title: Anne Boleyn

text: Meanwhile, the House of Commons had forbidden all appeals to Rome and exacted the penalties of "praemunire" against all who introduced papal bulls into England. It was only then that Pope Clement, at last, took the step of announcing a provisional excommunication of Henry and Cranmer. He condemned the marriage to Anne, and in March 1534 declared the marriage to Catherine legal and again ordered Henry to return to her. Henry now required his subjects to swear an oath attached to the First Succession Act, which effectively rejected papal authority in legal matters and recognised Anne Boleyn as queen. Those who refused, such as Sir Thomas More, who had resigned as Lord Chancellor, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, were placed in the Tower of London. In late 1534 parliament declared Henry "the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England". The Church in England was now under Henry's control, not Rome's. On 14 May 1534, in one of the realm's first official acts protecting Protestant Reformers, Anne wrote a letter to Thomas Cromwell seeking his aid in ensuring that English merchant Richard Herman be reinstated a member of the merchant adventurers in Antwerp and no longer persecuted simply because he had helped in "setting forth of the New testament in English." Before and after her coronation, Anne protected and promoted evangelicals and those wishing to study the scriptures of William Tyndale. She had a decisive role in influencing the Protestant reformer Matthew Parker to attend court as her chaplain, and before her death entrusted her daughter to Parker's care.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: After her coronation, Anne settled into a quiet routine at the king's favourite residence, Greenwich Palace, to prepare for the birth of her baby. The child was born slightly prematurely on 7 September 1533 between three and four in the afternoon. Anne gave birth to a girl, who was christened Elizabeth, probably in honour of either or both Anne's mother Elizabeth Howard and Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York. But the birth of a girl was a heavy blow to her parents, who had confidently expected a boy. All but one of the royal physicians and astrologers had predicted a son and the French king had been asked to stand as his godfather. Now the prepared letters announcing the birth of a "prince" had an "s" hastily added to them to read "princes[s]" and the traditional jousting tournament for the birth of an heir was cancelled.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: The infant princess was given a splendid christening, but Anne feared that Catherine's daughter, Mary, now stripped of her title of princess and labelled a bastard, posed a threat to Elizabeth's position. Henry soothed his wife's fears by separating Mary from her many servants and sending her to Hatfield House, where Elizabeth would live with her own sizeable staff of servants and the country air was thought better for the baby's health. Anne frequently visited her daughter at Hatfield and other residences.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: The new queen had a larger staff of servants than Catherine. There were more than 250 servants to tend to her personal needs, from priests to stable boys, and more than 60 maids-of-honour who served her and accompanied her to social events. She also employed several priests who acted as her confessors, chaplains and religious advisers. One of these was Matthew Parker, who became one of the chief architects of Anglican thought during the reign of Anne's daughter, Elizabeth I.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: The king and his new queen enjoyed a reasonably happy accord with periods of calm and affection. Anne's sharp intelligence, political acumen and forward manners, although desirable in a mistress, were, at the time, unacceptable in a wife. She was once reported to have spoken to her uncle in words that "shouldn't be used to a dog". After a stillbirth or miscarriage as early as Christmas 1534, Henry was discussing with Cranmer and Cromwell the possibility of divorcing her without having to return to Catherine. Nothing came of the matter as the royal couple reconciled and spent summer 1535 on progress. By October, she was again pregnant.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Anne presided over a court. She spent lavish amounts of money on gowns, jewels, head-dresses, ostrich-feather fans, riding equipment, furniture and upholstery, maintaining the ostentatious display required by her status. Numerous palaces were renovated to suit her and Henry's extravagant tastes. Her motto was "The most happy", and she chose a white falcon as her personal device.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Anne was blamed for Henry's tyranny and called by some of her subjects "the king's whore" or a "naughty paike [prostitute]". Public opinion turned further against her after her failure to produce a son. It sank even lower after the executions of her enemies More and Fisher.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: On 8 January 1536, news of Catherine of Aragon's death reached the king and Anne, who were overjoyed. The following day, Henry and Anne wore yellow, a symbol of joy and celebration in England but of mourning in Spain, from head to toe, and celebrated Catherine's death with festivities. With Catherine dead, Anne attempted to make peace with Mary. Mary rebuffed Anne's overtures, perhaps because of rumours circulating that Catherine had been poisoned by Anne or Henry. These began after the discovery during her embalming that Catherine's heart was blackened. Modern medical experts are in agreement that this was not the result of poisoning, but of cancer of the heart, an extremely rare condition which was not understood at the time.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Queen Anne, pregnant again, was aware of the dangers if she failed to give birth to a son. With Catherine dead, Henry would be free to marry without any taint of illegality. At this time, Henry began paying court to one of Anne's maids-of-honour, Jane Seymour, and allegedly gave her a locket containing a portrait miniature of himself. While wearing this locket in the presence of Anne, Jane began opening and closing it. Anne responded by ripping the locket off Jane's neck with such force that her fingers bled.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Later that month, the king was unhorsed in a tournament and knocked unconscious for two hours, a worrying incident that Anne believed led to her miscarriage five days later. Another possible cause of the miscarriage was an incident in which, upon entering a room, Anne saw Jane Seymour sitting on Henry's lap and flew into a rage. Whatever the cause, on the day that Catherine of Aragon was buried at Peterborough Abbey, Anne miscarried a baby which, according to the imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, she had borne for about three and a half months, and which "seemed to be a male child". Chapuys commented "She has miscarried of her saviour." In Chapuys' opinion, this loss was the beginning of the end of the royal marriage.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Given Henry's desperate desire for a son, the sequence of Anne's pregnancies has attracted much interest. Mike Ashley speculated that Anne had two stillborn children after Elizabeth's birth and before the male child she miscarried in 1536. Most sources attest only to the birth of Elizabeth in September 1533, a possible miscarriage in the summer of 1534, and the miscarriage of a male child, of almost four months' gestation, in January 1536. As Anne recovered from her miscarriage, Henry declared that he had been seduced into the marriage by means of "sortilege" – a French term indicating either "deception" or "spells". His new mistress, Jane Seymour, was quickly moved into royal quarters. This was followed by Anne's brother George being refused a prestigious court honour, the Order of the Garter, given instead to Sir Nicholas Carew.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Anne's biographer Eric Ives believes that her fall and execution were primarily engineered by her former ally Thomas Cromwell. The conversations between Chapuys and Cromwell thereafter indicate Cromwell as the instigator of the plot to remove Anne; evidence of this is seen in the "Spanish Chronicle" and through letters written from Chapuys to Charles V. Anne argued with Cromwell over the redistribution of Church revenues and over foreign policy. She advocated that revenues be distributed to charitable and educational institutions; and she favoured a French alliance. Cromwell insisted on filling the king's depleted coffers, while taking a cut for himself, and preferred an imperial alliance. For these reasons, Ives suggests, "Anne Boleyn had become a major threat to Thomas Cromwell." Cromwell's biographer John Schofield, on the other hand, contends that no power struggle existed between Anne and Cromwell and that "not a trace can be found of a Cromwellian conspiracy against Anne ... Cromwell became involved in the royal marital drama only when Henry ordered him onto the case." Cromwell did not manufacture the accusations of adultery, though he and other officials used them to bolster Henry's case against Anne. Warnicke questions whether Cromwell could have or wished to manipulate the king in such a matter. Such a bold attempt by Cromwell, given the limited evidence, could have risked his office, even his life. Henry himself issued the crucial instructions: his officials, including Cromwell, carried them out. The result was by modern standards a legal travesty; however, the rules of the time were not bent in order to assure a conviction; there was no need to tamper with rules that guaranteed the desired result since law at the time was an engine of state, not a mechanism for justice.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Towards the end of April, a Flemish musician in Anne's service named Mark Smeaton was arrested. He initially denied being the queen's lover but later confessed, perhaps after being tortured or promised freedom. Another courtier, Sir Henry Norris, was arrested on May Day, but being an aristocrat, could not be tortured. Prior to his arrest, Norris was treated kindly by the king, who offered him his own horse to use on the May Day festivities. It seems likely that during the festivities, the king was notified of Smeaton's confession and it was shortly thereafter the alleged conspirators were arrested upon his orders. Norris denied his guilt and swore that Queen Anne was innocent; one of the most damaging pieces of evidence against Norris was an overheard conversation with Anne at the end of April, where she accused him of coming often to her chambers not to pay court to her lady-in-waiting Madge Shelton but to herself. Sir Francis Weston was arrested two days later on the same charge, as was Sir William Brereton, a groom of the king's Privy Chamber. Sir Thomas Wyatt, a poet and friend of the Boleyns who was allegedly infatuated with her before her marriage to the king, was also imprisoned for the same charge but later released, most likely due to his or his family's friendship with Cromwell. Sir Richard Page was also accused of having a sexual relationship with the queen, but he was acquitted of all charges after further investigation could not implicate him with Anne. The final accused was Queen Anne's own brother, George Boleyn, arrested on charges of incest and treason. He was accused of two incidents of incest: November 1535 at Whitehall and the following month at Eltham.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: On 2 May 1536, Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower of London by barge. It is likely that Anne may have entered through the Court Gate in the Byward Tower rather than the Traitors' Gate, according to historian and author of "The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn", Eric Ives. In the Tower, she collapsed, demanding to know the location of her father and "swete broder", as well as the charges against her.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Four of the accused men were tried in Westminster on 12 May 1536. Weston, Brereton and Norris publicly maintained their innocence and only Smeaton supported the Crown by pleading guilty. Three days later, Anne and George Boleyn were tried separately in the Tower of London, before a jury of 27 peers. She was accused of adultery, incest, and high treason. By the Treason Act of Edward III, adultery on the part of a queen was a form of treason (because of the implications for the succession to the throne) for which the penalty was hanging, drawing and quartering for a man and burning alive for a woman, but the accusations, and especially that of incestuous adultery, were also designed to impugn her moral character. The other form of treason alleged against her was that of plotting the king's death, with her "lovers", so that she might later marry Henry Norris. Anne's one-time betrothed, Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland, sat on the jury that unanimously found Anne guilty. When the verdict was announced, he collapsed and had to be carried from the courtroom. He died childless eight months later and was succeeded by his nephew.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: The accused were found guilty and condemned to death. George Boleyn and the other accused men were executed on 17 May 1536. William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower, reported Anne seemed very happy and ready to be done with life. Henry commuted Anne's sentence from burning to beheading, and rather than have a queen beheaded with the common axe, he brought an expert swordsman from Saint-Omer in France, to perform the execution. On the morning of 19 May, Kingston wrote:


