The Matrix's Obscure Lost Media - First Movie Script (1994) | MATRIX EXPLAINED 

They should've kept the Eddie storyline as an introduction. The reason I say that is because it's why Cypher betrayed Morpheus, and it adds enough depth to Cypher that it makes him relatable. He's tired of Morpheus' ideas getting people killed, and he's tired of fighting a losing war. With that context, Cypher goes from a generic bad guy with no explainable reason he would betray his crew, to someone who reached his breaking point, and just wanted to go back to ignorance, rather than witnessing people die all the time. It's the difference between a dry, unrelatable bad guy, and a deeper, worn out soldier that just wants it all to be over.

"The great Morpheus, we meet at last." "And you are?" "Smith. CyberMarine Smith."

The fact they got turned down in the begining led to a much better all around movie. The original has terminator vibes for sure. Nothing wrong with terminator but that's what terminator is for, we don't want a knock off of that. I think it's awesome they went back and worked hard on an even better story that is iconic

I'd love we just replayed 1989-2009, a golden age.

2009 - 1989 = 20 Math, crazy how that works.

It's pretty remarkable that you've managed to create 5 star videos from a film franchise consisting of only 4 movies. There are channels dedicated to long running tv shows that sometimes run dry on topics. Incredible work mate. I think the original script would have been a fun film to watch but I don't think it would have become what it is today if it were not revised.

As someone who has written before, I definitely have had my ideas and overall style shot down, only go to back to the drawing board. I never let go of the spirit and messages, only altered their execution. The Matrix we got was the best possible execution and timing.

the first draft made sense when you realize early 90s blockbusters like Speed, Demolition Man, 12 Monkeys, Judge Dredd, and Terminator 2 were the type of movie that hollywood was making back then

Between 1989 and 2009 there are 20 years, not 30.

What we got is so much better. I also appreciate that sometimes only PART of a great story makes a great film, and the Wachowskis used other media that was better venues to tell other parts, such as Kid's backstory.

2009 - 1989 = 20 years... not 30 years as stated. Aside from that this is a great video as usual! Keep up the great work

I like the final story better. Though, I've read somewhere that in the original story people were used as a processing power (human brains as a powerful neural networks) not as batteries which (the batteries) does not make much sense since machines would need to pump a lot of calories into those pods just to keep people alive, not to mention keeping them warm in the dark, cold world.

This first draft sounds straight out of White Wolf's World of Darkness, Mage the Ascension, Virtual Adepts.

I love that both versions end with, "and then, _THEY FUCK,_ the end."

The producer was right. That original script devolved into just another Terminator movie. Glad we got the final product that we did. However, there are some elements from that original script that most certainly would’ve worked in the final. The concept of Morpheous’ stance on love, as it pertains to soldiers. This most certainly could have been a secondary theme that presented its own conflicts between the characters. it’s not that Morpheus was against it, it was that he was against it for those selected in carrying out the task of fighting the war. He needed soldiers to be clear minded, unattached and focused. That was one of the sacrifices, as a soldier, they would give up in order to help humanity. The conflict would have been him realizing that soldiers are still humans, too, and that we all need that connection. That story most certainly could’ve worked in the final.

Shout-out from Newcastle South Africa 🇿🇦 *The Matrix has us*

I think the brothers had not read or considered the book Simulacra and Simulation when writing the first script. Then after getting the feedback they incorporated it into their story. Thats what brought the big change in the vibe and overall story.

You can see the producer’s name, Joel Silver, who ultimately produced the 1999 film. I think it’s safe to say that he was right

2009 - 1989 = 20 :)

Fundamentally different movie. They totally redone concept in the end. The first one was more complicated and with totallly different vibes, more like 90s movie. The final one has new millenium vibes.

The Cyber Marines remind me quite a bit of the Sentinels.

Dude, this video is what your channel was all about. Well done.

Thank you again for a well produced video and for all the insight into the world of The Matrix. I can’t help but watch your videos the second they drop.

1989-2009 is 20 years lol had me questioning my age for min bro

Glad you're back bro! This is a successful channel that's growing! One of my favorite YT channels!

Remember, dreamers, from the first letter struck in 1989 to the last flicker of light on the silver screen, it took ten years. You have to craft, and you have to draft.

The story definitely got better in the movie apparently but thank good that they kept the philosophical perspective

Could you make a video about the sources of inspiration for The Matrix, for example, the story is very similar to an Italian comic that came out previously: “razzi amari”

The matrix is the single greatest movie ever made period. It is almost divinely inspired in my humble opinion. It is the single greatest story ever produced as a film and flawlessly executed.

