Matrix year of release. The Matrix writers are transgender sisters

Immediately after this message, there was a knock on the door - these were his customers. After paying Neo, they invite him to a nightclub. Thomas initially refuses, but when he sees a girl with an unusual tattoo of a white rabbit among the customers, he changes his mind. There he meets a hacker girl named Trinity. She promises to reveal the secret of the Matrix to Thomas, and to do this, the latter must meet with the one who has been looking for him for a long time - Morpheus, whom the authorities consider the most dangerous terrorist. Neo has no time left for hesitation, because the so-called “agents” - a kind of “guards” of the Matrix - have already become interested in his computer crimes.

Having arrested Neo at work, they interrogate him and offer him cooperation. Neo refuses, and the agents implant a bug in him, after which Mr. Anderson wakes up in his apartment to a phone call from Morpheus. On the way to him, Trinity removes the bug, and Neo realizes that this was not a dream. Morpheus invites Mr. Anderson to see the Matrix with his own eyes and offers a choice of two pills - a blue one, which, after taking, Neo will wake up in his bed and believe that he dreamed everything, and a red one, which will allow Neo to understand what the Matrix is. Neo chooses the last one and finds himself in an eerie destroyed world, which turns out to be the real real world.

He learns that the world he knows is an illusion generated by the artificial intelligence of a supercomputer. The planet is plunged into eternal darkness, and the cities lie in ruins. Humans are enslaved by all-powerful machines to produce the energy the machines need to survive. Those few who were able to retain consciousness hide in the catacombs and wage a guerrilla war against the machines, having learned to independently enter and exit the Matrix.

The last city humanity is Zion, located deep underground, from which desperate forays are made on flying ships into the world of the Matrix to save people connected to it. One of these ships is called Nebuchadnezzar, and its captain is Morpheus. He believes that Neo is the Chosen One, who was already born when the Matrix was created, with the rare ability to change everything around him and adjust the Matrix to suit himself.

It was he who saved the first people from the machine resistance movement, revealed the truth to them and will be able to save humanity forever from the power of robots. All types of martial arts are downloaded into Neo's mind so that he can resist the agents. Morpheus tests Neo in a fight, in which he initially easily defeats him, but then Neo manages to defeat Morpheus. Next, he teaches Neo to make huge jumps, but the latter doesn’t succeed the first time, like everyone else. The team is surprised by this, because if he is the Chosen One, then the laws of the Matrix should be within his power.

However, a traitor Cypher appeared in the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, ready to exchange the lives of his friends and freedom of mind for the illusion of happiness offered by the system. He betrays his former friends to agents - security programs of the Matrix, who are eager to obtain access codes to Zeon, when the entire team heads to the Oracle of Pythia, so that Neo can find out whether he is the chosen one or not. The Oracle predicts that Neo will have to choose between his life and Morpheus's.

Morpheus is captured by the agents while saving Neo. Cypher kills half the team, but Tank, the cameraman, manages to kill him with a Tesla rifle. Neo and Trinity, at the cost of superhuman efforts, save their captain. When they are almost out of the Matrix, Agent Smith manages to shoot the telephone receiver, and Neo does not have time to get out. He decides to fight with the agent, since Pythia said that everyone decides for himself who he should be.

In a difficult battle, Neo barely manages to neutralize one of the agents and escape from the rest. When he already enters the room with the phone, Smith kills him. However, Neo, feeling the power within himself, comes to life, since in fact he is the Chosen One. He easily destroys Smith by destroying his programming code. At the end of the film, Neo makes a phone call: he promises that he will show the people locked in the Matrix that they actually live in a world where there are no rules and boundaries - in a world where “anything is possible,” and then soars into the sky.

Team [ | ]

Film crew

Russian dubbing

• Dubbing director: Yaroslava Turyleva
• Sound engineers: Vladimir Mazurov, Pavel Shuvalov
• Authors of the synchronous text: Dmitry Usachev, Ekaterina Barto
• Assistant director: Valentina Rubinova

Cast

Soundtrack [ | ]

Production [ | ]

Producer Joel Silver soon joined the project. The storyboard eventually received studio approval and it was decided to film in Australia to make the most of the budget. Soon, The Matrix became a co-production with Warner Bros. and Australian company Village Roadshow Pictures.

Filming [ | ]

All but a few scenes were filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney and in the city itself, although recognizable landmarks were not included to maintain the feel of a typical American city. The film's production helped establish New South Wales as a major film production centre.

Before filming began, the leading actors trained for four months, learning the basics of martial arts. This training lasted from October 1997 to March 1998. The actors did not expect such workloads and were completely confident that a few weeks would be enough to gain practical skills. Despite the training, some filming of the fights was not without incidents: during the filming of the fight between Morpheus and Smith, Hugo Weaving, blocking a blow from Laurence Fishburne, almost broke his arm; Keanu Reeves himself underwent neck surgery before filming and therefore did not fight as much in the film as planned. The filming itself started on March 14, 1998 and ended on September 1 of the same year, on the eve of Keanu Reeves' birthday.

To prepare for the scene in which Neo wakes up in the pod, Reeves lost 15 pounds and shaved his entire body, including his eyebrows, to give Neo a emaciated appearance. The scene where Neo ended up in the sewer system ended principal photography. According to Art of the Matrix, at least one filmed scene and numerous short action sequences were left out of the film's final cut.

Post-production[ | ]

Design [ | ]

Visual effects[ | ]

Bullets "stopped" in the air

When John Gaeta read the script, he begged effects producer Manex Visual Effects to let him work on the project. He ended up creating a prototype that led to Gaeta becoming the film's visual effects supervisor.

To create this effect, we used the old technique artistic photography, known as “time slice”, which consists of the following: a large number of cameras are installed around the object, which film the object “simultaneously”. Then the frames are combined as follows: first, they take the first frame from the first camera, then the first frame from the second, the first frame from the third, etc. As a result, the viewer sees a stationary object on the screen, while the camera seems to be moving around it. This is reminiscent of how a person walks around a statue to get a better look at it from all sides.

The described method was improved by the (at that time) Wachowski brothers and special effects director John Gaeta: bullet time also registers the movement of objects so that during the camera fly-around effect you can see the slow motion of the characters. When the shots were stitched together, the resulting slow motion effects reached a frame rate of 12,000 frames per second, as opposed to the film's normal 24 frames per second. Standard movie cameras were placed at the ends of the array to obtain normal speed action before and after. Since in most sequences the cameras almost completely cover the subject, computer technology was used to cut out the cameras to appear on the other side of the background. To create the backgrounds, Gaeta hired George Borshukov, who created 3D models based on the geometry of the buildings and used photographs of the buildings themselves as textures.

Manex also handled creature effects in "real world" scenes such as hunters and machines; Animal Logic created the corridor effect of the green code and the exploding agent at the end of the film.

The cost of special effects was $12.6 million (20% of the budget).

