The Matrix Turns 10 Years Old

 

Woah!

 

I can't believe it.  Tomorrow (March 31st, 2009) marks the Ten year anniversary of the first Matrix film.  Time really does fly as one gets older.  It really doesn't feel like it was that long ago.  A whole decade has passed since we were all first introduced to Neo and Morpheus and Trinity and Agent Smith.  It seems like it was just yesterday, doesn't it?

 

Ten years.  It feels so strange to think about.  Ten years ago, I was a young and idealistic 21 year old who was floundering around in college and didn't know what he wanted to major in.  I hadn't even started drinking yet.  And I was wrapped up at the time in the huge hype that was the forthcoming release of Star Wars Episode One, which was only two months away at that point.  They were simpler times then.  Happy times filled with good friends and playing games like Mario Kart and Goldeneye on the N64.

 

I didn't see The Matrix on the day it came out.  To be honest, I had barely noticed its release.  I hadn't really seen any trailers or advertisements for the film either.  I had no clue what it was about, but a few of my friends had gone to see it and swore to me up and down it was one of the best sci-fi films of all time.  They thankfully didn't spoil anything for me.  They just said repeatedly that I had to go see it, and I had to see it now.

 

I finally got around to seeing The Matrix about a month after it came out.  I'm still amazed that I had somehow gone to see the film so late and had managed not to know anything about what the film was about.  Today, that would be an impossible feat.  With the amount of time I spend on the internet, scouring for cool things to post here to Geek-tastic, there's no way a major sci-fi film like The Matrix would escape my notice.  But this was 1999, I barely used the internet for anything other than music downloading on Napster and talking with friends on AOL Instant Messenger.  I only had dial up, after all.  It was just too slow to go wandering around looking up cool movie stuffs.

 

I still have a vividly clear recollection of watching the film for the first time.  I remember liking how dark and industrial it looked in the first 30 minutes or so.  It looked sort of like a Nine Inch Nails video, all grays and pale greens and dark brooding shadows.  Then Neo took the red pill, and suddenly I'm watching a completely shaved and naked Keanu Reeves waking up in a goo bath pulling wires out of the back of his head.  It was a completely unexpected transition and it left me dumbfounded and thinking "What The Fuck!!!"

 

Then came the explanations.  The training programs with Morpheus.  The woman in the red dress, the explanation of the agents, the realizition of what the Matrix itself actually was.  What I thought had been the film's reality for the first 30 or so minutes had in fact all taken place inside a computer program, and that almost every single person on earth lived in this artificial fantasy world created by machines that ruled over us.  I was absolutely floored.  No film I have ever seen, before or since, has ever taken me by suprise as much as The Matrix did.  I think I was actually sitting in the theater with my jaw dropped, open mouthed in amazement as Morpheus told Neo, "What is the Matrix?  Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dreamworld, built to keep us under control.  In order to change a human being . . . into this."  At which point, of course, Morpheus holds up a Duracell battery.

 



 

I remember actually muttering under my breath, "Oh my god." as he held up the battery.  It's one of my all time favorite movie moments from my life.  I had just had my mind officially blown.  What I thought was going to just be another sci-fi action film had taken me places no other film ever had.  It explored the nature of reality as well as our own perceptions of that reality.  It had taken the age old sci-fi concept of man vs. machine and had turned it on its head.  The war of man vs. machine had already been fought long before the film had began.  Man had lost, and the worst part was the vast majority of the population didn't even know that the war had been fought in the first place.  The machines were in charge, and we were nothing more than an energy source to them. 

 

Of course, nowadays the Matrix films are sort of seen as cliched and out of date, but that's only because just about every single action or sci-fi or even comic book film that has come out since then has stolen from the first Matrix film in some way, shape or form.  Slow motion action scenes, bullet time, all of it was done first in The Matrix.  In the present state of things where the Watchmen's failure at the box office has everyone in Hollywood spelling doom for all future Rated R comic book or sci-films, I'd like to point out that The Matrix was Rated R, and its success is what really paved the way for a lot of the films that have come out in the last decade.  Even PG-13 films like The Dark Knight, I would argue, owe part of their existence to the success of The Matrix.  Do you honestly think that Warner Brothers would have green lit a really dark and brutal reboot of the Batman franchise if there hadn't been a slew of successful dark films like The Matrix before it.  Just look at that interrogation scene between Batman and the Joker in Dark Knight and tell me you don't see shades of The Matrix in the lighting of that scene.  The bare tile walls, the washed out hallogen lights. 

 

Yes, the sequels sucked.  Yes, the videogame based on the sequels sucked.  Yes, the film spawned a lot of knock offs and wannabes that all sucked.  I freely admit that the Matrix franchise became bloated and a bit too self important in my opinion, but that doesn't detract from the sheer achievement that was the first film.  Both technologically and socially, The Matrix changed things.  It changed how films are made.  It changed how people saw rated R blockbusters.  It drastically increased the kinds of heavy topics that are covered in big summer films.  And the references people make to the film happen a lot more often than you probably realize.  Even today, whenever anyone says the words Deja Vu, I still respond with, "Don't worry, that's just a glitch in the Matrix."

 

Tomorrow, in honor of the film's 10th birthday, I'm going to sit down and watch it on DVD.  I havne't actually seen the film in years.  It'll be good to see it again.  As overused as the effects became later, I still remember being awed by the fight scenes and their use of martial arts and people flying on wires.  The first time I saw Neo dodge bullets I nearly crapped my pants.  And then there was that phone call at the end.  The shot of Neo putting on his glasses, looking up . . . and then flying away.  Cut to a badass Rage Against The Machine song, and I was cheering and screaming and thinking I had just seen one of the greatest films of all time. 

 

I still think that. 

 

P.S.  I really hope Duracell payed a fortune for that product placement when Morpheus held up that battery.  I still associate their batteries with that scene.  Whenever I see one in stores I still think, "That's what the Matrix turns us all into."