Hong Kong martial arts cinema: how The Matrix’s Yuen Woo-ping shaped the trilogy with his action choreography
- Martial arts director Yuen Woo-ping had shunned Hollywood until he met The Matrix directors the Wachowskis and heard their plan to make a kung fu sci-fi film
- Although The Matrix movies were heavy on special effects, Yuen also applied the physical wire work techniques he used in Hong Kong
Hong Kong martial arts director Yuen Woo-ping’s action scenes are the defining feature of The Matrix trilogy, yet Yuen himself never sought to work in Hollywood.
When the films’ sibling directors the Wachowskis were preparing the first in the trilogy, a producer for the film had to track Yuen down in Hong Kong and convince him to go to Los Angeles to discuss choreographing the martial arts scenes in The Matrix.
“I’d already been asked to work in Hollywood a couple of times, and I’d said no. I didn’t feel that my English was good enough to work there,” Yuen told this writer in an interview in 2019.
“What happened then was that one of the producers of The Matrix contacted Shaw Brothers to find me. They seemed to want me to go to Hollywood really badly, but I still didn’t want to go. Then Shaw Brothers [studio] told me that the producer was offering me a free ticket to Los Angeles, and all I had to do was turn up there and have a chat, and that I should go, as it would be the polite thing to do,” Yuen said.
At the meeting, Yuen was intrigued by the Wachowskis’ plans for the film.
“The Wachowskis said that they wanted to integrate kung fu with special effects, to combine a sci-fi movie with a kung fu movie. That struck me as an innovative idea and a way to do something new, so I thought I would give it a try. I’m glad I did, as it really worked,” Yuen said.
Hong Kong martial arts cinema: everything you need to know
One of the reasons that the action scenes in The Matrix films are so impressive is that Yuen insisted on training the major cast members – Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, and Hugo Weaving – to do kung fu before the shoot.
Yuen wanted their kung fu to look as authentic as possible on the screen.
Most Hong Kong stars, he said, have a basic knowledge of martial arts, and just need to be brought up to scratch for a movie, but the Americans had to be taught from scratch. The actors of The Matrix trained in a warehouse in Hollywood for four months with Yuen, who also planned out some of the action scenes with them.
“Woo-ping can teach us so many things, but he does also want to see your style,” Keanu Reeves told Kung Fu magazine during the training sessions. “I’ve been trying to incorporate some of the stunt guys’ stuff and create my own style. Woo-ping doesn’t just put it on you, it’s very organic and collaborative,” Reeves said.
The Wachowskis had some basic ideas about what the actors would need to do in each action scene, and Yuen took it from there, the martial arts director said.
Although The Matrix movies were heavy on special effects, Yuen also utilised the physical wire work techniques – which involve suspending a performer on a wire to give the effect of flying – that he used in Hong Kong.
In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the career of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our martial arts film explainer.
