Cinematographer Bill Pope is something of a legend.
The lenser has served as director of photography on many films, most notably the Wachowski’s “The Matrix” trilogy, Sam Raimi’s two “Spider-Man” sequels, “Team America: World Police,” “Army of Darkness,” “Bound,” “Clueless,” “Darkman,” and more recently the likes of “Baby Driver,” “The Jungle Book” and “Alita: Battle Angel”.
He knows his stuff and recently got chatting with another legendary cinematographer, Roger Deakins, as part of the latter’s Team Deakins podcast (via Yahoo). One topic that came up was “The Matrix,” specifically how the two sequels don’t live up to their predecessor and what went wrong with them.
Pope didn’t mince words, yet puts the blame on someone entirely unexpected – filmmaker Stanley Kubrick:
“Everything that was good about the first experience was not good about the last two. 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 we should be going in another direction. There was a lot of friction and a lot of personal problems, and it showed up on screen to be honest with you. It was not my most elevated moment, nor was it anyone else’s.
The Wachowskis had read this damn book by Stanley Kubrick that said, ‘Actors don’t do natural performances until you wear them out’. So let’s go to take 90! I want to dig Stanley Kubrick up and kill him. There is something about making a shoot that long, 276 shoot days, that is mind numbing and soul numbing and it numbs the movie.”
Pope is not returning for the fourth instalment in “The Matrix” franchise which had just begun shooting when the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. John Toll, who worked with director Lana Wachowski on “Cloud Atlas,” “Jupiter Ascending,” and Netflix’s “Sense8” series, is taking on those duties.
Pope will next serve as cinematographer on Marvel Studios’ “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”.
