My bad. If only I’d watched Access Hollywood before posting about Gerry. Michel Marriott has an article in the NYTimes about the convergence between video games and films. Actually, it’s about Enter The Matrix, the video game.
If anybody gets it, it’s the Wachowski brothers, who wrote the game script to intertwine with their upcoming films. (Matrix sequels a-comin’, get on board, li’l chill’n.) The actors and sets carry over, too, into the hour-plus of filmed scenes and cinematics. The Wachowskis are hardcore gamers themselves, and their vision of The Matrix is comprehensive, almost unnervingly so.
It’s expansive enough for assimilated video games, a world large enough for other directors to work freely within it. Animatrix is a collection of animated shorts from six directors (including the creators of Akira, Cowboy Bebop and Aeon Flux). The first of four to be released online is Mahiro Maeda’s touching, cautionary Second Renaissance, Part 1 a/the machine creation myth, complete with circuity goddesses and mecha-Adam and Eve.
By the end of the year, The Matrix will be so pervasive, it’ll give new meaning to the throwaway Hollywood line, “We’ll all be working for you someday.” [images: thematrix.com]