A Sci-Fi for the rest of us

Rating: Null/10 (25 May 1999)

Lots of people who watch lots of sci-fi will tell you that the Matrix didn't get into the plot enough. Too much eye candy. Or, the ever popular "too mainstream." I love the concepts regularly presented in SF, but really, I don't like Sci-Fi movies. However The first hour/half-hour of most SF flicks are really cool. Then they go off into crazy directions that I find rather boring. Too much dialog or development of the averted reality or something to that nature bore me. Really, after the first half hour I get the premise. It's time to move on. Dark City had a great first 45 minutes. But it lost me after that. Not because I couldn't follow, but just because the non-mainstream course it took wasn't in my tastes. Some like that now, but I do not. What the Matrix did do, much like Star Wars, was take a SF story, present it in a way that was aimed more at me as the average guy who likes SF but not hardcore. Which I really did appriciate: its rare (T2, The Matrix, Star Wars) that SF is produced, a genre I enjoy, that is aimed at my interest level in the subject. Forget staying true to SF ideals. Whether they toned it down to make money or not I'm glad this cool concept was finialy made for me.