The Matrix is a remix

Everything is a Remix, the short video series previously featured here, is back with a new installment on The Matrix, in which Rob Grigsby Wilson and his friends trace the influences, lifts, cribs, and sneaks that went into the Wachowskis's "original" movie.

(via Neatorama)

Everything Is A Remix: THE MATRIX [vimeo.com]

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Alex Petrovich

Cyberpunk FTW!
Craig Duffy

Well duh- every work, every movie, every book, painting, etc. has influences from previous creators.
http://nefariousnewt.blogspot.com NefariousNewt

This series is amazing in its depth and detail. Reminds me — to a degree — of James Burke’s Connections series.
http://twitter.com/Caspianroach Caspian Roach

Damn this made me want to re-watch the Matrix movie. You know, the only one that was good.
- flosofl
  
  You say that like there were others…
Roshan Abraham

Craig–I think that’s why it’s called “EVERYTHING is a remix?”
zaptrashmasher

I want to see this done with porn.
trefecta

Dark City.
Guido

I loved it, but a comment to the authors: Add subtitles or mute the soundtrack while Dick is talking. I am not a native English speaker and his words are hard to understand. I guess that people with hearing impairment, even if native speakers, have the same issue.
http://twitter.com/maglev375 MAG LEV

been following each instalment of Everything is a Remix, it’s first-class work and I’ll bet it’s shown in media studies groups for years to come
AviSolomon

Apparently, some French TV channel has the full recording of PKD’s speech at Metz:
http://www.archive.org/details/PhilipKDickSpeechExcerpts
http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Holmen/562023961 Robert Holmén

A funnier idea would be to link things that are obviously not influences on the matrix but appear similar. Like when the bullets make the water spikes shoot into the air… imply that was ripped off from Liberace’s Dancing Waters act in Las Vegas.

Or when Keanu twirls thru the air in sloooo-motion… imply that’s ripped off from the old NASA footage of a cat in zero-G.
wylkyn

I still don’t understand why the machines didn’t just use cows as batteries. All the matrix would have had to be was an endless field of grass, and you wouldn’t have to worry about a bovine Neo leading any rebellions. Stupid machines.
- Mark Dow
  
  Animal Farm remix.
- jackbird
  
  I believe I heard somewhere that the humans were more like-co-processors than batteries (since humans are net-negative energy-wise, they’d make a terrible power source); but the script didn’t want to confuse moviegoers too badly until the sequels.
snakedart

The Matrix with a bovine Neo leading a cow revolution? I would pay to see that movie.
- http://twitter.com/Elissa_Malcohn Elissa Malcohn
  
  Not Neo. Yvonne.
  http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/08/29/140036762/freedom-for-yvonne-germanys-runaway-cow-search-called-off
  She’s since been captured:
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14761713
- raines
  
  Close, but not quite: http://www.themeatrix.com/
- KanedaJones
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4zlufbOFOo
  
  There you go.
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

Ha, wasn’t expecting Tom Baker to show up in there! Less surprised that in the Seventies Whoverse, the Matrix turns out to be a quarry!
- Felton / Moderator
  
  Same here! It’s always nice to see Tom Baker, of course.
  - http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch
    
    I love Tom Baker. He has one of the most awesome voices this side of Orson Welles.
- freddiefreelance
  
  Most of the universe, throughout all space & time, shown in the ’70s Whoverse turns out to look a lot like Welsh gravel pits…
  - regeya
    
    Much like Stargate: SG1, where most planets either resembled the northwestern rainforest, or a rock quarry.
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/ziccup akbar56
    
    and that reminds me of my favorite Who joke:
    
    Why do all these alien races always want to take over earth? Have you seen the rest of the universe? It’s a gravel pit!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Aaron-Wallace/513446402 Aaron Wallace

These are a lot of the fight choreographers movies, shocker there, And if you didn’t get that the matrix was an american Wuxia, WHOA. Also PKD was a luminary figure in Science Fiction especially dealing with issues surrounding perception of reality (having an intense meth habit will do that to you), but yeah welcome to modern literary crit, context matters. Lulz.

But I have to give mad props to theose video editors if a picture is worth a thousand words, whats a moving picture worth?
- http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
  
  [...] if a picture is worth a thousand words, whats a moving picture worth?
  
  The Cinema is truth 1000 words-per-second. —Robert Godard
- http://devojane.blogspot.com devophill
  
  what’s a moving picture worth?
  
  24,000 words per second and up.
Eric Smith

Um… gee, the Wachowski Brothers watched a whole lot of great Asian action flix, read great science fiction and watched the same anime millions of Japanese did. It influenced them and they went on to make cinematic history with the greatest action movie ever made. Your point is?
Bucket

Wait just a gosh darn minute there.

Most of the non-matrix fight scenes they showed were choreographed by Woo-ping Yuen. You know, the fight choreographer for ‘The Matrix’.
It’s like claiming Vincent Van Gogh remixed Vincent Van Gogh paintings.

Of course, Vinny made like a million paintings of that one vase of sunflowers, so I suppose it’s an apt comparison.
Space Zombie

Rob Wilson is a very up and coming talent in Hollywood. Keep an eye on him. Great guy and super talented.

