Jet Li says he rejected The Matrix because he didn’t want his kung fu moves digitally recorded

Martial arts superstar explained the decision in a recent interview with Chinese media

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Jet Li says he rejected The Matrix because he didn’t want his kung fu moves digitally recorded

Josh Ye

Published: 7:49pm, 18 Oct 2018Updated: 8:42am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Remember Seraph from The Matrix? The kung fu fighting Guardian of the Oracle could have been played by Jet Li… until he realized the filmmakers might have wanted to digitally preserve all his martial arts moves.

The role of Seraph went to Taiwan actor Collin Chou. No offense to Keanu Reeves, but Seraph’s moves are so much more fluid that those of Neo’s. (Picture: Warner Bros./Movieclips)

In his latest interview with famed Chinese anchor Chen Luyu, Li revealed his reason for turning down the big role in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolution.

“It was a commercial struggle for me,” Li said, “I realized the Americans wanted me to film for three months but be with the crew for nine. And for six months, they wanted to record and copy all my moves into a digital library.”

He added, “By the end of the recording, the right to these moves would go to them.”

Li said back then, he was already worried that future technology would allow US filmmakers to digitally reproduce his moving body and superimpose the face of any actor onto it.

“I was thinking: I’ve been training my entire life. And we martial artists could only grow older. Yet they could own [my moves] as an intellectual property forever. So I said I couldn’t do that,” Li said.