The Matrix - March 31, 1999 (1 Viewer)

[GuruAskew]

I actually think "The Matrix" is more dated than "The Phantom Menace" due to the excessive parodying and over-use of special effects.

The whole bullet-time thing was pretty much obsolete the second it was done in this movie. Michel Gondry had used it years earlier in commercials and if anything the use in "The Matrix" was the last gasp of the whole gimmick. Even on the sequels they didn't use it. There are effects that are stylistically evocative of the original "bullet time" but the whole "surround the action with still cameras" thing was looking primitive even 4 years later.

Personally, I have love for the whole "Matrix" saga. I see the whole thing as massively-overrated but not awful. There's a fundamental tragedy in the whole thing: between the two sequels, "The Animatrix" and the video game there's enough good material to make a single mind-blowingly awesome followup to the first film but it's spread over those multiple projects and ends up being diluted. Even so, it succeeds in making the first film seem quaint, dated and small in comparison so it's really a lose/lose situation.

As it stands they just need to leave it as-is. It's probably better that we never see prequels, sequels, spinoffs etc. They've already kinda worn our their welcome in that regard.

But yeah, I was there, 10 years ago today on opening night. "The Matrix" may not hold up so well right now but it sure seemed like a big deal at the time.

I just wish the Wachowskis would do something more like "Bound". The real bummer is the path their career took. I have an unwatched copy of "Speed Racer" on DVD (I've heard good things in spite of the poor box-office performance, I just haven't gotten around to watching it) but I'd like to see them doing something small again as opposed to the big, obnoxious special-effects spectacle.

 

[Shad R]

I know this movie is known for special effects, but, and correct me if I'm wrong because it's been a while since I've seen Blade, but didn't Blade use the "bullet effects" a whole year before Matrix?
As for the movies, I liked the first one a lot, second one was entertaining, third one was OK until the end.

 

[GuruAskew]

Yeah but not the same method. Blade's use was essentially adding CGI bullets over slow-motion footage. Like the stuff in the sequels it's sorta stylistically similar without actually using the same effect, albeit in a very simple and primitive way.

"Blade" certainly paved the way for "The Matrix", as did "Dark City" (both of which were New Line films which certainly puts both of them within arms reach of the Wachowskis during "Matrix" pre-production) but I'm not going to get off on a plagiarism tangent. The Wachowskis borrowed freely from all sorts of things. The "Terminator" films were another big one. It's really no different than what George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino have done throughout their careers, although I just don't think the Wachowskis are in the same league as the rest of them.

 

[Michael:M]

I think Blade's use of bullet time was pretty close in execution as The Matrix's: the audience sees the bullet traveling through the air, with a visible air distortion tunnel behind it, and a main character dodges it.

I think The Matrix's use of it was more innovative and powerful, though.

One reason I have some sentimental love for the first one: it's the last movie I saw on this town's last really BIG movie screen; one of those old time, old school incredibly huge screens in a single theater they don't make anymore. A handful of us geeks went to see it; I distinctly remember looking over at my friends during the lobby scene and we all had the same expression on our faces; wide eyed and mouths hanging open in admiration.

 

[JohnMor]

Finally saw the 2 sequels in honor of the original's 10th anniversary. While they were okay action thrillers on their own, I absolutely think they failed as sequels to the original. Totally took the wrong direction. Reloaded bored me mostly and seemd FAR too reminiscent of the Stars Wars films.

And count me in as someone who felt the original was near perfect. It was complete without the sequels because it dealt not with the grandiose WAR which we've all seen before but with the more personal question of are you ready to awaken from the programming that is all around you and really live life? Almost a 21st Century reimagining of Wharton's The Age of Innocence. That was a great premise and well done and didn't really need any expansion. If they were going to expand it, I feel they took it in the most boring, predictable direction. The old huge battle of good vs. evil, the fight for humanity, blah, blah, blah, Star Wars revisited to a different place and time. It reminded me of the last episode of Buffy, but with a bigger budget.

I'm sure I'll watch the sequels again, as I certainly don't think they're bad movies in their own right, but I'll be separating them out from the first film.

 

[John Doran]

well, anyone who participated in the old threads will know that the matrix trilogy is among my favorite cinematic experiences of all-time, and continues to be so, 10 years later.

while i love the first film, reloaded is my favorite; and i also see revolutions as simply the second half of reloaded, and thus don't really consider them as separate installments.

on the other hand - and this is how i will register my own profound disagreement with the many naysayers on this thread - i despise the star wars trilogy, and lack the language to convey my abhorrence for the LOTR movies, other than to say that i find them all unwatchable, a sentiment that has only deepened since my attendance at the trilogy tuesday marathon (i think it was tuesday) all those years ago.

so there. ;-P

 

[mattCR]

Ok, see, I've always viewed "Revolutions" as the way I said it.. a total betrayal of the concept of the first film. In the first film, Morpheus lays it out: humans are slaves, living batteries who are forced to feed the monolithic machines and keep them alive. They are kept alive not out of some vague humanity or niceness of the robotic monsters, but because it works. We see visions of pods and millions of people as slaves.