-Not written by Rob Wilson, but someone who has worked with him.
digi_owl

The allegory of the cave, just shows how old the issue of “what is real” is…
jmdaly

I think they missed a couple whether it was a direct influence or not. For instance, Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville, where the protagonist battles an evil master control program who controls the minds of entire city supposedly located in space, or how about Forbidden Planet, where an entire population has turned themselves into pure energy and are stored within giant towers similar somewhat to those in the matrix.

I second the Bucket’s point about the choreography being woo-ping doing his thing, not necessarily the brothers copying an exterior force.
- http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch
  
  Think Alphaville might be a bit of a stretch. Anyway, that movie sucks. Godard got away with murder on the back of being Godard.
  - jmdaly
    
    uh… incorrect. That movie rules, as does any movie does which has executions performed by people being machine gunned off of diving platforms and then stabbed to death by synchronized swimmers.
- Donald Petersen
  
  I suppose it was too recent to have directly influenced The Matrix story-wise, since it was released just the year before, but as trefecta mentions above, Alex Proyas’ Dark City is thematically a very similar movie, with ordinary human beings obliviously living in a constructed, fake reality for the edification of their sinister masters (computer programs in The Matrix, alien beings in Dark City). And both tell the story of how the illusion is broken and the shackles of the helpless denizens thrown off through the efforts of a hero who adopts the powers of the villains and uses those powers against them.
  
  Roger Ebert had this to say: “I believe more than ever that “Dark City” is one of the great modern films. It preceded “The Matrix” by a year (both films used a few of the same sets in Australia), and on a smaller budget, with special effects that owe as much to imagination as to technology, did what “The Matrix” wanted to do, earlier and with more feeling.”
  - Jeb Adams
    
    Exactly right–as I watched THE MATRIX I was thinking how this is an incredibly cool action movie version of DARK CITY. Instantaneous learning, powers to warp “reality” which is not as it seems, everyone a victim, reluctant messiah, guiding mentor–sacrified! And so on.
    - CC
      
      But did you know that the rooftop scenes of The Matrix were shot on the sets from Dark City?
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/ziccup akbar56
    
    For all those claiming ‘Dark City’ was in itself such an original piece, check out the anime called “Uresei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer” for a bit of eye opening perspective.
Will Traxler

Actually the Wachowskis openly admitted to copying from ghost in the shell. So much so that they handed their producer a copy of the DVD and said “MAKE IT LOOK LIKE THIS”
yupgiboy

Everything now is influenced by everything previous? Ya don’t say…
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000829065733 Jon Sowden
  
  Yes, but the people who really need to know and understand that – you know; the people who make movies – seem to have developed an aggressive case of wilful ignorance in that regard.
http://twitter.com/peteyjlawson Pete Lawson

You could also buy a copy of the first Invisbles trade paperback, cut the panels up and rearrange them to storyboard large parts of the Matrix. They really borrowed from it LOTS…
http://twitter.com/mankoeponymous Manko Eponymous

How about the scene in Calder’s 1990 “Dead Boys/Dead Girls/Dead Things” where the characters are told they’re living inside a computer simulation called The Matrix?
John Ohno

Why am I the first one to notice that the embedded video is OpSeattle protests and not an embed of the Everything Is A Remix vimeo video?
http://twitter.com/lummy_al lummy_al

The guys openly show you their influences. They never claimed the ideas were original. There are whole books about their influences, and the DVD “The Origin of The Matrix” looks at these.
Eddie K

When I found out the large, green, hollowed out book at the beginning of The Matrix was real (Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard) and an important influence on the movie I immediately made a trip into Denver to visit the wonderful Tattered Cover Bookstore to grab a copy. The librarian looking lady helping me find it went right to the “Critical Theory” shelf and handed me a smallish white paperback. When I commented that it seemed smaller and lighter than I imagined she looked at me over the top of her reading glasses and said, “I think you’ll find it’s heavy enough”.
- Eric Smith
  
  If you failed to immediately ask her out, you are insane.
Mister44

The Remix series is awesome. Everything is built on top of something else. Sort of how you find ancient Rome under the cobblestone streets.

Coincidentally, I just had a dream last night where I was explaining the series to someone.
regeya

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_01_28_archive.asp#90244012
saint242

As some people in the video comments have noted… many of those kung fu movies were directed by Yuen Woo-Ping. Who also did the fight choreography for The Matrix. So of course they look alike.
- mat catastrophe
  
  I love how it took almost 20 hours for someone to point this out.
http://twitter.com/muddi900 muddi900

Well calling the fight scenes “cribs” is a bit unfair, since Yuen Wo Ping choreographed all of them.
http://twitter.com/gordonjcp gordonjcp

The story is a straight lift of the plot line of Mainframe’s concept album, “Tenants of the Lattice-Work”. The name is even similar.
RobDobbs

I’m pretty sure the whole goal of The Matrix was to do exactly what this video “Reveals” They set out to take all of the cool bits they’ve seen scattered throughout pop-culture and put it into a single movie – or 3, whatev – and they did it. Intentionally.