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Edwin Davies: This is pretty awful in terms of the huge budget, which all but guarantees that the film will lose a lot of money unless it becomes a huge sensation internationally. That's not impossible, since this is exactly the kind of huge spectacle that can play well with overseas audiences, but the Wachowskis seem to have used up their goodwill with global audiences in much the same way that they have with domestic audiences.

Probably the biggest thing that hurt Jupiter Ascending was the decision to delay its release from last summer to this weekend. I don't know if the film would have broken out due to other factors working against it - the ads, which didn't really convey the plot and instead emphasized the (very pretty) visuals and the Wachowski name chief among them - but it would have made more sense as a summer release, particularly in what turned out to be a pretty week summer for blockbusters. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. couldn't push it even further back to this summer because it'd get crushed by this year's much heavier hitters, so it was left to fend for itself at a time of year when audiences tend not to be drawn to science fiction epics. As such, it had the stink of failure hanging over it for months and months, something which was confirmed when the bad reviews started rolling in.

In a wider sense, this confirms that the Wachowskis have become cult filmmakers who, thanks to their earlier success and some clever co-production deals, have been able to command huge budgets. They have their ardent defenders (myself included) but it's getting to the point where the scale of their projects is becoming untenable since they're clearly not interested in making films that fit into commercial categories. Unless their Netflix show, whatever form that ends up taking, is a huge success that revitalizes their standing, I find it hard to believe that studios will be willing take such huge risks on their projects after so many costly flops.

Ryan Kyle: Warner Bros. did put their best foot forward trying to make this thing a hit with an IMAX release and a heavy advertising campaign that seemed to be prevalent everywhere. It was rather shocking when the July to February date change happened, since the advertising campaign already started with the summer release date with the trailer for "Jupiter Ascending" playing in front of the big blockbusters in May. The sudden pull appeared to be out of fear as the trailers did not translate well with audiences. Then when the campaign ramped back up, but with seemingly not any changes in terms of how it was being marketed, the writing was on the wall.

This is a disastrous start and overseas prospects seem questionable as well to make up the humongous deficit that the US box office will barely make a dent in covering.

David Mumpower: I think we've all known since the criminally underrated Speed Racer, at a minimum, that the Wachowski Brothers style had grown stale with most consumers. Personally, I have continued to enjoy their films up to and including the thought-provoking Cloud Atlas. And *I* had no interest in Jupiter Ascending. I think this is the first Wachowskis movie I haven't seen on opening weekend since Bound (!). That statement alone is telling. Even if it was trying but failing to counter-intuitively target fanboys as Lynderey suggested was the issue, that didn't happen. To me, these trailers looked eerily similar to The Chronicles of Riddick, which is not a good thing. I actually consider its opening weekend about a best case result, all things considered. People are so much better at sniffing out clunkers in the social media era.

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