t's been four years since producer Joel Silver and a pair of relatively unknown writer/directors, Larry and Andy Wachowski, high-kicked the science-fiction action-adventure genre into the 21st century with a little movie called The Matrix. Over time, its impact hasn't diminished, with countless imitations, record-breaking DVD sales and 1,100 fan sites on the Internet proving that The Matrix is more than a movie, it's a cultural phenomenon.
Now, the Wachowski brothers are further expanding the world of The Matrix, not only with two highly anticipated sequels, but with additional stories that cross over into multiple media. For those who can't wait until the first of the two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded, opens in theaters on May 15, a computer-animated prequel entitled Final Flight of the Osiris will be distributed with the Warner Brothers film Dreamcatcher, which opens on March 21.
Final Flight, one of nine anime-inspired segments in a collection called The Animatrix, features a story written by the Wachowski brothers, and sets up the events that will take place in Reloaded. Director Andy Jones, who also worked on the groundbreaking computer-animated feature Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, worked closely with the Wachowskis to accurately interpret the world of The Matrix using state-of-the-art CG technology.
In addition to Final Flight, four other Animatrix shorts will be made available to audiences prior to the release of the collection on DVD in June. Two can currently be downloaded from the official Web site, with two more appearing in April and May, respectively.
Science Fiction Weekly recently sat down with Silver and Jones to discuss the theatrical release of Final Flight of the Osiris, the creation of The Animatrix shorts and the challenge of managing the growing fan expectations for the continuation of the saga.
How did The Animatrix collection come about?
Silver: The Wachowski brothers are big fans of Japanese anime, so they really were excited about working with some of these directors. They wrote four of them themselves, but the other five they just kind of consulted with the directors after [they had] seen the movie and talked about what they wanted to do. They let them go off and do their own thing, essentially.
We had this wonderful guy, Mike Arias, who is an old friend of John Gaeta, who is head of visual affects of the movie. And Mike Arias [is] an American kid who lives in Japan, speaks fluent Japanese and is just a big, huge fan of anime. And he was our point person there and kind of saw through the whole process. [We] ended up with really an incredible kind of potpourri of animation styles that all have different stories, different styles, different ideas that all work and relate to this cultural thing the boys created called The Matrix.
Whose idea was it originally?
Silver: This was all a plan of the Wachowski brothers from the beginning. They really had this notion of telling a story in multiple mediums. It's not that far away that I remember when we only had three major networks and no computers or cable or anything. And the world was either one or the other. Back then it was television or movies and that was all. But the boys have sensed this accessibility out there. If we think we have a fan base, if there are fans who are interested in finding out more of what we're doing, then they say, "Why don't we give them the story all over the place?" So The Matrix Reloaded begins in Final Flight. I mean, that's the beginning of Reloaded.
Why was the decision made to release Final Flight in theaters?
Silver: We wanted to get Final Flight out there because it is the most sophisticated of the animes. It was the most costly. And it was the one that was directly related to the movie and we wanted to put it on the screen. And early on we said to [director Andy Jones], "Do you want to be able to project this? What do you think?" He says, "Let's go for it." So the idea was to put this out.
And how did the decision come about to release it with Dreamcatcher?
Silver: It worked out great for us that Dreamcatcher was this movie that was opening in March and had a similar audience and a similar aesthetic to our demographic, and that [Dreamcatcher director] Larry Kasdan was a very big fan of The Matrix, and thought it would be fun. This is all groundbreaking. I mean, they don't really do double features anymore, and it's not really a short, per se. It's not a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But we did feel that it was a good opportunity to kind of jump-start this saga. And Andy had worked really hard to kind of get what the boys wanted out of this, and actually created some images that the boys were so impressed with that they actually took those images and put them into the movie as well.
Which images were those?
Jones: I was working with John Gaeta as well, working with sentinel movement. Because he was trying to work on how the sentinels would crawl around the ship and how they would rip into things, even like the way they swarm when we see the sentinel army. Because he knew he'd be doing that so much longer down the road, he's like, "This is a great opportunity to work on how that's going to look." So I was developing things in terms of how the sentinels would come together and swarm, and he really liked it and the Wachowskis picked up on it.