Even to give a caveat to Reloaded, it goes a step farther and says that not only is that the case, the reason why people are kept in this state is because they had tried tons of times before, and this illusion worked to keep them as pacified slaves, nothing more. So, the entire matrix isn't a way to "help humanity" or anything like that, it's the equivelent of constantly drugging them or whatever to keep making them giant batteries. Morpheus pushes that hard in the first film, even showing a battery, and making the case that Neo is the one who will end that - he is the chosen one, so to speak.

The first movie ends with a note that this is exactly what is going to happen - Neo picks up the phone, and calls the agents who whoever, and lets them know that there whole world is about to come crashing in "untraceable" then "system failure" as he starts to hack apart their system.

A great, self-setup. Reloaded screwed with that a lot by basically making that phone call Neo made in at the end of The Matrix either a lie or meaningless. He obviously hadn't figured out how to hack the matrix and bring it down, he definitely didn't cause any system failure. And somehow, humans were now so stupid they could live in the matrix and not notice or seemingly care about people who fly and constant takeovers.

This is where revolutions REALLY bones it, though. In the first film, when an agent takes over a person, that person is basically dead; sucked down the pod-shoot and pulped for food or whatever. But they die. In revolutions, not only does Neo not do anything to "Shutdown the System" an agent is now more powerful then he is with some sort of abnormal AI that causes him to liquify most people. Now, think about this.. if we buy the concept of the first film, then at the end when we see tons of Agent Smith, where the hell is all of the power to make this happen? He has now liquified swaths of people, which means they all died, and so they aren't putting out any juice .. remember the whole "if you die in the matrix, you die for real? " ??? So, as Smith grows exponentially, the power source providing the matrix is going down just as rapidly as Smith KILLS real people.

Ok, fine. Now, in the end, the solution is.. let's team with the robots who upkeep the matrix, and let's be OK with all those human batteries that we were told in the first film was slavery (?)

From the first film, Neo was meant to free the people from their slavery to the matrix. We ended the first movie thinking he was on his way: Yes! System Failure! He broke the boundaries and his show of flying was proof that he had hacked the matrix and the rules no longer applied! We end the third movie with: Big swaths of human slaves in pods dead as Smith was a far more effective "hacker" then Neo (??), Neo agreeing with the robots that it was OK that people stay batteries (??), and sun rising as so AI programs discuss the idea of whether or not they let humans leave if they realize that they don't want to be in the matrix.. What (??) How are they going to realize that? It still leaves, as Morpheus noted in the first film, 99.9999% or whatever un-knowing slaves who are just unaware of their servitude.

So, what did Nero accomplish at all? I mean, really, OK, Zion didn't blow up and destroy. And.... after that... now there won't be agents when a small group of people decide they've figured it out and want out of the Matrix (?)

Apparently, though, everyone in Zion, who supposedly led the resistance and was fighting to free their fellow brothers & sisters who were still slaves were all OK with them staying slaves by the time we got to the end of Revolution, because they threw a big party while you weren't seeing floods of people come out of the pods.

And not a single person seemingly mourned any of the people that were dead in real life because Smith wiped them out in the Matrix.

The last two movies came off as garbled mess and I'd stick by my idea that they betray the concept of the film.

First film: Humans are slaves as batteries.
First film ends: Neo breaks his chains! He will free humans
Reloaded: Ok, we drop all the stuff about freeing people from the pods, who cares about them, let's pretend they don't exist. Let's save those in Zion!
Reloaded: I guess the humans are really just cannon fodder, who cares about wiping them out; they are only virtual here.. wait, they are connected to those people in pods.. ssshhhh forget that part. They might as well be bullet bags and target practice.
Revolutions: Smith is apparently a better Chosen one then Neo; oops.. he's wiping out a whole city! I guess all of those people, wait, forget that part again.
Revolutions: AIs will make peace with us if we let them keep their slaves, and they promise us they won't kill the ones who try and flee the plantation. Perfect! This is everything we really wanted! Let's party!

 

[Chuck Mayer]

matt,
A brief response.

1) Did anyone assume that SYSTEM FAILURE at the end of film one meant the entire Matrix? I never heard that theory until yesterday. The Matrix is never displayed graphically in that manner. It is displayed as a waterfall. The "SYSTEM FAILURE" display seemed to indicate a failure in the tracking program (as used to open The Matrix). Not the entire Matrix itself.

