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The Matrix (1999)

post #1 of 82
8/29/08 at 7:54pm
Thread Starter 
Hated this flick the first time I saw it in the theater, and it wasn't until 2002 that I realized that it really is a great sci-fi action flick. Sure this flick has been ripped off thousands of times, but it's a damn fun ride.

The 2 sequels blow dogs for quarters.
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post #2 of 82
8/29/08 at 7:58pm
Could never get into this film. I was exactly the right age for the film (14 years old) when it came out but I could never get on with it. Even at that age it's philosophical musings seemed banal and I was questioning why the fuck we were supposed to be taking glee in the murder of hundreds of average joes who happened to work for the US government.
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post #3 of 82
8/29/08 at 8:10pm
*sigh*

I hate you Spike.
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post #4 of 82
8/29/08 at 8:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
Could never get into this film. I was exactly the right age for the film (14 years old) when it came out but I could never get on with it. Even at that age it's philosophical musings seemed banal and I was questioning why the fuck we were supposed to be taking glee in the murder of hundreds of average joes who happened to work for the US government.
Sometimes you seem so jaded I'm wondering if you spent your entire life on Ritalin, Spike.

The 1st Matrix was pure pure pulp fun. Still is a good movie today. It's after that movie that things went sour.
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post #5 of 82
8/29/08 at 8:19pm
It's called being British I'm afraid, and also being raised on a diet of Robocop and Jackie Chan.
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post #6 of 82
8/29/08 at 8:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
and also being raised on a diet of Robocop and Jackie Chan.
Same here. And more HK movies that you can think of (thank you HK-immigrated neighbor). I really appreciated the effort thrown here, mixing manga, wuxia, old-school KF movies and a great blend of Sci-fi.
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post #7 of 82
8/29/08 at 8:46pm
Even with the iffy sequels and millions of spoofs, I still enjoy this movie almost as much as I did the first time I saw it. Which is a lot.
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post #8 of 82
8/29/08 at 9:03pm
Thread Starter 
Some jerkoff yelling out stupid crap sitting behind me ruined my theatrical viewing of the movie, and it was after seeing the opening to Swordfish that I decided to revisit the movie. Really glad I did.
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post #9 of 82
8/30/08 at 7:51am
i would love this movie more if it didn't suddenly spawn a whole bunch of 15 y/o trenchcoat wearing wannabe's. totally ruined the look

that said, i thought it was a great sci-fi movie, with tremendous scope and ideas.

which unfortuenetly went down the crapper with parts 2 and 3.

the first time i saw the rescue scene (crazy techno in the background, neo dodging bullets like crazy) i was in geek heaven
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post #10 of 82
8/30/08 at 8:07am
I like this movie and shall never apologize for it.
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post #11 of 82
8/30/08 at 3:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Francis Wolcott View Post
I like this movie and shall never apologize for it.
that is ok I am not apologize for Starcrash either.
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post #12 of 82
8/31/08 at 1:12pm
Quote:
It's called being British I'm afraid, and also being raised on a diet of Robocop and Jackie Chan.
So were Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright! And they LOVED The Matrix!

... that said, that particular love led them to make some of SPACED's weaker moments (the overdone Matrix references).

And I like The Matrix's sequels! I guess I wasn't ever THAT big on The Matrix. I really did get a kick out of it, but I think I still liked BOUND better in high school. Probably because nobody else had seen it and it made me cooler by default! Plus it had nudity.
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post #13 of 82
8/31/08 at 1:50pm
I remember seeing this inadvertently on opening night. It came out on a Wednesday, and my friends and I were bumming around a thrift shop, and I felt pressured to buy something, so I went with this $2 framed portrait of the poster from Speed. The one with the big Keanu head.



Oddly enough, it didn't have that text. So it really was just a big Keanu head.

