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Revision as of 18:54, 29 December 2006 by Pejmany (talk | contribs) (→Plot)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) 1999 American film| The Matrix | |
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| Directed by | Wachowski Brothers |
| Written by | Wachowski Brothers |
| Produced by | Joel Silver |
| Starring | Keanu Reeves Laurence Fishburne Carrie-Anne Moss Hugo Weaving Joe Pantoliano Gloria Foster |
| Cinematography | Bill Pope |
| Edited by | Zach Staenberg |
| Music by | Original: Don Davis Rob Dougan Jack Dangers Chino Moreno Hive Non-Original: Tim Commerford Madonna Wayne Gacy Stéphane Grappelli Liam Howlett Harry James Grant Marshall Tom Morello Zack De La Rocha Brad Wilk David Wyndorf Robert del Naja Sara J. Mushroom Vowles Matt Schwartz Jimmie Haskell |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release dates |  March 31 1999 11 June 1999 9 April 1999 |
| Running time | 136 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $63,000,000 |
| Box office | Domestic $171,479,930 Foreign $288,900,000 Worldwide $460,379,930 |
The Matrix is a science fiction/action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano and Hugo Weaving. It was first released in the USA on March 31, 1999, and is the first entry in the Matrix series of films, comics, video games and animation.
The film describes a future in which the world is actually the Matrix, a simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify, subdue and make use of the human population as an energy source by growing them and connecting them to the Matrix with cybernetic implants. It contains numerous references to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures; philosophical and religious ideas, including Vedanta, messianism and Socratic, Cartesian, and Platonic idealism; and homages to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hong Kong action movies and Japanese animation.
Plot
Template:Spoilers Computer programmer Thomas Anderson leads a secret life as a hacker under the alias "Neo". One night he finds messages appearing on his computer monitor, "The Matrix has you" and "Follow the white rabbit". This cryptic instruction leads Neo to a nightclub, where he is met by a woman called Trinity. She is aware that he believes a man named Morpheus can help him learn the answer to the question: "What is the Matrix?" At work the next day, Neo receives a telephone call from Morpheus, warning that three Agents are searching for him. Despite Morpheus' guidance, Neo is apprehended by the Agents, who present evidence of his criminal activities as a hacker. They explain that Morpheus is a wanted terrorist and request Neo's help in locating him; in return they will erase his criminal record. When he refuses to cooperate, the Agents implant him with a robotic bug through his navel.
Neo wakes up at home, assuming it was all a dream, and immediately receives a call from Morpheus requesting a meeting. He is picked up by Morpheus' allies Apoc, Trinity and Switch, who remove the bug and take him to the rendezvous. Morpheus explains that he has been searching for Neo his entire life. He offers Neo the chance to learn the truth about the Matrix. Neo accepts, and abruptly wakes up naked in a liquid-filled chamber, his body connected by wires to a vast mechanical tower bristling with identical pods. The connections are severed and he is flushed away into a deep pool of waste water. He is rescued by Morpheus and taken aboard the Nebuchadnezzar. As Neo recuperates, Morpheus explains the history of the Matrix. The world which Neo has inhabited since birth is the Matrix, an simulated reality construct of the world of 1999, developed by the machines to keep the human population docile. The year is closer to 2199, and humanity is fighting a war against artificially intelligent machines created early in the 21st century. The humans covered the sky in thick clouds in an attempt to cut off the machines' supply of solar power. The machines responded by using human beings as their energy source, growing countless people in pods and harvesting their energy. Morpheus and Trinity are part of a group of free humans who "unplug" others from the Matrix and recruit them to their resistance against the machines. Within the Matrix they are able to use their understanding of its nature to bend the laws of physics, giving them superhuman abilities. Morpheus believes that Neo is "the One", a man prophesied to "hail the destruction of the Matrix, end the war, and bring freedom to our people" through his limitless control over the Matrix.
