[HN Gopher] The Matrix (1999) Filming Locations - Shot-for-Shot ...
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       The Matrix (1999) Filming Locations - Shot-for-Shot - Sydney,
       Australia [video]
        
       Author : keepamovin
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2025-06-16 09:48 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | FirmwareBurner wrote:
       | Seeing the movie as a kid I totally expect it to be filmed in New
       | York, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, but Sydney never crossed my
       | mind since the shots looks too "North America" to be anything
       | else. Probably because in my mind Sydney is a beach with the
       | opera house and an outback with kangaroos and giant spiders.
        
         | keepamovin wrote:
         | Heh :) Sydney downtown is very beautiful and very city vibe.
        
           | FirmwareBurner wrote:
           | Sounds like something a giant spider would say ;)
        
             | keepamovin wrote:
             | Ah yes us sydneyspiders - I mean Sydneysiders - we're
             | always looking for delicious - I mean gullible - I mean
             | curious tourists in Sydney, and their dollars. We really
             | don't have enough hehehe! :)
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | Especially the sound of the crosswalk signals. Orbital
           | introduced me to them in the 90s, so when I heard in person
           | the first time I had a knowing smile and started to groove to
           | the rest of the track that my brain filled in for me
        
             | ajxs wrote:
             | We call them 'pedestrian crossings' down under! It's been
             | sampled in a few songs actually. The sound is so ingrained
             | in our psyche that you recognise it instantly.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | the only one ingrained deeper for is Blade Runner's "walk
               | now"
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | The one that really baked my noodle was seeing Melbourne play
         | the role of Boston in _Knowing_ (2009), which it did fairly
         | well if you don 't look too closely.
        
           | keepamovin wrote:
           | Like that film, but holy shit I did not know that was
           | Melbourne! No way. Have to go back and watch. Classic Cage
           | hahaha :)
           | 
           |  _also nice Matrix reference_
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | That's why Sydney was so popular. The CBD has a really American
         | feel but prices and wages are Australian. Fox studios had a
         | huge campus there. Not sure if they still do.
        
         | throwaway992673 wrote:
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_funnel-web_spider
         | 
         | The males like to wander around aimlessly looking for mates.
        
       | wkat4242 wrote:
       | I'm surprised they used two real locations for the hotels. The
       | "Heart O'The City" one at the very start, and the "Deja Vu"
       | staircase.
       | 
       | These hotels look really delapidated in the film. I thought they
       | were studio sets. I wonder how they managed to make them look so
       | bad, tbh with late 90s tech (green screen mostly and limited CGI)
       | it sounds like it would have been simpler to just build a
       | delapidated staircase in a studio than to make the actual thing
       | look rotten.
        
         | loloquwowndueo wrote:
         | CGI was not as limited as you think in 1999. Look up films from
         | that year and you'll see.
        
       | comrade1234 wrote:
       | I thought they filmed scenes in the east bay? Oakland maybe? I
       | swear I met (biblically) girls back then in s.f. that had been in
       | some rave scene.
        
         | Drunk_Engineer wrote:
         | That was the second one (Reloaded). Filmed in downtown Oakland
         | and Alameda Naval air station.
        
           | andrehacker wrote:
           | Sorry man, there never was a second "Matrix" nor a third.
        
             | to11mtm wrote:
             | Eh... I feel like they have aged better over time than a
             | lot of 'trilogies'. They do not measure up to the original
             | but they aren't truly terrible, at least if you're looking
             | at them from a more philosophical standpoint.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | what about the fourth with the gender bend twist? I guess
             | the meme is older than the fourth movie, but I rarely see
             | it even get mentioned let alone memefied. I guess less
             | people would know tetralogy instead of trilogy, at least, I
             | had to look up what a series of 4 would be.
        
               | echelon wrote:
               | The first film was groundbreaking. It matched "Star Wars"
               | and "Lord of the Rings" in terms of its cultural
               | penetration. Unfortunately the series failed to live past
               | that strong debut. The second and third films were a
               | total letdown, and The Animatrix only appealed to a niche
               | audience and was itself a mixed bag.
               | 
               | The surprising and unsolicited fourth film had some
               | promise in the first third of the film - I loved how it
               | subverted expectations and was a meta deconstruction of
               | the series itself. After the provocative and almost
               | blasphemous setup, the film quickly devolved into poor
               | action, weird pacing, and overall bad plot and character
               | arcs. In a word, it felt senile. (The action shouldn't
               | have been that bad with Keanu helming John Wick. It was
               | just laziness.) The denouement was just same-y slop we
               | see in every other dialed in action movie.
               | 
               | If you haven't seen the fourth film, it's a bit of a mind
               | fuck. But turn it off the minute the reveal is over. It
               | isn't worth your time otherwise.
        
             | loloquwowndueo wrote:
             | Sorry, they are as canon as the phantom menace even if you
             | don't like them (neither do I for that matter but hey, if
             | these creators wanted to wreck their legacy who are we to
             | stop them).
        
           | chrisallick wrote:
           | I remember being at the alameda skatepark and hearing them
           | shoot the freeway scene where the twins are driving a mac
           | truck and trinity comes to help.
        
       | reassess_blind wrote:
       | My favorite of these shot-for-shot style videos is how well Last
       | of Us 2 recreated Seattle:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uukShs2qgCI
        
       | ajxs wrote:
       | Very cool! I knew all of them, except for the two hotel
       | locations! Sydney's inner city has changed a lot in the
       | intervening years. It's surreal revisiting that Castlereigh St
       | shot in the film, and seeing how undeveloped it looks in
       | comparison to today.
        
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       (page generated 2025-06-18 23:00 UTC)