2) By assuming the first film provides ground truth, then I can't help but disagree with your assessment. Morpheus is not wrong, but he is also operating from a limited understanding of the war. You seem to have run with his initial interpretation. That paradigm does not incorporate scenes from the 2nd and 3rd movie indicating that the machines/programs are not a monolithic entity, any more than the resistance is. The first film provides a perspective, not truth. The conflict between man and machines is more complex than shown in the first film.

3) Your view on the agent takeover is presumptuous, because the agents in the films are killed. We don't see what happens to a person taken over by an agent when the agent is not killed. And the first film itself examined that ugly moral truth during the agent training program (Lady in Red). The people Smith "takes over" are NOT killed, as pointed out by the Oracle remaining the crater. So all of those people are return to themselves after Neo/Smith reloaded the Matrix.

4) That reload is different than the previous. An armistice is in effect, one which will offer humanity a choice between the Matrix and the real world. One in which humans and AI machines will have to work together to achieve any lasting prosperity and peace. Foreshadowed EARLY in Reloaded by the Oracle's speech.

Beyond that, I'm not sure how to approach your argument. You are operating from the perspective that the first movie is "correct" in it's worldview.

 

[mattCR]

Ok.. but doesn't this armistice, as you put it, still basically require humans as slaves, you know, bred in the pods ala movie 1? Or are we going to pretend that doesn't matter? In fact, it was specifically implied in the scene between the Oracle and the Archetect about "what do we do with those that decide they want out" "We let them go" .. ok, but what comparative do the people have? What brings the people inside the matrix to ever know that they are slaves inside the matrix? Now that Neo and those outside of the matrix can pop in like super-powered beings, what is their to prevent any of them from coming in as virtual kings/opressors etc. because they have the knowledge to do so? Nothing. In fact, one of the programs had basically done just this in his feudal realm of sorts in Reloaded. And since it was pointed out, by the Archetect, in his long-winded monologue that people are, in fact, the power that keeps everything going, then a mass-abandonment is still unlikely to keep any sort of peace, otherwise robots/AI sign their own death warrants.

I just dislike the latter installments because the first film was clearly: Humans break the bounds of an artificial existence because they seek the truth. And the next two films were: let's see how we can become collaborators in what is still slavery, and we'll call it making peace.

?? I just didn't care for anything about that. Imagine a film where a great spy figures out Nazi Germany is developing some super weapon, and he busts it up by breaking their decoder ring. Two sequels occur; in the second, he discovers not all of them are really bad people, they just want to survive, and in the third, he discovers maybe Stalin is even worse, and despite the fact that Hitler made room for him, he'd rather Hitler then Stalin, so let's make peace with one, and we'll just turn a blind eye to all the atrocities.

The first thought that crossed my mind with the Neo/Machines "Sit down" was the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The enemy of my enemy, oh well, we will just make peace with the enemy we have, and ignore the horrors in their back yard.

I may be alone, but I walked out of the theater pretty sickened by the third movie, and it's why I don't bring it up and say I wish I could wipe it from my mind.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Like the Machines had been slaves to humans (and still were, in Zion, to an extent) long before the war?

A councilman has a long discussion with Neo about this in Reloaded, when they head down to the engineering room. The armistice is about giving people a choice to be in the Matrix (which has changed at the end of the third film) or to be freed from that. Just as machines will have to serve and help the new human community.

The truth, as evidenced in the trilogy, is that humans and machines (who BOTH have committed horrible atrocities on one another) have to work together to find peace. The machines cannot dominate, nor can the humans.

That isn't the truth from the first film, I admit. But it's a more relatable truth to me. Your "humans are heroes, Smith is Stalin, and the Machines are Hitler" isn't an accurate analogy.

 

[Chris Atkins]

10 years +1 day ago, I had one of the most memorable theatrical experiences of my life. Great thread Chuck!

 

[Pete-D]

dp

 

[Pete-D]

I'm pretty sure Bullet time was used even before Blade.

I remember seeing it in a Gap commercial around 1997 and in music videos around that time also.

The Matrix was the first movie to really utilize it to that level though ... like actually 'freeze' or 'slow down' the action and move the camera around like that.

That is also one thing about the first Matrix -- the fight scenes had much more "impact" to them. When the character's threw punches or kicks it really had an "oomph" to it.

- Trinity destroying that cop with her kick

- Morpheus sending Neo flying back in the dojo

- Smith smashing Morpheus' head onto the toilet, shattering it.

The sequels really lost that in favor of fight scenes that were more like a mix of a video game meets a dance sequence.

 

[Diallo B]

Matt, although i don't have time for a complete post right now I have to say this.

IMHO, your detailed account of you view of the trilogy misses the mark drastically. Unfortunately, i don't have time for a proper response right now. I will respond soon.

