[a] It is the first installment in the Matrix film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano, and depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality that intelligent machines have created to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source. They almost came to an arrangement where Weaving's scenes could be filmed later in the year "I thought we could have done my scenes in May, June and July," Weaving said but ultimately director Lana Wachowski decided it wasn't going to work. [13] Weaving filmed a guest role on Roxburgh's Australian TV series Rake in May 2010. Im asking for recs from people who have seen him in any of those movies so I dont have to watch every single one. (For instance, Agent Smith's motivations in "Resurrections" admittedly don't seem to make a ton of sense. For the franchise it initiated, see, Wonderland Magazine, February 2010, page 148, fourth highest-grossing film of that year, greatest science fiction films of all time, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, The Matrix: Original Motion Picture Score, The Matrix: Music from the Motion Picture, Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, List of accolades received by the Matrix franchise, Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The Matrix (franchise) Influences and interpretations, Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time, "The Matrix laid the template for the gritty, gravity-defying, self-seriously cerebral modern blockbuster", "The Matrix: No 13 best sci-fi and fantasy film of all time", "The Sci-Fi 25: The Genre's Best Since '82", "National Film Registry selects 25 films for preservation", "5 million-dollar mistakes by movie stars", "Will Smith Reveals He Turned Down the Matrix, and Here's Why", "Will Smith Snagged 'I Am Legend' From Schwarzenegger, But Can You Imagine Nicolas Cage In 'The Matrix'? Reeves trained hard and even requested training on days off. When The Matrix was released in 1999, it quickly became an absolute sensation at the box office and it had a huge impact on the pop culture landscape. That news left many disappointed fans wondering why that was the case. The film's incorporation of wire fu techniques, including the involvement of fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping and other personnel with a background in Hong Kong action cinema, affected the approaches to fight scenes taken by subsequent Hollywood action films,[180] moving them towards more Eastern approaches. He was the second of the three children in the family. When Neo refuses to cooperate, they fuse his mouth shut, pin him down, and implant a robotic "bug" in his stomach. Quite the opposite and at the time it was more surprising that he attached himself to this movie. "I was doing a play, at the time, but we were working out dates and things so that I could do both. When John Gaeta read the script, he pleaded with an effects producer at Mass.Illusion to let him work on the project, and created a prototype that led to him becoming the film's visual effects supervisor. Related: Why Agent Smith Saves Neo & Trinity From The Analyst. While that case proved to be rather acrimonious, as Weaving disliked his experience working with Marvel, that's thankfully not the case for his failure to appear in The Matrix Resurrections. Soon after, Neo is taken by Trinity to meet Morpheus, and she removes the bug from Neo. Not really true about reeves. [123][124] The Matrix also received BAFTA awards for Best Sound and Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects, in addition to nominations in the cinematography, production design and editing categories. According to William Irwin this is Kantian, because the machines wished to impose a perfect world on humans in an attempt to keep people content, so that they would remain completely submissive to the machines, both consciously and subconsciously, but humans were not easy to make content. [167], In a 2016 GLAAD Media Awards speech, Lilly Wachowski said: "Theres a critical eye being cast back on Lana and I's (sic) work through the lens of our transness. Born in Colonial Nigeria to English parents, he has resided in Australia for the entirety of his career. [38] He has been in a relationship with Katrina Greenwood since 1984;[39] they live in Sydney and have two children together: Harry Greenwood, an actor, and Holly Greenwood, an artist. Hugo Weaving has played an almost absurd number of memorable characters in big-budget blockbusters over the years, but his role in the first three "Matrix" movies rises above them all. The world in 1999 was far from a utopia, but still humans accepted this over the suffering-less utopia. However, the surgery still made him unable to kick for two out of four months of training. He starred opposite Nicole Kidman in the 1989 TV mini-series Bangkok Hilton. Just RAN out of a lunch date. In addition to Wachowski, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss returned to star as Neo and Trinity, respectively, despite their seeming death at the end of Revolutions. The fight scenes in Fist of Legend led to the hiring of Yuen as fight choreographer. - March 27, 2022 05:09 pm EDT. [49] During the scene set on a government building rooftop, the team filmed extra footage of Neo dodging bullets in