Life with the Wachowskis

The Wachowski siblings are quite the elusive duo. As part of their contract with Warner Brother's for creating the second and third Matrix movies, they opted out of doing any sort of promotional-type advertising for the movies. They wanted the movies to speak for themselves. However, in typical Hollywood fashion (no, not that kind of fashion), just because they want privacy doesn't mean they get it.

Let's start at the beginning: comic book writing. Before writing screenplays these two were already busting out stories of alternate realities with the likes of Ectokid (who could see both the normal world and the Ectosphere realm where buildings are made of coral and unfriendly ghosts want to snack on his soul) and working construction or painting houses to earn a living. Soon after the comics they turned to cinema. They wrote Assassins before writing and directing Bound and The Matrix, the success of which pushed them into stardom.

Since The Matrix they have written and often directed a handful of other (mostly science fiction) movies like V for Vendetta, a live action version of Speed Racer, and an adaptation of the novel Cloud Atlas.

In addition to movies they've continued to write comic books and were also heavily involved in the video games that were based on The Matrix trilogy. Apparently the W's were quite avid gamers themselves. In their younger years they even wrote their own role-playing game.

Origins of the Matrix

The Wachowskis said they first conceived of The Matrix when considering the possibility of multiple and digital realities and thinking, "What if our world is a digital reality?" They were influenced by different anime they'd watched like Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, and Akira (source).

We'll get more into the philosophy behind the movie later, but it's worth saying that the Wachowskis were definitely influenced by texts like Out of Control, Evolutionary Psychology, and Simulacra and Simulation. Keanu Reeves states in Matrix Revisited that the Wachowskis had him read all these books carefully before even showing him the script. Needless to say, The Matrix's popularity is partly due to the fact it isn't just an action movie.

It's not just an action movie—but it is also completely an action movie. All of the crazy slow motion camera rotation freeze frame action sequences? Yeah, the Wachowskis had always admired Chinese action cinema and hired choreographer Yuen Woo-ping to help them perfect "wire fu" (which is just what it sounds like: actors doing kung fu assisted by wires that suspend them in the air).

It's this attention to filming full action sequences instead of using "clever" cuts to make the action appear more intense that really make The Matrix fight scenes pop.

As for the Wachowskis, they're still going at it full force and full sci-fi. With Jupiter Ascending and the Netflix series Sense8 they continue to prove that they are no mere '90s fad (like Orbitz, RIP). The future holds more Wachowski madness, guaranteed to blow us away.