T.S. Elliott famously stated “Good writers borrow; great writers steal.” And Aaron Sorkin also updated this by stating “Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.” The first I ever heard of The Matrix was during the 1999 Super Bowl where the images of Keanu Reeves bending over backwards as bullets fly by him in slow-motion aired. This was going to be a different movie, but there wasn’t really telling of what happened.
All that was on the commercial’s was Laurence Fishburne’s line as Morpheus saying, “No one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” So, one April weeknight when I was in college, a friend and I went to go see the movie and I was a little bummed. I didn’t really know what I was expecting but as a cinephile, I felt like I was watching a casserole of a lot of genres and tropes. The Wachowskis (at the time known as The Wachowski Brothers) seemed to blending science-fiction with Japan anime, Hong Kong action flicks, the cyberpunk genre that William Gibson pioneered, with some futuristic steampunk style dealing with the themes of the existential realm of the works of Terry Gilliam and David Lynch.
What was it about the Y2K era that produced so many movies focusing on whether or not what we’re seeing is the real deal. Along with The Matrix, there was David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, Dark City The Thirteenth Floor, Abre los Ojos and its remake Vanilla Sky, all within a time frame of four years. The Matrix, eXistenZ and Thirteenth Floor, all came out in 1999. And the concept of living a life that you didn’t know was real or not was examined in the 1990 Total Recall. You can see a huge influence of Blade Runner on The Matrix as you can on a lot of sci-fi movies afterwards.
But a lot of movies have borrowed or stolen from other movies. The Old West movies, The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars, were basically remakes on Japanese samurai movies The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo respectively as well as the original Star Wars trilogy, which drew inspiration mainly from The Hidden Fortress. And the Terminator franchise was heavily influenced (even possibly plagiarized from the works of Harlan Ellison). You can see a lot of the Terminator movies style at work in The Matrix, even though James Cameron never intended for the futuristic scenes to have as much weight as they have.
Starting in an unknown big city, Tom Anderson (Reeves) is a lowly computer programmer at a thankless job but has a side hustle as Neo, a hacker. He meets Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) at a nightclub where she tells him about how Morpheus (Fishburne) will contact him with the answers he seeks. The next day, Morpheus sends a cell phone to Neo’s office telling him that agents are going to arrest him if he doesn’t follow his instruction. Morpheus leads him through the office somehow able to see where everyone is.
Yet, Neo can’t escape out the window as Morpheus suggests and he is taken into custody questioned by the mysterious Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). When Neo asks to make a phone call, his mouth suddenly fuses together in Cronenberg fashion and Smith and the other agents plant a robotic “bug” in his abdomen. But Neo wakes up believing it’s a nightmare before he is contacted by Trinity and taken to meet Morpheus. But first, they remove the bug, which to his surprise is real.
Morpheus tells Neo he must make a choice between two pills – one red and one blue. The red one will help his answers about The Matrix. The blue pill will send him back to his former life. Curious, Neo takes the red pill and passes out. awakening nude, bald and connected to hoses in a fluid-filled pod in an endless field of similar pods. He is contacted by the ship Nebuchadnezzar and taken abroad where he sees Morpheus, Trinity and others. His body is weak and over an undetermined time, he gets to feeling better.
Morpheus explains that the year is actually closer to 2199 and there has been a war between man and machines with artificial intelligence forcing people to live in a simulated reality. People are used as batteries as their energy is what keeps the machines going, which explains why Neo was in a fluid-filled pod with hoses all through his body. Freaked out initially, Neo comes around to learning more about The Matrix, which is the simulated reality Neo and others thought they lived in.
Filming took place mostly in Sydney, Australia and at Fox Studios. The Wachowskis and the film crew had to avoid landmarks to give the exterior shots of the city where Neo thought he lived the feel of a generic American city. However, it really looks too generic which further helps the notion that The Matrix is a simulation. The filmmakers were able to utilize some sets left over from the 1998 neo-noir science fiction movie Dark City, which also had a similar theme as people are being given false memories while they sleep as an experiment being conducted by aliens.
