“The Matrix 4” made 180,000 trailers, the truth is actually like this_ Pills

Website: https://thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com/ or click “Read the original” at the end of the article

There are 180,000 versions of the magical pilot trailer? ?

The coolest part of the current film’s publicity plan is on this pilot trailer: everyone sees a different version.

The narration at the beginning of the film looks like this:

Red pill

At this moment

You show us what is true

You thought it was 1:23pm

But nothing is farther from the truth than this

Blue pill

Remember how to get here?

You have lost the ability to distinguish between reality and fiction

Only at this moment, 1:23 pm, is it true

Everything else, consciousness is teasing you

Obviously, the different video narration versions obtained by clicking on different pills are two different inner concepts corresponding to the red and blue pills in the “The Matrix” story by the producer, playing a word game:

The red pill represents an uncertain future. The virtual person who takes it will get rid of the slave control of the mother, and allow him to escape the illusory space and return to the real world, but it is more difficult and difficult to live in the “truth of reality”; blue The pill represents a beautiful prison, which will bring the virtual person back to ignorance and continue a comfortable and “normal” life like a fairyland in the “virtual reality” simulated by the mother body.

In the first “The Matrix”, the male protagonist Neo finally chose the red pill and became a member of the rebellion against the matrix/robot army.

But the more interesting part is that if you watch the pilot trailer a few more times (switch on the webpage or refresh the window to watch it again), you will find:

The time mentioned in the third sentence of the film and the number displayed on the screen are different each time. This time is exactly the system time of the device you are currently using.

In the replayed video version, in addition to the time difference each time, you will also find that the fast-cut trailer screens in the video are not exactly the same.

For example, in a version, you may see the following screen:

And in the next play, you will see this picture again:

Or this picture:

The picture played is different every time, which simply makes movie fans more excited. For example, the Silicon Stars spent a full half an hour this morning, looping again and again, saving new images that have not been seen before… Although the official trailer will be released in one day, the Silicon Stars still can’t help it. From these pictures, try to restore the plot, characters and settings of the new work.

According to Warner Bros., there are 180,000 versions of the pilot trailer.

How did they make so many versions? In this regard, Warner Bros. kept silent…

However, we can still find some clues from the webpage where this pilot trailer was released.

A developer friend told Silicon Stars that he did some debugging on the front-end code of this webpage, and worked out how to play the film side:Users open the video at different times and can see their current time in the video-this is because the website will play the corresponding video according to the user’s current system time.

(Similar technology is not a particularly difficult task. Some netizens mentioned that the technology used in the movie “The Matrix 4” was previously used by Rolex’s official website. The watch shown on the webpage has its hands moving and The local time of the user completely coincides, as shown in the figure below.)

Back to The Matrix. In other words, based on the calculation of 24 hours a day x 60 minutes = 1440 minutes, the film producer has prepared at least 1440 minutes version of the leading trailer…

As for the 180,000 versions mentioned by Warner Bros., let’s do a simple calculation: 180000/1440 = 125. In other words, insert different images at different times in the pilot trailer. For such a version, the film party should have prepared 125 .

Of course, this is just a guess from the Silicon Stars about the gameplay of Warner Bros.’s pilot film. The actual technical implementation may not be so troublesome, or it may be far more complicated than our brain supplement method.

In any case, such a classic film series that has the supreme status in the minds of science fiction fans, the launch of the sequel also played a “new trick” in the promotion, which is quite interactive and interesting, and it still makes movie fans want to give The film party’s painstaking effort gave a compliment.

Old website, new gameplay, the ancestor of viral marketing

If your Internet experience is old enough to have surfed the Internet at the end of the last century, then you may remember: Whatisthematrix.com (and related domain names) launched the first “The Matrix” as early as 1999 by Warner Bros. It’s already in use.

At that time, surfing the Internet was still a kind of avant-garde and not a mass activity. Warner Bros. specially built this marketing website to promote this super novel science fiction movie.

After the first movie of “The Matrix” was released, it immediately became a sci-fi masterpiece in the minds of movie fans. The director and screenwriter group Wachowski (still brother) immediately invested in the development of the sequel, and released two sequels of “Reloaded” and “Matrix Revolution” in 2003;

At the same time, Warner Bros. has also maintained the operation of this website, turning it into a data portal for the “The Matrix” trilogy.

In 1999, the website still looked like this:

The “The Matrix” trilogy is one of the earliest Hollywood film and television works that conducted in-depth exploration and interpretation of scientific and technological topics such as computers, the Internet, virtual reality, and (computer) viruses.

