> Just recently watched the Matrix (it came out two weeks ago in the UK).
> After hearing all the noise about it on this list I was expecting to get a
> lot out of this film. I didn't. As a film, it was awful. It's concept of
> style amounts to wearing sunglasses in the dark. Although many of the
> special effects scenes were excellent (when Neo emerges from the pod, the
> effective use of still motion to show that Neo has been shot) the directing
> was less than seamless, sometimes making the film difficult to watch. The
> first half-hour was almost painful as we went through the usual cool-hacker
> crazy-friends routine. At one point, when Morpheous began waxing
> philosophical, I lost consciousness. And then for some inexplicable reason
> the submarine/spaceship/whatever had to be attacked by squids. The whole
> idea of a world where you can make things up as you go along is probably one
> that should be avoided in future.
>
> If there were no good scenes and no good ideas in this film it wouldn't
> have been so bad. But there were at least two good scenes and one good idea,
> and for that I hate it. The next film to make good use of still motion and
> tackle more transhuman problems is going to make less of an impact because
> of this.
Hear, hear! Sure, the excellent special effects and graphic violence made the movie *bearable*, but no more than that. The plot is silly beyond belief (by anyone's standards), and hardly uses the virtually unlimited potential of the uploaded reality concept. My gawd, it could have been *so much more*, but instead it may have effectively ruined the entire genre...