| The Matrix | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski |
| Produced by | Joel Silver |
| Written by | Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski |
| Starring | Keanu Reeves Laurence Fishburne Carrie-Anne Moss Hugo Weaving Joe Pantoliano |
| Music by | Don Davis |
| Cinematography | Bill Pope |
| Editing by | Zach Staenberg |
| Studio | Village Roadshow Pictures Silver Pictures |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 31, 1999 (United States) April 8, 1999 (Australia) |
| Running time | 136 minutes |
| Country | Australia United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $63 million |
| Box office | $463,517,383[1] |
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving. It was first released in North America on March 31, 1999, and in Australia on April 8, 1999, and is the first installment in the Matrix series of films, comic books, video games, and animation.
The film depicts a future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality created by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human population, while their bodies' heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. Upon learning this, computer programmer "Neo" is drawn into a rebellion against the machines, involving other people who have been freed from the "dream world" and into reality.
The film contains many references to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures; philosophical and religious ideas such as René Descartes' evil genius, the Allegory of the Cave, the brain in a vat thought experiment; and homages to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hong Kong action cinema, spaghetti westerns, dystopian fiction, and Japanese animation.
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Computer programmer Thomas A. Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is secretly a hacker known by the alias "Neo." He is restless, and driven to learn the meaning of cryptic references to "the Matrix" appearing on his computer. An infamous female hacker named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), confirms that a man named Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), knows the answers he seeks; however, three sinister Agents, led by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), arrest Neo and attempt to discourage him from having any contact with Morpheus. Undeterred, Neo attends a secret meeting with Morpheus, who offers him a choice of two pills: a blue one that would allow him to continue his ordinary life, and a red pill that would allow him to learn the truth about the Matrix. Neo swallows the red pill, and he abruptly finds himself in a liquid-filled pod, his body connected by tubes and cables to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods. The connections are severed, and he is rescued by Morpheus and taken aboard his ship, the Nebuchadnezzar. Neo's atrophied physical body is restored, and Morpheus explains the situation.
Morpheus tells Neo that it is not 1999, but closer to 2199, and that humanity is fighting a war against intelligent machines created in the early 21st century. The sky is covered by thick black clouds created by the humans in an attempt to cut off the machines' supply of solar power. The machines responded by using human beings as their energy source in conjunction with nuclear fusion, later growing countless people in pods and harvesting their bioelectrical energy and body heat. The world in which Neo grew up was actually the Matrix, a simulated reality of the world set in 1999, developed by the machines in order to keep the human captives docile. Morpheus and his crew belong to a group of free humans who "unplug" others from the Matrix and recruit them to their resistance against the machines. They are able to use their understanding of the Matrix's nature to bend the simulation's laws of physics, giving them superhuman abilities within the virtual world. Morpheus believes that Neo is "the One," a man prophesied to end the war through his limitless control over the Matrix.
Neo is trained as a member of the rebellion. A socket in Neo's skull, formerly used by the machines to connect him to the Matrix, allows knowledge to be uploaded directly into his mind. In this way, he is able to quickly learn numerous martial arts styles, and impresses the crew with his speed when sparring in the rebels' virtual reality "construct" environment. Further training introduces Neo to the key dangers in the Matrix itself. He learns that fatal injuries suffered within the simulation will also kill one's physical body in the real world. He is warned that the Agents he previously met are powerful sentient computer programs with the ability to possess the virtual body of anyone still directly connected to the Matrix, whose purpose is to seek out and eliminate any threats to the simulation. Morpheus is confident that once Neo fully understands his own abilities as "the One", the Agents will be no match for him.
The group enters the Matrix and takes Neo to meet the Oracle (Gloria Foster), the woman who has predicted the eventual emergence of the One. From her comments, Neo infers that he is not the One. The Oracle adds that Morpheus believes in Neo so blindly that he will sacrifice his life to save him.