case the bullet time process did not work. Ultimately, we talked about it and when the offer came through to do it for Warners I said yes the next day and I talked to Lana. Whatever the case, it might be for the best Weaving isn't returning for The Matrix 4. His most notable film roles include Agent Smith in the first three The Matrix films (19992003), Elrond in The Lord of the Rings (20012003) and The Hobbit (20122014) trilogies, the title character in V for Vendetta (2005), and Johann Schmidt / Red Skull in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). Ive hung out with them all over the world for many, many years. [122] The filmmakers were competing against other films with established franchises, like Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, yet they won all four of their nominations. He is the recipient of six Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards (AACTA) and has also been recognised as an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia. [125] In 1999, it won Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. After Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the president of production of the company at the time, read the script, he decided to buy rights to it and included two more pictures, Bound and The Matrix, in the contract. Besides Neo and Trinity, several other notable characters came back from prior Matrix films for The Matrix Resurrections, mostly played by their original actors. The film also had the second-highest opening weekend for a spring starter film, trailing only behind Liar Liar. [145][146] Mitsuhisa Ishikawa of Production I.G, which produced Ghost in the Shell, noted that the anime's high-quality visuals were a strong source of inspiration for the Wachowskis. [199] On August 20, 2019, Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich officially announced that a fourth Matrix film was in the works, with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss set to reprise their roles as Neo and Trinity respectively. It reminded me of those 80s sci-fi horror movies. It's on the same level of weird as bringing back Morpheus (sort of) without Laurence Fishburne: not necessarily bad, but there's gonna need to be a good in-movie explanation for this decision. For sure! In 1998, he received the "Best Actor" award from the Montreal World Film Festival for his performance as a suspected serial killer in The Interview. Hugo Weaving Wasn't Totally Sold On The Matrix Resurrections Script, But That's Not Why He Isn't In The Movie. [51] During the rehearsal of the lobby scene, in which Trinity runs on a wall, Moss injured her leg and was ultimately unable to film the shot in one take. ", "Philip K. Dick's dark dreams still fodder for films", "AUTHOR Philip K. Dick "We are living in a computer-programmed reality, "Did Philip K. Dick disclose the real Matrix in 1977? Or was this purely from the casting director? The film is known for popularizing a visual effect[72] known as "bullet time", which allows a shot to progress in slow-motion while the camera appears to move through the scene at normal speed. [35] The success of The Matrix created high demand for those choreographers and their techniques from other filmmakers, who wanted fights of similar sophistication: for example, wire work was employed in X-Men (2000)[180] and Charlie's Angels (2000),[178] and Yuen Woo-ping's brother Yuen Cheung-yan was choreographer on Daredevil (2003). The first movie the Wachowskis directed, Bound, then became a critical success. [16] Weaving completed filming his role on the project in September 2010 and returned to Sydney to prepare for Uncle Vanya. The reason for that is the actor who portrayed Tank in The Matrix wanted too much money to return for the sequels. No one accepted the program. Hugo Weaving says he received an offer to reprise his role as Agent Smith for The Matrix 4, but scheduling conflicts prevented him from accepting. Neo wakes up from what he believes to be a nightmare. She flees, pursued by the police and a group of suited Agents capable of similar superhuman feats. He later reprised that role in the film's 2003 sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. And. Additionally, Neil Patrick Harris played a new character in The Matrix Resurrections and Yahya Abdul Mateen II took over portraying Morpheus. The Lord of the Rings and Captain America star Hugo Weaving has revealed why he did not return as Agent Smith for The Matrix 4. The Matrix Resurrections is a 2021 American science fiction action film produced, co-written, and directed by Lana Wachowski, and being the first in Matrix franchise to be directed solely by Lana, without her sister, Lilly. [46], Kym Barrett, costume designer, said that she defined the characters and their environment by their costume. [53], The filmmakers originally planned to shoot the subway scene in an actual subway station, but the complexity of the fight and related wire work required shooting the scene on a set. My mining for Hugo Weaving info would certainly benefit from my own research, but Im having some wine on a Friday and putting my HBOMax subscription to work. We'll just have to wait until December 24 to find out. The photo-realistic surroundings generated by this method were incorporated into the bullet time scene,[76] and algorithms based on optical flow were used to interpolate between the still images to produce a fluent dynamic motion;[77][78] the computer-generated "lead in" and "lead out" slides were filled in between frames in sequence to get an illusion of orbiting the scene. 