Everything Is A Remix: The Matrix Edition

from the influence-and-culture dept

Fri, Oct 7th 2011 6:30pm — Mike Masnick

We've discussed, a few times now, Kirby Ferguson's interesting Everything Is A Remix project. He's now posted a new video... which isn't technically a part of the series, but was made by Rob G. Wilson to highlight a variety of things in the movie The Matrix that appear quite similar to works in other movies: What's especially neat is that nearly all of these examples were apparently crowdsourced by fans of the project.

Of course, I'm sure some will point out that these are "inspirations" for The Matrix. And some may be accidental or aren't really copies at all. But I believe that's missing the larger point. Clearly The Matrix was inspired by a number of other works, whether or not all of these things were accurate. What the Wachowskis did with The Matrix was to take all those different influences and pull them together in a very compelling way with a very compelling storyline -- something I believe the Wachowskis are quite happy to admit. This is the very nature of storytelling. You build on the works of others. Everyone does it all the time.

In fact (rather amusingly), comic artist Grant Morrison, whose comic The Invisibles has been mentioned as an inspiration for The Matrix was once asked about how he felt about the Wachowskis building off of his work, and his response was that "they should have kept on stealing from me" in making the sequels, so that the sequels wouldn't have been so "incomprehensible."

The fear here is about overaggressive laws that block out this ability to be inspired and to pay homage. As we've clearly seen, time and time again, there are lots of people who seem to think it's infringement to pay homage to the works of someone else. It's ridiculous and shortsighted, but some courts agree, and the problem may only become worse.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: culture, everything is a remix, influence, inspiration, the matrix

46 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2011 @ 6:53pm

Woo-ping Yuen was the fight choreographer for all of these films.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2011 @ 7:31pm

The game is over for the IP parasites.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/25/occupy-wall-street-prot est
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2011 @ 7:45pm

Imagine a restaurant suing another because the other restaurant across the street copied a recipe from a meal.

Would anybody be able to produce American Pie without paying royalties?

How that would affect the economy of a region if nobody could produce American Pie's?

Buskers on the street cannot play songs anymore they can't make their pies to sell.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2011 @ 7:56pm

I deny reality and substitute it with my own.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
DOlz (profile), 7 Oct 2011 @ 8:00pm

Re:
"Would anybody be able to produce American Pie without paying royalties?"

Not anymore because of Don McLean.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
didi, 7 Oct 2011 @ 8:13pm

Woo Ping Yuen
As the first commenter points out, this video mostly shows that Woo Ping Yuen, fight choreographer of the Matrix, likes to pay homage to himself. Most of the "copied" movies are films he either directed, or ones in which he was the choreographer. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0950759/
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2011 @ 8:16pm

very cool video
now I'm gonna have to go watch The Matrix again. I'm gonna wear out that disc if I keep this up!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
VMax, 7 Oct 2011 @ 8:18pm

Re:
Is this a non sequitur comment?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
VMax, 7 Oct 2011 @ 8:20pm

Re: very cool video
Maybe you should burn it to the hard drive. Oh, wait, that might be illegal. I can never tell these days.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Jay (profile), 7 Oct 2011 @ 8:22pm

Re: Re:
Yes, plus it's old.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2011 @ 8:53pm

No it blocks out the ability for you to pay homage

the people who hold all the lawyers can "pay homage" just fine.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 7 Oct 2011 @ 10:03pm

Re: very cool video
That's a $2000 disk you're waring out.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Greevar (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 12:00am

Re:
"I reject your reality and substitute my own." - Adam Savage
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Jeffrey Nonken (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 12:07am

You know how the movie was invented? It started with a bet about whether a horse's hooves all leave the ground at the same time during a gallop. (They do.) In 1878 Eadweard Muybridge put a bunch of cameras along a short course with strings to trip the shutters and captured stills of the galloping horse. Later he used the images to create a zoopraxiscope, which inspired further developments. The rest is history.

You know how Bullet Time was done? They put a metric buttload of cameras around a stage in various configurations and tripped them in various ways via computer. When I watched the "Bullet Time" special on the DVD I immediately saw it as Muybridge's original experiment done with modern technology and delusions of grandeur. And so do we come full circle.

Surely nearly everything we do is derivative. What's innovative is not what we start with, but what we do with it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
LDoBe, 8 Oct 2011 @ 12:38am

Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
Holy Crap! I have watched Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix at least a hundred times each (not simultaneously or back to back mind) and I did notice the philosophical parallels of living in artificial worlds.

But I never realized the matrix had shot for shot near copies of GITS in it. I was too busy being distracted by the green filter.

Watching the side by side gave me goosebumps. I knew that all art is derivative in one way or another, and that true originality is extremely rare to come by, but the copying is so blatant. I just thought motifs were appropriated, but I guess the shift of medium blinded me to the wholesale copies of GITS shots.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
LDoBe, 8 Oct 2011 @ 12:45am

Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
By the way,

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the homage and appropriation of sources. I'm just voicing surprise, not indignation.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
LDoBe, 8 Oct 2011 @ 12:46am

Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
By the way,

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the homage and appropriation of sources. I'm just voicing surprise, not indignation.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
LDoBe, 8 Oct 2011 @ 12:46am

Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
By the way,

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the homage and appropriation of sources. I'm just voicing surprise, not indignation.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
BeeAitch (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 1:17am

The Sprawl Trilogy by William Gibson.

Or almost anything by Robert A. Heinlein.

Culture IS remix. Full stop.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The eejit (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 1:26am

Re: Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
GitS is obviously three times better than The Matrix.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mojo, 8 Oct 2011 @ 5:10am

Entertaining video, but it proves nothing. You could do the same comparison using Star Wars (probably already been done) or a variety of other iconic pop culture movies and discover that there is a lot of "homage" going on in Hollywood.