It has constructed a world where technology and human society are highly integrated, as well as philosophical ideas such as the “brain in a tank” contained in the film, and social issues such as the opposition between humans and AI. , “Western World“, etc.) provide a steady stream of inspiration and guidance (of course, “The Matrix” itself has also been greatly influenced by previous works such as “Ghost in the Shell”).

At the same time, whatisthematrix.com, which was built by Warner Bros. at the time, was definitely the originator of interactive network marketing, and created the first viral marketing of film and television works by itself.

On this website, fans can find various related information about the “The Matrix” trilogy, including a list of cast members, plot introductions, digital posters, original soundtracks, DVD purchase links, and so on.

However, for those Nerds who are really enthusiastic about “The Matrix”, this site also contains a lot of digital treasure.

After the trilogy came out, the homepage style of the website, a complex “circuit” contains links to the respective information of the three generations of movies.

The first is that there will be a Flash game on the website. The player plays as Neo in it. The more red pills you break, the better, while avoiding blue pills (which will reduce points). For every 10 points, the system will reward the user with a hidden code. When the maximum score is 50, all the codes will be displayed to the user, and a new page will pop up at the same time:

Entering the hidden code on this new page will unlock the original concept maps, comics, sketches, storyboards of the original “The Matrix” and other precious materials that have never been disclosed in other channels:

This is not over yet.

The official website of “The Matrix”, DVDs, and the packaging of peripheral products often contain some strange codes. These codes have binary, hexadecimal, and word formats.

For example, in addition to the official website Whatisthematrix.com, some netizens found another page hackthematrix.com, and the registrant was also Warner Bros. There is not much content on this page, only a few lines of small characters, and a keyboard used by the spacecraft “Operator” (the liaison between the virtual human in the parent body and the real world). If the user moves the mouse to the computer keyboard, some words will appear on the screen from time to time, such as “wrong number”, “deja vu”, “reload”, “trinity” and so on.

Die-hard fans entered these searched characters into the hidden page on the official website, and they actually unlocked more hidden precious information:

11011011: A 360° panoramic photo of the interior of the spacecraft “Nebuchadnezzar” (the spacecraft of the protagonist Morpheus);

EC306071: A panoramic photo of the kitchen where the “Prophet” made biscuits;

A3B1A428: A hidden Flash game, players can use the mouse to drag and assemble the spaceship in the movie;

neobullettime: After Neo’s initial “awakening”, the classic “Bullet Time” clip on the roof of the government building;

Tokyo: The crew came to Japan for publicity and found that the fans had to wait in line outside the theater all night in advance in order to meet with the crew members. Enter this code to see the grand scene at the time.

darrow: Click the mouse to watch the storyboard of the classic showdown between Neo and Agent Smith in the subway station in sequence.

redpill：Navigate to the website of Redpill Production. This is an organization that specializes in the interactive promotion of ancient flavors on the Internet. It is also the hero of the entire “The Matrix” viral marketing. It has also served movies such as “The Lord of the Rings”, as well as brands such as Atari, Heineken, and Samsung.

Seeing this, I couldn’t help but be amazed: these old people on the Internet, they really knew how to play back then…

Let’s play a few more pictures from the “The Matrix 4” pilot trailer, and briefly talk about some interesting elements found in it.

For example, in this picture, the middle-aged version of Neo is walking on the street, towards a cafe. Here, he will meet with an acquaintance. What’s interesting is that the cafe has a compound name called Simulatte, which has the dual meaning of “simulation” and “latte”, and even the logo alludes to “code waterfall” (that is, the code running in the virtual environment of the parent body).

In a version of the pilot trailer, there was a picture of Neo looking up at a foreign object in the sky. There is a massage shop sign “Corky’s Massage” next to it. This is an easter egg, which corresponds to Corky, the protagonist in the Wachowski sisters’ big screen debut, “The Amazing Flower”.

For another example, the following scene obviously pays tribute to the part of Morpheus teaching Neo Kungfu in the dojo in the first movie of The Matrix. However, it is worth noting that in this scene, Neo calmly dealt with the newcomer’s attack, and the roles of “master” and “apprentice” seemed to be interchanged.

As for the identity of this newcomer, outsiders speculate that he may be a young version of Murphys who “travels through time and space,” and this time it may be Neo’s turn to save Murphys. The actor of this role is Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, the actor of the black manta (Black Manta), the enemy of Neptune in the DC comic universe:

Do you like the viral marketing of “The Matrix 4”? In the pilot trailer, what other images impress you? Return to Sohu to see more