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DanJW

Matrix a ripoff

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Now the Matrix was obviously indebted to many existing sci-fi sources, but it turns out that the first movie was almost entirely based on one woman's script, for which she did not get paid. Tycho dropped this link in todays PA news. Sophia Stewart has sued Warner Brothers... and won. Also some interesting stuff there about the Great Beast of Revelations that is Time Warner.

For me this partly explains why the sequals were such travesties... the people that wrote them did not write the first movie, did not understand it, did not see the wonderful potential of the direction it was going in.

It's been a while since I had a good rant about the Matrix sequals, so I would just like to remind everyone how utterly dissapointed I am in the people that made them happen :frusty:

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I always knew the Wachowskis were hacks, now I can say it without getting criucified.

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That's crazy.

Not because I think it's shocking that The Matrix was someone else's idea, but because it means someone else pulled together concepts from Ghost in the Shell, Philip K. Dick and other well-known sci-fi and anime sources to make a script that was then copied by someone else.

Oh, and The Terminator? Harlan Ellison sued to get a writing credit because that was lifted from one of his short stories.

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Of course, Ghost in the Shell didn't come out until almost 15 years after her script was written... And your point has SOME merit, but that's just how genres work; almost any action movie or buddy comedy or whatever has the same basic formula, but they're still different movies. Once someone comes up with a good idea, it's often emulated and just becomes a facet of the genre.

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Good point about GITS. Although that influence was likely put in by the Wachowski brothers separately from this woman's screenplay (it's an undeniable influence that occaisionaly borders on outright stealing). There's that story of them screening the movie for someone (Joel Silver, I think?) and saying "we want to make a live action version of this."

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There's another earlier movie that is ridiculously similar to The Matrix. Don't know what it was called, maybe "The Dark City".

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Of course, Ghost in the Shell didn't come out until almost 15 years after her script was written... And your point has SOME merit, but that's just how genres work; almost any action movie or buddy comedy or whatever has the same basic formula, but they're still different movies. Once someone comes up with a good idea, it's often emulated and just becomes a facet of the genre.

From what I can gather, she's been saying that the entire movie is pretty much a direct ripoff of her script, not just "heavily influenced" or whatever. So I think the point about the myriad references in the Matrix does stand up; hell, even Neuromancer wasn't written until 1984, which according to her is 3 years after she wrote her script. There might well be some truth to what she's saying, but the way they're implying that the entire movie is pretty much her work makes her seem either a) a bit of a nutjob or B) terribly terribly bitter (which is understandable).

I'm also a bit bemused by the lack of coverage this has gotten - some of the sources would have you believe this is the giant evil news megacorporations exerting their control. Bollocks. Newspapers will pick up a story if they think it will get them readers, regardless of whether they're owned by the company involved about 5 steps up the corporate chain.

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I knew it! I just didn't want to believe it. I don't know why. After Larry had his/her sex change operation, I started to be a lot more suspicious - but I don't know why I thought that then either.

Freakin' ass clowns.

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...there is obviously more to this story than I'd like to know.

Oh, and the GITS rip off was mostly in style and action scenes.

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I laughed for a long time about this. Then I told my Matrix-loving friend about it (he has the movie posters framed and on his walls). Fun!

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This explains why the movies were so gratuitously cool and how that aspect of the thing seemed totally grafted on top of the story as if by someone who didn't understand the story at all...

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There's another earlier movie that is ridiculously similar to The Matrix. Don't know what it was called, maybe "The Dark City".

There are some little tips of the hat to that in the first matrix;

Trinity running along the rooftops chased by cops parallels a scene in dark city (including the up-down-up-down slopes of sheet-metal rooves).

Also GITS is referred to in one of the late scenes (Neo being chased by agents through various markets etc) where a Watermelon is shot. GITS has the same scene early on in the movie.

In those cases it's genuinely respects being paid, but I'd prefer to read this other script before declaring it derivative or whatever.

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