Anyway, my friends and I were headed home when we bump into an old friend who casually mentions he's shopping because it's his birthday. We all hang out a bit, go to dinner, all the while I'm dragging this giant Keanu head around, telling them, "Guys, I can't really carry this any longer." Someone suggests going to the movies, and we find out that The Matrix had opened that day. At this point, I was totally oblivious to carrying a giant, framed Keanu head with me into the theater, as I accidentally became the world's biggest Matrix fanboy.
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post #14 of 82
8/31/08 at 2:18pm
I watched this thing 3 days in a row when it first came out and I thought it was like the coolest thing I ever seen. I know people love/hate Keanu but he worked for this kind of pic. Bullet-time, c'mon...
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post #15 of 82
8/31/08 at 2:26pm
I've always maintained that the casting of Reeves was one of the luckiest things to happen to the production. After reading about who the Wachowskis offered the script to (Will Smith, Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio), I can't even imagine what a Matrix made with other actors would've been like. I imagine they would've been severely compromised. And I assume they only put out to those stars because that's what every movie tries to do (as well as they probably needed a star to acquire the necessary budget).

Anyway, with the anime-inspired style of the film, you couldn't do better than to cast Reeves. He was perfect for the film.

Though, as much as I love Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus, I'd be interested to see what Val Kilmer would've done with the character.
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post #16 of 82
8/31/08 at 9:30pm
Sorry, but I can't get into any film where the bad guys win. The Agents were only doing their jobs!

Agent Smith is the one, dammit!
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post #17 of 82
9/1/08 at 3:56am
Years later, after innumerable imitators and spoofs, I still love The Matrix - It's just an entertaining and well-executed slice of pop philosophy/sci fi/anime sensibilities.

As for Reloaded, I like it.

As for Revolutions, it has a few shining moments that stand out from the tedium.
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post #18 of 82
1/30/10 at 2:27pm
Apparently I like this film now. Ended up buying the trilogy on the cheap and watched the Matrix for the first time since I was sixteen. Away from the hype and zeitgeist it's a neat little sci-fi/action movie with some great cinematography which feels overly earnest and morally ambivalent.
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post #19 of 82
1/30/10 at 3:02pm
You gonna continue onto the sequels?
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post #20 of 82
1/30/10 at 3:05pm
Yeah, I remember kind of liking RELOADED and being aggresively bored by REVOLUTIONS.

I will say though that I still find the Lobby Shootout a little bit creepy. It's just how impassive it is, as well as the fact that the Matrix Look is now the official uniform for the emotionally disturbed.
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post #21 of 82
1/30/10 at 3:14pm
I should watch at least the first movie again. I was always kind of a super dick to this movie and its fans, namely because in my head I thought it doomed real cyberpunk from being brought to the screen, whatever the fuck that means.

Only saw the sequels once a piece, in the cinema. Remember enjoying them, but in hindsight they were firmly up their own asses.
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post #22 of 82
1/30/10 at 3:15pm
Impassive is a good word to describe the lobby shootout. I remember hearing comparisons to John Woo and going, "No no no! It's only Woo with all the passion taken out of it!!!"

Yea, I remember wondering why that sequence (and the movie as a whole) didn't catch more flack after Columbine happened. Not that I think it should've caught more flack. The connection just seems so superficially obvious for concerned parents to scapegoat on. I'm sure it got SOME flack, but still...

I remember it seemed like Fight Club got more negative attention in that regard.

Though I still dig and rip on the sequels in equal measure, the first movie gets lots of points for doing a lot with a little (relatively) and looking really classy doing it. It's just more thoughtfully shot and cut together. The sequels ended up coming across a bit like generic blockbusters. Flat.
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post #23 of 82
1/30/10 at 3:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
Away from the hype and zeitgeist it's a neat little sci-fi/action movie with some great cinematography which feels overly earnest and morally ambivalent.
Only you would describe The Matrix as a "little" movie.
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post #24 of 82
1/30/10 at 3:44pm
Well it is. Big ideas, big themes, loss of cool stuff. But it's a relatively compact movie in the grand scheme of things.
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post #25 of 82
1/30/10 at 4:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
Well it is. Big ideas, big themes, loss of cool stuff. But it's a relatively compact movie in the grand scheme of things.
It's also big in greatness. By any scale I can't really think of too many bigger movies that are actually better or, shit, as good. I mean, I get that the production wasn't as huge as something like LOTR (or maybe even something more old-school like Hard Boiled), I just think its kinda odd that you call that film small when action movies get much smaller. In the grand scheme of things.
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post #26 of 82
1/30/10 at 4:28pm
The night my dad took me to see this movie he hit a deer. Like, blood and guts everywhere, it was horrifying. I guess the biggest compliment I can give The Matrix is it made me forget about a deer being run over, which was pretty traumatic to my little tiny mind back then.
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post #27 of 82
1/31/10 at 2:54am
The first chapter in one of my favorite trilogies, I adore the hell out of this flick.
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post #28 of 82
2/3/10 at 4:54pm
Jesus Christ The Matrix Reloaded is inert. Aside from the awesome opening it feels like nothing happens of any consequence at all It's just shot after shot of people posturing and then the cyber rave.
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post #29 of 82
2/3/10 at 4:57pm
I found the opening of Reloaded to be pretty inert as well. From the get-go, just too much slow-motion that looked cool but had no reason to be exciting.
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post #30 of 82
2/3/10 at 5:02pm
The motorcycle stunt is terrible and Carrie Anne Moss has never looked more horrible, she looks utterly masculine at times, but the fall/firefight down the skyscraper looks impressive. The problem with the two Matrix Sequels is that we don't care about Zion, what audiences reacted to in The Matrix weren't the scenes of Neo looking like he'd just escaped auschwitz eating porridge with a bunch of miserable sods.

