Film / Jupiter Ascending

"I CREATE LIFE!!! ...and I destroy it."

— Balem Abrasax

Jupiter Ascending is a 2015 American space opera film written and directed by The Wachowskis.

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is a Russian immigrant girl raised in Chicago who makes her living cleaning houses with her family. Unbeknownst to her, she is also the genetic recurrence of the Queen of the Universe, whose three scions are vying for control of Earth. The son of the queen, Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne), sends an agent to kill Jupiter, but her other son Titus Abrasax sends Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), part-wolf, part-human Super-Soldier, to protect her, and they team up with Stinger Apini (Sean Bean) to confront the Abrasax siblings and protect Jupiter's claim.

The film was released in the United States on February 6, 2015. Watch the teaser trailer here and the main trailer here.

Has no relation to Mercury Rising.

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Jupiter Ascending provides examples of:

#-I

• Abusive Precursors: Humans were created by the Abrasax with the intention of being harvested eventually.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Channing Tatum is used to having his blood mopped up with unconventional methods.
  • Terry Gilliam being very unsubtly introduced at the end of a scene full of immense, complex, idiosyncratic and ineffective bureaucracy.
  • One shot shows a kid playing a Game of Thrones video game. Sean Bean, who plays Stinger, starred in the first season of the TV show. Likely doubles as a Celebrity Paradox.
  • Director allusion: this is the second movie by the Wachowskis that ends with a character flying at the camera.
• Aerith and Bob: Literally! In a world where people have names like Kalique, Balem, Famulus, and Maladictes, we also have... Intergalactic Advocate Bob.
• Aliens Speaking English: Everyone in this movie not from Earth speaks English (except the official Advocate Bob has to bribe), which is never even Hand Waved away. It gets to the point where even the writing in the alien spaceships and bureaucratic offices is in English. A bit jarring, since even Jupiter's family doesn't exclusively speak English.
• Animal Motifs: The Splices, with varying levels of subtlety.
  • Stinger is a beekeeper with incredibly precise piloting skills. He also used to have wings.
  • Caine is described in-universe as a lone wolf searching for a pack. His characterization is defined by his loyalty to Jupiter and martial skills.
• Ancient Astronauts: The alien dynasties that seeded Earth millennia ago inspired many of humanity's myths about vampires, dragons (one of the races that work for Balem even looks like smaller dragons), and possibly even deities. Humanity isn't even native to Earth, having evolved on a planet called Ourus, and Earth was "seeded" by Abrasax Industries roughly one hundred thousand years before.
• Artistic License: At one point, Jupiter uses a maxi pad as a makeshift bandage for Caine's wound. That is a decent idea on its face,^note The disposable absorbent pad was actually developed to treat battlefield wounds and quickly adapted for feminine hygiene. except she applies the sticky side to the wound, not the other side actually designed for absorbing blood. One would think her actress, Mila Kunis, would know herself which side does which.
• Artistic License – Geography: Jupiter's parents are said to have met while stargazing at the shore of Neva in Saint Petersburg. Saint Petersburg is in fact overcast during most of the year, and even when the sky is not clouded, one can't see stars there. Mind you, her father did seem very excited, so maybe this was a rare clear day during a power cut.
• At Least I Admit It: Unlike their sister, Balem and Titus own up to the fact that obtaining their youth serum results in the deaths of untold billions of people.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Downplayed. The three Abrasax siblings all have competing schemes, none of them particularly good. By the end of the movie, Kalique's scheme has gone off exactly as planned: Jupiter claimed her inheritance at the expense of one of Balem's most important holdings. What's more, depending on how inheritance laws work, she may even get a share of what Balem had left when he died. Ultimately, the brothers had far worse designs, so Kalique is definitely the least of three evils here.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Jupiter benefits from this whether cleaning toilets or scaling the exterior of Balem's buildings.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Balem is one of the three Abrasax siblings competing for Jupiter's inheritance and is the most evil of them as he's trying to harvest Earth after she gives him the planet while Titus is another one of those siblings and is also trying to kill Jupiter. The fact that they're also at odds with each other is the only reason Jupiter has a chance in hell of staying alive.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Nobody but Jupiter is genuinely concerned with the harvesting of billions of innocent people like the people of Earth and others in order to have the genetic material for Recodes. Other characters compare it to animals being humanely slaughtered for their meat and it is perfectly legal within the system.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Titus vents Caine into the vacuum of space in an attempt to kill him, but leaves him his jet boots and allows him to kick a crate filled with instant spacesuits that get vented along with him, thus allowing Caine to survive until the Aegis arrives to rescue him. Not only was it a sloppy attempt to murder him, it was also completely unnecessary, as Caine was powerless to thwart Titus when he was merely imprisoned.
