“I can’t even remember a time when alien intelligence or the potential inherent in the vastness of space didn’t fascinate us,” says Lana Wachowski. “Who didn’t love Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’? And the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ had such a profound impact on us. But as storytellers, what got us excited about that potential was answering the question, ‘If someone else is out there, and they know about us, why don’t they want us to know about them?’
Written, directed and produced by the Wachowskis, “Jupiter Ascending” is conceptually sci-fi but encompasses elements of their other favorite genres. A thriller and an action epic, it is also, at its core, a love story between two people who would never have met if not for one extraordinary event that might only happen once in centuries, if it happens at all: a Recurrence, a human born with a gene pattern that’s an exact duplicate of one that has already existed.
Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is a Recurrence. Her genetic profile has been identified as a match for a woman who, before her mysterious death, controlled one of the most dominant ruling families in the universe. This makes Jupiter, despite her humble upbringing, the beneficiary of unfathomable wealth and the pivotal figure in a monumental power struggle, with the Earth set in its crosshairs. To the family’s existing heirs, it just makes her a target.
