When you look at a movie that bombs, you need to separate whether it’s a bad movie versus just a movie that lost money. But let’s face it, Jupiter Ascending is in no way a good movie. It kind of makes movies like Valerian look like they make sense. And after years of proof, we can just finally admit that The Wachowskis did a decent movie in Bound and ran out of ideas after Grant Morrison spoke up about how much The Matrix took from The Invisibles. Well, that’s somewhat wrong because, if anything, this movie has too many ideas and bombards them into your eyes. Maybe ran out of good ideas is the right term to use.

I love that this movie was an attempt at whole new mythology and that it has some grandiose effects. But despite my incessant love for the very worst in cinema, it didn’t even move me. And trust me, I’m never a so bad it’s good fan. I want my bad movies entertaining works of missed-the-mark secret success oddball greatness. This misses even that mark.

If you told me that Jupiter Ascending was an adaption of an existing piece of media, it’d all make more sense. But I really feel like I got Leonard Part 6-ed here, being asked to care about something that has no reason to be cared about.

Lana Wachowski’s favorite book, The Odyssey, was one inspiration, with her saying “It was making me super-emotional. The whole concept of these almost spiritual journeys and you’re changed.” She also brought up The Wizard of Oz yet misrepresented the narrative by stating “Dorothy is pretty much the same at the end as she is at the beginning. Whereas Odysseus goes through such an epic shift in his identity.” I would argue that Dorothy, although she can go home at any time, needed to find the confidence, growth and friendship she’d need in Oz to succeed back in Kansas. Also, if all of these narratives seem to suggest that Jupiter Rising will have the same normal person is the messiah in a conflict they never knew about as The Matrix, you may have seen one of the Wachowskis’ films.

One of the statements the filmmakers made was “We were, like, “Can we bring a different kind of female character like Dorothy or Alice? Characters who negotiate conflict and complex situations with intelligence and empathy?'” Yes, Dorothy has a protector, Toto, who’s always barking at everyone. And that was sort of the origin of Caine.”

The problem is, they created a female character who seemingly only allows the world to carry them through the story instead of being a dynamic and fully-agented part of it.

This time, our would-be heroine is Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), who is a maid so poor that to get the telescope of her dreams, she must sell her eggs. And, of course, when she sells said eggs, that’s when aliens known as Keepers realize that she’s the heriditary Queen of Earth, named for her father’s favorite planet. But he wasn’t Russian, but you probably guessed that.

Yes, Earth is really just a petri dish, a place where elite aliens can harvesting the organs they need to produce a youth serum called ReGenX-E, which sounds like a Rob Liefeld character. There’s been a death in the House of Abrasax, the most powerful of elite alien houses — think Dune — and the rich kids are battling over their inheritence. Those kids would be Balem (Eddie Redmayne), who has inherited the refineries of — irony — Jupiter and is threatened by our heroine; Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), who has more mysterious motives and Titus (Douglas Booth), who has spent his inheritance on a spaceship that is a combination of a Gothic cathedral and the Playboy mansion and you know, why isn’t this movie just about that?

As the aliens go to harvest Jupiter’s eggs, they really want to kill her before she’s saved by Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), a half-human, half-dog with a nose so good it can smell someone across the universe. No, really. He’s been hired by Titus to take Jupiter, who also controls the Keepers, so immediately he’s suspicious. There’s also another alien on Earth, Stinger Apini (Sean Bean), who is half-human and half-bee in case you didn’t catch on. At this point, this feels like the worst RPG I’ve ever had to play and everybody in the party would probably be rules lawyers and I’m getting bummed out. But hey — Jupiter suddenly rolls for intuiton and learns that she can control bees.

Just writing this next part makes me giggle. She’s soon captured by hunters working for Balem who have been bribed by Kalique to bring Jupiter to her palace where she explains that our heroine is Earth’s rightful owner. Then, Titus’s henchmen capture Jupiter — again — and send Caine into deep space but not before Titus becomes all Republic serial villain and revealing his plan to marry Jupiter, kill her and take Earth. Luckily, Caine cosplays Flash Gordon and saves her at the altar, but now she has to get home because Balem has taken her entire family hostage.

So anyways, everyone lives, Jupiter’s family is returned home with no memory of their disappearance — think Men In Black — and Jupiter owns the Earth. Her family then gives her a telescope and she’s like, “Oh you guys,” except you know, she literally is richer than anyone and could just go to any planet now. Such is the happy ending. Oh yeah, and she can now date the dog man, who already told her, ” I have more in common with a dog than I have with you.”

She replies, “I love dogs. I’ve always loved dogs.”

This line was in the ad campaign and that’s when I realized that someday I was going to write a few thousand words about this movie.

I love that someone on Reddit, while Tatum was promoting the movie, asked what it was about. He replied, “Good question. I have the same one myself.”

