Behind the Scenes

First, if you have not read the Higher Meanings page, do so now. Nothing will make you appreciate these movies more than seeing the genius of the scriptwriters. Once you're finished with higher points of appreciation, this page will be the icing on the cake!

Awe-Inspiring Facts

• The Wachowskis approached Warner with the idea of the Matrix and Warner balked at the budget they had submitted. Over eighty million dollars. Warner instead agreed to give them ten million. The Wachowskis took the money and filmed the first ten minutes of the movie (the opening scene with Carrie Ann Moss) using the entire ten million. They then showed the executives at Warner the opening scene, and Warner was so impressed, they green lighted the entire asking budget.
• This is the first multi-media creation in human history, not to be confused with multimedia. The entire Matrix story is told not only in three movies (plus The Animatrix), but also in comics, video games, and even real-world websites that pretended to be written by certain fictional characters such as The General from Matrix Online and The Kid from the movies.
• Before filming, the principal actors (Reeves, Fishburne, Moss and Weaving) spent four months with martial arts experts learning the fight moves, from October 1997 to March 1998. The actors had originally thought that it would take just a few weeks. Martial arts training for M2 started in November 2000 and lasted eight months.
• Joel Silver (producer for the movies) said that the final 14-minute battle scene of M3 was a $40 million production of its own (more than what most movies cost to make) and was the most complicated sequence ever put on film.
• The Matrix Reloaded was largely filmed at the Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia. The climactic freeway chase scene was filmed at the decommissioned Alameda Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. Producers constructed a 1.5-mile freeway on the old runways just for the movie. Portions of the chase were also filmed in Oakland, California, and the tunnel shown briefly is the Webster Tube connecting Oakland and Alameda. Some post-production editing was done in old aircraft hangars on the base as well.
• M2's highway chase sequence took almost three months to shoot (longer than many films' entire shooting schedule).
• It was reported that Keanu Reeves volunteered to give up a claim to a share of ticket sales amounting to around $38 million when producers feared that M2 would never recoup the cost of the special effects.
• In order to create the shot of Neo waking up in the real world of the human power plant, Keanu Reeves had to bear quite a burden as the Wachowskis say in a chat session with their fans: WachowskiBros: We're pretty happy with the way this scene turned out. Keanu did some amazing work in this scene which included 6 hours every morning of prosthetic makeup. And he had to sit in a freezing cold vat of goo for another six hours.
• Earning in excess of $735,000,000 at the worldwide box-office, M2 was the most commercially successful R-rated movie in history. M2 was also entered into The Guinness Book of World Records for The Widest Film Print Run (for movie theaters), sending out 8,517 copies at the same time. M3 debuted in a record 94 countries (107 markets) and triumphed over Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that opening weekend.
• In an unprecendented simultaneous global release, M3 opened at exactly the same moment in every major city in the world on November 5: 6:00am in Los Angeles, 9:00am in New York, 2:00pm in London, 5:00pm in Moscow, 11:00pm in Tokyo, 1:00am in Sydney and at corresponding times in over 50 additional countries worldwide.
• The Enter the Matrix video game sold 1 million copies in the first 18 days of its release, becoming the fastest-selling movie-based video game in history.
• GM donated 300 cars for use in the production of the movie. All 300 were wrecked by the end.
• Between 1999 and 2000, The Matrix won a total of 32 awards worldwide, including 4 Oscars. Move your mouse over the following links to see what awards each movie won.
  M1 awards  —  M2 awards  —  M3 awards