Fantastic Document. super insightful. I love what you guys do. heres to hoping for an Animatrix 2 to keep going deeper on this franchise.

Dang , that original Eddie story gotta be MADE man lol..sounds interesting .. " The Story Before The Red & Blue Pill "

That Chanel is so good . Keep it up man

I love Dark City.

I'm glad changes were made the first matrix movie is my all time favorite visually and plot wise nothing else compares 😎

Hell yeah man. I missed this channel

Love all your videos.

So cool, man, thank you!

It gets too busy. Smith being more the face of an all powerful system works better in a broader way, and Neo an everyman underdog. The final version invests more in the archetypes. It does the resurrection of the hero at the end to round his arc. And at the same time it wasn’t completely derivative because it’s clearly rooted in a point in time, the 90s were coming to a close and the brave new world of the internet was now ubiquitous…the existential anxieties in how uprooting an influence that was becoming. The script had to find itself.

Amazing, thank you for sharing this!

Glad this channel is getting some new content! Keep it going!

As someone who is a big fan of the Terminator franchise, I am glad the Terminator-esque script was sacked in favor of the version we did get. I would not conceive the Termina-trix to be anywhere as compelling as the film we got.

There's a saying: when it's time to railroad, you railroad, not before. Did you know that the photographic camera, the bicycle, the airplane, and many other inventions were developed by different people, in different places, without knowledge of each other's work, at the same time? Every mathematical or scientific discovery, every invention, every story, all art, they all build on work of the past. They are all discovered or created within the context of a culture that is ripe for them. The Matrix and Dark City are both amazing stories, and very similar, and they were both developed in a world that was ripe for them. It's a fascinating truth about the universe (or simulation?) we live in, and something that I'm afraid won't be recognized in the future, as we are all aware of every latest thing at all times.

Thanks for this video!

The beginning was an interesting prolog to a novel concept but since the main character died..there was nowhere else to go with it and it was explored in the animatrix to revisit the idea that Neo wasn't the 1st!👏👏

Great Video as always! Had a question for a long time, what's that music you always use for the intros?

great video! loooove the art too 🥰🔥

Love the matrix love your videos. getting a better understanding of the matrix

That producer sounds like someone with a ton of experience. Just shows a failor is just a way to learn something and improve. Never give up !

So, basically, the producer stopped "The Matrix" from becoming what Marvel movies have become. Good move, cuz in the end, it created a saga which went on to become legendary.

Honestly, this happens all of the time. It's pretty rare for a script to get approved in its first version.

The first draft was perfect! This just goes to show you how ridiculous "Hollyweird" is, and how they are afraid to do new and interesting things. They always have to remold something to be lesser than what it was before or keep making the same movies with different settings and actors over and over. I still love the Matrix and all, but that script was excellent!

Imagine this movie with Will Smith instead 😭😭😭 The first movie was amazing, I saw it when I was too young to really grasp it so I went back n watched it again when the sequels dropped! Way ahead of its time! Loved the Original Trilogy!

Matrix and Terminator strike me as different aspects of the same story 👊🏾😎👍🏼

Hands him a golf ball. "Here, swallow this".. lol

I actually heard that the Terminator movies and the Matrix movies were supposed to be the same universe and that Terminator deals with the events before humanity lost the war, and the Matrix movies show what happened after the machines won.

I always felt that The Matrix was "Terminator" meets" Nightmare on Elm Street". Humans are fighting machines in an apocolyptic world, and if you die in this virtual dream world, you die for real.

The first Matrix was a perfect world, rivaled only by it's inevitable failure. The problem lied in the fact humans need misery and suffering to accept their reality.

The Producer needs a raise

The Matrix is probably the most perfect movie out there the way it unfolds and how it keeps your attention. It's clear that it took some time to develop compared to the two sequels that followed and whatever the fourth one was supposed to be.

The first matrix was called DARK CITY and it was an actual movie about a fake reality and a chosen one who fought against it's creators

20yrs man. 20yrs.

I've ALWAYS said that The Matrix is hugely influenced by Dark City. Please do the video you mentioned about the history and differences between the two

Gives a good glimpse into why good ideas in Hollywood (well ones not already suppoprted by an exisitng profitable IP) almost always never get made, the fact that the Matrix made it as a movie at all in th 90's is a minor miracle.

This script definitely pales in comparison to the masterpiece we ultimately received. The Matrix is groundbreaking in every category, compelling and thought provoking. This script depicts a film much like many others we've seen.

They needed an harsher critic when it came to Cloud Atlas.

I thought the original script used humans as cpu's. Which makes 1000x more sense than batteries as it doesn't violate thermodynamics.