This is a movie with a dog man who has a gun that barks. Where Terry Gilliam shows up in a scene straight out of Brazil that grinds the movie to a halt. Where a chase scene through Chicago demanded the moment between day and night when the sky is a certain blue, which meant that they could only shoot for six minutes a day for six months to get that scene and man, that feels like some kind of occult practice more than moviemaking and were that true I’d love this movie instead of wondering why it’s over two hours long.

Much like many of the box office bombs I’ve written about, this made a lot of money. But even $184 million worldwide isn’t much when the movie cost $210 million to make, much less even more to market.

Conspiracy theorists went nuts on this, as it raises so many Illuminati and New Age — read that as Satanic to those folks — ideas, like how Earth isn’t the center of the universe, genetic manipulation, fallen angels, the repitlian character of Greeghan being disinformation, the ideas of Madame Blavatsky being spoonfed to audiences and even a title which inverts Lucifer Rising.

It’s also a movie where the lead asks 105 questions, which is way less questions than I have about what I just watched.

So who is this movie for?

Anyone that cares about the Lone Ranger is either ancient or so deeply invested in a character that hasn’t appeared in popular media since 1981’s The Legend of the Lone Ranger. Sure, there were comic books from Topps and Dynamite Comics, as well as a collection of short stories and a 2003 WB TV movie that had Chad Michael Murray as Luke Hartman instead of John Reid. Actually, nobody really saw that movie as it was a pilot for an unpicked up series that was played in summer when nobody really ever watches.

Columbia Pictures had wanted to make a Lone Ranger film since 2002, as The Mask of Zorro was successful. Columbia wanted Tonto to be a female love interest, which would have made a small number of fans upset, but by 2005, the project was in turnaround.

Entertainment Rights eventually brought producer Jerry Bruckheimer in and got The Lone Ranger on board with Walt Disney Pictures, who were looking for another Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. They doubled down on that, casting Johnny Depp as Tonto and had Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio start writing a script that may have been about supernatural coyotes.

Finally, Gore Verbinski was hired to direct and Armie Hammer was selected to play the Lone Ranger. But the film was nearly canceled when Disney CEO Bob Iger and then Walt Disney Studios chairman Rich Ross had concerns over the film’s budget. Once Verbinski, Bruckheimer, Depp and Hammer deferred 20% of their salaries to minimize the overall cost, production began in February 2012. And then Ross was out and Alan F. Horn was in and he was already concerned. After all, bad guy Butch Cavendish ate the heart of the Lone Range’s brother.

Wasn’t this a family movie?

Who was this for?

If you can’t answer that, then how can you put $250 million into production and $150 million into marketing?

Even though the movie made $250 million worldwide — which is a great showing — it didn’t have a chance of breaking even.

So why did this movie get made?

I wonder that myself.

Why does it start not with the origin of its characters but instead with an old Tonto sitting inside a museum display?

Why do the Lone Ranger and Tonto come to blows in the film?

And again, who wanted this movie? I mean, I love The Shadow, The Phantom, Green Hornet, Doc Savage and other radio era heroes, I also realize that I am not the audience that makes you money.

The origin is pretty good, though. Lawyer John Reid is returning to Texas on one of Latham Cole’s (Tom Wilkinson) trains, which also has Tonto and Cavendish (William Fichtner, who I love and would cast in any movie) on board. The Texas Rangers, led by John’s brother Dan (James Badge Dale), have captured Cavendish, who is soon rescued by his gang. With the train derailed, Dan deputizes John just in time to walk into a trap where everyone dies except John, who Tonto believes can’t die thanks to a white horse hovering over the not dead man’s grave. Now, the world may believe that John is dead, but he has a mask, a mission and a silver bullet made from the fallen Rangers’ badges. Tonto tells him to use it on Cavendish, as he thinks that the criminal is actually a wendigo.

How did Tonto come to believe this? When he was young, he rescued Cavendish and showed him a mountain full of silver ore in exchange for a pocket watch. Later, Butch murdered Tinto’s tribe to keep the location a secret, leaving the Native American burdened with guilt.

But man, the rest of the movie is a mess. It’s a big loud mess and I should love it, but I just see so much excess on screen when this could be lean and fun and the same budget could have made five of these movies. How much did this movie lose? Studio president Alan Bergman was asked if Disney could recoup its losses on The Lone Ranger and John Carter through subsequent releases or other methods and he said, “I’m going to answer that question honestly and tell you no, it didn’t get that much better. We did lose that much money on those movies.”

I mean, as written many times, a bomb doesn’t necessarily make for a bad movie. And I’m guilty for looking at those issues as much as the film, just like Verbinski, Bruckheimer, Hammer and Depp all said, claiming that bad reviews were influenced by all the production troubles and big budget.

Westerns have continually failed over the last few years and even though I’m the kind of weirdo who can tell you that there’s a scene in this that is taken directly from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West and got the John Ford reference, you have to sell audiences as to why a Western works. That’s why The Hateful Eight works and this doesn’t. Then again, that’s not a big franchise movie and hey, Tarantino picked this as one of his top ten movies of 2013.

