It wasn’t in the original run of the US version at least, is all I can tell you. It might have been added sooner than I thought, but IMDB confirms it wasn’t in the original run (which I have a copy of).
I’m pretty sure there were two tints intentionally used in The Matrix.
The world inside the matrix was green-tinted, and the real world on the Nebuchadnezzar was blue-tinted.
Had the green look when I saw it in 1999. Do you have a cite for them adding later?
This article has comparison shots showing the picture changes made for the 2004 DVD release that brought it into better visual alignment with the sequels.
Looks to me like there was always a faint green tint, and they just cranked it up to eleven for the DVD re-release. Look at Carrie-Anne Moss in the first set of pics. In the first two, she looks faintly sea sick. In the third, she looks like a lizard person.
So it seems the tint may have existed originally, but was made more pronounced in the rereleases
Same here. I actually liked Reloaded. Taken on its own merits, it’s a first rate action flick, but I think it gets dragged down in a lot of people’s minds because of hard Revolutions sucked.
If Revolutions had delivered on some of the more interesting ideas brought up in Reloaded and hadn’t tried tying up everything in such a perfunctory manner, I believe Reloaded would be held in a lot higher esteem.
I loved the first Matrix movie, held and continue to hold it as one of my favorite movies and I rewatch it every few months.
I’m surprised at the negative reaction to The Matrix, and especially to the “Loved it at first, but hate it now” ones. I still love the film. If you didn’t know anything about it, the whole sequence after the “blue pill or red pill” is the sort of Universe Opening Up/Sense of Wonder thing that’s so rare in science fiction, comparable to the opening of the door in Dr. Morbius’ study into the Krel laboratory in Forbidden Planet or the change of scale at the end of each of the Lensman books – in each case you’re suddenly exposed to a world that is much bigger and stranger, with many more possibilities, a world that is very different from what you’ve supposed reality to be.
The “humans as batteries” explanation was absurd, of course, but I’ll forgive it, because it allows the rest of the film to proceed.
I wasn’t that fond of the sequels, but I must admit that I liked the intro to the second, the Burly Brawl (with the infinite Agent Smiths), despite its failings, and the entire section from the entry into the Merovingian’s club until the Truck Crash is one extremely long, wonderfully done action sequence that almost makes up for the overly long and boring Zion scenes.
All this talk of “jacking in” and “netrunning” have me pining for a Neuromancer movie (I just twitched sadly at the thought of Johnny Mnemonic… 
This. I don’t know why I knew nothing about the movie going in - usually I know way too much - but I saw The Matrix cold and was blown away when Neo woke up in reality. When I heard there was a sequel, I wrote a long speculation about how they’d discover that the “real world” was yet another Matrix, expanding on Smith’s speech that humans can’t be happy so there’s a series a grungier worlds for the malcontents; you can’t cut it in post-Apocalyptic Zion? Here’s an irradiated wasteland with giant insects - happy now? No, how about…? With Neo - being the one - working thru various fake realities until he really does find the real world, which is one giant machine-run megalopolis, and the machines/AIs aren’t bad or evil or even using us for power, but rather using the Matrix to evolve us away from the violent, selfish beings we were to the benevolent wise beings we created them to be.
Then I saw the actual sequels… :smack:
I saw it the same way. I don’t remember hearing about it at all prior to when it actually hit theatres, I think we actually ended up going to see it because we arrived late for the movie we’d planned to see.
Maybe the hype-vortex surrounding Episode One’s release a month later swamped all available hype-delivery avenues.
(also, glancing at wikipedia’s “1999 in film” page to recall what month the Matrix was released, 1999 was kind of a crazy good year for movies. I don’t think there’s been a year since that has had as many good, innovative films released.)
I think I’m a bit more in a “liked it a fair bit, now am somewhat indifferent to it” category. But I really think it is a bit less the film itself, than the effect of the sequels which I just never liked much at all. I’m kind of like those former Lost fans that can’t re-watch the series because of the ending. And oddly enough, I am not that kind of Lost fan :D.
I dunno overexposure + sequels have made it lose its allure for me. I still think it is an objectively good film and I own it on DVD, I just don’t really bother re-watching it on cable when I run across it channel-surfing.
This is very nearly my reaction. The movie was so good and innovative in so many ways, and then saddled with this utterly ridiculous “batteries” idea, that I was sure that at the end of the movie there would be a twist in which that whole thing was a lie and in fact the machines were keeping the humans in the matrix for SOME other, more interesting, more plausible reason. And then there was no such twist, so I was sure there would be one in the sequels. And then, well, you can guess the rest.
It’s rare that my enjoyment of a film could be so vastly improved by about 5 lines of changed dialog.
I saw it for the first time as a blurry VCD bootleg and a few times after that as a decent quality DVD but forgot about it for a decade until I had the chance recently to see it performed with a live symphony orchestra.
Everyone’s right about a lot of it not holding up and some of it being extremely stupid but, in the end, it doesn’t matter. After seeing it recently, I remember thinking that the movie it most reminds me of recently is Pacific Rim. What makes it such a great movie after all this time is that, for all it’s dark brooding philosophizing, it’s not afraid to just have fun and pull out majorly cool set pieces.
That scene in the lobby with the dozen soldiers? Awesome. The dojo fight? Awesome. “Dodge this”? Awesome.
The film managed to be a major cultural touchstone for a generation of people. Watching it with my friends in a massive orchestral hall filled with people inspired by that movie to pursue the path they are on today was a profound experience.
I was suprised at how bad it was given the hype. Sorry.
I gave it 4 out of 5 stars. I would have liked more of the living oblivious in an illusion vs. choosing reality theme and less of the “I’m the one” messiah. And Keanu was not the right person for the part. Too much stupid left over from Bill and Ted.
I enjoyed movie The Matrix, and I still enjoy it.
For having such a horribly stupid premise (possibly the worst science fiction concept ever), it was pretty damn entertaining.
Which premise do you mean?
If you’re referring to “humans as batteries” then I definitely agree. Most of the rest of the premise is reasonably solid, though.
Personally, I’ve mentally rewritten the script so that people are not used as batteries, they’re used as “non-logic units” in the computers. The computers can’t solve all of their problems via silicon and AI. So people in the Matrix perceive that they are just living their lives, but even the drone flipping burgers at McDonald’s is actually part of a distributed creative process, such as building a new prototype machine or programming a new sunset. (It’s like how the modern SETI at home program looks like a screen-saver, but is actually searching for ET.)
Or, my backup alternative explanation is that machines were forced to reconcile two conflict imperatives. One imperative said “Conquer the humans” and the other imperative said “Serve the humans.” So they conquered us and then put us in a Matrix environment so that we wouldn’t mind being conquered. Win-win, except for those pesky Neo types who figure it out.