he Matrix Revolutions, the third and final chapter in Larry and Andy Wachowski's epic SF trilogy of Matrix films, opens simultaneously around the world on Nov. 5, wrapping up the story begun in 1999. Though the second part, The Matrix Reloaded, baffled many viewers and drew decidedly mixed reviews, it nevertheless made a pile of money, and anticipation runs high for the sequel that audiences hope will resolve the questions raised by the first two installments.
The major cast members return, including Keanu Reeves (Neo), Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity), Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus), Hugo Weaving (Smith), Jada Pinkett Smith (Niobe) and Nona Gaye (Zee). Mary Alice steps in for the late Gloria Foster as the Oracle.
Producer Joel Silver managed a coup by securing the brand-new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles for the film's world premiere on Oct. 27, making Revolutions the first movie screened in the Frank Gehry-designed landmark. Silver, visual-effects supervisor John Gaeta and the cast assembled at the Disney Hall the day of the premiere to speak with Science Fiction Weekly and other reporters about the sequel. The following is an edited version of the comments from the news conference.
Can you talk about the decision to open the movie on the same day and time worldwide?
Silver: We felt that our fans really would want to see the movie right away. So we had the idea to open the movies on the same day. And because of the reality of piracy and the fact that sometimes [when] these movies are playing in theaters, or before they get there, they're available on street corners, we just decided to have an absolutely moment-by-moment release. So 9 a.m. New York time is zero hour, which is 6 a.m. in the morning in L.A. and sometime during the day on the continent and 11 p.m. in Tokyo, this movie will begin playing on almost 20,000 screens worldwide in over 63 countries.
Do the actors all still feel the bruises and bangs from these characters that you've played?
Gaye: I don't.
Fishburne: I think we've all recovered pretty nicely, actually.
Gaeta: I'm in great pain. Still. [Laughs.]
You've all become a family over the years. What are your emotions knowing that this is the end of the ride for you and The Matrix?
Moss: It's bittersweet. For me, anyway. I really want to celebrate this evening and to really feel, with my friends and family here, the fruits of the labor that we put all of our hearts and souls into. And at the same time, like the poster says, every beginning has an end. I feel very much that way. And when I saw that first poster I literally started crying. I was like, "Oh, my God, that's so reflective, not only of the journey of the film, but the journey of my life on this movie." And it's a very exciting day, being in the venue. I can't wait for that, to see the movie with everybody and to say goodbye to a big segment of my life. It's big.
Fishburne: Well, the groovy thing about these characters is that they're going to live with us for the rest of our lives. So we don't necessarily have to say goodbye to them. We're going to be walking around with them for the rest of our lives, pretty much. So they're all a part of us now. ...
I don't know that any of us knew we were going to be playing these characters for this long. I think we sort of knew that there was a trilogy somewhere, and we were hoping that they were going to make these movies, but for myself, I know I just signed on for the one movie, and the movie performed really well, and then it was made clear that there were two other movies, and that they wanted us all to come back. So I think for myself it's just taking it sort of one scene and one sequence at a time. One scene at a time, one fight sequence at a time, or whatever it is.
Reeves: It was a great role. Great project. And I got to work with some really special artists and people. It was, for me, a really special endeavor. And it's exciting that they're at the last one. Revolutions is opening tonight. It's exciting.
Mr. Gaeta, can you talk about the massive visual effects for the climactic battle in Zion between humans and machines?
Gaeta: The development for some of the battle scenes in Revolutions began as early as the year 2000. We have worked nonstop across the entire production span. Each year that ticked by in the last, almost four [years] at this point, we would double and double again the size of the artist staff and the research and development people. So you will be seeing things that really are a reflection of the state of the art in intelligent-creature animation, semiautomatic effects and extensions of the virtual-cinema program that we embarked on in Reloaded. We will end Revolutions pretty much with the culmination of all that work. ...