  • Don't forget the classic 'stupid Bond villain move' of explaining one's Evil Plan and then tossing the good guy into 'an inescapable deathtrap' without staying to see if he actually dies. There are at least FIVE rules in the Evil Overlord List that explain why this is such a stupendously bad idea.
• Bullet Time: Naturally, since it's the Wachowskis, though it shows up quite sparingly, most notably in the fight between Caine and Stinger to show how quickly Stinger can move despite his age.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: Bees. As a side effect of this, they can also recognize royalty, which tips Stinger off to Jupiter’s purpose in life.
• Capitalism Is Bad: The primary theme of the movie is how people can become commodities under capitalism. Jupiter and Vlady enter into a scheme to sell Jupiter's eggs for money (despite the eggs being Jupiter's, Vlady gets a bigger cut of the funds^note She also has less eggs than he has sperm, which sounds fair.), space society apparently runs on lab-grown slave labor, and all of Earth's population — everything humans have ever accomplished — is rendered completely meaningless to the Abrasax family, who use them as an interchangeable resource with as much significance as we might a herd of cattle.
• Casting Gag: Mila Kunis, a Ukrainian woman, as a Russian immigrant, which is doubly darkly hilarious due to the quasi-war between the two states. Her family though are Russian-speaking Jews, making it a bit more complicated (Jews are considered a separate ethnicity in both countries).
• Changeling Fantasy: Jupiter Jones is the genetic reincarnation of the Queen of the Universe. Three factions want her: the Queen's elder son, who wants to kill her so she can't reclaim the inheritance he received, the Queen's younger son who wants to marry (and then kill) her so he can steal the inheritance, and another group trying to protect her.
• Chekhov's Gun: Several. Most notable are the word "harvest" (used to describe Jupiter's egg donation and the process of collecting humans), and Caine's portal gun which he uses to kill Greeghan.
• Chewing the Scenery: While everyone is having some fun with the script, nobody is chewing more scenery than Eddie Redmayne. Most of the time, he speaks in a hoarse whisper ... until things start going downhill, and then he breaks out the shouting.
  Balem: I CREATE LIFE!!!!!
  [Jupiter barely reacts]
  Balem: ...And I destroy it.
• City Planet: Ourus. It has two artificial rings surrounding the planet and structures so tall they stretch above the planet's atmosphere, and the entire thing is described as an "overpopulated cesspool." The usual problems with the trope (such as the lack of farmland and population size) can be explained by their extensive space empires and virtual immortality.
• Collapsing Lair: The headquarters of Balem's corporation, located on Jupiter, begins to be demolished because the "grav-hull [was] ruptured" and "[t]he gas was reacting to the stockworks," because Caine's vessel had punctured the barrier around the planet and crashed into several structures. Maybe it was a bad idea to establish a base of operations on a planet so naturally hostile to life and machinery alike.
• Cool, but Inefficient: The Warhammers, Titus Abrasax' ship's first line of defense against attacking fighter craft, consists of banks of giant cannons that launch barrages of non-explosive, moderately mobile Space Mines in tight patterns. These things can do nothing but try and ram their target, so the whole weapon system proves as ineffective as it sounds despite looking pretty damn cool. Most tellingly, Caine and Stinger make it through the Warhammer blockade entirely unscathed and only start taking damage once Titus' ship's regular point defence cannons open fire.
• Cool Plane: The maneuverable, adjustable, submersible one-person fighter craft of the film outdo many of the space fighters out there.
• Cool Starship: Both the functional, cool-looking Aegis and the over-the-top elaborate personal ships of the Abrasax family.
• Cool Versus Awesome: At least one fight scene is human-wolf hybrid Caine fighting a group of space dragon soldiers.
• Costume Porn:
  • Jupiter's silver, white, and red gown◊ with matching headdress. It's her wedding dress.
  • Likewise, Kalique's own dresses◊ and gowns◊ fit this trope too.
