Scene Description Spotlight: “The Matrix”

Still for my money, one of the best scripts for action-writing. The Wachowskis use the basic elements of visual writing — strong verbs and vivid descriptors — to create a visceral sense of time, place, and action. Here are two excerpts of the opening sequence where Trinity tries to escape Agent Smith and his cronies.

INT. CHASE HOTELThe Big Cop flicks out his cuffs, the other cops holding a
bead. They've done this a hundred times, they know
they've got her, until the Big Cop reaches with the cuffs
and Trinity moves --It almost doesn't register, so smooth and fast, inhumanly
fast.The eye blinks and Trinity's palm snaps up and his nose
explodes, blood erupting. Her leg kicks with the force of
a wrecking ball and he flies back, a two-hundred-fifty
pound sack of limp meat and bone that slams into the cop
farthest from her.Trinity moves again, BULLETS RAKING the WALLS, flashlights
sweeping with panic as the remaining cops try to stop a
leather-clad ghost.A GUN still in the cop's hand is snatched, twisted and
FIRED. There is a final violent exchange of GUNFIRE and
when it's over, Trinity is the only one standing.A flashlight rocks slowly to a stop.TRINITY
Shit.EXT. CHASE HOTELAgent Brown enters the hotel while Agent Smith heads for
the alley.----INT. HALLShe bursts out of the room as Agent Brown enters the hall,
leading another unit of police. Trinity races to the
opposite end, exiting through a broken window onto the
fire escape.EXT. FIRE ESCAPEIn the alley below, Trinity sees Agent Smith staring at
her. She can only go up.EXT. ROOFOn the roof, Trinity is running as Agent Brown rises over
the parapet, leading the cops in pursuit.Trinity begins to jump from one roof to the next, her
movements so clean, gliding in and out of each jump,
contrasted to the wild jumps of the cops.Agent Brown, however, has the same unnatural grace.The metal SCREAM of an elevated TRAIN is heard and Trinity
turns to it, racing for the back of the building.The edge falls away into a wide back alley. The next
building is over 40 feet away but Trinity's face is
perfectly calm, staring at some point beyond the other
roof.The cops slow, realizing they are about to see something
ugly as Trinity drives at the edge, launching herself into
the air.From above, the ground seems to flow beneath her as she
hangs in flight --Then hitting, somersaulting up, still running hard.COP
Mutherfucker -- that's impossible!They stare, slack-jawed, as Agent Brown duplicates the
move exactly, landing, rolling over a shoulder up onto one
knee.Just below the building are the RUMBLING TRACKS of riveted
steel. The TRAIN SCREECHES beneath her, a RATTLING blur
of gray metal. Trinity jumps, landing easily.She looks back just as Agent Brown hurls through the air
barely reaching the last car --Agent Brown stands, yanking out a gun.Trinity is running hard as BULLETS WHISTLE past her head.Ahead she sees her only chance, 50 feet beyond the point
where the train has begun to turn, there is --A window; a yellow glow in the midst of a dark brick
building.Trinity zeros in on it, running as hard as she can, her
speed compounded by the train. The SCREAM of the STEEL
rises as she nears the edge where the train rocks into the
turn.Trinity hurtles into the empty night space, her body
leveling into a dive. She falls, arms covering her head
as --HER POVThe whole world seems to spin on its axis --BACK TO SCENEAnd she crashes with an EXPLOSION of GLASS and WOOD, then
falls onto a back stairwell, tumbling, bouncing down
stairs bleeding, broken --But still alive.Through the smashed window, she glimpses Agent Brown,
still on the train, his tie and coat whipping in the wind;
stone-faced, he touches his ear piece as the train slides
him past the window.Trinity tries to move. Everything hurts.TRINITY
Get up, Trinity. You're fine. Get
up -- just get up!She stands and limps down the rest of the stairs.Trinity emerges from the shadows of an alley and, at the
end of the block, in a pool of white street light, she
sees it.The telephone booth.Obviously hurt, she starts down the concrete walk,
focusing in completely, her pace quickening, as the PHONE
begins to RING.Across the street, a garbage truck suddenly turns U-turns,
its TIRES SCREAMING as it accelerates.Trinity sees the headlights of the truck arcing at the
telephone booth as if taking aim.Gritting through the pain, she races the truck --Slamming into the booth, the headlights blindingly bright,
bearing down on the box of Plexiglas just as --She answers the phone.There is a frozen instant of silence before the hulking
mass of dark metal lurches up onto the sidewalk --Barreling through the booth, bulldozing it into a brick
wall, SMASHING it to PLEXIGLAS PULP.After a moment, a black loafer steps down from the cab of
the garbage truck. Agent Smith inspects the wreckage.
There is no body. Trinity is gone.His jaw sets as he grinds his molars in frustration.
AGENT JONES walks up behind him.AGENT JONES
Then the informant is real.AGENT SMITH
Does that surprise you? It was
inevitable.AGENT JONES
He'll be contacting us again.AGENT SMITH
Expect it. Did you get anything
from the room?AGENT JONES
Their next target. The name is Neo.The handset of the pay phone lays on the ground, separated
in the crash like a severed limb.AGENT SMITH
We'll need a search running.AGENT JONES
It's already begun.We are SUCKED TOWARDS the mouthpiece of the phone, CLOSER
and CLOSER, until the smooth gray plastic spreads out like
a horizon and the small holes widen until we FALL THROUGH
one --

And we’re off and running into the next scene. So many strong verbs in this sequence. Here are some of them:

snaps, explodes, erupting, kicks, flies, slams, raking, snatched, twisted, fired.

And that’s just from the first few paragraphs. How about descriptors:

force of a wrecking ball, limp meat and bone, flashlights sweeping with panic, try to stop a leather-clad ghost

In another draft, there’s even better description of that initial fight:

The eye blinks and Trinity's palm snaps up and his nose
explodes, blood erupting. The cop is dead before he
begins to fall.And Trinity is moving again --Seizing a wrist, misdirecting a gun as a startled cop
FIRES --A head explodes.In blind panic, another airs his gun, the barrel, a
fixed black, hole --And FIRES --Trinity twists out of the way, the bullet missing as she
reverses into a roundhouse kick, knocking the gun away.The cop begins to scream when a jump kick crushes his
windpipe, killing the scream as he falls to the ground.She looks at the four bodies.TRINITY
Shit.

Notice how each line suggests an individual camera shot, you can ‘see’ it edited by the way the brothers approach the scene description — all without using any directing or camera lingo.

But mostly it’s strong verbs and vivid descriptors which make The Matrix one of the best examples of action-writing in a contemporary screenplay.

Here’s the movie version of the scene:

How blown away were you when you first saw The Matrix?

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