Chicago plays starring role in Andy and Lana Wachowski’s space epic ‘Jupiter Ascending’

Despite the fact that chiseled actor Channing Tatum is shirtless during a good portion of “Jupiter Ascending,” the newest film by Chicago’s own Beverly-bred “The Matrix” moguls Andy and Lana Wachowski, he is often overshadowed by his equally sexy and far more muscular co-star: Chicago.

Although past Chicago-shot films such as John Hughes’ 1986 comedy “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and Andrew Davis’ 1993 action-thriller “The Fugitive” are handsome cinematic tributes to the City of Big (and strapping) Shoulders, the $175 million “Jupiter Ascending” literally takes things to new heights. Originally slated for a July 2014 release, it opens Friday.

“In a lot of ways, we’ve been scouting Chicago our whole lives,” says Andy, an Andersonville resident, from the duo’s well-appointed world headquarters in Edgewater, where they recently installed a 3-D projection system in their expansive theater. “We live here for a reason. We think it’s one of the best cities in the world. And we don’t feel like anybody has truly captured our version of Chicago.”

In what is arguably the romantic space epic’s most eye-catching sequence, a high-speed, high-tech chase-skirmish occurs above and between Chicago’s skyscrapers. Employing stuntfolks in wire-attached rigs that enabled them to dangle and dance from helicopters, it was done in short bursts over two full weeks of filming during the summer of 2013 then judiciously enhanced with digital effects in post-production.

Chicago Film Office director Rich Moskal describes the shoot as “highly unusual” and “dramatic,” but says everything went smoothly thanks to a “well-rehearsed and proven system” the city has in place. According to Andy, the Federal Aviation Administration approval process, which lasted almost a year, was tougher to navigate and almost upended the production schedule a week before shooting began. In the end, though, it was worth the hassle.

“Once you establish a few shots of feeling real physical bodies flying through the air with real centripetal force, causing their bodies to contract or compact or break apart and scrambling for one another, there’s something that an audience can intuit — that this is real, that something is really happening here,” Andy says. “And it makes your gut clench when you see that.”

A certain kind of natural light, one that’s present just before dawn on clear summer days, was crucial, too. Lana, an early riser, has witnessed it many times from her home in Lake View.

“The sun — before it breaks the horizon — tends to bounce up off the sky and bounce off the lake, and the lake is a big reflecting pool,” she says. “And it turns the sky this amazing sort of indigo-violet-blue. And the city still has all of its lights on, and the L train [is there], with that rich sort of umber-y light, and the twinkling from the city is still very present. And we feel that the city looks extraordinary at that moment. The problem is that moment only lasts about six minutes.”

Hence the short bursts of filming.

When the Wachowskis brought their director of photography, John Toll, to an observation point atop the Willis Tower so he could view this dazzling phenomenon for himself, Toll’s wonder soon gave way to worry.

“He was like, ‘Oh, my god, it’s amazing. It’s so beautiful. What should we do? Should we shoot a kiss scene? Should we shoot a romantic conversation?’ ” Lana says. “And we’re like, ‘We want to shoot the chase!’ And his face just got completely ghostly pale, because the reason you shoot action scenes in broad daylight or at night is because they take so long and there are so many pieces. But we wanted this emotional quality to the chase, because [Jupiter] is beginning to fall in love.”

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Whether “Jupiter Ascending” scores at the box office or fizzles after opening weekend is anyone’s guess. Predictions have already begun. And at least one crowd, during a “secret” screening at the Sundance Film Festival in late January, was largely unimpressed. “I hated it,” an attendee told Variety. “It’s just ridiculous.”

For the Wachowskis, however, hate is nothing new, and critics will always carp.

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” says Andy, who admits that even massive financial success (“The Matrix” trilogy alone has grossed more than $1.6 billion worldwide) goes only so far in blunting critical blows. “You want people to go and like your movie, but we live in this weird Internet culture where people don’t have internal editors and they feel like they can say whatever they want. And in fact, if you want to be noticed, you have to say even more outlandish things. It’s become prevalent in our media, where it’s like a critic has to not only s— on a film, they have to do it in a spectacular fashion to get noticed. … I think people are more interested in their own egos than in necessarily having a thoughtful discussion about the merits of a piece of art.”

If Lana is concerned, she doesn’t let on.

“We’re so used to it at this point,” she says with a laugh. “That’s what always happens — every time we’ve made a movie. And I think it’s principally because our movies are so unusual. They’re always different.”

But being different, she adds, has a price.

“Every time we release a movie, every single time, there’s always this immediate knee-jerk reaction of ‘I don’t get it. I don’t like it.’ ”

Associates advised them not to make “Bound,” she says of the 1996 crime drama that is (according to ratings on Rotten Tomatoes) the best-reviewed film in their canon, but they did anyway. And the first “Matrix” screening was “a disaster” that prompted “this huge meeting,” Lana recalls, during which it was decided they “had to cut every piece of philosophy out.” “V for Vendetta,” “Speed Racer” and “Cloud Atlas” all took drubbings as well, though the latter garnered a four-star write-up from late Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert.

But the Wachowskis say they’d much rather stick to their vision — whatever that vision may be — and get pummeled than cave creatively for the sake of commercialism.

“If our main goal was to make money or be popular,” Lana says, “we wouldn’t have made any of our films.”