A Matrix Primer
While you wait to watch The Matrix Resurrections let’s take a look back at the original 1999 movie and how it came to be.
When Lily and Lana Wachowski first started working on The Matrix in the early 90s, they pictured it as a sci-fi comic book.
The siblings had an eclectic range of interests, including Hong Kong action movies, the power of the internet, Homer’s The Odyssey, mythology, Zen Buddhism, quantum physics, and classic sci-fi movies.
While listening to music by Rage Against the Machine and Ministry, they spent several years filling up pages of notebooks with ideas for their comic book which would incorporate all of these concepts.
Eventually though they realized they had something bigger on their hands and began working on a screenplay.
The story they imagined takes place in a dystopian future, approximately 200 years from the present. It follows Neo, a young software programmer by day and hacker by night who learns the world isn’t what he thought after meeting sunglass wearing operative Morpheus.
Morpheus gives Neo a choice, swallow the blue pill and continue living obliviously in the Matrix, or swallow the red pill and fulfil his destiny as “The One” and help liberate humanity by destroying the Matrix.
Obviously, Neo chooses the red pill and becomes a superhero dressed in black leather, with the ability to bend the rules of physics, jump across buildings, learn any skill, and fight any bad guy.
Will Smith was actually the first actor considered for the role. But he turned it down. Something he says he’s not proud of. But he just didn’t get it when filmmakers described the liquid action scenes.
The role of Neo ended up going to Keanu Reeves, who had struggled to find another Hollywood hit after the success of Speed in 1994. The Matrix would put him back on the map.
As for the role of Morpheus, Warner Brothers first offered it to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Douglas but they both declined, which was okay for the Wachowskis because they had someone else in mind, Laurence Fishbourne.
As for Trinity, another hacker who has escaped The Matrix, Jada Pinkett Smith auditioned for the role but didn’t click with Reeves so instead the Wachowskis went with Canadian born actor Carrie Ann Moss.
The Matrix team spent months training for the movie, every day they reported to a warehouse in Burbank, California where Yuen woo-ping, a legendary martial arts choreographer made them practice punching and kicking for hours on end.
But it was going to take more than some kick-ass martial arts moves to capture the most memorable part of the Matrix, something called bullet time.
You know what I’m talking about. That rooftop scene where Neo throws himself backwards in slow motion as a bullet soars over him like a bead of mercury while the camera simultaneously arcs around him in real time.
The shot and others like it were devised because the Wachowski siblings wanted to use slow motion to achieve the graphic punch of still comic book frames but also wanted to move the camera at normal speed.
The effect was created by placing cameras in a 360-degree circle around the action and then stitching their images together in a way that makes viewers feel like they're moving around a slow-motion scene.
The Wachowski’s didn’t invent bullet time technology but it had never been used like this before and it changed Hollywood forever. The effect was soon copied and parodied in movies, on TV and even in commercials.
That one scene between Neo and Agent Smith on the rooftop took nearly two years to complete and cost about $750,000!
The total budget for The Matrix was a whopping $63 million dollars. But it paid off earning $463 million dollars in worldwide ticket sales, putting it 4th on the movie earnings list for 1999. Plus it earned 4 technical Academy Awards including best visual effects.
The Matrix not only led the way in special effects it was also ahead of its time by raising concerns about humanity being controlled by technology, something that wasn’t front of mind for everyone in 1999 but it sure is now.
And the red pill – blue pill concept, knowledge vs blissful ignorance is also a pretty common idea now. In recent years it was hijacked by an anonymous group of men who set up an online community on reddit called The Red Pill. Their general belief is that female oppression is a myth and men are the ones who have been subjugated and it encourages followers to metaphorically choose the red pill and awaken to reality.
The Matrix wasn’t the only movie in 1999 became part of the cultural conversation. 1999 was a peak moment for really adventurous movie-making by big and small filmmakers something we covered in a special two part episode of History of the 90s in April 2020. You can listen to it anywhere you stream audio or here.
Hope you enjoy The Matrix Resurrections or at least understand it.