One of the greatest and most memorable movies ever made celebrates its 10th anniversary today. That movie is The Matrix.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten full years since The Matrix opened on the big screen on March 31, 1999 to great reviews, a plethora of film awards and an incredibly strong fan base. The movie sits at #29 on IMDB’s top 250 movies as voted by users with over three-hundred thousand votes and it has 86% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
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The movie, written and directed by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, set new standards in special effects for action and gunplay, martial arts choreography, sound and music style all the way to cinematography and editing. On top of that, they took a geeky concept and made it insanely popular and cool amongst mainstream moviegoers. It was an action movie that was both intelligent and stylistic and it did pretty much everything right.
Winner of four Oscars including Best Visual Effects, the movie went on to earn two follow-up films. Unfortunately, this is where all the praise and glory starts to plunder.
The two sequels, titled The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were filmed back-to-back with theatrical openings in the May and November of 2003 but they weren’t nearly as good as the original.
The Matrix Reloaded received rather good reviews and managed to perform far better than the first in theaters and on DVD. Revolutions however, was not so fortunate. The third movie in the franchise was shot down by most critics and fans and it’s earnings dropped significantly to just over half as much as Reloaded took in at the box office suffering through negative word-of-mouth.
For me, Reloaded was good but not perfect. It had some of the best action sequences in the trilogy and one of the coolest car chase scenes ever. Combined with a stellar soundtrack and some cool new characters (before they lost their cool in the third flick), these aspects of the movie helped overcome some of the negatives and it still was plenty enjoyable.
Revolutions, I thoroughly disliked in pretty much every way. They took the green theme way too far, to the point where every single item, person and background was literally different shades of that one color. The fight scenes which should of been so meaningful and epic became boring and the insane special effects were all for naught. The forced philosophical ideas discussed throughout the movie failed to accomplish what the first film did naturally and it came off as cheesy and unnecessary dialogue. To top off the mess, the much-hyped battle of Zion came off as a poorly setup skirmish with extremely counter-intuitive designs of city, the robots, weapons and strategy – it looked flashy but I wanted it to end.
Enough dwelling on the negative – let’s look at something positive!
For you collectors out there and for those who may not own The Matrix on DVD, a brand new special Blu-Ray anniversary edition is now available (as of today). It includes a book, photos as well as a pile of new special features among other added goodies.
What’s in store for The Matrix franchise now? Unfortunately, there’s no movement currently underway for another Matrix project. There has been speculation over the years that a fourth movie could be made but the Wachowski Brothers have kept busy with other projects.
What memories do you have of The Matrix Trilogy and does another installment in the franchise interest you?
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36 Comments
Surely you jest SHirley?
@ 790 Only a man who stops a sword with the side of his hand..wax on wax off..
I love them all even part 3 ! They were great and raised the bar for all action films!!!!!!
a film with all you look for in any film, i love all 3 of the films well done. educational and mind blowing etc
There seems to be some confusion about why Neo can stop the machines outside of the Matrix. I watched all three films last night, and came up with a theory of my own. One of the characters (think it was Morpheus, not sure), says something about Neo separating his a part of his mind from his body, so at the end of the second film, he is in both the Matrix and the real world simultaneously (this is why he wakes up in Mobil Ave, or “Limbo”, in the third film, despite his body laying unconnected to the Matrix in the infirmary aboard the Hammer.) Perhaps he was able to somehow affect the sentinels through whatever mainframe the machines share?
‘Reloaded’ and ‘Revolutions’ are misunderstood masterpieces far ahead of their time.
Narratively, they need to be viewed as a single film. It’s a giant 4-hour movie, to which the first film serves as an “origin story”.
The theme of the trilogy is about unity and balance. The idea that all is ONE. That enlightenment doesn’t come through the exercise of divine force, but through submission to the idea that we are all part of the cosmic dance within which we all play our part.
That’s probably why people didn’t like ‘Revolutions’ as much. It’s message was much more mature than that of the first film alone.
Revolutions resolved the Matrix storyline in a pretty neat way.
Of course I agree with most posts here that the first Matrix film is the best one. The narrative style and the suspense building up is just great along with a surprising end-twist.
However, something irritated me.
You cannot use humans to generate physical energy – it doesn’t work because you will always at best get back what you’ve invested in growing them.
The third Matrix film now made clear that it is the soul of humans that the machines are after.
The bright yellow colour represents the soul of a being in the Matrix movies and the machines are unwilling to continue their existence without some kind of “soul-energy” which they acquire from humans. The Architect explains indirectly this in Reeloaded.
Well, there are other dominant colour codes (green and blue) and you will surely find out what they are standing for.
Alternatively, you can also read my review of Revolutions on imdb.com – its title is “Amazing movie in my opinion – hated and not understood by many” and you should find it on the second page of comments (standard sorting order of imdb.com).
In Revolutions I especially liked the role of the Oracle. She plays a risky and at first glance wierd game.
There is so much in Revolutions which I cannot explain in a blog post.
Have a read of my aforementioned review and if you like it you might also rate it
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