Leaning into Transmedia
Something The Matrix does well…
The two famous pills are back in The Matrix Resurrections website that came out earlier this week. Fans can click on either pill to see a unique teaser that opens with raining green code coupled with either Yahya Abdul-Mateen II or Neil Patrick-Harris’ narration and random shots timed to an eerie soundtrack.
Teasers are my favorite thing in the world and Resurrections killed it here. First off, the two teasers lean into the mystery of the new movie, prioritizing the feeling of The Matrix rather than revealing any plot (as all good teasers do). Second, unlike traditional teasers, these talk to the viewer in a breaking-the-fourth-wall audio-sensory experience. From my interpretation, both narrators address you directly with sentences like “Do you know how you got here?” and even say the current time (a simple meta-gimmick that goes a long way). This is all while colorful visuals sporadically pop up in the teasers and hint at the iconic imagery from the original movie, but with higher production value.
Cool teasers aside, this got me thinking about transmedia and how The Matrix is a gold mine that can expand its IP in many ways. I took a class in college taught by the guy who practically coined the term transmedia and he showed me how vast entertainment can get. Essentially, transmedia is storytelling told across multiple formats. The idea is that you experience content through multiple mediums that are distinct, yet together build a world. For example, you could watch a movie on something, learn more about the characters in a videogame, and read more backstory through a comic book.
Examples include The Dark Knight and Inception’s AR games, the millions of Star Wars books and upcoming shows, and even Bandersnatch’s post-credit scene. But, the Matrix has been a notable IP that uses transmedia to its advantage, letting fans explore corners of its world through many platforms. It’s something that was clear and present in the trilogy, but for Resurrections, it could have gone further.
The website is a cool experience (letting the user choose teasers (of which there are 180,000 variations)) and it was well done. However, I’d even go a step further and invest more in transmedial marketing strategies for this film (and others in Hollywood). I think that the main reason people don’t is that it’s costly and generally only appeals to fans in a tight-knit community that really care about world exploring. (The website found a nice middle ground of not being expensive, but appealing to newcomers and still cool to fans.)
For Resurrections, I’d love to see more strategies that dive into the trippy, mind-bending maze that makes The Matrix so unique (an AR game for families, a comic book for fans, a beginner coding class for kids… something!) and make it appeal to a mass audience still stuck at home. Tactics that extend the IP to other mediums tailored to various audiences would let people have a layered Resurrections experience that’s not only fun, but drives hype for its release in December.
