One of the finest movies of our time

Rating: Null/10 (5 November 2003)

Spoilers here, yo!
Having hated Reloaded and knowing that Revolutions will be just as bad, I sat down yesterday and rewatched The Matrix. The original movie. The GOOD movie.
This time I noticed a lot of the smaller things that make it so beautiful, so amazing, so DIFFERENT from other movies. The plot was simple and complex, it was stylishly shot, and one can never say that they don't enjoy watching SWAT teams get blown away by badasses in trenchcoats.
The Oracle, for example. When Neo goes to the oracle, the entire audience knew for a fact that she'd say 'wayhey, you're the one!'. Only she didn't. Suddenly, the audience is caught off guard. They don't know what to think, and they don't know what in HELL will happen next. Neo's situation when Cypher betrays them and the police and agents ambush the building is very unique - Morpheus sacrifices himself because he thinks Neo is the one, but Neo knows he isn't, but he can't save him because the rest of the crew will endanger themselves trying to save him if he tries to go after Morpheus. Convoluted as hell! And a great situation! And then saving Morpheus, God (I maintain that the sequence from when Neo and Trinity walk into the lobby to the helicopter crash is the finest action sequence in the history of filmmaking, and that from Neo and Trinity walking into the lobby to the end of the movie is overall brilliantly done). Truly inspired, all around.

Also take Agent Smith. Agent Smith is the coolest movie villain ever, damn it. From the first time we see him we KNOW there's something sinister about him and the other two agents with him. He has such a methodical and well groomed look to him, the glasses, the suit, the huge freaking gun, and don't get me started on his voice. And then we see that he's slowly becoming unglued. An amazing character, through and through, not to mention that the whole 'suit with sunglasses and ear communicator' look is dead cool. In the later versions they've got him as some kind of rogue program or whatever, but I really don't think that works, mainly because I think he works so well as a product of the system, not something that ran away from it.

The Matrix isn't my FAVORITE movie (on a recent top 30 movies list I made, The Matrix was at #20) but it is, as the Teen Girl Squad would put it, 'hella tight'. The storyline is smooth and streamlined, and while it is easy enough to understand, it also has loads of levels (mainly just from what the Oracle told Neo and how that shaped how he saved Morpheus). You can watch the Matrix on all kinds of levels - the 'kickin' rad action' level, the 'kickin' rad story' level, the 'kickin' rad philosophy' level... The list goes on. So once the critics are done panning Revolutions, remember that the movies didn't always suck - they were started out with one of the finest most beautifully done accomplishments of all time.