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Her impending death may have caused her great sorrow for some time during her imprisonment. The poem "O Death Rock Me Asleep" is generally believed to have been authored by Anne and reveals that she may have hoped death would end her suffering.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Shortly before dawn, she called Kingston to hear mass with her, and swore in his presence, on the eternal salvation of her soul, upon the Holy Sacraments, that she had never been unfaithful to the king. She ritually repeated this oath both immediately before and after receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: On the morning of Friday, 19 May Anne was taken to a scaffold erected on the north side of the White Tower, in front of what is now the Waterloo Barracks. She wore a red petticoat under a loose, dark grey gown of damask trimmed in fur and a mantle of ermine. Accompanied by two female attendants, Anne made her final walk from the Queen's House to the scaffold and she showed a "devilish spirit" and looked "as gay as if she was not going to die". Anne climbed the scaffold and made a short speech to the crowd:


title: Anne Boleyn

text: This version of her speech is found in Foxe's "Actes and Monuments" and an almost identical version in Ives (2005).


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Lancelot de Carle, a secretary to the French Ambassador, Antoine de Castelnau, was in London in May 1536, and was an eyewitness to her trial and execution. Two weeks after Anne's death, de Carole composed the 1,318-line poem "Épistre Contenant le Procès Criminel Faict à l'Encontre de la Royne Anne Boullant d'Angleterre" (A Letter Containing the Criminal Charges Laid Against Queen Anne Boleyn of England), which provides a moving account of her last words and their effect on the crowd:


title: Anne Boleyn

text: It is thought that Anne avoided criticising Henry to save Elizabeth and her family from further consequences, but even under such extreme pressure Anne did not confess guilt, and indeed subtly implied her innocence, in her appeal to those who might "meddle of my cause".


title: Anne Boleyn

text: The ermine mantle was removed and Anne lifted off her headdress, tucking her hair under a coif. After a brief farewell to her weeping ladies and a request for prayers, she knelt down and one of her ladies tied a blindfold over her eyes. She knelt upright, in the French style of beheadings. Her final prayer consisted of her repeating continually, "Jesu receive my soul; O Lord God have pity on my soul."


title: Anne Boleyn

text: The execution consisted of a single stroke. It was witnessed by Thomas Cromwell; Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk; the king's illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy; the Lord Mayor of London, as well as aldermen, sheriffs and representatives of the various craft guilds. Most of the king's council were also present. Cranmer, who was at Lambeth Palace, was reported to have broken down in tears after telling Alexander Ales: "She who has been the Queen of England on earth will today become a Queen in heaven." When the charges were first brought against Anne, Cranmer had expressed his astonishment to Henry and his belief that "she should not be culpable".


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Cranmer felt vulnerable because of his closeness to the queen; on the night before the execution, he declared Henry's marriage to Anne to have been void, like Catherine's before her. He made no serious attempt to save Anne's life, although some sources record that he had prepared her for death by hearing her last private confession of sins, in which she had stated her innocence before God. On the day of her death, a Scottish friend found Cranmer weeping uncontrollably in his London gardens, saying that he was sure that Anne had now gone to Heaven.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: She was then buried in an unmarked grave in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Her skeleton was identified during renovations of the chapel in 1876, in the reign of Queen Victoria, and Anne's grave is now identified on the marble floor.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Nicholas Sanders, a Catholic recusant born , was committed to deposing Elizabeth I and re-establishing Catholicism in England. In his "De Origine ac Progressu schismatis Anglicani" ("The Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism"), published in 1585, he was the first to write that Anne had six fingers on her right hand. Since physical deformities were generally interpreted as a sign of evil, it is unlikely that Anne Boleyn would have gained Henry's romantic attention had she had any. Upon exhumation in 1876, no abnormalities were discovered. Her frame was described as delicate, approximately , "the hand and feet bones indicated delicate and well-shaped hands and feet, with tapering fingers and a narrow foot".


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Anne Boleyn was described by contemporaries as intelligent and gifted in musical arts and scholarly pursuits. She was also strong-willed and proud, and often quarrelled with Henry. Biographer Eric Ives evaluates the apparent contradictions in Anne's persona:


title: Anne Boleyn

text: No contemporary portraits of Anne Boleyn survive. A bust of her was cast on a commemorative medallion in 1534, believed to have been struck to celebrate her second pregnancy.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Following the coronation of her daughter as queen, Anne was venerated as a martyr and heroine of the English Reformation, particularly through the works of John Foxe, who argued that Anne had saved England from the evils of Roman Catholicism and that God had provided proof of her innocence and virtue by making sure her daughter Elizabeth I ascended the throne. An example of Anne's direct influence in the reformed church is what Alexander Ales described to Queen Elizabeth as the "evangelical bishops whom your holy mother appointed from among those scholars who favoured the purer doctrine". Over the centuries, Anne has inspired or been mentioned in numerous artistic and cultural works. As a result, she has remained in the popular memory and has been called "the most influential and important queen consort England has ever had."


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Anne's appearance has been much discussed by historians, as all of her portraits were destroyed following an order by Henry VIII, who wanted to erase her from history. Many surviving depictions of her may be copies of a lost original that apparently existed as late as 1773. One of the only contemporary likenesses of Anne was captured on a medal referred to as "The Moost Happi Medal" which was struck in 1536, probably to celebrate her pregnancy which occurred around that time. The other possible portrait of Anne was a secret locket ring that her daughter Elizabeth I possessed and was taken from one of her fingers at her death in 1603.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Another possible portrait of Anne was discovered in 2015 painted by artist Nidd Hall. Some scholars believe that it portrays Anne because it resembles the 1536 medal more than any other depiction. However, others believe that it is actually a portrait of her successor Jane Seymour.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Hans Holbein originally painted Anne's portrait and also sketched her during her lifetime. There are two surviving sketches that have been identified to be of Anne, by historians and people who knew her. Most scholars believe that Anne cannot be one of the two, as the portrayals do not look similar to each other, whilst others think that they do show the same woman but in one sketch she is pregnant, whilst in the other she is not.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: She was considered brilliant, charming, driven, elegant, forthright and graceful, with a keen wit and a lively, opinionated and passionate personality. Anne was depicted as "sweet and cheerful" in her youth and enjoyed cards and dice games, drinking wine, French cuisine, flirting, gambling, gossiping and good jokes. She was fond of archery, falconry, hunting and the occasional game of bowls. She also had a sharp tongue and a terrible temper.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Anne exerted a powerful charm on those who met her, though opinions differed on her attractiveness. The Venetian diarist Marino Sanuto, who saw Anne when Henry VIII met Francis I at Calais in October 1532, described her as "not one of the handsomest women in the world; she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised ... eyes, which are black and beautiful". Simon Grynée wrote to Martin Bucer in September 1531 that Anne was "young, good-looking, of a rather dark complexion". Lancelot de Carle called her "beautiful with an elegant figure", and a Venetian in Paris in 1528 also reported that she was said to be beautiful.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: The most influential description of Anne, but also the least reliable, was written by the Catholic propagandist and polemicist Nicholas Sanders in 1586, half a century after Anne's death:


title: Anne Boleyn

text: As Sanders held Anne responsible for Henry VIII's rejection of the Catholic Church he was keen to demonise her. Sanders's description contributed to what Ives calls the "monster legend" of Anne Boleyn. Though his details were fictitious, they have formed the basis for references to Anne's appearance even in some modern textbooks.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Because of Anne's early exposure to court life, she had powerful influences around her for most of her life. These early influences were mostly women who were engaged with art, history and religion. Eric Ives described the women around Anne as "aristocratic women seeking spiritual fulfillment". They included Queen Claude, of whose court Anne was a member, and Marguerite of Angoulême, who was a well-known figure during the Renaissance and held strong religious views that she portrayed through poetry. These women along with Anne's immediate family members, such as her father, may have had a large influence on Anne's personal faith.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Anne's experience in France made her a devout Christian in the new tradition of Renaissance humanism. Anne knew little Latin and, trained at a French court, she was influenced by an "evangelical variety of French humanism", which led her to champion the vernacular Bible. She later held the reformist position that the papacy was a corrupting influence on Christianity, but her conservative tendencies could be seen in her devotion to the Virgin Mary. Anne's European education ended in 1521, when her father summoned her back to England. She sailed from Calais in January 1522.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Another clue to Anne's personal faith could be found in Anne's book of hours, in which she wrote, ""le temps viendra"" ["the time will come"]. Alongside this inscription, she drew an astrolabe, which at the time was a symbol of the Renaissance. The inscription implies that Anne was a Renaissance woman, exposed to new ideas and thoughts relating to her faith.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Anne Boleyn's last words before her beheading were a prayer for her salvation, her king, and her country. She said, "Good Christian people! I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law, I am judged to death; and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I come hither to accuse no man, nor to any thing of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die; but I pray God save the king, and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler, or a more merciful prince was there never; and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and a sovereign lord." John Foxe, martyrologist, included Anne in his book, "Foxe's Book of Martyrs", claiming she was a good woman who had sincere faith and trust in her God. Foxe also believed a sign of Anne's good faith was God's blessing on her daughter, Elizabeth I, and God allowing Elizabeth to prosper as queen.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: Many legends and stories about Anne Boleyn have existed over the centuries. One is that she was secretly buried in Salle Church in Norfolk under a black slab near the tombs of her ancestors. Her body was said to have rested in an Essex church on its journey to Norfolk. Another is that her heart, at her request, was buried in Erwarton (Arwarton) Church, Suffolk by her uncle Sir Philip Parker.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: In 18th-century Sicily, the peasants of the village of Nicolosi believed that Anne Boleyn, for having made Henry VIII a heretic, was condemned to burn for eternity inside Mount Etna. This legend was often told for the benefit of foreign travellers.


