Keanu Reeves knows a thing or two about action movies, special effects and motion capture. His starring role in The Matrix put him front and center in one of the most groundbreaking cinematic achievements at the time. So when it was announced he would be a non-playable character in the video game Cyberpunk 2077, people got excited. That game required a ton of motion capture, and now Keanu Reeves has given some insight in the difference between The Matrix and Cyberpunk 2077’s motion capture.
The Matrix and Cyberpunk 2077 share a number of similar qualities. They’re action-packed, they feature dystopian worlds and they have Keanu Reeves. But, they also have their differences. Since Keanu Reeves plays Johnny Silverhand, an important character in the game, he needed to do a lot of motion capture work. So he recently gave some insight into the differences between doing Cyberpunk 2077 and The Matrix on social media. Here’s what Keanu Reeves said:
I’ve done a fair bit of motion capture. I did it in the Matrix films. So, to start doing motion capture for Johnny [Silverhand], it was all very familiar to me. The only difference I think, technologically, was how close they were going to real time review. But creatively it was very familiar, in the sense of starting a library of gesture and the toolbox let’s say for the animators to work with for the character.
This makes sense. The motion capture technology developed since The Matrix has made leaps and bounds, with many video games and movies using it to create incredibly realistic depictions of almost whatever they want. In Cyberpunk 2077’s case, they’ve created an incredibly life-like video game version of Keanu Reeves with a mechanical arm.
Cyberpunk 2077 has been in development for years now and possibly could be one of the biggest games of the year. Created by CD Projekt Red, which also made The Witcher 3, it put together a massive scale production team to tackle the video game. Thankfully for fans eager to get their hands on the game, it’s slated to release soon on December 10.
Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves isn’t done with The Matrix just yet. He’s been busy working on The Matrix 4 in Berlin, naturally reprising his role as Neo, This comes after months of being on hiatus due to current events. The cast and crew just recently wrapped filming, and the film is expected to come out on December 22, 2021. While production has been mostly kept secret, since The Matrix 4 will likely have Keanu Reeves doing more mind-bending stunts, I bet he did plenty of motion capture for that movie as well.