Rental [ | ]

The Matrix was first released in the United States on March 31, 1999, two months before the expected science-fiction film Star Wars. Episode I: The Phantom Menace." The film grossed $171 million in the United States and $460 million worldwide and was later released on DVD, selling more than 3 million copies in the United States alone.

Ratings [ | ]

Reviews [ | ]

Awards and nominations[ | ]

Followers of the Matrix[ | ]

The commercial success of The Matrix gave the green light for the creation of sequels (the plot outlines of the trilogy were originally conceived by the authors, but the studio demanded to determine the distribution results of the first film). As a result, the second part “The Matrix: Reloaded” soon appeared in cinemas, and after only 5 months - “The Matrix: Revolution”. New films contained even more impressive special effects. The story now centers on the upcoming Machine attack on the human city of Zeon. Neo introduces his new skills and also learns about the history of the Matrix, his role as the Chosen One, and the prophecy of the end of the war.

A collection of nine animated short films, The Animatrix, was also released independently. Most of the films are created in the anime style, which greatly influenced the trilogy. The Wachowski sisters approved of The Animatrix; outlined the plot lines of the episodes, but in all cases, except for the first episode, the animators were entrusted with independently writing and directing the scripts.

Three computer games have been developed based on the films: Enter the Matrix (2003), which tells about what happened before and during The Matrix Reloaded from the perspective of Niobe and the Phantom; The Matrix Online (2004) - MMORPG, which continues the story after The Matrix: Revolutions (it is known that the project failed in sales); and The Matrix: Path of Neo (2005), which allows players to take on the role of Neo and experience scenes from all three films.

The official website presents free comics set in the Matrix universe.

The second half of the nineties saw a real boom in films about illusions and reality - “The Truman Show”, “ Dark City", "Open your eyes", "Existence", "The Thirteenth Floor". Almost all of them became classics, some collected good box office. But one film was destined to outshine all the others.

"The Matrix", released seventeen years ago, on March 31, 1999, created a real sensation. She was adored, imitated and envied, she was accused of plagiarism and was called the new Gospel. It seems that even the Wachowski brothers themselves have not fully understood the reasons for such success. This can be seen in the kind of sequels they ended up making. To understand the phenomenon of The Matrix, let's take a look at how its history began.

If you had the same choice as Neo, which pill would you choose?
- Blue.
From the Wachowski brothers' chat with fans, 1999

"You know where this path leads"

Larry and Andy Wachowski loved movies since childhood. Parents (the father was a businessman, the mother a nurse) regularly took their children to the cinema, arranging double or even triple screenings. The young men unleashed their imagination, awakened by the films, by playing Dungeons & Dragons and drawing comics. As they later admitted, role playing games are in many ways similar to making a film - you have to strain your imagination, think through the actions of the characters and build entire worlds in your head.

Neither of the Wachowskis was able to finish college - they both decided to leave education to earn money. But at the same time, the brothers did not forget about their childhood passion for comics, which after some time began to generate income. In the early nineties, Larry moved from Chicago to New York, where he got a job for himself and his brother at Marvel Publishing.

One day, while working on their next comic book, the Wachowskis were discussing their fictional worlds, and one of them had a thought: what if our own world turned out to be just a computer program? This idea, both frightening and impressive, was perfectly suited to the script of a great science fiction movie. And the brothers’ long-standing love for anime and films about martial arts already determined the style of the future film.

The Wachowskis considered the idea of ​​making people not just batteries, but part of a neural computing network. But they decided that it was too difficult for the audience.

The Matrix was not the first script the Wachowskis took on. While still in college, Larry wrote an adaptation of William Goldman's The Princess Bride and contacted Goldman himself to discuss buying the film rights, but the writer simply hung up. Since then, the Wachowskis have gained experience and managed to sell several scripts: their first work was the thriller about cannibals “Carnivore”, the second was the film adaptation of the comic book “Plastic Man”. But real success came to the brothers in 1994 with the script for the swashbuckling crime thriller “Assassins,” which the producer at Warner Bros. liked. Lorenzo Di Bonaventure. Taking advantage of the moment, the Wachowskis slipped him their other ideas, including the synopsis of “The Matrix.”

Di Bonaventura and his colleague Joel Silver, who soon began to supervise the brothers, did not immediately realize that they had a future cultural phenomenon in their hands. Silver liked the general concept, but found the material too complex for the general public. He demanded that more explanatory dialogue be inserted. Adding to the difficulty was the scope of the project, which required complex visual effects, many of which had not yet been invented. The producers agreed to give the writers a chance if their less ambitious projects appealed to the public, and entered into a three-film pre-contract with them.

To impress the producers, the Wachowks commissioned artists Jeff Darow and Steve Skrous to make detailed storyboards for the future film based on their script.

However, already filming the first of them, “Assassins,” became a cold shower for Wachowski. Initially, Mel Gibson planned to direct the film, but the filming of his historical epic “Braveheart” was unexpectedly delayed, and he gave the film to his friend Richard Donner. And he immediately hired a new screenwriter, Brian Helgeland, who rewrote the script, removed most of the violence from it, and made the main character bland and “correct.” The Wachowskis were furious and even demanded that their names be removed from the credits. Hollywood is Hollywood - if you sell your work, you have to be prepared for the fact that they can do whatever they want with it without asking your opinion.

This story served as a lesson for the brothers. If the Wachowskis wanted their vision to be brought to life on screen, they had to become directors themselves. The problem is that such a large-scale and ambitious project as The Matrix required money. Of course, no one wanted to give eight-figure sums to debutants who didn’t even have a single short film to their credit. Once again, Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and Joel Silver helped the Wachowskis. Do you want to stage The Matrix yourself? Okay, we'll give you this opportunity if you prove that you know how to shoot.

The Wachowskis accepted the challenge. Their “final exam” was the neo-noir detective story “Communication.” The film had a very small budget, but the Wachowskis received full creative control over the film.

Even before the release of The Matrix, Neil Gaiman wrote a story based on it, Goliath, based on a version of the script with a neural network.

In parallel with the filming of the debut, they finalized the script for The Matrix and completed it five months before the release of Communication. This option is pretty close to the final one, except for some minor details. For example, the famous scene where Neo and Trinity storm a skyscraper looked much simpler: the heroes silently killed several guards using pistols with silencers and throwing stars. Or, say, in the finale the resurrected Neo did not perform miracles, but simply showed Agent Smith middle finger, picked up the phone and left the Matrix.

These differences show that at that time the Wachowskis were still restraining their imagination. The brothers were well aware that they might not be given the budget to stage overly large scenes.

What did I read?

Many of those who read the Matrix script for the first time could not understand at all what it was about. The brothers had to resort to analogies. For example, to explain their idea to Joel Silver, the Wachowskis showed him the anime “Ghost in the Shell” - they say, we want to film the same thing, only live. In addition, the brothers advised anyone who was planning to read the script to familiarize themselves with such philosophical books as “Simulacra and Simulation” by Jean Baudrillard and “Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines” by Kevin Kelly.

