Garrett’s Grumblings – 08/26/2015 – Did ‘The Matrix’ Destroy The Wachowskis’ Careers?
1999 was one of the most abnormal years in cinematic history. After sixteen years of waiting, we were finally going to be given another Star Wars film. Yes, I was buying the magazines with Darth Maul on the cover. Yes, I was counting down from about 1995 on until we were to once again hear the Star Wars theme on the big screen. Yet, January 1999 rolls around, and something else was happening. I was in film school going over something called ‘film noir.’ My college professor had an interesting way of running her class. She would show us two films of of a genre, one old, one new, and then have us do papers about their similarities and differences. Getting back to our film noir lesson, on this particular day, we were once again shown two films. One was an old classic entitled Double Indemnity. Not to be a film snob, I just would like to say that I enjoyed this film, and recommend anyone take a look at it if they can. I revisit it from time to time just to see how good and ahead of her time Barbara Stanwyck was in her role.
However, as good as Double Indemnity was, it was the second film we were shown which really captured my attention. It was a little movie called Bound. Starring Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon, Bound is a stylish little thriller about two ‘roommates’ that get caught up in mobster money laundering. In addition to the wonderful chemistry between the two lead actresses, Bound worked due to its dark pallet and the stylish way the Wachowskis established its plot. After it was over and the credits rolled, I promised myself that I would keep an eye on what these two directors would do in the near future and beyond.
Turned out I wouldn’t wait long. Just two months later, The Matrix showed up. I do not think the wall this movie was against can be overstated. How Warner Brothers gave Andy and Larry Wachowski, the two directors of Bound and writers of Assassins, $70 million to make a steam punk/science fiction thriller, and then open it a mere two months before the brand new Star Wars film is mind boggling. Yet, against all odds, The Matrix set the box office on fire. As a franchise was getting ready to be renewed, a brand new one was surfacing. The Matrix would go on to make over $450 million, and the metaphorical bigtime career births of two science fiction directing icons, just like the in-movie birth of Keanu Reeves’ Neo character, was upon us. The huge feather in their cap-off would be when The Matrix bested Star Wars Episode I for the 1999 Best Special Effects Oscar. George Lucas, beat by two comic book/film geeks at his own game? Impossible.
The Matrix is an interesting commodity because it came at a time when its synergy never mattered more. Only in 1999 would the Wachowskis’ techno thriller been made as a pulse holder of Americana. A grand mixture of twenty plus years worth of influences, the storm it caused was hard to ignore. It would seem that the Wachowskis were going to be our new auteurs. Little by little, stories came out about how shy the two brothers -at this time- were around the press, and rumblings of a sequel to The Matrix started to surface. Even at this time, I was inclined to think about whether they would have been more happy doing low key thrillers than shouldering the pressure that comes with making a sequel to one of the most innovative science fiction films of our time.
In the years leading up to the sequel’s release, The Matrix was hard to ignore, as it once again seemingly aimed to take away Star Wars‘ thunder. Around 2001, one year from the release of Attack of the Clones, I remember going to doctors’ offices and seeing Time cover stories talking about not Star Wars, but the Matrix sequel’s progress, and how producer Joel Silver was saying he knows the two brothers were working hard to follow their film up in the best way possible. It was painfully obvious around this time that the Wachowskis were not prepared for the pressure their 1999 roll of the dice was bringing them. Sure, they could say they had a three film story in their minds the entire time -which they did when they came out of their caves to talk- but even Lucas didn’t know that Boba Fett was the basis of the clones when he did A New Hope. But whereas The Empire Strikes Back seemed like a natural progression for the Star Wars universe, where the hell could the Wachowskis go after showing their main character as powerful as a character could get? In the very last frame of The Matrix, Neo flies into the camera like Superman. So in essence, the Wachowskis had the same exact problems anyone who tells the Superman story has. How do they make an immortal hero interesting?
From what little I know of the Wachowskis, I can say this: they do not like living up to a quota. Some time into the making of The Matrix sequels, Larry’s marriage crumbled, and he ended up having a sex change, progressively changing his name to Lana. How could someone going through this kind of identity crisis -good for him for being happy, by the way- be expected to concentrate on living up to the potential goodness their now announced two sequels were to be? And truth be told, I can see a lot of the now named Lana’s personal crisis in their films, starting from Bound. Each and every film from Bound on deals with characters burdened with not one, but many kinds of identity crisis. These identity crises can also be construed as career crises. To say this personal change didn’t effect the making of the Matrix sequels would be monumentally naive.
The Star Wars comparisons would not end just in similarities in cinematic progression, however, as once The Matrix‘s two sequels were released, fan reaction was mixed at best. While I can be seen sticking up for the Star Wars prequels on an almost weekly basis here, I can definitely see where people are coming from when it comes to The Matrix sequels. Characters exist for no other reasons than to fulfill the Wachowski aesthetic, and by the time Revolutions‘ finale happens, the stakes involved in the overall story are less than filtered.
In fact, unfiltered is the perfect word to describe the Wachowski mandate. Hard nosed producer Joel Silver, for once true to his word, supposedly gave them free reign to make the movies they wanted to. This shift in power was detrimental to the sequels’ quality. It also affected their careers, as from V For Vendetta, to Speed Racer, all the way through this year’s Jupiter Ascending, it has been sad to see the two siblings who started off in little indie films been given the power and money to do what they want, and throw it all away in big budget disasters. Though I would bat for Vendetta.
Watching Ascending, I could not help but wonder how we got here. The Wachowskis, two geeks who sixteen years ago fulfilled their dreams of making films with all their favorite influences, were now pressured to make a brand new, Star Wars inspired franchise. But it is safe to say Jupiter Ascending is anything but. Would they have been better off doing more Bound type features, building a resume almost Tarantino style in the name of good filmmaking? It is a question to ponder, and I have a feeling with the failure of Ascending we will see them humbled. Call me crazy, but I look more forward to a grounded Wachowski picture than yet another venture into science fiction that has me metaphorically and metaphysically ask what if.
Believe it or not, this is the most I have looked forward to a Wachowski project since….1999.