title: Anne Boleyn

text: A number of people have claimed to have seen Anne's ghost at Hever Castle, Blickling Hall, Salle Church, the Tower of London and Marwell Hall. One account of her reputed sighting was given by paranormal researcher Hans Holzer. In 1864, Captain (later Major General) J. D. Dundas of the 60th Rifles regiment was billeted in the Tower of London. As he was looking out the window of his quarters, he noticed a guard below in the courtyard, in front of the lodgings where Anne had been imprisoned, behaving strangely. He appeared to challenge something, which to Dundas "looked like a whitish, female figure sliding towards the soldier". The guard charged through the form with his bayonet, then fainted. Only the captain's testimony and corroboration at the court-martial saved the guard from a lengthy prison sentence for having fainted while on duty. In 1960, Canon W. S. Pakenham-Walsh, vicar of Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, reported having conversations with Anne.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: Mission: Impossible is a series of American action spy films based on and a follow-on from the created by Bruce Geller. The series is mainly produced by and stars Tom Cruise, whose character is Ethan Hunt, an agent of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF). The films have been directed, written, and scored from various filmmakers and crew, while incorporating musical themes from the original series by Lalo Schifrin.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: Starting in 1996, the films (taking place starting six years after the events of the ) follow the missions of the IMF's main field team under the leadership of Hunt to stop an enemy force all the while preventing an impending global disaster. The series focuses on Hunt as the lead character as opposed to the ensemble cast structure of the television series, although some characters, such as Luther Stickell (played by Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (played by Simon Pegg) have recurring roles in the films.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: The series has received a positive reception from critics and audiences alike, and is the 16th-highest-grossing film series of all time, with a worldwide gross of over $3.5 billion to date, and is often cited as one of the best action franchises to date. The sixth and most recent film, titled "", was released on July 27, 2018.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: The seventh and eighth films are two feature-length parts of "Dead Reckoning". "" will be released in July 2023, and will be released in June 2024.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: The "Mission: Impossible" franchise is co-produced and released by Paramount Pictures and rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: Ethan Hunt is framed for the murder of his IMF team during a botched mission in Prague and accused of selling government secrets to an arms dealer known only as "Max". On the run, Ethan seeks to uncover the real traitor and clear his name.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: Ethan goes back in action and works with professional thief Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandiwe Newton). The duo go undercover to stop rogue IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) (who is also Nyah's former lover) from stealing a deadly virus, starting a pandemic, and selling the antidote to the highest bidder.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: Ethan is engaged to Julia Meade (Michelle Monaghan), who is unaware of his true job. He assembles a team to face the elusive arms and information broker Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who intends to sell a mysterious dangerous object known as "The Rabbit's Foot".


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: Ethan and the entire IMF are framed for the bombing of the Kremlin while investigating an individual known only as "Cobalt" (Michael Nyqvist). He and three other agents are left to stop him from starting a global nuclear war.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: Ethan Hunt comes under threat from the Syndicate. Faced with the IMF's disbandment, Hunt assembles his team for their mission to prove the Syndicate's existence and bring the organization down by any means necessary.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: When an IMF mission to recover plutonium goes wrong, the world is faced with the threat of the Apostles, a terrorist group formed by former members of the rogue nation called the Syndicate. As Ethan Hunt takes it upon himself to fulfill the original mission, the CIA begins to question his loyalty and his motives.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: In January 2019, it was announced that both a seventh and an eighth "Mission: Impossible" were in development, with Christopher McQuarrie set to return as both writer and director of both films. Reportedly filmed back-to-back, the seventh film was originally scheduled for release on July 23, 2021, before being delayed to November 19, 2021, May 27, 2022, September 30, 2022, and July 14, 2023, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: In September 2019, McQuarrie announced via his Instagram account that Hayley Atwell had joined the cast for both films, which was later confirmed by the actress. Two months later, the director also revealed the involvement of Pom Klementieff and in late December Shea Whigham was confirmed as a cast member for the two upcoming movies. In January 2020, McQuarrie further announced that Nicholas Hoult had also joined the cast and Simon Pegg confirmed his return as Benji later the same month.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: In February 2020, McQuarrie announced that Henry Czerny would reprise his role as Eugene Kittridge from the first film, whilst Vanessa Kirby confirmed her return as Alanna Mitsopolis / White Widow. Due to scheduling conflicts, Hoult was replaced by Esai Morales for both films. Similarly, Angela Bassett was originally going to appear in the film, but was later removed due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: An eighth "Mission: Impossible" film was announced to be in development in January 2019, set to be written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie and filmed back-to-back with the . It was scheduled to be released on August 5, 2022, but was later delayed to November 4, 2022, and then to July 7, 2023, then to June 28, 2024, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: Hayley Atwell joined the cast in September 2019, followed by Pom Klementieff and Shea Whigham. In January 2020, Nicholas Hoult and Simon Pegg were also announced to be appearing in the film, but Hoult was later replaced by Esai Morales in both films due to scheduling conflicts.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: In February 2020, it was announced that Henry Czerny and Vanessa Kirby would return as Eugene Kittridge and Alanna Mitsopolis, respectively. In February 2021, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that the film will no longer be filmed back-to-back with the seventh film. Filming began shortly after production wrapped on the seventh film. It was announced that both the 7th and 8th films will be a send-off for Ethan Hunt.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: The "Mission Impossible" film series has received generally positive reviews, with the later three being acclaimed. Praise has been directed towards its cinematography, action sequences, stunts, musical score, and acting.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: The television version is in a rarely used time (an unusual time signature with five crotchets to a bar) and is difficult to dance to, as was proven by a memorable segment of "American Bandstand" in which teenage dancers were caught off-guard by Dick Clark's playing of the Lalo Schifrin single release.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: The opening theme music for the first six films are stylized renditions of Schifrin's original iconic theme, preserving the rhythm, by Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Michael Giacchino, Joe Kraemer and Lorne Balfe, respectively. Most of the versions included in the score also retained the time signature.


title: Mission: Impossible (film series)

text: However, for Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr.'s version featured on the first film's motion picture soundtrack, the time signature was changed to standard pop time to make it more dance-friendly, although the intro is still in time. The Limp Bizkit song "Take a Look Around" from the soundtrack to the second film was set to a similar modification of the theme, with an interlude in .


title: The Matrix

text: The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the first installment in "The Matrix" film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano, and depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality that intelligent machines have created to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source. When computer programmer Thomas Anderson, under the hacker alias "Neo", uncovers the truth, he joins a rebellion against the machines along with other people who have been freed from the Matrix.


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" is an example of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. The Wachowskis' approach to action scenes was influenced by Japanese animation and martial arts films, and the film's use of fight choreographers and wire fu techniques from Hong Kong action cinema influenced subsequent Hollywood action film productions. The film popularized a visual effect known as "bullet time", in which the heightened perception of certain characters is represented by allowing the action within a shot to progress in slow-motion while the camera appears to move through the scene at normal speed, allowing the sped-up movements of certain characters to be perceived normally.


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" opened in theaters in the United States on March 31, 1999, to widespread acclaim from critics, who praised its innovative visual effects, action sequences, cinematography and entertainment value, and was a massive success at the box office, grossing over $460 million on a $63 million budget, becoming the highest-grossing Warner Bros. film of 1999 and the fourth highest-grossing film of that year. At the 72nd Academy Awards, the film won all four categories it was nominated for, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing. The film was also the recipient of numerous other accolades, including Best Sound and Best Special Visual Effects at the 53rd British Academy Film Awards, and the Wachowskis were awarded Best Director and Best Science Fiction Film at the 26th Saturn Awards. The film is considered to be among the greatest science fiction films of all time, and in 2012, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant."


title: The Matrix

text: The film's success led to two feature film sequels being released in 2003, "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions", which were also written and directed by the Wachowskis. The "Matrix" franchise was further expanded through the production of comic books, video games and animated short films, with which the Wachowskis were heavily involved. The franchise has also inspired books and theories expanding on some of the religious and philosophical ideas alluded to in the films. A fourth film, titled "The Matrix Resurrections", was released on December 22, 2021.


title: The Matrix

text: At an abandoned hotel, a police squad corners Trinity, who overpowers them with superhuman abilities. She flees, pursued by the police and a group of suited Agents capable of similar superhuman feats. She answers a ringing public telephone and vanishes.


title: The Matrix

text: Computer programmer Thomas Anderson, known by his hacking alias "Neo", is puzzled by repeated online encounters with the phrase "the Matrix". Trinity contacts him and tells him a man named Morpheus has the answers Neo seeks. A team of Agents and police, led by Agent Smith, arrives at Neo's workplace in search of him. Though Morpheus attempts to guide Neo to safety, Neo surrenders rather than risk a dangerous escape via a scaffold. The Agents attempt to bribe Neo into helping them locate Morpheus, who they claim is a terrorist (and the most dangerous man alive), by offering to erase Neo's criminal record. When Neo refuses to cooperate, they fuse his mouth shut, pin him down, and implant a robotic "bug" in his stomach. Neo wakes up from what he believes to be a nightmare. Soon after, Neo is taken by Trinity to meet Morpheus, and she removes the bug from Neo, indicating that the "nightmare" he experienced was apparently real.