In the book Simulacra and Simulation, Neo had a hiding place. The Wachowskis hinted at their source of inspiration.

“What will you need besides a miracle?”

In the fall of 1996, “Communication” was first shown at the Venice Film Festival. The film was not released widely and did not recoup its already small budget, but the critics were delighted. The Wachowskis received compliments for their strong direction and excellent sense of style; they were called the new Coen brothers. The exam was passed. Lorenzo Di Bonaventura still had doubts about the project, but still gave The Matrix the green light.

The producers' agreement did not solve all the problems. The brothers demanded an eighty million dollar budget, and the studio was not ready to risk that kind of money. The Wachowskis, in turn, did not want to sacrifice entertainment. Joel Silver eventually found a way out of the situation - they decided to shoot the film in Australia, where renting a film set was much cheaper than in the USA. The final budget was $63 million - not much by the standards of today's Hollywood, but an impressive amount at that time.

The original script for The Matrix had more strong language. Before the shot, instead of “Try to dodge”, Trinity should have told the agent “Try to dodge, motherfucker!”

To finally convince Di Bonaventura of success future painting, The Wachowskis needed a big-name actor for the lead role. The script didn’t make any strict demands on Neo’s appearance. main character it described sparingly: “a young man who knows more about life inside a computer than about life outside it.” Therefore, all possible and impossible candidates were considered for the role of Neo. Mr. Anderson could have been played by Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Brad Pitt, Ewan McGregor or Leonardo DiCaprio. It's funny that the latter refused to negotiate because he was afraid of getting lost in the background of special effects. Could he then imagine that ten years later he would play a similar role in “Inception”!

Finally, the producers made an official proposal. And it was awarded to... Nicolas Cage. Perhaps the fact is that in 1997 the actor was still at the peak of his career. Perhaps this was the studio's way of apologizing to Cage for disrupting the filming of Superman Lives, where he was supposed to play Clark Kent himself. In any case, the choice seems unfortunate: Cage, whom we are used to seeing in the roles of madmen, bandits and detectives tired of life, would look at least strange in the image of a cyberpunk guru. Fortunately, Nicholas did not want to leave his family for Australia and turned down the role.

For a long time, Will Smith remained a contender for the role of Neo. But he eventually said “no”, opting for the film “Wild Wild West” - and made a big mistake. This steampunk comedy ultimately turned out to be one of the biggest flops of 1999 and reaped a rich harvest of Golden Raspberries. However, Smith doesn't really regret not playing Neo.

"The Matrix" is a very complex project, and I could not understand it then. It's not often I admit this, but I would ruin The Matrix. At that time, I was still not a smart enough actor and would not have been able to pull off this film - but Keanu succeeded.

Will Smith

The wonders of Photoshop: Neo could have the face of Depp, Smith, Cage or DiCaprio, and Sean Connery could play Morpheus or the Architect.

In the end, the list of candidates for the role of Neo was reduced to two actors - Johnny Depp and Keanu Reeves. The Wachowskis themselves preferred Depp, and this is understandable: as an actor he is much stronger and more versatile than Reeves. In Keanu's career before The Matrix, there was not a single role with lines longer than five sentences in a row.

However, the producers insisted on Reeves - and they can also be understood. It's hard to believe, but in those years Depp was not yet considered a star capable of attracting audiences to movie theaters. Meanwhile, Reeves had already produced several action films, including one film in the cyberpunk genre - “Johnny Mnemonic.” And most importantly, Keanu himself, having read the script, became very interested in the project and agreed to immediately sign the contract.

Now, fifteen years later, it is difficult to imagine how things would have turned out further career Depp, if he had become an action star in 1999. One thing's for sure: Pirates Caribbean Sea” in this alternative reality would have turned out completely different. But would The Matrix have been a different film? Hardly. Its success was the result of many factors, and the determining factors were still the plot and visual effects, and not the acting. Perhaps the overall mood and emphasis in some scenes would have been slightly different, but the effect of the film would have remained approximately the same.

But the difference could appear in the sequels, which were criticized precisely for the weak acting. It's likely that Depp would have done a better job of showing the character development of Neo, who was forced to live with the burden of being chosen and then learned that it was all part of the machines' plan.

Due to lack of training, Keanu Reeves found it difficult to perform stunts using cables.

Gary Oldman was considered for the role of Morpheus, and Jean Reno was offered the role of Agent Smith. If the actors had agreed, the film would have been a reunion of the stars of Leon, only now Oldman would have played the hero and Reno the villain. When Oldman refused, they offered the role of Morpheus to Samuel L. Jackson and only then to the usual Laurence Fishburne.

As for Reno, he preferred the role in Roland Emmerich's Godzilla, and, with all due respect to the French actor, this worked to the benefit of The Matrix. Because Hugo Weaving, who took his place, became one of the Wachowskis’ most successful finds and their constant partner for many years. In addition to “The Matrix” and its sequels, they then worked together on two more science-fiction films - “V for Vendetta” and “Cloud Atlas”.

Dark City

The plot of The Matrix is ​​in many ways similar to the plot of the film Dark City, released a year earlier. The Wachowskis themselves claim that Alex Proyas’ film did not influence them in any way - and indeed, at the time of its release, filming of “The Matrix” was already in full swing. But by a funny coincidence, part of the scenery (for example, roofs and a spiral staircase with a mosaic floor) was inherited by The Matrix from Dark City, which was also filmed in Australia.

“I know kung fu!”

As longtime fans of Hong Kong martial arts films, the Wachowskis dreamed of hiring Yuen Woo-ping, a stunt coordinator who had worked with Jackie Chan for years. Yuen was not very eager to engage in obscure Hollywood fiction, so he put forward what seemed to him unacceptable demands: a huge fee, complete control over the filming of action scenes and as much time for training the actors as it took for them to get into suitable shape. Much to his surprise, the Wachowskis immediately agreed to all the conditions.

As a result, the preparatory course for actors lasted for four whole months. At the same time, during training, Keanu Reeves suffered a displacement of the cervical vertebrae, and he needed urgent surgery. He missed the first two months of training, and spent the rest with a bandage around his neck. Even at the start of filming, Reeves had not yet fully recovered. Therefore, scenes that did not require much physical exertion were shot first.

Injuries also plagued other actors. On the first day of filming, Hugo Weaving discovered a polyp on his leg that had to be surgically removed. The question arose about replacing the actor, but the Wachowskis got out of it and moved the filming of his scenes to a later time. Carrie Anne-Moss sprained her ankle on set, but, fearing that she would be fired, she decided not to tell anyone about it and bravely endured the pain.

And most of all, the film crew suffered while filming the fight between Neo and Smith in the subway. The work took ten days longer than planned because two stuntmen were injured: one while filming the scene where Smith threw Neo into a phone booth, and the other during the sequence where Neo jumped up, slamming Smith into the ceiling.

Filming The Matrix is ​​dangerous work!