Neo begins his training with the group's "operator" Tank. In ten hours, Neo has learned numerous martial arts disciplines, and demonstrates his kung fu skills by sparring with Morpheus in a virtual reality environment similar to the Matrix. He learns that a person's abilities within the Matrix have more to do with mental effort than muscles. Further training introduces Neo to the key dangers in the Matrix itself. Injuries suffered in the Matrix are reflected in the real world; if he is killed in the Matrix, his physical body will also die. In addition, the men who interrogated Neo were Agents, sentient programs whose purpose is to seek out and eliminate any threats to the Matrix. They have the ability to possess the body of anyone still connected to the system, and display superhuman strength and speed. Morpheus explains that Agents are ultimately limited by the physical rules of the system, and once Neo fully understands his own abilities as "the One", they will be no match for him. The group enters the Matrix and takes Neo to the apartment of the Oracle, the woman who predicted the eventual emergence of the One. She informs him that he is not the One, but adds that Morpheus believes in Neo so blindly that he will sacrifice his life to save him. Upon returning to their exit, the group is ambushed by Agents and police officers. Although most of them escape, Morpheus is captured. Cypher is the first to exit the Matrix, but immediately attacks Tank and his brother Dozer, and one-by-one begins murdering the other crew members' real world bodies. Preferring his old life in the Matrix, he made a deal with the Agents to give them Morpheus in exchange for a permanent return to the Matrix. However, before he can murder Neo and Trinity, he is killed by an injured Tank.
The Agents attempt to gain the access codes to the mainframe of Zion, the humans' underground refuge, from Morpheus. Neo and Trinity resolve to rescue Morpheus, and return to the Matrix, storming the building. Neo becomes more confident and familiar with manipulating the Matrix, ultimately dodging bullets fired at him by an Agent. They use a helicopter to eliminate the Agents and rescue Morpheus. In an abandoned subway station, Morpheus and Trinity use a telephone to exit the Matrix, but before Neo can leave, the phone is destroyed by Agent Smith. The trapped Neo stands his ground and fights, eventually defeating Smith, but flees when the Agent quickly possesses another body. As he runs through the city pursued by the Agents, "Sentinel" machines converge on the Nebuchadnezzar's position in the real world. Neo reaches an exit, but is shot dead by the waiting Agent Smith. Trinity whispers to Neo that she loves him and refuses to accept his death, then kisses him. Neo's heart beats again. Within the Matrix, Neo stands up; the Agents' shoot at him, but he raises his palm and stops their bullets in mid-air. Neo now sees the Matrix as lines of streaming green code: he finally becomes "the One". Agent Smith makes a final attempt to physically attack him, but his punches are effortlessly blocked. Neo plunges directly into Smith's body, destroying the Agent and leaving Neo standing. The other two Agents flee, and Neo returns to the real world in time for the ship's electromagnetic pulse weapon to destroy the Sentinels. A short epilogue shows Neo back in the Matrix, making a telephone call promising that he will demonstrate to the people imprisoned in the Matrix that "anything is possible". He hangs up the phone and flies into the sky above the city. Template:Endspoiler
Principal cast
Sean Connery was originally offered the role of Morpheus. He turned down the role saying he couldn't understand the script.
Jean Reno was approached to play Agent Smith. He turned it down and took a role in Godzillainstead.
Gary Oldman was considered as Morpheus at one point, as well as Samuel L. Jackson. According to Don Davis, Johnny Depp was Larry and Andy's first choice for Neo, but Warner Bros. wanted Brad Pitt or Val Kilmer. After Kilmer and Brad Pitt said no, Warner Bros. was willing to consider Johnny Depp, and then it came between Johnny Depp and Keanu Reeves, who Warner Bros. was pushing. Keanu was always really tuned in to the concept and made a big difference in the casting.
Carrie Anne Moss had co-starred in a fantasy television series entitled Matrix several years before production of The Matrix. That series ran for only 13 episodes but was rebroadcast in several countries after The Matrix became a hit.