title: The Matrix

text: Morpheus offers Neo a choice between two pills: red to reveal the truth about the Matrix, and blue to forget everything and return to his former life. As Neo takes the red pill, his reality begins to distort, and he soon awakens in a liquid-filled pod among countless other pods, containing other humans. He is then brought aboard Morpheus's flying ship, the "Nebuchadnezzar". As Neo recuperates from a lifetime of physical inactivity in the pod, Morpheus explains the situation: In the early 21st century, a war broke out between humanity and intelligent machines. Though the humans had blocked the machines' access to solar energy by covering Earth's atmosphere with a thick layer of self-replicating nanobots, the machines won the war, and responded by enslaving humankind and harvesting their bioelectric power while keeping their minds pacified in the Matrix, a shared simulated reality modeled on the world as it was in 1999. In the years following, the remaining free humans took refuge in the underground city of Zion.


title: The Matrix

text: Morpheus and his crew are a group of rebels who hack into the Matrix to "unplug" enslaved humans and recruit them; their understanding of the Matrix's simulated nature allows them to bend its physical laws. Morpheus warns Neo that death within the Matrix kills the physical body too and explains that the Agents are sentient programs that eliminate threats to the system, while machines called Sentinels eliminate rebels in the real world. Neo's prowess during virtual training cements Morpheus's belief that Neo is "the One", a human prophesied to free humankind. The group enters the Matrix to visit the Oracle, a prophet-like program who predicted that the One would emerge. She implies to Neo that he is not the One and warns that he will have to choose between Morpheus's life and his own. Before they can leave the Matrix, Agents and police ambush the group, tipped off by Cypher, a disgruntled crew member who has betrayed Morpheus in exchange for a deal to be plugged back into the Matrix to live a comfortable life.


title: The Matrix

text: To buy time for the others, Morpheus fights Smith and is captured. Cypher exits the Matrix and murders the other crew members as they lie unconscious. Before Cypher can kill Neo and Trinity, crew member Tank regains consciousness and kills him before pulling Neo and Trinity from the Matrix. The Agents interrogate Morpheus to learn his access codes to the mainframe computer in Zion, which would allow them to destroy it. Neo resolves to return to the Matrix to rescue Morpheus, as the Oracle prophesied; Trinity insists she accompany him. While rescuing Morpheus, Neo gains confidence in his abilities, performing feats comparable to those of the Agents.


title: The Matrix

text: After Morpheus and Trinity safely exit the Matrix, Smith ambushes and kills Neo. While a group of Sentinels attack the "Nebuchadnezzar", Trinity confesses her love for Neo and says the Oracle told her she would fall in love with the One. Neo is revived, with newfound abilities to perceive and control the Matrix; he easily defeats Smith, prompting the other Agents to flee and he leaves the Matrix just as the ship's electromagnetic pulse disables the Sentinels. Back in the Matrix, Neo makes a telephone call, promising the machines that he will show their prisoners "a world where anything is possible". He hangs up and flies away.


title: The Matrix

text: In 1994, the Wachowskis presented the script for the film "Assassins" to Warner Bros. Pictures. After Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the president of production of the company at the time, read the script, he decided to buy rights to it and included two more pictures, "Bound" and "The Matrix", in the contract. The first movie the Wachowskis directed, "Bound", then became a critical success. Using this momentum, they later asked to direct "The Matrix".


title: The Matrix

text: In 1996, the Wachowskis pitched the role of Neo to Will Smith. Smith explained on his YouTube channel that the idea was for him to be Neo, while Morpheus was to be played by Val Kilmer. He later explained that he did not quite understand the concept and he turned down the role to instead film "Wild Wild West".


title: The Matrix

text: Producer Joel Silver soon joined the project. Although the project had key supporters, including Silver and Di Bonaventura, to influence the company, "The Matrix" was still a huge investment for Warner Bros., which had to invest $60 million to create a movie with philosophical themes and difficult special effects. The Wachowskis therefore hired underground comic book artists Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce to draw a 600-page, shot-by-shot storyboard for the entire film. The storyboard eventually earned the studio's approval, and it was decided to film in Australia to make the most of the budget. Soon, "The Matrix" became a co-production of Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures. According to editor Zach Staenberg on the DVD audio commentary track, the production team sent an edit of the film's first minutes (featuring Trinity's encounter with police and Agents) to Warner executives, and secured Warner's "total support of the movie" from then on.


title: The Matrix

text: The cast were required to be able to understand and explain "The Matrix". French philosopher Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation" was required reading for most of the principal cast and crew. In early 1997, the Wachowskis had Reeves read "Simulacra and Simulation", Kevin Kelly's "", and Dylan Evans's ideas on evolutionary psychology even before they opened up the script, and eventually he was able to explain all the philosophical nuances involved. Moss commented that she had difficulty with this process.


title: The Matrix

text: The directors had long been admirers of Hong Kong action cinema, so they decided to hire the Chinese martial arts choreographer and film director Yuen Woo-ping to work on fight scenes. To prepare for the wire fu, the actors had to train hard for several months. The Wachowskis first scheduled four months for training, beginning in October 1997. Yuen was optimistic but then began to worry when he realized how unfit the actors were.


title: The Matrix

text: Yuen let their body style develop and then worked with each actor's strength. He built on Reeves's diligence, Fishburne's resilience, Weaving's precision, and Moss's feminine grace. Yuen designed Moss's moves to suit her deftness and lightness. Prior to the pre-production, Reeves underwent a two-level fusion of his cervical (neck) spine due to spinal cord compression from a herniated disc ("I was falling over in the shower in the morning"). He was still recovering by the time of pre-production, but he insisted on training, so Yuen let him practice punches and lighter moves. Reeves trained hard and even requested training on days off. However, the surgery still made him unable to kick for two out of four months of training. As a result, Reeves did not kick much in the film. Weaving had to undergo hip surgery after he sustained an injury during the training process.


title: The Matrix

text: All but a few scenes were filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney, as well as in the city itself, although recognizable landmarks were not included in order to maintain the impression of a generic American city. The filming helped establish New South Wales as a major film production center. Filming began in March 1998 and wrapped in August 1998; principal photography took 118 days.


title: The Matrix

text: Due to Reeves's neck injury (see above), some of the action scenes had to be rescheduled to wait for his full recovery. As a result, the filming began with scenes that did not require much physical exertion, such as the scene in Thomas Anderson's office, the interrogation room, or the car ride in which Neo is taken to see the Oracle. Locations for these scenes included Martin Place's fountain in Sydney, half-way between it and the adjacent Colonial Building, and the Colonial Building itself. During the scene set on a government building rooftop, the team filmed extra footage of Neo dodging bullets in case the bullet time process did not work. The bullet-time fight scene was filmed on the roof of Symantec Corporation building in Kent Street, opposite Sussex Street.


title: The Matrix

text: Moss performed the shots featuring Trinity at the beginning of the film and all the wire stunts herself. The rooftop set that Trinity uses to escape from Agent Brown early in the film was left over from the production of "Dark City", which has prompted comments due to the thematic similarities of the films. During the rehearsal of the lobby scene, in which Trinity runs on a wall, Moss injured her leg and was ultimately unable to film the shot in one take. She stated that she was under a lot of pressure at the time and was devastated when she realized that she would be unable to do it.


title: The Matrix

text: The dojo set was built well before the actual filming. During the filming of these action sequences, there was significant physical contact between the actors, earning them bruises. Reeves's injury and his insufficient training with wires prior to filming meant he was unable to perform the triple kicks satisfactorily and became frustrated with himself, causing the scene to be postponed. The scene was shot successfully a few days later, with Reeves using only three takes. Yuen altered the choreography and made the actors pull their punches in the last sequence of the scene, creating a training feel.


title: The Matrix

text: The filmmakers originally planned to shoot the subway scene in an actual subway station, but the complexity of the fight and related wire work required shooting the scene on a set. The set was built around an existing train storage facility, which had real train tracks. Filming the scene when Neo slammed Smith into the ceiling, Chad Stahelski, Reeves's stunt double, sustained several injuries, including broken ribs, knees, and a dislocated shoulder. Another stuntman was injured by a hydraulic puller during a shot in which Neo was slammed into a booth. The office building in which Smith interrogated Morpheus was a large set, and the outside view from inside the building was a large, three story high cyclorama. The helicopter was a full-scale light-weight mock-up suspended by a wire rope operated a tilting mechanism mounted to the studio roofbeams. The helicopter had a real minigun side-mounted to it, which was set to cycle at half its regular (3,000 rounds per min) firing rate.


title: The Matrix

text: To prepare for the scene in which Neo wakes up in a pod, Reeves lost 15 pounds and shaved his whole body to give Neo an emaciated look. The scene in which Neo fell into the sewer system concluded the principal photography. According to "The Art of the Matrix", at least one filmed scene and a variety of short pieces of action were omitted from the final cut of the film.


title: The Matrix

text: Dane A. Davis was responsible for creating the sound effects for the film. The fight scene sound effects, such as the whipping sounds of punches, were created using thin metal rods and recording them, then editing the sounds. The sound of the pod containing a human body closing required almost fifty sounds put together.