And how did you get involved in the Animatrix?
Jones: They approached me. Actually, they approached Square, in about December of 2000. And they had seen what we were doing with Final Fantasy and they really liked the style we had developed and thought it would be the perfect medium to tell this last story that relates so closely to the live-action films. And we had a conference call with them. They really enjoyed what they saw. At the time they were extremely busy trying to shoot [Reloaded] and [Revolutions]. They were down in Australia. So it was hard for them to get away. But at the same time we did get a lot of input from them. We sent our storyboard artist down there to work out some ideas with them, and then he came back and we kind of further developed it.
How has the computer-animation technology improved since Final Fantasy?
Jones: We had made improvements along the lines of Final Fantasy but we couldn't put them in Final Fantasy, just because we'd already started. It's such a long process. And this is a short, so we were able to put in pretty much everything we could develop. In terms of the biggest improvements, the fight sequence in the beginning, the whole dojo sequence, we had a lot of skin development and muscle development and things that we hadn't done before.
Do you have the technology yet to make virtual humans who look exactly like real people?
Jones: We still don't. I think it's close, and it's getting there. And I think to get it exactly real you're going to need to do motion capture of the faces as well. And I'm strong believer in animating the faces so that you keep it kind of stylized. But if you do do motion capture of the face and the body, you might as well just use an actor to drive the character, which is kind of similar to what they did with Gollum [in the Lord of the Rings trilogy].
Do you think CG-animation has replaced actors in some respects?
Jones: I don't think it's replaced. Like Gollum, it's a transfer of performance. So I think it's a little bit silly. I don't think it's replaced. You still need an actor to drive the performance. You can't have 20 animators animating the performance because it won't look consistent.
Will there be references to Final Flight in Reloaded?
Silver: They reference the Osiris, that these people lost their lives for this information, and you find out about it. So if you've seen it you'll say, "Oh, I saw it. I get it." ... But again, the more you delve into all this, the more is available to the fans. So this story begins here and continues through the movie. And if you don't ever see it, or you don't play the video game, the movie will still be very great, exciting, thrilling. But if you take the time to watch some of the other animes and see the things, it will maybe enhance the experience.
How do the other segments of The Animatrix compare to Final Flight?
Silver: All the other eight are conventional anime stories. They're traditional animation. This, at least, has the CG, computer-generated animation, kind of aesthetic, so it does have a more reality base. So I'm sure there are going to be audiences that think they're seeing real people. I don't know if there are a lot of people who will think that, but I'm sure there are some that will say, "They were really animated?" But it was designed as the first step in this saga.
There's also a highly anticipated video game coming out the same day as the movie. How does that fit in with the story?
Silver: The boys wrote 600 pages of material for it. We shot an hour's worth of footage with all the characters in the movie, where scenes begin in the movie and then continue on in the video game, and things that relate to information that's happening. Yeah, and I mean, the further into the game you get, the more you can learn about. But it's really like a treasure trove of knowledge, of information, that is available to our fans if they want to go into it. And it's all shot during the full shoot, the process of the 270 days of shooting the movie in Australia. And there's an enormous amount of information available. So you have the ability to just continue to search and find and click and learn. It's all there.
Revolutions is also coming out this year in November. Why the decision to release both films in the same year?
Silver: We thought our audience would really hunt us down if we didn't do that, because it ends in the middle of the movie. The intention was to put them both out in the same summer. That's what we wanted to do. That was really our intention. But we just couldn't get it ready in time. The second movie is so effects-laden it just couldn't get ready in time to come out in the same summer, so we went to fall. We're concerned people are going to want to sit in the theater and wait until the next movie comes out. You really want to know what happens because they've created an incredible situation there that's just, "OK, we're ready, now what?"
Do you think you've pioneered the use of the Web as a marketing tool for films?
