Rypro 525

Some have mentioned that "why are these movies so revolutionary since I have seen that before in other movies".Well what movies then?

PixyJunket

Half the movie was Blade 1..

I can't remember the name, but I do know that many of the "fights" were stolen from hong kong fooey flicks. I have a friend who is VERY into them, and he mentioned the scene where Neo realizes he is "the one" and he's blocking all of Agent Smiths attack is stolen almost frame by frame from some kung fu movie..

Corvin

Wire-fu has been around for ever. Even Big Trouble in Little China used it in a couple action sequences (although not as well as The Matrix of its Hong Kong counterparts).

Many of Jet Li's movies have had stunts using wires. I'm not into the Hong Kong scene too much, so I can't go into further specifics.

The Crow features a hero that dressed like a villian. That's all I have for now.

DonnachaOne

Th so-called "Bullet Time" was invented years before The Matrix, featuring in several music videos, a Gap ad, Enemy Of The State... but credit is due to the effects guys on Matrix for employing the device on such a grand scale.

Watch Ghost In The Shell and be amazed by the similarities of certain scenes. Also, the artful slow-motion scenes involving acrobatic movement interspersed with neverending shooting echoes the work of John Woo.

Now, I never saw Chow Yun-Fat hop into the air and stay there, but the similarity in style is there.

The Matrix borrows not so much from Hong Kong films and Anime films as much as it does from some sci-fi/fantasy books. A friend of mine who is heavily into William Gibson thinks The Matrix is highly derivative, and is more than happy to rattle off a list of books.

I wouldn't worry so much about unoriginality as long as the story is entertaining. Look at Equilibrium a blatantly derivative pastiche of paranoia sci-fi books that was nonetheless very entertaining.

Pants

Bullet Time Effect had been used in many other films, videos, commercials

Filmmaker/film influences:

Sam Peckinpaugh
John Woo
Blade
Ghost in the Shell
Iron Monkey

Pants

This will be fun. Here are all the films listed by users at IMDb as being referenced by The Matrix. Lets try to figure out in what way does The Matrix borrow from them. I'll go first:

Un chien andalou (1929)
Wizard of Oz, The (1939) folding of reality/dream where characters are different on either side
Rashômon (1950)
High Noon (1952)
Man Who Knew Too Much, The (1956)
Vertigo (1958)
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
"King Leonardo and His Short Subjects" (1960)
"Doctor Who" (1963)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
C'era una volta il West (1968)
Wild Bunch, The (1969)
Enter the Dragon (1973)
Welt am Draht (1973) (TV)
Star Wars (1977)
Zui quan (1978)
Superman (1978)
Saturn 3 (1980)
Heavy Metal (1981)
Evil Dead, The (1981)
Blue Thunder (1983)
Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
Terminator, The (1984)
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (1985) (TV)
Trancers (1985)
Brazil (1985)
Transformers: The Movie, The (1986)
"Red Dwarf" (1988)
Akira (1988)
They Live (1988)
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
Road House (1989)
Total Recall (1990)
Wong Fei-hung (1991)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Point Break (1991)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Far and Away (1992)
Lashou shentan (1992)
Of Mice and Men (1992)
"X-Men" (1992)
Fong Shi Yu II: Wan fu mo di (1993)
Little Buddha (1993)
Jing wu ying xiong (1994)
Speed (1994)
True Lies (1994)
"Aeon Flux" (1995)
Jinzô ningen Hakaidâ (1995)
Higher Learning (1995)
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
Desperado (1995)
Cité des enfants perdus, La (1995)
Waterworld (1995)
Kôkaku kidôtai (1995)
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Men in Black (1997)
Final Fantasy VII (1997) (VG)
Abre los ojos (1997)
Kite (1998)
Ghost in the Shell (1998) (V)
Buffalo '66 (1998)
Dark City (1998)
Blade (1998)
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
"Cowboy Bebop" (1998)

PixyJunket

Final Fantasy VII?! Comboy Bepop?!

Thos imdb users are super cool..

jim_cook87

Curious, The Matrix referenced Blade and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels when both movies released after The Matrix completed filming?

Pants

Did the matrix really spend more than a year in post?

Groucho

None. The Matrix is wholly original, and all other movies are rip-offs of it (including films that were released before).

karnblack

The Wachowski bros. reference Yuen Wo Ping's Fist of Legend staring Jet Li as an influence during one of the featurettes on the DVD.

jim_cook87

Almost 7 months. The actors started their martial arts training in October 1997. Filming began March 1998 wrapped August 1998. It premiered in the US March 24, 1999

Blade released November 1998.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels released in the UK August 30, 1998, didn't reach the US until March 7, 1999.

majorjoe23

I watched the Matrix last night and it's amazing how much Trinity's initial escape from Smith follows Blade and the doctor's escape from the hospital, right down to the Blade/Trinity jumping shot. But yeah, Blade didn't rip-off the Matrix, it was released nearly a year earlier.

Saxofonix

perhaps Dark City .. for the theme of "things aint what they seem to be on the surface".

Also, I'd be VERY surprised if the Wachowski bros aren't avid fans of the writings of Philip K _Dick.

chanster

Heck, they used Dark City sets to film the Matrix. I saw a lot of Empire Strikes Back in the Matrix when they were hiding from the Sentinels, it felt like the Falcon waiting it out in the asteroid.

Samuel

Definitely Road House.

Lastblade

I think Neo = Randle McMurphy (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), in fact, Trinity = Candy, Morpheus = The Chief, Agent Smith = Nurse Ratched, etc etc etc...

The scene where Neo stops the bullet is an exact replica of The Chief suffocating Randle, you can just see the similarity.
































If you look long and hard enough, you will find that your life is just a big ripoff of someone else's life. Does that somehow make your life less meaningful?

trigun

The watermelon in Matrix is straight out of GITS.

cultshock

Maybe thats why they used Yuen as the fight choreographer (good choice!).

I was going through that huge list of influences that Pants posted, but since the film titles are in the origin country's language, I have a question about one of the HK films. I know that Lashou Shentan (92) is Hard Boiled and Wong Fei Hung (91) is Once upon a Time in China, but does anyone know which film Zui Quan (1978) is? Just curious.

DonnachaOne

Drunken Master.

Just look up the film on IMDb as you would an english title.

Or, you could have just looked up The Matrix, went to movie connections, and looked it up from the link.

cultshock

Thanks, the year of release should have been a hint for me.

Sorry, I was just too damn lazy to actually go to IMDb and figure it out for myself (and with your help I don't have to)

thegame370

It saddens me when people say The Matrix is similar or that it mirrors Blade in ways, Blade has to be one of the worst movies ever.