Dumbed-down virtual reality

Rating: Null/10 (27 January 2003)

I think this is a nice little action movie that I would like a lot better if it had not developed a following that goes on and on about the movie's supposed originality and profoundity (and who refer to the movie's critics, derogatorily, as "intellectuals," which is kind of funny). Well, it is entertaining, but it is not profound and it is certainly not original. Even someone like me, who has read some sci-fi but not a lot, can quote a few examples in which every single allegedly original or profound aspect of the movie has already been written by some sci-fi author. Let's see: we have a computer-generated world designed to keep a person entertained (so to speak) in Philip K' Dick's "I Hope We Will Arrive Soon;" we have a computer-generated world created to fool people into believing they are living in a fictituous world, while they are lying immobile in pods... millions of them, in "The Angel of Violence" by Adam Wisniewski-Snerg; we have a false world, this time drug-inspired, crated to mask the unbearable reality of a devastated world, AND the use of a pill to "lift the veil" and see the world as it is, in "The Futurological Congress," by Stanislaw Lem. And I'm not going to mention the overuse of technology that renders humans helpless... that one was already in H.G.Wells and E.M.Forster. Now, nobody would be able to make a movie out of any of these very fine works, without some idiot piping up "Oh, just like in Matrix!" In fact, you cannot do anything about virtual reality without the Matrix comparison, which was already been made about things as diverse as "eXistenZ" and "Open Your Eyes."
And, and then there are all the philosophical concepts the movie filches from diverse religions and philosophical sources; I suppose this works for some people, but I don't enjoy my philosophy or religion dumbed-down and sugarcoated in a `Kung Fu' setup. About the thing about Neo being an equivalent of Jesus Christ, I'll give the moviemakers some credit and take for granted that they didn't intend it, because it is so unflattering. Neo's character as `the chosen one' does not include a high degree of intelligence or awareness, but merely his ability to move very fast and dodge bullets.