The difficulties were not limited to injuries alone. The film required the development of complex special effects, the most famous of which was bullet-time - a “moving” camera flying around a stationary object (say, Neo dodging bullets). Initially, special effects master John Gaeta wanted to make do with mannequins, cables and just one camera mounted on a dolly. Rails were laid around the filming location - it was assumed that the cart would move along them at great speed. However, after several broken mannequins and broken carts, it became clear that this was a dead end.

The creators brainstormed, putting forward the craziest ideas, including using a miniature camera with a rocket accelerator attached to it. But in the end, a historical choice was made - to use bullet-time.

The phrase bullet-time has been registered by Warner Bros. since 2005. as a brand. You can shoot like the Wachowskis, but you can’t call the special effect the same.

The technology itself was known before The Matrix, but it was the Wachowskis who introduced it to the mass audience and showed its full potential. At first, the scene was filmed using regular cameras. The resulting animation was scanned and edited on a computer, after which it could be used as a background. Then it was the turn of 120 special cameras, which were placed around the set. Each camera took a photograph of an actor hanging from ropes against a green screen.

Then the photographs were entered into the computer, the cables were erased, and the background filmed in advance was substituted for the green screen. From photographs lined up in a row, a sequence of frames was obtained, and a special program filled the gaps between frames, achieving more smooth transitions between them. As a result, the illusion was created that the camera was flying around a “frozen” object, and the movement could be accelerated or slowed down at the director’s discretion. After that, all that remained was to finish drawing the slowly flying bullets on the computer - and receive a well-deserved Oscar for best visual effects.

"Wow!"

At the beginning of 1999, all critics expected that the main film event of the year would be the first episode of “ Star Wars" "The Matrix" was considered a "dark horse", but easily eclipsed Lucas's picture. Critics were delighted, as were audiences - the film eventually grossed over $450 million at the worldwide box office.

However, the main achievement of The Matrix was its influence on cinema. With the release of the Wachowski film, film producers realized that a new standard of entertainment and action scenes had emerged. The signature techniques of “The Matrix” - slow-mo, camera flying around stationary objects, fast-paced action scenes - began to be copied by everyone, from Kurt Wimmer in “Equilibrium” and “Ultraviolet” to Timur Bekmambetov in “Watches” and the creators of the game Max Payne.

The success of "The Matrix" could not but lead to the appearance of " unrecognized geniuses”, claiming that the brothers stole their idea and shamelessly profited from it. One woman even stated that not only “The Matrix”, but also “The Terminator” was “ripped off” from the script she wrote, and Neo and John Connor are the same character. And more recently, in 2013, one Hawaiian, who saw “The Matrix” for the first time in his life (according to him, doctors had previously forbidden him to watch films containing scenes of violence), immediately filed a lawsuit, deciding that the creators had plagiarized what he had written in 1992 year script. Now the Wachowskis once again have to prove that they did not steal their life's work.

References were made to the Wachowskis' real sources of inspiration. For example, to Harlan Ellison's story “I Have No Mouth, But I Must Scream”

Of course, if we examine in detail all the elements of the Matrix, we can say that almost every one of them has already been somewhere. People who live in virtual reality without knowing it? Stanislaw Lem's stories or Grant Morrison's comic book "The Invisible People". A pill that helps you escape from the world of illusions? Film "Total Recall". Personality programs and virtual tyranny? Film "Tron". Does the term “Matrix” itself mean cyberspace? Neuromancer by William Gibson. Trinity image? Molly is partly from the same Neuromancer.

You can spend a long time wondering where the Wachowskis got this or that idea from. But we must understand that it is impossible to live and create in society and not come into contact with its culture, ideas, and concepts. Another thing is that if you simply collect pieces from successful works, a masterpiece will not come together by itself. It is important to love the material with all your heart, process it and use it as building blocks for your creation. The Wachowskis did exactly that - based on the existing ideas created something new. That is why their names went down in the history of cinema.

"Mr. Anderson, welcome back!"

The Wachowskis originally conceived The Matrix as a trilogy. But the studio gave the green light to the sequels only after realizing the full scale of the film's success. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were released four years after the first film. From a financial point of view, they were successful - a couple of films collected $1.2 billion at a cost of approximately $300 million. But as works of cinematic art, the sequels were nowhere near as good as the first Matrix.

The main problem with sequels is that the interesting ideas from the original remain undeveloped. The ending of the first part hinted at the grandiose changes associated with the arrival of the Chosen One. In the sequels, we see that essentially nothing has changed. Many still don’t believe in Neo, and although the savior himself flies, he still fights with agents with his fists. At the end of the first part, he learned to destroy programs and change the Matrix with the power of thought, but the creators almost did not remember this ability of his.

The decision to shoot the sequels at the same time and release them with a break of six months was also a mistake. As a result, “Reloaded” did not turn out to be a self-sufficient film, but only a bridge between the first and third parts. All key events - the battle for Zeon, Smith's invasion of the real world - were transferred to "Revolution", which is not in the best possible way affected the plot dynamics of both sequels.

Yes, the scale of events has grown noticeably, the special effects have become even better, but the feeling of freshness has disappeared. In the years between the first and second films, Hollywood has already mastered the Wachowskis' findings. For example, Trinity's opening jump has been copied and parodied countless times. However, the creators did not find anything better than to start “Reboot” with the same jump. And later they regularly quoted the best moments of the first part, instead of showing the public something new.

What’s even worse is that the thrill and sense of danger have completely disappeared from the films. In the first "Matrix", each battle decided something - the heroes were constantly on the verge of death. This is sorely lacking in the sequels, especially Reboot. Take Neo's initial fight with the agents, which has no effect on the plot, and compare it with the intense chase from the beginning of the first Matrix. Or, say, a duel with a hundred Smiths. As a demonstration of special effects, it is certainly good. However, can it be compared in terms of drama to the short and effective episode on the roof where Neo tries to push his limits? Of course not.

Because of all this, “Reboot” and “Revolution” turned out to be weaker than the original. But we should not forget about such a reason for disappointment as the effect of inflated expectations. Many fans expected some kind of philosophical revelations from the sequels, forgetting that for all its effectiveness, “The Matrix” is just an adventure blockbuster, albeit one of the best. Yes, it has a lot of interesting ideas, but philosophy is not learned from Hollywood films. Perhaps such fans should have taken the Wachowskis’ advice: pick up and read for yourself the books that served as a source of inspiration for the brothers.

Sean Connery was originally offered the role of the Architect. He refused because he didn’t understand anything in the script - and, admittedly, he was not alone in this.

We believe this world is real!

Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, inspired by The Matrix, wrote a scientific paper in 2003. In it, he came to the optimistic conclusion that there is only a 20% chance that you and I are living in a computer simulation.

"What is a matrix?"

And yet why, of all the films about virtual reality, is it “The Matrix” that stole the show? Why, for example, “Dark City,” a film with a similar plot, failed at the box office and gained recognition only after being released on video, while Wachowski’s film immediately turned out to be a hit? I think there are a number of explanations for this.

