Kevin Spacey’s still a cat, still upset about it in the extended Nine Lives trailer

We could spend all day debating why, exactly, Kevin Spacey agreed to star in a movie where he plays a powerful business mogul magically transformed into a talking cat. We could discuss the easy paychecks available for voice work, or a desire to take a break from all those ribs he’s constantly downing on the set of House Of Cards. But after watching the new, extended trailer for his upcoming talking cat movie Nine Lives, we think we’ve finally parsed Spacey’s true artistic motivations.

Seriously, listen to that dialogue: “Wait a minute, I’m a cat!” “Sometimes I feel like my dad’s looking out for me, through the cat.” “I should have been a better dad.” This is some real Hemingway shit: no artifice, just raw feelings being transmitted in the simplest way possible. Which is to say, through the vocal cords of an Oscar-winning actor slumming in a CGI cat movie from the guy who directed Wild Wild West. (Christopher Walken, meanwhile, was simply cursed to be in every single movie in which someone is given a magical lesson in the value of family, in order to teach him a lesson about the value of the family he’s too busy starring in Click to actually see.)

Nine Lives is set to premiere on August 5. The incipient cultural revolution it heralds will probably arrive by Labor Day.