The Matrix 4 poster.
The latest in the film history classic "The Matrix" series, "The Matrix Restart" (hereinafter referred to as "The Matrix 4"), directed by the first three directors Lana Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves and Kerry-Ann Moss returned together to continue to play Neo and Trinity, the film was released in the mainland on January 14. In the first three installments of the series, Neo was rescued from the Matrix and became the savior of all mankind, and in this one, he will have to return to his old business and make choices for the future again.
"Things have changed, the market is sluggish, and I'm sure you can understand why our beloved parent company, Warner Bros. Pictures, decided to make a sequel to the trilogy." This is the 19th minute of the opening of "The Matrix 4", Neo's dialogue with old rival Smith. There are many terriers of warners who spit on the main creator, such as "It's not that we want to shoot, it's Warner who forced us to shoot, otherwise we will cancel the contract", "What is the fourth part going to talk about?" "Whether there is a primitive team like us or not, we all have to shoot." "Since there are these "complaints", why do you still have to shoot? Director Lana Wachowski took her side to explain the idea, not least because she always thought the reboot was timely.
Why did you make The Matrix 4?
Neo and Trinity are reborn in the director's dream
From the release of "The Matrix 3: Matrix Revolution" in 2003 to the present, in the past 18 years, there has been news about the restart of this series, and it has also been hanging the appetite of fans of the film. At the end of The Matrix 3, Neo the Savior and Bug Smith the Matrix of the Matrix are both destroyed, heralding the end of the war between machines and humans, maintaining a superficial peace. In "The Matrix 4", the brief peace between man and machine ushered in a new revolution, and Neo, who was full of tubes, was reawakened.
Stills from The Matrix 4. Neo tries to cross in the mirror.
And this "awakening", outside the play, comes from Lana Wachowski's real experience. It can also be said that she began to be "reborn" in honor of her deceased parents. "When my sister Lily Wachowski and I finished filming the TV series Super Sense Hunt (2015), we both felt like we had a creative peak experience again. After that, Lily didn't want to continue making movies, so we decided to suspend our work on the film. It wasn't until my parents fell ill that my lover and I went back to Chicago to live with my parents, take care of them, and accompany them through the last few months of their lives. One night I woke up and suddenly fell into the great grief of the death of my parents, and my brain began to conceive a soothing story. One night after that, two dead characters, Neo and Trinity, were reborn in my sleep, and I woke up and immediately put the idea into action, went downstairs, and began to write the story of the dream. ”
Stills from The Matrix 4. Neo and Trinity returned hand in hand to fight side by side.
Lana Wachowski believes that the inspiration for her artistic creation originates from emotions, and even if she thinks rationally, these thoughts are also dominated by emotions: "I will have the desire to confide in others, and the impact on my career is becoming more and more obvious, such as the movie "Cloud Atlas" (2012) is a real breakthrough in my art, and the TV series "Super Sense Hunting" is the most autobiographical work I have created, that is the real me." 」 I wanted to bring the feel of these works to the Matrix trilogy, to give them a truly beautiful love, a human spirit of struggle, and the meaning of our lives. But I hope that after many years, I will be able to integrate into the Matrix series with more mature ideas, which is one of the reasons why I returned to The Matrix. ”
In addition to his own return, Lana Wachowski also believes that this is the best time for Reeves to play Neo again: "If he is too old to complete those action scenes, if he is too young, there will not be so much precipitation and resonance." 」 When he says lines like, 'I don't think everything I've done in my life matters,' these are the questions we're struggling with and thinking about right now. When you enter the next stage of life, you will start to think about what is real and what will make you better. ”
How to attract Keanu Reeves to return?