Firstly, the Wachowskis wrote a truly excellent script, tailored according to the best canons of the genre. There was intrigue in it that made the plot move. Together with Neo, we were looking for the answer to the question of what the Matrix is. As soon as we solved this mystery, they threw another one at us: is it true that Neo is the Chosen One? The action accelerated, the situation became more and more tense. Neo and Trinity must save Morpheus before he breaks down. They must leave the Matrix before the agents find them. Neo alone must fight Smith and manage to pick up the phone before Nebuchadnezzar is destroyed by machines from the real world. And finally, the ending, which had just the right amount of suspense - it left room for sequels, but made it possible to do without them.

The second reason is visual perfection, stunning action scenes, each of which was precisely calibrated and memorable for a long time. The Matrix provided viewers with a unique, unprecedented spectacle. Let's not forget that The Matrix was an incredibly stylish film. I wanted to speak in phrases from it, wear the same glasses and raincoats as her heroes.

In addition, The Matrix came out surprisingly on time. By 1999, the personal computer had already entered into Western usage, but was still perceived as something new. The first generation of gamers has grown up, conquering countless virtual worlds. The planet froze in anticipation of the new millennium - some seriously expected miracles and signs, others, on the contrary, were preparing for the worst. The media also made their contribution, regularly frightening the public with the upcoming “Problem 2000” and the global computer apocalypse. Perhaps there could not have been a better time for The Matrix to be released.

The victory of The Matrix over all competitors was also predetermined by its global nature. In films such as Open Your Eyes, Existenza, and The Truman Show, artificial reality was created to deceive one person or a group of people, nothing more. As a rule, everything was in order with the world itself. In the Matrix universe, absolutely all of humanity lives in virtual reality, playing the role of a battery, and this, frankly speaking, is scary. Each viewer after watching could ask the question: how do I know that I myself do not live in the Matrix? How can I check that my world is not an illusion?

It is not surprising that The Matrix has become the subject of an almost religious cult. After all, it is literally crammed with religious symbols - from the names of the characters to the structure of the story. Basically, it repeats the myth on which the entire Western culture has been based for two thousand years. A myth about a man destined to save the world. He fights, performs miracles, he is betrayed close person, and the hero dies, sacrificing himself, and then miraculously resurrects and soars into heaven.

* * *

All these factors came together and gave us truly great movie. It is not for nothing that in 2012 “The Matrix” was recognized as a national treasure and included in the Library of the American Congress. And even if the Wachowskis didn’t manage to enter the same river a second time, it’s worth telling them Thanks a lot for showing us how deep the rabbit hole goes in 1999.

Personal...
The film is worth watching frame by frame and learning how it was made. When you take it apart, you will be amazed by the simple techniques used to achieve this incredible power of influence on the viewer from the audio-visual side of the picture. Perhaps this is talent, when from cubes (pictures, sound, editing) already millions of times put together in different combinations, something unimaginably extraordinary suddenly turns out.
But the film "The Matrix" is one of those disposable things. The technique of filming, editing, and the behavior of actors repeated in other films is perceived as a poor parody of the original source. An incredible number of imitations and parodies of the film have proliferated online. It all looks bad. But copycats don't go away. This speaks to the power of influence of the film’s style on graphomaniacs from cinema...
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(eng. The Matrix) - a film made by brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski.
The film was released in the United States on March 31, 1999 and marked the beginning of a trilogy of films, as well as comic books, computer games and anime based on it.
Writers: Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
Cinematographer: Bill Pope
Composer: Don Davis
Fight director: Yuen Wu Ping
Actors:
Keanu Reeves Neo
Laurence Fishburne Morpheus
Carrie-Anne Moss Trinity
Hugo Weaving Smith Agent
Gloria Foster Pythia
Joe Pantoliano Cypher
Marcus Chong Tank Tank
Paul Goddard Brown Agent
Robert Taylor Jones Agent
Julien Arahanga Epok
Matt Doran Mouse Mouse
Belinda McClory Switch

The film describes the theory that the Matrix is ​​interactive computer program, simulating reality for billions of people, forcibly connected to it by the rebel Machines, who thus extract from people the energy they need to continue existing.

The idea of ​​the Matrix largely reproduces Plato's myth of the cave, and according to some opinions it is the embodied idea of ​​solipsism. The film contains many references to cyberpunk and hacker subculture, philosophical and religious ideas. "The Matrix" also actively uses motifs from "Alice in Wonderland" and Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke's novel: The City and the Stars ("Profession"), Hong Kong action films and Japanese anime.

Plot
A young man named Thomas Anderson leads double life. By day he is a programmer at large company, at night - hacker Neo. One day a strange message arrives on his personal computer: “You are stuck in the Matrix” (“The Matrix has you...”). An unknown person instructs him to “follow the white rabbit.” Neo meets a girl with a white rabbit tattoo. Following her, he comes to a nightclub. There he meets a hacker girl named Trinity, who promises to reveal the secret of the Matrix to Thomas. To do this, Neo must meet with the one he has been looking for for a long time - Morpheus, whom the authorities consider the most dangerous terrorist.

Neo has no time left for hesitation, because the so-called “agents”, a kind of “guards” of the Matrix, have already become interested in his computer crimes. Morpheus suggests young man to see the Matrix with his own eyes and offers a choice of two tablets - a blue one, after taking which Neo will wake up in his bed and believe that it was just a dream, and a red one, which will allow Neo to understand what the Matrix is. Neo chooses the red pill.

Neo finds himself in a terrible destroyed world, which turns out to be the real real world. He learns that the world he knows is an illusion created by the artificial intelligence of a supercomputer to keep people in line. The planet is plunged into eternal darkness, cities lie in ruins. Humans are enslaved by all-powerful machines to produce the energy they need to survive. Those few who were able to retain consciousness hide in the catacombs and lead guerrilla warfare against machines, learning to independently enter and exit the Matrix.

The last city of humanity is Zion, located deep underground, from which desperate forays are made on flying ships into the world of the Matrix to save people connected to it. One of these ships is called the Nebuchadnezzar, and its captain is Morpheus. He believes that Neo is the Chosen One who can save humanity from the power of the machines.

However, the traitor Cypher appeared in the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, ready to exchange the lives of his friends and freedom of mind for the sweet deception of the System. Cypher turns his former friends over to agents - autonomous programs of the Matrix who are eager to obtain access codes to Zion. Morpheus is captured by agents. Neo and Trinity save their captain through superhuman efforts, but Neo has to flee from the agents pursuing him. Neo does not have time to exit the Matrix, and Agent Smith kills him. However, Neo comes to life (since in fact he is the Chosen One), feeling the power within himself. He easily destroys Smith by destroying his programming code.

At the end of the film, Neo makes a phone call, promising that he will show the people trapped in the Matrix that “anything is possible.”

