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Jupiter Ascending revolves around a royal family business/corporation/empire. Abrasax Industries, produces:

Soylent Green RegeneX by harvesting humans for their genes.

This is done at the Jupiter Refinery, which is buried in the center of the Giant Red Spot of the planet Jupiter, in our system. Access to the Refinery is controlled by a corridor/tunnel/access gate or Vortex, that pushes the storms/gas/hurricanes of Jupiter aside. Otherwise, ships attempting to travel through the storm are destroyed by the gas hurricanes.

But it's never explained why Jupiter, or Jupiter's Giant Red Spot. Was Jupiter chosen for protection of what's considered the most valuable product? Or was the gas needed in it's creation? Is the Jupiter Refinery the only refinery for RegeneX? It can't be because of Earth, as it was expect to take centuries to be ready for Harvest. Or was it simply a sci-fi fascination with the King of Gas Giants?

So why Jupiter (the planet)? Book or Movie or interview answers would be great.

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    You're asking us to make sense of part of a film that, in its entirety, makes absolutely no sense. :P
    – Catija
    Oct 23, 2015 at 7:02
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    @Catija actually, I quite enjoyed (and understood it), flying roller-skates not withstanding. I'm asking about a minor untouched plot point. Why Jupiter, instead of something closer to the empire's homeworld, or a space station or whatever?
    – cde
    Oct 23, 2015 at 7:05

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It's never directly explained, but I would imagine that the refinery is specifically for Earth, which is noted to be a particularly large and rich holding. It could well take decades to process such a holding, and preparations for the harvest have probably been ongoing for centuries, or maybe even millennia. Jupiter is obviously in the same solar system as Earth, which presumably makes it a convenient but discreet base for the refinery.

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    But the plot dictated that Earth is not set for harvest for at least a century, until Jupiter's reincarnation threw a bone in that plan. And the refinery seems to be Balem's throne, not just a factory.
    – cde
    Oct 23, 2015 at 7:42
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    The Abrasax siblings are tens of thousands years old, so they have a different concept of time. During a conversation with Balem, his assistant tells him that the best time for harvest is "later this century" - that kind of time-frame is so small to someone who's lived for, say, 50,000 years as to be imminent. It's also clear from what we see at the refinery that preparations are ongoing - the humans you see being experimented on are from Earth (taken up as a 'skim' to test the quality of the livestock). And the refinery is just one of many factories - they go into it in the special features.
    – Nonesuch
    Oct 23, 2015 at 12:06

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