title: The Matrix

text: The film's score was composed by Don Davis. He noted that mirrors appear frequently in the film: reflections of the blue and red pills are seen in Morpheus's glasses; Neo's capture by Agents is viewed through the rear-view mirror of Trinity's motorcycle; Neo observes a broken mirror mending itself; reflections warp as a spoon is bent; the reflection of a helicopter is visible as it approaches a skyscraper. Davis focused on this theme of reflections when creating his score, alternating between sections of the orchestra and attempting to incorporate contrapuntal ideas. Davis' score combines orchestral, choral and synthesizer elements; the balance between these elements varies depending on whether humans or machines are the dominant subject of a given scene.


title: The Matrix

text: In addition to Davis' score, "The Matrix" soundtrack also features music from acts such as Rammstein, Rob Dougan, Rage Against the Machine, Propellerheads, Ministry, Lunatic Calm, Deftones, Monster Magnet, The Prodigy, Rob Zombie, Meat Beat Manifesto, and Marilyn Manson.


title: The Matrix

text: In the film, the code that composes the Matrix itself is frequently represented as downward-flowing green characters. This code uses a custom typeface designed by Simon Whiteley, which includes mirror images of half-width kana characters and Western Latin letters and Arabic numerals. In a 2017 interview at CNET, he attributed the design to his wife, who is from Japan, and added, "I like to tell everybody that The Matrix's code is made out of Japanese sushi recipes". "The color green reflects the green tint commonly used on early monochrome computer monitors". Lynne Cartwright, the Visual Effects Supervisor at Animal Logic, supervised the creation of the film's opening title sequence, as well as the general look of the Matrix code throughout the film, in collaboration with Lindsay Fleay and Justen Marshall. The portrayal resembles the opening credits of the 1995 Japanese cyberpunk film, "Ghost in the Shell", which had a strong influence on the "Matrix" series. It was also used in the subsequent films, on the related website, and in the game "", and its drop-down effect is reflected in the design of some posters for the "Matrix" series. The code received the Runner-up Award in the 1999 Jesse Garson Award for In-film typography or opening credit sequence.


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix"s production designer, Owen Paterson, used methods to distinguish the "real world" and the Matrix in a pervasive way. The production design team generally placed a bias towards the Matrix code's distinctive green color in scenes set within the simulation, whereas there is an emphasis on the color blue during scenes set in the "real world". In addition, the Matrix scenes' sets were slightly more decayed, monolithic, and grid-like, to convey the cold, logical and artificial nature of that environment. For the "real world", the actors' hair was less styled, their clothing had more textile content, and the cinematographers used longer lenses to soften the backgrounds and emphasize the actors.


title: The Matrix

text: The "Nebuchadnezzar" was designed to have a patched-up look, instead of clean, cold and sterile space ship interior sets as used on productions such as "Star Trek". The wires were made visible to show the ship's working internals, and each composition was carefully designed to convey the ship as "a marriage between Man and Machine". For the scene when Neo wakes up in the pod connected to the Matrix, the pod was constructed to look dirty, used, and sinister. During the testing of a breathing mechanism in the pod, the tester suffered hypothermia in under eight minutes, so the pod had to be heated.


title: The Matrix

text: Kym Barrett, costume designer, said that she defined the characters and their environment by their costume. For example, Reeves's office costume was designed for Thomas Anderson to look uncomfortable, disheveled, and out of place. Barrett sometimes used three types of fabric for each costume, and also had to consider the practicality of the acting. The actors needed to perform martial art actions in their costume, hang upside-down without people seeing up their clothing, and be able to work the wires while strapped into the harnesses. For Trinity, Barrett experimented with how each fabric absorbed and reflected different types of light, and was eventually able to make Trinity's costume mercury-like and oil-slick to suit the character. For the Agents, their costume was designed to create a secret service, undercover look, resembling the film "JFK" and classic men in black.


title: The Matrix

text: The sunglasses, a staple of the film's aesthetics, were commissioned for the film by designer Richard Walker from sunglasses maker Blinde Design.


title: The Matrix

text: The film is known for popularizing a visual effect known as "bullet time", which allows a shot to progress in slow-motion while the camera appears to move through the scene at normal speed. Bullet time has been described as "a visual analogy for privileged moments of consciousness within the Matrix", and throughout the film, the effect is used to illustrate characters' exertion of control over time and space. The Wachowskis first imagined an action sequence that slowed time while the camera pivoted rapidly around the subjects, and proposed the effect in their screenplay for the film. When John Gaeta read the script, he pleaded with an effects producer at Mass.Illusion to let him work on the project, and created a prototype that led to him becoming the film's visual effects supervisor.


title: The Matrix

text: The method used for creating these effects involved a technically expanded version of an old art photography technique known as time-slice photography, in which an array of cameras are placed around an object and triggered simultaneously. Each camera captures a still picture, contributing one frame to the video sequence, which creates the effect of "virtual camera movement"; the illusion of a viewpoint moving around an object that appears frozen in time.


title: The Matrix

text: The bullet time effect is similar but slightly more complicated, incorporating temporal motion so that rather than appearing totally frozen, the scene progresses in slow and variable motion. The cameras' positions and exposures were previsualized using a 3D simulation. Instead of firing the cameras simultaneously, the visual effect team fired the cameras fractions of a second after each other, so that each camera could capture the action as it progressed, creating a super slow-motion effect. When the frames were put together, the resulting slow-motion effects reached a frame frequency of 12,000 per second, as opposed to the normal 24 frames per second of film. Standard movie cameras were placed at the ends of the array to pick up the normal speed action before and after. Because the cameras circle the subject almost completely in most of the sequences, computer technology was used to edit out the cameras that appeared in the background on the other side. To create backgrounds, Gaeta hired George Borshukov, who created 3D models based on the geometry of buildings and used the photographs of the buildings themselves as texture.


title: The Matrix

text: The photo-realistic surroundings generated by this method were incorporated into the bullet time scene, and algorithms based on optical flow were used to interpolate between the still images to produce a fluent dynamic motion; the computer-generated "lead in" and "lead out" slides were filled in between frames in sequence to get an illusion of orbiting the scene. Manex Visual Effects used a cluster farm running the Unix-like operating system FreeBSD to render many of the film's visual effects.


title: The Matrix

text: Manex also handled creature effects, such as Sentinels and machines in real world scenes; Animal Logic created the code hallway and the exploding Agent at the end of the film. DFilm managed scenes that required heavy use of digital compositing, such as Neo's jump off a skyscraper and the helicopter crash into a building. The ripple effect in the latter scene was created digitally, but the shot also included practical elements, and months of extensive research were needed to find the correct kind of glass and explosives to use. The scene was shot by colliding a quarter-scale helicopter mock-up into a glass wall wired to concentric rings of explosives; the explosives were then triggered in sequence from the center outward, to create a wave of exploding glass.


title: The Matrix

text: The photogrammetric and image-based computer-generated background approaches in "The Matrix"s bullet time evolved into innovations unveiled in the sequels "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions". The method of using real photographs of buildings as texture for 3D models eventually led the visual effect team to digitize all data, such as scenes, characters' motions and expressions. It also led to the development of "Universal Capture", a process which samples and stores facial details and expressions at high resolution. With these highly detailed collected data, the team were able to create virtual cinematography in which characters, locations, and events can all be created digitally and viewed through virtual cameras, eliminating the restrictions of real cameras.


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" was released on DVD and Laserdisc in its original aspect ratio of on September 21, 1999, in the US from Warner Home Video as well as in a cropped 1.33:1 aspect ratio in Hong Kong from ERA Home Entertainment. It was also released on VHS in both fullscreen and widescreen formats followed on , 1999. After its DVD release, it was the first DVD to sell more than one million copies in the US. By 2000, the film went on to become the first to sell more than three million copies in the US. At that point, it became the top-selling DVD release of all time, holding this record for a few months before being surpassed by "Gladiator". By , 2003, one month after "The Matrix Reloaded" DVD was released, the sales of "The Matrix" DVD had exceeded 30 million copies. It then debuted on both VHS and DVD formats in the UK on , 1999. "The Matrix" sold more than 107,000 DVD copies in just two weeks, breaking "Armageddon"s record for becoming the country's best-selling DVD title. The Ultimate Matrix Collection was released on HD DVD on , 2007 and on Blu-ray on , 2008. The film was also released standalone in a 10th anniversary edition Blu-ray in the Digibook format on , 2009, 10 years to the day after the film was released theatrically. In 2010, the film had another DVD release along with the two sequels as "The Complete Matrix Trilogy". It was also released on 4K HDR Blu-ray on May 22, 2018. The film as part of "The Matrix Trilogy" was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on October 30, 2018.


title: The Matrix

text: The franchise also contains three video games: "Enter the Matrix" (2003), which contains footage shot specifically for the game and chronicles events taking place before and during "The Matrix Reloaded"; "The Matrix Online" (2004), an MMORPG which continued the story beyond "The Matrix Revolutions"; and "" (2005), which focuses on Neo's journey through the trilogy of films.


title: The Matrix

text: The franchise also includes "The Matrix Comics", a series of comics and short stories set in the world of "The Matrix", written and illustrated by figures from the comics industry. Most of the comics were originally presented for free on the official "Matrix" website; they were later republished, along with some new material, in two printed trade paperback volumes, called "The Matrix Comics, Vol 1 and Vol 2".