Actor Will Smith turned down the role of Neo. He later stated that, if given the role at that time, he "would have messed it up".
Production
The Matrix was a co-production of Warner Bros Studios and Australian Village Roadshow Pictures, and all but a few scenes were filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, and the city itself. Recognisable landmarks were not included in order to maintain the setting of a generic American city. Nevertheless, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Martin Place and a Commonwealth Bank branch are visible in some shots. Subtle nods were included to Chicago, Illinois, the home city of the directors, through place names, city maps, and a subtly placed picture of the Sears Tower.
The rooftop set that Trinity uses to escape from Agent Jones early in the film was left over from the production of Dark City, which has been remarked upon due to the thematic similarities of the films. According to The Art of the Matrix, only one filmed scene was omitted from the final cut.
The Wachowski Brothers were keen that all involved understood the thematic background of the movie. For example the book used to conceal disks early in the movie, Simulacra and Simulation by the French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard, was required reading for most of the principal cast and crew.
Template:Spoilers Some of the locations shown early in the film are featured again later. Room 303 in the Heart O' the City Hotel, where the police officers find Trinity, is the same room where Neo is killed by Agent Smith and resurrected as the One; the building in which Neo meets Morpheus for the first time is the place in which the group later appears before meeting the Oracle; and the room in which Neo takes the pill is the same room in which Mouse dies.
Production design
In the film, the code that comprises the Matrix itself is frequently represented as downward-flowing green characters. This code includes mirror images of half-width katakana characters and Western Latin letters and numerals. In one scene, the pattern of trickling rain on a window being cleaned resembles this code. More generally, the film's production design placed a bias towards its distinctive green color for scenes set within the Matrix, whereas there is an emphasis on the color blue during the scenes set in the real world. In addition, grid-patterns were incorporated into the sets for scenes inside the Matrix, intended to convey the cold, logical, artificial nature of that environment.
Also, the Chroma key screens used for shooting special effects scenes were bluescreen for Matrix scenes and greenscreen for real world scenes. This was done to ensure that the predominant colors of the sets did not interfere with the CGI editing processes.
The "digital rain" is strongly reminiscent of similar computer code in the film Ghost in the Shell, an acknowledged influence on the Matrix series (see below). The linking of the color green to computers may have been intended to evoke the green tint of old monochrome computer monitors.
Visual effects
The film is known for popularizing and evolving the use of a visual effect known as bullet time, which allows the viewer to explore a moment progressing in slow-motion while the camera appears to orbit around the scene at normal speed.
One proposed technique for creating these effects involved accelerating a high-frame-rate motion picture camera along a fixed track at a high speed to capture the action as it occurred. However, this was discarded as unfeasable, as the destruction of the camera in the attempt was all but inevitable. Instead, the method used was a technically expanded version of an old art photography technique known as time-slice photography, in which a large number of cameras are placed around an object and fired simultaneously. When the sequence of shots is viewed as a movie, the viewer sees what is in effect two-dimensional "slices" of a three-dimensional moment. Watching such a "time slice" movie is akin to the real-life experience of walking around a statue to see how it looks at different angles.
Some scenes in The Matrix feature the "time-slice" effect with completely frozen characters and objects. Interpolation techniques improved the fluidity of the apparent "camera motion". The effect was further expanded upon by the Wachowski brothers and visual effects supervisor John Gaeta to create "bullet time", which incorporates temporal motion, so that rather than being totally frozen the scene progresses in slow and variable motion. Engineers at Manex Visual Effects pioneered 3D visualization planning methods to move beyond mechanically fixed views towards complex camera paths and flexibly moving interest points. There is also an improved fluidity through the use of non-linear interpolation, digital compositing and the introduction of computer generated "virtual" scenery.