Filming
"The Matrix" is a co-production with Warner Bros. and Australia's Village Roadshow Pictures. Most of the film's scenes were filmed in Sydney, Australia, although early versions of the script mentioned that the action takes place in Chicago, the hometown of the Wachowski brothers. During the filming, some of the scenery of “Dark City” was used, a film by Sydney director Alex Proyas, released a year before “The Matrix” and close to it in its philosophical issues.

Design
The “Matrix Code” in the film is represented by green symbols running down. However, these characters are nothing more than a set of mirrored Latin letters, numbers and syllables of the Japanese katakana alphabet. Also similar to the Matrix code is the rain flowing down the car window (in the scene under the bridge) and the stream of water from the window cleaner (in the office scene). The color scheme in the world of the Matrix is ​​clearly green, and in the real world more emphasis is placed on blue.

Similar "flowing symbols" are found in the anime film "Ghost in the Shell", only there they run horizontally. The Wachowski brothers themselves admit that they were inspired by this anime, also made in the cyberpunk style. The same horizontal symbols are seen on the alien monitors in the movie Independence Day.

Visual effects
An effect called Bullet time became " business card"Matrix". “Bullet time” is an almost complete stop of time at a certain moment, while the camera continues to move.

To create this effect, we used an old artistic photography technique known as “time-slice,” which consists of the following: a large number of cameras are installed around an object and simultaneously film the object. When making a montage, the frames are combined as follows: first, the first frame is taken from the first camera, then the first frame from the second, from the third, and so on. As a result, the viewer sees a stationary object on the screen while the camera moves around it. This is reminiscent of how a person walks around a statue to get a better look at it from all sides.

The described method was improved by the Wachowski brothers and special effects director John Gaeta: bullet time also registers the movement of objects, so that during the camera fly-by effect you can see the slow motion of the characters.

Music
The film's composer was Don Davis. He noted that the effect of reflection is used very often in the film: the reflection of the red and blue pills in Morpheus's glasses; Trinity watches as the agents put Neo into their car through the rearview mirror of a motorcycle; reflections in a bending spoon; reflection of a helicopter in the windows of a skyscraper. Davis focused on the theme of reflections when he began writing music, trading orchestral themes for contrapuntal ideas.

The Matrix soundtrack also featured music by Rob Dugan, Rage Against the Machine, Propellerheads, Ministry, Massive Attack, Deftones, The Prodigy, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Juno Reactor.

Sources of inspiration and ideas from previous works
"The Matrix" contains many allusions and reminiscences to various films, literary works, philosophical ideas. The situation shown in the film refers to the allegory of the cave by Plato and thought experiment“brain in a vat”, and Jean Baudrillard’s treatise “Simulacra and Simulation” is mentioned in one of the scenes of the film. The film also contains many allusions to other cyberpunk works, such as William Gibson's Neuromancer.

The plot of The Matrix is ​​based on religious ideas about the apocalypse and the illusory nature of the earthly world in comparison with the higher spiritual world. Deacon Andrey Kuraev in his book “Cinema: Reloaded with Theology” examines the religious motives of the film.

* 1939. The use of humans as a source of energy for other beings is described in Eric Frank Russell's book The Sinister Barrier.

* 1960. Stanislaw Lem's story “The Strange Boxes of Professor Corcoran” describes a device that simulates human brain, onto whose receptors virtual life is projected. Moreover, the story features an interconnected family of electronic devices endowed with consciousness, one of which has begun to doubt that the picture of life it observes is real.

* 1961. Herbert Franke's novel The Orchid Cage described The Matrix as it appears in the film.

* 1963. In Roger Zelazny's story " White Crow"due to overpopulation of the Earth most humanity is immersed in a sleep artificially maintained by machines. The scene of the protagonist's awakening is reminiscent of Neo's awakening.

* In 1965, the authors Jack Williamson and Frederic Pohl wrote the work “Child of the Stars.” In this story you can find a description of people who enter into a “community” with a machine using communication connectors located on their foreheads. The description of these connectors, as well as the very “community” of a person with a machine, is very reminiscent of a connection to the Matrix.

* 1971. An artificially created illusory reality is also described in Stanislav Lem’s story “ Futurological Congress" In this book, a high-tech utopian future world is the product of a collective hallucination caused by chemicals, sprayed according to the plan of a secret worldwide “chemocracy” in order to hide the reality where the world is in the deepest economic and environmental crisis.

* 1976. In the episode "Merciless Killer" from Doctor Who, the matrix is ​​a database containing the knowledge of the Time Lords, which could emulate reality for a person connected to it. A person could die if he died in the visual world generated by this device (matrix).

* 1984. There are noticeable parallels with the Soviet film “Guest from the Future.”

* 1986. The idea that the universe we perceive may have been created by a computer simulation program was expressed by Alexander Lazarevich in his book “The Desire Generator.” Technical ability to carry out the calculations necessary for full description of our universe, with the help of quantum computers, is theoretically substantiated in the popular scientific work of physicist David Deutch “The Structure of Reality”.

* 1989. The Matrix was greatly influenced by the Japanese anime film and manga Ghost in the Shell. Producer Joel Silver said the Wachowski brothers, when describing their intentions for The Matrix, showed him the anime and said, "We want to do this for real."

* 1993. “Little Buddha” (in which Keanu Reeves played Buddha). And Buddhism in general. Buddha, quite aptly, means “awakened one.”

* 1994. There were many comparisons with the comics en: The Invisibles by Grant Morrison; Morrison believed that the Wachowski brothers plagiarized his work when making the film.

In ReBoot (animated series), a world-city of creatures is shown inside a computer, inside which the scientist Matrix, due to an experiment, “zeroed” himself and another similar world-city, after which a confrontation between the survivors and those who appeared again began.

* 1995. " Strange days»

* 1995-1996. The design of the underground city of Zion, as well as the scene with the penetration of machines into it by drilling into the surface, almost exactly repeats the anime "Evangelion"

* 1997. Castaneda, Carlos in the book “The Active Side of Infinity” describes the observable world as an interpretation of the energy that forms the Universe, as well as the ability of sorcerers to turn off the interpretation system and see the energy directly. Likewise Neo is able to see the Matrix in the form of “source code”, to overcome the perception of it as reality.

* 1998. “The Truman Show (film).”

* 1998. “Dark City (film, 1998)”

* 1999. “The Thirteenth Floor (film)”

Lana (born Lawrence) and Lilly (born Andrew) The Wachowskis acquired world fame as the authors of such recognized film masterpieces as “Assassins”, “Communication” and, of course, the “Matrix” trilogy.

But perhaps equally, if not more, fame was brought to them by the fact that they are among the first transgender people among Hollywood celebrities.

The story that happened to the Wachowski brothers is reminiscent of one of the bizarre scenarios they wrote, in which the truth of life seems to be fiction, and the fiction is so plausible that it is not too surprising.

