Jupiter Ascending Review: Gorgeous Effects, Broken Story

Yes, Jupiter Ascending is worth watching, and the reason is the craft. Lana and Lilly Wachowski's space opera spends 127 minutes on production design and has little left for the story. Mila Kunis plays Jupiter Jones, a Chicago house cleaner who sells her egg cells to buy a telescope, and Channing Tatum plays Caine Wise, a genetically engineered soldier sent to Earth to find her.

The film opened on February 6, 2015, took $184 million worldwide against a budget of $176 to $210 million, and collected 27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 273 critic reviews, read on October 20, 2026. It also became one of those expensive flops that grew a small, stubborn afterlife, the kind of film people keep arguing about long after the marketing stopped. The picture work is the reason to spend an evening with it.

Spoiler-free verdict: Worth watching for the craft. The script is a lost cause. A 127-minute space opera with Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum, photographed by John Toll and scored by Michael Giacchino. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 27 percent from 273 critic reviews, read on October 20, 2026. Nothing here needs reading twice.

What Jupiter Ascending is about

Jupiter Jones cleans other people's houses for a living in Chicago. She wants a telescope, so she sells her egg cells under a friend's name, and the clinic turns out to be a front for the Keepers, who work for the dynasty that runs this part of the galaxy and who try to kill her. Caine Wise kills them first. He is a former Legion soldier, part wolf, with a sense of smell that can track a gene across the solar system.

Caine takes Jupiter to Stinger Apini (Sean Bean), a half-human, half-honeybee exile living in hiding, and Jupiter finds she can order bees around with her mind. She is also the genetic match of the Abrasax matriarch, long dead, which makes her the rightful owner of Earth. The dynasty's three heirs each want the empire for themselves: Balem (Eddie Redmayne) runs it from a refinery inside the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, Kalique (Tuppence Middleton) holds the planet Cerise, and Titus (Douglas Booth) has spent his inheritance on a spaceship. Diomika Tsing (Nikki Amuka-Bird) of the Aegis police force is the only one in the room trying to keep the peace.

Cast and performances

Kunis plays Jupiter as a tired, watchful house cleaner and holds the centre of a film that keeps handing the frame to somebody else. Tatum gives Caine the vocabulary of an action star, running on anti-gravity boots with a gun in each hand, and the stunt work is physical rather than digital: most of the flying was done by stunt doubles filmed from a six-camera rig slung under a helicopter, and Kunis and Tatum shot the eight-minute Chicago chase every day for six months.

Eddie Redmayne's Balem is the performance the film cannot survive. Stephanie Merry in The Washington Post wrote that his tantrums come out as "sudden outbursts that have Redmayne screeching his lines", that he is "about as intimidating as a toddler", and that you will never be able to unhear the way he shrieks "Gooooo!" at his hideous minions. Redmayne won the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor for it on February 27, 2016, the night before the 2016 Oscars and a year after he took the Best Actor Oscar for The Theory of Everything on February 22, 2015.

Bean plays Stinger for laughs and loyalty in equal measure, and he is the only one in the film who sounds like he is having fun. Booth is the useful kind of villain, bored and beautiful as Titus. Middleton gives Kalique the one scene that feels like a person with a life outside the plot.

What works

The production design. Producer Grant Hill and visual effects supervisor Dan Glass built a world out of Renaissance architecture, modern glass and Gothic art, and it never looks like a copy of another space movie. John Toll shot it on Arri Alexas and Codex recorders, his second digital feature after Iron Man 3, and he and editor Alexander Berner give it a colour language of deep blue and hot gold that carries a romance the script never asks for. Michael Giacchino scored it before the cameras had finished rolling, which is the Wachowskis' habit, and the score does the work the dialogue should have done.

The idea underneath. Lana Wachowski told the Toronto Sun that they wanted "a different kind of female character like Dorothy or Alice", characters who "negotiate conflict and complex situations with intelligence and empathy". Jupiter fights with nerve and cunning instead of a bigger gun. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club called the film "an imaginatively goofy, Rococo space opera" and wrote that while it may not be as compelling a synthesis of pop philosophy and geek tastes as The Matrix, "it feels personal in the way that big-budget, effects-driven movies rarely do".

What doesn't

The script is the problem. Peter Travers in Rolling Stone called it "pandering FX padding, unnurtured by humor or heart", and he was writing about the film where the effects are the point. James Berardinelli of ReelViews, whose review Metacritic carries, called it "a truncated, Cliffs Notes version of something that might have worked a lot better as a mini-series". Three heirs, one dead matriarch's genes, a serum business, a Legion, an Aegis force, an alcazar, a refinery inside a gas giant. The film names these things and then uses them as furniture.

