jupiter ascending isn’t what most critics thought

[solarbird]

We finally saw Jupiter Ascending a couple of weekends ago, in the lair, rented rather than in a theatre. I wish I’d got myself out to see it large, but, well, life and all that.

It’s better than it’s given credit for. And I thought I had a long post to write about this, but I keep not writing that post, so I’m going to write a shorter one and see what happens.

Jupiter Ascending is, in large-brush-strokes, David Lynch’s Dune, but with the “Chosen One” trope excised and replaced with “Hidden Princess.” It’s a bold decision to make, because audiences aren’t used to Hidden Princess in live-action anymore, and they’re not used to it in nominally-SF movies at all.

That’s what it is, though. You’ve got all the bits. You have ultra-rare critical-to-galatic-society unique-brutal-production-method High-Protein Liquid MacGuffin. You have old-school Dune-style space-opera politics-as-secret-warfare over the usual space-opera things, with betrayals! Everywhere! You have overflowing decadence, commentaries on exploitive economics, and massive disparities of wealth and power on an intergalactic scale, and set design Lynch would’ve killed to possess. And it’s a whole family of disturbing predilections and obsessions, as in, again, Dune.

You even have Eddie Redmayne channeling Sting’s shouty Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, only with a little more of a lid on it.

But not much of one

Meanwhile, instead of Chosen One tropes and fantasies, you get a huge bundle of Hidden Princess – the lost royal child, the family of commoners who know actual love vs. the royality who doesn’t, all of it.

Plus you get the bundle of heterosexual schoolgirl fantasy stuff that tends to go along with that trope. So… you’re found by a guy who is part wolf and has a tragic backstory you can’t be bothered to explain coherently because it doesn’t really matter because it’s different for you because it’s you (of course) and he has wings and he’s utterly devoted to you and has a great ass – did Tina Belcher write this part?

That’s just one example. And sure, it’s silly, just like a lot of the Chosen One tropes – Harry “Lightning Scar” Potter, I’m looking in your direction. But we take those tropes for granted, and run with them because they’re so common, they’re shorthand, and given meaning depending up on how well they’re done or not done. We don’t even call them “silly,” half the time; we call them “mythic” if we don’t just gloss over them entirely.

And when push comes to shove, that’s what I think did in Jupiter Ascending with critics; familiarity with “Chosen One” tropes, and the expectations thereof, but a lack of current familiarity with “Hidden Princess” in anything like this context.

Many, many people complained that the story made no sense, or was confusing. It’s not. It lacks narrative discipline, sure, but the primary flow is deeply linear – pedantically so at times. It only fails to make linear sense if you either try to force it into the Chosen One paradigm against all the actual storytelling on screen, or if you ignore everything women characters do as unimportant. (Every reviewer who referred to Black Widow as “eye candy not doing anything much” in the first Avengers film, I’m looking in your directions.)

But also explains why it did eventually find an audience. A subset of the viewing audience did pick up on the Hidden Princess tropes, and once you get that, it makes all kinds of sense.

Particularly once you realise it’s Hidden Princess Dune. Then, suddenly, it’s pretty neat.

I should schedule a critical-viewing double-feature at the Lair: Lynch’s Dune and the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending. Seeing them in that close a proximity sounds neat to me, as a cinematic exercise. Maybe in the fall, once summer touring season is done.

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Comments

[vatine]

I thought that Dune was a David "Twin Peaks" LynchAlan Smithee production?

It would make sense both ways, though.

[solarbird]

I must not start posts with lots of names in them after midnight. I must not start posts with lots of names in them after midnight. I must not start posts with lots of names in them after midnight.

I did this with something last week, too. Fixed; thanks.

[corvi]

I like when you do this sort of thinky review.

What are some other examples of the "Hidden Princess" plot?

[solarbird]

Anything that makes me think is likely to make me write about it. I do have a blog to maintain, after all. ^_^

Hidden Princes is pretty thin and far between in live action lately, but they're all over the place in faerie tales and animation. Snow White, the very first Disney animated film, is an archetypal hidden princess story - she's recognised by the animals, for example, as royalty. (And in Jupiter Ascending, that animal is the bee. See?) Like Chosen One, there's a whole lot of Special Because Special, but in Hidden Princess it's birth rather than some kind of (maybe even spiritual) choosing, reflecting the ingrained sexism of culture. Chosen One can come from anywhere; Hidden Princess must have the heritage.

I think I could build an argument that Escape to Witch Mountain has a bunch of elements of Hidden Princess, really, with a co-helping of even-rarer Hidden Prince. The focus there, too, is on being rescued. Hidden Princess can grow to rescue herself (see here, see Witch Mountain in part), but doesn't have to (see Sleeping Beauty). I think, also, you can say in the broadest of strokes that Hidden Princess is about restoring what is due, and Chosen One is about creating a place. Both in practice tend to involve elements of each other, because it really is a blurry intersection.

In both cases, at the lowest levels, they're about post-childhood power/identity fantasies. I'm not really This Boring Ordinary Kid, I'm the Chosen One / Special / Hidden Royalty. The X-Men comics resonate - at their best - for several reasons, one of which is that they have the flexibility to cover both sets of bases. I mean, think about it - mutant of birth, of heritage (Hidden Princess), sometimes striking out entirely on their own (whether they like it or not; Chosen One), and sometimes being rescued by, say, Xavier and company (can be Chosen One or Hidden Princess) and offered/placed on a path of power.

I'm trying to think of more examples outside animation and faerie tales, but it's hard, you know? Anastasia is a literal hidden princess, I suppose - but it's been long enough since I've seen it that I hesitate. And, again, animation. Hm. Like I said, thin on the ground as of late.

[vatine]

I guess it could be argued that Pippi Longstocking is a Hidden Princess story and she has certainly had all of "books", "live action film" and "animated film" featuring her.

[solarbird]

From the books I read (which is almost certainly not all of them and is most certainly some time ago), I wouldn't agree. But I haven't read them all. But from an archtypal standpoint, Pippi is basically fae - similarly to Peter Pan in some ways, as I recall it - and that's a whole different archetypal environment.

[vatine]

There's an element of that. Although she is a princess (although it's arguable that she wasn't born a princess, because I certainly do not recall the timing between her birth and her father becoming a king of a Pacific island).

[solarbird]

<reads up>

Oh, that turned out to be real? Wow. Okay. So... I dunno! I'd have to read the books then to have a proper opinion. I prefer her as being a more fae/wild child story, myself. I hope the writer didn't break that.

[metanewsmods]

May we link this on metanews? We also post on Tumblr and LJ.

[solarbird]

On Tumblr and LJ, I'd prefer that you linked to the original copy that lives on my band blog, as this is an echo of that content. (I post some things here first, but also echo my band blog here; I'm a musician.)

But if for some reason you have a specific need to link to Dreamwidth (particularly on the metanews community here, that makes sense), then sure, that's cool too, go ahead.

[metanewsmods]

Linking to the band blog should be fine. Thanks!