chosen one, and the chosen one is just kind of a. You know, it's the way, know, you tell people not to look at Instagram and judge their own life by what they see on Instagram. Everybody's not going to know the hero. Everybody's not going to be the chosen one. Everybody's not going to be the one who saves the day.

05:44
CeeJay
Some of us are just getting by, and Juniper Jones is a person whose whole life is just about getting by. And then she's thrust into this intergalactic intrigue. But it doesn't change her because most people are who they are when they're adults. It doesn't really change her at all. She's just kind of like, sure, fine.

06:10
Sam Alicea
See, one of my biggest problems is that she's like that seriously I kept thinking like, okay, so this is what really annoyed me. I wish that they had, in the beginning been like, oh, Jupiter, like, you don't give a shit about anything, right? Because that's really how she. Right. But they make this whole point in the first few scenes with her family to just be like, oh, Jupiter doesn't trust anyone. And she's just so hard, and she'll never fall in love because she doesn't trust anyone. That boy was on that planet for how long? And she was like, okay, I'll go with you. And then she ended up on a spaceship, and the woman was like, I'm on your side. And when he came, he was just like, I'll save you, Jupiter. She's like, no, she's on our side.

06:58
Sam Alicea
And then jumped to the next ship, and she's agreeing to marry this other dude and then jump to the last.

07:04
Case Aiken
Guy, like, so instantly.

07:05
Sam Alicea
Yeah, there's actually no proof that she never trusts anyone, ever. That is the one line that needs to be strict. I think if she's just going to be like, Jupiter, I wish you had some ambition. Why are you such a basic bitch? Why do you just wait for pumpkin spice lates? Why don't you have ambition in your life? All you want is a telescope. That's it. That would have been fine, but she doesn't trust anyone. She's hard. No, she's not. She's not. She trusts everyone.

07:36
CeeJay
Yeah, I agree with you. I don't disagree with anything that you said. Again, I don't think that reading that I have of the movie is completely supported by the text, but it was very much supported by how funny her reactions are. It is very much, I think, supported by Mila Kunis's actual performance. Yes.

08:05
Case Aiken
There's definitely a disconnect.

08:07
CeeJay
She has to break a space tablet or something like that, and she kind of just throws it down on the ground. She just touched a hot pot from a stove or something, and she just tosses it down with no regard to what that is actually going to do, how it's going to affect anything that happens. She's kind of just there. And I'm not saying that's good. I'm saying that it's funny and that's part of the reason that I enjoy it.

08:39
Case Aiken
But I think, getting back to the earlier point, I think that it would be even funnier if this was an ongoing Jupiter Jones could feel like a flash Gordon type character, like a human trapped in a world of aliens. And this world is certainly rich enough for that kind of story, and for a lot. But this movie tries to jam, like a season of a tv show into a two or three hour movie. There's so much that happens, and they thus don't spend nearly enough time with any of it. That despite the fact that this movie is very long, it just feels like we're just not getting enough time for any of the things that are important, which includes Jupiter Jones having a real arc.

09:23
CeeJay
Yeah, she doesn't have any agency.

09:25
Case Aiken
Yeah.

09:26
Sam Alicea
She doesn't even have a reckoning with the fact that she's in space and has been kidnapped. Or it's just kind of like, this is happening. And they're like, yeah. And she's like, okay, I own earth. Cool. All right. She even gets annoyed at the bureaucracy. Instead of just being confused and amazed by everything, she's just like, this is dumb. Why am I here? It's actually really funny.

09:57
Case Aiken
Yeah, well, I mean, in that scene, the bureaucracy is so heavy with tape that even a robot gets frustrated and starts bribing people.

10:05
CeeJay
Yeah. Which I found funny. I basically like that entire scene. There are things about this movie I think, character wise, world building wise, and plot wise, that I find very strong. But it doesn't really stick. The landing, especially in the back half. The back half kind of just. Have you ever been carrying several things, and then one thing falls, and then everything else subsequently starts to fall, and you're trying to keep hold of all of the stuff before everything in your hands completely hits the ground? That's kind of what happens at the end of this movie. It kind of felt like it didn't know where to go.

10:50
CeeJay
And I think that your observation about it feeling like a tv show or like a season of a tv show is very interesting because part of me likes that it sort of has all of this stuff going on, but it wraps itself up at the end because it feels like the movie Kroll to me. And Kroll is like this space fantasy fairy tale that came out sort of in the aftermath of Star wars, and it is generally like the movie Excalibur, but it's on a planet that has aliens and stuff, but all the aliens seem to be based on european myths of some sort, and it is also throwing a lot at you. But I think the thing that makes Kroll work more than this is that Kroll's story is very simple.

11:49
CeeJay
And I think because of the world building, Jupiter ascending feels the need to be very complicated. Just like the idea, just pulling this out of a hat, the idea that the human race existed on another planet and came to terraform Earth. And in order to do so, they had to kill all the dinosaurs. I feel like that's not a throwaway thing, especially when you have, like, lizard creatures, because all it did was make me think, so are the lizard guard alien folks like descendants of the dinosaurs? And there are pockets of stuff like that sent my mind into other places, and I wasn't paying attention to the movie anymore or what was happening inside the actual story. I was trying to dig into the world.

12:48
CeeJay
And I think that has a lot to do with what you said about characterization, which I think hinges on Jupiter, but nobody else is doing any heavy lifting. I think characterization, the performances, is doing a lot of heavy lifting, especially with the supporting cast, because Channing Tatum and his stern, albino half wolf alien person and then Eddie Redmayne. And that was a choice.

13:22
Sam Alicea
It was a choice. He stuck to the choice. It was a choice.

13:31
CeeJay
But I think there's a few things that this movie could have done, really, without changing much, that would have made it a much more enjoyable experience and a weirder experience, because it is weird. It does have a lot going on, but I think it could be a tiny bit more absurd, a tiny bit more wackadoo, and a lot of the stuff that we've been complaining about would be forgiven.

13:58
Case Aiken
Well, yeah, I think you brought up a really good point by comparing it with general fantasy lore, like being like Excalibur, because this is ultimately about a night errant saving a princess. And even the last act is like, we're going to basically lay siege to this hellfire kingdom or like a Mordor kind of thing. And it has all the tropes. He's fighting a literal dragon at the end. He's got an actual shield no one feels like, because there's this feudal kind of structure to it, like this very dune like kind of world that they're setting up that currently exists. It can't help but feel like a medieval story here.

14:40
Case Aiken
And so there are plenty of tropes that we could work with that don't need to be excised from this to be like, yeah, it was perfectly fine, but I think by the time we get to the end, like you said, it got so complicated in terms of what are the stakes, what will happen to things, how does this all work? And there are so many that catch you and you have to take a moment to process the line, like the throwaway about the dinosaurs. I definitely missed that the first time, and I don't remember them saying that at all. And then this time I was watching. I was like, wait, did he just say that they killed the dinosaurs?

15:11
Sam Alicea
What?

15:12
Case Aiken
And then I had to start thinking about the timeline for things and how the whole process works because, I don't know. It's a really interesting world they set up, but it keeps stopping me to make me think about the Sci-Fi tropes that they're using, which is preventing me from really digging just how simple a story and how fast everyone's emotions fall into the beats of that story. Mila, Jupiter is really into Kane very fast, and I get it. He just saved her from crazy flying spaceships and all that. And it was a dope ass action scene, and her heart's probably beating faster than a hummingbird's wings can flap, but she's in love with him real quick.

15:56
CeeJay
Also is a alien person with flying boots who looks like Channing Tatum. And Channing Tatum is hot. And there's been, like, a real weird sort of reappraisal of Channing Tatum on the Internet recently where they're just like, was Channing Tatum ever hot? Yes, of course he was. And anybody who tells you he wasn't is lying to you. But I get, like, again, she's basic. She doesn't have a lot going on. A shirtless man who's got, like, fucking elf ears and rides the sky, of course. But I completely agree with you that it falling in with the beats of the story does, again, make things sort of a foregone conclusion. And they could have a little bit more conflict. They don't actually have a conflict together. That's something I noticed this time going around.

16:53
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah, I have notes about that. That's a big thing I want to talk about.

16:56
Sam Alicea
The person with trust issues has no trust issues. None.

17:01
Case Aiken
Neither one of them. The text says both of them have trust issues. Like, Kane doesn't like the entitled is the thing that they say about him. And he has, like, one throwaway line of being like, you should have told me. And that's doesn't. He's never mad at her after that point. And that would have given him something to do for about half the movie. And instead he's just like, shows up to save her from shit. Three fucking separate times from all the people she trusts. Or four or five. Yeah, every arc of this. And if this was fucking Power Rangers, Kane showing up to save the day would be them calling the Megazord. It's going to happen every time, and it plays out the exact same way. And it's cool scenes. I fucking love them. I will watch that shit all over again.

17:49
Case Aiken
But it doesn't change it up. And we never have different emotional beats for it. It's just Kane really wants to protect her, so he shows up and he protects.

18:02
Sam Alicea
There's not. There's not much to do for these two leads, to be honest with you. Even in the script, there's not a lot for them to do. And the script has other information that the script doesn't follow up on. Like, the script doesn't follow its own text, which is almost worse than an actor disregarding the text.

18:26
CeeJay
Also, this movie is woefully deficient of any of the extreme horniness that the production design is I feel like calling for.

18:40
Sam Alicea
I agree.

18:41
CeeJay
And nobody really is playing it up performance wise. I do think that line is very funny where she's just. Where he's like, I'm more dog than person. And she's like, I love dogs. I've always loved dogs. That was funny to me in the trailers before the movie came out. It is funny to me every time I watch this thing. But yeah, I think that there's something missing in the way that they behave toward one another because we understand that they have to get together. The movie sets that up pretty well. It's just that you don't really see why. Like, they don't even get an enemies to lovers thing, which I think the stuff about his character not liking entitles or whatever was supposed to set up it all just sort of.

19:45
Case Aiken
Don't spoil my pitch. Those are literal words. I have.

19:48
CeeJay
I apologize. But yeah, I just wish there was a little bit more time spent, again, making a little bit more time spent characterizing Jupiter in a way that would have been narratively satisfying by the end because it just kind of wasn't.