I think that the difference between the first and the second two films in the Matrix trilogy clearly is that, in the first film, of course, [we were] trying to show [that] a simulated universe is sort of a construct of the mind. We wanted to get the audience into this idea where you could do amazing things, like detach the time and space of the camera from the time and space of the subject before it, something you could only do in your dreams or in a more direct way like a game, a God's-eye point of view. ... Virtual reality is limitless. ... Flying is possible. Anything's possible. So in Matrix I, we sort of created a method that only sort of pretended to be a technology, suggested a technology, whereas for the two films that we just completed, we feel that we've actually acquired the technology that was suggested. We are, in fact, producing something that we call virtual cinema, which really is to some extent the virtual component of virtual reality. There's three virtuals in one sentence. It's actually completely liberating, I think, and it will allow directors for years to come, I believe, to start imagining impossible types of content. ...
For the women, we're marking the 20-year anniversary of Alien, which introduced this heroine character, and each of you demonstrates abilities sometimes in excess of your male counterparts. Can you talk about your characters' strength?
Smith: I think every woman has strength in her own way. So, to me, and watching this movie and watching The Matrix, it's nothing unusual. We don't see it a lot. Thank goodness that Larry and Andy are connected enough to write the truth of who I believe women really are. So for me it was very natural. It wasn't like I had to really muster up any special techniques to play Niobe. So, like I said, I think it was really kind of a natural. It was a really natural character for me to play.
Moss: I loved Jada's answer. I thought that was really right on the money. I mean, I loved playing Trinity. The first time around, in the first Matrix, I was just like, "Wow, this is such a great character." Then to have gotten to play her through, not just being the girl who kicks ass, ... [but also] it's like all of the characters in Revolutions, all of the women, ... have so much heart and soul, and they're strong. And it's not like they're just one dimension. I love that, and that's really [a tribute] to Larry and Andy, because they really understand women, and they understand people. And it's been an honor to play a woman with the kind of strength that Trinity has, with her heart and her body too. It's been great. I've loved it.
Gaye: It was a little bit more difficult for me, because I don't have a man in my life that I could think about and go to. So I used my son, and that worked just as well. But it took me a minute to figure out what I was going to go to to get that fire. So I used my baby, and I kind of figured if I was in that situation, he was in trouble, of course I would go and shoot bazookas and kill Sentinels. So I figured it out, but it took me a second.
Keanu, can you talk about shooting the fight sequence at the end in the rain and the stunts you had to do? How dangerous was that?
Reeves: It was just another element. What happened was, on the first take when Hugo and I—Smith and Neo—fight, the rain came down, and we realized that we couldn't see each other. But we'd fought so much together that we actually didn't have to see each other, which was kind of a cool thing. It was just dramatic. It was fun. It was like a ton of water a minute or something like that. So we were wet for a couple of weeks. Six weeks. ...
We wore wetsuits underneath our costumes. And Neo had, I think, 21 different cassocks, and I think five of them were used for the rain. Different weights, how the fabric looked in the rain and how it moved. So I had a light rain cassock, a dry ... talking cassock. The other thing that Hugo and I found was that when we would do the scenes, we couldn't hear each other. And we couldn't actually hear ourselves because the big, fat, juicy raindrops that they'd taken two months to design were loud. So to try and find the scene and feel the scene it was frustrating sometimes, because you couldn't hear yourself and you couldn't hear your fellow actor. So we had to kind of work through that.
Was there anything of the philosophy of the film that you carried over into your lives?
Gaye: I think that the film itself reiterated feelings that I already had about life. Sometimes you have to be selfless and not think about you, and think about what's greater than you, the greater good. And as human beings it's difficult for us to do that all the time. So I'm very proud to be in a film where that's pretty much the premise of it. And that's what I believe that the brothers want you to understand: that it's about love, and it's about being selfless and giving instead of receiving.
Can you talk about the directors?