Perhaps the strangest thing about this movie is that I had never seen Armie Hammer in a movie before, but knew him from the allegations that he had asked a girlfriend to remove one of her ribs surgically so that he could eat it. Another girlfriend claimed that he repeatedly wanted to eat her flesh and would lick cuts that she had.

Everyone’s kink is everyone’s kink, but wow, dude.

And Johnny Depp…

Anyways. Let’s get past the budget and scandal and think to something Bruckheimer said.

“I think it is going to be looked back on as a brave, wonderful film. I’ve been through this a lot with journalists. We made a movie years ago called Flashdance, and I remember one journalist just giving us the worst review ever. Then, about five years later, we get this kind of love letter – that he totally “missed” it. That he loved the movie, and it’s kind of the same with you that, any time it’s on, you have to watch it. It happens, you know.”

This is not that love letter.

The Lone Ranger is a movie that thinks that putting huge set pieces in the place of human drama equals a great movie. And I get it, I know how blockbusters work, but after two Lone Ranger movies with good Butch Cavendish actors and not much else, do I have to wait until 2057 for someone to do it right? This is a few steps removed from The Wild Wild West, another heartbreaker of a movie because it’s a franchise that only fat old men like me care about and the movie was made to totally not be for us — rightly so, because it needs a mass audience — but it no way connects with anyone other than the whims of its filmmakers.

I kind of love that this movie answers all of my meta needs, from reuniting Dolly Parton with Dabney Coleman and Lily Tomlin to having Buddy Ebsen show up as Barnaby Jones. And I realize that every critic wanted more out of director Penelope Spheeris. But look, I’m a simple man and I like seeing Jim Varney play Uncle Jed and do you have any clue how many hours and hours I’ve watched of the original show?

So yeah, Erika Eleniak is no Donan Douglas, Diedrich Bader can never touch Max Baer Jr. and while I love Cloris Leachman, she’s not anywhere close to Irene Ryan. But isn’t it cool to get one more episode, in fact, multiple episodes? And yeah, Rob Schenider and Lea Thompson are just alright bad guys, but this is a movie silly enough to have Zsa Zsa Gabor show up as herself and not smart enough for Jed to say, “That’s that Oliver Douglas feller’s sister’s wife.”

Seriously, grade school Sam watched Leave It to Beaver, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and The Beverly Hillbillies every single day for hours. If anybody wants to reboot any of those shows, please reach out to me. I’m ready to share my wasted life with the world.

While not strictly a movie made from a TV show, Don’t Worry, We’ll Think of a Title is packed with TV stars either in lead roles or in cameos and that’s always been my jam. In fact, this movie is meta before we even knew what that meant.

Charlie Yuckapuck (Morey Amsterdam) and Annie (Rose Marie) work =at the diner run by Mr. Travis (Richard Deacon), making this nearly a The Dick Van Dyke Show reunion, just as that show was in its last month of first-run episodes. It’s a busy place, so busy that people like Danny Thomas and Forrest Tucker just drop by.

Then, one day, Crumworth Raines (Moe Howard!) comes in to inform waitress Magda Anders (January Jones) that she has inherited a bookstore at Updike University. She hires Charlie and Annie and all manner of hijinks ensue, as Charlie looks just like a defecting cosmonaut named Yasha Nudnik, which brings in spies out of the cold, as it were, such as government agent Jim Holliston (Michael Ford), Comrade Olga (Carmen Phillips) and KEB agents played by Peggy Mondo, Cliff Arquette and Nick Adams.

The bookstore gets even more cameos, including Milton Berle, Steve Allen and Carl Reiner. But perhaps the one that put this on the site was that Irene Ryan plays Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies and is completely in character, giving the protagonists a ride and driving back off to her show. In 1966, movie theaters and movies were battling for audiences, so it’s just crazy to see her show up and literally everyone knows who she is.

Director Harmon Jones made some wild movies like The Beast of Budapest, Gorilla At Large and Bloodhounds of Broadway. Here, he’s working from a script by Amsterdam, John Davis Hart (who wrote the English dialogue for Any Gun Can Play, The Great Silence, Argoman the Fantastic Superman and Kill, Baby…Kill!) and William Marks (War Party, episodes of Bonanza and The Wild Wild West. 

One of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone is “A Stop at Willoughby,” perhaps because it’s about advertising. Then again, it’s also about nostalgia and the pull of better times, which we all feel as we grow old.

Charles Lattimer (Mark Harmon) is an ad guy facing the gears of the business wearing him down, all while his marriage to Kristen (Catherine Hicks) is nearing its end. Every day, he rides the train and when the conductor (Bill Cobbs) gives him a pocket watch, he’s able to go past the sprawl and into Willoughby in the 1890s. That’s where he finds purpose and discovers that the illustration that he’s based his new campaign around came from his own pen. And oh yes, there’s new love with Laura Brown (Mary McDonnell).

As always, I prefer the much tighter original, as this has too much fluff and too happy an ending. Director Steven Schachter and writer Vivienne Radkoff have mostly made TV movies, but they turn in a fine film here, even if it’s not really necessary.