  • The shoes! Jupiter especially ends up in some fantastic heels, some of which even Mila Kunis is visibly uncomfortable and/or struggling in.
• Cryptic Background Reference: While the film is actually pretty good at world-building with background references and a surprisingly interesting universe, one reference in particular feels cryptic. Caine, the part-wolf part-human super soldier, is said to have ripped the throat out of an Entitled, yet he doesn't remember the incident taking place and apparently was informed of its occurrence by his mentor, Stinger. The only indication that it actually happened is that he was court-martialed for the crime, and is no longer a skyjacker. Who the Entitled was, the reasons for it occurring, and why Caine is said to have done it in a fit of rage when we never see him acting out of rage at any point in the movie, is never expanded upon.
  • However, Balem's raspy voice and ornate collars hint it was him- and according to Eddie Redmayne, he had his larynx ripped out by a Lycantant, so unless that happened twice, it's safe to assume it was him. Given Balem's delightful personality, it's not hard to imagine why Caine did it.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The galactic community has a very different outlook to Earth. Most notably, it's a major plot point that they see genetics as the sum total of identity - thus, if you are genetically identical to a dead person, then you are considered to be that person reborn. Jupiter eventually decides that she doesn't buy it.
• Didn't See That Coming: Balem didn't think anyone would be crazy enough to enter the stockworks by breaching the grav-hull protecting the place from violently exploding.
• Disappeared Dad: Max Jones is murdered before the birth of his daughter Jupiter. No mention is made of the Abrasax siblings' father (or fathers?) though.
• Disney Villain Death: Balem falls to his doom from a collapsing platform.
• The Dragon: Mr. Greeghan to Balem, after his predecessor Tskalikin is killed for his failure to capture Jupiter. Amusingly, the Sargon, his race of humanoid winged reptilians, resemble Dragons and are implied to have started the original myth on Earth.
• Dramatic Space Drifting: Caine is spaced by Titus Abrasax for 'betraying' him instead of just being killed outright or sinply left to rot in hus cell until after Titus got everything he wanted. Of course, he explains to Caine the entirety of his Evil Plan — and it works out exactly as you'd expect for Titus.
• Dynamic Entry: It's almost Caine's trademark for the film. His interruption of Jupiter and Titus' wedding aboard Titus' pleasure starship, going into Balem's factory, surprising the hunters after him at the medical clinic (and his rescue of Jupiter there), his 'rescue' of Jupiter from Kalique ... it's actually easier to count the times when he enters an area through normal means.
• Easily Forgiven: Caine quickly forgives Stinger for handing him and Jupiter over to Titus. Justified, as Stinger also alerted the authorities about the situation and only did it to save his ailing daughter. Stinger is also one of the few people skilled enough to help Caine save Jupiter, and he also makes clear there are no other potential reasons he might turn on Caine a second time.
• Establishing Character Moment: The three Abrasax siblings are introduced overlooking a Harvested planet with no remorse and arguing (as subtly as they can) over their mother and the inheritance she left them. Jupiter has a montage of cleaning other people's houses and admiring their beautiful and expensive things. And Caine's introduced with all the bounty hunters speaking in awe of him: cue fight scene.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: All three Abrasax siblings remember their mother fondly, and each is (in his or her own way) carrying out her legacy. Didn't stop Balem from killing her, though.
• Everyone Has Standards: Jupiter's uncle is a sexist jerk who exploits his family members, but he's furious when he thinks Vladie made Jupiter sell her eggs.
  [Repeatedly hitting Vladie with a pillow] You! Do! Not! Treat! Your cousin! Like! Chicken!
• Exact Words: Balem's intentions are pretty transparent when he's trying to blackmail Jupiter into abdication — send her and her family back to Earth, and immediately harvest the planet. It's so transparent, in fact, that she realizes as much and decides to spite him by refusing, even knowing he'll kill her family and probably her as well.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Splices are generally looked down upon.
  • Earth as well is looked down upon, but it is done a shade more subtly. For example, the Abrasax siblings don't refer to Earth as a planet, but as an industry. They treat the people as a commodity.
• Feudal Future: The space-faring human civilization is stated to be a "confederation" but families such as the House of Abrasax, which has titles, seals, succession crises, et al., seem to dominate the economy.