Returning to the hacked telephone line which serves as a safe "exit" from the Matrix, the group is surrounded by Agents and SWAT teams. One of the members of the group, Mouse (Matt Doran), is killed in the initial ambush. Morpheus stays behind to delay the agents, allowing Neo and the others to escape. They learn that they were betrayed by their fellow crew-member Cypher (Joe Pantoliano), who preferred his old life in the Matrix over the real world, and who had made a deal with the machines to have himself reinserted into the Matrix in exchange for giving them Morpheus. Cypher is killed, but his betrayal leads to the deaths of all crew-members except Neo, Trinity, Tank (Marcus Chong), and Morpheus.
Morpheus is held in a government building in the Matrix. The Agents try to coerce him into revealing the access codes to the mainframe of Zion, the humans' subterranean refuge in the real world. Neo and Trinity storm the building to rescue their leader. Neo becomes more confident in his ability to manipulate the Matrix, ultimately dodging bullets fired at him. Escaping to a subway station, Morpheus and Trinity use a pay phone to exit the Matrix, but before Neo can leave he is ambushed by Agent Smith. Neo stands his ground and eventually causes Smith to get hit by a train, but flees when the Agent possesses another body.
As Neo runs through the city toward another telephone exit, he is pursued by the Agents while "sentinel" machines converge on the Nebuchadnezzar in the real world. Neo reaches an exit, but Agent Smith is already there and shoots him repeatedly, killing him. In the real world, Trinity whispers to Neo what the Oracle had told her: that she would fall in love with "the One." She refuses to accept his death and kisses him. Neo's heart beats again, and within the Matrix, he revives; the Agents shoot at him, but he raises his palm and the bullets stop in mid-air. Neo is now able to perceive the streaming lines of green computer code that constitute the Matrix. Agent Smith makes a final attempt to kill him, but his punches are effortlessly blocked, and Neo destroys him. The other two Agents flee, and Neo returns to the real world in time for the ship's EMP weapon to destroy the sentinels that had already breached the craft's hull.
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 then flies into the sky.
The Matrix was a co-production of Warner Bros. and Australian Village Roadshow Pictures, and all but a few scenes were filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, and in the city itself. Recognizable landmarks were not included in order to maintain the setting of a generic American city.[7] Nevertheless, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, ANZAC Bridge, AWA Tower, Martin Place and a Commonwealth Bank branch are visible in some shots, as is signage on buildings for the Sydney offices of AON, Citigroup, Telstra, Westpac, KMPG, Ernst & Young and IBM Corporation among others. Other clues to the filming location include left-hand traffic flow and signs featuring British English terminology and spellings such as "lift" and "authorised" (rather than the American English "elevator" and "authorized").
Subtle nods were included to Chicago, Illinois, the home city of the directors, through a subtly placed picture of the Chicago skyline, city maps, the destination of the subway train during the subway station fight between Neo and Agent Smith saying "Loop", and the names of streets: Wells, Lake, Franklin, Erie, State, Balbo, Wabash, Adams.
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.[8] According to The Art of the Matrix, at least one filmed scene and a variety of short pieces of action were omitted from the final cut, and have (to date) not been published.
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, a 1981 work by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, was required reading for most of the principal cast and crew.
Comic book artists Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce worked on The Matrix as concept and storyboard artists respectively.
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 kana characters and Western Latin letters and numerals. 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 and artificial nature of that environment.[9]
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 color green reflects the green tint commonly used on early monochrome computer monitors.
As for artistic inspiration for bullet time, I would credit Otomo Katsuhiro, who co-wrote and directed Akira, which definitely blew me away, along with director Michel Gondry. His music videos experimented with a different type of technique called view-morphing and it was just part of the beginning of uncovering the creative approaches toward using still cameras for special effects. Our technique was significantly different because we built it to move around objects that were themselves in motion, and we were also able to create slow-motion events that 'virtual cameras' could move around – rather than the static action in Gondry's music videos with limited camera moves.
The film is known for popularizing the use of a visual effect known as "bullet time", which allows the viewer to explore a moment progressing in slow-motion as the camera appears to orbit around the scene at normal speed.[11]
The method used for creating these effects involved 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 triggered nearly simultaneously.[11] Each camera is a still-picture camera, and not a motion picture camera, and it contributes just one frame to the video sequence. When the sequence of shots is viewed as in a movie, the viewer sees what are 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 from different angles. The positioning of the still cameras can be varied along any desired smooth curve to produce a smooth looking camera motion in the finished clip, and the timing of each camera's firing may be delayed slightly,[11] so that a motion scene can be executed (albeit over a very short period of real time).
