Deep Dives: Movies in the Spotlight - The Matrix

Welcome to the first edition of Deep Dives: Movies in the Spotlight! I'm excited to take a more detailed look at the making of the Wachowski Sister's 1999 Sci-Fi masterpiece The Matrix. If for some reason you're reading this without having seen the film, I'll give you a quick recap.

The Matrix explores a dystopian future where mankind has been conquered by AI and robots. In order to enslave humanity and harvest them as a power source to keep themselves running, robots have trapped the minds of humans in a digital simulation known as the matrix. The films protagonist is Neo. Neo has always questioned his digital reality and in the films first act is rescued and released from the matrix by a small group of already freed humans that are part of a larger human rebellion. The rest of the film is Neo's ascension into his alleged destiny as 'The One'; a prophetic figure that is supposed to help free all of mankind from their robot overlords.

The Idea

The Wachowskis initially cut their teeth as storytellers by writing comic books for Marvel. During this time they frequently collaborated with horror/fantasy writer Clive Barker on his series Ectokid, Hellraiser and Nightbreed. Interestingly, each series seems to incorporate notions of characters existing in dual worlds or choosing paths outside of the norm. When speaking about their time consuming and eventually writing comics, the sisters remarked “The comic book and graphic novel culture has long examined the dramatic possibilities of alternate realities — places where the laws of physics, biology or time are made to be broken.”

During this time they began crafting the idea for The Matrix as an original concept for a new comic series. The Wachowskis drew inspiration from several places, but were seeking to create a mythological story. Specifically, they recalled "The Matrix grew out of the unconventional literature that we read as well as our long-time interest in and knowledge of classic mythology and legend." 

The siblings also wanted to infuse the story with the aesthetics of Japanese anime. In particular the cyberpunk and dystopian setting was inspired by Akira, the action and animation style came from Ninja Scroll, and the notions of an interconnected digital network and a superpowered protagonist came from Ghost In The Shell.  

Crafting the Script

In addition to the influences listed above the Wachowskis drew on a variety of literary inspirations. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland for example, not only appears as a story parallel, but actually gets directly referenced in the film several times. 

"You take the blue pill... the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill... you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

In analyzing the script others have also noted the influences of William Gibson's Neuromancer which featured a protagonist that was a hacker and accessing a virtual reality datascape known as the 'matrix'. The term matrix also stems from a 1969 novel written by L. P. Davies called The White Room. Acclaimed science fiction writer Philip K Dick is also often cited as a clear influence for the film and his writings help inspired what we usually reference today as simulation theory - the thought that human existence may already exist within a computer simulation. 

Apart from the more fantasy/Sci-Fi elements of the script, the film also draws from philosophy and religion. In the early moments of the film we see Neo open a hollowed out copy of Simlacra and Simulatio which was a treatise of french cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard. Though, Baudrillard himself takes issue with the comparisons. Other analysts note the fingerprints of other famous philosophers such as Descartes, Kant and Plato. The common theme among them being a pursuit of truth and the illusions that help mask them. Particularly Plato's Allegory of the Cave is cited is an obvious parallel for Neo's journey out of the matrix. 

"Slowly, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can see only shadows. Gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in water and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually, he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself... Only after he can look straight at the sun "is he able to reason about it" and what it is."

 Despite all of these influences, the Wachowskis still had a tall mountain to climb. They spent reportedly 5 years crafting the screenplay and toiled through 14 different drafts. Even still, the hard part was still to come - getting a studio to agree to make it. In fact, despite their efforts on The Matrix, the Wachowski's first script to become a movie was 1995's Assassins. The film was the poorly received by critics, but the Wachowskis caught the eye of one of Assassins' producers- Joel Silver. 

After Assassins was released, the Wachowskis showed Silver a draft of The Matrix. Silver reportedly loved the script, but needed the unproven filmmakers to gain directing experience first. So, in 1996 the siblings released their first feature film (which they also wrote) called Bound. The film wasn't a financial success, but did garner a lot of attention from critics and, more importantly, executives at Warner Bros. 

Finally, with some momentum, the Wachowskis had one final hurdle: come up with a budget that Warner Bros would agree too. To help, they enlisted comic book artists Steve Skroce and Geoff Darrow to create a detailed storyboard for the entire film. Using the artist's depictions the siblings and the studio agreed to a $60 million budget and planning for principal photography began.  

