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Production

Development

The Wachowski brothers, Larry and Andy, grew up reading comic books, Philip K. Dick novels, as well as watching kung fu films, John Woo movies and anime. Their spec scripts and comics reflected "our main goal [which] was to make an intellectual action movie. We like action movies, guns and kung fu, but we're tired of assembly-line action movies that are devoid of any intellectual content. We were determined to put as many ideas into the movie as we could, and purposefully set out to try to put images up on the screen that people haven't ever seen before." He added with the idea "every single fiber of reality is actually a simulation created in a digital universe" allowed one to "really push the boundaries of what may be humanly and visually possible". The story would be a "journey of consciousness", and is comparable to a superhero's origin story.

The Wachowskis pitched their script, but many studio executives did not understand it. In 1994, Warner Bros. chief executive officer Lorenzo di Bonaventura read the Wachowskis' script for Assassins and signed a three-picture deal with them.. Both Bonaventura and Joel Silver loved The Matrix trilogy draft; even though he did not understand the story beyond the first forty or so pages, Bonaventura said "I knew if I was going to make a leap of faith, this was the one to make." However, he felt the brothers should see how successful the first film would be before filming all three movies. He also was concerned that they had never directed a film, so he advised they film Bound (1996) first.

The brothers enlisted storyboarders to help the producers understand their vision. Larry said "We don't really like the way conventional storyboards are done. Instead, we brought in some friends of ours to draw out every single action beat, visual moment and stylistic shot in the film. Then, for months, we pored over every frame, exploring how to attack each shot. This also allowed us to be very specific, in terms of the budgeting and visual-effects requirements." The brothers acted out scenes and suggested camera angles to help the storyboarders understand what to sketch. In mid-1997, Bonaventura announced a US$60 million budget and Australia as the shooting location for the film.

Design

The Wachowskis gathered colleagues from the comic book industry (including Geof Darrow) to spend a year creating concept art. Darrow impressed the filmmakers with his "insanely" detailed drawings machinery. He spent much time designing the Sentinels, after the Wachowskis rejected his and other artists' early designs.

Cinematographer Bill Pope (who shot Bound for the Wachowskis as they loved his work on the comic bookish Army of Darkness) believed he was hired as he was a comic book reader and understood styles they would be replicating. During their meeting, Pope noticed a copy of Frank Miller's Sin City, so he asked, "'Is that what you want the film to look like?' We were all impressed by Miller's use of high-contrast, jet-black areas in the frame to focus the eye, and his extreme stylization of reality." The Wachowskis made the Matrix and the real world distinct in coloring: the real world is blue-tinted, while the Matrix is green for unsettling effect. Pope used green filters and color grading to create this. When shooting scenes in the real world, he used long lenses to make the backgrounds look soft, which emphasized the actors in the foreground.

Yuen Woo-ping choreographed the action sequences because the Wachowskis love Hong Kong action cinema, and also find the wire fu safe, graceful and surreal — perfect for their vision. "[Hong Kong films are] miles ahead of American action films in terms of the kind of excitement that the action brings to the story," Larry said. "American filmmakers have gotten to the point where they create their fights in the editing room. [...] There's a bunch of quick cuts – bam! bam! bam! – and then it's over; the fighting never involves the audience on a story level. Hong Kong action directors actually bring narrative arcs into the fights, and tell a little story within the fighting." Wo Ping usually choses camera angles for his action scenes, so the Wachowskis allowed him to choreograph the action and camera angles with their own. He trained the cast for six months in Los Angeles, California in late 1997 Australia, as the Wachowskis felt having the actors perform the stunts made the story more believable. Yuen was unfamiliar with western practices and felt two months was adequate enough to train the cast, but he realized he definitely needed at least four months to prepare them after their first session.

Kym Barrett designed the costumes, which had to look cool but also be practical. She created a stretchy version of each costume to wear when the actors were being held in harnesses, and versions which hid body armor for scenes involving fake bullets.

Filming

Sydney was selected as the shooting location as it was cheap to film in. On their first day of filming, the cast and crew held a Buddhist ceremony to bless the shoot. To film Neo and Morpheus walking in a training simulation, many twins and triplets were cast as extras to convey deja vu.

Warner Bros. were hands off during the shoot, and did not object when the shooting schedule rose from 90 days to 118: after seeing eight minutes from the first month of filming, they increased the number of effects shots from 200 to 415, adding $4 million to the budget. "A lot of times studio executives get uptight because we don't understand why [the filmmakers] are doing something," said Bonaventura. "We understood." The second unit also shot for 90 days.

Bill Pope found filming in Sydney difficult. "We were on this rooftop, and every day you'd have to get up [there]. It's not like L.A., where buildings have helicopter pads. There was just a single-file staircase and a narrow pathway and swinging cranes. It's raining, it's not raining, the wind is blowing in gale force, then it's not blowing. The logistics were incredible." After forty days of exterior rooftop filming, the crew moved indoors. After filming, the Wachowskis took a break, returned in November 1998, and edited the film until a week of its US release.

Effects

Major visual effects companies turned down the film, leading to the hiring of Manex Visual Effects (led by John Gaeta) as well as the Sydney-based Dfilm Services and Animal Logic. Together they created 500 visual effects shots. Manex created the entirely digital environment of the human fetus farm and the energy plant, To create the virtual landscapes, photographs of cities were cleaned and combined, before having motion blurs, lens distortion and grain added to seamlessly match camera moves. Gaeta noted "the scenes that depict virtual reality were created using the techniques that I think are going to be at the core of virtual reality". The older effect of rear view projection was used for the car journey to the Oracle's apartment, to convey the falseness of the Matrix once Neo returns.

