It's hard to pin point what the biggest problem with Jupiter Ascending is. It's plagued with just about every issue a film could have. Paper thin characters, convoluted plot, stilted dialogue, lack of grounding, and an aimless plot. There are many other issues, but those are the ones that stick out as being the biggest problems. But of course, when you throw all of these things together, what you get is a boring movie. In essence, that was the film's biggest problem. It wasn't even interesting enough to be a b-movie guilty pleasure. It's just too messy and uninteresting. It's the movie equivalent of a book "telling" rather than "showing."
There's countless dialogue info-dumps where boring characters are telling an equally boring hero (Mila Kunis) what's really going on in the universe. These scenes play out like a more lifeless version of scenes from a Percy Jackson movie. And really, the first 30 minutes feel like a compilation of better movies whoring it out. We get an Indiana Jones like introduction to Channing Tatum, who bursts onto the screen in an action sequence to find a piece of paper he must sniff to know Mila Kunis location, and once he finds her—it's probably only 10 minutes later, but the fight scenes just keep going, so it feels like an eternity—he saves Jupiter (Mila Kunis) and I almost wish he'd say, "come with me if you want to live," because at least then he'd be saying something. At this point we're over half an hour into the movie and I still don't give a damn about anything anyone is doing on screen.
On the positive, the effects are mostly good (the CGI lizards I don't really buy, but they look as good as your average CGI character does when standing next to a real human), and the acting is surprisingly strong, the only problem is they're giving nothing to do with their skills. No character has a story worth telling. No one grows, and the plot is driving no where. Everyone is passive, the plot is moving around them, leaving the audience wondering who the hell they're supposed to root for.
This is easily the worst movie I've seen this year. I hope it stays that way, because I don't think I could handle it if I have to watch a movie ascend to Jupiter's depths.