Assembling the Cast

With the script and budget in place, the next task was to find the actors that would bring the story to life.  

When casting the lead role of Neo, the Wachowskis quickly became enamored with Keanu Reeves. In discussing the decision they remember that "When he came to meetings with us he had a real appreciation for the script. We could discuss the film with Keanu in the same way we'd discuss it between ourselves." Additionally, Reeve's appearance was an important consideration: "Keanu has a boyish quality about him that was perfect for the role, but at the same time he has a maturity that allows his character to develop and eventually take control of the situation."

 When considering actors for the role of Morpheus, the filmmakers knew they needed someone who could bring the 'presence' that the character would have. Enter Lawrence Fishburne. Fishburne was already a well established actor but also clearly had an understanding of the film from the get-go: "Visually, I thought the style of the film was very fresh and new - in fact, pretty extraordinary... The broader themes in the movie have to do with reality versus hyper-reality, and the difference between what's real and what you perceive to be real."

For the female lead, the sister's specifically wanted someone that audiences would not be familiar with. After a long search, they settled on a little known Canadian actor whose career was spent mostly on TV; Carrie-Anne Moss.  While discussing the decision, the directors remembered "As soon as we saw her in the audition we knew we'd found Trinity... Carrie-Anne had tremendous intensity and great physical presence. Even though she wasn't a trained fighter, she looked like she could throw a punch."

When casting the villain for the film, the Wachowskis had their eye on British actor Hugo Weaving. Weaving reveled at the notion of playing the dichotomy of Agent Smith remarking that "Smith is a law enforcement officer and a seemingly invincible machine. He has certain human frailties, though, like anger, pride and arrogance. Then he begins to develop certain theories and, consequently, becomes a mixture of the terrifying and the amusing - another reason why I enjoyed the role."

Despite assembling a worthy cast with Reeves, Fishburne, Moss and Weaving; The Matrix cast was almost very different. Famously, the role of Neo was originally offered to Will Smith who declined due to not liking the script. Instead he chose the western themed action comedy Wild, Wild West. The role of Morpheus was presented to several actors ahead of Fishburne to include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Russel Crowe, Samuel L. Jackson and Val Kilmer. And despite the desire for someone audiences wouldn't recognize, the role of Trinity was supposedly floated to a couple actors to include Madonna, Sandra Bullock and Jada Pinkett Smith. 

Once the main leads were finally in place, the Wachowskis had an important task for their actors to fulfill - undergo extensive months long training with the film's famed fight coordinator Yuen Woo-Ping. To complicate matters, the cast suffered more than a few poorly times physical setbacks. Reeves was in the middle of recovering from surgery for a herniated disc and did his training while wearing a neck brace. This injury would also effect him even once principal photography had begun requiring the shooting schedule to be rearranged. Additionally Moss suffered a sprained ankle, while Weaving required surgery for his hip. Nevertheless, the show had to go on.

Production and Design

In order to keep costs down, the studio insisted on filming in Sydney, Australia. Despite the fact that Sydney is home to some iconic international landmarks, the filming team elected to specifically avoid any areas that would be instantly recognizable. In some instances they even had to digitally remove identifying objects like the Sydney Opera House out of the background of a scene. The overall goal was to make the city feel as generic as possible - feeding into the notion of a fake digital world. 

As for their hand built locations, the production team led by Owen Paterson created 30 different sets. In addition to their work in the Australian sound stages, the production team altered some existing spaces. The subway scene for example, was a storage facility with train tracks already present. However, they needed to be able rig the wires used by the stunt team which made using an actual subway station an impossibility. 

Principal Photography

 Total time spent on principal photography lasted 118 days and despite some setbacks, stayed largely on schedule and budget. This is a credit not just to the efforts of the Wachowskis as the directors, but to the many teams that worked under them. These teams are also a huge part of what helped make the film so special. 

In order to nail the look of the film, the Wachowskis brought in Bill Pope to serve as director of photography. Pope had just finished working with the pair on their movie Bound and also shared their love for comic and graphic novels. In designing the look of The Matrix Pope started with the detailed storyboard that had been laid out from before the movie was greenlit. He then had to work with his teams to bring it to fruition. 