20:07
Sam Alicea
I did like the villains. I want to say something positive. I did like the. And I enjoyed them. And I enjoyed the plot of the fact that it's like this very rich family that basically rules over the universe. Several universes, many planets, and they kind of treat them like commodities. They're property, they're something that they own and that the beings that are on these planets, they really view them as cattle and basically just tools for their life. And I thought one of the best lines was when the three immortals were together. And the younger brother, or I assume he's younger because he'd be played by the younger actor. The younger brother asks his sister if she's ever seen a culling, if she's ever seen what is done to actually create what she bathes in to keep her young.

21:11
Sam Alicea
And she's just like, no, but I hear it's very humane. I thought that was really great. There are certain statements in this that kind of do what good Sci-Fi is supposed to do and kind of point to issues in society. So it does attempt to do that. It does do that. It did get that across on some level. I don't know if it's like 100% efficient because there's so much happening. I think the problem is there's just so much happening. This movie has so much to say. But I want to give props to that because I think that it is a good fantasy story and there are ways that it upholds good Sci-Fi lessons. Science fiction fantasy lessons.

21:59
Case Aiken
I wanted to take a step back and look at the world building, and they're perfect examples of that. The world building is so nice, especially up front. And I love that. It's hard not to make a matrix comparison with the Wachowskis because structurally this movie is the Matrix in that she lives in a world that she's not seen, that the real world is a layer separate from the world that she's currently in. And that all the way that they first make contact, like all the agents and so forth feel like I even just said agents and I wasn't intending to be the agent. They are. They're effectively the agents. They're the controlling influences that are sort of manipulating society. They're able to wipe people's brains. All this stuff ultimately comes together to feel like a matrix world.

22:42
Case Aiken
It's just instead of it being a computer simulation, it is effectively a terrarium that we all live inside of. But what I think is really fascinating and the key difference between the matrix and this is that this is a matrix that we put ourselves into. It is a world where humanity has gotten to the point where we are harvesting ourselves for our own survival. And I think that's really a really interesting and gross situation for humanity to be in. And I love it. It's really heavy handed with the whole like, this is capitalism unbound to the point where it effectively becomes feudalism because there is some kind of government. But the people who are so rich don't need to worry about that. They effectively have their fiftens, they have their domains, they have their vassals.

23:34
Case Aiken
And again, it's like all pyramid structured where we have people at the top who have then underlings who are also very powerful in their society. And they have underlings who are less powerful and then go on and so forth until eventually we just get to humans being cattle, and that's really cool. And it's a classic Sci-Fi thing. It feels like the Morlocks in the time machine, like, raising up other humans to be their food. Spoiler for the time machine. If you haven't read 120 year old.

24:05
Sam Alicea
Sorry, everyone. Spoiler.

24:08
Case Aiken
But in the far future of the time machine, one group of humans starts eating another group of humans, and that's their cattle. And it's like that without the post apocalypse part. This is like, all right, yeah, we just go on. And eventually, yeah, we don't care about ourselves at all. This is a society that has stripped away the actual humanity from it in favor of just profit. But that profit is this weird concept of time.

24:33
Sam Alicea
Yeah, profit and vanity.

24:35
CeeJay
Yeah, because all they're doing is pouring it into, like, a jacuzzi so they can have a stem cell bath every, like, a thousand years.

24:44
Case Aiken
Yeah. It's probably not even the most efficient.

24:46
CeeJay
Use of that, but, yeah.

24:48
Sam Alicea
I mean, do you have other proposals? You're going to go to the galactic senate.

24:54
Case Aiken
Yeah, like a de aging sponge thing.

24:56
Sam Alicea
I'm pretty sure you're gonna have to fill out several forms in order to get that proposal and get your. Yeah, but you're gonna have to show your tax bat and get your tax code first.

25:08
CeeJay
Oh, man. I'm actually very excited to see what your pitches are and how different they make the movie that we have, because, one, I agree with Sam in that it's very long. It's incredibly long. And two, I agree that there's entirely too much going on. But also, I had a hard time trying to figure out what I would take away because I think so much of it is so interesting, but the time is not used very well in the way that those things are doled out.

25:52
Sam Alicea
Listen, I'm with you. I don't think anyone should be excited about my pitch, because this was actually a really hard one for me in particular, because it's not that I loved this film. It's not like I'm like, oh, my God, guys, this is a great film, because it wasn't. But there are so many elements that I really liked. And when I went to this movie, because I saw this in theater, I wanted to like this. I was rooting for this movie. I wanted this movie to be the thing. Right. And it was really hard because I really like a lot of what they did with this universe. I like a lot of what. It's just. There's just too much going on. So when I was sitting there trying to think of it, I was just like, but what would I cut?

26:42
Sam Alicea
But what wouldn't I do? How do I make it succinct? And I think that's the challenge. How do you edit it down and then add small bits so that you can get a little of a character arc.

26:57
CeeJay
Yeah.

26:58
Sam Alicea
Especially between the leads. The leads, really? Honestly, I found a lot of the background characters a lot more interesting, and I found myself being, huh. I wonder what that character's like on their home planet.

27:11
Case Aiken
Like Ganesh the Elephant man or, pardon me, just nesh.

27:14
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

27:16
Case Aiken
Oh, can we talk for a second? Just about how everyone who isn't a main character has a name that is just, like, whatever animal they are. Even Channing, they spell it out like Canis.

27:28
Sam Alicea
Yeah. I'm going to say they weren't very creative with the names. In any case. Even Jupiter's name is alliteration. She's Jupiter Jones.

27:38
CeeJay
Yeah. I think there's something really pulpy about that.

27:45
Case Aiken
And again, she feels like a flash Gordon type.

27:48
CeeJay
Yeah.

27:48
Case Aiken
But just gender flipped.

27:49
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Or this is like a very JK Rowling. Like, I'm just going to name everything.

27:55
Case Aiken
Exactly what it means again, I really like this world. I keep coming back on Kane, where I can't tell. I feel like he's in this uncanny valley of prosthetics where a little bit less, and I would be like, yeah, that's a beautiful Channing Kadem right there. And maybe a little bit more, and he would feel a little bit less. I don't know. There's just, like, something kind off, and I guess maybe that's the albino thing that they're also trying to do on top of everything else. I kept thinking about gargoyles in this, and I was like, well, what if he had more, like, grayish kind of skin or something? Something to further deviate him from humans but without making him less.

28:44
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

28:46
Case Aiken
We don't need to go full on Ron Perlman, the beast, or, like, beauty and the beast kind of design.

28:52
Sam Alicea
We know. You got to keep him pretty. You got to keep him pretty, right?

28:54
Case Aiken
Yeah, I got to keep him pretty because I feel like they lean a little bit too much into this kind of, like, he's got kind of, like a gimp fetish kind of look to him with this tight leather going on, and then the exposed shoulders, and then you get the elf stuff because all the space stuff has this faye quality to it because it's just outside of our line of sight, and there's these courts and kingdoms and so forth. There's a lot of fairy kind of imagery going on. He's got the pointed ears, and he can float around, and he used to have wings, we find out. So I kind of want either a little bit more or a little bit less. But right now, I don't know, he feels a little bit too much like late 90s style.

29:41
Sam Alicea
Listen, if they made him gray or bluish gray, like a dark elf, that still works for girls, it would be fine.

29:49
CeeJay
Works for CJS, too. Not going to lie.

29:52
Sam Alicea
It works for CJS. CJ approved. But honestly, I actually like that idea, because this is primarily a fantasy film, and so it would have been kind of cool to have him be. I mean, who doesn't love a dark elf?

30:13
CeeJay
I also think in terms of the production design, I think the production design is so cool. There's lots of interesting shapes and lines that go into all of the different halls and the spaceships and things like that. The costume design was at its best when it was on Eddie Redmayne.

30:32
Sam Alicea
Yeah, he had the best capes.

30:35
CeeJay
He had the best capes. And also, back to the movie needing to be a smidge more horny. Take it there. But the.

30:49
Case Aiken
No, by all means, take it there.

30:51
CeeJay
I think that the aliens, barely anyone, was showing enough skin. I think that because of the way that the spaceships were designed, the shapes were very flowy. There was a lot of spaces in between. I thought that the clothing would match it. And I'm not talking, like, in the citadel part where they're doing the bureaucracy scene, where everybody has to go through, but even though you can see on the robot bureaucrat person that's taking them around, the design of his head even has that same motif going with the spaces. Everything's very sharp. I want to find another way to say shapes, but the shapes are very stringy and flowy. They feel like garments, almost. You can tell the design in the way that the buildings are formed, especially Douglas Booth. What was his character?

31:53
CeeJay
He was the son that was trying to marry his reincarnated mom, Titus. His spaceship in particular, was very much, like, shared this motif and where everything sort of looks like different angles of seeing the rings of a planet. And I thought that the clothes might be more like that, and the clothes were like that on Eddie Redbayne, but everybody else was just wearing, like, met galar gowns and shit.

32:24
Sam Alicea
That spaceship was really cool, first of all. But I have to say that they did do a little peek at him, kind of like in midst orgy, but with not very orgy. It was very tight on his face with, like, a cup.

32:43
CeeJay
People were floating around each other and moaning.

32:46
Sam Alicea
And there were, like, a couple of heads near his head. And then there were just some body parts that you could kind of sort of see. And it made it look like they were like he was just in a pool of people, which is fine, but it was very close, so you couldn't really tell what was going on. And that's about as sexy as this movie got because you're right. There wasn't a lot in it. There was, like, maybe the one scene early on with, oh, I can't remember her name. The older sister who likes to be. Looks like she. And she's heading into the bath to basically show the rejuvenation and the power of it. And that's about it.

33:30
Sam Alicea
And then you get a couple of kisses towards the end, one during a battle scene, which always bugs me because I always think, stop. You're running for your lives. I understand why people are doing it. Right. The heightened emotion. But my brain always goes into panic mode. Like, guys, people are trying to kill you.

33:49
Case Aiken
They were actively being shot at.

33:50
Sam Alicea
Yeah, people are trying to kill you. Move. I don't know why I feel like I'm in that moment. I'm like, excuse me, lovebirds. Get a room. When this is done, I'll pay for it.

