Once you’ve partially rewritten the fundamental rules for action filmmaking and added indelible iconography to the cultural landscape, there’s a wee bit of pressure the will always follow you to do the same sort of thing again.

Are the Wachowski siblings up to it?

It’s hard to say- that sort of groundbreaking film event is as much a result of unforeseen star alignments and perfectly timed cultural moments as any deliberate genius of the creatives. What is clear is that Wachowskis will try, once again, to change the way we look at action films with Jupiter Ascending. They’ll be doing it with Channing Tatum as their male lead- the actor has confirmed as much with his own mouth that he owns, and he had this to say:

“It’s going to be a crazy action movie from the directors of The Matrix. They’re going to reinvent the wheel as far as action goes, all over again.”

…a sentiment that we’ve heard tossed around this film more than once. Of course, The Wachowskis have already accomplished that feat once before, and the rest of the world is still trying to catch up to Speed Racer and it’s brilliant use of a fully computerized camera. For all the lauding of Tintin and Spielberg’s abilities with a mo-cap-enabled God camera, neither he nor anyone else working with such tools has come anywhere close to the brilliance they managed with that underloved ’08 film. The fact that the film has largely been left out of the conversation shows how important timing and those uncontrollable machinations of the universe (which is to say: financial returns) can be when you’re trying to change things forever, ever, forever in the public eye.

In any event, Vulture has gotten some indication that Jupiter Rising will also be pushing storytelling boundaries with a plot that mixes aliens, space-travel, genetic manipulation, bounty hunting, and Queens Of The Universes. You can click over there to get details, but I’d just as soon wait and not hear this wacky-ass shit secondhand.

Remember that Mila Kunis, who was first rumored with Tatum, is the lead of the film and will have her own Neo thing going on, while Tatum will be some sort of bounty hunter. This is the space where the Snow White joke that every single other article about the plot has made should go.

This should all start after the siblings put out Cloud Atlas on December 6th.

Source | Empire