“It’s a science-fiction space opera,” Lana and Andy Wachowski said earlier this year. “It has a lot of things from a lot of genres that we love. It’s got a lot of original action, it’s got a lot of romance.” No matter where you stand on last year’s “Cloud Atlas,” it’s undeniable that it had the stamp of the Wachowski siblings. An amalgam of fantasy, sci-fi and Big Ideas, those have largely been the hallmarks of the directors and they are continuing in that tradition with “Jupiter Ascending,” which is dropping the curtain on its veil of secrecy with the first trailer today.
Starring Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis, the flick is a fairy tale-esque saga of a woman who could hold the key to the cosmos, and the man sworn to kill and then protect her. Ambitious stuff as per usual from the directorial pair, who have been promising they’ve got something up their sleeve that will see them push beyond bullet-time. But considering critics were mixed on “Cloud Atlas,” and audiences didn’t really show up, can this movie rebound the Wachowskis? Here’s the official synopsis:
Jupiter Jones (Kunis) was born under a night sky, with signs predicting that she was destined for great things. Now grown, Jupiter dreams of the stars but wakes up to the cold reality of a job cleaning other people’s houses and an endless run of bad breaks. Only when Caine (Tatum), a genetically engineered ex-military hunter, arrives on Earth to track her down does Jupiter begin to glimpse the fate that has been waiting for her all along—her genetic signature marks her as next in line for an extraordinary inheritance that could alter the balance of the cosmos.
Co-starring Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton, Doona Bae, James D’Arcy and Tim Pigott-Smith, and featuring a score by Michael Giacchino, “Jupiter Ascending” opens on July 25, 2014. Watch below. First official image from EW. Update 2.28: An international trailer for “Jupiter Ascending” has arrived. Watch below.