Larry and Andy were born in Chicago, into an American-Polish family. Larry in 1965, his brother two years later. Their father is a businessman and a convinced atheist. Mother - nurse, a Catholic who later converted to... shamanism. One must think that such an explosive mixture of ideologies and religions, which hovered in their house, could not help but leave an imprint on the psyche of the brothers.

The guys became interested in theater back in school, they took part in all productions. However, even then they did not strive for acting, remaining behind the scenes as directors, assistant directors, text authors, and so on. Write incredible stories and make things up strange worlds the brothers began already at this time.

Then both, as usual, went to college, however, neither of them graduated.

For some time the brothers worked as carpenters in Chicago, then took up construction business, moreover, the direction of their activity was distinguished by its originality: being talented artists, the guys painted the facades of buildings, transferring their fantasy worlds and illusory characters. Soon they began drawing comics. And then they wrote their first film script - “Assassins”. The script immediately brought them success and some fame, because the film starred such stars as Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas. And four years after that, in 1999, The Matrix appeared. It made its creators famous and rich.

By this point, the Wachowski brothers gave the impression of being quite brutal guys. In the recent past, they were builders and carpenters from Chicago, both of them were married, and did not at all look like mannered, handsome boys.

Thunder struck in 2000, and completely unexpectedly: one day the elder Wachowski, Larry, appeared on the set of “The Matrix Reloaded” in a woman’s dress. Further - more. In 2003, at the Cannes Film Festival, Larry no longer looked like a man in a woman's dress, but like a real lady: makeup on his face, carefully styled hair, feminine manners, thoughtful jewelry. He appeared on the red carpet arm in arm with his new passion, Ilsa Strix. Then more and more photographs began to appear in the tabloid press in which Larry was caught by the paparazzi in a female guise. They began to say that Larry had undergone sex reassignment surgery. However, there was no official confirmation of this until 2012, when Larry Wachowski publicly announced to the press that he was now Lana.

Actually, for the family, Larry has long become Lana. Speaking at one of the charity events. Lana Wachowski said that hatred of one's own male body tormented her for a long time, she experienced severe depression and even thought about suicide, and only the support of loved ones helped her survive this crisis and decide to publicly acknowledge her transgenderism.

That left Andrew, the younger brother, a big guy with a penchant for crude humor. This one will definitely remain a man, the tabloids decided. And they were wrong. In 2014, Andrew made a sensational statement to the press, revealing that he was now Lilly!

Perhaps this recognition would have happened a little later and under other circumstances, however, the ubiquitous journalists got wind that the younger Wachowski was also thinking about changing his sex and even began taking hormonal medications. Under the threat of disclosing his transgender status in the tabloids, Andrew called a press conference.

However, if everything went quite smoothly with Lana Wachowski, many journalists, and not only them, accuse Andrew-Lilly of insincerity. Still, the healthy and cheerful Andrew, who had been married for decades, did not at all give the impression of a man who hated his masculinity. And it is unlikely that two brothers with such an unusual worldview would be born in one family. In general, Lilly Wachowski’s behavior was considered almost a tribute to fashion.

However, Andrew Wachowski disappeared, and in his place appeared Lilly - a large lady with reddish hair and, perhaps, a little too muscular, however, with quite rounded shapes.

It is hardly possible to answer the question of why such an extraordinary story occurred. The easiest way is to accuse both siblings of insincerity and the desire to earn additional fame (and money, of course) for themselves in such a scandalous way. Two brothers write scripts, which they then use to make great films – it’s boring. But if these two brothers suddenly became two sisters - wow, how cool that is!

But still, it would be wrong to reduce everything to the desire for fame and money. Still, the brothers don’t just dress up in women’s dresses, they have undergone operations, after which their lives will never be the same, and it’s not easy to decide on this.

It seems that the origins of the strange decision of two seemingly prosperous guys should be sought in early childhood, which passed in an atmosphere of tossing from the denial of God to Catholicism, and then to a strange cult - shamanism. This very shamanism, by the way, involves the journey of souls to other worlds and their introduction into other bodies. Who knows if mommy instilled in her children some strange idea that their souls had entered the bodies of men who were strangers to them? It is very likely that the mother had a serious influence on the brothers; it was not for nothing that they gravitated so much toward the feminine. We should not forget that the eldest of the now Wachowski sisters, Lana, having abandoned her masculine nature, chose not a man as her life partner, as it would be logical to assume, but a woman, and what a woman! The owner of an elite club where practitioners of sadomasochism gather.

Now I finally found the answers to those stupid plot holes that plagued me in this trilogy. This... This is simply brilliant! If the film had been brought to the screen as originally intended, the effect of watching “The Matrix” would have been 10 times stronger. And in terms of the cruelty of the final turn of events, this film would have surpassed even the magnificent “Fight Club”!
The script for The Matrix was created by the Wachowski brothers over the course of five years. He gave birth to a whole illusory world, densely penetrated by several storylines, from time to time intricately intertwined with each other. Adapting their colossal work for film adaptation, and yielding to the demands of producer Joel Silver, the Wachowskis changed so much that, by their own admission, the embodiment of their plans turned out to be only a “fantasy based on” the story that was invented at the very beginning.

So, the original script for The Matrix.

First of all, it is worth mentioning that script sketches and different options of the same film, having been rejected, were not further developed, so much remained not integrated into a coherent system. Thus, in the “sad” version of the trilogy, the events of the second and third parts are quite severely curtailed. At the same time, in the third, final part, the unfolding of such a severe intrigue begins that it practically turns on its head all the events that occurred earlier in the plot. Likewise, the ending of Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense completely shakes up all the events of the film from its very beginning. Only in “The Matrix” the viewer had to look at almost the entire trilogy with new eyes. And it’s a shame that Joel Silver insisted on the implemented version

Six months have passed since the end of the events of the first film. Neo, being in the real world, discovers in himself incredible ability influence the environment: first, he lifts into the air and bends a spoon lying on the table, then determines the position of the hunting machines outside of Zion, then, in a battle with the Octopuses, he destroys one of them with the power of thought in front of the shocked crew of the ship.

Neo and everyone around him cannot find an explanation for this phenomenon. Neo is sure that there is a good reason for this, and that his gift is somehow connected with the war against machines, and is capable of having a decisive impact on the fate of people (in the filmed film this ability is also there, but it is not explained at all, and it is not even shown on it). especially draw attention - maybe that’s all. Although, on common sense, Neo’s ability to perform miracles in the real world makes absolutely no sense in the light of the entire concept of “The Matrix”, and just looks strange).

So Neo goes to Pythia to get an answer to his question and find out what to do next. Pythia tells Neo that she doesn't know why he has superpowers in the real world, and how they relate to Neo's Purpose. She says that the secret of our hero’s Destination can only be revealed by the Architect - the supreme program that created the Matrix. Neo is looking for a way to meet the Architect, going through incredible difficulties (this involves the already familiar Master of Keys being captured by the Merovingian, a chase on the highway, etc.).