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" grossed $27.8 million during its opening weekend, as well as earning $34.7 million in its first five days. It surpassed "Lost in Space" and "Indecent Proposal" for having the biggest April and Easter opening weekends. The film also had the second-highest opening weekend for a spring starter film, trailing only behind "Liar Liar". Three years later in 2002, "The Matrix"s records for having the largest April and Easter opening weekends would be taken by "The Scorpion King" and "Panic Room". Upon its opening, it had the highest opening weekend of any 1999 film, easily topping "Payback". Additionally, this was the biggest opening weekend for a Keanu Reeves film since "Speed" in 1994. It was also ranked number one at the box office ahead of "Forces of Nature". The film would remain at the top of the box office for two weeks until it was overtaken by "Life". During its fourth weekend, "The Matrix" briefly returned to the number one spot. The following week, the film would be displaced by "Entrapment".


title: The Matrix

text: In its original run, the film earned $171,479,930 (37.0%) in the United States and Canada and $292,037,453 (63.0%) in other countries, for a worldwide total of $463,517,383. In North America, it went on to become the fifth highest-grossing film of 1999 and the highest-grossing R-rated film of that year. Worldwide, it was the fourth highest-grossing film of the year, after "", "The Sixth Sense" and "Toy Story 2". "The Matrix" became the second-highest-grossing Warner Bros. film of all time, behind "Twister". Overall, it was the third-highest-grossing R-rated film at the time, just after "Saving Private Ryan" and "". Following re-releases, the worldwide gross of the film is $466,621,824. In 2012, it was placed 122nd on the list of highest-grossing films of all time, and the second highest-grossing film in the "Matrix" franchise after "The Matrix Reloaded" ($742.1 million).


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" was praised by many critics, as well as filmmakers, and authors of science fiction, especially for its "spectacular action" scenes and its "groundbreaking special effects". Some have described "The Matrix" as one of the best science fiction films of all time; "Entertainment Weekly" called "The Matrix" "the most influential action movie of the generation". There have also been those, including philosopher William Irwin, who have suggested that the film explores significant philosophical and spiritual themes. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 88% based on 159 reviews, with an average score of 7.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Thanks to the Wachowskis' imaginative vision, "The Matrix" is a smartly crafted combination of spectacular action and groundbreaking special effects". At Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received a score of 73 based on 35 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. It ranked 323rd among critics, and 546th among directors, in the 2012 "Sight & Sound" polls of the greatest films ever made.


title: The Matrix

text: Philip Strick commented in "Sight & Sound", if the Wachowskis "claim no originality of message, they are startling innovators of method," praising the film's details and its "broadside of astonishing images". Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four: he praised the film's visuals and premise, but disliked the third act's focus on action. Similarly, "Time Out" praised the "entertainingly ingenious" switches between different realities, Hugo Weaving's "engagingly odd" performance, and the film's cinematography and production design, but concluded, "the promising premise is steadily wasted as the film turns into a fairly routine action pic ... yet another slice of overlong, high concept hokum."


title: The Matrix

text: Jonathan Rosenbaum of the "Chicago Reader" reviewed the film negatively, criticizing it as "simpleminded fun for roughly the first hour, until the movie becomes overwhelmed by its many sources ... There's not much humor to keep it all life-size, and by the final stretch it's become bloated, mechanical, and tiresome."


title: The Matrix

text: Ian Nathan of "Empire" described Carrie-Anne Moss as "a major find", praised the "surreal visual highs" enabled by the bullet time (or "flo-mo") effect, and described the film as "technically mind-blowing, style merged perfectly with content and just so damn cool". Nathan remarked that although the film's "looney plot" would not stand up to scrutiny, that was not a big flaw because ""The Matrix" is about pure experience". Maitland McDonagh said in her review for "TV Guide", the Wachowskis' "through-the-looking-glass plot... manages to work surprisingly well on a number of levels: as a dystopian sci-fi thriller, as a brilliant excuse for the film's lavish and hyperkinetic fight scenes, and as a pretty compelling call to the dead-above-the-eyeballs masses to unite and cast off their chains... This dazzling pop allegory is steeped in a dark, pulpy sensibility that transcends nostalgic pastiche and stands firmly on its own merits."


title: The Matrix

text: "Salon"s reviewer Andrew O'Hehir acknowledged that although "The Matrix" is in his view a fundamentally immature and unoriginal film ("It lacks anything like adult emotion... all this pseudo-spiritual hokum, along with the over-ramped onslaught of special effects—some of them quite amazing—will hold 14-year-old boys in rapture, not to mention those of us of all ages and genders who still harbor a 14-year-old boy somewhere inside"), he concluded, "as in "Bound", there's an appealing scope and daring to the Wachowskis' work, and their eagerness for more plot twists and more crazy images becomes increasingly infectious. In a limited and profoundly geeky sense, this might be an important and generous film. The Wachowskis have little feeling for character or human interaction, but their passion for "movies"—for making them, watching them, inhabiting their world—is pure and deep."


title: The Matrix

text: Filmmakers and science fiction creators alike generally took a complimentary perspective of "The Matrix". William Gibson, a key figure in cyberpunk fiction, called the film "an innocent delight I hadn't felt in a long time," and stated, "Neo is my favourite-ever science fiction hero, absolutely." Joss Whedon called the film "my number one" and praised its storytelling, structure and depth, concluding, "It works on whatever level you want to bring to it." Darren Aronofsky commented, "I walked out of "The Matrix" ... and I was thinking, 'What kind of science fiction movie can people make now?' The Wachowskis basically took all the great sci-fi ideas of the 20th century and rolled them into a delicious pop culture sandwich that everyone on the planet devoured." M. Night Shyamalan expressed admiration for the Wachowskis, stating, "Whatever you think of "The Matrix", every shot is there because of the passion they have! You can see they argued it out!". Simon Pegg said that "The Matrix" provided "the excitement and satisfaction that "" failed to inspire. "The Matrix" seemed fresh and cool and visually breathtaking; making wonderful, intelligent use of CGI to augment the on-screen action, striking a perfect balance of the real and the hyperreal. It was possibly the coolest film I had ever seen." Quentin Tarantino counted "The Matrix" as one of his twenty favorite movies from 1992 to 2009. James Cameron called it "one of the most profoundly fresh science fiction films ever made". Christopher Nolan described it as "an incredibly palpable mainstream phenomenon that made people think, Hey, what if this isn't real?"


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" received Academy Awards for Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound. The filmmakers were competing against other films with established franchises, like "", yet they won all four of their nominations. "The Matrix" also received BAFTA awards for Best Sound and Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects, in addition to nominations in the cinematography, production design and editing categories. In 1999, it won Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. In February 2022, the film was named one of the five finalists for Oscars Cheer Moment as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' "Oscars Fan Favorite" contest, for the "bullet time" scene, finishing in fifth place.


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" draws from and alludes to numerous cinematic and literary works, and concepts from mythology, religion and philosophy, including the ideas of Buddhism, Christianity, Gnosticism, Hinduism, and Judaism.


title: The Matrix

text: The pods in which the machines keep humans have been compared to images in "Metropolis", and the work of M. C. Escher. A resemblance to the eery worlds of Swiss artist H.R. Giger was also recognized. The pods can be seen in "Welcome to Paradox" Episode 4 "News from D Street" from a 1986 short story of the same name by Andrew Weiner which aired on September 7, 1998, on the SYFY Channel and has a remarkably similar concept. In this episode the hero is unaware he is living in virtual reality until he is told so by "the code man" who created the simulation and enters it knowingly. The Wachowskis have described Stanley Kubrick's "" as a formative cinematic influence, and as a major inspiration on the visual style they aimed for when making "The Matrix". Rainer Werner Fassbinders German TV Miniseries "World on a Wire" from 1973, an adaption of the novel Simulacron-3, served as inspirational source for some details of The Matrix, such as the transfer between the real world and the Matrix-simulation via telephone / phonebooth. Reviewers have also commented on similarities between "The Matrix" and other late-1990s films such as "Strange Days", "Dark City", and "The Truman Show". The similarity of the film's central concept to a device in the long-running series "Doctor Who" has also been noted. As in the film, the Matrix of that series (introduced in the 1976 serial "The Deadly Assassin") is a massive computer system which one enters using a device connecting to the head, allowing users to see representations of the real world and change its laws of physics; but if killed there, they will die in reality. The action scenes of "The Matrix" were also strongly influenced by live-action films such as those of director John Woo. The martial arts sequences were inspired by "Fist of Legend", a critically acclaimed 1995 martial arts film starring Jet Li. The fight scenes in "Fist of Legend" led to the hiring of Yuen as fight choreographer.


title: The Matrix

text: The Wachowskis' approach to action scenes drew upon their admiration for Japanese animation such as "Ninja Scroll" and "Akira". Director Mamoru Oshii's 1995 animated film "Ghost in the Shell" was a particularly strong influence; producer Joel Silver has stated that the Wachowskis first described their intentions for "The Matrix" by showing him that anime and saying, "We wanna do that for real". Mitsuhisa Ishikawa of Production I.G, which produced "Ghost in the Shell", noted that the anime's high-quality visuals were a strong source of inspiration for the Wachowskis. He also commented, "...cyberpunk films are very difficult to describe to a third person. I'd imagine that "The Matrix" is the kind of film that was very difficult to draw up a written proposal for to take to film studios". He stated that since "Ghost in the Shell" had gained recognition in America, the Wachowskis used it as a "promotional tool".


title: The Matrix

text: The film makes several references to Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". Comparisons have also been made to Grant Morrison's comic series "The Invisibles", with Morrison describing it in 2011 as "(it) seemed to me (to be) my own combination of ideas enacted on the screen". Comparisons have also been made between "The Matrix" and the books of Carlos Castaneda.


