40 Fun Facts About Jupiter Ascending

Which barking movie dog did the Wachowskis call the origin of Caine Wise in Jupiter Ascending?

Toto, the barking guardian of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, was the model: the directors wanted a heroine who handles conflict with empathy, plus a loyal protector at her side.

In Jupiter Ascending, where does Balem Abrasax hide his giant refinery?

The Great Red Spot of Jupiter hides the refinery, the seat from which Balem controls the wealthiest business empire in the known universe.

What job does Jupiter Jones do before learning she owns the Earth in Jupiter Ascending?

Housekeeper is her trade, and it pays so modestly that she agrees to sell her egg cells under a friend's name for extra cash.

Which Magic Mike star plays the genetically engineered soldier Caine Wise in Jupiter Ascending?

Channing Tatum later called the seven-month shoot a nightmare from the start, saying the whole cast had worked flat out on it.

Which Black Swan actress plays Jupiter Jones, heir to the Earth, in Jupiter Ascending?

Mila Kunis saw indulgence and consumerism as the underlying themes of the story, and described her character as unhappy with life until rescue arrives.

Which actor won a Worst Supporting Actor Razzie as Balem Abrasax in Jupiter Ascending?

Eddie Redmayne took the Razzie for a villain critics found over the top, and he later admitted it was a pretty bad performance by all accounts.

Jupiter Ascending was written and directed by the sisters behind which earlier sci-fi franchise?

The Matrix made Lana and Lilly Wachowski famous, and veterans of that series such as costume designer Kym Barrett came back to work on this one.

What gear lets Caine Wise glide through the air like a skater in Jupiter Ascending?

Antigravity boots do the work, and the effects team found a way to film real stuntmen for those scenes instead of building them digitally.

What do the Abrasax dynasty make from the people they harvest in Jupiter Ascending?

A youth serum that keeps the galactic elite alive indefinitely is the product, which turns every seeded planet into a farm waiting for its harvest.

Which children's character led the film that beat Jupiter Ascending to number one in US cinemas?

SpongeBob won the weekend with Sponge Out of Water at $55.4 million, three times the $18.4 million debut of the space epic, which also trailed American Sniper.

The long pre-dawn chase soon after Jupiter Jones meets Caine Wise crosses which US city in Jupiter Ascending?

Chicago is where the heroine lives with her relatives, and the chase was shot in the blue light just before sunrise, a window of only minutes each morning.

The actor behind Balem Abrasax in Jupiter Ascending won a Best Actor Oscar that year for which film?

The Theory of Everything earned its lead the Oscar for playing physicist Stephen Hawking, the opposite verdict to the worst-acting prize his space tyrant brought him.

Which Game of Thrones actor plays Stinger Apini, exiled comrade of Caine Wise, in Jupiter Ascending?

Sean Bean plays an ex-soldier hiding out on Earth with his daughter, who agrees to help the heroine once he works out who she is.

Which insects obey Jupiter Jones, revealing that she is royalty, in Jupiter Ascending?

Bees fall under her control at the hideout of a soldier who is himself part insect, a splice that gives him special vision and fierce loyalty.

Which heightened sense lets Caine Wise track a single gene across the universe in Jupiter Ascending?

Smell is his gift because he was engineered as half human and half canine, a mix that is not obvious at first glance.

What did the Caine Wise actor wear to reshape his lower jaw for Jupiter Ascending?

A mouthpiece changed the line of his jaw so much that he could not shut his lips and found it hard to speak.

What does Jupiter Jones hope to buy with the money from selling her egg cells in Jupiter Ascending?

A telescope is the dream purchase, fitting for a woman named after her late father's favourite planet.

How does Titus Abrasax plan to take ownership of Earth away from Jupiter Jones in Jupiter Ascending?

By marrying her and then killing her he would inherit the planet, but Caine Wise survives being thrown into the void and reaches the altar in time.

Jupiter Jones is genetically identical to which dead member of the Abrasax dynasty in Jupiter Ascending?

The siblings' mother, matriarch of the most powerful alien dynasty, lives again in those exact genes, which makes Jupiter Jones the rightful owner of Earth.

Which studio, whose president asked the Wachowskis for an original franchise, released Jupiter Ascending?