Some scenes in The Matrix feature the "time-slice" effect with completely frozen characters and objects. Film interpolation techniques improved the fluidity of the apparent "camera motion". The effect was further expanded upon by the Wachowski brothers and the visual effects supervisor John Gaeta so as to create "bullet time", which incorporates temporal motion, so that rather than being totally frozen the scene progresses in slow and variable motion.[11] Engineers at Manex Visual Effects pioneered 3-D visualization planning methods to move beyond mechanically fixed views towards more complicated 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 movie was rendered on a FreeBSD cluster farm.[12]
The objective of the 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 suggests the capabilities of a true virtual camera.
The evolution of photogrametric and image-based computer-generated 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 more closely realizing the "virtual camera".
The 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 Triumph Speed Triple 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.[13]
In addition to Davis' score, The Matrix soundtrack also features music from acts such as Rammstein, Rob Dougan, Rage Against the Machine, Propellerheads, Ministry, Deftones, Monster Magnet, The Prodigy, Rob Zombie, Meat Beat Manifesto, and Marilyn Manson. Other pieces from artists such as Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, and Massive Attack are included in the film, but not featured on the soundtrack.
The Matrix is arguably the ultimate cyberpunk artifact.
The Matrix's premise resembles Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Calderon de la Barca's Life is a Dream, Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland, René Descartes's evil genius, Georges Gurdjieff's The Sleeping Man,[15] Kant's reflections on the Phenomenon versus the Ding an sich, and the brain in a vat thought experiment.
Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is featured in the film, and was required reading for the actors.[16] However, Baudrillard commented that The Matrix misunderstands and distorts his work.[17][18]
In Postmodern thought, interpretations of The Matrix often reference Baudrillard's philosophy to demonstrate that the movie is an allegory for contemporary experience in a heavily commercialized, media-driven society, especially of the developed countries. The influence of the matrixial theory of Bracha Ettinger articulated in a series of books and essays from the end of the 1980s onwards was brought to the public's attention through the writings of art historians such as Griselda Pollock[19][20] and film theorists such as Heinz-Peter Schwerfel.[21]
There are similarities to several works by science fiction author Philip K. Dick,[22][23][24][25] as well as cyberpunk works such as Neuromancer by William Gibson.[26]
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 that anime and saying, "We wanna do that for real".[27][28] 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".[29] Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was another science fiction film that helped inspire the visual style of The Matrix.[30]
Reviewers have commented on similarities between The Matrix and other late-1990s films such as Strange Days, Dark City, and The Truman Show.[31][32][33] 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.[34] However several of the resemblances pointed out by Morrison can be a product of the common influence received from the books of Carlos Castaneda that were recognized as an inspiration by Morrison himself.[35] In addition, the similarity of the film's central concept to a device in the long running series Doctor Who has also been noted. As in the film, the Matrix of that series (introduced in the 1976 serial The Deadly Assassin) is a massive computer system which one enters using a device connecting to the head, allowing users to see representations of the real world and change its laws of physics; but if killed there, they will die in reality.[36]
In years after the film's release, The Matrix inspired films to duplicate its premise. 2010's Inception has been frequently compared to The Matrix.[37]
The Matrix was first released on March 31, 1999. It earned $171 million in North America and over $292 million in foreign box offices, for a total of $463 million worldwide,[1] and later became the first DVD to sell more than three million copies in the US.[38] The Ultimate Matrix Collection was released on HD DVD on May 22, 2007[39] and on Blu-ray on October 14, 2008.[40]
The film was also released standalone in a 10th anniversary edition Blu-ray in the Digibook format on March 31, 2009, 10 years to the day after the movie was released theatrically.[41]
The Matrix received generally favorable reviews from critics,[42] with a consensus forming that it presented an "ingenious" blend of Hong Kong action cinema, innovative visual effects and an imaginative vision.[43] Rotten Tomatoes reported that 87% of critics gave the film positive reviews, with an average score of 7.4/10, based upon a sample of 126 reviews.[43] The site reported that 68% of selected notable critics gave the film a positive review, based upon a sample of 28.[44] At Metacritic, which assigns an average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 73 upon its DVD release, based on 35 reviews.[42]
