Article On The Matrix Sequels, Contains Very Minor Spoilers
12-22-02 | 08:49 PM
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Article On The Matrix Sequels, Contains Very Minor Spoilers
One year, two sequels—and a revolution in moviemaking. An exclusive look behind the scenes of 2003’s hottest flicks
By Devin Gordon
NEWSWEEK
Jan. 6 issue — The Warner Brothers studio lot in Burbank, Calif., is frenetic on most days, but on a Thursday in early November it was really humming. The company’s box-office Bigfoot for 2002, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” was set to open in eight days, and nearly every division of the studio was working furiously to get it ready. Until 2:30 p.m. That’s when everything stopped. For the next half hour, the boy wizard had to make way for “The Matrix.”
ALL MORNING, BUZZ had rippled through the lot that producer Joel Silver would be screening, for the first time, 20 minutes from the sci- fi smash hit’s two feverishly anticipated sequels, “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions,” both of which will hit theaters in 2003. In Hollywood, showing up late is standard practice. The theater that Silver reserved for his grand unveiling was juiced with 35 Warners executives—and one NEWSWEEK journalist—by 2:25. By 2:50, people were peeling their jaws off the floor.
The climax of “Reloaded” is a lengthy freeway chase
that, like the original “Matrix” in 1999, will redefine action filmmaking and visual effects for years. Two familiar heroes, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), have captured a critical pawn in mankind’s struggle against the Machines: the Keymaker, a tiny Asian man who has access to all the doors into the Machine world. Now they must safely get the Keymaker out of the Matrix and back into the real world, and the only way to do that is through a hard telephone line. The closest one is a few miles down a nearby freeway. The trouble is, in the Matrix, a freeway is the last place you want to be. There are people everywhere, meaning the bad-guy Agents have an unlimited supply of bodies to jump into—each behind the wheel of a guided missile. “You always said never get on the freeway,” Trinity reminds Morpheus as they race up the entrance ramp. “You said it was suicide.” Morpheus grins. “Let us hope,” the rebellion’s Zen-calm leader says, “that I was wrong.”
The ensuing sequence may be the most audaciously conceived, thrillingly executed car chase ever filmed. Sounds like hype, yeah. But you’ve gotta see this thing. The scene features two kung fu battles in speeding vehicles—one in the back seat of a Cadillac, the other on the roof of an 18- wheeler truck. There’s also a heart-stopping motorcycle chase through oncoming traffic and enough wrecked cars to keep a junkyard in business for years. Fans will go particularly bonkers over one shot of an agent leaping from atop a moving car onto the hood of another and, with his feet, crushing the entire thing into a pretzel. Says cinematographer Bill Pope: “It’s going to make ‘The Fast and the Furious’ look like ‘The Slow and the Dimwitted’.”
Four years ago “The Matrix” arrived out of nowhere and
grossed $171 million in the United States alone—terrific for an R-rated film. But it accelerated into a phenomenon thanks to DVD, becoming the format’s first title to sell a million copies. Fans watch it again and again, each time discovering cool new bits, like how the phone conversation that opens the film foreshadows a key betrayal and how scenes inside the Matrix have a green tinge while scenes in the “real world” are blue. (Sorry, geeked out there for a second...) Critics, meanwhile, lauded writer-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski for bringing an elegance and choreography to American action films that had been missing since the days of Sam Peckinpah. On a basic level, though, “The Matrix” was simply good storytelling. “I’ve heard the ‘Star Wars’ people boast about shooting frames that are 97 percent digital, and lo and behold, the movies are soulless,” says John Gaeta, visual-effects supervisor for all three “Matrix” movies. “They traded the whole idea of depth in filmmaking for this supertechnological hype. It helped us focus our own philosophy: the story drives everything.”
