Anthony Brandon Wong is an award-winning Australian actor who was born on May 12, 1965 (not to be confused with Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong!). To fans of The Matrix trilogy, he is also known as Ghost – the “Zen Buddhist assassin” –, a recurring character in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, where he was the gunner and First Mate on Niobe’s hovercraft Logos.
His connection with Niobe extended in Enter the Matrix, the first videogame in The Matrix franchise, where he “plays” the lead character alongside Jada Pinkett Smith, who portrays Niobe. Unfortunately, due to copyright issues, Ghost does not speak at all in the movies and his head was “shaved” in The Matrix Online, a multiplayer online role playing game.
Ghost’s story as part of the resistance against the machines who control the Matrix goes back all the way to the time when Trinity was set free from the bounds of the Matrix. Both of them were freed on the same day and, although the two have a sibling-like relationship, Ghost had unrequited love for Trinity who was in love with Neo. Ghost and Trinity were also training partners during their time in Zion.
Ghost has a prominent role in retrieving the Osiris message in the first mission of Enter the Matrix and, together with Niobe, he has to fight agents and make sure the message is delivered safely to Zion, a storyline that weaves into The Animatrix’s short film “Flight of the Osiris.”
“The game is not just a cheap spin-off,” said Anthony Brandon Wong in an interview for SHM (KillerMovies.com). “The Wachowski brothers wrote and directed one hour of extra footage for it. I call it The Matrix 2B. If you think of the whole story as a house, then the movie follows what goes on between Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in the bedroom, and the game is about what happens between me and Jada Pinkett Smith in the living room.”
Ghost also has an encounter with Persephone, the Merovingian’s wife, who, just like in Reloaded, asks Ghost for a kiss in return for precious information. With her help, Ghost does reach the Merovingian but is unable to retrieve the key to the Source and free the Keymaker.
We also remember Ghost in the highway chase scene in Reloaded where, once again, together with Niobe, he helps Morpheus fight an Agent on top of a moving semi-truck.
As these feats suggest, Ghost is one of the best fighters within the Matrix, a gifted martial artists and an excellent shot, who has killed at least one Agent and has survived many dangerous encounters. To excel at this, Anthony Brandon Wong, the actor, “had to do gun training,” and “got to train with a soldier.” But, although he “did a little martial arts,” in the movies, he had stuntguys fighting for him. (Flicktalk).
After the events in Revolutions, Ghost remains a faithful soldier under Niobe’s command and retains his position as First Mate on Logos II (the previous ship, Logos, having been damaged beyond repair when Niobe takes it back to Zion with an army of sentinels behind her).
My intertextual study The Matrix and the Alice Books looks at the way Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have influenced some of the ideas put forth by Andy and Larry Wachowski. The book is now available as a Kindle ebook too.
