Kung fu, cyberpunk and colorful pills

25 years old, March 31, 1999, the cyberpunk action movie “The Matrix” was released. How one of the most famous modern franchises was filmed and in what state it is now – in the material “Kommersant”

In the beginning there was a comic

Brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski (later sisters Lilly and Lana Wachowski) ran a construction business, but dreamed of making art. In 1993, they managed to get a job at Marvel, where the brothers began working on creating a comic book about a world in which people are captured by a computer program.

The idea for a comic book grew into an idea for a film script, which they reworked for five years, and then tried for a long time and unsuccessfully to sell to producers. As a result, they contacted Joel Silver, who produced Lethal Weapon, Die Hard and other action films. Everything was complicated by the fact that the Wachowskis themselves wanted to shoot the film, and to begin with, Silver advised them to direct something on a smaller scale. The producer helped the directors with the debut chamber film “Communication”, after which the Warner studio became interested in “The Matrix”.

With the help of hired artists, the Wachowskis drew 600 pages of precise storyboards, but Warner gave them only $10 million instead of the requested $80 million. With this money, the Wachowskis shot the first six minutes of the film (in which the heroine Trinity runs away from the police) and showed it to the studio bosses. Warner appreciated the idea and significantly increased the budget. To reduce costs, filming was moved to Australia, where renting locations was cheaper.

What inspired the Wachowskis?

The Matrix depicts a future in which machines have enslaved humanity and are using humans as living batteries. They keep humanity in a comatose state while people’s minds are in a virtual reality called the “Matrix”. Several hackers, freed from the influence of the Matrix, confront the system presented in the film by Agent Smith.

“The Matrix” was filmed in the cyberpunk genre; the Wachowskis were inspired by numerous representatives of this genre. Even when developing the comic, the brothers thought about making it a continuation of Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, and the image of Trinity was practically copied from the heroine of the novel Molly.

The film also would not have happened without the anime “Ghost in the Shell,” which the directors, after writing the script, showed to the producers, claiming that they would do the same, only in a feature film. A number of scenes were almost completely copied from the anime, including running green titles (later it turned out that the sushi recipe was encrypted in them).

One of the main sources of inspiration for the directors was John Woo’s Hong Kong crime films, which used slow-mo (time dilation) and acrobatic shootout choreography. The Wachowskis were also inspired by Chinese films in the wuxia genre (analogous to films and books about knights in the West). In them, warriors could fly and perform unimaginable acrobatic feats.

The Matrix makes reference to a number of books, including Alice in Wonderland, 1984, The Wizard of Oz, and the Bible from which the city of Zion and the ship Nebuchadnezzar were taken. (King of Babylon). The Bible also borrows the general motif of the second coming of the chosen one: before gaining power, Neo dies and is resurrected, like Jesus Christ.

Technical Excellence

The Matrix won four Oscars in technical categories, including Best Special Effects. First of all, the film is remembered for its bullet time technology (a technique of stopping time in a frame where the camera continues to move around the characters), which the Wachowskis did not invent, but brought to perfection. Similar techniques were used in the 1960s Japanese anime Speed ​​Racer (which the Wachowski brothers would bring to the big screen after The Matrix trilogy), as well as in some Michel Gondry commercials, but it was the Wachowskis who took on the style element of the technique.

To stage the fights, the Wachowski brothers called on Hong Kong fight choreographer Yuan Heping. He trained the actors for several months before filming began. Many were injured, including Keanu Reeves, who was out for two months due to neck surgery. Thanks to the dexterity of the directors, the film managed to combine action scenes with computer graphics in an organic form.

Who else could play the main characters?

According to the original plan, all the main actors were supposed to be African-American, and they wanted to invite Will Smith to play the main role. However, he did not want to take risks and act with little-known directors. Later, Nicolas Cage (who didn’t want to go to Australia to film), Leonardo DiCaprio (who thought that the special effects would prevent him from revealing his acting potential) and Johnny Depp, whom the Wachowski brothers really wanted to see in the leading role, refused the role of Neo. The producers, however, insisted on choosing Keanu Reeves, who had previously starred in another cyberpunk film, Johnny Mnemonic.