The Wachowskis have admitted they used their love of Hong Kong action cinema led them to implement elements into the movie. You can see the works of Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark and especially John Woo in this movie. Woo had just become more known to mass American audiences with his movies Hard Target, Broken Arrow and especially Face/Off. Quentin Tarantino had become heavily influenced by the same genre as well with many people noting similarities between Reservoir Dogs and the HK movie City on Fire.
The Matrix wasn’t the first movie to mix martial arts and extreme gunplay. Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal as well as Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon movies and even The Crow had done so. But Norris’ career was mostly limited to Walker, Texas Ranger and Seagal was becoming more of a joke by the 1990s ended. Action movies that featured Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis put the emphasis on the star rather than the action. The Wachowskis made the action the focus.
By doing this, they shook up the genre. Or in other words, they created a glitch in the matrix. As the 20th Century ended and a new century of cinema began, filmmakers didn’t need to worry about big-name actors (and their egos) as they seemed to churn out the same movies as they had before. Reeves wasn’t known at the time as a major action star. He had made Speed in 1994 but Fishburne was known more for acting in dramas and thrillers. Moss, herself, was a virtually unknown actress. But she left a great impression on the audience. (Trinity also became famous among lesbians.)
And that’s another thing The Matrix shook up. The movie just didn’t appeal to young white heterosexual men as what most action movies had been geared toward. I was kinda surprised of the wide diversity of people who liked it when I was in college. The Wachowskis are transgender women. Their previous movie, Bound, had been their feature film debut and it focused on a woman on parole played by Gina Gershon getting involved in a complicated money theft scheme with the Chicago Mafia mobster, played by Joe Pantoliano who plays the treacherous Cypher here, and his girlfriend, played by Jennifer Tilley. The way they directed the movie and how Gershon and Tilley played their respective characters, it really didn’t matter about their sexuality. That wasn’t the emphasis.
The Matrix had women and black men literally kicking ass in amazing fashion. Because Neo is still new to all that’s around him, Reeves’ performance works making him somewhat a novice while Trinity and Morpheus are the experts. Other actors playing the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar are Marcus Chong, Julian Arahanga, Matt Doran, Belinda McClory and Anthony Ray Parker. Gloria Foster plays The Oracle in the first two movies while the Wachowskis cast Mary Alice when Foster died. In the sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, more black actors (Jada Pinkett Smith, Harold Perrineau and Harry Lennix), would be in more crucial supporting roles.
You can say that the Wachowskis themselves were living a life that wasn’t their reality. Most of the transgender people I know and have spoken with say they’re finally glad they’re allowed to be more open. The Matrix was the first major movie franchise to be made by the LGBTQIA community for everyone. The world all humans lived in was one where they had to get along with each other to battle a bigger enemy.
Showing that more diversity is welcome by the general public would lead to rise of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson as action stars. Then, there was how Matt Damon proved to be an effective action star in The Bourne Identity and its sequels as well as Colin Firth even surprising us in Kingsman: The Secret Service. Focusing more on action and breaking down egos, filmmakers could basically cast anyone they wanted as well as the stunt coordinators who didn’t have to do what the star wanted. And for better or worse, it led to the popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It also helped that time caught up with a lot of the above-mentioned action stars and a lot of them did other things. And action movies had to have better stories. It’s easy to describe something like Die Hard, The Terminator or Lethal Weapon in one sentence or two. But The Matrix gives us a complex story. It’s not near as complex as Bound where you had to pay attention.
But the movie also spawned many imitators most notably with its use of bullet-time and slow-motion action scenes used ad nauseam by Zack Snyder. Even directors like Woo would find themselves being accused of copying The Matrix when Mission: Impossible 2 had people saying the action was too similar. I got into a huge argument with the same friend who I had seen The Matrix with that the movie director had been doing this for more than 10 years prior. There was no way to pull out a smart phone to show someone then. I got into a lot of arguments with people for the longest time over who was and wasn’t in movies and who did and didn’t copy or rip-off other filmmakers.
While the Matrix sequels didn’t measure up, the original still remains a groundbreaking entry where you can see the difference between the movies that came before and the ones that came after.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 