The director wrote him a very short but suspenseful letter
Keanu Reeves returns to The Matrix 4 from an email from Lana Wachowski with only one simple sentence: "How's it going?" I was thinking..." Reeves's reaction at the time was—"What?! The letter prompted an exchange between Reeves and Wachowski, who shared some of her recent experiences with Reeves and talked about what prompted her to create a new episode of The Matrix, recollected, "She asked me how I felt about it, and I just wanted to say it was great, especially to work with her on another Matrix. We've collaborated on the Matrix trilogy, and she's got a lot of new ideas this time, like she learned a lot about using natural light from john Thor, the director of photography she's been working with, so she used to be behind a monitor in the first three films, and now she's standing more next to the camera. As a filmmaker, her transformation is extraordinary, and what we see now is not only an artist's interest in natural light, but also a shift in her desire to be closer to the camera, to truly integrate with the camera, which I have never seen before. Do you know? In the past, we used to plan, rehearse, and shoot again, but now we prepare and start, and we learn in practice. ”
Lana Wachowski was filmed on location in The Matrix 4.
Reeves remembers that back in the filming of the first The Matrix (1999), the Wachowski sisters talked about the creation of the second. They described some imaginary bridges, and the entire story line of "The Matrix" was already in their minds. "As an actor, my character is well represented in the first three works of The Matrix, where Neo connects the real world and the matrix world, maintaining a balance between the human world and the machine world, and he is circling around in search of peace."
In addition to the character's personality accident, Reeves said, the factors that moved him back were Neo's love story with Trinity: "I think there's a wonderful combination between the two of them, they're very complementary in their minds and abilities, and when I'm shooting with Kerry-Ann, it feels like there's something beyond me, it's a huge sense of power, it feels like we're Neo and Trinity. In fact, I have been in contact with Kerry-Ann all these years, and she is a very good person. I remember when we first worked together, she wasn't married and had children, and we used to say hello in the morning, say "good morning" to each other, and then stretch, warm up and train together, and she would play some music to give people a relaxed and relaxed feeling. We support each other, sit together and talk about life, and I cherish the time I share with her. She has changed a lot when I see her again now, but her heart is always the same, just go and see how she expresses her heart, meet her children, her husband, her cool family to get to know her. There were a couple of scenes where Trinity and Thomas were drinking coffee, which was so touching for us that I needed to play the love between Neo and Trinity with her, and it touched us very much. ”
Carey-Ann Moss, Lana Wachowski and Keanu Reeves in an intimate conversation.
The Matrix 4 tidbits
1. A night drag racing scene through the city of San Francisco, the crew closed 12 blocks to complete the shooting.
Stills from The Matrix 4. Neo and Trinity raced alongside street racing.
2. The film was performed by a Red Rangers camera and a new Komodo camera, but when shooting one of the stunt shots, because one of the cameras was too close to the burning car, the fuselage melted, and it was fortunate that the memory card was successfully rescued to preserve this "hot" picture.
3. In The Matrix 4, Reeves and Kerry-Ann Moss leap down a 43-story, 172.2-meter-tall building on Montgomery Street in San Francisco, which Lana Wachowski chose because when the dawn sun illuminates it, the roof constructs a stunning picture of the seascape, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the city skyline.
4. Many of the fight scenes in the "The Matrix" series incorporate a lot of Chinese kung fu elements, which has become a major feature of the series. Stunt action director Jonathan Espio applied a lot of Chinese martial arts expressions to the "Matrix 4" action choreography this time, making the action more fluid, and when the grand fight scene gradually scaled to the two-person duel shot, the martial arts action was no longer just stiff and stylized, but both fast and smooth.
Stills from The Matrix 4. Neo and Morpheus kung fu duel.
5. During the filming of The Matrix 4 in Berlin, Keanu Reeves starred in the new film "Bill and Ted's Quest", and he chartered a show in the cinema to invite all the cast and crew of the crew to watch the movie.
6. In the film, Thomas Anderson and his colleagues often appear in a coffee shop called "Simulatte," which was rearranged by a juice shop called Joe and the Juice, whose logo was designed by Lana Wachowski herself.
Zhou Huixiaowan, a senior reporter of the Beijing News
Senior Editor Huang Jialing Proofreader Li Lijun