'Morning.
Did you sleep.
You will tonight.
I guarantee it.
You would think being cast in one of cinema's most celebrated
sci-fi films and then being offered a chance
to return for its two equals would
be any up-and-coming actor's dream.
But for one actor, the ruin of that opportunity
turned into the most famous thing about him.
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Actor Marcus Chong had a relatively uneventful career
before what many would think to be his biggest break when he
was cast in 1999's The Matrix.
Other than small guest appearances on television
and a role in Panther, The Matrix
was going to be Chong's feature debut,
a trippy cyberpunk kung fu movie backed by Warner Brothers
and directed by two filmmakers hot off a small budget
thriller.
The Matrix had everything in line to launch Chong's career.
Chong played the role of Tank, the operator
aboard the Nebuchadnezzar.
In the world of the film, whenever
someone jacks into the matrix, it's
the operator who stays on the ship
and monitors the vital signs of the crew while also
reading the code of what's happening within the matrix.
Operators are generally natural-born humans
without the jacks of red pills, those freed from the matrix.
Me and my brother Dozier, we're both 100%
pure old-fashioned home-grown human born free right
here in the real world.
While not a main character, they are
like every character in the movie essential to the plot.
The world of the matrix may seem ordinary now,
but in 1999, the idea of a virtual world
run by computers accessed by freed human batteries was odd.
Whoa.
Every character served to deliver exposition
whether plot or ideological with Tank being no different.
When we first meet him, we quickly
learn one of Tank's roles as operator
is to upload any skill to the red pills jacked
into the matrix.
While Morpheus is responsible for explaining
the philosophical ramifications of the matrix,
characters like Tank serve to deliver the brass
tax of how the world works.
To his credit, Chong does a good job.
When he talks about the human city of Zion where he was born,
there's a genuine sense of awe and reverence.
Zion?
If the war was over tomorrow, Zion's
where the party would be.
It's a city?
The last human city.
Throughout the entire film, it's clear
that Chong is giving his all to the performance.
Maybe it was something in the air on set
and knowing that this film would sincerely be something special.
And he was right.
When The Matrix was released, it took the world by storm.
It's hard to express now when everything
is known or explained ad nauseam,
but there was a genuine surprise in this film that
resonated with the audience.
His performance was good enough, his character central enough,
and it was initially planned for Tank
to appear in both sequels, Matrix
Reloaded and Revolutions.
But before production began, his middling role
in a wildly successful film went directly to his head.
It seemed that in Chong's mind, he
was as high ranking of a star as Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne
Moss, or Laurence Fishburne.
As Chong entered negotiations for the sequels,
he demanded $1 million for both films
while the studio was set on $400,000 for the two.
But Chong's ego had inflated itself
so much that he had begun to believe the Wachowskis
and Warner Brothers would have no choice but to meet
his demands.
After talks fell through, Chong was written out
by having Tank's death occur off screen.
His brother link was then introduced
to take over as operator aboard the Nebuchadnezzar
for the sequels.
And if we're being honest, it still works.
While it's clear that Chong had built up the idea that Tank
and therefore himself was irreplaceable,
that just wasn't the case.
We are not arguing that Tank was inconsequential
to the first film.
He does save our heroes from Cipher,
but the important bit is that our heroes are saved,
not who saved them.
Tank works within the film in the same way
all auxiliary characters work within such
a tight and precise script.
They are there to usher Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and Agent
Smith.
Tank uploading a helicopter pilot program
is no more important than Mouse wondering
if the robots got the taste of chicken cross wired
in their brains.
Makes you wonder about a lot of things.
You take chicken, for example, maybe they couldn't figure out
what to make chicken taste like, which
is why chicken tastes like everything.
There are ideas the Wachowskis want our protagonists
and us by proxy to consider.
With the introduction of Tank's brother Link, played
wonderfully by Harold Perrineau, the same ideas
of Zion, natural birth, and family are still laid out.
While it's impossible to know what the Wachowskis had in mind
for Tank's arc, it's safe to say they were able to manage
the broad strokes with Link.
Link, Morpheus is crazy.
No doubt.
But Tank and Dozier believed him, and I'll tell you what.
To say Chong handled the letting go poorly
would be a gross understatement.
Chong believed both of which Wachowskis and Warner Brothers
rallied together to have him blackballed in Hollywood.
While the specifics of that are completely unknown,
it is known that he was arrested in 2000 for making death
threats against the Wachowskis.
In regards to how that arrest came about,
we are left with Chong's story.
I'm not crazy.
You'll see in my document-- we'll
see who's crazy when my documentary is finished.
In 2018, Chong published The Marcus Chong Story to YouTube
with the hashtag Matrixgate.
It's abundantly clear from watching the 45-minute video
that Chong is at least during filming unwell.
It's easy and maybe not wholly inaccurate
to infer a high level of narcissism from the video,
but nobody outside the main players
will ever know what really happened.
Chong argues that even during filming of The Matrix,
he was treated unfairly, left to pay for his own rent
during filming in Australia and without a driver
to take him to and from set.
He also states the guards on set often
refused to let him on set without a production assistant
coming to vouch for him.
For their part, the Wachowskis have stayed relatively quiet.
When reached for a statement by The Guardian in 2003
after the lawsuit was filed, the two refused to comment.
Even in the original E Online article,
neither Warner Brothers nor the Wachowskis comment,
content to let the lawsuit play out.
Even 20 years on, the answers are all still pretty murky.
What we can infer from the lawsuit's dismissal
and their silence is they're feeling justice has been done
and want to move on.
On the other hand, Chong continuously
brings the situation up, refusing to let it go.
What Chong presents to us via his own story
are a lot of moments that he feels are damning evidence.
All they really do is prove the Wachowskis were
right in separating from Chong.
In the original article published by E,
he readily admits to crashing press junkets
and stealing food.
It all reads as someone you just sincerely
don't want to be around.
There's a sense of entitlement that he made the movie what
it was single handedly.
Throughout The Marcus Chong Story,
shot, written, edited, starring, and produced by Marcus Chong,
he continuously misgenders and dead
names Lana and Lily Wachowskis.
Remember this was published on YouTube in 2018
with the sisters coming out as trans in 2008 and 2012
respectively.
There's often a misperception of the term blackballed.
It infers some secret society working within the shadows
to ruin lives and careers, but more often than not,
the perceived blackballing is really
just a series of consequences in response to bad behavior.
It's akin to a toddler saying their parents blackballed them
from juice after throwing their sippy cup against the wall.
That seems to be all that has happened to Chong
and deservedly so.
There's a common adage in freelance work.
To be successful, you need to be talented, on time, and polite,
but you only have to be two of those.
While the saying implies a level of forgiveness
for unbridled talent, the other two
demand a level of human decency.
It's a story we've repeated again and again,
a career cut short by arrogance and self-importance.
A small bit of success can immediately-- no
pun intended-- tank a career if you're not
humble and ready to put in the work.
A big break is never the change our mind drifts to,
some sudden new life where nothing is ever the same again.
It's a catalyst that marks a beginning, one
where you have to remember you're part of something
bigger.
And to continue being a piece of that bigger world,
you have to remain humble and respectful to those around you.
Without that, everything falls apart.
So what do you think?
What other actors or creators can you
think of that went missing from the franchise that you love?
Let us down in the comments below and as always,
thanks for watching.