Warner Bros., through its president Jeff Robinov, proposed the idea, and development began two years later while the directors were busy on another shoot.

Advocate Bob, who steers Jupiter Jones through the paperwork in Jupiter Ascending, is what kind of being?

A robot lawyer, Advocate Bob is sent from window to window with his client as each clerk demands a slightly different form from a different office.

Terry Gilliam's cameo as a bureaucrat in Jupiter Ascending is a nod to which film that he directed?

Brazil, his satire of a paperwork-choked future, is echoed when he turns up as the Seal and Signet Minister who finally confirms the heroine's title to Earth.

Which original star of The History Boys plays the legal guide Advocate Bob in Jupiter Ascending?

Samuel Barnett, who went on to play the title detective in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, gives the advocate his chipper manner.

Which composer, who also scored Speed Racer for the Wachowskis, wrote the music for Jupiter Ascending?

Michael Giacchino began recording the music at Abbey Road before shooting had finished, a back-to-front method he found far more freeing.

Which ancient epic, the favourite book of Lana Wachowski, partly inspired Jupiter Ascending?

The Odyssey moved her because its hero goes through an epic shift in identity, the kind of journey that leaves a traveller changed.

Which film were the Wachowskis still shooting when design work on Jupiter Ascending began?

Cloud Atlas kept the directors busy with its future-set segments while the effects teams started pre-production, and its cinematographer and editor followed them over.

Which US film festival hosted a surprise invitation-only premiere of Jupiter Ascending?

Sundance staged the secret screening in Park City without inviting the press, and Variety still reported clusters of empty seats.

In which Russian city do the parents of Jupiter Jones meet before her birth in Jupiter Ascending?

St Petersburg is where the couple meet; after Maximilian Jones is killed, his widow Aleksa relocates to America to live with her relatives.

What do the Keepers do to Jupiter Jones and her friend after attacking them in Jupiter Ascending?

The Keepers erase their memories at once, yet a photograph Jupiter Jones took of them survives on her phone to puzzle her later.

The worlds of Jupiter Ascending were modelled on cities of which continent rather than earlier sci-fi?

Europe supplied the look: the effects supervisor pointed to Renaissance architecture, Gothic art and modern glass as the ingredients.

Captain Diomika Tsing, an ally of Jupiter Jones in Jupiter Ascending, serves in which police force?

The Aegis ship under her command pulls the heroine's relatives out of the collapsing refinery, then opens a portal back to Earth.

The six-camera Panocam rig built for Jupiter Ascending was mounted on what kind of aircraft?

A helicopter carried the rig, and its overlapping footage let the directors swing a virtual camera around the action independently of the real flight path.

The score of Jupiter Ascending inspired A Dark and Lonely Space, a later stage work in which art form?

Ballet was the form: dancer Kyle Davis set 24 performers to the music as planets, celestial bodies and forces of physics.

Famulus, an engineered hybrid in Jupiter Ascending, is half human and half which animal?

Deer is the other half of Famulus, one of several engineered hybrids in the story alongside the half-canine soldier Caine Wise.

Which future Princess Margaret of The Crown plays Katharine Dunlevy in Jupiter Ascending?

Vanessa Kirby landed the royal role only months after this release, and her character here lends her name to the heroine as a pseudonym.

Which actor plays Titus Abrasax, the heir who buys a lavish spaceship, in Jupiter Ascending?

Douglas Booth had played Romeo on screen two years earlier, and first drew notice as Boy George in a BBC drama.

Which English church, known locally as the ship of the Fens, hosted filming for Jupiter Ascending?

Ely Cathedral is a favourite of film crews: before this shoot it had already doubled for Westminster Abbey in The King's Speech.

Which actress, later seen in the Downton Abbey films, plays Kalique Abrasax in Jupiter Ascending?

Tuppence Middleton went from this set into the main cast of Sense8, the Netflix series by the same directors, as Riley Gunnarsdóttir.

Stinger Apini of Jupiter Ascending was described as a character in the mould of which Star Wars hero?

Han Solo was the template for the exiled veteran, who returns with Caine Wise to rescue the heroine from Titus Abrasax.

How does Maximilian Jones, the father of Jupiter Jones, die before she is named in Jupiter Ascending?

In a robbery, the opening tragedy of the story; his widow then names their baby after the planet he loved most.