In deciding on the color palette for the film, Pope turned to the tone baked into the script. “The future world is cold, dark and riddled with lightning, so we left the lighting a bit bluer and made it dark as hell" Pope recalled. Additionally he remarked since we wanted the matrix reality to be unappealing, we asked ourselves, 'What is the most unappealing color?' I think we all agreed on green, so for those scenes, we sometimes used green filters, and I'd add a little bit of green in the color timing."

With the look and tone set, Pope shifted his efforts to figuring out how to shoot the many slow-mo sequences the Wachowskis planned to shoot. The goal was to shoot at a very high frame rate - 300 fps (normally films shoot at 24 fps). However, this super fast frame rate comes with its own set of problems - namely lighting. When shooting at high frame rates light has less time to hit the camera's sensors. To compensate, the lighting team needed to employ the use of very high powered lights. That is not necessarily a bad thing unless, let's says, your scene needs to be shot in the middle of the day on top of a skyscraper's roof. 

In addition to the photography team, the stunt team was an incredibly important aspect to the film's success. When conceptualizing the film the Wachowskis really wanted to incorporate action elements from anime and Hong Kong films. "We've always wanted to bring Hong Kong wire stunt and fight sensibilities into our Western story ideas. This was the perfect opportunity." In order to bring that vision into reality, the sister's enlisted the help Yuen Wo Ping, a top stunt coordinator from Hong Kong. Wo Ping agreed, but only if the cast spent significant time working with him on the fight choreography and wire work.

Wo Ping was not just an essential in getting the cast trained and ready for shooting, he helped craft the entire action and filming sensibilities for the movie. The Wachowskis recalled "Wo Ping usually directs his action scenes and picks all of the camera angles. For our fights, we talked to him about what the actual storyline of the fight was, and he would then go off and choreograph it. Once he had the whole 'dance' of the fight, we'd ask what he would recommend for every shot. We'd then add whatever flourishes, camera moves or other angles we wanted on top of that." One particular aspect of all the action sequences was the use of wires. In using wires, the actors and stunt teams were able to have the characters perform superhuman acts that defied the laws of physics and to do so gracefully/effortlessly. 

Another notable collaboration was also occurring within the stunt work. Chad Stahelski, who would eventually go on to direct John Wick, served as stunt double for Keanu Reeves. After auditioning for Wo Ping, Stahelski was brought out to Australia. He recalls “Training with Keanu, with the Hong Kong guys, everybody had to memorize everything. They demanded a lot. And the Wachowskis were meticulous, to say the least. The storyboards were hundreds and hundreds of pages. I still have my copy of them. And I shit you not, they are almost the exact movie." Stahelski would later go on to double Reeve's in the sequels and has directed the actor in all four John Wick movies. 

Post-Production

As principal photography wrapped, the Wachowskis moved on to the post-production phase to cut the film and finish the VFX. Given that it was 1999, the VFX team in particular had a monumental task ahead of them. Luckily, they were more than up to the effort. By the time the film was finalized, they had unknowingly helped launch a wave of CGI creativity that altered to course of how films would be made going forward. 

An important figure in this with the visual effects supervisor John Gaeta. Gaeta and the Wachowskis understood that in order to pull off the visuals they wanted, the VFX collaboration would have to start  during principal photography. 

One particular aspect the team knew they needed was to be able to digitally recreate at least some of the real world environments that the film shot in. Today, that is a very easy task. In 1999 however, they were pioneers. They elected to create 3D models based on actual still photographs of the various location they needed (such as the roof top scene). They then took those still images and used them to build photo-realistic surrounding. Then they had to create algorithms to interpolate between those still images and match the movement of the camera within the scene. This allowed the Wachowskis to film shots where the camera swings a full circle around the character while keeping the background looking 100% realistic to the eye.

However, the most iconic part of the VFX for The Matrix was of course the 'bullet time' effects. The method they ended up using was a modernized version of an old technique known as time-slice photography. The basic goal of bullet time is to capture images in super slow motion with a camera that appears to be moving at a normal speed. In order to do an effect like that 'in camera' your camera rig would have to be moving incredibly fast. Like strap a rocket onto it fast. However the solution that Gaeta and his team utilized is a deceptively basic one. Instead of moving the camera super fast, they incorporated the use of multiple cameras to take still images that would later be composited together. In filming the bullet dodging scene with Neo, the team utilized over 100 cameras and spaced them out according to how fast they wanted their 'digital camera' to be moving throughout its arc. In post, they then interpolated and morphed the still images together in sequence in order to give the appearance of a slow-moving camera revolving around Neo.

