(She climbs out when suddenly a voice calls from the dark.)
“It doesn’t have to end like this.”
(Balem is on the other side of the Trough.)
“We don’t have to do this again. You once believed we would rule this Verse together. It’s true. You swore it to me.”
(Jupiter flees his screams.)
(This scene comes just after Jupiter and Balem grab a hold of railings after tumbling through the Grav Trough.)
Of all of the fascinating things about the script pages/call sheets (see here and here for background), this little exchange was perhaps the most intriguing. It was also probably filmed, explaining the disturbed/frightened look that Jupiter shoots at Balem before leaving.
This exchange both throws light on and further muddies what was going through Balem’s mind as the refinery was sinking. As the film stands, it simply seems as if Balem, overwhelmed by the catastrophic destruction of his refinery, completely flips and attempts to destroy Jupiter (first strangling her, then cutting her and finally beating her with the pipe), whom he believes to be his mother.
With this scene, the picture gets more complicated. In short, it suggests that Balem attempted to win Jupiter/Seraphi back before pursuing her destruction. He wants what logic dictates he shouldn’t - he wants Jupiter/Seraphi to rule by his side. The distinction between the two women has disintegrated for him, and he is adamant that Jupiter is Seraphi returned to him from the dead. With this scene it appears that Balem is treating Jupiter as a second chance at his relationship with his mother, in much the same manner that Kalique was (though she was obviously far more rational about who Jupiter was than Balem). Here, Balem is enraged by Jupiter’s implicit rejection of him, which presumably echoes his mother’s rejection of him after she had her change of heart about harvesting (which, again presumably, inspired the ‘fight’ that Balem refers to in his final scene). Jupiter’s rejection of his offer precedes his brutal attack, so the violence is less arbitrary than it is in the finished film.
I don’t have the whole scene so can’t be 100% sure, but it looks like the scene just prior to Jupiter and Balem falling into the Grav Trough went down differently. I’m basing this assumption on the fact that Jupiter and Balem appear to be in different parts of the lab when the plinth falls and smashes through the lab floor (Jupiter is with Caine but is pulled from him by the gravitational force, and Balem is hiding away from her before he is sucked down). This is just inference, but it seems to me that the scene where Balem slashes Jupiter’s arm and Jupiter shoots him in retaliation doesn’t exist in the version of the script I have (which is the initial shooting script). It wouldn’t really fit with the offer Balem makes, and the circumstances established by the script suggest that it simply wouldn’t work given the relative positions/circumstances of the characters. I only have the very beginning of the boardroom scene where Jupiter first meets Balem, so we have nothing to go on with regards to his conduct there. I only have the very start of the scene, but the script does still have Balem attack Jupiter viciously with a pipe.
There is LOTS of material to go through but I hope that whets your appetite. The script pages really are fascinating and offer significant further insight into events.
To turn to you, what do you make of all this? Does it flip things on their head for you? Are you revising any of your headcanons about Balem and Seraphi?
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