34:03
CeeJay
Fuck.

34:03
Case Aiken
She could pay for it. She's rich.

34:05
Sam Alicea
Well, I mean, she only owns human chattel and she's not trading it in. So I don't know how rich she actually is.

34:16
CeeJay
I also think that the human chattel thing was a little heavy for the tone.

34:21
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah. There were definitely moments where it's just like, oh, yeah, this is just about consumerism. It's gotten real bad.

34:29
CeeJay
Yeah. Part of the thing was that 100 human beings or 1000 human beings had to be killed to create, like, a block of the space. Stem cells.

34:45
Sam Alicea
Yeah, it was 100.

34:47
CeeJay
It was 100.

34:47
Sam Alicea
And then she dropped them.

34:49
CeeJay
Yeah. And that was a lot. I feel like that's a lot to throw in a movie like that.

34:58
Sam Alicea
Again, this movie has really big ideas. Like, it's got huge ideas and not enough time to deal with the repercussions. Can't talk. Repercussions of those ideas. Right. Like, yes. Jupiter holds it in her hands. She realizes how many dead human souls or whatever essence they collect is in that vial and then she drops it. And then she's even more upset because she's dropped it. And he's like, it's fine. It's cool. And I actually didn't mind that moment because I was like, well, that felt.

35:34
CeeJay
That'S how he would behave. Yeah.

35:35
Sam Alicea
That's like the most real moment of this film, probably. But there's not enough to really dissect what they're actually trying to say. These are grand ideas. These are huge ideas. Right? This is like subjugation and using people as a monetary, not just for money. These people aren't just like commerce. They're literally bred for the purpose that eventually these aliens will come around and harvest a planet and just wipe out people so that they can squish them.

36:14
CeeJay
And use them as, like, fucking eye cream or whatever.

36:17
Sam Alicea
Exactly. There's something that's a very big feeling there. It's not just a commentary on capitalism, although it is, but it's also a commentary on just, like, ethics and the 1% and people who don't have empathy and don't have compassion and become so dissected. And if you live a long time, can you still have that compassion? Like, at one point he said, my mother never cleaned toilets. And she said, well, maybe that's the problem. This disconnect of what is hard labor, of what is everyday things, of understanding others and empathizing with them, because there's so much going on in this movie. You just have a bunch of throwaway lines that are trying to get to the root and the heart of it, but it doesn't always connect because there's so much else going on.

37:14
CeeJay
Yeah, there's too many ideas and they're.

37:16
Sam Alicea
Good, but they're just a lot.

37:20
Case Aiken
Can we talk about the. This is part of thesis of the piece, but it's a smaller part of the world, which is Jupiter's family back home. Yeah, yeah.

37:30
Sam Alicea
Can we talk about those? We. I have real feelings about that family.

37:37
Case Aiken
Well, we've got this very heavy handed metaphor of her selling her eggs and being kind of uncomfortable about the whole thing.

37:44
CeeJay
Yeah.

37:46
Case Aiken
Which is, I think, fine, but the pressure. And then this recurring thing with her cousin who set it all up and did the very heavy handed, like, that's capitalism. I make profits go up. The fact that we keep coming back to him and that he almost gets punished for not having the money. Never resolved, by the way.

38:04
CeeJay
No.

38:07
Case Aiken
Is unnecessary. Every time we cut back to the family back at home, I was like, I don't care about any of this. Why are we seeing this? It was good to set them up at the beginning as having stakes for her that are more immediate than just her species. And we can set up some of themes that are going to be played out on a broader scale. But after that, it was just like, I don't need to see this. And it's perfectly fine to come back to them when they are kidnapped and used as hostages. Fine there. But I don't need to see any time spent being like, what the fuck's going to go on with this tv that we bought? It's so big. Way too much.

38:44
CeeJay
Yeah. The family didn't do much for me because they didn't have any sort of redeeming factor that would lead me to believe that Jupiter would care about them going forward or have any extreme sort of positive feelings towards them. Like if. Maybe if that older cousin had shown some support for whatever Jupiter had going on. But also that raises the question, what did Jupiter have going on?

39:30
Case Aiken
She wanted to buy a telescope, and I thought she wanted to buy it for her mom. And then at the end, the mom gets it for her.

39:36
Sam Alicea
The whole family pitches in and buys it for her.

39:39
Case Aiken
Right. No, I know it's the whole family, but I thought she was buying it for her mom because it was a thing about her dad and it's not a thing that she ever personally saw.

39:48
CeeJay
Yeah, that's something that doesn't make a ton of sense. Also, you get, like, the mom finds out about her wanting to buy the telescope. Two axe into the movie, and by that time, it doesn't really mean anything because then they have to get kidnapped.

40:10
Case Aiken
But at the end, when she finally gets it, I'm like, who cares? Now, you've been to space, right?

40:15
Sam Alicea
Like, you're not staring up at the stars anymore. You can probably call down a fleet of people to take you up there. You are still the owner of Earth. You clearly still have connection to space. Yeah, no, the family didn't do a lot for me, be honest with you. When he was just like, they've got your family. I almost thought so, right? Which felt very callous. But I was just like, what did her family actually do? Like, her uncle just would sit at the table and belittle her and tell her that she would never pay him back and all she wants is shoes.

40:54
CeeJay
Or something like that. And we don't know. Maybe Jupiter asked for some money for shoes before the movie started. I don't know, but it is super dismissive. And you know who they could have kidnapped? And I would have been like, oh, what's Jupiter going to do? The bees. If they had kidnapped the bees did more for Jupiter than her family in the movie.

41:19
Sam Alicea
Heck, Sean Bean's daughter did more for Jupiter than her family.

41:23
CeeJay
Yeah. Also, there's this thing where Sean Bean. Did they ever explain why Sean Bean's daughter was sick?

41:29
Sam Alicea
They named some space disease, like the equivalent of the gout, but he named it as something. And that's like. I don't know who's, like, she's got the cough or space gout. Yeah, that's my official word. She's got space Gout. No, they definitely said something, but it sounded like he was like, she's got the cough. Blah, blah, blah. And she does cough, like, in one scene, and she's, like, walking off and it leads you to believe that this is, like, something that's deadly and that the immortals could fix. So he made this deal so that she could be rejuvenated and it could be fixed. But it's probably just gout.

42:14
CeeJay
But it's just a space gout. Oh, boy.

42:16
Sam Alicea
As one gets when you're living on.

42:19
CeeJay
Earth, got to watch out for that space gout.

42:22
Case Aiken
I mean, thinking about this movie, I keep coming around to being like. I really like all the stuff that are going into it as like an intellectual exercise, like doing this feudal structure and like I said, these sort of fantasy faye elements to everything, but it's actually just super advanced humans. I enjoy that. I enjoy the idea of harvesting people as something you'd like because relish. But it's like, it's a suitably fucked up kind of thing.

42:50
Sam Alicea
This is the wrong crowd to say that in front of. Go on.

42:53
Case Aiken
It's a suitably fucked up thing as an evil motivation and being used as this heavy handed metaphor for capitalism. I think this is all fine stuff that they're doing here. I think there's all this Sci-Fi design work that you can see that they love anime and you can see the things that they really enjoy going into it. Like I said, the design work is great. I think that there's annoying elements that are super close to my pitch if I'm ever allowed to make a Wildcats movie, like the things I would do to sort of make that particular setting work. So it's, like, frustrating for me looking at it and being like, oh, yeah, they did those kind of things. And it's not that they're that original.

43:31
Case Aiken
It's just that they're taking this whole mishmash of Sci-Fi concepts and making it all fit together into this movie. I love all of that. And then I don't care about the characters that much. And that's. There's. It's just so much is happening, and I don't have the. Like, I barely remember the character names. Sure, her name's Jupiter, and it's hard to forget that one because the title of the piece is Jupiter ascending, but it's Mila Kunis. And I have to keep reminding myself that Channing Tatum the dog man is named Kane because it's just Channing Tatum. All of this is like they're playing out this grand, operatic thing. But I kind of care about the character elements and the actual story that they're telling, the way I care about watching a friend's kid in a high school bike. Yeah, but that's sort of that.

44:26
Case Aiken
But I love the set design. I love all the work they're doing such a good job, guys.

44:31
Sam Alicea
It's also very level video game ish when it comes to the bad guys and Jupiter hanging out with them. Right? So she hangs out with the woman, and then she gets kidnapped, and she hangs out with the younger guy, and then she's with Eddie Redbaid. It's like, there's no point that any of them, they just give up. It's just like, oh, well, my sister has him, my brother has him now, so I can't do anything about it. Oh, well, marriage didn't work. Darn. I guess I don't need that. Which I think I was just like, I get Eddie Redmayne. Like, his character is supposed to be the baddest of the bad, and he feels that he's entitled to this because that's what he got for his mother when his mother passed away. And now that she's back.

45:25
Sam Alicea
And he also has a lovely, very confusing thing where he just keeps talking to Jupiter as if. Even though she's a reincarnation, as if she has all the memories of his mother, which I thought was actually pretty interesting in the script. Again, they don't really spend that much time together, so it's not something that's integral. And again, just like everything else, it becomes a couple of really amazing lines in the midst of a longer. There's like, there's some edible themes. Like, even with Tristan wanting to marry her, I mean, yes, it's for property, but it is the reincarnation of his mother, the fact that Redmayne is constantly talking to her as if that's his mom. And there is almost the way that he plays it kind of like this sad, romantic, like, you asked me to do it. You were miserable.

46:30
Sam Alicea
You asked me to do it. Like this huge sacrifice that he had made for the love of his mother, and all he wants is her property. I mean, just sign it over so I can harvest all the people, you know? And this goes back to just not being sexy enough. I mean, I don't necessarily think moms and sons getting together is sexy, but this is a missed opportunity to add some creepiness that they just kind of shied away from because there's too much going on.

46:58
Case Aiken
Yeah, this movie kind of needs the rave scene from matrix reloaded. Like just a big orgy that we see a lot of, not just the close up one person. Like, Titus'ship should have just been like a full on fuck boat. Everyone's just traveling around. All the rich people on it are just, like, going town. And then there's servants who are kind.

47:19
CeeJay
Of like, wiping down the floors and stuff.