• Foreshadowing: Kalique admitting that her people may have inspired the myths about vampires foreshadows the later revelation that their youth serum is made from people.
• Fountain of Youth: 'RegeneX' is a special fluid that restores your youth when you bathe in it. Unfortunately, it's produced by killing and processing people; one hundred humans are needed to create a single portion of the fluid.
• The Greys: The "Keepers." They're employed by Balem to guard Earth and maintain the Masquerade, and have all the hallmarks of the trope, viz. grey skin, large heads, and no clothes.
• Half-Human Hybrid
  • Caine, both genetically manufactured and half wolf. Stinger and Famulus also count, being half bee and half deer respectively.
  • Technically, all of Earth is this way, Earth-humans having been spliced with native species during the seeding.
• Hover Skates: First Caine, and later Jupiter Jones, sport a pair of these.
• Human Aliens: Inverted. All humans come from a distant planet, Orous, while Earth humans (and Splices) are lesser beings artificially created by genetic engineering. In the universe of Jupiter Ascending, we're the human aliens.
• Human Resources: The Earth, as well as countless other planets, are just People Farms. The DNA is used to keep the more privileged humans eternally young.
• Humanity Came from Space: We really came from a planet named Ourus originally, and were then "seeded" on Earth 100,000 years ago. Also, it's one of the few examples where humanity's ancient galaxy-spanning empire still exists, and is hostile, with space humans planning to "harvest" those on Earth to make a youth serum without any ethical qualms, seeing us as essentially livestock.
• Humans by Any Other Name: Caine refers to the humans of Earth as "Terrsies" in an extremely condescending tone.
• I Have No Son!: Inverted. Jupiter tells Balem just before he falls to his death that she's not his mother.
• I Have Your Wife: Happens twice. Stinger's daughter is ailing, compelling him into handing Jupiter and Caine over to Titus in exchange for the money to afford a "Recode." Balem does this with Jupiter's entire family, to convince her to abdicate so he can take Earth for his own.
• The Illegal: Jupiter, her mother Aleksa, and her Aunt Nino. All three of them, including math professor Aleksa, have to work as maids in the family cleaning business because they lack the proper documentation for better jobs.
• Immortality Immorality: How the Abrasax family — and presumably others out in space like it — maintain their long lives is pretty horrible. The substance that rejuvenates them is created by harvesting human life forms they seeded millennia ago on other planets.
• Improvised Bandage: Jupiter uses a pad from the glove compartment of a stolen car to staunch Caine's bleeding.
• Impoverished Patrician:
  • "Impoverished" is a relative term here, but all three heirs stood to lose a portion of their inheritance once Jupiter Ascended. A few lines also make it clear they're no longer even in the line of inheritance if she dies, in which case her Earth family would Ascend. As Kalique's scheme hinged on this, we can presume the lion's share of Jupiter's inheritance would come out of Balem's holdings. Titus in particular is this: while he maintains an expensive lifestyle, he's running out of money and failed a recent financial enterprise, which is why he competes with his siblings for control of Earth.
  • While Jupiter is cleaning the house of a wealthy client, Katherine Dunlevy is dithering over the prospect of receiving a marriage proposal from one of America's richest bachelors. She compares herself to Cinderella. The irony is lost on her, though clearly not on Jupiter.
• Incest Subtext: The driving force of the movie is the conflict between the Abrasax siblings and Jupiter, the genetic recurrence of their mother. Titus is The Casanova whose defining scene is a Zero-G Spot pseudo-orgy of heavy petting. He plans to secure his claim to Earth by marrying Jupiter, and all that implies. (Although he repeatedly insists it's only a contract, he's fairly touchy and flirty and makes a lot of intense eye contact.)
• Incurable Cough of Death: Stinger's daughter. Downplayed compared to many examples, but still, the moment she did it, you pretty much knew what was coming.
• Informed Ability: In the opening narration, Jupiter claims her father's death made her The Cynic who always sees the worst in people. However, much of the latter half of the plot is fueled by her trusting strangers blindly, accepting their claims at face value, and falling for someone she just met that day.
• Interspecies Romance: Human Jupiter with half-wolf genetically engineered Super-Soldier Caine.

J-Z

• Just Between You and Me: Titus tells Caine his Evil Plan before throwing him out the airlock. Like most Evil Gloating, it backfires.
