Excerpt from a Grant Morrison Interview.DRE: This may be old news but was the controversy over The Matrix films being like The Invisibles blown out of proportion?GM: It's really simple. The truth of that one is that design staff on The Matrix were given Invisibles collections and told to make the movie look like my books. This is a reported fact. The Wachowskis are comic book creators and fans and were fans of my work, so it's hardly surprising. I was even contacted before the first Matrix movie was released and asked if I would contribute a story to the website.It's not some baffling 'coincidence' that so much of The Matrix is plot by plot, detail by detail, image by image, lifted from Invisibles so there shouldn't be much controversy. The Wachowskis nicked The Invisibles and everyone in the know is well aware of this fact but of course they're unlikely to come out and say it.It was just too bad they deviated so far from the Invisibles philosophical template in the second and third movies because they blundered helplessly into boring Catholic theology, proving that they hadn't HAD the 'contact' experience that drove The Invisibles, and they wrecked both'Reloaded' and 'Revolutions' on the rocks of absolute incomprehension. They should have kept on stealing from me and maybe they would have wound up with something to really be proud of - a movie that could change minds and hearts and worlds.I love the first Matrix movie which I think is a real work of cinematic genius and very timely but I've now heard from several people who worked on The Matrix and they've all confirmed that they were given Invisibles books as reference. That's how it is. I'm not angry about it anymore, although at one time I was because they made millions from what was basically a Xerox of my work and to be honest, I would be happy with just one million so I didn't have to work thirteen hours of every f*cking day, including weekends.
Wow, another one coming out the woodwork, so let me see, The Wachowskis lifted their story off: The Bible, Invisibles, Ghost in the Shell, Dark City, X: The Movie, Alice in Wonderland, Neuromancer, A crazy lady called Sophia Stewart, V For Vendetta, Fist of Legend, 1984, etc, etc, etc.Well which one is it? One of them, or all of them? Is it too hard to comprehend that they simply took themes prevalent in all of these sources and mixed them up sucessfully? Why is everyone and their granma bitching at the brothers for getting fame for making something creative and influential in cinema? Backlash to success is a bitch sometimes.
All that story means is that the courts are willing to hear the case...not that the Wachowskis have been found guilty of IP theft.