47:21
Case Aiken
Stepping in with water bottles. Exactly.

47:23
Sam Alicea
Absolutely.

47:24
CeeJay
That would have been hilarious, actually. No, I'm going to save that for when we get to the pitch stuff. But, yeah, I agree.

47:37
Sam Alicea
Just mopping down floors, sighing when something goes flying across the room. A sex toy. Just all these wonderful deleted scenes of just people cleaning up after their mess.

47:49
Case Aiken
Yeah. Like, Jupiter arrives on the ship and there's like this. All these pedestal or podiums or something that she's, like, walking by and it looks like a museum. And she's like, what's this? And it's like, that's for your butt.

47:58
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

48:02
CeeJay
I wonder who does keep all of this stuff clean. It was funny. They were in the palace of the sister where they go see the statue of the mom, and she's got all those candles. And whenever I see a bunch of nonsense on the floor, whether it be candles, it'd be like some romantic scene in a movie where there's, like, rose petals. My first, I don't know, maybe it's turning 2026 and past that point. I've just always been like, who's going to clean that up?

48:30
Sam Alicea
It's true, though.

48:31
CeeJay
Whose responsibility is this? Every single candle that was on the floor.

48:36
Sam Alicea
And you know they got to change those candles out, right? Because you know those are always lit. Right? So there's someone that has to come through, figure out which ones have melted, scrape it off the floor, replace it with a new candle, light it like that person. It's probably a tiny dinosaur, to be honest with you.

48:53
Case Aiken
Like a little Compton Mathis. Like running out. Yeah, with its tiny little finger.

48:57
Sam Alicea
Listen, this movie is kind of like a fanfic writer's dream because there's not a lot going on with the characters, but so much about the world. So you can basically warp these characters to anything.

49:12
CeeJay
My God. The Kane Titus section of an archive of our own must be gargantuous. Gargantuan. It's just like, oh, my God, it's so big. I came up with a new word for it. Gargantuous. It has to be huge.

49:28
Sam Alicea
Yeah, absolutely. Case is like, okay, well, he's like, these two are not allowed to speak anymore to each other.

49:40
Case Aiken
No, I'm here for it. I'm like, all right. I don't know what I can more contribute or what's the best dirty joke I can make from this? I don't know.

49:49
CeeJay
Just saying.

49:50
Case Aiken
Yeah, but I think we're all in agreement. Like, man, there needs to be more fucking going on in this.

49:57
CeeJay
Yeah. There was a piece that came out, and I think the writer's name is R. S. Benedict, about modern blockbusters and their extreme lack of sexiness. There are a lot of people who are in peak physical condition all over these blockbusters and. And all over, you know, mainstream film, but nobody in the films is having sex, and nobody in the films, like, hit people hitting on each other is, like, perfunctory or feels weird or, like, it comes off weird because we don't see that. And I've been watching recently a lot of movies from before the year 2000 where I don't know what happened before the year 2000, but it seemed like before then, everybody wanted to fuck each other all of the time.

50:55
CeeJay
And now in movies, everyone is just sort of there to speak to each other and get a box, and there's, like, outside forces who want the box, and they got to keep the box, but then they lose the box, and the outside forces have the box, and by the end, they have to save the world with the box, and we.

51:14
Case Aiken
Find out that box had a blue laser in the sky, as boxes are want to do. Yeah, it's a mystery why that happens with that box, the real mystery box. Anyway, I have a head cannon thing that makes this movie work a lot better for me, and it's not a pitch, but I just want to say it out loud, which is that, for me, this movie would work a lot better if it was shaved down a lot and then just was just one of the chapters in Cloud Atlas, because I think it has a lot of the same themes. Chattel slavery is a huge part of all of that. I think it's got plenty of elements that kind of work, and I think it actually kind of works with the future stuff that we see in that series.

51:55
Case Aiken
And I think this has the same level of depth of storytelling of any of the chapters in Cloud Atlas, which is kind of the problem of Cloud atlas. All of the stories in that are like surface level, and this is kind of in the same.

52:11
CeeJay
Yeah, I haven't seen Cloud Atlas, so I can't speak to that.

52:15
Case Aiken
I am a much bigger fan of Cloud atlas than I am of this. I will say that, yeah, I see.

52:21
CeeJay
Tons of movies and so many of them would work better as like 45 minutes to hour long shorts. But I think the runtime is so bloated because they had all of these ideas. And I just wish that some of that energy was put towards interweaving those ideas in this overarching plot with motivations and reasons for being for the people that we have to spend most of the time with. And I also wish, special effects wise, that the movie would have come out like ten years before it did go.

53:00
Case Aiken
On, because I actually really like.

53:02
Sam Alicea
You're hoping that it wouldn't rely so much on the special effects.

53:05
CeeJay
Is that why part of it, or at least some of them, would be a little bit more practical? Because like I said before, the movie is weird, but I don't know if it's necessarily weird enough in the same way you're talking about them. Sort of like going a little bit harder with the edible stuff. If the movie had decided to be a bit sexier, it feels like something that is weird, but only as weird as it could be to still try and be commercial, which at the end of the day, it was still too weird to be commercial. But, yeah, I just wish that the dragon creatures that Eddie Redmayne is whispering at the entire movie, they look kind of like the puppets from the dark crystal.

54:05
CeeJay
And what would the movie look like if some more stuff like puppetry and things and stuff like that were used and they didn't have the special effects to rely on and they had to cut corners in some way and they had to build things from scratch. What would some of that stuff look like?

54:24
Sam Alicea
Yeah, I could see that definitely puppet up some of these aliens.

54:28
CeeJay
And this isn't to say that the special effects themselves are bad, it's that I tend to respond more to practical effects. And the movie is inspired by so many movies that came before it, that because of the time and the technology that was available, had to use puppetry, had to use miniatures, had to be a lot more tactile in creating these worlds. Part of me was missing that in this.

55:00
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to think, because it's a Wachowski movie, and this is 16 years after the first Matrix movie. And I feel that their style is such fascination with pushing the envelope of special effects and trying new things with it that I just don't think that's a movie that they would have made.

55:20
CeeJay
And I completely buy that. I completely buy that. That makes total sense to me. It's just that their chosen genre, which is space opera, has this long, storied history of very practical, very tactile, tangible. You can touch most of the things on screen kind of effects. And I felt like because of the genre that they're playing in, that stuff missing sort of took away from it a little bit, if that makes sense.

55:51
Case Aiken
Oh, it totally does. I have a note that this feels like a Star wars prequel, and I think that's the same type of problem. The story is kind of bloated and nothing feels very real. But there's a lot of good ideas in play, and as a result, I like it a lot. But I also can't say that it's a good movie.

56:06
CeeJay
It's like, what if Cinderella was Romeo and Juliet was the phantom menace? That's this movie.

56:11
Case Aiken
Yeah. Sam, you got anything on that?

56:13
Sam Alicea
No. I was nodding, and I realized that you can't see that because I don't have my camera on. I was like, yeah, that makes sense. It just hit me, and I was like, I feel like there's, like, one other thing, but I couldn't think of another. I was like, it's got to be like commentary on capitalism. But, yeah, there's a strong political stance in this, too. Yeah. No, I actually love the idea of practical effects. I mean, one of my favorite shows was Farscape, and I think one of the things that made that work so well is all the puppets in it. Like, the aliens felt so real because they were practical effects. Like, Rigel was there, pilot was there for the actors touch and to feel.

56:59
Sam Alicea
But I understand what you're saying, case, about just, like, the style that the Wachowskis have in terms of just loving. They love their special effects and they do it well. I didn't have a problem with any of the special effects in this film. I thought that overall, it's a beautiful film. Like, this film is actually really beautiful. Like, the design, the way that the world fits. Like, everything really fits really well. Like, I remember there were all sorts of articles and everything about the wedding dress that Mila Kunis wore in that scene, especially because the headpiece was so elaborate for them to really. They spent a lot of time really thinking about what this world would look like and feel like in their design choices. So I think overall, that's good.

57:59
Sam Alicea
I feel like we're getting close to pitches, but before we pitch, maybe case we should.

58:05
Case Aiken
Yeah, we should probably pause for a second and give a shout out to one of the many shows that we have on our network, which are all great, and we should do that.

58:14
Sam Alicea
Yeah, let's do it.

58:15
Case Aiken
Let's break to that. And when we come back, we will have pitches.

58:18
Sam Alicea
Hey there, screen beans. Have you heard about screen snark?

58:22
Case Aiken
Rachel, this is an ad break. They aren't screen beans until they listen to the show.

58:26
Sam Alicea
Fine. Potential screen beans. You like movies and tv shows, right?

58:31
Case Aiken
I mean, who doesn't? Screen snark is a casual conversation about the movies and television shows that are shaping us as we live our everyday lives.

58:38
Sam Alicea
That's right, Matt. We have a chat with at least one incredible guest every episode, hailing from all walks. We've interviewed chefs, writers, costumers, musicians, yoga teachers, comedians, burlesque dancers, folks in the.

58:51
Case Aiken
Film and tv industry, and more. We'd be delighted for you to join us every other Monday on the certain.

58:56
Sam Alicea
POV podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts, fresh and tasty off the presses.

59:02
Case Aiken
What? No, that's not.

59:04
Sam Alicea
Can I call them screen beans now? Fine, screen beans.

59:14
Case Aiken
So tune in, and we'll see you at the movies or on a couch.

59:17
Sam Alicea
Somewhere, because you're a whole screen beans now. She will be mine. All right.

59:26
Case Aiken
And we're back. I had a couple of other notes, but I feel like they're kind of just like parts of my pitches. Like things. I wish that had been improved in this, but CJ, as our guest, would you like to take the first crack at it?

59:41
CeeJay
Yeah. So we've talked about it. My number one thing, make it hornier. Most things need to be hornier. This movie in particular needed to be a lot more horny than it actually was. My second pitch is one of the siblings has to go. Not Eddie Redmayne, but Douglas Booth or the sister. One of them has to go. There's one too many of them, which that entire stop is space that could be used to create more tension and development between Cain and like. And I think that, characterization wise, the sister and the younger brother are hewed entirely too close together to work effectively as two different characters.