• Karma Houdini: Titus Abrasax faces no consequences for his actions in the movie other than some mild damage to his clipper, although Caine does try to assure Jupiter that he'll receive his comeuppance via bureaucracy.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The space police and bounty hunters come standardly equipped with the ability to make people on the worlds they visit forget anything out of the ordinary that they see, including inducing laser-guided amnesia and building back structures that were damaged in combat that the visitors were involved in. However, the fact that people may have been killed during the fight wasn't brought up.
• Layman's Terms:
  Caine: [The boots] harness the force of gravity, redirecting it into differential equation slips so you can surf.
  Jupiter: Yeah, I heard ‘gravity’ and ‘surf.’
  Caine: Up is hard. Down is easy.
• Masquerade: One is enforced on Earth through liberal use of Laser-Guided Amnesia technology so the Terrans don't notice when things get out of hand among the aliens.
• Maternity Crisis: Jupiter's mother gives birth to her in a shipping container en route to America.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Jupiter was born in the House of Leo with Jupiter ascending, which according to her aunt means she's destined for greatness.
• Meaningful Echo: "I hate my life." First said during a montage of Jupiter's boring life on Earth, then comes back to bite her when Balem reveals that it's what his mother said to him before he killed her.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Jupiter has the name of an extraterrestrial body. Jupiter is also the name of the king of the gods, as Jupiter is the queen of the interstellar magnates. In-universe, her name is meaningful to her family as her father named her after his favorite planet, and she was born with Jupiter in Leo.
  • Stinger Apini is part bee. (Apinae is the subfamily for most bees in taxonomy.)
  • Caine is part canine. He's also a badass who starts out working for a bad guy, fitting with Name of Cain.
  • Kalique is said the same way as Caligula — the corrupt and decadent dictator.
  • Knock the "m" off Balem and you have Bale, as in evil and spite.
    • Balem's henchman, Mr. Night, was given the name Chicanery, which means deceptive trickery — befitting the specialty of his employer's family.
  • Abrasax is from Greek Mythology, the name itself refers to the order of the seven classical planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). In the context of the movie, it refers to how their dynasty "owns" all the planets.
  • The elephant Splice pilot is named Nesh, after the Hindu god Ganesh.
  • Gugu Mbatha Raw's character is a deer-splice and Titus' right-hand woman. Fittingly, her name is Famulus, which means 'assistant' or 'servant.'
• Mr. Fanservice:
  • Caine, who takes his shirt off at one point, which is perfectly normal since he's treating an injury, but it doesn't go back on until he's collected some weapons, had a fight, stowed away on a spaceship and gets to another planet.
  • Balem's lounge attire.◊
• Naval Blockade: Balem orders a planetary blockade of Earth as soon as he finds out that Jupiter escaped his agents. It fails miserably.
• The Needs of the Many: Jupiter's decision in the climax: she refuses to abdicate (guaranteeing that Balem will kill her and her entire family), rather than letting him Harvest Earth and kill billions. Of course, Caine shows up before that happens, but it's the thought that counts.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Balem gives Jupiter a pretty relentless beating with a metal rod after she foils his plan. She later returns the favor.
• Not With the Safety On, You Won't: Jupiter holds Caine at gunpoint when she first meets him. Subverted in that he tells her how to disengage the safety, so when she holds it up again, it's primed to fire. He actually left the gun there for her to point at him, so she'd feel more comfortable.
• Obliviously Evil: Kalique seems to try to look on the other way on the gravity of the fact that billions of innocent people have to die for her to get her youth serum. At least Balem and Titus acknowledge it as mass murder.. Lampshaded when she tells how she personally deals with it when she tells Jupiter about the things she'll be able to do to better her family's lives once she's Ascended:
  Kalique: ...and all you have to do is close your eyes.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Balem subjects Jupiter to this: he promises her that if she abdicates the throne, he'll wait to harvest Earth until after she's dead and he'll let her family live. Subverted when she realizes that, even if he does kill her and her family, he can't harvest Earth unless she abdicates, whereas if she does, then they're all animals for the slaughter. She thus decides that, if the choice is between her and her family being murdered or being harvested with the rest of the Earth, she'll pick the option that hurts Balem.
• Oh, Crap!: Vladie's reaction when Jupiter tells him she didn't sell her eggs, because the doctors were Keepers in disguise trying to kill her. Thus, he couldn't pay for the things he bought, and the rest of the family found out.
