On Friday, Oscar ballots get mailed out, and Academy voters will have a chance to dictate movie history. They’ll decide whether rising star Eddie Redmayne takes home a trophy for his phenomenal performance as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything” and determine if overdue veteran Julianne Moore indeed has a lock on best actress for her wrenching portrayal of a woman with early-onset Alzheimers in “Still Alice.”
As it happens, on that the same day are two movie openings that could not be timed worse. One, “Jupiter Ascending,” stars Redmayne as an evil interplanetary monarch, while the other, “Seventh Son,” stars Moore as an evil witch. The movies are varying degrees of awful, and neither is saved by its Oscar-nominated star.
Eddie Redmayne as Balem Abrasax and Edward Hogg in “Jupiter Ascending.” (Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
In fact, “Jupiter” is a little worse off because of Redmayne. The highly anticipated, long-delayed action adventure from the Wachowski siblings (as in the writing-directing team behind the “Matrix” movies and “Cloud Atlas”) features the British actor playing his first supervillain, and he’s pretty terrible.
In a movie riddled with unintentional humor, Redmayne spurs the most uproarious laughs. With the exception of a goofy conversation featuring Sean Bean (“Bees are genetically designed to recognize royalty,” he explains with utter conviction), nearly all the awkward tittering comes at the expense of Redmayne’s portrayal of Balem Abrasax.
You can see what the role is supposed to be. This super-scary bad guy (mild spoiler here) “harvests” planets, killing humans so he can stay forever youthful. A character like that should be quietly sinister and eerily emotion-free — so sedate that when he does unleash a torrent of rage, it sends shivers down your spine. Not a chance. Redmayne speaks in a throaty whisper, fighting hard to make his voice as deep as he can, and the result is often unintelligible. And he’s so slight, so boyish, that he never comes across as intimidating at all. When he grabs the heroine Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) by the throat, you wonder why she doesn’t just flick him in the forehead. That should be enough to knock him over.
And then there’s the screeching. To show Balem’s penchant for rage spirals, Redmayne raises his voice to epic soprano levels when reaming out his otherworldly lackeys. If he’s capable of inflicting damage, it’s to eardrums alone.
So what will the Academy do with this information? Is “Jupiter Ascending” doomed to be Redmayne’s “Norbit”? (You remember “Norbit.” The 2007 comedy stinker arrived in theaters — with star Eddie Murphy wearing a dopey fat suit in all the ubiquitous posters — just as voters were staring at ballots with Murphy as a supporting actor nominee for “Dreamgirls.” He lost to Alan Arkin in “Little Miss Sunshine,” and historians still debate whether this was the Curse of Norbit, or just a case of no one really liking Eddie Murphy that much.)
It depends: Do the voters think of themselves as jurors — the courtroom ideal, anyway — agreeing only to take into account the pertinent data presented by the nominated performance?
Previous Oscars ceremonies tell us that the past can come into play, but not usually in a punitive way. The truth is, the Academy doesn’t appear to care much about past failures, but they might reward past good behavior. If the McConaissance has taught us anything, it’s that Hollywood doles out second — and third and fourth — chances. (As long as your name isn’t Mel Gibson.)
It doesn’t have nearly the cachet of an EGOT, but there are a fair number of ROs — actors singled out at the Razzie Awards, which honors the worst in movies, as well as the Oscars. It’s happened to stars as renowned as Laurence Olivier and Faye Dunaway. Halle Berry won her Razzie for the dreadful “Catwoman” just a few years after she won an Oscar for “Monster’s Ball.” And Kevin Costner has been a regular (dis)honoree at the Razzies since winning the directing Oscar for “Dances With Wolves” (though he never won for acting).
But the Academy has also showed love for a number of actors after they won Razzies. The most memorable: Sandra Bullock. In 2010, just a day before she accepted her first Oscar in glittering Marchesa, she showed up like a good sport to accept her Razzie, toting a red wagon filled with DVDs of her mess of a comedy, “All About Steve,” to hand out to fans. Not only did Bullock win for worst actress that year, but also worst couple, a dishonor she shared with Bradley Cooper — who, since then, has been nominated for three Oscars.
Other RO standouts include Woody Harrelson, who was twice Oscar-nominated after getting a Razzie for “Indecent Proposal,” and John Travolta, whose two Oscar nominations are sprinkled among his seven Razzie noms. (He won the Razzie for “Battlefield Earth” in 2001.) Roberto Benigni won a Razzie in 1994 for “Son of the Pink Panther,” a few years before the Academy gave him the chance to climb all over the seats on his way to the stage to pick up an Oscar for “Life Is Beautiful.”
So Academy voters might not hold the bad movies against a star — but they definitely consider previous good work when selecting winners. Of all his far better movies — from “Taxi Driver” to “Goodfellas” — director Martin Scorsese won an Oscar for “The Departed,” and some saw it as his due after getting snubbed in the past. Other “make-up” Oscars include Denzel Washington, who won for “Training Day” instead of “Malcolm X” or “The Hurricane” (though there could be another explanation for that), Russell Crowe, who won for “Gladiator” instead of “The Insider,” and Al Pacino, who took home an award for “Scent of a Woman” and not the myriad other movies he was so much better in.
So Redmayne probably has nothing to worry about. Mistakes happen, and he wasn’t the only negative aspect of the misfire that is “Jupiter Ascending.” Still, the timing is funny. It’s enough to make you wonder if somehow Harvey Weinstein was behind all of this . . . .