01:00:35
Case Aiken
Well, especially because we don't get more with Kalik. She would be the easiest to at least cut out her section or have her section be kind of fused with the bureaucracy part because she doesn't play a part later on.

01:00:50
Sam Alicea
Yeah, I didn't remember her name. I had to ask you for it.

01:00:55
CeeJay
I think that the reincarnation stuff is not too heady, but a little too complicated for what they want to do. I would have rather Jupiter just been left on earth by their mom before she died and her be the long lost sister. Rather their sister mom wife. That's another thing. I think there's a little bit too much exposition that spread throughout the movie because it's just happening, and none of it turns out to be really like, none of it, except for the stem cell blocks, turn out to be an actual reveal. And even then, there's a lot of very obvious visual stuff that's sort of leading you to that conclusion. I would have rather the large story points or narrative points of the world that is being built here be explained in a prologue. And then all the other stuff is just character stuff.

01:02:20
CeeJay
I think that Jupiter and Kane spend too much time together for them not really to know much about each other. I would also jettison the family. Most of the family maybe just keep the mom. And I like the idea of her being sort of born without a country, but they don't really do anything with it. And, yeah, a big prologue at the beginning would have been very good to explain the world and to see the mom trying to escape with Jupiter and then going to earth. And even if the mom has to die, I don't know why the mom always has to die. But even if the mom has to die, then that would be, in my opinion, a cleaner way for things to just work, rather than the I'm going to marry my mom's reincarnated self and stuff like that.

01:03:29
CeeJay
Those were a lot of concepts that I don't think paid off very well. I also, like I said, would make the effects a little bit more practical. And if we're dealing with this race, that is, humans that are just populating different worlds with more humans, all of the aliens feel like they would need to be more humanoid than they appeared, in my opinion. They kind of had the big lizard people. I would want them to be more like human lizard people. And I would also like the. What was the last name of the kingdom? I would like them to look a bit weirder. I would like them to have sort of a design for what humans on the planet that humans actually come from look like and why it's different from human beings that are on Earth.

01:04:36
Case Aiken
Yeah, this isn't a thing that I felt like needed to really be nitpicked because it's the kind of pedantry that I go for, but no one else does, which is that the whole, like, well, why did they even splice humanity into the species that was living on Earth? Why did they do anything like that? The timetables don't match up with real science. They killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and then waited, then another 64 to do anything with the species living on the planet. A lot of those are like, oh, well, it just seemed like weird stuff that they're just using shorthand.

01:05:10
Sam Alicea
I'm sorry, case, have you ever destroyed an entire planet of beings? You have to give it some time to sit so the soil gets turned over.

01:05:19
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah. You have to rotate crops, which that would have been more interesting also, by the way, if it was like, it wasn't an alien race. They wiped out, they harvested the dinosaurs, and then they let a new race go. But if they're humans, then it's all just like, weird details there. And the timelines for things are all like, man, none of these really properly work as far as science goes. And it would have been nice to, I don't know, make it matter more.

01:05:43
CeeJay
And also, the idea with the splices, I think it makes for some interesting gags. I'm a big fan of gags. I'm a gag guy where take, for example, Kane, what if another. And this also fits in with the sort of bureaucracy aspect of it. I didn't really like the aliens that looked a little bit more like Roswell. Aliens fixing everything up, because I would like there to be a galaxy wide sort of bureaucracy and construction set up where there is different aliens that are spliced with different animals, which explain. And they said that nobody ever believes that we erase enough minds to where if we miss somebody, nobody ever believes them.

01:06:38
CeeJay
But that would be why nobody ever believed anybody about Bigfoot or a wolf man or whatever, a mermaid, because that was an alien who was here to tax somebody because they were spliced with an alien from a fish planet or something like that. Stuff like that. I think that there is a lot of minutiae towards the space stuff that I think could be boiled down to more recognizable symbols and still make sense and still feel weird and get the point across as well. And then I think, lastly, I would recast Jupiter. Even though I appreciate Mila Kunis and.

01:07:25
Case Aiken
Her work, I can see that one thing when were watching it, we kept saying is that she does not have period face. And with this fantasy kind of element, she just seems out of place a.

01:07:34
CeeJay
Lot, which I think you get somebody else who doesn't have period face, and that's an odd term, but who doesn't have a face that works for drama set in medieval times or something like that, but can embody a sort of plucked off the street in Chicago person and still be weirded out by all this stuff. If this movie was being made right or even in the same time, I would choose Alice in also make. I would also just flesh out Jupiter's characterization a little bit more. Make her a serial underachiever, make her maybe a stoner. I think if she's a stoner, it would explain a lot of why she kind of just goes along with all of the space stuff to get along.

01:08:35
Sam Alicea
Okay, now you're adding, dude, where's my car?

01:08:37
CeeJay
What's going.

01:08:39
Sam Alicea
I was like, no, this is, dude, where's my car? And it's hilarious. I kind of want this version. Go on.

01:08:44
CeeJay
Yes. And I want the conflict not to be that she can't trust anybody, but to be that she doesn't care. I want her sort of demeanor to be like, what's the point? And if there's no larger point to sort of her life that's going on earth, she figures out that there's this vastness of space which features this kingdom that controls everything and stuff like that, which confirms those suspicions. So why would her demeanor change when she gets to. Because I like a lot of stuff that Mila Kunis is doing, incidentally, because Mila Kunis is not a terribly dynamic performer, and I want to take that, and I want to graft that onto the character as characterization and getting a better actress. Those are all my things.

01:09:47
Sam Alicea
That was just your long wish list.

01:09:48
CeeJay
Yep, yep. That's all I got. Everything about Channing Tatum, keep him the same. Keep the awful blonde hair, keep him spending a smooth third of the movie with his shirt off, keep him not having.

01:10:02
Case Aiken
Flying into space.

01:10:03
CeeJay
Flying into space with his shirt off. Keep him know looking obviously fit as Channing Tatum's are want to do, but not so much that it makes me feel bad. I can tell that he had, like, a burrito before they started filming, and I appreciate him for it, because I'm tired of seeing guys who are, like, three months into a studio financed exercise plan, dehydrated for a week and on HGH and them telling me that's what people look like. It's not what people look like, but, yeah, keep everything. Those are my changes and my suggestions and my pitches.

01:10:49
Case Aiken
All right. Yeah. I think a lot of that is stuff that we can work with, Sam. How about.

01:10:59
Sam Alicea
A lot? So our pitches are a little bit similar. They did get different in a little way. So I also thought maybe dropping the elder sister but still keeping three siblings and having the third sibling actually be Jupiter's father. There's this whole romantic scene where her mother finds this man just staring up at the sky and that kind of thing, and he's always in places that she didn't expect him to be. So my thing is that he is the elder brother. He is the king, and everyone else are like, his brothers are the princes underneath him. And he owns Earth, but it's very far out into the galaxy. It's like a podunk kind of place, but he loves it. He thinks it's very quaint. He doesn't call it because he likes this space and he falls in love with this human woman.

01:12:04
Sam Alicea
And before he knows that she is pregnant, his brother, Eddie Redmayne puts a hit on him and gets rid of him. And there is a war in space over who has actual dominion over this kingdom for this family, because as far as everyone knows, he doesn't have an heir. So this war has been going on forever. Meanwhile, Jupiter is living on earth cleaning toilets with her mom, who, for all intensive purposes, like, one day she had the love of her life and she was pregnant and he had told her that he was going to marry her and then he disappeared. So she doesn't trust men. She's passed that down to her daughter. Her uncle still treats her like crap because she is a child out of wedlock, untraditionally. That's not okay. So she's got a lot of issues.

01:12:59
Sam Alicea
She's got a lot of issues and she just really doesn't give a flying rat's ass about anything or anyone because that's what's expected of her. There's nothing more expected of her. She doesn't care what the fuck. And I say that she does go in for a medical procedure, but maybe not harvesting her eggs because that's a little too on the nose for me. Harvest. Harvest. It doesn't sit right with Jupiter. I'm sorry, guys, I'm still making fun of that line. So she goes in for a medical procedure. It is figured out by these spies because there is a rumor that he did indeed because of a diary that's found or something. I don't know.

01:13:45
Sam Alicea
We'll work it out in the rewrite that he did love this woman and that she was with his child and he was very happy and so there's this whole thing, like, they need to find her because technically, she's the rightful heir. And why this pisses off Eddie Ray Maine so much is because Earth has been so untouched that there are so many people that he could make so much money from basically taking the whole planet and calling it, know, taking all these people, he could make a fortune. And technically, he owns it, but he doesn't own it because there's this question, and you can pull in the bureaucracy there, too, which would be kind of fun. So this is the competition between the two brothers, right? Because you want to get this young lady into space.

01:14:36
Sam Alicea
And the brother that's not Eddie Redmond, whose name I keep forgetting. And I know it starts with a t in the movie, but I. Titus, I keep wanting to call him Tristan, and so I stop myself because I know Tristan's wrong. So, Titus, of course, I'm like, no, I don't know what's wrong. So Titus, of course, is in this mad dash to find her, partially because politically, if he can get her on the side or even marry her, because royalty doesn't give a shit about that, he can basically have ownership of this and stop Eddie Redmayne from having any of the monies. He can have all of the galactic monies. I don't know what they actually called it, or if they just trade in the spice. I don't. Looking.

01:15:26
Sam Alicea
And that's why he hires Kane to go and find her and to, like, it's been confirmed that she's definitely down there, and she is very close to her mom, even though she doesn't give a crap about the rest of her family, she loves her mom. She sees that her mom has been not treated well by her brothers. She's very attached to her, and so when everything goes down and she gets kidnapped, she is most worried about her mom and trying to get in touch with her mom, and, of course, she can't. And you have a couple of things of her mom being very worried about where she went and her uncle being, whatever. So in any case, I would leave everything about Kane the same. I have no problem with his. Maybe. Maybe I would add the bluish tint to his skin.

01:16:10
Sam Alicea
I don't know. Ever since case mentioned that I was. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm actually digging that. Just kind of make him, like, a little bit different and mysterious. But I want to see more in the characterization. I would like to see a little more pushback between the two of them, where he's got to remind her that he has saved her life. And she's like, yeah, thanks so much. Still going home. And he's like, I don't think you understand, like, these people are going to get you, and you're going to have to come or your family's going to be in trouble. Keep Sean bean in it because I love him. Why not? And he can help get them up there. And then when they get on the barge with her uncle, not Tristan, that's what I'm going to call him.