The objective of bullet time shots in The Matrix was to creatively illustrate "mind over matter" type events as captured by a "virtual camera". However, the original technical approach was physically bound to pre-determined perspectives, and the resulting effect only suggested the capabilities of a true virtual camera.
The evolution of photogrametric and image based CGI background approaches in The Matrix's bullet time shots set the stage for later innovations unveiled in the sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Virtual Cinematography (CGI-rendered characters, locations and events) and the high-definition Universal Capture process completely replaced the use of still camera arrays, thus realising the virtual camera.
This film upset the juggernaut release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace by winning the Academy Award for Visual Effects.
Music
See also: The Matrix: Original Motion Picture Score and The Matrix: Music from the Motion PictureThe film's score was composed by Don Davis. He noted that mirrors appear frequently in the movie: reflections of the blue and red pills are seen in Morpheus's glasses; Neo's capture by Agents is viewed through the rear-view mirror of Trinity's motorcycle; Neo observes a broken mirror mending itself; reflections warp as a spoon is bent; the reflection of a helicopter is visible as it approaches a skyscraper. (The film also frequently references the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which has a sequel entitled Through the Looking-Glass.) Davis focused on this theme of reflections when creating his score, alternating between sections of the orchestra and attempting to incorporate contrapuntal ideas.
In addition to Davis's score, The Matrix's soundtrack also features music from acts such as Rammstein, Rob Dougan, Rage Against the Machine, Propellerheads, Ministry, Deftones, The Prodigy, Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson.
Influences and interpretations
Main articles: The Matrix series and The Matrix character namesThe Matrix makes numerous references to recent films and literature, and to historical myths and philosophy including Messianism, Buddhism, Vedanta, Advaita Hinduism,Yoga Vashishta and Gnosticism. The film's premise resembles Plato's Allegory of the Cave and The Brain in a Vat thought experiment, while Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is featured in the film. There are similarities to cyberpunk works such as Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Japanese director Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell was a strong influence. Producer Joel Silver has stated that the Wachowski brothers first described their intentions for The Matrix by showing him this anime and saying, "We wanna do that for real". Mitsuhisa Ishikawa of Production I.G., which produced Ghost in the Shell, noted that the anime's high-quality visuals were a strong source of inspiration for the Wachowski brothers. He also commented, "... cyberpunk films are very difficult to describe to a third person. I'd imagine that The Matrix is the kind of film that was very difficult to draw up a written proposal for to take to film studios." He stated that since Ghost in the Shell had gained recognition in America, the Wachowski brothers used it as a "promotional tool".
Reviewers have commented on similarities between The Matrix and other late-1990s films such as Strange Days, Dark City, and The Truman Show. Comparisons have also been made to Grant Morrison's comic series The Invisibles; Morrison believes that the Wachowski brothers essentially plagiarized his work to create the film.
Release
The Matrix was first released in the U.S. on 31 March 1999, less than two months before the highly anticipated sci-fi film Star Wars: Episode I. It earned $171 million in the U.S. and $460 million worldwide, and later became the first DVD to sell more than three million copies in the U.S.
Critical reception
The combination of special-effects-laden action and philosophical meandering was considered fresh and exciting. Philip Strick commented in Sight & Sound, "if the Wachowskis claim no originality of message, they are startling innovators of method", praising the film's details and its "broadside of astonishing images". Roger Ebert praised the film's visuals and premise, but disliked the third act's focus on action. Other reviewers criticised the comparative humorlessness and self-indulgence of the movie.
In 2001, The Matrix was placed 66th in the American Film Institute's "100 Years... 100 Thrills" list.
Awards and nominations
The Matrix received Oscars for film editing, sound effects editing, visual effects, and sound. Furthermore, the film won these awards in the year that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released, making it the first film to win the special effects Oscars when competing with an entry in the Star Wars series.
It also received BAFTA awards for Best Sound and Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects.