The schedule is part of it. The release moved from July 2014 to February 6, 2015 after poor test screenings, and the budget grew from $130 million to more than $210 million to cover over 2,000 effects shots. That is where the script went.

Then there is Redmayne. Balem is on screen for a lot of it, and the voice is pitched to be unsettling. If that voice is going to end your evening early, this is the film to skip.

What audiences say

The split is the story. Every score in this section was read on October 20, 2026. Rotten Tomatoes has the Popcornmeter at 38 percent from more than 50,000 ratings, Metacritic's user score is 5.1 from 645 user ratings, Letterboxd's member average sits at 2.09 out of 5 from 158,370 ratings across 20,468 written reviews, and TMDB's user score is 5.5 from 7,280 votes. On the other side of the ledger, Metacritic's critics gave the film 40 out of 100 from 40 reviews, a score the site calls mixed or average.

Who is arguing is the part the scores hide. Mark Kermode in The Observer called it "absolute nonsense" with "dialogue that would make George Lucas cringe", then wrote that the film "has delivered all of its riches on first viewing". Susana Polo put Jupiter Ascending eighth on Polygon's list of the ten best movies of 2015 and admitted that it "doesn't work in such a fantastical way that it remains startlingly compelling".

Where to watch Jupiter Ascending

There is no subscription streaming for Jupiter Ascending in the United States. JustWatch checked 376 streaming services on October 20, 2026 and lists it as free with ads on YouTube Free, and as a rental or a purchase on Amazon Video, the Apple TV Store and Fandango At Home. TMDB's US watch providers agree, listing rental and purchase on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Google Play Movies, YouTube and Fandango At Home, with no flatrate service in the country. TMDB's regional listings put it on Netflix in the United Kingdom and on JioHotstar in India, both checked on October 20, 2026. The film is in English with subtitles, and the US certificate is PG-13.

Current availability, cast details and member reviews sit on our Jupiter Ascending streaming options and member reviews page.

Verdict

Is Jupiter Ascending worth watching? Yes, with the caveat attached. This is a 127-minute film whose pictures are worth the ticket and whose script is not, with a lead villain who will cost you the evening if Redmayne's voice gets on your nerves. It grossed $184 million, it was never going to be a good film, and the 27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes as of October 20, 2026 is closer to the truth than the cult claims.

The case for it is John Toll's camera, Dan Glass's world, the eight-minute Chicago chase, and Mila Kunis playing a woman who wins without a transformation. The case against it is Redmayne and a plot with more proper nouns than logic. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers wrote that the film shifted "from a shambles to a fiasco", and he had the images in front of him. What he missed was the whole picture.

Watch it for the craft and the strangeness. Expect to argue about it afterwards.

Spoiler warning: the ending of Jupiter Ascending

Titus throws Caine off his ship and into open space. Caine survives it. He comes back with Stinger and reaches Jupiter before the wedding, then the last act turns into a heist. Balem takes Jupiter's family hostage and demands that she hand over Earth. She refuses, because the harvest cannot happen without her permission. Caine gets inside the refinery in the Great Red Spot and cracks its gravity hull, and the place starts to collapse.

Tsing's ship picks up Jupiter's mother and her siblings. Jupiter survives the collapse, lands at Balem's feet, and when he reaches for her she fights him off and he falls to his death. Caine gets her out while the refinery comes apart, and Tsing opens a portal to Earth and takes the three of them home.

Her family comes back to the Chicago flat with no memory of the week they were gone. Jupiter keeps the ownership of Earth a secret. Caine's rank in the Legion is restored, and the two of them start something. The last beat is Jupiter back in the cleaning job she started in, mopping the same floors, and she is no longer doing it because she has to.

The bureaucracy has the last word too. Terry Gilliam has a cameo as the Seal and Signet Minister, the bureaucrat who confirms Jupiter's title to Earth, and Mark Kermode in The Observer caught the joke: the film becomes "Brazil in space, replete with a Terry Gilliam cameo".

Read the ending as a homecoming and she was handed the power to decide the fate of the planet and went back to the life she came from because it is hers. Read it greedily and she keeps Earth as an asset and puts it back in the drawer. The film does not settle it, and it does not have to. It wanted a homecoming, and homecomings in this genre rarely arrive happy.