Here’s the thing about fiascos: Usually they wind up being fiascos. Nothing about Cloud Atlas suggested a blockbuster in the making: David Mitchell’s novel, with its impossible-to-reproduce nesting-doll structure, created serious adaptation problems, quite apart from defying any attempt to reduce its multiple plots into a digestible marketing nugget. The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer produced the film independently for $100 million (though Warner Brothers paid $15 million for distribution rights), with the Wachowskis throwing in some of their money to complete it. Rave reviews were absolutely essential, but the smattering of opinion across the spectrum, from the rapturous (“the most beautiful and distinctive big-screen vision of the year,” Andrew O’Hehir, Salon) to the rapacious (“The cast comes off like a third-rate stock company on the matinee after the night on which everyone got bombed on mescal,” David Edelstein, Vulture), did the film no favors. The only consolation is the consolation for all such fiascos: That the people who love it will obsess over it and keep it alive long after yesterday’s hits become tomorrow’s “remind-me-what-that-was-agains.” But with $9.4 million domestically for a third-place open, that’s cold comfort for now.