• Orcus on His Throne: Balem spends a lot of time sending Mooks to do his dirty work, but not once do we see him leave the Jupiter refinery.
• Out-Gambitted: Balem and Titus spend most of the movie sending more guards or bribing more mercenaries to bring them Jupiter. Kalique bribes two of Balem's mercenaries to bring Jupiter to her first, and is nothing but polite and kind to her. The result is that Titus falls under Aegis investigation and Balem is dead, while Kalique is alive and well to take control of the company, exactly as she wanted.
• Parental Incest: The several-millennia-old Titus Abrasax tries to force Jupiter Jones, the reincarnation of his mother, to marry him. However, while he does creepily try to charm her, and Famulus taunts Caine with the idea of them having sex, he only wants to marry her so he can be her heir, then immediately kill her to get the inheritance.
• People Farms: The sole point of Earth (and countless other planets seeded by the Abrasax family) is to grow a sizable population and then kill the entire planet overnight, turning them into immortality bathwater.
• Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: The extinction of the dinosaurs was engineered by aliens because they were deemed too hostile to human life. Once they were gone, Earth was seeded for eventual harvesting.
• Pinball Protagonist: Jupiter Jones. The directors have stated that they wanted to have a female protagonist who didn't conform to Real Women Don't Wear Dresses. Unfortunately, Jupiter is merely swept up into a plot she has no idea of and nothing to do with. Other people help her and rescue her, and she's just along for the ride. She displays no special skills or knowledge to contribute anything. The first thing she does for herself is to agree to marry Titus in exchange for pardoning Caine and Stinger — over an hour into the film.
• Practical Currency: As Kalique explains, the most valuable resource in the galaxy is "more time." She bribes some mercenaries with a supply of "finest Abrasax."
• Praetorian Guard: Each of the Abrasax siblings has their own Royal Guard. Balem doesn't rely on them as much as the others in favor of Mr. Greeghan and his men. Jupiter is also informed that she's entitled to a Royal Guard by law, after being legitimized.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Zig-Zagging Trope. Jupiter herself clearly wants to prevent the Earth from being harvested, but the Aegis crew, and in general anyone who helps her, are never shown to care one way or the other about the Earth. They're portrayed as heroic simply for protecting Jupiter's legal inheritance.
• Really 700 Years Old: All the Abrasax siblings, and potentially any moneyed character Jupiter encounters in space. Kalique in particular just turned 14,004 years old and her mother was in her 91st millennium when she died (and not of old age).
• Revenge Before Reason: Balem is willing to harvest Earth ahead of schedule just to spite and/or kill Jupiter, even though Mr. Night points out the serious financial blow doing so would entail.
• Royally Screwed Up: The Abrasax clan; even the best of them — arguably Kalique, the only one whose endgame doesn't seem to necessitate Jupiter's death — has no qualms committing genocide for the sake of personal immortality.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Most of the non-human characters.
• Scenery Porn: All the scenery is taken to an absurd degrees of detail, ranging from the insides of even the cruisers and motorbikes, to the individual planets and the starships.
• Schizo Tech: Ourus resembles myriad bureaucratic facilities built in the early twentieth century, staffed by splices and androids who ask for signatures in the form of thumbprints. In sharp contrast to House Abrasax's Crystal Spires and Togas look.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Averted. In a rare exception in Space Opera movies, three million or even billions of people isn't a huge number, centuries and even millennia is a short period of time, and a planet is a common resource — though some are more valuable for various reasons. Also, fancy orbital structures are very delicate and anything that works as a spaceship works as a projectile.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Apparently embedded in Orous' legal system to the point that Jupiter's android lawyer has protocols for it.
  Intergalactic Advocate Bob: It goes without saying that graft is incompatible with my programming. [Proceeds to bribe the bureaucrat at the desk.]
• Screw Your Ultimatum!: Jupiter does this to Balem. He can kill her and her family, but the alternative is just as bad and this way she's screwing him over in the process.
• Self-Made Orphan: Balem killed his mother, because she begged him to, likely because she could no longer stand taking part in planetary genocides.
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: Kalique slowly emerging naked (with Toplessness from the Back) from her Fountain of Youth made of RegeneX, now young and beautiful.