01:17:05
Sam Alicea
They'll call him not Tristan because. Titus. I found it, guys. Titus, he does the summary of the world, kind of showing her what it was telling her about her father, but he does it in a way that it's a very slow reveal of how actually terrible things are, right? So all of a sudden, this whole world opens up to her that she never thought was a possibility, and here she's someone important, whereas, like, back on earth, she's a girl who cleans toilets, whose uncle is a raging asshole that she lives with because her dad disappeared. But it turned out her dad is the king of the universe. And that's fucking awesome. And also, oh, shit, I'm fucking royalty.

01:17:53
CeeJay
What the fuck?

01:17:55
Sam Alicea
And so there's going to be, like, a nice, like, oh, God. And Kane's going to ultimately be disappointed because he doesn't really like royalty, because splicing is something that they do to make other humans more and other races fit their needs more, to subjugate them more. And so for him, she's part of the group that basically made him what he was, which is just a hybrid of a lot of different things to serve their purposes, to basically serve them. And so that'll bring tension into their life, which will confuse her because she doesn't understand the politics of what is. And she doesn't even understand why her uncle would be a bad person till her uncle tries to get sexy and tries to marry her. And she's like, whoa, whoa. Wait. Hold on. We're not. Wait, no, I don't want to be sexy with you.

01:18:56
Sam Alicea
I don't want to marry you. And of course, he's gotten rid of Kane, and Kane realizes that, you know, like, she's from another planet. She just doesn't even know what she's gotten herself into. And also knows that she's going to die, that I would keep. The uncle's going to kill her afterwards because he doesn't care about her. Why should he care? So Kane will save her, and in saving her, somehow the two of them will fall into another trap, and they will just fall to the more evil brother, Eddie Redmayne, who can continue to do his choice of whisper. It's fine, I guess, except for the yelling. I kind of wanted him to have, like, a twitch when he yelled, more so because I wanted to be like, this is something he tried to do to be dignified.

01:19:47
Sam Alicea
And then when he yelled and lost his mind, it was because he's actually crazy and I just wanted to see more of a twitch. And then he's kidnapped the one person that he knows that is the most important, which is his mom or her mom, rather. And it'll probably proceed the way that it did, except that at the end, she really won't just own earth, she will actually be in charge of the universe. And that's hard because I don't know what that leads to. It's like, too many questions. But the movie doesn't answer that either because it's like she owns Earth. So what else? But, yeah, definitely keep the scene with the wings. That was awesome. Make tanning blue. And that's my pitch.

01:20:40
CeeJay
Can I add one more element?

01:20:42
Case Aiken
Yeah.

01:20:43
CeeJay
Babu Frick or a Babu frick type character.

01:20:47
Sam Alicea
Yes. I mean, I don't even know if you need to finish this for the people at home, but I am on the same.

01:20:54
CeeJay
That was.

01:20:55
Case Aiken
That's literally it.

01:20:56
CeeJay
Babu Frick or a Babu Frick type character.

01:20:58
Sam Alicea
And a thousand times possibly you need.

01:21:01
CeeJay
That comedy and possibly a DJ Khaled song over the credits that features Babu Frick in pit Bull again.

01:21:08
Sam Alicea
So in completely committed, ready to sign that contract? Yes. The other thing that they really could do, and this is just like me saying it, if they wanted to keep the world exactly as it is, they could do that as long as they did it in a 16 episode arc.

01:21:24
Case Aiken
Yeah, that is the other way to.

01:21:25
Sam Alicea
Take it so that they could actually go through all of these very complicated ideas that they're trying to set forth. Case.

01:21:34
Case Aiken
So I like all of these notes so far. I feel like the bulk structure of it, because it's so simple, doesn't really need to be changed that much to make this work a lot better as a movie. I think this movie is really close to being actually good. And it's just like all this weird spots where it gets kind of lost in itself or it didn't realize it needed some thought at some areas that would really make it work a lot better. I agree that it's really awkward. And again, it feels like a serial. It feels like a flash Gordon thing. The way the siblings play know, one, two, three, is it's the exact same beats and it's really annoying that they don't matter in any way.

01:22:17
Case Aiken
And it's particularly annoying because Kalik happens so early and we never actually really find out what her deal is. She pivots when Kane shows up to being like, perfect, we'll take you to the authorities. That's great. And then she doesn't really come back again. So if nothing else, she needs to be involved in the third act because she's not. And that sucks. I also think that we need to actually understand a little bit more about the world because they explain a lot. But one area that they don't actually explain is this concept of whatever sort of central authority exists at all. We know that the Aegis is out there and it's kind of like a nightly order that sort of writes things, but we don't see a lot of it. And we know that they have this extremely complicated legal system out there.

01:23:04
Case Aiken
And not that I want to spend that much more time in any of that because we don't need everyone voting on no confidence in the imperial senate. We don't need that in this movie. But I would like a little bit more because I think that one of the big problems is that Jupiter's ascension doesn't actually happen in this movie. I think that we don't get her coming into her own as a powerful political figure that she ultimately needs to be. And I think that is a big arc that we're missing. And then CJ used the exact term that I had, which is enemies. The lovers needs to better played out because they are kind of like a little. We dig each other, but I don't know each other's deal. And then lovers pretty fast.

01:23:56
Case Aiken
There's this assumption that they shouldn't like each other, or at the least Cain doesn't like Jupiter, but then that goes away real fast and we need to make that not be the way. So for me, I think I would open the movie on the dead world. I think that was a really evocative thing. And I think that the wichowskis are dealing with the fact that it is impossible not to talk about the Matrix. I think that there are so many story beats that are similar that they are going to try to reposition them so that it isn't just a one to one, because it's really effective to have your fish out of water story.

01:24:32
Case Aiken
Start with the fish in the water and start to notice that there might be things outside of the water and then accidentally end up outside of water and then have to figure out how to survive. That was the matrix with Neo. Like, neo sees the world. We get, like, little hints, but they're not very overt. They set up that things are weird, but we don't know what the twist is going to. We set up very early on that the twist is like, yeah, there's space. There's humans in space. We're fine with that. So I think we should start off with the culling. And then it's interesting that we've got James Darcy in this movie who is not Brian Darcy, James Micah, and we don't really do much with him. I like the idea of him being a more important part.

01:25:16
Case Aiken
So I actually really like the idea of him being all of their father and sort of setting up that earth was bequeathed to her or something to that effect. And maybe the will is inscribed on the tattoo that she's always had her whole life rather than one she gets, like, later on. And she never understood how it happened. It was when she was a baby. Who tattoos a baby?

01:25:42
CeeJay
That's a good line or something for her to be like, yeah, I've always had it. Who tattoos a baby?

01:25:49
Sam Alicea
It's like, not quite a birthmark.

01:25:51
Case Aiken
Yeah. And then we don't need to have the flashback to the dad be at the beginning. It can actually happen a little bit later in because we're kind of opening at the point now in the present with they just called a world. There's, like, conversations about this all. And I actually really dig this idea of it being Jupiter as their sibling rather than this reincarnation of the mother because I think that's a thing that's too close to the Matrix and they need to move away from that one because it's just the one was reborn all over again.

01:26:20
Sam Alicea
Yeah. If they wanted to go reincarnation, I think that they should have gone, honestly, full ascension and then had her have the mother's do a ceremony where she actually has the mother's memories. I think that would have been kind of cool.

01:26:39
Case Aiken
That would be a really interesting thing.

01:26:41
Sam Alicea
If that's the way you're going to go, because she doesn't ever get any of the memories. She doesn't ever really fully become the reincarnation. She doesn't really connect with it. You know how much I love Avatar. And so if somehow she could connect with the queen or get the queen's memories and become kind of a player in this world, that would have also been interesting. I don't know how that plays out with the time, and that changes the movie drastically. But that would have been a little more interesting than what happened. And if you're going to make her actually.

01:27:17
Case Aiken
Yeah. I mean, that's also kind of a perfect thing to push things forward, which is that if she had the mother's memories implanted in her when she's at the citadel, like, if that was waiting for her as part of this will, and you could do the resurrection story arc where then she isn't trying to interpret this memory file that's been loaded into her brain. Sure, that's very matrix esque, but I think that actually is kind of different here, because it's all the memories, not just all the powers, and it allows for reveals of things to occur at an appropriate spot for it.

01:27:51
Sam Alicea
Also, it becomes a mystery because then you can have her solve who murdered the mother.

01:27:56
Case Aiken
Yeah, because maybe the memories don't go up to the point of her death. Like, maybe they just have on file the last time she saved, but she has way more information now, and it means that she can't be manipulated the same way. I think that keeping three is fine. There's no need to remove a sibling, because narratively, we kind of like that. Typically, things coming in sequences of three. I think Khalique, I would actually have her be a powerful political figure, potentially, like maybe at the Citadel or whatever they're calling it, wherever this center point of bureaucracy is, she greets either her reincarnated mother or her long lost sister and is happy to see her.

01:28:41
Case Aiken
And she has this wonderful estate, and it's like, oh, unfortunately, you have to go down to the lower levels to go get the paperwork filled out, and then we go into that. This is my Android assistant. He can show you the way and then have her be part of this. Because what I really want is, I really want Jupiter to rise in political power. Like, she has that moment with Titus where she ratles off some code law, that here's all the tax code stuff that I can find you for the way you've behaved. And I like that moment, but that should be the first step in her coming into her own, and she never gets. And that's. That, I think, is really annoying because she never actually ascends.

01:29:22
Case Aiken
She has a fuck yeah moment where she kills Eddie Redmayne or survives Eddie Redmayne, but it's not her actually doing the thing that she needs to be good at. Like, she's never going to be as good as Kane at that.

01:29:33
Sam Alicea
All she says is, I'm not your mother. And then he falls. Yeah.

01:29:38
CeeJay
That's what happens after you say, I'm not your mother.