Synergy: Attacking on All Fronts
The sequels appear to have only one serious drawback: you can’t see the first one for five months. “Reloaded,” which features every actor whose character survived the original, including Keanu Reeves as Neo and Hugo Weaving as the relentless Agent Smith, arrives in theaters on May 15. Then, in a potentially risky strategy, Warner Bros. will release “Revolutions” just six months later, in early November. “Our fans would be angry at us if we made them wait any longer,” producer Silver explains. ” ‘Reloaded’ ends, I promise you, at a moment of true filmus interruptus.”
The sequels were shot simultaneously in Australia over a 270-day stretch from 2001 to 2002. Combined, they cost more than $300 million—probably far more, but no one’s talking. The franchise’s first videogame, titled Enter the Matrix, will hit stores the same day that “Reloaded” opens in theaters (sidebar). The Wachowskis are also spearheading a DVD project, due in June, called “The Animatrix,” a collection of nine animated short films with stories that fit like puzzle pieces into the movies’ mythology. Make a mental note: 2003 is going to be the year of “The Matrix.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/850165.asp
The freeway battle sounds amazing.
By Devin Gordon
NEWSWEEK
Jan. 6 issue — The Warner Brothers studio lot in Burbank, Calif., is frenetic on most days, but on a Thursday in early November it was really humming. The company’s box-office Bigfoot for 2002, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” was set to open in eight days, and nearly every division of the studio was working furiously to get it ready. Until 2:30 p.m. That’s when everything stopped. For the next half hour, the boy wizard had to make way for “The Matrix.”
ALL MORNING, BUZZ had rippled through the lot that producer Joel Silver would be screening, for the first time, 20 minutes from the sci- fi smash hit’s two feverishly anticipated sequels, “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions,” both of which will hit theaters in 2003. In Hollywood, showing up late is standard practice. The theater that Silver reserved for his grand unveiling was juiced with 35 Warners executives—and one NEWSWEEK journalist—by 2:25. By 2:50, people were peeling their jaws off the floor.
The climax of “Reloaded” is a lengthy freeway chase
that, like the original “Matrix” in 1999, will redefine action filmmaking and visual effects for years. Two familiar heroes, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), have captured a critical pawn in mankind’s struggle against the Machines: the Keymaker, a tiny Asian man who has access to all the doors into the Machine world. Now they must safely get the Keymaker out of the Matrix and back into the real world, and the only way to do that is through a hard telephone line. The closest one is a few miles down a nearby freeway. The trouble is, in the Matrix, a freeway is the last place you want to be. There are people everywhere, meaning the bad-guy Agents have an unlimited supply of bodies to jump into—each behind the wheel of a guided missile. “You always said never get on the freeway,” Trinity reminds Morpheus as they race up the entrance ramp. “You said it was suicide.” Morpheus grins. “Let us hope,” the rebellion’s Zen-calm leader says, “that I was wrong.”
The ensuing sequence may be the most audaciously conceived, thrillingly executed car chase ever filmed. Sounds like hype, yeah. But you’ve gotta see this thing. The scene features two kung fu battles in speeding vehicles—one in the back seat of a Cadillac, the other on the roof of an 18- wheeler truck. There’s also a heart-stopping motorcycle chase through oncoming traffic and enough wrecked cars to keep a junkyard in business for years. Fans will go particularly bonkers over one shot of an agent leaping from atop a moving car onto the hood of another and, with his feet, crushing the entire thing into a pretzel. Says cinematographer Bill Pope: “It’s going to make ‘The Fast and the Furious’ look like ‘The Slow and the Dimwitted’.”
Four years ago “The Matrix” arrived out of nowhere and
grossed $171 million in the United States alone—terrific for an R-rated film. But it accelerated into a phenomenon thanks to DVD, becoming the format’s first title to sell a million copies. Fans watch it again and again, each time discovering cool new bits, like how the phone conversation that opens the film foreshadows a key betrayal and how scenes inside the Matrix have a green tinge while scenes in the “real world” are blue. (Sorry, geeked out there for a second...) Critics, meanwhile, lauded writer-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski for bringing an elegance and choreography to American action films that had been missing since the days of Sam Peckinpah. On a basic level, though, “The Matrix” was simply good storytelling. “I’ve heard the ‘Star Wars’ people boast about shooting frames that are 97 percent digital, and lo and behold, the movies are soulless,” says John Gaeta, visual-effects supervisor for all three “Matrix” movies. “They traded the whole idea of depth in filmmaking for this supertechnological hype. It helped us focus our own philosophy: the story drives everything.”
