A Trib review wrote on many references to classic sci fi in The Matrix reloaded. I’ve read a fair amount of old sci fi and seen some too, but I must say that the allusions slipped right by me. 
Any one care to point out some sly references made for those “in the know”?
Well, that big orgiastic dancing scene in Zion reminded me of that part in ** Dune ** where the Fremen drink the transformed Water of Life and have an orgy.
No direct parallels, but that’s what came to mind when that scene came on.
Can we mention the ‘we took this directly from Ghost in the Shell’ thing? OK it is anime, but a classic nonetheless
Yes, please do mention it. What part did they claim to take directly from Ghost in the Shell?
What about Tron? The whole movie pretty much reminded me of the basic premise of Tron.
The whole “machines at war with humanity” thing was ripped off from the Terminator which was, in turn, ripped off from an old Harlan Ellison story.
The idea of jacking directly into a computer and interacting within a consensual virtual reality stems directly from William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer.
And I think The Matrix ripped off numerous conventions from the anime genre as a whole instead of just Ghost in the Shell in particular. Among these conventions are such things as post-apocalyptic worlds, super-human feats of strength (including flying), ultra-stylish posing, kung-fu galore, quasi-philosophical babbling, and plot-holes you could drive a bus through. Heck, The Matix IS live-action anime. And, considering the shape of those sentinels, I shudder to think of the possibilities for a little hentai porn.
There was an original thought in Martix Reloaded?
The machines at war with humanity theme goes back at least to Karl Capek’s play RUR, which gave us the word robot and was written in 1920. It probably was used earlier and was used umpty kazillion times more before Ellison’s version.
The idea of jacking directly into a computer goes back at least to Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17, which was written in 1966 and is the prototype for all later cyberpunk.
The idea of the auto accident goes back to 1894 and is credited to Henry Ford
Okay, I think this is kind of getting a little ridiculous. I think the OP means intentional references to specific works. Not “name every story you can think of that has a fight, a robot, a computer, a war, a ship, a human, or a spoon.”
Exactly. The review gave me the impression that were referential nods to past sci-fi efforts. Not that the plot line reminds one of Mule’s plans in The Foundation Trilogy and such. But I missed them if they are there. I figured that this board was the place to find bigger nerds than me who would’ve caught them all.
Ah well.
Not so! Ford ripped off Nicholas Cugnot’s original concept from 1769.
Hmph! Whipersnappers these days…
I knew about Cugnot. I just didn’t accept that as an automobile. There were many glider and balloon deaths before the first plane wreck as well.
And using his name wouldn’t have been as funny as Henry Ford’s.
The problem with spotting allusions to science fiction is that there are only so many major tropes in the field, and these have been used, expanded on, varied, refuted, and reimagined so many times that specifics are almost impossible to come by.
It’s also true that hardly anyone who is not a specialist in the field will recognize how old these tropes are or who is credited with originating them, as my reply to Hodge indicated. Gibson’s contribution to cyberpunk (a name he did not invent) was an attitude that combined the future with noir and hardboiled imagery. He created very little. Even the idea of the cyberworld as a consensual illusion is credited to Vernor Vinge, whose True Names appeared several years before Neuromancer. Katherine MacLean’s classic story “The Missing Man” is cyberpunk in all but name and it came out in 1971. And that’s still several years after Delany.
Another problem with the Matrix is that it appears to have been put together by fifteen art directors working apart from one another. Zion has giant gears powering something or other that reminded me of 1927’s Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 Modern Times. Yet there was also that startling shot of a clean white room with computer techs moving images around in mid-air that seemed to be taken directly out of Minority Report.
And that’s another problem. As far as I can tell, the Wachowski brothers’ main inspirations were other movies, not classic print sf. I don’t know what the Trib review was referring to, but print and movie sf are two entirely distinct bodies of work, with far less overlap than you might imagine.
But when there is an overlap, how is one supposed to know what is being alluded to?
The only way out of this would be to provide a link to an interview with the Wachowski’s that explained their thinking. But they don’t do interviews, do they?
Ah, well. We all do what we are meant to do. Or some things change, and some don’t. Or if you boil a trout in haddock, then the spindle doesn’t give milk.
The Matrix Reloaded made some subtle references to an earlier work, entitled “The Matrix”. They both had a fight, a robot, a computer, a war, a ship, a human, and a spoon. Actual examples is left as an exercise for the reader.