It's Jada's Body, But You Can Use It

By Chris Taylor/San Francisco

Hey, sit back, and take in The Matrix Reloaded passively in a darkened theater if you want. But for the real red-pill experience, you're going to have to swap that bucket of popcorn for a console and controller. The Wachowski brothers, raised on video games, always intended it that way--and created an intricate plot for a game called Enter the Matrix that wraps around the second movie like one strand of a DNA double helix around another.

Video games with cinematic tie-ins are often wan, but Enter the Matrix is rich, complex and compelling--almost a new movie in itself. In production since February 2001, it puts Jada Pinkett Smith's Niobe--not exactly a central figure in The Matrix Reloaded--front and center. There are two hours' worth of new scenes that pop up between levels, and Pinkett Smith submitted to several months of highly advanced "mo-cap"--a motion-capture technique that turns body movements into digital information--so that you're literally playing as her.

As the game opens, Niobe, along with fellow supporting character Ghost, has to retrieve a letter that has been left for them by the crew of the Osiris, shown in the Animatrix short, The Final Flight of the Osiris--a letter that shows up in Neo's hands, with scant explanation, in the movie. Tantalizing intersection points like this are the Wachowskis' way of making you drop another $50 on their world the day after you leave the theater. (The game will be released the same day as the movie on all formats: PC, PS2, Xbox and GameCube. TIME got an exclusive prerelease look.)

Of course, there would be no point to a Matrix game in which you couldn't dodge bullets in slow motion while the camera sweeps around you. You don't have to be a trigger-twitching teen to play: simply press a button, and time slows down, allowing you to deliver martial-arts moves and avoid being strafed at a more middle-aged pace.

Shiny Entertainment, the Orange County, Calif., company charged with bringing the Wachowski vision to the gaming world, sent its staff to live on the set of the movie in Sydney for 20 weeks. The group took 25,000 photos and digitally scanned the heads of every A-list actor. More than 2,000 movements were mo-capped. "There are 30 different ways of walking," boasts David Perry, president of Shiny. Niobe and crew can walk, sprint or scamper, just like you.

There are almost as many ways to play the game. As with the movie, shooting and martial arts are only part of the picture. To outwit the Agents and Sentinels, you will have to brush up on your driving skills, Grand Theft Auto--style. You might also want to learn to hack. At one point in the game, you're faced with a green computer screen, a blinking DOS prompt and no instructions on how to proceed. Perry says he wants players to be staring slack-jawed at the screen--just as Neo was when he received his "knock, knock" message from Trinity in the original movie.

That may ultimately make Enter the Matrix a little beyond the reach of less tech-savvy gamers, but it will increase the Internet buzz about the game--and the Wachowskis' street cred. If in the future no self-respecting sci-fi director can make a movie without producing a video game at the same time, blame the brothers. Like the film that spawned it, Enter the Matrix already has the makings of a cult classic. --By Chris Taylor/San Francisco