During their first meeting with the game-development team at Shiny Entertainment, the Wachowskis were prepared with an original 244-page script for the game alone, and they announced their intention to shoot more than an hour of exclusive footage (which they have dubbed "cineractives") to develop the narrative of the game. According to Shiny's president, Dave Perry, their participation was far more explicit than suggestive. Says Perry: "They basically had an arc for the story and they knew exactly how it would all fit together -- the beginning, the middle and the end -- and they had gotten right down to the point where they said to me, 'Okay, you're in this situation and you get this and head to the front door but the front door has been all sealed and the place starts closing in on you.'" By contrast, most film-based video games -- such as Electronic Arts' rendition of "The Two Towers" -- feature plots that are more adaptation than supplement. Even when these games are well implemented, they are ends unto themselves. To those fans that choose to pursue it, "Enter the Matrix" provides access to an obsessive level of authoritative detail and offers a potential enhancement of the film-viewing experience.

Of course, it helps to remember that the Wachowski brothers are, themselves, passionate fans of both anime and video games. (Perry has noted that the brothers have an Xbox and PlayStation 2, and play "tons of games.") This gives them an edge that most directors will never have: They understand the logic of these media on a basic, instinctive level. The Wachowskis view these forms, which are so often seen as the extraneous trappings of a film's product line, as meaningful projects of their own.

For "The Animatrix," the brothers insisted on handpicking the directors and production teams, and the final roster reflects their long-standing admiration for anime: Those involved in the production of the five non-Wachowski sequences include members from the production team that developed "Akira," an anime staple, and the director of the much acclaimed "Cowboy Bebop" series, which recently reached American theaters in the form of a feature-length film. Film stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne-Moss have both lent their voices to individual chapters of "The Animatrix," an endorsement that would, by itself, put the series in a class far above previous attempts at animated tie-ins.

Quality standards for the video game were even higher. Reports place the production budget for "Enter the Matrix" at figures in excess of $20 million, more than four times the usual budget for a PlayStation 2 game. And while big budgets don't always correlate with better products, the Wachowskis' involvement in the game's development and production bode well for those fans hoping for something more than an exploitative video game tie-in. Footage for the game was captured at the same time as footage for the feature films, using the same sets, costumes and props that appear onscreen in theaters, and the game production crew was given unrestricted access to all of the film's resources.

The Wachowski brothers themselves wrote and directed more than an hour of exclusive footage for the game, which features active participation from all of the film's significant characters. (As a point of comparison, the video game tie-ins to the James Bond franchise have received praise from fans and critics for the mere use of Pierce Brosnan's visual likeness.) According to the cast, the Wachowskis were no less demanding of the game's stars than those featured in the films. In an online interview, Jada Pinkett-Smith, who appears as Niobe, one of the two central characters featured in the game, reported that the experience of shooting for the game was identical to the production for any feature film: "It's serious business, down to how you walk, the tone of your voice, how you pronounce the words, the whole attitude -- just everything. [The Wachowskis] were just as involved in the process of the videogame as they were the movie. It's all one [and] the same -- there was no separation. It was just one, big, massive project." According to most actors, in fact, the cast was unaware of which scenes were being shot for the game and which were being shot for the movie. In most cases the Wachowski brothers refused to clarify.

In an online production journal, lead game programmer Michael "Saxs" Persson explained: "Traditionally, the development studio is left without access to assets from the movie, such as the primary talent, and the effects and sound departments. That all changed on 'Enter the Matrix.' We have had unprecedented access to any and all assets generated from the movie, right from the get-go."

Taking all of this into account, the critique that argues that there is nothing new unfolding in the multimedia experiments of the "Matrix" team appears unfounded. Yes, the Year of the Matrix will advance the science of franchise marketing, just as the first "Matrix" film advanced the art of computer-generated visual effects. And yes, all this multimedia synergy represents a huge opportunity to cash in. To get the "entire" "Matrix" experience, fans will have to shell out at least four times this year: twice at the box office, for "Reloaded" and "Revolutions," and twice at the cash register, for "Enter the Matrix" and "The Animatrix." It's true: Warner Bros. could not be in a better position. But the same might also be true of audiences who have waited four years for the second coming of "The Matrix." The Wachowski brothers have made an enormous commitment to developing the "Matrix" universe, and if the phenomenal following of the first film is any indication, fans will thank them for it.

As it did in 1999, the revived "Matrix" franchise is guaranteed to raise the bar for special effects. If we're lucky, however, the Year of the Matrix will also raise the bar for how stories are conceived and executed. Presenting a single unified narrative in the form of two movies, nine animated shorts, and a cinematic video game, the Wachowskis have offered a new model for storytelling in the detail-obsessed, information-saturated digital age. We can only hope that other directors will follow their lead.

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