The Matrix lawsuit you're NOT hearing about...

[GeorgeC]

Details can be found at http://www.daghettotymz.com/

Forgive the animation intro loading and the music (which I hate), but there's something going on here. You click on Sophia Stewart's link to get the meat of the matter.

To sum it up, a lady by the name of Sophia Stewart wrote a screenplay in the 1980s and sent it off to the Wachowski Brothers in the mid-1980s in answer to an ad they placed in a magazine or paper.

She basically never heard from them again.

Low and behold she got a view of the ORIGINAL cut of The Matrix in March 1999 and noticed a number of disturbing similarities to her script and the fact that she received no credit. She also noted things in the Terminator movies similar to her script and has gone after Gale Ann Hurd (producer of the series) and James Cameron, too.

(Note: Cameron and Hurd have been sued before by writer Harlan Ellison. Ellison had a very clear-cut case since Cameron acknowledged reading and getting ideas from a short story Ellison wrote years before Terminator was a twinkle in Cameron's eyes. Ellison won his lawsuit, received monetary damages, and has since been credited in home video prints of The Terminator for his short story ideas.)

She contacted all the parties involved (the Wachowskis, Joel Silver, etc.) and informed them she was preparing to sue.

Not too longer after, 30 minutes were edited from The Matrix and subtle visual effects changes were made, too.

Why isn't this showing up on the radar in the US or most places around the world? Simple -- Time-Warner, copyright holders of The Matrix, own vast amounts of media outlets (CNN, CNN Headline News, Time magazine, the WB Network, etc.) and are suppressing this in their interests. They know if the facts came out that there would be a massive public relations disaster on-hand and that the lady at the center of this might get a lot of public support and sympathy.

While it really shouldn't affect the case, the fact is that Ms. Stewart is also African-American. I'd still feel for her and root her on if she were Asian, Arab, Hispanic, or European. Something really smells in this case and I'm amazed that I have not heard about this until now.

While I am not big on conspiracies, my instincts are sharp enough to tell me there is something to this and my gut feeling is that Ms. Stewart has a case here.

[Macaluso]

ooooooh... I heard about this a while ago XD

[MusicFan]

If she really was mad over the fact she didn't get credited, she would of sued them before the movie came out, but doing this after the franchise is a household name, it seems she just cares about the money and attracting attention the herself. Thankfully, the latter half of the two is failing. I don't want her to win, just to show her some sort of lesson. I really don't care if her claims are valid or not, she just happens to really annoy me doing this.

[Christian]

Well, there is such a thing as statute of limitations. She may not have money as her primary motivation but it may not have been worth her while to file a case in 1999 if The Matrix was never going to go anywhere. Any student of law will tell you that waiting does not make her case less valid (but while it may remain valid forever in the eyes of the law she still has to file her case before the statute of limitations expires).

[GeorgeC]

If she really was mad over the fact she didn't get credited, she would of sued them before the movie came out, but doing this after the franchise is a household name, it seems she just cares about the money and attracting attention the herself. Thankfully, the latter half of the two is failing. I don't want her to win, just to show her some sort of lesson. I really don't care if her claims are valid or not, she just happens to really annoy me doing this.

You know, this sort of fannish self-centered logic never ceases to amaze you.

You really don't give a darn about anything other than your own entertainment, do you?

Seriously -- LISTEN TO YOURSELF!

You're saying you're okay with other people getting screwed by Mr. Popularity and that right/wrong doesn't matter so long as you're getting entertained?

I've seen this attitude with regards to the lawsuits brought by the creators of Superman, Green Lantern, Captain America, and a bunch of other classic character mythologies. It seems a majority of the fandom that bothers to post on the Internet isn't concerned about JUSTICE -- the whole friggin' point of most of these characters!! -- so long as the stupid comic books get published on time. Never mind that a big corporation long ago screwed the creators out of large sums of money because of shady publishing tactics. Never mind that as these corporations make tens of millions of dollars off these characters that the elderly character creators have a hard time paying basic living expenses or get a pittance of a pension. The fans just want their fix. Screw the people that created the characters that entertain these fans!

To heck with legal nitpicking and the legalese B.S. that corporate lawyers use to screw people out of their creations and rightful time in the spotlight --

I say give the lady her time in court TO PROVE HER CASE.

Sadly, she can't get a break on the major media outlets because they've automatically decided she's a nutcase or media whore like you have. The major media are also working to protect themselves because it's simpler to cut out items about simple human decency and justice that don't score high ratings and focus on garbage like the packaging for the next big DVD release or whatever Paris Hilton is doing in LA this week.

The other problem is that you're making an automatic assumption that she actually KNEW they were stealing her ideas in the first place!

Harlan Ellison sure didn't know what James Cameron was doing in The Terminator until AFTER that movie came out and Jim Cameron blabbed about the fact that he cribbed ideas and a major plotline from an old Ellison short story.

People that STEAL from other people generally don't let the victims know that they were robbed from in the first place.

I'm amazed that you seem to think that people aren't entitled to go after crooks and that they have to sit there and take it. As much as I think most lawsuits are frivolous, it seems to me that provable intellectual theft is something that people ought to be taken to court for.






P.S. -- Frankly, I don't give a darn about The Matrix, either. From what I've seen, it's the biggest piece of overhyped garbage in years and frankly I've seen the same basic VR concepts in TV shows (VR 5) and movies (Tron) done long before The Matrix was filmed.

I am concerned, however, that yet another of the little people is being stepped on by jerks that possibly stole her ideas...

[Macaluso]

The first movie was awesome.
The second two sucked.

[Ben]

I agree with George here wholeheartedly, and also as someone who has seen a submitted idea end up on the screen with no reward or credit.

At the time, I did not have the money nor the resources to go after "the big boys", and often it isn't until much later that cases are able to be brought up.

If she sent in a story idea and then 30 minutes of sub-plot were deleted, why shouldn't she be recognised. And where ARE those deleted scenes, huh? Why can't we see them?

The Matrix wasn't the most original of ideas anyway, but I did love the first film. Yes, I bought the recent trilogy set to see how they ran as a whole, like many others, but this lady deserves some reward if they used ideas she initiated.

[Stego]

I'm gonna stick with my beliefs in the fact that the best thing to come out of the Matrix is...the Animatrix. Much more depth and vision.

[Ben]

I think I'd probably go with that too. But the first film WAS pretty good too!