The Matrix (1999) Filming Locations – Shot-for-Shot – Sydney, Australia [video]
36 comments
·June 16, 2025FirmwareBurner
magarnicle
You have to go a long way to get to the "outback" from Sydney, though Hollywood has other ideas. I laughed in Mission Impossible 2 when they set up their base in the desert for their operation in Sydney Harbour. Just a short 500km (at least) helicopter ride away.
bitwize
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
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
jeffwilcox
Plus the Wachowskis have Chicago street names throughout.
throwaway992673
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_funnel-web_spider
The males like to wander around aimlessly looking for mates.
wkat4242
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.
alex1138
Neo fights giant Kangaroo Smith
keepamovin
Heh :) Sydney downtown is very beautiful and very city vibe.
dylan604
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
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.
FirmwareBurner
Sounds like something a giant spider would say ;)
keepamovin
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! :)
wkat4242
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.
dkjaudyeqooe
They probably were delapidated, Surry Hills has undergone a lot of gentrification in the last 25 years.
loloquwowndueo
CGI was not as limited as you think in 1999. Look up films from that year and you’ll see.
ttmb
I was working in Sydney and the instructions for dropping off the off-site backup tapes said "turn left at the Woman In Red fountain".
tetris11
I was hoping to see the subway location, but I guess this was just a set piece
jeffwilcox
Love it - was walking with a friend near Martin Place they pointed out the "Reflection" sculpture that was in the movie during the red dress training exercise.
ajxs
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.
reassess_blind
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
comrade1234
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
That was the second one (Reloaded). Filmed in downtown Oakland and Alameda Naval air station.
andrehacker
Sorry man, there never was a second “Matrix” nor a third.
dylan604
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.
loloquwowndueo
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).
to11mtm
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.
chrisallick
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.
mattigames
I still believe the Matrix Online videogame had a lot potential, it just needed a better game loop, I think some new Matrix game taking ideas from games like Helldivers, GTA V and Cyberpunk could become a hit, where there are 2 parallel worlds, the Matrix and reality, and some things you do in one can help you in the other, e.g a way to discover from the matrix where the sentinels are in reality, the overall aim of the game would be to gain territory on "reality", and you would gain "exploits" that help you gain territory faster, meaning destroying robot bases and liberating human farms, plus recruiting some of them. On the monetization side the publisher can of course just do the popular thing and sell skins (that only show in the Matrix of course), for both cars and characters, maybe paint jobs for your ship would work fine too.
neilv
> On the monetization side the publisher can of course just do the popular thing and sell skins (that only show in the Matrix of course)
Perfect. If that didn't already exist in gaming industry, it would've been invented for a Matrix game.
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.