It just comes down to the big picture. Zoom out past the individual shots, past the action sequences and look at the movie as a whole; did you enjoy it?

If so, then I honestly don't care if every frame used to construct the film was a copy of frames used to make other movies - if the film maker managed to hold on to you and keep you entertained for two hours, then his job is done.

However, if a little behind-the-scenes knowledge leads to your over-analyzation of the film making process and the conclusion that all directors are thieves and their transgressions should be outed (GASP) then you, my friend, are going to be very busy.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 7:16am

Re: Re:
Yep, it's also a drooling idiot. Equal opportunities here on Techdirt, if you can use a keyboard, you too can out yourself as a moron if your words match that description.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 7:36am

Re:
Even the Anime!?!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 7:37am

Re: Re:
"Reality Distortion Field engaged!" - Steve Jobs
[ link to this | view in thread ]
abc gum, 8 Oct 2011 @ 7:58am

"but it proves nothing"

Not sure that proof was being attempted here, but there is a point being made.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 9:28am

It's no secet that The Matrix "copied" concepts and scenes from various movies and comic books. It's also no secret that the Wachowskis' production techniques involved a lot of revolutionary uses of pre-existing technologies from bullet time to Woo-Ping's choreography. The fact that others had invented the technologies did not make them any less revolutionary - the usage was the major point.

Their achievements should be celebrated, even though many of their concepts were not "original". A shame that so many idiots seek to kill this way of working so that others can make money on work they didn't directly create.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rikuo (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 10:44am

Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
I have to disagree with you there. Ghost in the Shell and Matrix did not have a philosophical parallel of living in artificial worlds.
GitS doesn't have an artificial world. Sure, it has a super advanced internet you jack yourself into, just like Matrix, but its more of an information database than a real world simulation. Gits was all about whether Major Motoko, having a cybernetic body (shell), had a soul (ghost) (hence the title, Ghost in the Shell).
Matrix though is the opposite. The existence of the human soul is taken for granted in the movies, its the question of whether the environment you find yourself in is real or not.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
nasch (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 12:01pm

Re:
Did you even read the post?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 1:17pm

Re: Woo Ping Yuen
Oh oops! Don't tell Mike that, it sort of kicks his whole argument into the sewer. So there is no "remix", just one dude working a bunch of movies and using similar techniques in all of them?

Who would have thunk it? Certainly not Mike!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 1:50pm

Re: Re:
reading ? wuts dat
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 2:00pm

Re: Re: Woo Ping Yuen
Hey don't tell the world about your ignorance of old kung-fu movies, they all used those moves.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
LDoBe, 8 Oct 2011 @ 3:03pm

Re: Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
Yes, that's absolutely true.

Perhaps I should have just said that the characters struggled with the nature of reality.

It's the solipsist's problem. If you take "I think, therefore I am" as your only first principle, then it is very hard to determine if your senses are of any value, and what's more, your memories are possibly artificial as well.

In GitS, artificial memories can be implanted through ghost hacking, in The Matrix, your entire life is artificial by default.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 3:28pm

Re: Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
I just wish Mike could learn the different between poaying homage and copying. He doesn't seem to be very good with the subtle things.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Marcel de Jong (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 3:55pm

Re: Re: Woo Ping Yuen
And the rest of the examples? Did Woo Ping Yuen also write Alice in Wonderland? Or direct Ghost in the Shell and Akira?

Oh wait, that's right, you love being a moron. Never mind.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Marcel de Jong (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 3:56pm

Re: Re: Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
So enlighten us. What is the difference?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 3:57pm

Re: Re: Re: Woo Ping Yuen
Or that they referenced Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, which is a comic book that was obviously choreographed by some dude.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 3:58pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
Copying can get you sued. Paying homage to can also get you sued. There really is no difference.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 4:56pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
It gets expensive too.

Terminator as a homage from "The Soldier" comes to mind.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
nasch (profile), 8 Oct 2011 @ 9:58pm

Re: Re: Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
I just wish Mike could learn the different between poaying homage and copying.

Are you claiming that these are copying and not homage?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 10:05pm

Re:
That article doesn't mention IP.

and the whole occupy Wall Street movement doesn't seem to have any objectives. It would be nice if they did have a reduce IP directive, and I think that will get them a lot of public support, but unfortunately they seem to be all over the place. Our IP laws do need to be fixed, they cost jobs and hinder innovation, and we need some protesting directed at correcting these laws.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2011 @ 11:54pm

Re: Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
The soul and the mind are the same thing. To have a human mind you need a working human brain. When you die, your brain stops working. Hence your mind ceases to exist. A soul is supposed to be a disembodied mind. The whole idea that you might have an immortal soul is a tragic misunderstanding of the necessity to have a working brain in order to have a mind. If you have no working brain, then you have no mind (since you cannot think without your brain hardware), therefore you cannot have a soul.

Sorry to offend all the religious people out there. It's just logic.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
abc gum, 9 Oct 2011 @ 7:33am

Re: Re:
"occupy Wall Street movement doesn't seem to have any objectives"

This is what the media has told you.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
MPAA RIAA, 9 Oct 2011 @ 7:36am

Re: Re: Re: Ghost in the Shell => Matrix
What? ... Did someone say Paying?
Where's my cut?!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Oct 2011 @ 1:38pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Woo Ping Yuen
"comic book that was choreographed"

I don't think you know what any of those words mean.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Oct 2011 @ 2:19pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Woo Ping Yuen
It was joke!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
nasch (profile), 9 Oct 2011 @ 6:12pm

Re: Re: Re:
Do you know what their objectives are, then?
[ link to this | view in thread ]