Moss: They are really extraordinary people. And they absolutely knew how they wanted to see each and every moment of this film. And so, really, we were just a conduit to their expression of the film, I think. For me, for sure. And we had so many great conversations. They're really smart, interesting guys. It wasn't so important to me that I understood every single thing intellectually. For me it's about my heart understanding something and feeling things. But I sure loved hearing them talk about it, all of the ideas of the movie. We all talked about it. We're all, I think, very conscious people and looking to understand ourselves and the world more, and the movie really reflects that. ... So in knowing them over, gosh, six years of my life, they absolutely created the character that I just gave life to. They told me how to do everything that I did. And I really wanted to give them that.
Some of the fans were disappointed with Reloaded. Do you feel expectations are higher or lower with this film? And do you feel those fans who didn't like Reloaded will be more satisfied with this one?
Silver: We were very clear that Reloaded was only half a movie. It was hard to say that over and over, we all did, over and over again, that you're seeing half a movie. And the reaction to the movie was, "We only saw half a movie." So this is the other half of the picture, and it is the resolution of the story. It's the conclusion of the story. It ends the story. I really feel that you need to see both of these movies to really get the story that the boys intended for the end of this yarn, the end of this tale. And I think it's very satisfying. It's thrilling. And it's a sad day for all of us, but a happy day for all of us, that we've finished this saga, but we can share it with all of you.
The end of the movie could leave things open for another one. Would you ever want to do another Matrix movie?
Silver: It will never happen.
Will there be any other subsidiary Matrix things in the future?
Silver: We're dealing with all that now. There is a project being worked on with a company called Ubi Soft, which is outside of Seattle, which is a multiplayer online game that, in fact, may become available as early as this summer, which will continue on the story of the world of the Matrix. ... I think Jada may be involved a little bit, maybe Laurence a little bit, but we're just working on that now. And there is a discussion about maybe doing another video game that there's talk of. There's a moment in the movie when Seraph [Collin Chou] comes in with Neo and Trinity and Morpheus, and the Merovingian [Lambert Wilson] says to him, "Oh, the prodigal son returns." And the boys wanted to kind of explore that backstory. So that may be something that they deal with in a video game. But there will be other areas of Matrix material, but there will not be any more movies.
Joel, how did you make the decision to have the premiere here in the Disney Hall?
Silver: It was last spring. I was taking a tour of the hall with Frank Gehry. I've known Frank for many years. I took a tour of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao with him as well. And as I walked into the hall the first time I said, "Wow, the whole idea of The Matrix is it's a synthesis integration of what we believe things to be and what we hope it could be." And I think that Frank's architecture is like that, that it really is about what's available to us. ... It's what might become available if we really let ourselves go. And I said to Frank, "What an incredible place for us to screen this movie." And he said, "We should do it." And I said, "Can we show a movie in here?" And he said, "Absolutely. It's been designed to be able to do anything you need to do." And it was just a miracle that we were able to put all the time and places and dates together, and that the last event that the L.A. Philharmonic had was Saturday night, and the tent's still up, and the facility is still ready to go. And so we're coming in tonight with the premiere of the movie, the first time the movie's been shown here, the first time we're showing Revolutions anywhere, and we're going to kind of let them see how loud we can get in there. Perfect timing.
In the past few years, when you've been approached by Matrix freaks, do you understand the philosophy or agree with it, or do you think, get a life, this is just a movie?
Gaeta: The Shatner factor.
Gaye: No, I don't think it's just a movie at all. And I wouldn't turn anyone away who wanted to talk to me about it. I'm very proud to have been a part of this saga, and I do think that a lot of the theories and a lot of the sentiment that is in the film I agree with, and it inspired me, and it's part of what made me so excited to be a part of the last two installments. So if anyone wanted to talk to me about the film or ask me questions about The Matrix I would be more than happy to talk to them, because I think this is a brilliant thing that's been done.
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Sean Astin
