Stop the insanity-This is not a good movie! Where did the script go?

Rating: 2/10 (9 January 2001)

I really can't understand all of the accolades that this film continues to receive. Has the entire world gone insane and forgotten that what makes a good movie is its script. Has everything become about special effects, special effects and more special effects? Sure, if you want special effects, this is definitely the movie for you. If I was writing this entry for the Special Effects Message Board, I would have given it a 10/10 rating. But frankly, I need more than great visuals to have a movie work for me and as this film has nothing else, it gets a 1 rating.
I know my rating won't dissuade the masses from singing the praises of this movie. I know that my rating won't stop the inevitable outcome of Matrix II becoming the highest grossing film of all time during its opening weekend. Perhaps the only thing this review will do is lead like minded people in the direction of other movies that deal with similar themes yet actually have characters that you will care about.
Let me make clear, that the core concept of Matrix is a great one. The whole idea of our world being part of someone else's imagination is something that has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. When Matrix originally debuted, you couldn't have paid me to stay away from the theater. Someone had finally put one of the great philosophic debates into movie form and I knew that it had to be incredible. Instead, the only thing incredible about the film (beside the special effects) was how wrong I had been.
There on the screen was a movie without any real screenplay. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't bring myself to care about these characters because they just weren't real. You would think that in a film dealing with reality-as-you-know-it crumbling around the main characters, that there would be some exploration into how the newly revealed reality affected their psyches. But that doesn't happen here. Instead, we are given a movie where the emphasis is placed upon stocking up on as many guns and other weapons as possible so that the bad guys can be shot and killed. Give me a break!!!
I think what has happened in these type of movies is that the producers are handed a great idea and then spend their entire budget on the actors and special effects. They don't bother to spend anything on the screenplay because they have realized that good ones aren't necessary anymore. Just give the public some nice CGI and they'll flock to the theatre. Unfortunately, they seem to be right. Movies like Matrix and and the Jurassic Park series continue to sell out even though the stories are horrible. Give us a cool CGI Dinosaur running around a city or make the lead characters do CGI kung-fu moves and we'll go home happy. Never mind that we have absolutely no insight into who the main characters are. We don't need to care about them as long as they are involved in computerized situations! (Did anyone actually give a damn whether Jeff Goldblum's character lived or died in Lost World?)
Anyway - my point is that you can certainly make a film exploring ideas and concepts similar to those in these mega movies and still have the audience care about the characters.
In the case of Matrix, for those interested in a good "reality-as-you-know-it" type of movie, I would suggest Josef Rusnak's 'Thirteenth Floor' or even better yet, if you can handle sub-titles, Alejandro Amenabar's "Open Your Eyes". Both of these movies manage to give you an incredible story, with characters you will remember long after the credits have rolled. Believe it or not, you'll actually find yourself wondering about the characters' futures rather than simply commenting on how cool that CGI generated flip-in-the-air was.
Good movies are supposed to leave you with questions. They are supposed to make you think. You didn't really have to do that with Matrix, and its a shame because the movie could and should have been so much more than it ended up being.
In my opinion, Matrix was a waste of both time and money. I will just keep praying that one day the movie going public will give up on these special effects monsters and turn back to the days of enjoying movies with plots. On that day, films like "Open Your Eyes" will finally get their due and Hollywood will stop giving us mere eye candy like Matrix and similar ilk.