Last week, the trailer for Cloud Atlas, an adaptation of the “unfilmable” David Mitchell novel, was released. It was very pretty, very long, and very crazy-looking. Present in the over six minutes of footage were, explained Alex Pappademas, “futuristic hover-bike chases, old people engaging in gleefully reckless driving, romantic clichés, colonial barbarism, regular barbarian barbarism, sweeping beauty shots of mountains and sunsets and steam trains,” and also “Tom Hanks! Multiple Tom Hankses, including a goateed gangster Hanks who resembles Ice-T cosplaying Will Ferrell from Night at the Roxbury!” So, again — what the hell is going on here? Thankfully, the people in charge — the three-headed directing team of the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, best known for Run Lola Run — have now made a video explaining themselves. It’s notable because, as Deadline points out, it features a “rare on-camera appearance by Lana Wachowski, who nearly a decade ago first announced her transition from Larry Wachowski.” It’s also notable, however, because for once the people behind a batshit-crazy thing gleefully admit that it’s a batshit-crazy thing. For the record, there isn’t actually a blow-by-blow account of Tom Hanks’s goatee. But you still might find this clip helpful.