So in between writing snarky tweets about the Olympic opening ceremony tonight (holy crap were the commentators terrible, by the way), I was of course searching for random stuff on the internet. Writer BenDavid Grabinski had mentioned getting excited for the new Wachowski movie Cloud Atlas and how frustrating one of the online comments was for the trailer. Well color me curious, so I found this pretty lengthy trailer – at over five minutes – and checked it out. It looks to be intense and gorgeous and complex and filled with science fiction. So yeah, kind of up my alley. Check it out below.

You might have figured it out from the trailer, but this is no ordinary ensemble cast. Spanning several generations, it’s a story of a couple’s journey through lifetime after lifetime. The movie jumps back and forth between the many lifetimes to tell the overall story of these two souls. Yeah, I love these kinds of movies so I’m excited. And while soul mates through time have been done before, normally they just use two actors to play the lovers in both times. This looks to be much more complex, which is cool.

A few things I noticed. One, it looks like Tom Hanks and Hallie Berry are going to be in two different lifetimes. Are they the only couple that are going to be used twice? Also, Jim Broadbent’s character describes seeing the future from his future selves’ point of view. So does that mean that these reincarnations don’t only have visions of their past, but also the lives to come? The trailer seems to say yes. Or perhaps the reincarnations don’t occur in chronological order from the souls’ point of view. I think The other question I have is if they’re going to have the two souls change gender? Personally, I think it would be awesome if the each one was a woman in some lifetimes and a man in others – it would support the idea that outside our physical bodies we’re all just people.

The trick for Cloud Atlas is to keep all the stories clear enough for the audience to keep track. Even a maze-like narrative like Inception could work for it as long as it’s written the right way. But on visuals alone this movie looks worth checking out. Cloud Atlas comes out at the end of October and I have a feeling this will be one you’ll want to see on the big screen just for how pretty it is.