LOS ANGELES – It’s the day of the final showdown between “The Matrix Revolution’s” Neo and Agent Smith. There’s only one problem in shooting the scene: Actors Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving realized that they were both flying blind.
“On the first take where Smith and Neo fight, the rain came down and we realized that we couldn’t see each other,” explains Keanu Reeves. “But we had fought so much together that we actually didn’t really have to see each other, which was kind of a cool thing.”
The scene, shot entirely in the rain, was so wet that the actors had full wet suits underneath their costumes.
“It was like a ton of water a minute or something like that, so we were wet for a couple weeks six weeks,” Reeves adds.
But the “big, fat, juicy raindrops” that the film’s special effects team had taken months to design didn’t just make it hard for the actors to see each other. They also were loud, according to Reeves.
“So to try and find the scene and feel the scene, it was frustrating sometimes, because you couldn’t hear yourself and you couldn’t hear your fellow actor. So we had to kind of work through that,” he says.
In the end, the trouble was well worth it, as the scene is one of the most visually spectacular in the film. “The Matrix Revolutions” opens Wednesday.
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AP-NY-10-31-03 1240EST
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