A wannabe philosopher with cool shades

Rating: 8/10 (19 March 2013)

In its basic formula The Matrix is a more than typical teen adventure for all those who want to escape in a world where you can look cool, and gain superpowers, and fight a shady organization that enslaves the world, and get the girl. Throw in a convenient power up just for the sake of winning when everything feels lost and you have a cheesy fighting shonen anime to win the kid audience.
As cheesy as it is, it has a very high budget that makes all the above to look marvelous. It has famous actors, cool clothes, detailed machinery, attention to physics, and lots of cinematics such a slow motion, big explosions, and shrapnel falling all over the place. That is enough to win all those who seek fancy visuals and shallow entertainment.
It also has dozens of symbolisms and allusions to philosophy and religion that really make you think about the meaning of life, god, freedom, and all those existentialist stuff. That is enough to offer a superficial depth to win all the wannabe brainiacs.
Oh but wait, did I just call it superficial? Why yes I did; because it is. All the above elements are just fan service and despite all the attempts to make it intellectual, it fails in the longrun. And by longrun I mean the next movies which try to expand the concept, only to open more plot holes and inconsistencies as it goes on and on. By the time the final showdown took place in the third film, I just didn't care anymore about the outcome, and even the epilogue was disappointing.
Anyways, The Matrix is philosophical first, action second, and sci-fi third. There is a bit of everything in it to please anyone who doesn't try to think too much of how plausible are all the stuff that happen in it; in-logic or not. It managed to be something very few films managed to achieve over the years and it is a high recommendation. Could they have made it better? Sure; but the point was to have fun and think a bit and not to go kamikaze on hard-science.