Sydney Morning Herald
April 19 2003
Garry Maddox reports.
 

Making the two sequels for The Matrix was a brutal business for the main actors, Weaving says. "There were a lot of injuries again this time around."
Carrie-Anne Moss, who plays Trinity, broke her leg training for a wire stunt. Laurence Fishburne, aka Morpheus, fractured an arm in another training incident. And Weaving put out a disc in his neck while being pulled back on a wire. "I was flying through the air and I had to land on my back," he says of the whiplash-style injury.
While he kept working, doctors advised that Weaving drop particular movements from his repertoire during fight scenes. "I was getting these strange tinglings down my arm and in my fingers."

Keanu Reeves, who plays Neo, managed to avoid the hospital ward. "His skills were fantastic," says Weaving. "He wants to be able to do everything himself and gets really angry if he can't."
The high-action fight scenes that were such a feature of the original Matrix are echoed in its physically demanding sequels. "Training seems to be more dangerous than the actual shoot because you're stretching yourself, seeing what you can do and doing things for the first time and trying to make things work," Weaving says.

Once the cameras started rolling, perfecting scenes became the focus. For one shot, Weaving and Reeves had to hit and kick each other for 93 takes.