The Matrix , one of the best action movies , changed filmmaking forever, along with the bodies of the people who made it. Nearly three decades later, Laurence Fishburne is still talking about the brutal training that went into becoming Morpheus . And, if you thought those gravity-defying fights looked intense, the reality behind them was even tougher.

Fishburne spoke at the Marrakech Film Festival (via Variety ) about the experience. What started as an ambitious sci-fi action movie experiment quickly turned into a crash course in Hong Kong martial arts filmmaking , and the Matrix cast had no idea what was coming. Here’s how Fishburne described it:

We were essentially the first Western actors to work in the Hong Kong style. And so [martial arts choreographer] Yuen Woo-

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