Maybe not common, but The Fellowship Of The Ring (full motion capture and CGI for Gollum) was released in 2001, while The Matrix Reloaded was released in 2003.
I don't think Jet Li needed to extrapolate into the future at all.
Jet Li did motion capture for a video game within a year of the second Matrix release, so it wasn't the motion capture he was opposed to. Presumably it was Warner Bros' contract for him.