One of the coolest scenes in The Matrix Resurrections almost didn’t happen. The moment where Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss) jump off a skyscraper is genuinely thrilling, and believe it or not, it wasn’t purely the work of CGI. Reeves and Moss were attached to wires suspended 550 feet above the ground, leaping hand-in-hand from the building’s edge.
According to SFX supervisor J.D. Schwalm, the production team was having trouble getting approval from the insurance company to go ahead with the stunt. “We filmed the jump in the morning as the last shot of the day after filming all night. But the evening of [the jump], we got word that we were not gonna do it,” Schwalm told Yahoo Entertainment. “The studio and the insurance company and whatnot wasn’t going to allow the actors to get on the rig. It was down to the wire and ultimately somebody showed up, gave the green light and it happened that day. It was pretty intense.”
In a world where most stunts are rendered with digital effects, it’s refreshing that The Matrix Resurrections opted for a more old school approach. Reeves is famous for pulling off his own stunts in movies, so it was exciting to see him live up to that legacy as well.
Director Lana Wachowski previously stated in a Matrix featurette that she wanted the moment between Neo and Trinity to feel “completely real”, hence why the team put so much effort into figuring out how to get Reeves and Moss to leap off a 43-story skyscraper safely.
Watch how they pulled off the ambitious stunt below:
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