Jupiter Ascend­ing

The infa­mous tor­ture scene in Neil LaBute’s crit­i­cal­ly-derid­ed 2006 remake of The Wick­er Man – in which Nico­las Cage utters the immor­tal line, ​“Oh, no, not the bees!” as an angry swarm is poured into the wire-mesh hel­met he’s been forced into – has racked up more than two mil­lion views on YouTube. Now, how­ev­er, its long reign as the undis­put­ed nadir of apoidea-based movie scenes looks to be over.

Behold Jupiter Ascend­ing, in which Mila Kunis’ star-gaz­ing Chica­go house clean­er, Jupiter Jones, hav­ing just learned that she is, in fact, the rein­car­nat­ed queen of the galaxy, dis­cov­ers that she is able to com­mand an entire colony of hon­ey­bees just by waft­ing her arms. ​“You’ve nev­er been stung by a bee before, have you?” enquires an awe-struck Sean Bean, who then pro­ceeds to explain to every­one in his most earnest York­shire drawl that bees are hard-wired to recog­nise roy­al­ty. Unable to wrap her head around this non­sen­si­cal rev­e­la­tion, Jupe (as she’s irk­some­ly referred to through­out the film) instant­ly dis­miss­es the notion that she has blue blood. ​“Bees don’t lie,” Bean assures her.

If you’re read­ing this think­ing we’ve just gone and spoiled the best bit of the movie, fear not. There is no short­age of head-scratch­ing­ly dumb moments in this bloat­ed 3D space opera. This is, after all, pre­cise­ly what we’ve come to expect from writer/​director sib­lings the Wachowskis, who seem des­tined to con­tin­ue plumb­ing the depths of the very genre they helped reju­ve­nate some 16 years ago with their land­mark cyber­punk odyssey, The Matrix.

Once again, the human race is bliss­ful­ly unaware of its grim fate. Only this time it’s aliens, not machines, that are hold­ing domin­ion over Earth. Specif­i­cal­ly, Eddie Redmayne’s preen­ing inter­galac­tic over­lord, Balem Abrasax – the kind of irra­tional­ly evil cin­e­mat­ic bad­die who insists on speak­ing in a men­ac­ing­ly hushed reg­is­ter despite com­mu­ni­cat­ing with every oth­er char­ac­ter from the oppo­site side of the room with his back turned – and his squab­bling broth­er and sis­ter (Dou­glas Booth and Tup­pence Mid­dle­ton, keep­ing the British end up), each of whom are keen to har­vest our planet’s most abun­dant nat­ur­al resource in order to sus­tain their own immor­tal­i­ty. Time, Balem pro­claims, is the most valu­able com­mod­i­ty in the universe.

Test­ing that the­o­ry is Chan­ning Tatum, who pops up as the film’s fig­u­ra­tive and lit­er­al sav­iour, a per­ox­ide-goa­teed boun­ty-hunt­ing man-wolf named Caine (think Mag­ic Mike audi­tion­ing for Starlight Express). With Jupiter about to be bumped off before she’s able to claim her birthright, Caine inter­venes in the time­ly man­ner of a bona fide action hero – wav­ing a big gun around and sport­ing some rather snazzy anti-grav boots that enable him to carve around mid-air like some slip­pery beef­cake assas­sin. Tatum spends the entire first half of the film swoop­ing about with his shirt off, but not even that will be enough to dis­tract you from how awe­some­ly dull the film is.

This is spec­ta­cle cin­e­ma at its most anaemic and unad­ven­tur­ous. A colos­sal cos­mic com­post heap filled with char­ac­ters so thin­ly devel­oped their com­bined dis­tin­guish­ing traits and motives would strug­gle to fill one side of a cock­tail nap­kin. The film also fea­tures the most awk­ward impromp­tu-fam­i­ly-reunion-on-a-gang­way-sus­pend­ed-over-a-mas­sive-air-shaft sequence since the Sky­walk­er men first crossed swords. All of which makes Jupiter Ascend­ing feel like an expen­sive­ly assem­bled mash-up of oth­er supe­ri­or sci-fi epics – from Luc Besson’s The Fifth Ele­ment to JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. Only with a load of trench coat-clad CG lizard hench­men and Gugu Mbat­ha-Raw in a pair of nov­el­ty over­sized mouse ears.

Myr­i­ad short­com­ings aside, the fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with engi­neer­ing your film’s cen­tral nar­ra­tive to accen­tu­ate the pre­cious­ness of time is that your audi­ence is unlike­ly to take kind­ly to hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of theirs wasted.