boe_dye sez: has it been ten years already?!

Rating: 10/10 (3 January 2009)

I can remember seeing this in the theatre so long ago. I remember going to the movies, having an expectation that it was about aliens or perhaps some type of over the top b-movie, and then being totally blown away by just about everything that was in front of my face, and then blown even further away after learning about all of the symbolic meanings hidden throughout the film.
And 10 years later, my wife and I decided to pop in a DVD and try out our new 42in LCD and sure enough the movie still blows my mind.
Sure you can still enjoy this movie for the sole purpose of the eye candy. The story line while not directly original, was at the very least original to the generation who watched it.
1999 was certainly the tail end of the appeal to the so-called cyber-punk genre. Previous we had the wonders of Blade Runner, Hackers, and Johnny Neumonic just to name a few. But this movie set a standard.
Borrowing ideas from Anime, Post-Apocalyptic dystopia, and Terminator, and doing what Star Wars did for Generation X in the 80's by giving us "The Force" and amazing ways to shoot models in epic space battles, this did for Generation Nintendo in the 90's by inventing new ways to use camera angles, and "bullet time", as well as giving us the idea to "unplug from the Matrix".
It gave "woah" a totally new meaning, as well as catch phrases like "there is no spoon", and "see how deep the rabbit hole goes".
You can watch this movie two ways: For the utter enjoyment of what you see is what you get, or in the double meaning catch phrase by seeing "how deep the rabbit hole goes", you can learn all of the philosophy that went into it, which there is quite a bit.
A movie that brings back memories, it is certainly my favorite movie of all time. It was kind of a bummer that the sequels were more about flash and fire as opposed to substance and thought.
But the great thing about this movie is that it does end with an ending that doesn't need to be taken as a cliffhanger. It can be taken as somewhat open ended, but with a great deal of finality.
A great supplement to this film would be the Animatrix series which gives a great back story and history to how the humans and the machines started fighting each other in the first place. It also provides some other short stories which in many cases are better then the 2 sequels.