The 2003 movie Stanley Kubrick ruined from beyond the grave: “I want to dig him up and kill him”
For as long as cinema exists, Stanley Kubrick will continue to be one of its most influential figures. However, that isn’t always a good thing, and he even conspired to ruin a movie from beyond the grave.
Under normal circumstances, you can’t really blame a disappointing film on a dead guy. It’s not like Kubrick was there to defend himself, and neither was it as if his ghost was hovering around the set, insisting that there’s no point in doing five takes when you can do 50 instead.
Many, many, many filmmakers have worn their Kubrickian influences on their sleeves, with Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Ridley Scott just a few of the big-name auteurs who’ve cited the innovative mastermind as one of their earliest and most important touchstones.
They definitely wouldn’t let him spoil one of their pictures from the other side of the mortal plane, but according to cinematographer Bill Pope, the Wachowskis did. The lenser, who’d been working with the siblings since Bound, returned for both The Matrix and its back-to-back sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions.
As arguably the single biggest cinematic game-changer of its era, one that coincidentally premiered two and a half weeks after Kubrick’s death in March 1999, Pope didn’t have anything bad to say about the original. Conversely, the Wachowskis’ decision to mount a mammoth production for the two follow-ups was “sort of torture,” especially when they decided to read a book written by the Clockwork Orange architect.
“Everything that was good about the first experience was not good about the last two,” the director of photography explained. “We weren’t free anymore. People were looking at you. There was a lot of pressure. In my heart, I didn’t like them. I felt like we should be going in another direction.”
That’s an opinion that many share about Reloaded and Revolutions, which opted to pick up where one of the greatest blockbusters ever made left off by disappearing up their own arses. Pope had a more specific problem, though, and it had everything to do with Kubrick, who he was adamant negatively impacted the production from beyond the veil.
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“The Wachowskis had read this damn book by Stanley Kubrick that said, ‘Actors don’t do natural performances until you wear them out,'” he raged. “So let’s go to take 90! I want to dig him up and kill him.” Harsh, but Pope was so infuriated by the approach that he would have gladly exhumed Kubrick’s corpse and murdered it for what it had put him through on the second and third Matrix flicks.
There are many reasons why Reloaded and Revolutions failed to live up to the almost impossible standards set by their predecessor, but Pope has a much simpler theory: it was all Kubrick’s fault.