4 Hugo Weaving: $30 MillionHowever, it isn't just The Lord of the Rings where Weaving has made his money, as the veteran actor has appeared in countless major movies such as The Matrix, Captain America: First Avenger, and V For Vendetta. Interview Hugo Weaving: 'I can't get up in front of an audience. The franchise has also inspired books and theories expanding on some of the religious and philosophical ideas alluded to in the films. Sadly, that doesn't look to be the case for the eagerly-anticipated film set to arrive next month. Where Did Yahya Abdul Mateen II Go To School And Is He An Alpha? The Matrix draws from and alludes to numerous cinematic and literary works, and concepts from mythology, religion and philosophy, including the ideas of Buddhism, Christianity, Gnosticism, Hinduism, and Judaism. So when we first learned that Weaving wouldn't be returning to the fourth film, "The Matrix Resurrections," it made sense. I have SO many thoughts and so many questions and maybe well get to some more, but one of the first things I want to know is: what are the great roles Hugo Weaving performed prior to landing Agent Smith in The Matrix? For example, after Jessica Henwick already showed up in Star Wars and the MCU, she joined the cast of The Matrix Resurrections as the character Bugs. [104] Following re-releases, the worldwide gross of the film is $466,621,824. Pure, unadulterated luck. [20] In April, months of speculation finally ended when Weaving appeared on The Hobbit's New Zealand set, shortly before a production spokesman officially confirmed the actor's return as Elrond in Peter Jackson's prequel trilogy to The Lord of the Rings. Smith, of course, was introduced in the original Matrix as one of the "Agent" programs tasked with preventing humans from escaping the simulated reality (aka. [10] At Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received a score of 73 based on 35 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews. [69] For Trinity, Barrett experimented with how each fabric absorbed and reflected different types of light, and was eventually able to make Trinity's costume mercury-like and oil-slick to suit the character. Check out Waits on one of the late night shows in the 70s). To prepare for the wire fu, the actors had to train hard for several months. It also led to the development of "Universal Capture", a process which samples and stores facial details and expressions at high resolution. From the moment he steps on screen, Agent Smith is a force to be reckoned with. [101] It was also ranked number one at the box office ahead of Forces of Nature. [69] For example, Reeves's office costume was designed for Thomas Anderson to look uncomfortable, disheveled, and out of place. In a nutshell, that's what happened." The original Tron (1982) paved the way for The Matrix, and The Matrix, in turn, inspired Disney to make its own Matrix with a Tron sequel, Tron: Legacy (2010). Actor Hugo Weaving was noticeably absent from the latest Matrix Resurrections movie. [113] Comparisons have also been made to Grant Morrison's comic series The Invisibles, with Morrison describing it in 2011 as "(it) seemed to me (to be) my own combination of ideas enacted on the screen". In 1994, the Wachowskis presented the script for the film Assassins to Warner Bros. Pictures. In addition, the Matrix scenes' sets were slightly more decayed, monolithic, and grid-like, to convey the cold, logical and artificial nature of that environment. Weaving played a supporting role in Joe Johnston's 2010 remake of the 1941 film The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro. Most of the time when schedules dont match up initially, movie productions get pushed back to accommodate all of the films stars. Um, yeah. A four-month course, nine to five Mondays through . [14] In 2009, the film was ranked 39th on Empire's reader-, actor- and critic-voted list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". The scene in which Neo fell into the sewer system concluded the principal photography. [117] Simon Pegg said that The Matrix provided "the excitement and satisfaction that The Phantom Menace failed to inspire. The two sides entered into negotiations to try to make The Matrix Resurrections' schedule work out so that Weaving could do both projects, but, according to Weaving, Wachowski proved unwilling to accommodate the dates Weaving wanted. He regularly appears in productions by the Sydney Theatre Company (STC). Because the cameras circle the subject almost completely in most of the sequences, computer technology was used to edit out the cameras that appeared in the background on the other side. After all, practically everything about The Matrix Resurrections didnt work. Hugo Weaving was born on April 4, 1960, in Nigeria, to English parents Anne and Wallace Weaving. Neo was the Chosen One, and his brief infusion with Smith at the end of the Matrix was enough to make the Agent much more powerful and much more intelligent. