#script posts

she’s already so sure of him and of them but he says fantastic so purposefully here because he knows that’s what he’d have said before. he knows she’ll find it a comfort even if he never talks like that again from here on.

(Jupiter doesn't want to see any of this but something catches her eye, something soft amidst the hard lines of industry: human bodies, their skin white, brown and black, piled like mounds of coal waiting to be refined.)

JUPITER JONES

“Oh god…”

CHICANERY NIGHT

“Impressive, isn't it? But this is just the Skim. A triflecompared to Harvest, when your entire planet will look like this.”

(The bodies are bulldozed onto grav-ways that feed into the glowing interiors of the refinery.)

CHICANERY NIGHT (CONT’D)

“I find it amusing to think that you were born like them, just another piece of stock, and now here you are, a certified stock holder.”

(The ship arcs towards Balem’s citadel. Jupiter looks back for the Aegis.)

JUPITER JONES

“I don’t see the Aegis. Where are they?”

CHICANERY NIGHT

“They’ll be along in good time. All in good time.”

(This snippet is from a deleted scene that comes just after Greeghan pilots the ship through the eye of Jupiter, with the eye being closed immediately afterwards to shut the Aegis out. It explains why there is concept art by Allen Wei (pictured) depicting piles of bodies waiting to be refined. Earlier posts on the script/call sheets can be found here (call-sheet trivia), here (deleted scene - Balem proposes that Jupiter rule the Verse with him) and here (background).)

This is yet another deleted scene, and this one is either amusing or horrifying depending on how dark your sense of humour is. I find it LOL-worthy because it takes the grand Jupiter Ascending tradition of taking pride in global genocide to the next level. The script doesn't go into much detail about Jupiter’s responses, but that’s probably because they would have left it up to Mila to convey Jupiter’s horror through expressions/line delivery, etc.

And Mr Night is totally being a passive-aggressive little rat here. That’s certainly not how you should talk to an entitled, but he’s past caring. And probably still a bit drunk.

I doubt this was actually filmed, since the ship that Greeghan pilots in the film doesn't have windows to the rear that Jupiter could look out of. They may have cut it for budget reasons, since rendering huge piles of dead bodies being processed would have come with a hefty price tag. 

In the script, you very much get the impression that Jupiter is being taken to Balem like a lamb being taken to the slaughter - her helplessness and weariness with her experiences are accentuated far more than they are in the finished film, which adds a more sinister air to proceedings. I think I prefer how things played out in the film since Jupiter comes across as a stronger character, though I do wish they’d kept Jupiter seeing the mountains of bodies - it would have made the horrific nature of the refinery clearer and further underlined how monstrous harvesting is.

I will be posting insights into the Jupiter Ascending script/call sheets later, but before I do I just want to clarify a few things:

1. I will not be posting scans/photos of the script pages. This is to cover my own back when it comes to copyright, etc.

2. I will post brief quotes/transcriptions of the scripts, but they will be just that - brief. As a rule, I will instead provide summaries and highlight differences between the scene as scripted and the scene as filmed. Again, this is to cover my back.

3. I don’t have everything. The material I have is mainly concentrated on the shadow chase and the film’s climax (going from Chicanery and Greeghan taking Jupiter to the refinery to Aleksa waking up). There are snatches of scenes from the Commonwealth Ministry and the incest wedding as well, but they are very brief indeed. Because of the nature of the paperwork, the material I do have is patchy and incomplete - I only have the very opening of the initial Jupiter/Balem exchange, for example (literally up to “my mother never cleaned a toilet in her life”). If my coverage feels patchy, it’s because the material I’m working from is patchy.

4. The script does not tell us what was filmed (though it is likely that a lot of it was), and some of the scenes as scripted play out differently from the finished scenes. Therefore, it’s not just a case of the script containing deleted scenes - it also contains alternate scenes (the script is dated May 2013, FYI). I expect some of the scenes were changed to their final forms during re-shoots.