01:29:40
Case Aiken
He hums, Grubers yeah, it's not really satisfying. What I would really like is for her at the end, for her to be able to reveal that either she'd been recording or transmitting or something, or she's just called in reinforcements because she's figured out how to use her wealth and inheritance and political power to bring in reinforcements. And that should be like leading Kalik's flagship, and then the whole forces of the Aegis, not just that one ship that was in orbit, the cavalry should show up, and that should be when Eddie Redwave flips out and things start to go bad. And that's the very end of the third act. But we should have Jupiter actually get the drop on him. And she needs to be more capable and more aware by the end than she was earlier on.

01:30:29
Case Aiken
And so I like the idea of her getting the memories. I also like the idea of her being the sister and figuring things out, but, like, being a quick study. And maybe the deal is that she's so smart that being just, like, I don't like getting into, like, well, if you were smart, you wouldn't be doing, like, a blue collar job. But maybe that is kind of the thing that she's doing a job that she's actually really good at. She shows that she's better than anyone at, but she's lazy because she's so innately good at it. She has a great eye for detail. Maybe she spots all the things that people were missing, and maybe she was like, maybe we get scenes of her early on reading a book instead of cleaning a room, because it's like, it'll only take her a minute.

01:31:11
Case Aiken
And we find out that, yeah, she's actually great at all this stuff. She's able to spot all the things, she's able to remember all these particular details, and that should be, then, a thing that pays off later, because as it is, we don't get any sort of setup and payoff for her arc. She doesn't really have an arc. She just comes into money and then says that she's not going to let it change her. And we don't even see any truth to that. We don't know how much further it goes. So I'd like that. And then, like, CJ, like you were saying, with enemies to friends, I think that as soon as it's revealed that she isn't entitled, we should get more hostility from him.

01:31:45
Case Aiken
And then I think we should spend more time in the bureaucratic world, even if not more of the actual. That one scene was perfectly fine, that Brazil esque. We're going to run around and go check out, go to all the different stations, but spend more time absorbing the quote unquote society, not just the individual castles of each of these people, but actually absorb what human society looks like. And this is why I think Khalik kind of works well here, because she's not overtly hostile. So this is a good time for it to be like, oh, no, we can get a little bit of introduction to it all. We can sort of spend some time here, but we can also set up why the entitled are bad and they are bad. They should be abusive to their servants.

01:32:29
Case Aiken
They should throw these soldiers into their deaths. I don't think they even fully explain why Cain tore someone's throat out. I think they just said he did it. And I would like to have more of a feeling for it. I would like to feel like he was doing something right for his friends, that he was standing up against the oppression of society and then found out that he's just a cog in this machine, and that machine is just going to keep on chugging along. And that's why he's depressed and hates them and kind of hates her as an extension of that. And so that her ascension here and becoming better at it shows that there is a way for positive change in society that he finds endearing.

01:33:14
Case Aiken
Because there should be a point where before she gets her full inheritance, and maybe this is the point where if she's getting the memories, like up until that point where she has to lay low, like Titus is after her or something like that, or Redmaid heteron Rain's character, there should be a spot where later on in the movie, not like when they go to Stinger's place, where Kane is protecting her and keeping her secreted away from some sort of threat, where they hook up and then there should be weird friction and then they should part, and that's when she gets captured, and then that's when Kane shows up. And she thought that Kane had abandoned her or something to that effect. And Kane showing up, it's like, oh, you really do love me, kind of thing.

01:33:58
Case Aiken
Because we also don't really get that Kane just was like, no, you're going to go where you need to go. Okay, I'll stay with. There's a. Sorry, they closed the door now. I had to break the door to get to you. There's never, like, a spot where he really made a choice that was different than just what he was going to do anyway. There's no conflict there. And they should be some conflict where he's like, maybe he's disgusted by her accepting her inheritance. Maybe that's the thing that sort of breaks them at the 60% mark, where she does accept the memories of her past self or her past genetic duplicate, or she does take on the mantle of whatever house of Braxis, whatever, and roll with that so that there is continual conflict.

01:34:44
Case Aiken
And then he decides that, no, he really does love her, and he fights his way through hell to get to her, as opposed to he's just always going to stay by her. And the fact that she got separated from him, he's mad and he's going to go catch up to her because those sequences are so good. We haven't really talked that much about just how fucking dope. All the action scenes.

01:35:01
CeeJay
Yeah, they're really great.

01:35:02
Case Aiken
Like, the Wachowskis do an amazing job. That fight in Chicago, which is just this, when it's done, you're like, holy. Like, all of those, I want way more of. But, man, they wrote this script, and then they started shooting this script, and we just needed some tightening at multiple spots because I love the world that they've got going. I love all the elements that they've got going. I just want to feel like these two are like they had that friction and now they're just fucking in several. Now they're just going to bone at the end of it all because he's her knight in shining armor and she's the princess in the castle, but I don't want her to be a weak princess. I want her to Queen Amidala this shit.

01:35:44
Case Aiken
She should feel like she's like on the foundation of a rebellion or whatever, of the society or some sort of change, like doing something with it. And sure, she wants to learn how to skyscate. Awesome. I want to see more of that at the end, too. But I feel like she needs to actually be doing something with her power, because just sitting back and letting humanity sort of be its own thing is also she'll eventually die and they'll just take the planet. That's just what they're going to do. She hasn't fixed society, so I need to feel like that's somewhere on her. It doesn't need to be on our to do list for tomorrow, but it needs to be, like, on the road. She's going to figure out what she's going to do. In the meantime, she's sort of learning her deal?

01:36:23
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Because all she does is she inherits Earth and then she's, like, hanging out there and I'm like, yeah, but, bro, what about the other planets? What about the other places they're killing? So you just don't want it to happen to your planet? Okay. It's kind of selfish in an altruistic.

01:36:43
Case Aiken
Don't want. I don't like Kane getting his wings back at the end.

01:36:47
CeeJay
Me neither.

01:36:48
Case Aiken
I get it from a story standpoint, but I don't think he should have ever had wings because we don't get any scene where it's a big change for him. And we spent so much time establishing how fucking cool these skyscrats are. And I have one point when he gets captured at one spot, he uses them to break out. And I'm like, why did they leave his skyscrats on him when they put him in jail? That seems such an obvious oversight, especially since he just used it to break out. Are they just so common? Are they, like, wheelie skate? Like shoes?

01:37:19
CeeJay
Also, why didn't he do that inside the cell?

01:37:22
Case Aiken
I think it's just, like, more just not being quite clear what they wanted to do.

01:37:26
CeeJay
Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. I agree with everything you said.

01:37:32
Case Aiken
But the skyscating is so cool and he's so good at it. And I wish they leaned more into the skating metaphor if we got some more skater moves. Kind of like, I don't know what all the good words are, but when you put your hand down on the half pipe and you're like. You kick up and stuff like that.

01:37:52
Sam Alicea
Like an ollie?

01:37:53
Case Aiken
Yeah, like some real Tony hawk kind of show.

01:37:55
Sam Alicea
I also do not know. I've just heard the word ollie around skaters. I don't know anything.

01:38:01
Case Aiken
And, like, vert.

01:38:02
Sam Alicea
Please don't add us.

01:38:04
CeeJay
Also, on the wings, they never really properly explain the significance of them or what kind of rank they denote or why they're so important. It's just that, I guess legionnaire folks have wings and they lost them because they were kicked out of the legion. But, yeah, getting them back doesn't really do anything, especially when there is a very visual freedom and coolness that's already established with the skates, with the moon boots.

01:38:44
Sam Alicea
I mean, they just make him angel, though, right? I mean, there's just that.

01:38:48
CeeJay
Yeah.

01:38:49
Case Aiken
I mean, he becomes a hound arcon. And that's cool. But you know what? If all the other people on the ship had their wings and everyone we saw in the society, if all the other humans had their wings, if that was just like a part of it. If it was like hawk world, which this actually is not that far from the 80s revamp of Hawkman, where all the Aristotle wear wings. Yeah, on Thanagar, that actually is kind of in the same vein. And maybe they could work with that. But also, the wings don't dramatically change the abilities that Kane has because he is able to go up.

01:39:24
Case Aiken
It's hard, but he can, like, down is easier, he says, but he effectively can move around freely in three dimensional space because of the shoes he's wearing, that the wings don't change dramatically what his power of action is. So it wasn't like he was being dramatically inhibited. They effectively were, like, keeping him away from the elevator and he had to use the stairs. And it would have been like, it should be something different. Like he was being really restricted from a thing. And so the fact that he is already able to freely move around, it's cool. But I would rather him teach her how to skyscate while both of them are wearing skyscrats. This should be like the ending of Disney's Tarzan, where they're both swinging on the goddamn vine.

01:40:08
Case Aiken
And there's a moment where it's just like, oh, he's taught her how to be him in this environment.

01:40:16
Sam Alicea
Honestly, in your rewrite, in your path, you do have her hiding on the planet while trying not to be hunted down. And that actually could be, like, a really cute scene. Him trying to teach her how to skyscate. That's just such a classic rom.com. And the stakes are higher, right? Because she'll be like, I'm not doing that. That's way too high. And he'll be like, okay, all right. And then you see them, they're seemingly in the air, and he's like, okay, now come to me. She's like, no. He's like, no, just come on. Just slide forward. And she goes. And she kind of tips, and she's like, oh, my God. And he's like, you're literally, like, 2ft from the ground, and you show it. So you have this funny moment of her just being, like, freaking out over something that's not.

01:41:16
Sam Alicea
And it can just be very cute. And then them getting higher and then her kind of falling and him catching her, which can totally be super sweet and romantic. Guys. Yeah. Building a new rom.com.

01:41:29
Case Aiken
Well, and that's the thing this movie is missing. They just like each other too much without really any sort of back and forth on it. And not that every movie needs to have a love interest story, but this one has one, so it should be.

01:41:42
Sam Alicea
It just doesn't work.

01:41:45
Case Aiken
That's my biggest thing, honestly, if their love story just felt better, I think this whole movie would work better for everyone. And everything else is icing on the cake. Yeah, that's true, because it's so interesting on a surface level and it doesn't all click together. And that's the bummer about this movie because I watched it and I was like, yeah, I'm really happy I spent the time to rewatch this movie.

01:42:10
CeeJay
Same. Especially during the first half.

