Warner Bros. and the Wachowskis have won a summary judgement against Thomas Althouse’s claim that The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions were copied from a work of his. The lawsuit was filed last year and stated that the sequels were based around a script that Althouse had submitted to Warner Bros. in 1993 called The Immortals. Althouse claimed that his lawsuit was being filed so long after the films’ release because he only first saw them in 2010.
Warner Bros. fought back against Atlhouse and now Judge R. Gary Klausner has sided with them saying “[t]he basic premises of The Matrix Trilogy and The Immortals are so different that it would be unreasonable to find their plots substantially similar.” Althouse’s script involved an immortal CIA agent travelling to the future and battling other immortal Nazis. Althouse was mostly alleging that The Matrix films stole from his themes though, including multiple Christ allegories. Judge Klausner disagreed here as well.
“Plaintiff alleges that both stories have allusions to Christ. However, allusions to Christianity in literature date back hundreds of years and are not generally protectible. Looking at the details of the works, the two works express these themes very differently. The Christian allusions in The Immortals concludes with the literal Second Coming of Christ, whereas The Matrix Trilogy concludes with a metaphorical reference to Christ, as Neo sacrifices himself to save others.”
I have to say, this Judge seems to really get what The Matrix Trilogy is all about. Either the lawyers explained it very well, or he had the pleasure of multiple rewatches.
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