Actor & Actress Facts

• Actors who turned down the role of Neo:
  • Val Kilmer
  • Brad Pitt
  • Ewan McGregor
  • Leonardo DiCaprio (was concerned about the amount of special effects)
  • Will Smith chose to make Wild Wild West instead. He admitted later that he had no regrets because "Keanu was brilliant as Neo."
  • Lou Diamond Phillips (at least, was sent the script, but his agent told him the movie would flop)
• Other actors who turned down roles:
  • Sean Connery turned down the role of the Architect, saying he couldn't understand the script. Years later, he said he chose to do The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen despite not understanding the project because he regretted turning down both The Matrix and Lord of the Rings.
  • Russell Crowe turned down the role of Morpheus.
  • Jean Reno turned down the role of Agent Smith so he could do Godzilla instead.
  • Jet Li turned down the role of Seraph even though the role was written specifically for him.
  • After Jet Li declined the role of Seraph, the part was changed to a female and offered to Michelle Yeoh, who turned it down due to scheduling conflicts.
• Other actor considerations:
  
  • Pop singer Aaliyah was signed on to play the role of Zee but was tragically killed in a plane crash on August 25, 2001, along with 8 other passengers. She had already shot scenes from M2, but hadn't shot scenes for M3 yet, forcing the Wachowskis to recast Zee and retake all of the M2 scenes.
  • Brandon Lee was the Wachowskis' first choice for the part of Neo years before the shooting of the film. Unfortunately, Brandon Lee died from a gun accident while shooting a film.
  • Johnny Depp was the Wachowskis' first choice for the part of Neo. After Kilmer and Pitt turned it down, Warner Bros. considered Depp but also pushed for Keanu Reeves.
  • Brad Pitt and Val Kilmer were Warner Brothers' first choices for the part of Neo.
  • Kevin Costner was seriously considered for the role of Neo.
  • Tom Cruise was supposedly considered for the part of Neo.
  • David Duchovny was considered for the part of Neo, but he opted to do X-Files: Fight the Future instead.
  • Samuel Jackson was considered for the part of Morpheus.
  • Gary Oldman was considered for the part of Morpheus.
  • R&B singer Brandy was considered to play Niobe or Zee but couldn't because she was pregnant.
  • Rumor: Halle Berry was also considered to play Niobe but opted to play Catwoman.
  • Rumor: Newton was considered to play Niobe.
• It took Carrie-Anne Moss six months just to get the Scorpion Kick in the beginning of M2 correct.
• To prepare for his role in the three movies, Keanu Reeves was asked to read three books: Simulacra and Simulation (Jean Baudrillard), Out of Control (Kevin Kelly) and Evolution Psychology (Dylan Evans and Oscar Zarate), before he could even open up the script. Simulacra focuses on "what gets in our way" of perceiving reality. (Please contact me if you can briefly summarize the other two books).
• Carrie-Anne Moss twisted her ankle while shooting one of her scenes but decided not to tell anyone until after filming, so they wouldn't re-cast her.
• For the cell phone conversation scene between Neo and Morpheus in the Metacortex office, Keanu Reeves actually climbed out the window without a stuntman, which was 34 floors up.
• After practicing the moves of the Dojo scene for 8 months with light contact, Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishburne were covered in bruises from their full-contact fighting during filming of the actual scene. They were also covered in scratches, scrapes, burns from mats and wires, etc.
• Carrie-Anne Moss was a cast member of the short-lived television show "Matrix" (1993).
• When Lawrence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving filmed the bathroom fight scene of M1, Lawrence cracked a couple of Hugo's ribs, and they also experienced great pain when their fists collided a little too "realistically." Lawrence was sneezing almost uncontrollably during the entire scene due to allergies of breathing all the dust of the scene.
• The Wachowskis approached Hugo Weaving to play Agent Smith after seeing his performance in the movie Proof (1991).
• Many of Io's hovercraft captains and crew were Sense8 actors, not to mention 70% of the film crew were as well. And when Bugs and Morpheus start running out of Neo's apartment through a back door, they exit a movie theater playing the movie Root of All Evil, starring Lito Rodriguez, yet another nod to the Sense8 show.

