JULIE ONI
Staff Writer
At the conclusion of a movie, there are times when you feel so dissatisfied with the ending that you wish you could have changed some aspect of the movie. You could have done it much better than the director.
Maybe you wouldn’t have let Jack drop into the icy water and leave Rose behind, or you would have found it more fascinating to see Red and Dufresne plan an escape from Shawshank together in the end.
With anyfilms.net, you finally have your chance to interact with films. If you don’t like the ending, just choose another one.
So you’re stuck at the base of a river with no raft and no help for miles.
Do you want to: a) continue on this journey and see what happens; b) turn to Page 21 to swim across; or c) grab hold of the eagle just above and turn to Page 15 to fly away?
It’s a difficult decision, but it’s yours to make. The Web site serves a similar purpose to those “Create your own Adventure” books we read when we were kids. It lets you create the story yourself.
In accordance with a new wave of cell phone technology, the site was formed with the help of Samsung to produce films for cell phones, but they can be played on the Web site as well.
The bounds of technology are virtually endless. The adventure texts had only 20 or 30 possibilities; anyfilms.com has 11,000.
The story consists of 10 characters with 10 possible endings, all circling around only one event. The point is to try out every possible scenario in order to discover what actually happened.
This is genius. You can basically become a director overnight. Look out Stephen Spielberg. “Munich” has only one storyline, but my film has thousands more.
This new creation puts even more power in the hands of the public than passively purchasing a movie ticket. It allows movie fans to become involved by creating our own plots.
If you’re OCD like me, you won’t be able to get enough of the site. When I discovered it on accident, I sat at my computer for two hours just trying out different scenarios. I wanted to find out more of the story, so I’d change things around a bit.
The only problem for we obsessive-compulsive people is that we’ll never be completely satisfied. Though I scanned the screen for nearly 120 minutes, I was nowhere near completing the storyline.
I went to bed that night thinking about other possibilities, and it was frustrating knowing that I’d probably never get the chance to put the complete story together.
With tests to study for, work and a daily dose of “Law and Order” on TNT, I just don’t have enough time on my hands to piece together the 11,000 pieces of the puzzle.
There is an answer to this problem, however.
Each storyline may be seen as either its own film or part of a larger film. The version you create is not just a random part of a bigger work; it can stand on its own as well.
You will be satisfied even if you make only one film.
The site only offers one interactive movie and three shorts, but just imagine what lies ahead. Pretty soon, we’ll be leaving the theater knowing that, if dissatisfied, all we have to do is run home and sit before our computer screen to keep the ship from sinking.
02-09-2006
