Keanu Reeves falls through "The Thirteenth Floor" of the "Dark City"

Rating: 10/10 (28 June 2011)

Of all of the Reality-Perception films of the 90's... Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor... This film made the loudest noise and propagated cell phone knockoffs, two sequels, and a very long-lived online Virtual Environment/Game. And of course, it put Keanu Reeves, Carrie Anne Moss, and Hugo Weaving on the map.
I saw this film in Anaheim during it's first run, this film was released during the Dot-Com blitz and was an Anthem for Pirates and Hackers alike. Whole Usenet groups spring up overnight, and "There Is No Spoon" was being painted in Subway Tunnels just like "Frodo Lives" in the early 60's when Lord Of The Rings inspired cult-like activity.
"What if I give you the Finger --- And you give me my phone call"
This portrayal of open defiance against "The System" and it's "Agents" rallied people around the world to take up arms against corporate idiocy everywhere, I was very pleased to identify with it.
"How can you talk when you have no mouth?"
-The Corporate response to any attacks by "Little People" is to basically cheat - In this film by literally removing Neo's Mouth.
But Neo was the one who would be able to use the same Methods Matrix Agents used, to beat the main Agent "Smith" who was a program that developed an Ironically Human Hatred of Humans.
There is so much in there, a lot of religion and philosophy is explored in this short film. But so much has already been said about this film, being a landmark event, there is nothing really much to add to what has been said about it.
But the idea that what we can see, hear, feel, smell, and taste might just be fabricated for us by "God" or whatever, this was new to the year these films came out. Like The Thirteenth Floor which was released exactly one month after this was, this film presented the idea that we are not really here at all, we could be somewhere else altogether... And the idea of Virtual Reality is not really a concept of the 90's computer age, it was conceived in the book "Simulacron 3" by Daniel F. Galouye... I am not sure when this was written, back when he thought it up, computers were comprised of huge vacuum tubes and were the size of buildings, but somehow, Galoye saw into the future and that a kind of Virtual Reality was possible using computers.
Even today, as we are on the brink of having 3D HDTV's in our houses, the reality of The Matrrix is not far away - If we are not already caught in it, if we are not already living in a Matrix type environment.
And that is the question, isn't it? Because, it is all in our minds anyway...
"I know that this steak isn't real"
But we can still eat it. So, even without spoons, I can still enjoy this film 12 years after it was made. But it should have ended with this one, there should never have been any sequels.