Deeper Meaning Facts

• One of the freeway signs during the freeway chase says Whipple Ave, Woodside Rd, Marsh Rd - which are three real consecutive freeway exits on the 101 freeway south of San Francisco. These are the same signs that you would pass on the real-world highway 101 if you had just left the headquarters of Oracle Corporation and were heading southbound on 101.
• When Neo meets with the Oracle for the first time in M1, the music playing in the background in her apartment is Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light." When Neo goes to see The Oracle in her apartment in M3 (the second time), a different version of the same song is playing.
• During the final fight sequence between Neo and Agent Smith and also during the credits, the following Sanskrit sloka is recited in a westernised style in the song "Neodämmerung": "Asatoma Sat Gamaya, Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya, Mrityorma Anritam Gamaya," which means "Lead me from the unreal to the Real, Lead me from the darkness to the Light, Lead me from the temporary to the Eternal."

Technical Facts

• The spring-loaded cell phones used in the film were Nokia Stilleto's or 8110's. These phones were produced in limited quantities and were only available in Europe and in Australia. Samsung produced 10,000 phones (model SPH-N270) which sold out quickly.
• M1 was made in total obscurity ("under the radar"). The facilities used to make the first movie only had one bathroom, no trailers for actors to change in, and not even a coffee maker. Geoff Darrow described the conditions for working on M1 to be like a cave, while M2/M3 seemed more like working at NASA.
• One full-size APU was built for M3. It was completely rendered in Auto-CAD, and parts were made detachable so that for scenes involving different pilots/APUs, the detail work could be altered. The full model weighed around 2 tons.
• It took the Wachowskis 3 months of heavy duty research to select the right explosives, glass and explosive configuration to achieve the circular explosion of glass for the helicopter crash scene.
• Numerous sets of identical twins were cast as extras in the "Woman in Red" scene, as indicated by the Wachowskis' chat session with fans: WachowskiBros: People don't realize how important this scene is, because we are all staring at the woman in the red dress! There are actually twins and triplets that we hired in that scene. And all of the clothes are based on black and white costumes, like nuns, chefs, brides, sailors. We had the idea that Mouse just doubled people instead of making originals. But we couldn't afford to do it digitally, so we ended up hiring as many doubles, or as many twins, as we could find in Sydney. It was kind of like a bad dream on the set. An example of this would be the tall man with slicked-back hair and sunglasses in the opening shot, who is seen seconds later as a police officer writing a parking ticket.
• The Merovingian's chateau was designed to be "over the top," drawing inspiration from the Hermitage (home of President Andrew Jackson) as well as the Chateau de Versailles. All statues seen in the Merovingian's chateau are of the real Merovingian since the Merovingian cannot get enough of himself.
• According to Wachowski Bros, all animals in the Matrix universe are computer generated images.
• "The Matrix code was designed around a paradox: it had to be familiar enough to reflect a modern computer code yet original enough to appear futuristic. To this end, an entire alphabet was created, a combination of eastern and western characters incorporating numerals, letters and symbols. Designer Simon Whiteley sourced references from manga comics, combining Katakana script with chopped up alpha-numerics." - AnimalLogic website, designers of the "raining" Matrix code effect
• The special effects of M2 alone cost $100 million.
• The Wachowskis weren't respected enough to do M1 at first since they were brand new to Hollywood with no previous acting or directing experience. So, they proved their directing ability by directing Bound, a $6 million film that was higher quality than many films with twice the budget.
• Only a few of the Smith clones were actually played by Hugo Weaving. Open casting calls for males with similar body shapes and structures took place, and Weaving's head was superimposed on them later.
• In M2, Trinity uses a genuine hack to get into the Matrix. She uses Nmap version 2.54BETA25 (an actual port scanning tool) to find a vulnerable SSH server, and then proceeds to exploit it using the SSH1 CRC32 exploit from 2001.
• Neo performed more than 250 moves during the Burly Brawl. There are also four totally computer-animated sequences in that scene, with no live action whatsoever.
• Many of the "raindrops" in the final fight between Neo and Smith are actually single lines of Matrix code, similar to those on displays seen in the "real world" throughout the trilogy. This subtle effect was added to imply the Matrix was beginning to destabilize. This visual trick was easily seen on IMAX and larger movie theaters, but can be seen on smaller televisions as banded rain that seems to "jump" like static during close ups of the fight scenes.

