Rather than mistaking the image for reality, the spectator is
astonished by its transformation through the new illusion of
projected motion. Far from credulity it is the incredible
nature of the illusion itself that render the viewer speechless
(Gunning, 2004: 866).
The connection between cinema and videogames has also now become
an economic matter. The clearest examples are Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
(West, 2001), Final Fantasy and Resident Evil (Anderson, 2002), blockbuster
films based on the success of videogames and which illustrate the transition
from the small screen of the monitor to the big screen of the cinema,
exposing the permeable boundaries existing between both media. Today,
many Hollywood productions intentionally include CGI action scenes, as seen
in films such as Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Lucas, 2005) and
The Matrix, in order to sell the videogame and, at the same time,
videogames trailers include cinematographic conventions, montage and
narration to gain currency amongst videogames consumers (Chien, 2007: 26).
In this way, games adapted from films, and films inspired by videogames,
acquire an advantage as they allude to diegetic worlds that very often are
familiar for the spectator/player, facilitating, in this way, their ‘immersion’
within these worlds. The Enter The Matrix (2003) game, which was released
on the same day as The Matrix Reloaded (Wachowski and Wachowski, 2003),
is an illustrative example of the transmedia storytelling of today: ‘media
conglomeration provided a context for the Wachowski brothers’ aesthetic
experiment - they wanted to play with a new kind of storytelling and use
Warner Bros blockbuster promotion to open it to the largest possible public’
(Jenkins, 2006: 108). Game and film thus constitute at once alternative but
entirely complementary mediums for audiences to follow the story of The
Matrix. Acutely aware of the existing link between games and films, as well
as videogame players and cinema audiences, Warner Bros secured the
economic success of the game and film with the simultaneous release and
mutual promotion of both products.
Hybrid forms of videogames and films have now started to appear
following the aesthetic principle of verisimilitude facilitated by the
supremacy of the digital image. Today we can find experimental films, not
- 52 -