Channing Tatum Plays An Albino Wolf Man In The Wachowski’s Jupiter Ascending

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Channing TatumLana and Andy Wachowski’s sci-fi opus Jupiter Ascending is already one of the most anticipated movies of 2014. On the trail to hype up his new Die Hard in the White House actioner White House Down, Jupiter Ascending actor Channing Tatum dropped a few details about his character, and what he revealed is strange and kind of awesome.

Talking to Collider, the Magic Mike star said, “I’m a splice, splices are essentially built in a test tube. I’m a hybrid wolf and human. And half albino, so I’m a little defective.”

So he’s an albino mixture of a wolf and a man. That’s…an interesting idea. I have no idea how that fits into the story of Jupiter Ascending — which revolves around Mila Kunis as a peasant girls who shares DNA with the Queen of the Universe — but I really, really want to find out. Also, does “half albino” mean that he’s just super pale?

These new details sound suitably bizarre and esoteric for a project like Jupiter Ascending. Tatum also delivered a few more concrete details that are exciting in other ways. The Wachowskis have a way with action, and apparently their next movie is going to rely more on physical, practical effects, rather than simply throwing CGI at tough scenes.

Tatum said this about the shoot:

We’re doing stuff that’s never been done, inside the camera, in the CG world, and the physical stuff. There’s very little, if not no, digital stuntmen in the movie. All the stuff is really real and it’s been hard figuring it out because they don’t like doing anything that’s been done before. So we’re definitely doing some new stuff, so hopefully everybody likes it. And it’s fun, it’s got some cheek to it. It’s a cheeky movie a little bit.

These are promising words indeed. I’m not automatically against CGI. Especially in sci-fi you’re going to need to have strong digital effects a lot of the time, but it can definitely be overused if you’re not careful. There’s something that just never looks right when a character is entirely digital. It always looks too much like a video game to me, and the Wachowskis have shown that they’re pretty good at synthesizing the digital and the practical.

Jupiter Ascending is set to release in theaters on July 25, 2014.