Trivial Facts

• Today (1/29/22) I noticed that the opening theme music (strings and brass during the Warner Bros. logo) starts in the key of E minor in the first movie, F# minor in the second movie, and G minor in the third movie. (Up a whole step / tone, then up a half step / semitone.) If someone were to binge watch these movies, this could have a subtle effect of increasing opening tension from one movie to the next.
• M3 was the first film to premiere in the brand new Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.
• The Wachowskis donated the lumber used to build the 1.5-mile freeway used for M2 to Mexico to help with low income housing.
• The "woman in the red dress" distracted more than just Neo. A man driving by the filming scene stopped his car to look at her, unaware that a rolled garage door was closing above his car. It closed on his car, and as he drove forward, the door scratched his car very badly and broke his windshield. He drove away in embarassment.
• All of the references to street corners (e.g. Wells and Lake) are real intersections in Chicago, USA, the Wachowskis' hometown. The subway train has signs for "Loop," another Chicago reference. The film however is quite obviously not set in Chicago or any other real city (though it was filmed in Sydney).
• The director of photography (Bill Pope) makes a cameo appearance as a security guard who gets paid to count sheep.
• The Merovingian's parking garage in M2 (used for the scene with the Twins) is full of antique cadillacs as far back as 1932.
• Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski had been approached to direct Batman Begins (2005) but turned it down to do the Matrix sequels.
• At the beginning of M1, the Agents' traced the call between Cypher and Trinity to be 312-555-0690. Phone companies encourage fictional writers to use phone numbers with the 555 prefix since such numbers are not ever given out to businesses or individuals.
• When Neo is fighting the Smith clones (The Burly Brawl), some unconventional sound effects were used. When Neo is kicked and flies through and knocks over the group of Smiths, dominoes toppling over was used. At the end of the fight when Neo throws Smith by the leg into his clones, the sound of a bowling ball knocking over pins was used.
• The Wachowskis are seen themselves in M1 washing the windows of Mr. Rhinehart as Thomas Anderson is lectured for being late to work.
• M2 was originally banned in Egypt because of the film's religious themes, but later released after approval of the censorship bureau.
• M3 promotional material was in such high demand that distributors were extremely worried about it being stolen. To combat this, standees and banners were sent out with the code names of "Caddyshack 2" and "The Replacements." Several cinemas thought they had not received the materials due to these names, so they did not display them until the last minute.
• Filming of M1 began with a Buddhist feast/celebration. (Are the Wachowskis Buddhists? It's hard to tell since all the major religions and philosophies are portrayed within the films.)
• The face of Deus ex Machina was modeled after photographs of Andy Wachowski's infant nephew.
• The street corner where Neo and Smith fight in the crater is the same corner from which Neo made his phone call at the end of M1 - the corner of Pitt, Hunter and O'Connell Streets in Sydney, Australia. You can see the phone booth to the right when they hit the ground.
• The Wachowskis' contract for doing M2 and M3 included a stipulation that they would not have to do any media interviews.
• I, the author of this website (Chad), was in all four movies. Not only am I a bot married to Trinity in M4 (not to mention the person who plays Chad is John Wick director and one-time Reeves stunt double Chad Sahelski), I'm also found in Morpheus's hovercraft in M1 and M2: the NebuCHADnezzar. The hovercraft is destroyed at the end of M2, but in M3, Councillor Hamann asks, "Has there been word from the NebuCHADnezzar?" A big thanks to the Wachowskis for finding a way to include me in all four movies!

Something to Get Excited About

The Wachowskis indicated they wanted to give their fans more of the Matrix story:

WachowskiBros: There have been many questions about the history that Morpheus suggests in this scene, we have written the history in a fair amount of detail. We've often hoped that if we did an anime series, we would tell the story of this history and the story of the first One.