For slow motion shots, cameras that photographed 300 frames per second were used. The moment when the simulation of the Matrix slows down as an Agent was filmed by photographing 96 frames per second.

Gaeta began work on the bullet time shots in 1996 by creating a digital shot of a person avoiding an exploding trash can.

Cast

Keanu Reeves as Neo / Thomas A. Anderson: Before Reeves was approached in June 1997, Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Brad Pitt were among possibilities for the character. DiCaprio and Pitt were uninterested in making a special effects-film, having starred in Titanic and Cool World respectively. Smith felt he "would have messed it up", while Nicolas Cage had "family obligations". Johnny Depp was not interested, while Ewan McGregor was also a favorite of the Wachowskis. David Duchovny turned down the part to star in The X-Files film. Casting Reeves was a risk for the project, as many felt the actor's star profile faded after Speed. Reeves identified with Neo as, "He feels something's wrong. He doesn't trust what's around him, so he removes himself from the world and is seeking his answer kind of monastically." He was required to read Simulacra and Simulation, Out of Control and Introducing Evolutionary Psychology before he was given the script.

Reeves began training with a neck brace following surgery for a herniated disc weeks beforehand. This caused trouble for his legs, which restricted the amount of kicking he could do. He was dedicated enough to work on his martial arts on Sundays. His neck did not fuse when filming began, so the shoot had to be arranged for him to film quieter scenes first. A prosthetic was applied over Reeves' mouth for Neo's interrogation, meaning he had to communicate by writing for five hours. His first stunt involved kicking two SWAT agents simultaneously on the rooftop, which required thirty takes to satisfy the directors. The bullet dodge shot was done practically, and it was difficult for Reeves because he found the wires holding him in place clunky.

Reeves was paid US$10 million, and also given a share of the gross.

• Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus: Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones and Liam Neeson were also considered. Fishburne said he was not confused by the script. Yuen commented Fishburne enjoyed jumping, which was incorporated into his stunts.

• Carrie Anne Moss as Trinity: Jada Pinkett Smith and Gina Gershon also auditioned. Smith was later cast as Niobe in the sequels. Moss said it took her a while to read the script. Her three-hour audition consisted of performing stunts, so she was prepared for the six months of training.

She sprained her ankle while performing a cartwheel during the start of filming. She learned to pilot a helicopter for key shots.

• Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith: Weaving found Smith an amusing character, and strove to give his American accent a neutral feel reminiscent of a 1950s news reader. Fishburne said it was modeled after Walter Cronkite, but other crew members joked Weaving picked up the accent from the Chicago-born Wachowskis. Weaving began experiencing hip pain after two days of stunt training, and surgery was performed on it in January 1998. After recovering, Weaving hurt his wrist and cracked two ribs during filming. "At that point," he said, "I thought, 'Oh, who cares?'"

• Joe Pantoliano as Cypher: Another freed by Morpheus, he betrays the Nebuchadnezzar's crew to the Agents to ensure his return to the Matrix because "Ignorance is bliss."
• Julian Arahanga as Apoc: A freed human and crew member on the Nebuchadnezzar.
• Anthony Ray Parker as Dozer: A "natural" human, with no plugs for the Matrix, and pilot of the Nebuchadnezzar.
• Marcus Chong as Tank: Dozer's brother, operates the training simulation, also a "natural" human and operator of the Nebuchadnezzar.
• Matt Doran as Mouse: A freed human and programmer on the Nebuchadnezzar.
• Gloria Foster as the Oracle: Exiled program who still resides in the Matrix, helping the freed humans with her foresight and wisdom.
• Belinda McClory as Switch: A human freed by Morpheus and crew member of the Nebuchadnezzar.
• Paul Goddard as Agent Brown: One of two sentient "Agent" programs in the Matrix who work with Agent Smith to destroy Zion and stop humans escaping the system.
• Robert Taylor as Agent Jones: Second sentient "Agent" program.

Release

Warners pushed forward the release date to avoid Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The filmmakers took advantage of the complex plot by using the tagline, "You can't be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it." The marketing was relatively large for a pre-May film, and it even involved moving the Nebuchanezzar set from Sydney to LA for press interviews.

The Matrix received generally favorable reviews from film critics, with a general consensus forming that it presented an "ingenious" blend of Hong Kong action cinema, innovative visual effects and an imaginative vision. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, with an average score of 7.4/10, based upon a sample of 120 reviews. The site reported that 68% of selected notable critics gave the film a positive review, based upon a sample of 28. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 73 upon its DVD release, based on 35 reviews.

It became the first film to sell more than a million copies on DVD.

When asked about its similarities with Dark City, director Alex Proyas replied "They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery."

Themes

Neo is comparable to Jesus because he is killed by Agent Smith, but is miraculously resurrected and becomes more powerful. The final shot in the film mirrors the ascension. The red pill, which awakens those trapped in the Matrix, can also be interpreted as a reference to red wine drunk during the Eucharist. Neo's name is similar to the Greek word neos, meaning newly-born or new, but is also an anagram of the "One", whom he is prophesised to be. The word Christ also translates into Hebrew as "Anointed One".

Morpheus and Cypher are comparable to John the Baptist and Judas respectively. Morpheus is named after Greek god of sleep, which is appropriate as he is the one who awakens Neo from the dream world of the Matrix. Other names include Morpheus' ship the Nebuchadnezzar, after the Babylonian king; the rebel city, Zion, is also a term for the Holy Land; and the Oracle references the Pythia in Delphi. The Pythia had the inscription "Know thyself" atop their temple's entrance, which the Oracle has on a plaque above her kitchen door.