The Matrix aka one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time is a groundbreaking classic that blew everyone’s minds with a trip to a world where everything makes you question reality. One of the best parts about the film is its wild action sequences that keep viewers on the edge of their seats. However, it was not an easy task to achieve such perfection.
Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Hugo Weaving had to go through a grueling training regimen to make sure that they would be able to execute the fight scenes perfectly and do justice to them. Of course, anyone who has seen the film knows that the training paid off well but it sure did take a toll on the actors including Hugo Weaving who revealed that their training went on for about six months.
Hugo Weaving Opened Up about the Exhausting Training for The Matrix
On the DVD featurette for The Matrix (via Looper), Hugo Weaving got candid about the training he and his co-actors were put through for the film’s action sequences. He recalled how what they initially thought was going to be a kung fu workshop of five weeks ended up going on for months.
They started their training regimen in October 1997 and were finally done with it in March 1998…that’s six months of extremely exhausting training.
Weaving stated,
We started training in October of ’97, trained all the way through ’til March of ’98. That was on, like, an everyday basis. It was a very involving, exhausting process… I initially thought we were going to be doing kung fu for maybe four or five weeks, something like that. It ended up being months and months of training.
In order to bring out the best in the actors, The Wachowskis hired Yuen Woo-ping, a martial arts choreographer and film director.
According to Weaving, he believed that Woo-ping and his team probably thought that the actors under him were “useless” initially. But soon, they managed to prove them wrong.
Initially, I think [they] took us on and saw we were useless, which we were, hopeless at kung fu. But they slowly realized after a couple of weeks that maybe we were going to be able to get to a level where we’d be halfway decent.
Well, luckily it all paid off in the end as the film is still considered to have some of the best action in Hollywood history despite having been released 25 years ago.
Keanu Reeves Enjoyed The Matrix’s Training
The directors had been admirers of Hong Kong action cinema for a long time before getting their hands on The Matrix. Thus, they knew that Woo-ping would be the best man to work on the film’s fight sequences.
The actors trained in kung fu and wire-fighting which is a Hong Kong cinema technique where actors are flung around on wires. It took them months to perfect this technique and even Keanu Reeves was on edge about the training.
During an interview with The Empire, Reeves said,
The training was one of the things I had to consider. I said, ‘I’m tired and I just want to do Chekhov.’ And they said, ‘You can do Chekhov when you’re older.’
Reeves added that his colleagues sure ended up hurting themselves a lot.
Yeah, people got hurt. It was, ‘He’s pulled this, he’s pulled that… smashed this, smashed that.’ But we didn’t break any noses. For some reason, we were all really good at not hitting each other. Or at least we saved it for the shoot.
Despite the demanding regimen, Reeves had a great time wire-fighting and he was simply enjoying himself.
It’s great. That fall where I jump from the building, that was like a 35-foot wire-jump. They just had some guys and a machine dropping me upside down. I got good enough to do the front flip and the back flip and the run up the wall. And I got to do one of the spins, so I really enjoyed it.
Well, he isn’t one of Hollywood’s best action stars for no reason now, is he?
Stream The Matrix on Netflix.