It was Neo using Kung Fu to shoot up a lobby, or wrenching a helicopter out of free fall.

Reloaded and Revolutions seems to think we care about humanity when in reality these are the least humane films around. They're built on an icy, impersonal asthetic, and as such asking for us to be okay with the cold and disaffected Matrix action and then get all cosy with the earthy zion stuff feels tonally jarring.
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post #31 of 82
2/3/10 at 5:06pm
I remember having visions of Zion based on how Marcus Chong's character described it. It did a waaaaay better job of giving me a sense of the last desperate survival of humanity than the sequels did.

Once I saw what Zion was actually like, I thought... "Oh... that ain't so bad. What're they bitching about!?" It was not too far from the suffering of the people of Naboo. Hahahaha.
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post #32 of 82
2/3/10 at 5:22pm
The Burly Brawl starts off well, but as soon as the CGI doubling becomes really apparent the entire thing just falls apart. Kung Fu just isn't fun if you can see the seams and its nowhere near artistic enough to justify that fakeness.
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post #33 of 82
2/3/10 at 5:24pm
I enjoyed how relentless the sequence was when I first saw it. But that CG aged the moment you saw it. No spoon, my ass.

Reloaded wasn't a movie. It was an essay. And not a very good one.
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post #34 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:02pm
The entire sequence from the Merovingian's mansion through the freeway chase is the highlight of Reloaded, and the trilogy, actionwise. Neo using swords and such livened up kung fu that was becoming rote, and removing the Superman from the equation, however briefly, really helps up the intensity for the secondary characters. Once he swoops back in, I turn the series off.
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post #35 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:04pm
Yeah the highway chase is something else, and the little scuffle in the Merovingian's place is amazing. The only distraction is that Morpheus looks SO pudgy in his wasistcoat and purple trousers.
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post #36 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:15pm
And yet he fights so much better against an upgraded agent! I remember all the back and forth on the IMDB boards about how Morpheus was suddenly able to fight an upgraded agent on somewhat equal terms. Hahahaha... what a waste of time!

I remember wishing that the fight between Morpheus (now with sword!) and the Twins (now with phasing powers!) were longer. That was a pretty cool second or two of sparring.
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post #37 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:16pm
Yeah that's something I never got. Morpheus even beats the shit out of multiple Smiths in the corridor.
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post #38 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:22pm
Maybe Smith gets more powerful next to a toilet. Either that, or Morpheus gets weak next to them. But even more important, is what Dr. Cornell West thinks are the philosophical implications of that notion!
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post #39 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:24pm
Well, I think they were just playing off the fact that after seeing them beaten repeatedly, we weren't buying agents as these unstoppable powerhouses anymore, even if they should be. The fanwank would be that with his faith in Neo validated, Morpheus is able to operate at a higher level than in the original. His being stronger and faster has nothing to do with his flabbiness in this place, and so forth.
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post #40 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Schwartz View Post
The fanwank would be that with his faith in Neo validated, Morpheus is able to operate at a higher level than in the original. His being stronger and faster has nothing to do with his flabbiness in this place, and so forth.
Yea, that's what I figured. Especially since the character became an insufferable blowhard in the 2nd movie. Such ego should've made him The One 2.0.
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post #41 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:35pm
Weaving is the only one who came out of this whole debacle completely unscathed. Smith is a delight.
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post #42 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:38pm
Smith is the reason I'm about to watch REVOLUTIONS. sigh.

