Welcome back to the second issue of the newly-minted series I lovingly call “Dad’s Daily DVD!” Last issue, we watched the outstanding romantic comedy How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, which earned an outstanding score of 9/10. This issue, we’re taking a turn from romantic comedy to sci-fi cyberpunk with The Matrix; a classic that I’ve been itching to watch ever since I was tall enough to read the spines of my dad’s DVD collection. Though I doubt anyone needs an introduction to the world of The Matrix, I’ll provide one anyway.
According to Google, this film follows a hacker named Thomas Anderson, under the alias “Neo,” who finds out that humanity is living within a simulated reality enforced by intelligent computers. Involving gravity-defying stunts and red vs. blue pills, The Matrix follows Neo’s journey of rebellion against the oppressive sentient computers that keep humanity sedated.
Though this movie doesn’t seem like my style of entertainment, this series’s purpose is to explore different genres and ultimately evaluate my dad’s taste in film. Without further ado, here is my honest review of The Matrix.
★★★★★★★☆☆☆ — 7/10, Red Pill or Blue Pill? For me, Blue.
Maybe it was just me, but I found that I was simultaneously on the edge of my seat and unable to take the movie seriously. On one hand, the big reveal about what the “Matrix” really was absolutely blew my mind, but on the other, the sheer amount of clichés in this movie had me predicting what was going to happen at every turn. Considering the massive cultural impact that this movie made, perhaps The Matrix is one of the original movies that made these tropes “cliché.” Looking beyond that first impression, the sheer visual and practical effects completely flabbergasted me. Though the intensely dramatic one liners did keep me wildly entertained for a long time, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself a little bit whenever something extremely dramatic happened. I’m a big fan of crazy things happening in movies, but when the movies don’t have some sense of self-awareness, it always comes off a bit funny to me.
If you’d like to know more, read below. Warning– there are spoilers!
*SPOILERS BELOW!*
Beyond the serious-drama-turned-unintentional-comedy, I don’t think I’m a huge fan of brooding cyberpunk. At least, dramatic movies with an embryonic romantic side plot. With the one exception that is The Hunger Games, I find that survival does not go hand in hand with romance. At the end of the movie, when Trinity (one of the agents of Morpheus that escaped the Matrix) kisses Neo, I felt I had been slapped across the face. Where was the character development? Where was there any hinting at a romantic relationship between them? Where was the chemistry? Prior to the kiss, they must have had one or two conversations– both of which remained strictly business-like. But out of nowhere, Trinity confessed her undying love for Neo and they kissed with a backdrop of exploding machinery.
Overall, I feel the ending could have been much stronger had the writers hinted at the possibility of a future romance between them, rather than injecting a random romantic subplot into a story that very much did not involve it.
Otherwise, I absolutely loved the practical effects, no matter how un-serious they were. Specifically, I loved the shot of Neo emerging from his goo pod and getting shot through the “dead chute” in the real world. Morpheus’s hovercraft reminded me of the Millenium Falcon, with the incredibly intricate set of a cyberpunk spaceship. In today’s world full of CGI, it was refreshing to see a practical set of a fantasy world. Last but not least of the FX highlights; the prosthetics. With the breathtaking reveal that today’s human world exists as nothing more than a simulation, the subsequent discovery of outlets embedded into each human’s skin was disturbing, to say the least. I remember that I audibly gasped when metal plugs were inserted into the back of each person’s skull. The metal outlets puckered each person’s skin so perfectly, it looked impossibly real. The synthetic skin stretched around each artificial orifice– molded flawlessly to the actor’s complexion. I hope that practical FX returns to the movie-making arena soon– there’s nothing more magical than knowing that the actors see the same things the audience does.
Finally, I’d like to provide readers with two customary “Dad’s Daily DVD” lists– cliches and moments that I laughed at (and probably wasn’t supposed to), and miscellaneous favorite moments.
THINGS I JUST COULDN’T TAKE SERIOUSLY
- The FX of Trinity running all over the walls. For 1999, these were magical FX, but 25 years later, I could almost see the harnesses around her waist.
- The unrelenting pace. I felt like I got whiplash in the first 15 minutes of the film.
- Morpheus’s line, “This is the world that has been pulled over our eyes to blind us from the truth,” because it sounds like something a cynic would spout on Twitter ( I refuse to call it “X”).
- The sticky mirror that bounced a little bit when Neo poked it.
- Naked and shaved humans in GooTM, plugged into their Egg Chargers.
- The swoosh and kabow sound effects every time somebody moved really fast or hit something.
- Neo’s immediate professionalism in combat training, which somebody had downloaded onto his synapses just a couple of minutes before.
- The fact that no one ever explained why they all wore sunglasses all the time.
- Neo falling off a building and then bouncing off the concrete.
- Neo and Trinity inexplicably wearing full leather outfits when they went back into the Matrix.
- A 5 minute montage of Trinity and Neo slaughtering a bunch of security guards with an excessive amount of guns.
- Blindly shooting an office building with a machine gun for a full 30 seconds without any regard for the captive inside the building that might catch a stray.
- This line.
- TRINITY: “What is he doing?”
- MORPHEUS: “He’s beginning to believe…”
- Neo’s line when he’s losing a fight against an agent.
- AGENT: “Say goodbye, Thomas Anderson.”
- THOMAS ANDERSON: “My. Name. Is. Neo!!!”
- Neo backflipping out of the way of a train.
- Neo shaking his whole body once and dirt flies off of him like he’s a dog.
- The Sleeping Beauty trope: a true love’s kiss can revive someone beyond saving.
- A really dramatic shot of Neo’s foot in the air when he did a really extra karate kick.
- The ending shot of Neo flying straight into the camera.
THINGS I UNIRONICALLY LOVED
- 35-year-old Keanu Reeves.
- The guy in the beginning saying “You gotta unplug, dude” being foreshadowing to “unplugging” from the Matrix.
- The fact that each AI Agent was just the same actor in sunglasses, over and over again.
- The constant green tint in uncomfortable places, like the interrogation room or the boss’s office.
- Alice In Wonderland themes throughout the movie.
- “The One” being an anagram for “Neo.”
- When the bug crawled into his belly button. I was thinking that the bug has got to be an allegory for sexual abuse. Maybe Mr. Hadley’s teachings are getting into my system too much.
- I’m not a fan of body horror–I get nauseous when I watch it–but these FX were fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
- The main antagonist being sentient AI– given the AI situation today.
- The concept of human beings being used as batteries, even though there’s a couple of plot holes. (How does birth work? Does a pair of humans in the Matrix just queue up a baby in the human-growing fields? And it’s like a Bluetooth Baby with free delivery?)
- The explanation of “deja vu” in Matrix terms
- This movie made me wonder whether I would prefer truth and misery or ignorance and bliss. I.e. red pill vs. blue pill
- AI is completely right, the human species is literally a parasite, or a virus.
- Morpheus’ actor did an amazing job looking like his mind was breaking.
- The shot of Neo dodging the bullets– that had such a huge cultural impact
Though this movie was not my favorite, it is a classic, and I think it’s worth a watch.