Loved Dark City... i remember seeing it when it came out... i heard Matrix even used some of the Dark City sets...

"Human brains make better CPUs than silicon chips" thingy was my favorites from there

I'm grateful for what was done exactly how it was and how it was released.

Same thing happened in star wars episode 3 when they removed the "kill for love "aspect when anakin believed obiwan was trying to steal his love... makes it like a whole different movie

I love the first Matrix. The first only. When Neo gets to have superpowers in the real world they lost me, it doesn't make any sense and it ruins the premise.

I'm glad you found something new to say.

8:08 humans being used for electricity was not in the original script of The Matrix - it said humans' brains were used for computation, which was later changed to the easier to understand concept of electricity for mainstream audience 🧐🧐🧐

The first script was the movie Dark City, as Matrix is basically a copy of it.

There is a fundamental difference between a cool idea, and an actual story. The draft you just told us about suffers from a cool idea that is not actually a story, which is an honest, failing of a lot of science fiction. Ideally, you wanna have a solid story that has a lot of cool ideas baked into it, and what you read certainly was not at that point. I do understand what the person reading the script meant when he said, the spiritual and metaphysical aspect of it were confusing. They are. They are not baked into the story itself, in the version you told us about they seem like they’re just sort of bolted on to the sides. The rewrite incorporates them into essential portions of the story rather than superficial sub dressing.

I'm glad Will Smith didn't play the lead role in the Matrix

I heard of a draft, where humans were "harvested" for their creativity instead of electric power. Would have made more sense for me, but I guess, it was a bit to esoteric for Hollywood.

that is nice love to see a movie of this 1 script

Amazing

Very interesting.

I think this producer's criticism is exactly right about the rest of the Wachowskis career, and especially the remainder of the Matrix movies.

Never realized that the Matrix states this was the 6th version of the Matrix. Very similar to how some scientist believe that our civilization is the most recent form of humans and that there was multiple civilizations that lived and died before ours throughout history. our world has a hidden history of wiping the planet clean to start over from scratch.

Did you hear that the Terminator is the past of The Matrix some lady said that but I don't know how true that is

I think the best change here was to fix "VR" ... I don't like how it was mentioned. The later version reversed it, since Neo does not go into VR, but out of it. So they "just" have to create a futuristic, destroyed earth and everything in "VR" aka Matrix is our real world with some superhuman abilities. This makes it comfortable to understand what it's like inside the matrix and nothing outside (the movies real world) is too abstract. If there is anything hard to understand, it is what Neo, Morpheus and Agent Smith were. None of them were only humans or programs. They were part of a system that the Architect builds and the Oracle manipulates. Controlled freedom as the perfect prison. I think this is why "no one" liked Matrix 3, it needed a (non-repeating) end to that story, not just a big boss fight and happy end.

3:00 the studio even used set assets from Dark City in the Matrix.

This is where the Neo is John Conner comes in....

Definitely a good thing they rewrote the latter half. It really did feel like a Terminator rip-off in that part.

As a professional filmmaker myself, you shouldn't take the logline too literally. Loglines are used to stimulate the intrest of a producer and studio to finance your project.

Interesting

From my understanding the use of humans as a energy source was added later, because the studio thought the original idea of humans being used for their brains acting as processors was difficult for the audience to understand.

There must be thousands of tales probably since the beginning of history where a character's loyalty is put to test by using some form of hallucination or fake reality. I'm glad they got rid of that idea.

89-09 are 20 years not 30 :D

God, this is so aweful. I'm glad the re-wrote this.

There are lines in the 2nd Matrix movie that are word-for-word taken from the novel: The Neverending Story.

Dark City is one of my favorite films but it came out after The Matrix was in post-production. I'm disappointed to hear about the animosity. The squids are effectively the Cyber Marines, tho. I hope somebody filmed the creative meetings that got the Animatrix into production!

I wouldn't mind watching "alternate versions" of movies, if they're produced. It's like seeing a "what if" story with the same components, but a different arrangement and final composition. Like a remix. Comics and video games do it and it works.

I thought the original idea was that they used the human minds for their processing power. But it was determined that the average viewer wouldn’t understand so they changed it to using them as batteries

Eddie's story would have been good to include. They sort of did with animatrix. But it should have been included at some point even the last movie or something

I've always enjoyed reading the first draft of escapist movies to see how much changed from concept to execution, and there's usually several elements where I'm like man I wish that made into the movie but too bad the studio denied it... The Matrix first draft is actually painfully mid and it's not that he was too smart for executives it was just generic and boring.

5k likes that's what's up!