Synergy: Attacking on All Fronts
The sequels appear to have only one serious drawback: you can’t see the first one for five months. “Reloaded,” which features every actor whose character survived the original, including Keanu Reeves as Neo and Hugo Weaving as the relentless Agent Smith, arrives in theaters on May 15. Then, in a potentially risky strategy, Warner Bros. will release “Revolutions” just six months later, in early November. “Our fans would be angry at us if we made them wait any longer,” producer Silver explains. ” ‘Reloaded’ ends, I promise you, at a moment of true filmus interruptus.”
The sequels were shot simultaneously in Australia over a 270-day stretch from 2001 to 2002. Combined, they cost more than $300 million—probably far more, but no one’s talking. The franchise’s first videogame, titled Enter the Matrix, will hit stores the same day that “Reloaded” opens in theaters (sidebar). The Wachowskis are also spearheading a DVD project, due in June, called “The Animatrix,” a collection of nine animated short films with stories that fit like puzzle pieces into the movies’ mythology. Make a mental note: 2003 is going to be the year of “The Matrix.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/850165.asp
The freeway battle sounds amazing.
12-22-02 | 09:24 PM
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I read that article and it just got me even more pumped for the Matrix movies. They rank right up there for me with LOTR in sheer anticipation. The article also re-assured me that the Matrix sequels will not be crappy. To change the topic momentarily, I thought the most entertaining, and truthful line in the article was this one talking about Star Wars:
"I’ve heard the ‘Star Wars’ people boast about shooting frames that are 97 percent digital, and lo and behold, the movies are soulless."
I also liked: "They traded the whole idea of depth in filmmaking for this supertechnological hype. It helped us focus our own philosophy: the story drives everything.”
These lines just validated my opion of the recent Star Wars films and goes to show that not everybody bows to the alter of Georgie Porgie. You know, I believe Gaeta isn't the first person to rip Lucas in a somewhat public forum recently. I think Guillermo Del Toro made an off-handed remark about him on the Blade 2 Doc and Shayamalan also made a remark that seemed to be directed towards Lucas on the Storyboard doc on the Sixth Sense VS DVD.
Back to the topic at hand, everything in this article just sounds really cool; like the car chase and the parts mentioned later in the article...which I will not mention here as it contains major spoilers. I also liked how the article mentions how driven the Wachowski's are to top bullet time and invent something that no one will be able to copy. Finally, Virtual Cinematography sounds wild. People reading this should definitely check out the full article.
"I’ve heard the ‘Star Wars’ people boast about shooting frames that are 97 percent digital, and lo and behold, the movies are soulless."
I also liked: "They traded the whole idea of depth in filmmaking for this supertechnological hype. It helped us focus our own philosophy: the story drives everything.”
These lines just validated my opion of the recent Star Wars films and goes to show that not everybody bows to the alter of Georgie Porgie. You know, I believe Gaeta isn't the first person to rip Lucas in a somewhat public forum recently. I think Guillermo Del Toro made an off-handed remark about him on the Blade 2 Doc and Shayamalan also made a remark that seemed to be directed towards Lucas on the Storyboard doc on the Sixth Sense VS DVD.
Back to the topic at hand, everything in this article just sounds really cool; like the car chase and the parts mentioned later in the article...which I will not mention here as it contains major spoilers. I also liked how the article mentions how driven the Wachowski's are to top bullet time and invent something that no one will be able to copy. Finally, Virtual Cinematography sounds wild. People reading this should definitely check out the full article.
Last edited by DVDGUY1116; 12-22-02 at 09:26 PM.
