A Movie Like The Matrix Might Never Happen Again - On its 20th anniversary, the sci-fi classic is as dazzlingly original as ever — too much so for the risk-averse Hollywood of today
The film came out exactly 20 years ago, before 1999’s summer action-movie season had even begun; The Matrix’s big competitors at the theater were comedies such as 10 Things I Hate About You and Analyze This. As an R-rated sci-fi epic about hackers who know kung fu and do battle with machines in a postapocalyptic wasteland, The Matrix was difficult to describe. Yet it somehow became a word-of-mouth hit, the rare blockbuster that opens at No. 1 at the box office, falls to No. 2, and then climbs back to the top position (which it did in its fourth week). It’s the kind of dazzling, original film that inspires a generation of fans and imitators — and the kind of movie Hollywood wouldn’t make in today’s franchise-heavy media landscape.
Though bits and pieces of The Matrix have been copied over the years—the slow-motion action dubbed “bullet time,” the leather outfits — the film’s DNA is impossible to transpose. With its narrative of a world where the wool has been pulled over everyone’s eyes, it feels like a movie that’s very much about the disillusionment that comes at the end of a century. Neo (Keanu Reeves) is a hacker who learns that reality is a mere computer program designed to keep humans in line as machines siphon away their body heat for energy. The Matrix is a triumph of screenwriting in that it conveys all its convoluted plot machinations with ease, dramatizing long-winded explanations by setting them against electrifying imagery.
For me personally, the film has not really dated and its concepts are still as mind-blowing as back then. It still rocks my world to think we only know what we see and can fathom out, and if you consider IBM's Power of Tens movie, time, dimensions, and the vastness (to us) of space and galaxies, we become rather insignificant. Right at the other end of the scale one human is the equivalent of an entire galaxy to a lifeform the size of a sub-atomic entity. The Matrix makes me realise sometimes I must just get off the train and stand back on the platform and watch "life" whizzing by. Our lifetime's generations may merely be a few days in a child's dollhouse. Maybe Elon Musk had a point - how do we know we are not living in a simulation? Is déjà vu not maybe just a glitch in the machine?
Even if we don't live in a simulation many people live their lives like they are in a simulation, never breaking out of it to see it for what it is. Often a person's life is controlled/dictated by repressive social norms, politics, peer pressure, religion, stereotypes, etc. Many rituals, laws, customs, even religions, were invented to control the masses. So are we not maybe anyway just living our lives in The Matrix?
See www.theatlantic.com/entertainm…
#thematrix
from Beiträge von Danie van der Merwe https://ift.tt/2OGYaTB
via IFTTT
Though bits and pieces of The Matrix have been copied over the years—the slow-motion action dubbed “bullet time,” the leather outfits — the film’s DNA is impossible to transpose. With its narrative of a world where the wool has been pulled over everyone’s eyes, it feels like a movie that’s very much about the disillusionment that comes at the end of a century. Neo (Keanu Reeves) is a hacker who learns that reality is a mere computer program designed to keep humans in line as machines siphon away their body heat for energy. The Matrix is a triumph of screenwriting in that it conveys all its convoluted plot machinations with ease, dramatizing long-winded explanations by setting them against electrifying imagery.
For me personally, the film has not really dated and its concepts are still as mind-blowing as back then. It still rocks my world to think we only know what we see and can fathom out, and if you consider IBM's Power of Tens movie, time, dimensions, and the vastness (to us) of space and galaxies, we become rather insignificant. Right at the other end of the scale one human is the equivalent of an entire galaxy to a lifeform the size of a sub-atomic entity. The Matrix makes me realise sometimes I must just get off the train and stand back on the platform and watch "life" whizzing by. Our lifetime's generations may merely be a few days in a child's dollhouse. Maybe Elon Musk had a point - how do we know we are not living in a simulation? Is déjà vu not maybe just a glitch in the machine?
Even if we don't live in a simulation many people live their lives like they are in a simulation, never breaking out of it to see it for what it is. Often a person's life is controlled/dictated by repressive social norms, politics, peer pressure, religion, stereotypes, etc. Many rituals, laws, customs, even religions, were invented to control the masses. So are we not maybe anyway just living our lives in The Matrix?
See www.theatlantic.com/entertainm…
#thematrix
from Beiträge von Danie van der Merwe https://ift.tt/2OGYaTB
via IFTTT
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