Matrix Cinematographer: “I Want to Dig Stanley Kubrick Up and Kill Him”

While Stanley Kubrick may not have been directly involved in their making, the cinematographer of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions blames the late filmmaking legend for why making those sequels proved "sort of torture" to make -- and for the diminished quality of the films themselves. Appearing on Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins' podcast Team Deakins, Matrix sequels cinematographer Bill Pope explained how Stanley Kubrick influenced the films' directors, the Wachowskis, which in turn made for a grueling back-to-back production for both cast and crew. "Everything that was good about the first experience was not good about the last two. We weren’t free anymore. People were looking at you. There was a lot of pressure," Pope told Deakins (via Indiewire). Pope confessed, "In my heart, I didn’t like them. I felt we should be going in another direction. There was a lot of friction and a lot of personal problems, and it showed up on screen, to be honest with you. It was not my most elevated moment, nor was it anyone else’s." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/03/28/the-matrix-trilogy-in-six-minutes"] Pope lays part of the blame for the arduous shoot -- and how it translated to less than great work up on the screen -- on a book penned by Kubrick, the director of The Shining and 2001, that influenced the Wachowskis' approach to working with actors. "The Wachowskis had read this damn book by Stanley Kubrick that said, “Actors don’t do natural performances until you wear them out.” So let’s go to take 90!," Pope said. "I want to dig Stanley Kubrick up and kill him." As /Film points out, Kubrick was notorious for doing dozens of takes, and Shining actress Shelley Duvall made no secret of the hell Kubrick put her through on set. The Matrix sequels shot back-to-back over 276 days, a punishing challenge even without directors' embracing Kubrickian levels of exhaustive meticulousness. Bill Pope sees such a long shoot as ultimately working against the quality of the films, citing Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy as another example. “There is something about making a shoot that long, 276 shoot days, that is mind numbing and soul numbing and it numbs the movie,” Pope told Deakins. “You think about The Hobbit, where they [shot] one, two, and three, and the movies are just numbing. In the books, you don’t feel that because you pick it up and put it down. In a movie shoot, it’s too long. There’s a limit from what you can take in.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-most-disappointing-third-movies-in-trilogies&captions=true"] For all his grievances with the making of the sequels and feeling like the films themselves suffered because of the long shoot, Pope recently transferred The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions to 4K for Warner Bros.' archives and told Deakins, "I wrote the Wachowskis and Keanu and Carrie Ann that we did a good job [on the sequels], we should be proud of them.” The Matrix 4 recently resumed production in Germany after the coronavirus pandemic halted production in March. Bill Pope is not the cinematographer on it, with Braveheart's John Toll serving as director of photography this time around.