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" belongs to the cyberpunk genre of science fiction, and draws from earlier works in the genre such as the 1984 novel "Neuromancer" by William Gibson. For example, the film's use of the term "Matrix" is adopted from Gibson's novel, though L. P. Davies had already used the term "Matrix" fifteen years earlier for a similar concept in his 1969 novel "The White Room" ("It had been tried in the States some years earlier, but their 'matrix' as they called it hadn't been strong enough to hold the fictional character in place"). After watching "The Matrix", Gibson commented that the way that the film's creators had drawn from existing cyberpunk works was "exactly the kind of creative cultural osmosis" he had relied upon in his own writing; however, he noted that the film's Gnostic themes distinguished it from "Neuromancer", and believed that "The Matrix" was thematically closer to the work of science fiction author Philip K. Dick, particularly Dick's speculative "Exegesis". Other writers have also commented on the similarities between "The Matrix" and Dick's work; one example of such influence is a Philip K. Dick's 1977 conference, in which he stated: "We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs".


title: The Matrix

text: In "The Matrix", a copy of Jean Baudrillard's philosophical work "Simulacra and Simulation", which was published in French in 1981, is visible on-screen as "the book used to conceal disks", and Morpheus quotes the phrase "desert of the real" from it. "The book was required reading" for the actors prior to filming. However, Baudrillard himself said that "The Matrix" misunderstands and distorts his work. Some interpreters of "The Matrix" mention Baudrillard's philosophy to support their claim "that the [film] is an allegory for contemporary experience in a heavily commercialized, media-driven society, especially in developed countries". "The influence of [Baudrillard] was brought to the public's attention through the writings of art historians such as Griselda Pollock and film theorists such as Heinz-Peter Schwerfel". In addition to Baudrillard, the Wachowskis were also significantly influenced by Kevin Kelly's "", and Dylan Evans’s ideas on evolutionary psychology.


title: The Matrix

text: Philosopher William Irwin suggests that the idea of the "Matrix" – a generated reality invented by malicious machines – is an allusion to Descartes' "First Meditation", and his idea of an evil demon. The Meditation hypothesizes that the perceived world might be a comprehensive illusion created to deceive us. The same premise can be found in Hilary Putnam's brain in a vat scenario proposed in the 1980s. A connection between the premise of "The Matrix" and Plato's Allegory of the Cave has also been suggested. The allegory is related to Plato's theory of Forms, which holds that the true essence of an object is not what we perceive with our senses, but rather its quality, and that most people perceive only the shadow of the object and are thus limited to false perception.


title: The Matrix

text: The philosophy of Immanuel Kant has also been claimed as another influence on the film, and in particular how individuals within the Matrix interact with one another and with the system. Kant states in his "Critique of Pure Reason" that people come to know and explore our world through synthetic means (language, etc.), and thus this makes it rather difficult to discern truth from falsely perceived views. This means people are their own agents of deceit, and so in order for them to know truth, they must choose to openly pursue truth. This idea can be examined in Agent Smith's monologue about the first version of the Matrix, which was designed as a human utopia, a perfect world without suffering and with total happiness. Agent Smith explains that, "it was a disaster. No one accepted the program. Entire crops [of people] were lost." The machines had to amend their choice of programming in order to make people subservient to them, and so they conceived the Matrix in the image of the world in 1999. The world in 1999 was far from a utopia, but still humans accepted this over the suffering-less utopia. According to William Irwin this is Kantian, because the machines wished to impose a perfect world on humans in an attempt to keep people content, so that they would remain completely submissive to the machines, both consciously and subconsciously, but humans were not easy to make content.


title: The Matrix

text: Andrew Godoski sees allusions to Christ, including Neo's "virgin birth", his doubt in himself, the prophecy of his coming, along with many other Christian references. Amongst these possible allusions, it is suggested that the name of the character Trinity refers to Christianity's doctrine of the Trinity. It has also been noted that the character Morpheus paraphrases the Chinese taoist philosopher Zhuangzi when he asks Neo, "Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference from the real world and the dream world?"


title: The Matrix

text: Years after the release of "The Matrix", both the Wachowskis came out as transgender women, and some viewers have seen transgender themes in the film before it was officially confirmed. The red pill has been compared with red estrogen pills. Morpheus's description of the Matrix giving you a sense that something is fundamentally wrong, "like a splinter in your mind", has been compared to gender dysphoria. Also, in the original script, Switch was a woman in the Matrix and a man in the real world, but this idea was ultimately dropped. In a 2016 GLAAD Media Awards speech, Lilly Wachowski said "There’s a critical eye being cast back on Lana and I's (sic) work through the lens of our transness. This is a cool thing because it's an excellent reminder that art is never static." She spoke in 2020 about the movie as an allegory for transgender identity, and compromises they had to make at the time. In an interview with "Variety", Keanu Reeves stated that he did not know the film was an allegory for being transgender during production.


title: The Matrix

text: Following "The Matrix", films made abundant use of slow-motion, spinning cameras, and, often, the bullet time effect of a character freezing or slowing down and the camera dollying around them. The ability to slow down time enough to distinguish the motion of bullets was used as a central gameplay mechanic of several video games, including "Max Payne", in which the feature was explicitly referred to as "bullet time". It was also the defining game mechanic of the game "Superhot" and its sequels. "The Matrix"s signature special effect, and other aspects of the film, have been parodied numerous times, in comedy films such as "" (1999), "Scary Movie" (2000), "Shrek" (2001), "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist" (2002), "Lastikman" (2003); "Marx Reloaded" in which the relationship between Neo and Morpheus is represented as an imaginary encounter between Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky; and in video games such as "Conker's Bad Fur Day". It also inspired films featuring a black-clad hero, a sexy yet deadly heroine, and bullets ripping slowly through the air; these included "Charlie's Angels" (2000) featuring Cameron Diaz floating through the air while the cameras flo-mo around her; "Equilibrium" (2002), starring Christian Bale, whose character wore long black leather coats like Reeves' Neo; "Night Watch" (2004), a Russian megahit heavily influenced by "The Matrix" and directed by Timur Bekmambetov, who later made "Wanted" (2008), which also features bullets ripping through air; and "Inception" (2010), which centers on a team of sharply dressed rogues who enter a wildly malleable alternate reality by "wiring in". The original "Tron" (1982) paved the way for "The Matrix", and "The Matrix", in turn, inspired Disney to make its own Matrix with a "Tron" sequel, "" (2010). Also, the film's lobby shootout sequence was recreated in the 2002 Indian action comedy "Awara Paagal Deewana".


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" had a strong effect on action filmmaking in Hollywood. The film's incorporation of wire fu techniques, including the involvement of fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping and other personnel with a background in Hong Kong action cinema, affected the approaches to fight scenes taken by subsequent Hollywood action films, moving them towards more Eastern approaches. The success of "The Matrix" created high demand for those choreographers and their techniques from other filmmakers, who wanted fights of similar sophistication: for example, wire work was employed in "X-Men" (2000) and "Charlie's Angels" (2000), and Yuen Woo-ping's brother Yuen Cheung-yan was choreographer on "Daredevil" (2003). "The Matrix"s Asian approach to action scenes also created an audience for Asian action films such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000) that they might not otherwise have had.


title: The Matrix

text: Chad Stahelski, who had been a stunt double on "The Matrix" prior to directing Reeves in the "John Wick" series, acknowledged the film's strong influence on the "Wick" films, and commented, ""The Matrix" literally changed the industry. The influx of martial-arts choreographers and fight coordinators now make more, and are more prevalent and powerful in the industry, than stunt coordinators. "The Matrix" revolutionized that. Today, action movies want their big sequences designed around the fights."


title: The Matrix

text: Carrie-Anne Moss asserted that prior to being cast in "The Matrix", she had "no career". It launched Moss into international recognition and transformed her career; in a "New York Daily News" interview, she stated, ""The Matrix" gave me so many opportunities. Everything I've done since then has been because of that experience. It gave me so much". The film also created one of the most devoted movie fan-followings since "Star Wars". The combined success of the "Matrix" trilogy, the "Lord of the Rings" films and the "Star Wars" prequels made Hollywood interested in creating trilogies. Stephen Dowling from the BBC noted that "The Matrix"s success in taking complex philosophical ideas and presenting them in ways palatable for impressionable minds might be its most influential aspect.


title: The Matrix

text: "The Matrix" was also influential for its impact on superhero films. John Kenneth Muir in "The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television" called the film a "revolutionary" reimagination of movie visuals, paving the way for the visuals of later superhero films, and credits it with helping to "make comic-book superheroes hip" and effectively demonstrating the concept of "faster than a speeding bullet" with its bullet time effect. Adam Sternbergh of "Vulture.com" credits "The Matrix" with reinventing and setting the template for modern superhero blockbusters, and inspiring the superhero renaissance in the early 21st century.


title: The Matrix

text: In 2001, "The Matrix" placed 66th in the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Thrills" list. In 2007, "Entertainment Weekly" called "The Matrix" the best science-fiction piece of media for the past 25 years. In 2009, the film was ranked 39th on "Empire"s reader-, actor- and critic-voted list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". "The Matrix" was voted as the fourth best science fiction film in the 2011 list "", based on a poll conducted by ABC and "People". In 2012, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant." In 2022, "The Matrix" was determined the most popular tech-themed movie in the United States using search volume data.


title: The Matrix

text: The film's mainstream success led to the making of two sequels, "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions", both directed by the Wachowskis. These were filmed back-to-back in one shoot and released on separate dates in 2003. The first film's introductory tale is succeeded by the story of the impending attack on the human enclave of Zion by a vast machine army. The sequels also incorporate longer and more ambitious action scenes, as well as improvements in bullet time and other visual effects.


title: The Matrix

text: Also released was "The Animatrix", a collection of nine animated short films, many of which were created in the same Japanese animation style that was a strong influence on the live action trilogy. "The Animatrix" was overseen and approved by the Wachowskis, who only wrote four of the segments themselves but did not direct any of them; much of the project was developed by notable figures from the world of anime.


title: The Matrix

text: In March 2017, Warner Bros. was in early stages of developing a relaunch of the franchise with Zak Penn in talks to write a treatment and interest in getting Michael B. Jordan attached to star. According to "The Hollywood Reporter" neither the Wachowskis nor Joel Silver were involved with the endeavor, although the studio would like to get at minimum the blessing of the Wachowskis. On August 20, 2019, Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich officially announced that a fourth Matrix film was in the works, with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss set to reprise their roles as Neo and Trinity respectively. "The Matrix Resurrections" was released on December 22, 2021, in theaters and on HBO Max.


title: The Matrix

text: In September 2022, Danny Boyle was announced to be directing a dance adaptation of the film, titled "Free Your Mind", and it is set to debut in October 2023 in Manchester, U.K.


title: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film)

text: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a 2016 fantasy film directed by David Yates and written by J. K. Rowling. It is the first instalment in the "Fantastic Beasts" film series and the ninth overall in the Wizarding World franchise, serving as a spin-off of and prequel to the "Harry Potter" film series, inspired by the 2001 guide book of the same name by Rowling. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton, Jon Voight, Carmen Ejogo, Ron Perlman, and Colin Farrell.


text: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" premiered in New York City on 10 November 2016 and opened in theatres worldwide on 18 November 2016 in 2D, 3D, 4D, Dolby Cinema, and IMAX formats, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received generally positive reviews from critics and emerged a commercial success after grossing $814 million worldwide, making it the eighth highest-grossing film of 2016.


text: The film was nominated for five British Academy Film Awards, including Best British Film, and won for Best Production Design. It was nominated for two Academy Awards and won for Best Costume Design, becoming the first Wizarding World film to win an Academy Award. A sequel, "", was released in November 2018, and a third film, "", was released in April 2022.


text: In 1926, British wizard and "magizoologist" Newton "Newt" Scamander arrives in New York City. He observes Mary Lou Barebone, the non-magical ("No-Maj" or "Muggle") head of the New Salem Philanthropic Society, preaching that witches and wizards are real and dangerous. Attempting to recapture a Niffler that escaped from his suitcase of magical creatures, Newt meets No-Maj Jacob Kowalski, an aspiring baker, and they unwittingly swap suitcases. Porpentina "Tina" Goldstein, a demoted Auror of the Magical Congress of the United States (MACUSA), arrests Newt for breaking magical law. Since the suitcase in his possession only contains Jacob's baked goods, Newt is released. At home, Jacob opens Newt's suitcase, inadvertently freeing several creatures into the city.


text: After Tina and Newt find Jacob and the suitcase, Tina takes them to her apartment and introduces them to Queenie, her Legilimens sister. Jacob and Queenie are mutually attracted, though American wizards are forbidden to have any contact with No-Majs. Newt takes Jacob inside his suitcase, magically expanded to house various creatures including an Obscurial, a parasite that develops inside magically gifted children when their abilities are suppressed; those afflicted rarely live past the age of ten.


text: After they recapture two of the three escaped beasts, Tina returns the suitcase to MACUSA, but they are arrested, as officials believe one of Newt's creatures is responsible for killing Senator Henry Shaw Jr., who was actually attacked by a different Obscurial. The Director of Magical Security, Percival Graves, accuses Newt of conspiring with the infamous dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, and decides to destroy Newt's suitcase and obliviate Jacob's recent memories. Newt and Tina are sentenced to death. Queenie senses this, rescues Jacob before his memory can be wiped, then helps Newt and Tina escape and retrieve Newt's suitcase. A tip from Tina's goblin informant Gnarlak leads the four to recapture the last of the escaped creatures.


text: Graves approaches Credence, Mary Lou's adult adopted son, and offers to free him from his abusive mother in exchange for helping to find the Obscurial causing destruction throughout the city. Credence finds a wand under his adopted sister Modesty's bed, which Mary Lou assumes is his; when Credence is about to be punished, the Obscurial kills Mary Lou and her eldest daughter Chastity. Graves, assuming Modesty is the Obscurus' host, dismisses Credence as a Squib and refuses to teach him magic as he had promised in return for service. Credence reveals he is the real host, having survived due to the intensity of his magic, and attacks the city in broad daylight.


text: Newt finds Credence hiding in a subway tunnel, but is attacked by Graves. Tina, who had tried to protect Credence from Mary Lou (leading to her demotion), attempts to calm the boy, while Graves tries to convince Credence to listen to him. As Credence returns to human form, MACUSA President Seraphina Picquery and the Aurors counterattack, shattering the Obscurial. However, unseen by anyone but Newt, a single wisp of the creature flees the scene. Graves admits he had planned to unleash the Obscurial to expose the magical community to the No-Majs and to frame Newt for the incident. He claims MACUSA's laws openly protect No-Majs at the expense of the magical community, and he no longer cares to live in hiding. Picquery orders the Aurors to apprehend Graves, but he defeats them. Newt captures him with the help of one of his beasts and reveals that Graves is Grindelwald in disguise, although it is unknown if the real Graves is still alive or not.


text: MACUSA fears their secret world has been exposed, but Newt releases his Thunderbird to disperse a potion that obliviates recent memories over the city as rainfall, while MACUSA wizards repair the destruction and erase the recent events from the news. Queenie kisses Jacob goodbye as the rain erases his memories, and Newt returns to England. Jacob opens a bakery with pastries resembling Newt's beasts, and, when Queenie enters, he smiles at her.


text: Zoë Kravitz appears in a photograph as Leta Lestrange, Newt's former love who betrayed his trust, to set up her role in the sequel film "" (2018).


text: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" is mentioned several times as a school textbook in the "Harry Potter" book series, with Scamander named as the author. In 2001, Rowling published an edition of the "textbook" to be sold to raise money for the British charity Comic Relief. The book is a directory of magical creatures with an introduction by its author, Newt Scamander. It does not contain a narrative.


text: First announced in September 2013 just two years after the release of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2", the Fantastic Beasts project marked Rowling's debut as a screenwriter. The film sees the return of producer David Heyman, as well as writer Steve Kloves, both veterans of the "Potter" film franchise. There were rumors that Alfonso Cuarón would direct, which he refuted in May 2014. Warner Bros. announced that David Yates would direct at least the first instalment of a planned trilogy. James Newton Howard was brought on board to score the film.


text: Principal photography began on 17 August 2015, at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, in Hertfordshire, England and wrapped in January 2016. Several scenes were shot on location in London. After two months, the production moved to the Cunard Building and St George's Hall in Liverpool, which was transformed into 1920s New York City. Framestore in London produced the visual effects for the film.


text: On 9 April 2016, the film's website announced that James Newton Howard would write and compose the score. On 24 October 2016, Pottermore published an official first look at the film's main theme composed by Howard. The main theme incorporated John Williams' themes from earlier films, such as "Hedwig's Theme". The soundtrack was released by WaterTower Music on 18 November 2016, coinciding with the film's release worldwide.


text: The visual effects were provided by Cinesite, DNEG, Framestore, Image Engine, Moving Picture Company, Milk VFX and Rodeo FX.


text: On 4 November 2015, "Entertainment Weekly" released the first official publicity shots of the film, including pictures of characters Newt, Tina, and Queenie, and behind-the-scenes shots of production and filming on various sets designed to mirror 1920s New York City. On 10 December 2015, @Fantastic Beasts announced on Twitter that an "announcement trailer" would be released on 15 December. A teaser poster was also released along with the one-minute trailer.


text: During "A Celebration of Harry Potter" at Universal Orlando Resort in February 2016, a featurette was released showcasing several interviews with various cast and crew members, as well as the first official behind-the-scenes footage. On 10 April 2016, the first "teaser trailer" was released during the MTV Movie Awards. On 10 August 2016, more information and publicity shots for the film were released through "Entertainment Weekly", with new information on Ezra Miller's character, Credence Barebone, and the news that Zoë Kravitz would have a role in the series. New images released at the time include the quartet running down a New York City alleyway; David Yates chatting to stars Katherine Waterston and Eddie Redmayne on the set in front of a blown out subway station; Colin Farrell's character, Percival Graves, interrogating an arrested and handcuffed Newt; and Graves and Credence putting up anti-magic propaganda. A final trailer for the film was released on 28 September 2016.


text: The film's script was published in book form on 18 November 2016. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay" was written by Rowling herself.


text: On 7 March 2016 a trailer-preview was released about the History of Magic in North America as it is in the Harry Potter universe. On 7 October 2016, Rowling also released on Pottermore four pieces of writing exclusively as an introduction to the film "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", titled "History of Magic in North America". It includes information about scourers in North America, brutal and violent magical mercenaries who played a significant role in the historic Salem witch trials of the 1600s; info about various American wand makers; the role magic played in World War I; the foundation of MACUSA; the harsh enforcement No-Maj/Wizarding segregation; and life in 1920s Wizarding America; with info about wand permits and prohibition; and her fictionalized ideas of "Native American Magic." Her use of Native American religious figures and symbolism from contemporary, living cultures for this work of fiction was met with protests by Native American communities; she was accused of racial insensitivity, violation of intellectual property rights, disrespect and appropriating "Native traditions while erasing Native peoples."


text: On 28 June 2016, Rowling released a second part to her "History of Magic in North America" series, concerning the fictitious Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, detailing the founding of the pre-eminent American Wizarding academy and allowing users to sort themselves into one of the four houses of the school. The school itself is mentioned in the film.


text: A "story pack" based on "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" was released for the video game "Lego Dimensions" by WB Games and TT Games. The pack includes a constructible model of MACUSA, figures of Newt Scamander and a Niffler, and a six-level game campaign that adapts the film's events. The pack was released on the same day as the film, alongside a "fun pack" containing figures of Tina Goldstein and a Swooping Evil. The cast of the film reprises their roles in the game.