Made In Hollywood

Two weeks after the Super Bowl, The Matrix released the main character posters, designed entirely according to Duke's ideas. Besides having to be "cool to the extreme," they also incorporated elements of cyberpunk culture. By March, Warner Brothers, in collaboration with Silicon Valley and related forum websites, hosted a cyberpunk cultural exhibition in San Diego, during which the first official trailer for The Matrix was shown.

What is another major characteristic of The Matrix besides being cool? It's definitely not the philosophical musings or mysticism, but rather a culmination of the cyberpunk culture as it has developed to this point. A trailer that emphasizes both coolness and cyberpunk elements was sure to make a big impact among this group.

Strictly speaking, Duke had even cooler and more fun ideas than The Matrix, and many aspects of the original film could have been replaced with dazzling futuristic settings. However, during both the shooting and post-production, Duke only made some changes rather than completely overhauling everything.

Every film has its own unique style, and Duke was very aware of this. Even the most successful mixed-genre film, The Avengers, actually had a very distinct style. The coolness and cyberpunk elements of The Matrix are its most striking features. Adding some futuristic elements would help, but if they were added too much, it would ruin the film's overall style, leading to a disaster.

A pure mixed-genre film might not fail completely, but it definitely won't achieve massive success. For example, Joss Whedon, who is good at blending various elements into a unified style, failed with Firefly, a typical mixed-genre film, proving this point.

Turning a mainstream sci-fi film into a fan-oriented one is a failure. After the massive success of The Avengers, the director seemed to move in this direction with the sequels, which ultimately performed below expectations.

Cyberpunk has its own distinct dark qualities, and Duke certainly wouldn't add anything bizarre, especially beautiful landscapes, which would ruin that quality.

If a film loses its style or the style is unclear, the chances of failure increase significantly.

Let's not forget, it's still 1998, and we're not in the era where films can rely solely on visual effects to overwhelm the audience.

The week-long cyberpunk cultural exhibition attracted the attention of a large number of young enthusiasts from across the U.S., and Warner's media outlets along with NBC provided extensive coverage, with The Matrix being the most mentioned.

Even some major figures from the computer industry, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, attended the exhibition, further enhancing the importance of the event among computer and network enthusiasts.

Soon, the posters for The Matrix spread rapidly across North America, with the first trailer quickly appearing on all video platforms, announcing the arrival of the summer blockbuster.

After further collaboration with Warner Brothers, the biggest advantage was that Duke didn't have to worry about promotion, distribution, and theater operations. Beyond North America, Warner Brothers and the film's sponsors actively promoted the movie in major overseas markets.

With Warner handling promotion, Duke's main task remained completing the post-production of The Matrix on time and with high quality.

The huge ship that was taking the world by storm had essentially ushered in a new era of movie special effects. Duke cut actor expenses and secured the maximum tax incentives from Australia in order to invest more funds into special effects. While The Matrix might not have reached the current limits of special effects, it aimed to create the most dazzling visual effects possible.

There is a huge difference between a film with a $20 million special effects budget and one with a $40 million budget. The final effect of the latter will be far superior.

Special effects were another major reason for the success of The Matrix. As for the philosophical musings praised by professionals, they were actually quite secondary. The failure of the film's later sequels, especially the final one, showed that if certain elements in a commercial film were overemphasized, it could have negative results.

The two sequels strengthened the original film's unique traits, particularly the baffling dialogue and philosophical reflections. This led the story to exceed the intellectual limits of mainstream audiences, and while the visual effects were still impressive, they didn't have the desired effect, which directly led to the disappointing box office performance.

As Duke had said, this was a sci-fi commercial film aimed directly at the summer blockbuster, and certain elements should only be lightly touched upon. If the film went deeper into topics like an art-house film, the enormous investment would have been unsustainable.

During these months of post-production, Duke continued to use his trademark sharp editing style. After years of collaboration, Mike Dawson worked seamlessly with him, so this work was relatively easy. The most troublesome and time-consuming aspect was the visual effects handled by Industrial Light & Magic.

Under Duke's suggestion, the special effects team at Industrial Light & Magic was split into three groups. One group was tasked with handling regular special effects, another worked on the bullet-time effects between Neo and Smith, and the last group focused on using computer technology to enhance several gunfight scenes.

Gunfights require more than just Charlize Theron showing off her seductive figure and cold beauty. There were inevitably some shortcomings during filming, but the increasingly powerful CGI technology was enough to make up for these flaws.

Of course, there were elements like mechs, squid armies, and Zion that didn't appear in the film. The Matrix had a runtime of just two hours, and cramming too much into it would only make it a mishmash.

A film isn't successful just because you toss in a bunch of futuristic elements.

A film's message is often more difficult to process the more information it reflects. If the complexity exceeds the audience's cognitive limits, the consequences can be severe.

Even now, looking at the world's top 100 box office films over the past twenty years, it's easy to see that most of them are relatively simple films.

The effectiveness of special effects can determine the success or failure of a film. To avoid the trouble caused by disjointed work, Duke needed to integrate the entire post-production process. To achieve this, he specifically had a complete special effects management information system designed. This was the first time such a massive computer information management system had been used in film production.

Through this "digital journal" and "special effects progress" system, all staff involved in digital processing, computer-aided design, and 3D modeling could access scene designs, high-resolution models, and all footage related to the production process, greatly improving work efficiency.

More importantly, this system continued to be effective in later productions, such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Additionally, Duke planned to summon the crew for a reshoot of a scene—a scene even cooler than bullet-time.

The most memorable scene from The Matrix is definitely Trinity kicking a police officer while flying, Neo dodging bullets on a rooftop, and the iconic bullet-time confrontations between Neo and Smith. Duke's goal was to add "time freeze" during explosions to make things even cooler.

The final effect of the film would not be the coolest—it would be cooler!

These "time-freezing" effects, achieved through technical means, all use "slow motion" to create a visual shock that emphasizes "speed."

This approach of using "slow" to represent speed is not new. The true master of this technique is not a Hollywood director, but the famous John Woo. While Woo may not have been the original creator, he has perfected this technique, and his slow-motion gunfight scenes have had a profound impact on Hollywood action films, even changing the way gunfights are portrayed in American movies.

In contrast, Hollywood once embraced the classical realism of gunfights, like those in Heat, directed by Michael Mann. Even with the same indestructible gunfight style, Hollywood differs significantly from Woo's romanticism.

Without exaggeration, John Woo and Yuan Heping have had a greater influence on Hollywood films than what is immediately visible. Unfortunately, they have never been able to fully integrate into the industry like Ang Lee.

Hollywood is, undeniably, an extremely exclusive and, at the same time, very adept at attracting talent.

Any ambitious Hollywood director knows one thing: stagnation equals failure. James Cameron, representing the technical director, has always been at the forefront of global movie technology, and calling him a pioneer is no exaggeration.

Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, represents the businessman director. It's clear to anyone that Spielberg has stagnated in recent years. His recent works can only be described as average, and it's widely recognized that his directorial career is on the decline.

Duke is neither James Cameron nor Steven Spielberg, but he always remains clear-headed, understanding that learning is an endless process. Just like during filming, he absorbed the strengths of Yuan Heping, and he would not overlook those film ideas, knowledge, and techniques that could help him. He could borrow the coolness of John Woo's gunfights and draw inspiration from Japanese animation for production.