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 hen it was announced in the early 1980s that
American audiences were returning to Jupiter via "2010",
the Peter Hyams sequel to Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking "2001",
Toho decided to give Japanese audiences a trip of their own, and do it
before "2010". The result was "Sayonara Jupiter" (aka
"Bye-Bye Jupiter"), a big budget effort whose biggest
accomplishment was to make viewers appreciate the average "2010"
even more. "Jupiter" was a movie with the potential to mark the
first time a Japanese film competed with a major Hollywood production on a
level playing field. Instead, it was a missed opportunity, a movie that was
too long and too self-indulgent for its own good.
"Sayonara Jupiter"
opens on Mars, where scientists are laboring to extract water from the red
planet's polar ice caps. Instead, they uncover a mysterious symbol that
appears to be a message from extraterrestrials that, apparently, have been
active in the solar system for thousands of years. The discovery postpones a
planned mission to Jupiter, where humans hope to harness solar power for an
energy-starved Earth. Instead, a spaceship is dispatched to ensure that
alien life do not currently exist on Jupiter before the planned mission is
to commence. But things don't go as planned, and a renegade hippie cult and
a runaway black hole shows up to complicate matters.
The biggest and most glaring problem with
"Sayonara Jupiter" is the script by Sakyo Komatsu, who is
adapting from his own novel. Komatsu wrote the novel twenty years earlier,
and while he was translating the novel into script form he apparently
forgot to look out the window. Otherwise he would have noticed that it's
no longer the 1960's. As a result, the flower children of the Jupiter
Church and their philosophies, as portrayed in the film, are laughably out
of date in the materialistic 80s. In fact, they don't translate well even
now. Truth is, it's hard to believe that a published novelist (any
published novelist, actually) could write such bland and unbelievably bad
dialogue.
Another problem concerns the aliens living on
Jupiter. The aliens are never really focused on to the extent that they
should have been, seeing as how they are a major part of the film's
premise. Instead, they're relegated to background players. This is a major
problem, especially since aliens are what the audience usually comes to
these types of movies for. Not helping matters at all are the script's
human characters, who are so thinly drawn that not a single one ever
achieves the level of personality where the audience can care about them.
The only possible exception is Ron Wilson, playing
the ill-fated Captain Kinn. Wilson is heads and shoulders above everyone
else, but considering the cast at hand, that's not really a feat worth
bragging about. The only other bright spot is Koichi Kawakita, whose
special effects work for "Sayonara Jupiter" is quite impressive,
and might possibly be some of the best effects done in the 1980s. They're
so good, in fact, that they might rival anything done by a major Hollywood
studio at the time. The miniature work is also impressive and intricate in
design, not to mention the excellent matte paintings.
Unfortunately director Koji Hashimoto isn't up to the
task of meeting Kawakita in the inspiration department. Even though
"Sayonara Jupiter" is a visually attractive film, the filmmakers
spend so much time lingering on the effects shots that eventually you see
more of outer space than any sane person would care to. The film itself is
simply way too long; 140 minutes is a ridiculous amount of time to tell
"Jupiter's" story, and as a result the film feels bloated and
padded.
Ultimately, "Sayonara Jupiter" looks less
like a motion picture and more like a demo reel for Toho's special effects
department. As such, Toho's special effects department certainly has a lot
to be proud of. The rest of the film's cast and crew, unfortunately,
should hang their head in shame.
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