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. "Out of The Matrix came V for Vendetta, which was an absolute joy to make in Berlin. The group enters the Matrix to visit the Oracle, a prophet-like program who predicted that the One would emerge. He also loves both Marvel and DC movies, and wishes every superhero fan could just get along. [86] The Ultimate Matrix Collection was released on HD DVD on May 22, 2007[83] and on Blu-ray on October 14, 2008. His non-appearance in them has also been noted: after. If Weaving had been in the role, we'd have all known straight away that Neo's boss was actually Agent Smith, but because it's Jonathon Groff playing the guy, the movie gets to have fun keeping the reveal under wraps for at least a little bit. Why Hugo Weaving Wasn't in 'The Matrix: Resurrections', Everything Leaving Netflix in January 2023, 'White Men Can't Jump' Star Sinqua Walls on Being 'Grateful' for Working on New Sports Film (Exclusive), Channing Tatum Plans to Remake Classic Romance Movie, Gina Lollobrigida, Italian Movie Star, Dead at 95, Colin Farrell and Brendon Gleeson Are Both Sick Following Golden Globes, How Reese Witherspoon Feels About the 'Legally Blonde' Scene in 'Wednesday', 'X-Men' Star Now Engaged to Girlfriend of 8 Years, 'Witch Mountain' Disney+ Show: What to Know. Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss portrayed Neo and Trinity, respectively, in all three chapters of the film series, each of which were directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski. [46] According to The Art of the Matrix, at least one filmed scene and a variety of short pieces of action were omitted from the final cut of the film. Weaving and Cate Blanchett reprised their roles in STC's internationally lauded production of Uncle Vanya for a ten-day run at New York's Lincoln Center in July. The method of using real photographs of buildings as texture for 3D models eventually led the visual effect team to digitize all data, such as scenes, characters' motions and expressions. Giger was also recognized. Writer of all things that involve them! I immediately responded yes to that, and then we went into negotiation. [26] He appeared in a segment of the Australian anthology film The Turning, based on Tim Winton's collection of linked stories, entitled "The Commission", directed by David Wenham. Hes got plenty of movies prior, a lot of which I havent seen. [25] Weaving had to undergo hip surgery after he sustained an injury during the training process. Hugo Weaving stars in a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. [171][172] It was also the defining game mechanic of the game Superhot and its sequels. Worldwide, it was the fourth highest-grossing film of the year, after Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, The Sixth Sense and Toy Story 2. Is Hugo Weaving in 'The Matrix 4'? This was also only the 3rd film for the Wachowskis. He appeared as Sir John in Yahoo Serious's 1993 comedy Reckless Kelly, a lampoon of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. Interesting trivia about lots of the bit parts in that film with aus/nwz ties. [25], Yuen let their body style develop and then worked with each actor's strength. This film was considered a risk and many, many actors turned down roles, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith, Nicolas Cage, Brad Pitt, David Duchovny, Val Kilmer, Sandra Bullock, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Beals and Gillian Anderson. The Animatrix was overseen and approved by the Wachowskis, who only wrote four of the segments themselves but did not direct any of them; much of the project was developed by notable figures from the world of anime.[198]. He played the role of the Elf-lord Elrond of Rivendell in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001 - 2003) and later The Hobbit film trilogy (2012 - 2014). Absolute joy to make in Berlin 2010 remake of the bit parts in that film aus/nwz. Pursued by the police and a group of suited Agents capable of superhuman! She removes the bug from Neo who have seen him in any of movies... Asking for recs from people who have seen him in any of those movies so dont... A nutshell, that 's Not Why he is n't in the films Waits on one of the films return! Came V for Vendetta, which was an absolute joy to make in Berlin starter film trailing... Led to the hiring of Yuen as fight choreographer the films also ranked number one at the box office of. Hugo Weaving stars in a modern adaptation of Shakespeare & # x27 ; t get up in of. 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I dont have to wait until December 24 to find out that, and wishes every superhero fan could get., to English parents Anne and Wallace Weaving Awards for Best Science Fiction film and Best Direction he appeared Sir. Neo wakes up from what he believes to be a nightmare I havent seen the actors had to train for. Wallace Weaving to be the case for the eagerly-anticipated film set to arrive next month requested training on days.. That the Phantom Menace failed to inspire practically everything about the Matrix V! Lot of which I havent seen the wire fu, the actors had to hip. After, Neo is taken by Trinity to meet Morpheus, and then worked each! ] in 1999 was far from a utopia, but still humans accepted this over the world for many many.