The Matrix series
Main article: The Matrix seriesThe film's mainstream success led to the greenlighting of the next two films of what was conceived as a trilogy, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. These were filmed simultaneously during one shoot and released in two parts in 2003.
The first film's introductory tale is replaced by a story centred on the impending attack of the human enclave of Zion by a vast machine army. Neo also learns more about the history of the Matrix, his role as the One and the prophecy that he will end the war. The sequels also incorporate longer and more ambitious action scenes, as well as improvements in bullet time and other visual effects.
Also released was The Animatrix, a collection of nine animated short films, many of which were created in the same Japanese animation style that was a strong influence on the live trilogy. The Animatrix was overseen and approved by the Wachowski brothers but they only wrote four of the segments themselves and did not direct any of them; much of the project was created by notable figures from the world of animé. Four of the films were originally released on the series' official website; one was shown in cinemas with the Warner Bros movie Dreamcatcher; the others first appeared with the DVD release of all nine shorts.
The franchise contains three video games: Enter the Matrix (2003), which contains footage shot specifically for the game and chronicles events taking place before and during The Matrix Reloaded; The Matrix Online (2004), a MMORPG which continues the story beyond The Matrix Revolutions; and The Matrix: Path of Neo, which was released 8 November 2005 and focuses on situations based on Neo's journey through the trilogy of films.
Available on the official website are a number of free comics set in the world of The Matrix, written and illustrated by figures from the comics industry. Some of these comics are also available in two printed volumes.
Impact
The Matrix has had a strong effect on action film-making in Hollywood. It upped the ante for cinematic fight scenes by hiring acclaimed choreographers (such as Yuen Woo-ping) from the Hong Kong action cinema scene, well-known for its production of martial arts films. The success of The Matrix put those choreographers in high demand by other filmmakers who wanted fights of similar sophistication: for example, Yuen Woo-ping's brother Yuen Cheung-Yan was choreographer on Daredevil (2003). There was a surge in movies, commercials and pop videos copying "the Matrix look", usually without the training and attention to detail that made it successful in the first place.
Following The Matrix, films made abundant use of slow-motion, spinning cameras, and, often, the famed bullet time effect of a character freezing or slowing down and the camera panning around them. In several video games, most notably Max Payne and its sequel, bullet time and the ability to dodge bullets became core gameplay elements. The bullet time effect has also been parodied numerous times, in comedy films such as Scary Movie, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Shrek and Kung Pow: Enter the Fist; in TV series such as The Simpsons and Family Guy; and in video games such as Conker's Bad Fur Day.
In 2003, GRACE, the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, commissioned Free Range Studios to produce The Meatrix, a dark satire of The Matrix, to encourage the purchase and consumption of organic foods and sustainable, free-range meats. In the Adobe Flash short, Leo, a pig on a seemingly bucolic farm, is approached by Moopheus, an anthropomorphic bull, who reveals to him that the farm he has known is an illusion, and in reality he is trapped in a horrific "factory farm". The animated short has won numerous awards, been reported in major international media, has been viewed over 10,000,000 times and translated into 13 languages. In 2006, this was followed by a sequel, The Meatrix II: Revolting, themed around the factory farm treatment of dairy cows.
Some considered that The Matrix signaled the end of significant exploration in the cyberpunk movement. Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky commented, "I walked out of The Matrix and I was thinking, 'What kind of science fiction movie can people make now?' The Wachowskis basically took all the great sci-fi ideas of the 20th century and rolled them into a delicious pop culture sandwich that everyone on the planet devoured." Author William Gibson, a key figure in cyberpunk fiction, called the film "an innocent delight I hadn't felt in a long time", and stated, "Neo is my favourite-ever science fiction hero, absolutely". Joss Whedon says the film is "my number one" and that it "works on whatever level you want to bring to it".
