The Curious Case of Sophia Stewart and The Matrix

The Wachowskis stole the script for The Matrix?

At first, the accusation seemed to be a classic case of black oppression from Hollywood. Black Americans and white liberals wanted it to be true. They wanted a black writer to win one over on Hollywood. The headline even seemed to ring true a bit, especially around 2004 and 2005. A black woman allegedly had her story stolen by the Wachowskis who turned it into a multi-million dollar franchise called The Matrix. Internet news feeds went back and forth with the story that this woman had finally won her case against the Wachowskis in court, and that the rights to the franchise were really hers.

Except all that just wasn't true.

Sophia Stewart, the woman in question, dubs herself "The Mother of The Matrix." According to her, she submitted her story back in 1981 and had it rejected. She then answered a magazine ad in 1986 in which the Wachowskis solicited science fiction stories for a forthcoming comic book. She decided to send in her work, called "The Third Eye," copyrighted in 1983, but didn't hear anything about it in reply. Thinking nothing else of it, she forgot about it until she saw The Matrix with a friend in 1999, and recognized the story as hers. She then filed a complaint with the FBI, and in 2003, filed a lawsuit.

Not content with her claim against the Wachowskis, she further claimed that her work helped inspire The Terminator, and claimed to be the mother of that sci fi film as well.

Right there, that should have been a red flag. A proven liar increases exaggeration the moment the spotlight falls on them.

Furthermore, let's clarify something. As Snopes points out, she won a judgement, but not her case. Time magazine also investigated Stewart's claims, and found them baseless.

Also, the timeline is wrong. In 1986, the Wachowskis weren't even big in Hollywood, and one of them was still in college.

But losing in court doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a legitimate gripe. Could Stewart have planted the seed of an idea, sort of like J. Michael Straczynski planting the idea of a space station in the minds of the producers of Star Trek?

There was only one thing to do: Read her original story, 'The Third Eye,' and see if it bore any resemblance to either The Matrix or to The Terminator.

Turns out, Sophia has been marketing this to the hilt. It is very possible to obtain her manuscript through Amazon. It's free if you have Kindle Unlimited. It's $9.99 if you don't. And if you make the mistake of buying it on her website, it's more like $30. It's also possible to buy her book on her wronged experiences, a trivia book, and something called "Matrix 4," which has nothing to do with the upcoming movie. Any one of these are ridiculously overpriced, but they are available.

I took the cheapest option and got the Kindle version, and I immediately regretted it as the worst ten bucks I ever spent.

The book isn't even really a book. It's more of the outline of a book. What little is fleshed out is thinly veiled Christian mythology, and what isn't is barely much of a story. There is not one, single shred of dialogue to be found anywhere. It involves a messianic character named "I-Khan" who leads a rebellion against the obviously named "Morning Star," whose corporate collective is named the "Seven Heads." (Yeah, not very imaginative, is it?) Working with "Morning Star" are a family of rich business people called the "Rothfellers" (a poor portmanteau of Rothchild and Rockerfeller). I-Khan meets a deity-like being known as "The Eye" which emits an energy beam which disintegrates all his colleagues and symbolically kills and resurrects him. (This part is closer to Indiana Jones than anything else.) In an erotic twist, his clothes are burned off, but he remains. He then becomes the resurrected leader who will lead humanity to freedom (of course).

Now we come to the only similarity between Stewart's work and that of The Terminator and/or The Matrix. The "Rothfellers" rule Earth with the cooperation of a planet called "Sorr." Planet Sorr is completely populated with machines, and those machines lend powerful technologies and support to the Rothfellers and Morning Star.

A hero defends Earth from rule by machines. That's it. That's the only similarity.

But Earth isn't directly ruled by these machines, like in Terminator or Matrix. It's merely a partnership between Morning Star, the Rothfellers, and Sorr. In Stewart's story, when I-Khan lands on Sorr, he gets the machines to join his rebellion by means of making the ruler of Sorr, Queen Janee, fall in love with him. Morning Star is so incensed by this betrayal that he destroys the Planet Sorr utterly.

Not very much like either The Matrix or The Terminator, is it?

Stewart describes a pyramid-shaped ship which was to be the flagship of Earth's fleet. I-Khan steals it and uses it in his rebellion. This description seems to better fit Stargate: SG-1 than The Matrix. Yet Stewart has no beef with SG-1 at all. It's not like the Stargate franchise has no money, it's just that Stewart only has eyes for Hollywood. Canadian productions aren't even on her radar.

As "proof" for her claim, Stewart includes a facsimile newspaper clipping in her book. The clipping is from the Los Angeles Sentinel Newspaper, June 8th, 1981, and the article is about how Sophia Stewart was planning a multi-million dollar science fiction film to be produced in 1982. This helps establish the timeline of her original story, but since the original story bears no resemblance to either The Terminator or The Matrix, that doesn't help her much. She also has correspondences proving that her manuscript was rejected by Hollywood around 1981. Fine, but that still doesn't make her case.

Stewart includes correspondences between herself and Warner Brothers, as if that aided her case, either. None of the letters she wrote to them are included, and that's interesting, because she has a reputation for being something of a bitch. For proof of that, see this article here.

Even her book's title, 'The Third Eye,' is a rip-off. It was the title of a show on Nickelodeon in the 80's which featured several SF miniseries.

Warner Brothers basically laid out the same case as the one I made above, and with the same reasons. Stewart's story just doesn't match up. Simple as that.

Eric

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