Hard to be original....

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2000)

Now that we have had the pioneering-stages of film-making, and passed through the first stages of computer-animation and graphics creating the illusion of another world within the one we live in, life and movies could have become exciting. But in fact the results are pretty disappointing. Hollywood bores us almost to death with re-makes and re-makes of re-makes and the results are almost consistently worse than the originals which at least, but certainly not only, had the profits of being original. This case isn't much different. The producers should be given credit in creating a fantasy and doing it convincingly, as well as doing a good job on dealing with some of the special effects and stunts. Fighting scenes are not too bad either, but lack involvement, and could very rarely be called exciting. This makes the Matrix certainly not a thriller or good action movie. In this way the Matrix is disappointing due to a weak plot, a badly told story that suffers from a lack of story-telling abilities, involvement, surprise and continuity. This movie could make a nice prequel to a series, but a lot needs to be done to really make this a success: better and deeper characters, a good story-line, a more realistic view of mankind, better directing and more involvement with characters and less attention drawn on special effects could make the sequels a good start for a new kind of sci-fi movies. The cast seems good enough, and should not be blamed for the way the story evolves in this movie; one only gets the idea, certainly after having seen the extras on the dvd and 'the making of'-documentary the attention of the directors and producers was drawn almost totally towards the 'Kung-fu' and special effects this way creating a life-like comic-book sci-fi movie. Some involvement of George Lucas could do a lot of good to this movie, even if only consulting him on creating and telling stories. But he certainly would not have been proud of this movie if the result would be this disappointing on so many points. Referring to the beginning of this comment, the Matrix is hugely overrated, but over-looking the releases of the last few years this should not be a surprise... people are not exactly spoiled with good movies, and if trying to be original could be rewarded, this movie should earn an award for maybe a not fully successful, but at least one of the most successful attempts to be original of the last few years. Maybe only exceeded by the largely underrated 'Dark City'.