Gary Oldman and Samuel L. Jackson were considered for the role of Morpheus, Jean Reno could have played Agent Smith, and Sandra Bullock and singer Janet Jackson were considered for the role of Trinity. All of them declined, either due to unsuitable schedules or the remoteness of the filming location.

“The Matrix” and fashion

When creating the first Matrix, the costume designers had a very limited budget, which forced them to use low-quality materials. To compensate for this, the artists came up with memorable clothing cuts, such as Morpheus’s formal robe, Trinity’s shiny jumpsuit and Neo’s cape, which became the main costume of the film.

The raincoat was made from cheap woolen fabric, the flaps of which were quite dense, but fluttered easily when moving, as was necessary for the Wachowski brothers for action scenes. Also, all the fabrics of the costumes were tinted green, since green was the dominant color in the picture.

Immediately after the film’s release, leather coats and sunglasses began to appear on the catwalks of high fashion houses. Collections inspired by The Matrix were presented by Dior and other famous brands. Pop and rock performers, as well as movie and comic book characters, dressed in this style in clubs and restaurants. Black was the most fashionable color in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And among girls there is a fashion for short haircuts, like the heroine Carrie-Anne Moss.

Popularity and influence of The Matrix

The Wachowskis made The Matrix into a trilogy, but it is the first film that is most often seen as a revolution in the genre of action films and cyberpunk. The first “Matrix” introduced the fashion for slow-mo and bullet time, and the final shootout is considered one of the most masterfully choreographed action scenes in cinema.

Some of the directors’ discoveries were later used so often by other filmmakers that they turned into clichés. For example, just six months after the release of The Matrix, the bullet time technique was used in more than 20 films. The film also influenced video games: Finnish developers Remedy used the bullet time effect as the main concept for the video game Max Payne.

Fight choreographer Yuan Heping returned to China to become the fight director for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. According to him, in the film he introduced the world to a “romanticized, aesthetically pleasing style of kung fu,” thanks to which the wuxia genre became popular in the West.

The Matrix has achieved cult status and spawned a franchise that includes comic books, animated films and video games. The red and blue pill memes are still popular on the internet today, as is the iconic gesture of Morpheus calling on Neo to attack.

The film was successful with film critics and audiences and grossed $463.5 million against a budget of $63 million. In 2012, “The Matrix” was selected for the US National Film Registry.

What were the interpretations?

The Wachowski brothers never explained The Matrix, and fans have debated what actually happens in the film for decades. Allusions to Neo as the new Jesus Christ already seem commonplace, but otherwise the material in the film is susceptible to various interpretations.

It is traditionally believed that the choice of a red or blue pill represents Plato’s myth of the cave: will people who have thought one thing all their lives and believe it to be true, will want to know the truth about real reality? In the film, Neo hid programs in Jean Baudrillard’s book Simulacra and Simulation, which alludes to The Matrix as a copy of a world that does not exist. After the release of the film, Baudrillard said in an interview that the Wachowskis misunderstood him, and the film distorts the meaning of the book.

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek wrote that almost any philosophical doctrine can be found in The Matrix, including existentialism, Buddhism, Marxism, nihilism and postmodernism.

The future of The Matrix

After the release of the first film, the Wachowskis immediately began creating the second and third. The films were successful at the box office (“Reloaded” grossed $742.1 million and “Revolution” grossed $427.3 million, both budgeted at around $150 million), but received mixed reviews from fans and reviewers. The final film of the trilogy, “The Matrix: Revolutions,” received especially a lot of criticism. At the same time, The Matrix Reloaded was praised for its philosophical approach. In 2019, for the 20th anniversary of the first film, Warner released The Matrix for re-release in 4D format.

The first rumors about the development of a new Matrix appeared in the mid-2010s, with Warner executives considering ideas for both a reboot of the franchise and a direct sequel. Only Lana Wachowski took part in the creation of the fourth part of the series, acting as director, screenwriter and producer of the film. Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus) and Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith) did not star in the film, but Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss returned to their roles. The new film “The Matrix: Resurrection” was released in 2021 and failed at the box office (with a budget of $190 million, the film earned only $157.4 million). To date, it is unknown about Warner’s plans to create new films based on the franchise.

Evgeniy Fedunenko