He's so great in the film and he's the only one who seems to be totally not taking it seriously.
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post #43 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:40pm
The approximation of a DBZ fight at the end of Revolutions is amazing, complete with "Huh... whaaa? H-his powers!!" dialogue.
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post #44 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:45pm
I think that the second one could on many accounts be considered an good but slightly weaker middle film if the third one had answered the questions that it posed. However, since Revolutions drops the ball so utterly and completely it just seems like the midway point on a rapid descent.

I know I've said it before but the sound effects of the Burly Brawl are just too comically bad for me to be able to enjoy it. And I seem to recall reading that they had to build their own loop of highway to film the driving scenes in the second film because they couldn't possibly find an already existing highway section that captured the drab plainness that they desired for their setting.

Still, having watched the 1st one fairly recently after buying it on Blu-ray, it's amazing how much I still like it. And losing my Art of the Matrix book during my last move is still saddens me, the concept art for the original is pretty great.
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post #45 of 82
2/3/10 at 6:50pm
RELOADED does a lot better for itself when its not being directly compared to KILL BILL vol.1 which was released a little while after and was advertised, at least over here, as being the 'real deal' action wise.

RELOADED is frustrating because it doesn't know what to do with Neo, it's best scenes have Neo stranded on another continent, and because it's got quite interesting and nihilistic ideas. The idea of Zion being a machine construct, being something designed to extend the net of control is fantastic and it's just completely given up later on.
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post #46 of 82
2/3/10 at 7:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dontEATnachos View Post
because they couldn't possibly find an already existing highway section that captured the drab plainness that they desired for their setting.

Still, having watched the 1st one fairly recently after buying it on Blu-ray, it's amazing how much I still like it.
HAHAHAAHAHAH, about the highway. And despite my drubbing of the film, I actually still like it too. It's just too odd of a blockbuster for me to hate it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
and because it's got quite interesting and nihilistic ideas. The idea of Zion being a machine construct, being something designed to extend the net of control is fantastic and it's just completely given up later on.
Which goes back to what nachos said about Revolutions dropping the ball. Upon first viewing, I think I loved Reloaded despite its many flaws simply because of the Architect scene. I knew it would end on a cliffhanger, but I didn't know how. I was so freaked out that the movie would end with Neo opening to door and fading to white. I would've hated the movie right then and there if that had happened.
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post #47 of 82
2/3/10 at 7:11pm
The most inventive thing about REVOLUTIONS thus far is the score. Love the piece of music, which morphs from Zhang Yimou drumming to full on electronica, that plays when they storm the Merovingians club. The fight itself, not so much. And I never need to see that Crane kick again.

Also the guy who plays the Merovingian usually speaks perfect, unaccented, English. So his bizarre French accent makes no sense.
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post #48 of 82
2/3/10 at 7:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dontEATnachos View Post
I think that the second one could on many accounts be considered an good but slightly weaker middle film if the third one had answered the questions that it posed. However, since Revolutions drops the ball so utterly and completely it just seems like the midway point on a rapid descent.
You basically just said what I was going to say - if REVOLUTIONS had delivered on the themes discussed in RELOADED, RELOADED becomes a much better film.

Quote:
.....they had to build their own loop of highway to film the driving scenes in the second film because they couldn't possibly find an already existing highway section that captured the drab plainness that they desired for their setting.
Obviously they didn't think to look in Indiana.
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post #49 of 82
2/3/10 at 7:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
Also the guy who plays the Merovingian usually speaks perfect, unaccented, English. So his bizarre French accent makes no sense.
Neither do about 90% of most movie accents. So?
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post #50 of 82
2/3/10 at 7:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chavez
Obviously they didn't think to look in Indiana.
If I recall correctly their original choice was going to be Akron, OH but then they ended up deciding to just build it. I really should see if I can find some of those articles somewhere.
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