01:42:12
Sam Alicea
Yeah, the first half is still really good. And I will say, despite me not being thrilled with her family, because they're not great, I was like, oh, I really misjudged this film. I don't remember why I didn't like it. This film's awesome. This is really good. And then I hit the middle of the film and I was like, oh, right. It kind of falls apart. And it falls apart. Know, poor Jupiter and Kane. They just really are not compelling. They're not compelling together. And she doesn't have a real, as you said, she never. It's so sad.

01:42:55
Case Aiken
It's funny. This is just more proof that it's very hard to make a dune movie.

01:42:59
Sam Alicea
Agreed.

01:43:00
Case Aiken
And, yeah, I hope that ends up being.

01:43:03
Sam Alicea
Did you hear I actually called the elixir spice before. And then I was like. I just kind of kept talking because I was like, did anyone notice that I called it spice?

01:43:12
Case Aiken
I think it didn't phase me so much that I just was just like, yes, that's the term for it. Right. Okay, moving on.

01:43:18
Sam Alicea
You're like, yeah, this is basically dude, and that's fine.

01:43:21
Case Aiken
I don't need everything to be completely unique. There are all these Sci-Fi references that I enjoy. I'm really happy with all that. I don't roll my eyes when we get to the point where he's fighting a literal dragon. I'm here for all of those things. I am here to be like, oh, the Wachowskis. You two really like the same shit.

01:43:42
CeeJay
I do.

01:43:42
Case Aiken
Awesome. I'm so happy for it.

01:43:44
Sam Alicea
Yeah, Space dragons are awesome. I think there should be more space dragons. I think there should be movies with more space dragons. I've said it. I don't even think it's a controversial take. I think there would be a lot of people that be like, yeah, Sam's right. There should be Space dragons.

01:44:00
Case Aiken
Oh, totally. Last thing, which is like, the one thing they are missing at the end, is that Eddie Redmayne should be a wizard. Not like actual magic, but he should have some tech shit in his chambers that allow him to do some crazy shit. He should be able to make hand gestures or say command words to Alexa that just all of a sudden, Alexa, shoot lightning ball.

01:44:20
Sam Alicea
Alexa, kill the reincarnation of my mother.

01:44:23
Case Aiken
But he should have some shit like that or like some gray goo stuff or something that's like future technology that is indistinguishable from magic for the purposes of the scene confronting. She one ups him with her political machinations. All of a sudden, there's a fleet right outside of Jupiter. Like, oh, shit, he's going to lose. Ultimately. He's like, well, sure, but he won't find your body. And then he just starts making commands. And we get some scenes with that. And it's not just him trying to beat her to death. Have him do some cool shit that's like space technology, but again, looks basically magic.

01:44:59
Sam Alicea
Yeah, I just realized, I just want to say I'm sorry if anyone's listening with an Alexa in the room. And the Alexa is very confused right now, because every time you say an Alexa's name, it voice activates. And I've had, well, my cousin, every time he listens to a podcast and someone mentions her, weird shit comes up on his Alexa.

01:45:20
Case Aiken
You mean when someone mentions Alexa?

01:45:23
Sam Alicea
Yeah, because if you're like Alexa and then you say the whatever you command it with. And so a lot of know, podcasts, human voices. Yeah. He actually had a dvd ordered, well, at one point from his Amazon account.

01:45:38
Case Aiken
We have been merciful up until this point because there is a character in this movie named Alexa, and we have only referred to her as Jupiter's mom.

01:45:46
Sam Alicea
Also, I don't think Alexa can kill the reincarnation of your mom, so I think you should be okay listeners.

01:45:53
Case Aiken
Right. But Alexa can play chumbawumba, and so that should happen right now.

01:46:03
CeeJay
How dare you, Alexa.

01:46:06
Case Aiken
I'm sorry.

01:46:07
Sam Alicea
Cruel. You are cruel.

01:46:10
Case Aiken
Yeah. And for all you other ones out there, hey, siri, play chumbawumba.

01:46:14
CeeJay
Okay?

01:46:15
Case Aiken
Google play chumbawumba.

01:46:20
Sam Alicea
You know, just equal opportunity being an ad.

01:46:22
Case Aiken
Yeah, I did a mine. It actually triggered my own phone.

01:46:27
CeeJay
Fuck.

01:46:28
Case Aiken
Okay, that's funny. I trolled myself.

01:46:35
Sam Alicea
You trolled yourself.

01:46:37
Case Aiken
You know, the best part is, that's the first time that has actually worked on my phone. It just does not hear me when I try to use the voice commands. So, anyway, so now that we are done trolling our audience, I feel like we all kind of just generally liked it. And there's like, yeah, it's all these spots to tighten. And clearly this just didn't get the second draft. It's very much like the phantom menace, where they had plenty of freedom, maybe not complete freedom like the way George Lucas did, but they had plenty of freedom to make some cool shit. And they made some cool shit, but they didn't have someone really go through and be like, but why is this scene here? Not why does this scene happen, but why is this scene here?

01:47:14
Case Aiken
And that's, like, the big issue with this whole script.

01:47:16
Sam Alicea
Agreed.

01:47:17
Case Aiken
So, CJ, would you consider this freezer burned?

01:47:22
CeeJay
No, I think it's still fresh. I think there's a lot of stuff to hear that makes the movie worth watching. So I would give it a still fresh, which is spoilers, because we'll be doing this movie on the show later.

01:47:36
Case Aiken
All right, well, if people want to have your thoughts about if a movie is fresh or freezing bird, where can they find those thoughts? Yeah.

01:47:45
CeeJay
I have a podcast called below freezing with CJ and Micah. I'm CJ and my budy Michael. We have a podcast which we untaw different movies that come in at or below 32% on Rotten Tomatoes. This is our third season this year, and every month we're doing a theme. We are recording this still in March, and March is cyberpunk, and next month is book adaptations. So we're having a lot of fun with that one as. Yeah, it's a good time. And Micah's been on here before as well, so folks know Micah. She's great. And we invite guests on Sam, you're welcome to come on at any point.

01:48:29
Sam Alicea
Oh, fantastic. I love books, by the way, so I'm up for anything you want.

01:48:37
CeeJay
Yeah. And I also have a newsletter called Monoplex, in which I watch movies and I write about them. And the most recent one is a look back at a couple of movies from the called streets of Fire and one called gleaming the Cube. And it is essentially, the essay is about realizing that everything that you want kind of already exists. You just kind of have to go look for it. So, yeah, that's what I do.

01:49:10
Case Aiken
Awesome. Below freezing is so fun. I've been on before, and I've scheduled to record with you guys soon, so looking forward to all that. People should definitely go check that out. It's a great show with it. It's like the step before doing this show where you actually go watch the movie, and then this one's like, all right, well, that one was Freezer burned.

01:49:33
Sam Alicea
It's like we're cousins.

01:49:34
Case Aiken
Yeah.

01:49:38
Sam Alicea
Someone is going to.

01:49:39
Case Aiken
Yeah, we are the recurrence of below freezing.

01:49:42
Sam Alicea
Yeah, one day we will all ascend.

01:49:48
Case Aiken
Sam, what do you have going on?

01:49:50
Sam Alicea
I'm here. Find me here. And any complaints, send them to case. And you can find case.

01:49:56
Case Aiken
Yes, you can find me on Twitter at case aiken. You can find the podcast at another pass. And yeah, you can find stuff that we work on@certainpov.com. We've got a lot of great shows. I work on two other ones, Men of Steel, which is the Superman Appreciation podcast, and scruffy Nerf Herders, which is our Star Wars Dungeon and Dragons game that I've been running, doing, like, little side stories with all the hosts of different podcasts. It's been a great old time, but if those are your jam, check it out. It's all@certainpov.com. Also@certainpov.com. You can find a link to our discord server. We are having this call right now on Discord, but just come hang out. We share memes. We chat. When this drops, we will be at the very end of Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

01:50:38
Case Aiken
So come talk about your spoiler thoughts on that one. We've got all kinds of conversations because we've got all kinds of shows, so it's a great network. Come check it out. Sam, take us home.

01:50:50
Sam Alicea
Next time on this show, we'll be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed the show, pass it on.

01:51:02
Speaker 2
Thanks for listening to certain point of views. Another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

01:51:31
Case Aiken
All right, so let's get into it. We'll do a clap to sync up, and then I will start us off.

01:51:36
CeeJay
Okay? Because you were asking us about it and I thought were already recording. I was like, oops. Oh, no.

01:51:45
Case Aiken
If you haven't been recording, I really don't like walking into an episode and having someone have a totally different opinion of the movie than I was expecting heard.

01:51:55
CeeJay
That makes sense.

01:51:56
Case Aiken
It sometimes throws me off a little bit because sometimes we'll have energy being like, I can't wait to nitpick about these things. And then it's like, no, I fucking loved it. And I was like, fuck, that makes sense.

01:52:07
CeeJay
But I am recording now, okay? I'm ready to clap when everyone's ready to clap. Commercial time.

01:52:14
Sam Alicea
Commercial time. Watch this. Listen to.

01:52:17
CeeJay
You can literally keep that and turn it into a jingle. You have my permission.

01:52:22
Sam Alicea
And also, Matt, you're welcome for all this space for the ad.

01:52:26
Case Aiken
Hi Matt.

01:52:31
Sam Alicea
I was just like, if this is a long ad, Matt's got plenty of stuff to cut out.

01:52:44
Speaker 2
Hello and welcome to massively affected, where I, Josh Silverman, bring on a guest and ask them the not so simple question, why Mass Effect? Massively affected is a podcast dedicated to exploring our personal legacies with mass Effect. From our origin stories with the series to the impact it had on our lives. Everything is on the table when it comes to the series, which includes the trilogy, Andromeda books, comics, fanfics, and whatever else the future may hold. During the debut first season, I was joined by Reignite's own Matt storm, as well as a cavalcade of amazing guests including Kate Sanchez from but why though?

01:53:18
Speaker 2
Greg Haynes of able Gamers, Ken the Shepherd of Fanbite and Normandy FM, and many more wonderful guests with mass effects stories to tell, each episode dives into the experience of a guest and myself, and I hope you join us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you may find podcasts. You can share your own stories and find the show on Twitter by searching at massaffected pod certainpov.com.