David Mitchell’s sprawling book Cloud Atlas has garnered a lot of praise and attention, and its 500+ pages begs the question: how would you ever make a film adaptation of this genre-bending, time traveling epic? Well, the answer comes this October. Directed by not two but three people, this sci-fi-romance-historical story stars Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, along with Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon and many others. At the helm are Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski. The Wachowskis are famous from The Matrix movies, and Tykwer is of Run Lola Run fame. This is Lana Wachowski’s first film since her gender reassignment, where she formally dropped the name Laurence.
As movie trailers go (and trailers are a particular favorite of mine), this one is immense. At nearly six minutes, it covers a huge swath of the movie, but necessarily so, for such a genre-bending saga. Tom Hanks makes an appearance as many characters, in all manner of dress and personality. His voice narrates much of the story, which dives from 19th century sailing ships to high-paced laser battles set in a dystopian future. Beautifully edited, the trailer picks up in pace about 2/3 through, driven mightily by the M83 song “Outro”, which positively electrifies anything that its paired with. I’d actually go so far as to say that the song does a lot of the heavy lifting for this trailer, and is partly why it has been so well received. But bravo to the editors, who made this extra-long trailer supremely watchable and enjoyable. I look forward to seeing if the film adaptation will live up to the growing hype.
And here’s the song that helps tie it all together.