Good special effects, but no originality at all.

Rating: 2/10 (10 September 1999)

"Ignorance is bliss" as they say in the film. You go in without any knowledge of the Science-Fiction literature and you enjoy the film, you go in the theatre with some SF knowledge, the amount of rip-off and open plagiarism annoys you like hell. The Matrix is as if the screenwriter decided to use parts of his fave SF stories and made up a story to bind them all: The Second Foundation Trilogy, all that's written by William Gibson, Ender's Game by O.S. Card, Star Trek's holodeck concept, references to Terminator films, and to Cliff Simak's short stories, and more and more show up in the film. And with awe and horror I saw Obi-Wan and young Luke in the Morpheus - Neo dialogue somewhere in the first 30 minutes of the film; even the music was a la Star Wars at that moment. I guess they thought "most people stop reading SF after they are 20 years old, so they either won't bother or won't remember" which is a crying shame. However, giving the devil its due, the special effects are interesting, the pace is high and the music/sound effects are deafening, therefore The Matrix becomes an interesting spectacle, but it's still hollow, borrowed, and plundered from others' decent works. Pity. I wish it were "the" SF film people were talking about. Did you notice, I didn't write even a single word about Keanu Reeves' expressionless, lifeless, face.