If everything seems old in Hollywood, maybe that's because doing something new takes YEARS. ''The Matrix'' (opening today), which stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss, spent three years in script development and one year in production; the actors underwent martial-arts training for six months in order to perform all their own stunts -- a first in an American film; and a San Francisco-based F/X company spent two years inventing ''Flo-Mo,'' or ''bullet time,'' which allows the characters to appear to move faster than speeding bullets.
The $60 million futuristic action thriller stars Reeves as Neo, who may or may not be the person who can free the human race from its imprisonment in ''the Matrix,'' a computer-generated reality created by evil bug-like creatures. If figuring out the movie's plot is difficult -- ''it took me quite a few times reading the script and talking to the other actors and directors to understand it,'' says Moss -- the shoot was even tougher.
The actors arrived in Australia for filming in March 1998, but what was intended to be a 90-day shoot lasted 118. In addition to the problems of nailing ''bullet time'' and the other complicated special-effects work, there was the melding of two perfectionist directors, brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski (''Bound''), and a perfectionist actor. ''Instead of 'perfect,' they had to come up with 'super-perfect,''' Reeves tells EW Online. ''Especially in the action sequences. I'd want to do it again, and they'd say, 'No, it's perfect,' and I'd say, 'I can do it better,' and they'd say, 'It's SUPER perfect.' That worked (to get me to move on) -- for a while.''
The actors arrived safely back home last September, but the special-effects team and directors were kept working until 12 days before the film's March 31 opening. (The Wachowskis were given an extra $4 million plus when Warner Bros. asked them to speed up postproduction, partly so that ''The Matrix'' would beat the ''Star Wars'' prequel to theaters.) The directing brothers had originally imagined that ''The Matrix'' would be the first of a trilogy, but now they're heading home to Chicago to wait and see how the movie does. ''We're just recovering,'' says Andy. ''It's like cutting the umbilical cord.'' For her part, Moss is getting ready for the next installment. ''I hope there's a second one,'' says the feisty actress, ''because I really want to do more (fighting).''
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