Silver: I don't know if we can make any money out of it. We're not thinking about it as that. But I think if we use the Web as a way to reach our fans, not just a promotional fashion, just make things available to them, then it's a very important tool. And I think that's what we have to do.
How important has the Internet been in the promotion of this film?
Silver: There's 1,100 Matrix fan sites. We have 50,000 hits a day, every day, on our Web site. We use the Web site. Again, this is not promotional stuff. It's full of content, our Web site. It is full of content. And we think it's critical. I mean, at the very end of the crawl of Reloaded will be a trailer for Revolutions. You have to sit through eight minutes of credits. And the studio was saying to us, "What if people won't wait?" Well, that's what the Internet's about. They'll know it's coming, if they want to see. We don't want to show a trailer at the beginning of the movie, because then they're going to see things that they wouldn't want to see until the end of the movie.
But the Internet is there for that. I mean, two of the animes are already on the Internet. There'll be two more that are going to be on. Look, I think that, again, it's all these things are available to us. I'm fortunate I have these two filmmakers who are savvy and smart enough and with it enough that they can understand and grasp it all and are using it all. And Spencer Lamb, who runs our Web site, is constantly finding new things and things we can do. The one good thing about AOL, and our whole situation, is they have a very powerful server, and they can have ... 250,000 downloads in an hour or something that. If they didn't have the AOL server we couldn't be doing that. We use it a lot. It's a town crier for the movie.
There is so much anticipation for these films, do you feel any pressure as a producer?
Silver: It's good to hear, but I also know I've seen the movie. We deliver. So, the movie delivers. It's there. I mean, it'd definitely there. We're getting closer and closer, we're about eight weeks or nine weeks away from release of the movie and we're trying to manage it. Look, I've spent my life making these movies and I have never had a situation where there is so much incredible eagerness for anything about the movie.
Do you think that eagerness will translate into the same kind of success that The Matrix had?
Silver: Yes, there's tremendous interest in the movie, but look, the fact is that it is a monumental work. The story is so crucial. It's all story-based, all of these things. This is a story that is being told in multiple mediums. That is happening. And the visual effects are beyond groundbreaking, are mind-bending. It's just unbelievable what we've been able to do. But whereas we say our video game is being available in all formats when it comes out, and all platforms, the movie is the same way.
If you want to see it as just a cool, young male action movie, it's there. If you want to look at it as a very effective and passionate love story, it's there. If you look just for intellectual, philosophical elements, it's there. All those things are there. And you can take from it what you want to take from it. And that's what the boys want you to do. They don't want to say, "This is what it's about." They want you to take from it how it communicates to you.
We had the first screening for the executives and the studio this week, and they could not stop talking about it for hours, because that's what it does. It creates that kind of fervor and that kind of discussion, and that's the point. That's what they're doing it for. These are very, very artistic guys, and what I'm lucky about is that their art is very commercial.
Do you fear overexposure??
Silver: We're being very careful. I mean, the reason we have the cover of Newsweek is we don't have that much out there. I mean, they didn't give us that cover because we are everywhere. It's because they sensed that we weren't everywhere. And they felt it was valid to put it on the cover of a news magazine. I mean, we had one trailer, a teaser came out with Attack of the Clones, and we had a Super Bowl spot. We have one trailer coming out in April of Reloaded. But the movie really begins with Final Flight.
It really worked out that Larry Kasdan was such a big fan of The Matrix and said, "Let's do this," because we wanted to put this out theatrically. We wanted to put Final Flight up on the screen. We thought it would be a great place to put it. It's the right audience, the right picture, the right kind of material. ... But there isn't that much available until once the movie starts coming. The video game is incredibly full of information and full of story. And the boys directed an hour's worth of footage that's in there. And that comes out day and date with the movie too, so you'll start sensing that.
But we don't have the kind of enormous, hit-you-over-the-head kind of material that some of the Star Wars films or some of the other people have had, which I think has had some kind of fan backlash. We're trying to be very pure to our fans.
Do you think the movie will live up to the expectations?
Silver: It absolutely does. It goes beyond it. It's there. It's fantastic.
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