Sophia Stewart legal case
On April 24, 2003 Sophia Stewart filed suit against Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Joel Silver and the Wachowski Brothers claiming that the stories of The Matrix and Terminator franchises were based on a manuscript she wrote titled "The Third Eye". She allegedly submitted the manuscript to the Wachowskis in response to an advertisement. On October 4, 2004, a California court granted Stewart leave to continue her case. One account misreported the October 4th decision as Stewart winning her lawsuit, rather than simply winning permission to continue with the case. The case was dismissed in June 2005 on the basis that "Stewart and her attorneys had not entered any evidence to bolster its key claims or demonstrated any striking similarity between her work and the accused directors' films"..
Books about the Matrix
- Stacy Gillis (Editor), The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded, Wallflower, 2005. ISBN 1-904764-32-0
- The Rebel Sell (2004) a nonfiction criticism by Canadian authors Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, of 'counter-culture' is highly critical of The Matrix movies' philosophical underpinnings as being essentially individualistic and only artificially in opposition to our capitalist paradigm.
- Matthew Kapell and William G. Doty have edited a volume on the entire franchise entitled Jacking In to the Matrix Franchise: Cultural Reception and Interpretation (NY: Continuum 2004).
Notes and references
- Spencer Lamm (editor) (2000). The Art of the Matrix. Titan. p. 488. ISBN: 1-84023-173-4.
{{cite book}}:|last=has generic name (help); Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - The Matrix Revisited (DVD). Warner Bros. 2001.
- Hillner, Jennifer. "I, Robocop". Wired. Condé Nast Publications.
- Ebert, Roger (November 6, 2005). "Great Movies: Dark City". Retrieved December 18.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=and|date=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - Costume designer Kym Barret, production designer Owen Paterson and cinematographer Bill Pope, interviewed in The Matrix Revisited (Chapter 7).
- Don Davis, interviewed in The Matrix Revisited (Chapter 28). A transcript of his comments may be found online:
- "The Matrix: Fair Cop". URL retrieved 7 July 2006.
- Joel Silver, interviewed in "Scrolls to Screen: A Brief History of Anime" featurette on The Animatrix DVD.
- Joel Silver, interviewed in "Making The Matrix" featurette on The Matrix DVD.
- Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, interviewed in The South Bank Show, episode broadcast 19 February 2006
- ^ Roger Ebert's review of The Matrix. URL retrieved 21 August 2006.
- "The Matrix (1999) - Channel 4 Film review". URL retrieved 21 August 2006.
- "Cinephobia reviews: The Matrix". URL retrieved 27 December 2006.
- "Poor Mojo Newswire: Suicide Girls Interview with Grant Morrison". URL retrieved 31 July 2006.
- Box Office Mojo: The Matrix. URL retrieved 8 March 2006.
- "Press release - August 1, 2000 - The Matrix DVD: The first to sell 3 million". URL retrieved 26 July 2006.
- "Positive review of The Matrix"
- Sight & Sound review of The Matrix
- "Critical review of The Matrix"
- "Negative review of The Matrix"
- The Matrix Comics at the official Matrix website
- Darren Aronofsky, quoted in the article "The Outsider", Wired. November 2006 issue (pp. 224)
- The Art of the Matrix, p.451
- "201 Greatest Movies of all Time". Empire (Issue 201). March 2006. p. 98.
- "Report on Sophia Stewart's lawsuit against the Wachowski brothers"
External links
- Official website
- The Matrix at IMDb
- The Matrix multiple scripts by Andy & Larry Wachowski
- Complete list of actors who were considered for roles
- Philosophy of The Matrix (official Warner Brothers Site, mentioned previously)
Reviews
- Roger Ebert's review of The Matrix
- The Matrix on Rotten Tomatoes
- The Matrix on Meta Critic
- The Matrix: A Christian Review
Articles
- Unplugging The Matrix, an article on Slate.
- Technology - The Shadow of the Matrix
- Synchronistic Linguistics in The Matrix
- Duncan Chesney on Spinoza and the Politics of The Matrix (Film-Philosophy website)
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