'Reloading' movies into commercial reality : a multimodal analysis of The Matrix trilogy's promotional posters

In 1999, the first episode of The Matrix movie trilogy was released, marking the beginning of a new trend in science fiction movies and also in the perception of motion pictures as interactive social and commercial events. This paper will analyze an aspect of The Matrix trilogy promotional campaign (1999–2003) focusing on the interplay between verbal and visual semiotics through a select corpus of posters. The method of analysis will be based both on the grammar of visual design developed by Kress and van Leeuwen, and on the Hallidayan model of analysis. The Matrix movies are set in a present (not future) ‘real’ world that is actually a ‘fiction of science,’ rather than a science fiction vision of a future reality. They are based on the idea of a very fuzzy border between real and virtual reality, which has become a major issue in these last fifteen years due to the advent of the internet and the fast growing number of internet users all over the world. This analysis will show how posters encode di¤erent kinds of promotional messages according to the social impact of each movie.