This Sci-Fi Romeo & Juliet Adaptation With A Spider-Man Star Was An Ambitious Failure
by Witney Seibold · /FilmWe may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
The premise for Juan Diego Solanas' 2012 sci-fi romance "Upside Down" is a bit odd and will take a few moments to explain. The film takes place on two separate planets that orbit each other so closely, they can be connected by a tall tower. Although there is no "up" in space, the citizens of both worlds have decided that one planet will be the "Up Top" planet, and the other will be the "Down Below" planet. Up Top is where society's wealthy citizens live, while Down Below is where the impoverished working class lives.
Physics also don't work the same way in this universe. Every object from one planet will always be beholden to its native world's gravity. That means if someone from Down Below travels to Up Top, they will have to wear a weight belt to keep themselves essentially affixed to Up Top's floors. They call such counterbalance weights "inverse matter." If someone from Down Below were to urinate while visiting Up Top, their urine stream would pour up. That is something that happens in "Upside Down."
Oh yes, and if someone stays in physical contact with inverse matter for a prolonged period, it will become unstable and start to burn hot. People from Up Top regularly visit Down Below just so they can dance on the ceilings, but people from Down Below are forbidden from hobnobbing with Up Toppers.
Into this world, Solanas transposed a "Romeo & Juliet" story about a Down Belower named Adam (Jim Sturgess) who attempts to infiltrate Up Top and who has a romance with the wealthy Eden, played by Kirsten Dunst. Given that she gave Spider-Man an upside-down kiss in 2002's "Spider-Man," Dunst (who hated filming that scene) seems to have a thing for romancing upside-down guys.
Kirsten Dunst enjoys more upside-down kisses in Upside Down
I'm not quite done describing the film's premise. It seems that the tower that connects the Up world and the Down world is owned by a well-moneyed super corporation, and the Up Toppers are in an exploitative economic arrangement with Down Below, taking their oil and selling them electricity at jacked-up prices. So just in case the class metaphor wasn't strong enough, there is a literal element of financial exploitation worked right into the screenplay.
"Upside Down" will drive most sci-fi fans nuts, as even elementary school students know that this isn't how gravity works. If one were to leave their home planet and go to a different planet, they would be able to walk around on the new planet under its own gravity. Gravity doesn't "own" its native planet's citizens. Heck, even the ridiculously inaccurate "Moonfall" understood physics better than this, and Neil deGrasse Tyson called that film the least scientifically accurate sci-fi movie ever made.
Once we accept that "Upside Down" is a fantasy, however, and not based in sci-fi concepts, then maybe one can have a good time with it. Indeed, the fantastical ideas about gravity make for some wildly ambitious and visually interesting scenes. There is a sequence wherein Adam takes Eden to a mountain and kisses her while she adheres to a rock face above his head. There is another sequence wherein a character makes pancakes using ingredients smuggled from the opposing world, allowing the meal to float through the air. It's absurd enough to be entertaining, and it's certainly original.
Also, the cast is game. Sturgess and Dunst are appealing romantic leads, and the always-amazing Timothy Spall has a supporting role. Sigur Rós did some of the music.
Most critics disliked Upside Down, and it tanked at the box office
Did I mention the bizarre additional conceit about a rare breed of pink bumblebees that make a certain kind of pink pollen that has "magical" properties? And that Adam has invented a kind of pink pollen cream that can defy skin aging? Sure, why not? Throw in pink bees. They're in "Upside Down" as well. There's a lot of sneaking around, conspiring, and even a bout of amnesia. The film is more complicated than even its complex premise lets on.
Critics weren't kind to "Upside Down," and it only has a 29% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 52 reviews. Anton Bitel, writing for Sight & Sound, couldn't get around the absurd physics of the premise, calling them "patently ridiculous." Frank Scheck, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, enjoyed the bizarro physics, but found the central love story to be "pedestrian." Not everyone hated it, though. Some critics, including yours truly, wrote more positive reviews that cited how amusingly weird the physics were and how they required a great deal of creativity to visualize, even if they didn't make any scientific sense. (Sadly, mine has since been wiped from the Internet.)
Whatever the critics said, though, it didn't help the grosses of "Upside Down." On a budget of $50 million (!), it only earned about $22 million at the box office. According to Box Office Mojo, only $105,095 of that was earned in the United States. That's a bomb of epic proportions. The film is hardly a classic — yes, it is most certainly ridiculous — but it's ambitious enough to warrant a look, especially if you like arch, mythology-heavy sci-fi. It's currently available to stream on Prime Video.