10 Things Wrong With Jupiter Ascending

8. It's At Least 20 Minutes Too Long

Yes, it's an arbitrary complaint when you don't like a film to insist that it drags on for too long, but this is a movie clearly in dire need of a more ruthless editing job. It's far from an obscenely long film as it stands (a relatively reasonable 127 minutes), yet despite the need to be introduced to this world, there are so many superfluous and snoozy asides that add so little to the film. Aside from chopping down the exposition or at least making it more concise, one surprisingly length and totally pointless sequence that could easily get lost is when an eccentric assistant character (again, if you can remember his name, well done) is attempting to help Jupiter acquire her title. Jupiter is bounced around numerous departments for a good two or three minutes, and while the scene is clearly intended to evoke a little Terry Gilliam-esque bureaucratic mockery, it falls completely flat. This is the most blatantly unnecessary scene in the movie, but there are others like it, and had the pic clocked in at barely over 100 minutes, then critics and audiences may have been much kinder to its glaring flaws.
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Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.