Release and Reception

With the film finally 'in the can' the movie made its premiere on the 31st of March 1999 and grossed $27.8 million dollars in its opening weekend. Considering its legacy today, it seems like a humble gross, but it was ranked number one at the box office for the first three weeks of its theatrical run. In the end, the film would accumulate a $463,517,383 million worldwide making it the fifth highest gross that year. 

Critical reception was also strong at release. Many recognized the groundbreaking VFX work, imaginative concept and incredible action. Looking at ratings as they stand today (which likely includes updated reviews since release) The Matrix sits at 83% and 85% on RottenTomatoes (critic/audience scores), 8.7 on IMDB, and 73% on Metacritic. 

During the awards season the film garnered several awards to include Oscar wins for Editing, Sound, and VFX.

Legacy

While the initial recognition of The Matrix upon release doesn't match its masterpiece status, it has had a long lasting legacy on science fiction and film. Its VFX was groundbreaking and was mimicked by a wide variety of media including other films, TV, and video games. The stunt coordination and fight choreography paved the way for more and more Eastern influence on how Western action movies get made. It also arguably started a wave of increased Western interest in anime and served as an influence on the rise of the superhero film genre. I also wonder about the effect The Matrix had on emerging technology - especially if it fueled a larger interest in the development of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Academia seems to have also taken a vested interest in the movie. A Vox article found that search results for the film yielded over 1100 different results in Google Scholar. 

Sadly, not all legacies are good. In recent years the clearly leftist messages baked into the film has been baffling misconstrued and adopted by far right elements. The concept of red-pilling was co-opted during the early days of the 'manosphere' as anti-feminist reactionary messaging targeted at young men who were feeling disenfranchised by changing notions of masculinity. Later, the themes of reality as an illusion also began to seep into the red-pilling concepts and may have helped fuel movement towards more conspiratorial thinking within politics and society at large. 

To end on a more uplifting note, The Matrix has most recently been gaining traction as an allegory for the transgender experience; a notion very likely born out of the Wachowskis publicly coming out as trans. However, even Lana and Lilly have stated that they did not consciously write the film as a direct allegory for transgenderism. When asked about the new interpretation Lilly remarked "It’s not like these were conscious decisions, but more like we’re finding our way instinctively as these two closeted trans women. So all those things that your receptors are buzzing about are completely valid. When people say, “Oh, it’s a trans allegory,” it’s like, “Yeah… it is, but we weren’t like, Hey, let’s write a trans allegory .” That’s not how it started. We were like, “Hey, let’s write this action film,” and then we got our trans all over it. [laughs]"

So, with all that in mind, I think The Matrix resonates with people on multiple levels because it is a deeply layered mythological tale. It recognizes that the human experience, especially with a modern lens, is surrounded by technology and social systems/structures of our own creation. The conflict then, is how we reckon with those systems and structures and what breaking free of those may mean for the future of humanity, in both good and bad ways.

If you would like to know more about the making of The Matrix you can check out the sources below that I used to craft this Deep Dive and tune in later for more posts like this! 

Sources

 https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/how-the-cast-of-the-matrix-assembled/

https://screenrant.com/matrix-movie-cast-actors-almost-played-neo-morpheus/ 

http://www.filmscouts.com/scripts/matinee.cfm?Film=matrix&File=casting

https://www.wildaboutmovies.com/features/keanu-reeves-interview-with-tim-nasson-for-the-matrix/ 

https://www.vox.com/culture/22816209/the-matrix-4-resurrections-explained-sequels-red-pill-trans-neo-trinity-keanu-reeves-wachowski-lana

https://screenrant.com/is-the-matrix-movie-trans-allegory-explained/ 

https://beforesandafters.com/2021/07/15/vfx-artifacts-the-bullet-time-rig-from-the-matrix/

https://theasc.com/articles/flashback-the-matrix 

http://www.filmscouts.com/scripts/matinee.cfm?Film=matrix&File=bul-tim

https://cinephiliabeyond.org/matrix/ 

https://screenrant.com/matrix-movie-behind-scenes-details-making-trivia/

https://www.alltherightmovies.com/feature/30-interesting-facts-about-the-matrix/ 

https://www.sparknotes.com/film/matrix/context/

https://www.matrixfans.net/movies/the-matrix/the-making-of-the-matrix/ 

https://www.vulture.com/article/the-matrix-timeline.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix