Today, Warner Bros., Andy and Lana Wachowski, and Joel Silver have officially won the lawsuit that claimed their blockbuster film, The Matrix, was stolen.
Thomas Althouse filed the lawsuit in California federal court in 2012. He says the reason it took so long to file the lawsuit was that he didn’t actually watch the film until 2010. Who hasn’t watched The Matrix?? Regardless, after seeing the film he began investigating the similarity between the franchise and his own personal script titled, “The Immortals.” Althouse said he had submitted his script to Warner Bros in 1993.
The script from Althouse follows a CIA agent who gains immortality from a drug and finds himself in the year 2235 where Adolph Hitler and co. have been reanimated from cryopreservation. The script’s spy protagonist fights with the also immortal Nazis who seek to oppress and destroy all “short-lifers.”
You are probably thinking what I and most people are thinking and what Judge R. Gary Klausner said.
The basic premises of The Matrix Trilogy and The Immortals are so different that it would be unreasonable to find their plots substantially similar.”
However, Althouse maintains that they are similar in that both stories have allusions to Jesus Christ and other religious undertones.
“Plaintiff alleges that both stories have allusions to Christ,” notes the judge. “However, allusions to Christianity in literature date back hundreds of years and are not generally protectible. Looking at the details of the works, the two works express these themes very differently. The Christian allusions in The Immortals concludes with the literal Second Coming of Christ, whereas The Matrix Trilogy concludes with a metaphorical reference to Christ, as Neo sacrifices himself to save others.”
Sorry, Althouse, that wasn’t even a good try.