And so Neo meets the Architect. He reveals to him that the human city of Zeon has been destroyed five times already, and that the unique Neo was deliberately created by machines in order to personify hope for liberation for people, and thus maintain calm in the Matrix and serve its stability. But when Neo asks the Architect what role his superpowers manifesting in the real world play in all this, the Architect says that the answer to this question can never be given, for it will lead to knowledge that will destroy everything Neo's friends fought for and himself.

After a conversation with the Architect, Neo realizes that there is some secret hidden here, the solution of which could bring the long-awaited end to the war between people and machines. His abilities are becoming stronger. (The script contains several scenes of Neo's impressive fights with machines in the real world, in which he has evolved into Superman, and can do almost everything he could in The Matrix: fly, stop bullets, etc.).

In Zion, it becomes known that cars have begun moving towards the city of people with the goal of killing all those who have left the Matrix, and the entire population of the city sees hope for salvation in Neo alone, who does truly grandiose things - in particular, he gains the ability to arrange powerful explosions where he wants.

Meanwhile, Agent Smith, who has escaped the control of the main computer, has become free and has acquired the ability to endlessly copy himself, and begins to threaten the Matrix itself. Having inhabited Bane, Smith also penetrates the real world.

Neo is looking new meeting with the Architect to offer him a deal: he destroys Agent Smith by destroying his code, and the Architect reveals to Neo the secret of his superpowers in the real world and stops the movement of cars to Zeon. But the room in the skyscraper where Neo met with the Architect is empty: the creator of the Matrix has changed his address, and now no one knows how to find him.

Towards the middle of the film, a total collapse occurs: there are more Smith agents in the Matrix than people and the process of their self-copying grows like an avalanche; in the real world, machines penetrate Zion, and in a colossal battle they destroy all people, except for a handful of survivors led by Neo, who , despite his superpowers, cannot stop thousands of cars rushing into the city.

Morpheus and Trinity die next to Neo, heroically defending Zeon. Neo, in terrible despair, increases his strength to absolutely incredible proportions, breaks through to the only surviving ship (Morpheus' Nebuchadnezzar), and leaves Zion, climbing to the surface. He heads to the main computer to destroy it, avenging the deaths of the inhabitants of Zeon, and especially the deaths of Morpheus and Trinity.

Bane-Smith is hiding aboard the Nebuchadnezzar, trying to stop Neo from destroying the Matrix, as he realizes that doing so will kill himself. In an epic fight with Neo, Bane also displays superpowers, burning out Neo's eyes, but ultimately dies. What follows is a scene in which Neo, blinded but still seeing everything, breaks through billions of enemies to the Center and causes a grand explosion there. He literally incinerates not only the Central Computer, but also himself. Millions of capsules with people turn off, the glow in them disappears, the cars freeze forever and the viewer sees a dead, deserted planet.

Bright light. Neo, completely intact, without wounds and with intact eyes, comes to his senses sitting in the red chair of Morpheus from the first part of “The Matrix” in a completely white space. He sees the Architect in front of him. The Architect tells Neo that he is shocked at what a person is capable of in the name of love. He says that he did not take into account the power that is infused into a person when he is ready to sacrifice his life for the sake of other people. He says that machines are not capable of this, and therefore they can lose, even if it seems unthinkable. He says that Neo is the only one of all the Chosen Ones who "was able to come this far."

Neo asks where he is. In the Matrix, the Architect answers. The perfection of the Matrix lies, among other things, in the fact that it does not allow unforeseen events to cause it even the slightest damage. The Architect informs Neo that they are now at the "zero point" after the reboot of the Matrix, at the very beginning of its Seventh Version.

Neo doesn't understand anything. He says that he has just destroyed the Central Computer, that the Matrix is ​​no more, along with all of humanity. The architect laughs and tells Neo something that shocks to the core not only him, but the entire audience.

Zion is part of the Matrix. In order to create for people the appearance of freedom, in order to give them Choice, without which a person cannot exist, the Architect came up with a reality within a reality. And Zeon, and the whole war with the machines, and Agent Smith, and in general everything that happened from the very beginning of the trilogy, was planned in advance and is nothing more than a dream. The war was only a diversionary maneuver, but in fact, everyone who died in Zion, fought with the machines, and fought inside the Matrix, continues to lie in their capsules in pink syrup, they are alive and are waiting for a new reboot of the system so that they can start “living” in it again ", "fight" and "free yourself". And in this harmonious system, Neo - after his “rebirth” - will be assigned the same role as in all previous versions of the Matrix: to inspire people to fight, which does not exist.

No human has ever left the Matrix since its creation. No man has ever died except according to the plan of the machines. All people are slaves and that will never change.

The camera shows the film's heroes lying in their capsules in different corners of the "nurseries": here is Morpheus, here is Trinity, here is Captain Mifune, who died a brave death in Zeon, and many, many others. They are all hairless, dystrophic and entangled in hoses. Neo is shown last, looking exactly the same as he did in the first film when he was "liberated" by Morpheus. Neo's face is serene.

This is how your superpower is explained in “reality,” says the Architect. This also explains the existence of Zeon, which people “could never build the way you saw it” due to lack of resources. And would we really, laughs the Architect, allow people freed from the Matrix to hide in Zeon if we always had the opportunity to either kill them or connect them to the Matrix again? And would we really have to wait decades to destroy Zeon even if it existed? Still, you underestimate us, Mr. Anderson, says the Architect.

Neo, looking straight ahead with a dead face, tries to comprehend what has happened, and casts his last glance at the Architect, who says goodbye to him: “In the Seventh Version of the Matrix, Love will rule the world.”

The alarm sounds. Neo wakes up and turns it off. The last shot of the film: Neo in a business suit leaves the house and quickly heads to work, disappearing into the crowd. The end credits begin to heavy music.

Not only does this script look more coherent and understandable, not only does it really brilliantly explain plot holes that were left unexplained in the film adaptation - it also fits much better into the gloomy style of cyberpunk than the "hopeful" ending of what was seen us trilogy. This is not just Dystopia, but Dystopia in its most brutal manifestation: the end of the world is long behind us, and nothing can be fixed.
The architect in the form of a managing system is not only and not so much a reference to the Freemasons, but first of all a symbol of manual programming of the established order of things, which is not natural and is based on ignorance, suppression and control. And Neo’s rebellion, useless within the framework of the existing system that programs this rebellion, serves as a demonstration that the fight against this system without going beyond its framework is impossible, meaningless and useless.

As a result, Neo’s initial, seemingly fateful choice with the red and blue pills becomes meaningless, because both paths turn out to be false within the system, are embedded in it and do not bring either him or humanity closer to liberation. With all his abilities and talents, the hero still does not fully understand the real structure of the system, in which he, both as a clerk and as a savior, is just a slave of a system that he does not know and does not understand.

If such ideas really crossed the minds of the Wachowski brothers, then it’s a shame that they didn’t make it to the big screen, although the matryoshka concept of the Matrix in the Matrix itself is not new. It could be an excellent example of a postmodern world of lost meanings and ideals striving for program zero.