 

[Diallo B]

I think Chuck summed up my response in one sentence Matt. However, when I get the time I will elaborate.

 

[DavidJ]

Hmmm, not sure that I want to jump into this, but I guess I will...

Chuck, I appreciated your well-thought out response to Matt earlier. I concede that it is an acceptable way to interpret and think of the the trilogy and it did make me think about my judgment of the sequels. However, it didn't change it.

I don't think they are horrible movies. I can understand that people like them and may even love them. I didn't hate watching them. I often find myself watching parts of Reloaded---Revolutions, not so much.

Even after your explanation, I still think that they violated the rules for their own world and I have a hard time with that. I'll accept almost any premise or movie world as long as the filmmakers are consistent with the rules that they have established for their movie "universe." I have no patience for filmmakers who manipulate those rules to surprise, trick or manipulate the audience.

Now, I'm not saying that this is what they set out to do or even that your explanation does not fit what they ultimately did. In a lot of ways, I think they were just victims of the success of the original. It was praised for it is action and "deep thoughts." Let's add more action and deep thoughts! We'll contort the story and world to fit. It is pretty easy to come up with explanations and theories to fit things after the fact.

To me, that is what they ultimately did. The Matrix ended with a story trajectory that went one way. By the time of the sequels, they had retroactively changed that trajectory to fit the new thoughts and ideas they had created. And you know what, that is their prerogative.

I just didn't like the sequels as much as the original---I felt let down by the quality and direction of the plot. And yes, I'll freely admit expectations are partly to blame. The sequels didn't live up to their potential.

I'm sure this didn't change your view. I'm not that eloquent or persuasive, but I hope that it helps illuminate how someone can come to the conclusion that the sequels don't play by the same rules as the original and that they can be bothered by that. Your post helped me understand the other side and I know we have some common ground---we both like the first one.

 

[Jim_K]

FWIW - the earliest use of bullet-time I know of is the Ringo Lam/Chow Yun Fat Hong Kong actioner Full Contact (1993). The HK action films of the 80's/early 90's and Japanese Anime were two of the major stylistic influences for The Matrix.

As for the quality of the films, I'm more in agreement with Chuck. The first film is a genuine Sci-Fi classic and Reloaded is brilliant for the most part. I'm still a bit luke-warm on Revolutions so that's were we differ a tad.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Some catch-up comments:

1) Pete is correct. The fighting in The Matrix was more visceral than in the sequels. For the most part. But I'd argue the non-Neo fights in Reloaded (but not the major Neo fights, which were the majority) were also visceral (Morpheus on the truck for example). As was the real world Neo vs. Bane/Smith.

2) Blade did several things that The Matrix did, about 8 months earlier. It didn't do them as well, but it did them nonetheless. Blade should get more credit. The way the Brothers used bullet time was more important than being the first. They used it the most effectively. That is what matters. Hey, the whole techno music for the fight scene was done 4 years earlier in Mortal Kombat

3) David, thanks. I do not mean to sell anyone on LIKING the direction the sequels went (which you are completely correct is not the direction the first film would lead you to believe). I just want to point out that I do believe the direction they ultimately went is foreshadowed to some extent in the first film and quite a bit in Reloaded. I could recommend the Animatrix short The Second Renaissance, but that would be cheating...the three films should stand on their own. I think they do, but I also think T2R is critical to sharing that paradigm. Since I never saw the sequels without seeing T2R (several times), I cannot comment on that.

4) We do agree on the first film. It is an exceptional piece of work. It could have been a Frankensteinian mess, convoluted and non-sensical. But it's very tight, very polished, and very well made. It is a great action movie with a good heart and cohesive and meaningful themes. It also has one of the best effects sequences of the past few decades (the battery reveal sequence).

5) I don't think Bill is correct that The Matrix seems more dated than TPM. I don't think it feels dated at all. One thing the Brothers have not done is glut the market with tie-ins and trinkets. There were three video games total, no fiction books (aside from two comic collections, and the Art of book for the first film), a toy series or two, and The Animatrix. Very little cashing in on the universe. Some of that is relative popularity compared to LOTR, SW, and superheroes, but not all. Certainly in 2003, they could have flooded the market. They chose not to, and I appreciate that.

 

[John Doran]

this misses the mark. it's closer to something like:

1) a handful of humans break the bounds of an artificial existence in an effort to find and live with the truth;

2 & 3) let's see how we can secure, for as many humans as possible, the ability to become aware of the truth and choose to live with it or not. which requires collaboration with the only beings capable of providing widespread access to such truth.

 

[mattCR]

I will admit, I have never seen "Animatrix". I don't know if I could ever be good with the idea of any sort of peace that involves people still in pods powering machines. I'd be one of the warmongers, I suppose, demanding a wipeout of the machines