I kind of agree here. As much as I bitch about movies that are happy to be stupid, I at least give The Matrix credit for ATTEMPTING to go beyond the normal “hunh hunh big thing go boom” level of action movies. Unfortunately, I think the effort didn’t quite work out, but they tried.
I thought The Matrix was hugely enjoyable. The only reason I haven’t bought the DVD yet is I’m waiting for a two-disc edition to come out, but I do have it on VHS.
1)Yes, the philosophical bits were ludicrous, but that’s par for the course for SF flicks. C’mon, the Force? The “Neo is the One” device was, IMHO, needlessly messianic.
2)The humans-as-batteries concept might be weak scientifically, but it gives the AIs a reason to keep humans around, otherwise there’s no movie. I did keep wondering through the movie why the AIs didn’t just pith the humans as they were bred, thereby obviating any need for a virtual world in the first place. You don’t need to be sentient to produce electricity.
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I wish the screenwriters had been more inventive. There was way too much gunplay and not enough use of the inherently plastic properties of an artificially-created world.
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The visuals were amazing. Didn’t you gasp when you saw the endless fields of artificial wombs and the machines harvesting babies? Weren’t you excited by the “bullet-time” sequences? Weren’t you shocked that Keanu Reeves can walk and talk at the same time?
Bring on the sequels!
I’m leery of the sequels. Keanu’s lack of acting ability kind of served in his favor in this one, since he was supposed to be clueless and overwhelmed most of the time. I can buy Keanu as clueless and overwhelmed. Harder to buy him, for two hours, as the messiah (though I have heard good things about his work in ‘Little Buddha’ which I haven’t seen.)
My favorite anti-Keanu quote was someone remarking about ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ - “Wait a minute, we’re supposed to believe Keanu Reeves has TOO MUCH information in his head?”
To punish the humans.
To study the humans.
- To discern what makes humans different from machines.
- To discover what made humans hostile toward the machines.
- To learn to become more like humans.
- To learn to become less like humans.
I can’t think of any others. Haven’t the machines heard of nuclear power?
A helicopter in flight is a stable mount? Wouldn’t a gun like that provide about as much thrust as the tail rotor?
JMonster…
Yes to the first question, nope to the second. A helicopter is a large, large, large, large object, and since the gun was firmly attached to it, it helped nullify the recoil. In other words… if Neo were holding the gun himself, it’d have been throwing him all over the place.
RealityChuck…
He can also have super-precise control over his movement. That was also the point. Didn’t you see the Kung-Fu scene? Or the “I can jump across buildings” scene? Ultra-fine-tuned control, better than can be achieved in the real world.
Because Fishburne wasn’t moving. Didn’t you see the tracing of gunfire heade up in one direction through the room, up the wall, around Morhpeus, and back down to peg the agents? You think that would have been easier if Morpheus had been jumping all over the place?
The movie’s not supposed to have depth. It’s a mindless action movie, like Die Hard or Predator. If you want depth, you see stuff like American Beauty or The Abyss (rimshot).
One of my favorite strengths of DVD is the ability to quickly skip past the long stretches of exposition–which were, oh yes, needlessly long. Needlessly long for myself, and my friends, at least–I’ve known people for whom it wasn’t long or simplistic enough, to whom it was just sooo confusing. (Which statement is followed by me biting my tongue.)
Fun little action flick, and it was one of the films that helped bring Hong Kong style action into the US, which has had secondary effects in getting other films released. As far as the philosophical points go, of all the “reality is an illusion!” films that came out close to each other, “Dark City” did it the best, in my opinion–including what fights would be like in a malleable reality. Just a pity it couldn’t have the Matrix’s budget.
And good lord, yes, the commentary track is one of the worst I’ve ever heard.
I would’ve enjoyed it, if the robots had been using the human brains for processing power. 
Humans are the dumbest thing ever to use for batteries…but we have a lot of theoretical operations per second, right?
As better-than-average random number generators? Maybe the machines have trouble with coming up with genuinely creative ideas, and use the humans as a supplement. “Got an engineering problem? No prob–we’ve got a brilliant, highly trained engineer living an artificial life in which his creative solutions are rewarded with cool toys and hot sex, not necessarily in that order. We’ll have an answer by tomorrow.”
Now THAT would have been neat.
Sadly, it would have confused even more people–the studio has to figure, everyone grasps what a battery does, we can even have Morpheus hold one up for emphasis. Harder to express the idea of massively parallel computing with clunky exposition, however.
I loved the Matrix. Seen it four times already and it’s sad I have to wait another 16 months for the sequel.
There was one problem I had with it. They violated the “show, don’t tell” rule waaaaay to many times in regards to Neo.
“Is he the one?”
“He is the one.”
“I know he’s the one.”
“I am the one.”
Enough already! Stop telling us he’s the one and show us why he is. We’ll figure the rest out on our own.
I just can’t help commenting on one of the stars of Matrix, Keanu Reeves. I just can’t take him seriously. To me, his best onscreen opposite would be a surf board or a car named Foxy. Maybe when the studio calls for someone to act opposite of Keanu, “opposite of Keanu” is just a code for “good”.
I know it sounds like I’m picking on him, but you can’t have a great film if it’s poorly acted or poorly cast. It’s like Meg Ryan playing a brain surgeon in City of Angels!!! C’mon! Make me believe! Make me belive!
RealityChuck wrote:
Hell, I felt that way the first time I saw Star Wars. (I was expecting to see planets exploding and laser swords and space battles, and instead I saw … a farm boy having dinner with his aunt and uncle. Bleah.)
BJaneDoe wrote:
Or, for that matter, like Meg Ryan playing an intellectual in I.Q..
Re: parallel computing -
Yeah, I can see why they didn’t bother. Awful lazy, though. (The computing thing is so much creepier, IMO.)
Re: Keanu -
Aww, don’t be dissing the “Bill and Ted” movies. He was fun in those, right?
A couple of people have mentioned the “humans as batteries” thing. I agree on the nuclear power issue, and also point out that it the humans were smart enough to go to the Earth’s core where it was “warm”, why not the machines?
I liked the movie. Nice to see special effects focussing on martial arts, than needless explosions (not that there weren’t plenty of those, too).
About the “nuclear power” issue… you guys DID notice when Morpheus said “Combined with a form of fusion”, yes?
Anyway…
If you guys want to talk about similar-but-without-the-FX movies, I suggest The Thirteenth Floor. It’s got a lot more “boring” parts, but in my opinion, it’s better. It has a lot more of the “show, don’t tell” that Ender mentioned.
Wow! I’m not the only one?? There actually are other people that didn’t like the Matrix? Thank god… here i thought i was alone all this time.
The downward spiral for me began when Neo first “woke up” and asked why his eyes hurt, to which Morpheus replied, “because you’ve never used them before.”
Uh… if he’d never used his eyes before, why would he have used ANY of his muscles? Wouldn’t his body have atrophied to the point where he couldn’t even stand up, let alone do all that running around?
Jeez, you guys are the most inattentive bunch I’ve ever seen. Morpheus says as such. “Your muscles have atrophied, we’re rebuilding them.” (Paraphrased) Then they inject a bunch of acupuncture-esque needles into him t begin the sequence.
“But he didn’t look atrophied!”
It’s a movie. Suspend your disbelief.
This only serves to make the notion more ridiculous. If they have fusion, why do they need HUMAN BATTERIES?!
Oh yeah, where else have we seen human batteries? Stephen King’s Tommyknockers. (aliens, not robots).
Enderw24: Yes, the “writers” certainly felt that they had to spoonfeed the entire plot to us, as if the movie’s audience was made up entirely of intellectual invalids.