Sounds Like Keanu’s Stunt Double on The Matrix Had a Hell of a Time

The most iconic scene in Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s first Matrix film is, with out query, the foyer battle the place Neo and Trinity (Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne-Moss) use a really alarming quantity of weapons to make their approach to rescue Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne). And probably the most iconic shot from that scene is Neo, below heavy hearth from closely armed goons, dodging gunfire and rearming himself by cartwheeling over a rifle whereas concurrently choosing it up. It definitely seemed like a tough stunt to do, nevertheless it seems it wasn’t simply bodily difficult, however (needlessly!) mentally difficult, too.

You can thank The Matrix producer Joel Silver for making the stunt even tougher than it wanted to be—or quite Chad Stahelski, Keanu Reeves’ stunt double on the movie, can thank him. In an awesome interview with Vulture, the stuntman-turned-John Wick director reminisced concerning the difficulties of one of many film’s biggest pictures:

“I had to do a thing where I cartwheel over to an M16 rifle, pick it up with one hand, and then Keanu shoots and goes into the fight or whatever. I remember the setup was a day turnover, so you get one take, and it takes a day to reset, and then you do the second take. I had barely met anybody on set at this point. I’m in the getup, and I’m getting ready to go, and I remember producer Joel Silver walking over to me—I had never met the man before in my life—looking me right in the eye and saying, ‘Don’t fuck this up.’ Basically, don’t miss. And he gave me that little stare. He’s a very intense person. And I was like, Okay. Don’t miss gun. They said there’d be a lot of debris, so I just practiced doing the flip with my eyes closed. And I swear to you, as soon as they yelled action, the first squib [bullethole special effect] went off, and I couldn’t see shit. I just threw myself in there and magically found the gun and grabbed it. I was only 25 and I was like, Don’t miss gun. Don’t miss gun. Don’t miss gun.”

(You can see the stunt at 1:20 within the above video.)

Luckily for Stahelski, Silver, the Wachowskis, and audiences, he didn’t miss! But man, the stress of making an attempt to drag that stunt off whereas figuring out you solely get two takes—two very costly takes—would have been greater than sufficient to psych most individuals out, even with out getting threatened by a significant Hollywood film producer. So full kudos to Stahelski for pulling it off, since his work on The Matrix helped make it a blockbuster, which led to him beginning his personal stunt firm and ultimately changing into a film director, too.

He’s obtained another nice anecdotes about making the film—together with how he confirmed up for his first audition with a bleeding head wound—in addition to some enjoyably enthusiastic ideas about how The Matrix reworked motion motion pictures, so the full interview is totally well worth the learn.

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