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A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about films that haven't aged well. I was surprised to hear that he'd recently rewatched The Matrix, and felt that it had aged poorly. I remember that I wrote a "Fun Friday" article about that very subject about five years ago, and I thought it would be interesting to talk more about it.

Does this film hold up in 2023?

OK, having spent a little time with it, I have to agree that it seems dated today. Not because the story is bad or because it doesn't have great effects for its time. The problem is that The Matrix so redefined the action genre that every film since has copied it in some way. It seems far less amazing and thought-provoking than it did at the time.

I'm forced to agree that most of my positive feelings for the film are tied up in the way I felt when I first watched the film in the theatre. Sitting down and watching it, I'm transported back into the body of a much younger man, and a world which seemed far more open to me than the one we're in now. Watching any film from your youth tends to have that effect. It helps you put aside any of the problems you're having today. It also tends to make you forget that you may have had problems back then.

Let's be honest about the writing and action

By today's standards, the writing is stale, the acting wooden, and the set pieces are nothing terribly interesting. The film doesn't show us anything that we're not accustomed to seeing. It doesn't hold up the same way that a film like Taxi Driver does. That film is nothing like The Matrix but it deals with ideas of subjective reality and disconnection in its own way. Taxi Driver will probably live on for decades because it's so unique and thought-provoking. The Matrix in 2023 seems like a bunch of cliches delivered by way of uniniteresting performances.

Note: I do highly recommend you watch Taxi Driver, but it's an incredibly slow-paced movie by today's standards. Put the phone down, turn the lights off, and surrender to the intentionally plodding pace. You'll thank me.

Taxi Driver is very much a film of its time, and The Matrix is very much a film of its time as well. Maybe not enough time has passed for us to truly judge The Matrix that way, and maybe it will bounce back in the estimation of film critics. Or maybe it will just be another footnote in film history, a turning point that heralded a new cinematic form but isn't in itself timeless. I look at Bonnie and Clyde, one of the first films to show realistic violence on film, that way. It's not a terribly interesting film today, but it has significance because of when it came out.

The sequels really hurt the original film

There have been three live-action sequels to The Matrix, a theatrically-release animated film, plus comics, games, and tons of ancillary material. All that stuff really hurts the original film instead of helping it. It creates a deep mythology that people just don't want today. I think that at this point people are so tired of "cinematic universes" that they just aren't willing to invest time in another one.

It also doesn't help matters that the three sequels just aren't that good. The second and third are confusing and you don't know who or what to care about. The fourth, which released during the pandemic lockdown, was flat out unnecessary.

All this extra material really dilutes the impact of the original film, which was a self-contained exploration of millennial panic. It wasn't a deeply steeped mythology requiring time and dedication to understand.

All that said, I'm still a fan of the film but if you didn't love it in 1999, you're probably not. I'm curious about what you feel about it.

Below is my original article, in which I'm much more complimentary of The Matrix. See, I do change my mind from time to time.

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Last week I rewatched The Matrix, keenly aware that this film is now 19 years old. The once-revolutionary special effects aren't so special anymore, although they hold up surprisingly well. The plot is as silly as ever, with holes big enough to drive a subway train through. But overall it holds up well as an example of fairly well-crafted summer entertainment. It's become a touchstone for our culture in two decades, and I got to thinking about why.

We still have millennial paranoia

In 1999 when this film came out, there were a lot of people who sincerely worried that the world was about to end. It wasn't a biblical prediction that would do us in, but our own stupidity. Short-sighted computer coders who didn't give their programs the ability to work in any year starting with a "20" were the big fear back then. Here came The Matrix, a film where computers had taken control all due to longtime short-sightedness by humans. It seemed tailor made for that era.

Things aren't terribly different now. We have smarter artificial assistants now, ones who do a fairly good job of providing us the information they think we want. We often exist in virtual rooms where we hear the stories we want to hear. The Matrix has its dated beats, but the message still works.

Good filmmaking is timeless

The visuals of The Matrix aren't as novel as they once were, and they're a lot easier to achieve. Back in 1999, CGI was a very new thing and the movie's trademark effects were actually achieved with 35mm still cameras loaded with real actual film. That's how long ago this was. But despite the fact that we've all seen kung fu and CGI and time dilation a zillion times before, despite most of the cast's wooden acting, this is a well-crafted film. Today's special-effects rollercoaster rides are often shoddily produced by lowest-bidder CGI houses. This leads to a very generic look. The Matrix looks like nothing made today. The filmmakers were aware they were making something new. They spared no opportunity to make things look as good as their late-1990s technology would allow. That level of craftsmanship is rare in any era. I sadly would say it's even more rare in theatrical releases now.

The world is an even more unreal place now

I've lost count of the number of people who have said "I feel like I'm in The Matrix" in the last 18 months. The twenty first century sure hasn't worked out the way we all expected when we were kids. It's not a place of peace and flying cars and robot maids, I'll tell you that. The Matrix has become shorthand for an experience that does not quite measure up to our expectations of reality, an experience that we might choose deliberately to leave if we could. But that's really not the point of this slightly paranoid "Fun Friday…"

The Matrix is real (kinda.)

What would you call a computer server that holds all pertinent information about not only the film but all the other ancillary Matrix-oriented material? It might as well be the Matrix itself. It's The Matrix Wiki, a fan-operated resource for information. It's not a virtual-reality experience… yet… but it seems like the closest we have at this point to actually living in the movie. Sure you say, it's just a wiki. It's not going to hurt you. To which I say, that's just what they want you to think.

The post FUN FRIDAY REVISITED: Is this the Matrix? appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.

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