• Shame If Something Happened: After kidnapping Jupiter's family, Mr. Night never admits to kidnapping them, but merely offers to help ensure their safety if his demands are met.
• Shout-Out:
  • Jupiter's blue gingham flannel shirt from the beginning of the film. Lana made this explicit in at least one interview.
  • Jupiter cites law 27b/6. Also doubles as an Actor Allusion, since director Terry Gilliam actually has a cameo in the film.
  • The film does the infamous revolving door of bureaucrats scene from Ikiru in sci-fi style.
• Society of Immortals: The Abrasax family can live forever on their wealth, and their lives are very different from both Earthlings and even the rest of their space society. They have a Crystal Spires and Togas look to their stuff, they seem to have no incest taboo, and plan on very long time-scales. The Earth, for example, is a sixty-five-million-year investment that's about to come ripe.
• Space Police: The Aegis. They're "like cops" and provide legal services and an escort.
• Starscraper: Ourus has buildings which extend into space.
• Starship Luxurious: All the personal ships of the Abrasax heirs qualify, but Titus' clipper takes the cake. It has its own cathedral inside, as well as hundred-meter-high gilded statues lining the hull.
• Suddenly Shouting: When Balem Abrasax isn't whispering, he's shouting. Transcends into Villainous Breakdown by the end.
  Balem: Bring her to me ... NOW!!!
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Stinger and his daughter both have these, although they only appear gold for a moment when they do so. They appear to be from their partial bee DNA, apparently.
• Time Abyss: The late Abrasax Matriarch was over ninety-one thousand years old when she died. Of the "younger" generation, Kalique recently passed the fourteen-millennia mark, and she's the middle child.
• Too Dumb to Live: Jupiter's father. When a bunch of armed guys break into his house and try to steal his telescope, he tries to stop them and is promptly shot. What did he think would happen? Whilst the telescope was important to him, it wasn't worth risking his life over ... or risking the lives of his wife and unborn child, who were in the room with him.
• Undressing the Unconscious: A recurring bit in the film is Jupiter waking up to find herself dressed in something she wasn't wearing when she passed out in prior scenes, to which she responds with shock and sometimes annoyance at being made to wear something way fancier than she's used to.
• Vast Bureaucracy: The Captain of the Aegis cruiser would much rather go into battle than deal with the bureaucracy that claiming Jupiter's title to Earth involves. She's not exaggerating.
  Jupiter: I will never complain about the DMV. Never, ever again.
• We Win, Because You Didn't:
  • This sums up Kalique's gambit in a nutshell. As the middle child, she seems to be well off and financially stable. By allowing Jupiter to ascend and protecting her from Titus, she screws over her older brother, who loses his greatest asset by virtue of it being Jupiter's inheritance, and prevents Titus from becoming more powerful by keeping Jupiter out of his hands.
  • This is also Jupiter's gambit in the climax. Regardless of whether she abdicates, she and her family will die eventually: either they'll die of natural causes or Balem will murder them. But if she abdicates, Balem will own the Earth, and be able to Harvest it at any time. Jupiter chooses not to abdicate for this reason: sure, she and her whole family will die, but Balem won't get his hands on Earth.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Titus disappears from the story after Caine rescues Jupiter from the forced marriage. Granted, he might have been apprehended or arrested, but we never see it, and it's never mentioned by anyone (Caine begins to explain Titus' likely fate, but Jupiter cuts him off).
  • This seems to be the case for a few characters: The bounty hunters, Kalique, and Advocate Bob also vanish the moment their role in the plot has been fulfilled. Justified since most of these people are bit players in the unfolding events, or have lost the ability to influence the outcome. Stinger's daughter Kiza is actually gone before her relevance is explained.
• Would Hit a Girl: Balem slaps Jupiter across the face when she adds two and two and verbalizes her realization that he killed his mother.
• You Have Failed Me: After his bounty hunters betray him and his keepers fail to capture Jupiter, Balem tortures and executes his reptilian Sargorn head of security, Mr. Tskalikin. Balem makes sure the replacement, Mr. Greeghan, watches it happen. It's a very strange example, because Tskalikin wasn't directly responsible for any of the mishaps, but Balem killed him anyway, apparently just to have someone, anyone, to blame.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Balem points out Jupiter isn't a killer. He's right, so she lowers the gun and shoots him in the leg, which is almost as satisfying.

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