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".[45] Roger Ebert praised the film's visuals and premise, but disliked the third act's focus on action.[31] Similarly, Time Out praised the "entertainingly ingenious" switches between different realities, Hugo Weaving's "engagingly odd" performance, and the film's cinematography and production design, but concluded, "the promising premise is steadily wasted as the film turns into a fairly routine action pic ... yet another slice of overlong, high concept hokum."[46] Other reviewers criticised the relative humorlessness and self-indulgence of the movie.[47][48][49]
In 2001, The Matrix was placed 66th in the American Film Institute's "100 Years... 100 Thrills" list. In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called The Matrix the best science-fiction piece of media for the past 25 years.[50] The film is also ranked number 39 on Empire's "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time."[51]
Several science fiction creators commented on the film. 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."[52] Joss Whedon called the film "my number one" and praised its storytelling, structure and depth, concluding, "It works on whatever level you want to bring to it."[53] 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."[54] Director M. Night Shyamalan praised the Wachowskis' passion for the film, saying, "Whatever you think of The Matrix, every shot is there because of the passion they have! You can see they argued it out!"[55]
The Matrix received Oscars for film editing, sound effects editing, visual effects, and sound. The filmmakers were competing against other films with established franchises, like Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, yet they managed to sweep all four of their nominations.[56][57] In 1999, it won Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction.[58] The Matrix also received BAFTA awards for Best Sound and Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects, in addition to nominations in the cinematography, production design and editing categories.[59]
| Award | Category | Name | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 72nd Academy Awards | Film Editing | Zach Staenberg | Won |
| Sound Mixing | John T. Reitz, Gregg Rudloff, David E. Campbell, David Lee | Won | |
| Sound Editing | Dane A. Davis | Won | |
| Visual Effects | John Gaeta | Won |
American Film Institute Lists
The Matrix has had a strong effect on action film-making in Hollywood. It set a new standard for cinematic fight scenes[60] 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 and their techniques in high demand by other filmmakers who wanted fights of similar sophistication: for example, wire work was employed in X-Men (2000),[60] and Yuen Woo-ping's brother Yuen Cheung-Yan was choreographer on Daredevil (2003).
Following The Matrix, films made abundant use of slow-motion, spinning cameras, and, often, the bullet time effect of a character freezing or slowing down and the camera dollying around them. The ability to slow down time enough to distinguish the motion of bullets was used as a central gameplay mechanic of several video games, including Max Payne, in which the feature was explicitly referred to as "bullet time" (although the game went into production before the film was released). The Matrix's signature special 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 animated TV series such as The Simpsons, Fairly Oddparents and Family Guy; in the OVA series FLCL; and in video games such as Conker's Bad Fur Day, along with a more elaborate parody called Marx Reloaded, in which the central relationship between Neo and Morpheus is represented as an imaginary encounter between Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky.
In 2011, ABC aired a primetime special, Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time, that counted down the best movies chosen by fans based on results of a poll conducted by ABC and People. The Matrix was chosen as the #4 Best Sci-Fi Film.
The film's mainstream success led to the making of two sequels, 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 succeeded by the story of 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. There are reports that Keanu Reeves told a London audience that a fourth and fifth film may be in the works. This claim is doubted by commentators.[61]
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 who only wrote four of the segments themselves and did not direct any of them; much of the project was developed by notable figures from the world of anime. 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. Several of the films were shown first on UK television prior to their DVD release.
The franchise also 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 continued the story beyond The Matrix Revolutions; and The Matrix: Path of Neo (2005), which focuses on situations based on Neo's journey through the trilogy of films.
The Matrix Comics is a series of comics and short stories set in the world of The Matrix, written and illustrated by figures from the comics industry. Most of the comics were originally presented for free on the official Matrix website;[62] they were later republished, along with some new material, in two printed trade paperback volumes.
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