After my disappointment over the third installment of the Matrix, I've been trolling some of the online reviews of the movie, in part to see if my experience matched up with reviewers' and in part to see if I can find someone who can help me make my dissatisfaction more articulate.
What do you know? I found one. In MIT's Technology Review blog, there's a review by Henry Jenkins, where he argues that the Matrix provides us with a compelling example of what he describes as transmedia storytelling. As you might gather, this means that the story itself is told across several media--in the case of the Matrix, there are the animated shorts that appear as the DVD The Animatrix and there is also Enter the Matrix, the video game whose events focus on two minor characters from the movie and take place between Reloaded and Revolutions.
Jenkins' account is persuasive in some places, less so in others. On the one hand, knowing what I do about the Wachowski brothers' intense involvement with both the shorts and the video game, I find it easy to believe that it is difficult to get the whole picture without seeing the whole picture, and in this case, the whole includes the DVD and the video game. Less compelling for me, however, were disclaimers such as the following:
Most film critics frankly haven't been willing to make the effort to "get" this franchise because they are stuck within a mono-media rather than a trans-media paradigm--and thus, the second two films walk away with a row of Gentleman's Bs. They can see something new is going on here but they really don't know what to make of it.
Well, okay. I've heard this line of reasoning for ten years now with respect to new media, too often used as an excuse for reader/viewer discomfort or displeasure. "You didn't like it? Clearly you just don't understand it." I don't mean to accuse Jenkins of this, because I think his treatment of this idea is fair for the most part. He fully admits that, while the name is "new," the phenomenon is something that's been around for a long time. The difference is that to this point, there hasn't been as concerted or concentrated an effort by any artist to do something genuinely transmedial. The Star Wars franchise is a good example of a transmedial phenomenon, but in many ways, the relationship among media is a derivative or subordinate one. You don't need to buy the action figures to enjoy the movie. That the novels and video games have turned into entirely separate franchises themselves has less to do with the original Lucas plan, and more to do with the popularity of the original and the loyalty of the fans. From this perspective, the Matrix does indeed break ground.
Where it still fails for me, as someone who owns The Animatrix, is in the dependency that is similarly spread across media. The most popular transmedial franchises tend to operate at the level of archetype -- the original Star Wars certainly is archetypal space opera, and many other transmedia figures (Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Dracula, et al.) command loyalty in part because of the variety of ways they have been taken up. So I'd argue that the flaw with the 2nd and 3rd Matrix films isn't that I fail to understand the "transmedia storytelling," but rather that they're marred by "transmedial dependency." I don't have to see Tim Burton's Batman to appreciate the camp of Adam West or the bleak and gritty Dark Knight of Alan Moore. But Batman himself spans these media, and each in its own way helps me appreciate the distinctive visions of the other incarnations.
As I think the Wachowskis will learn to their potential detriment, consumers are a lot less likely to shell out $40-50 for a DVD and a video game based on a movie that they didn't enjoy. And if the critics are any indication, there's only slightly more market for a 4th Matrix than there is for an 18th Police Academy. If the movies can't stand alone, they're not going to persuade moviegoers to spend the time, energy, and money to get the full story.
One final note that occurs to me as I write this, and that's the dark side of the synergy that Jenkins details. Yes, there is interest to be built by transmedia storytelling, the opportunity to tap into a broader range of consumers. But the flip side of that is that the audience for various media also differ in significant ways. The original Matrix tapped into a wide cross-section of people, precisely because of its archetypal appeal, the fashionability of the visuals, and the special effects. It is a much smaller demographic, however, that has the time and money to spend on a Matrix video game. By spreading the movie across media, the Wachowskis may have guaranteed that the movie would only be appreciated by those audiences that are common to all the media they chose. It is equally possible, in other words, for a transmedia approach to narrow its appeal to the point of niche.
At any rate, I recommend the Jenkins piece quite a bit. I found it pretty productive in the sense that it gave me a new perspective on the whole Matrix phenomenon.
Try this theory on for size.
I’m not a Matrix fan, mostly because I can’t stand Keanu Reeves, and partly because I don’t play video games. Cool kung fu moves aren’t enough to hold my interest unless they’re being performed with tongue in cheek humor by Jackie Chan. I couldn’t sit through the whole first Matrix movie. I saw pieces of the second on TV (I had an a** load of papers to grade and was seeking a distraction) and can certainly wait for the third to show on HBO. And yet, I think I know the discomfort you’re talking about.
Your discomfort may be due to the writer’s over determination of symbol and archetype. It’s like the difference between an X-Files episode written by Chris Cater and one written by David Duchovny. Carter’s symbolism is fluid, malleable, and seeps into Carter’s story frame like Jell-o, permeating the story with meaning that can’t quite be pinned down, leaving viewers with a pleasurable psychic itch to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Duchovy doesn’t trust fans to understand, so his stories over determine meaning, forcing symbolism on viewers again and again in an attempt to make sure they “got the meaning.” His stories are condescending and insult viewers’ intelligence, which is one more reason why literature majors shouldn’t write fiction. He should stick to acting, which he’s quite good at, or go teach lit at Columbia.
In the first Matrix, the concept was fresh enough to engage viewers in intellectual puzzle solving. By the third installment, the ante had been upped so high, there was no escape. Perhaps, for intelligent viewers like you, the challenge of the puzzle was gone. The symbolism had played out, the characters hadn’t changed, and the concept had died on the vine, much like Terminator III. Or maybe you realized you just don’t like Keanu Reeves.
Sorry about the extra post. Can you remove it?
Hey, Nancy! Duh, I should have removed the 3rd (now 2nd) comment too, I suppose. Oh well.
Believe me when I say that my feelings about Keanu are well-documented--my former chair up here still tells the story of the first time she took me out for lunch with a group of people: "He just sat there quietly for an hour, and all of a sudden, he launched into this rant against Keanu!"
You may be right above, by the way, about the diff b/w the first and the rest. I think also, though, that a major issue for me wasn't so much that I'd "solved" the puzzle by the second one--it was that I think the W brothers switched puzzles midstream. There's a nice piece in Slate about the franchise, and how the original was about Reality and the other two about Fate, when it was the musings on Reality that attracted so much attention in the first place.
My other theory is that they compressed their ideas into the first one, not knowing that they'd be contracted for the other two. As a result, the ambiguity and appeal that permeates the first one (and I admit its limits--I only gave it a matinee when I saw it in the theaters) is partly a result of an intensity that the other two couldn't match since the W's no longer had to "prove" the value of the franchise. Instead of upping the ante philosophically, intellectually, or narratologically, they did this transmedia thing. And by all accounts, they put unprecendented effort into it.
Same thing happened in the move from Star Wars (originally, I think, a one-shot deal) to Empire. All of a sudden, Hamill & Fisher are siblings?! Which they were from the get-go, I suppose, but if Star Wars is the only movie you see, that doesn't play nearly as well. And Matrix suffers from the same sort of thematic compression--it's a stand-alone movie, period. I didn't (and don't) think it's a great movie, but it's a damn sight better than the other two.
Thanks for the note, Nancy...