personal development plans: Enter the Matrix

In 2003, following their amazing cult success 'The Matrix', the Wachowski brothers set out to write a sequel and in turn released the simultaneously filmed 'The Matrix Reloaded' and 'The Matrix Revolutions' movies. Aswell as these they also produced a series of animated shorts to expand on the mythologies (,propaganda) and backstories of the matrix world including a CGI feature entitled 'Final Flight of the Osiris' which fills in a small part of the story that is told in the two main sequel movies. At least this is what many fans of the film series believe....

However, in fact this animated short actually plays an integral part of the story.

During the process of the writing their scripts for the films, the Wachowski brothers wanted to create an interactive experience and came up with the idea of producing not only the collection of animated shorts to bring depth to their story but also to make a video game that would see fans immersed into the experience of actually being able to be part of the story.

The result was a collection of three scripts, 'The Matrix Reloaded', 'The Matrix Revolutions' and also the video game 'Enter the Matrix'.
The game itself didn't do very well and critics slammed it for minor bugs and dated graphics, and so the game descended into a place where it quickly became forgotten about....

I always thought that this was a shame, and even now almost ten years later I still return to play the game on occasions. The reason being how it connects to the movies.
I'm sure that there are many fans of the film series out there who are completely oblivious to the game and are yet to have had the full experience, this is because it was not only the script that was split three ways...it was also the production of the film. As the storylines for the game and the first of the two film sequels run parallel to each other, up to 2 hours of movie footage was filmed especially for video game alone....and this is seen on neither movie or as extras on their respective DVDs. The only way to see it.....is to play the game, or rather 'Enter the Matrix'.

But these individual film scenes only serve as a realistic link to the films to emphasize the scenes in the game, it's actually how the game plays out in relation to the films storyline that makes it so immersive and various pieces of information that are left out of the films (to the imagination of the viewers) are explained in the game for a full picture of what is going down in the plot.....
Whilst the films carry the narrative of the main character, Neo, the game takes the route of characters Niobe and Ghost....whom have brief roles in the movies, yet through the game are shown to be vital to the plotline and the overall success of the fight.

Despite the harsh criticism that it recieved I, at a time when I was getting more excitement from video game narratives than that of film, found it to be one of the most engaging games that i'd played and thinking back now i'm still waiting for other filmmakers to take this route of intertwining their plotlines with games in order to create that interactivity with the fans. With the games industry now becoming much bigger than the film industry, this could very well be a trend that filmmakers will decide to follow.