I was nearly in shock as to how complicated the landing sequence was going to be and then...sky crane.
That is one amazingly ambitious project.
So that is basically insane, but I do have to ask how many of those kinds of maneuvers have been tried before? I mean, they say they can't land the rover with rockets, so I assume they have used alternate methods before as well?
For comparison, here is the similar video that they put out to describe the EDL system used by Spirit & Opportunity back in 2004. For some reason it was a mere 6 minutes of terror. I'm not sure what accounts for the discrepancy:
Maybe the retrorockets/sky crane in Phoenix/Curiosity (respectively) add a few seconds.
Here's a pretty good presentation on the design constraints of Curiosity. He answers the 6 vs 7 question about 27 minutes in: it's the guided-descent phase that gives the extra minute.