What's the Matrix? What's the Big Deal???

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2003)

When this movie first came out I dismissed it as I am not much of a Keanu Reeves fan, and in addition it looked like yet another big empty special effects romp. I have only seen parts of the movie on cable tv, but with the overhyped sequel now in release I feel I had to comment on the original movie.
It's something about an alternate reality within a computer, right? Nothing new there, it's been done already with Tron. Dreamscape and Nightmare on Elm Street created alternate worlds within people's dreams, and in those two movies, like the Matrix, when you die in the dreams you die in real life. I guess I will give the filmmakers credit for trying to use science fiction literature for ideas, at least that's what some of the comments say, but most of what I saw was just a lot of long fancy action scenes. Okay, you can all hate me but I didn't care much for those flying kung fu fights, whatever else in the movie was science fiction those fight scenes certainly weren't. More on the action later.
I didn't find the characters all that interesting, or else I would have wanted to watch the movie all the way through. I did find Hugo Weaving interesting as the main alien, villain, whatever. His stylized gestures and line delivery were both intriguing and a bit creepy. Laurence Fishburne basically just spouted exposition, and then get rescued by Keanu Reeves, and Carrie Ann-Moss just seemed to be there for the love interest aspect. Can't really say much about Keanu Reeves that hasn't been already said here, though i did like the comment about him playing a block of wood.
There were some interesting effects as Reeves makes the transformation for being placed into the matrix, or something, but like so many movies nowadays the emphasis seemed to be more on action, and lots of it, than on anything else. The low point for me in this movie was when Reeves has to rescue Fisburne from the aliens. Now, since he is in an imaginary world, he can summon up the most outlandish weapons and tools to help him in his task, like the stuff they used in the Mission Impossible tv series, or even better he can use cunning and wits to free Fishburne, but god forbid today's filmmakers fall back on anything that doesn't require CGI. Anyway, with a whole alternate universe at his disposal, what weapons does he choose? Machine guns, hand grenades, missile launchers and other conventional weapons. So all this high-faluting pseudo-philosophy is reduced to a high-tech rambo movie. At least in Tron the heroes used gadgets in keeping with the computer world in which they were trapped, and in the first Star Wars Luke Skywalker used The Force to help him destroy the Death Star!!!
Another thing about the kung fu scenes were that they were anticlimactic. Reeves defeats Weaving in the subway station, but then Weaving comes back in the next scene anyway, so bascially the whole scene was a big nothing!!!
Sorry to disappoint you folks but I didn't find anything in this movie to alter or challenge my world, or my perception of my world, except to show me how an overblown video game of a movie can be perceived as supreme greatness. Seen as a colorful action movie it's a decent time passer, but please do not call it the greatest science fiction movie ever or even one of the greatest. Before you do that, go and see 2001, the original Planet of the Apes, Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Village of the Damned, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Quatermass and the Pit, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and especially The Man in the White Suit, a science fiction movie which depicts a technological change and its impact on society without one special effect! Hell, go and see Being There, a fantasy film with a greater perception of our world than the Matrix, and there's only one trick shot in the whole movie (sorry, you gotta see the pic to find out what it is).
One last closing comment. Yesterday I was listening to the morning radio, and the announcer was all excited about the opening of Matrix Reloaded. He commented on the 14 minute chase scene and the 1,000 special effects in the film, as if that makes the movie great. I found it so sad that today's public is so jaded that they can only rate a movie by the quantity of its technical achievements. Besides, what's so great about a 14 minute car chase? Did they run out of story that they had to pad out the movie with an extended action scene? I would probably lose interest after about 4 or 5 minutes anyway. You want longer? Watch one of those real tv cop chase shows!