The Matrix (1999)
Directed by Lana Wachowski
Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells the story of a computer hacker who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the vast and powerful computers who now rule the earth.
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40 films that influenced The Matrix
What critics say influenced The Matrix
This is simpleminded fun for roughly the first hour, until the movie becomes overwhelmed by its many sources—Blade Runner (rainy and trash-laden streets), Men in Black (men in dark suits with shades), Star Wars for mythology, Die Hard for skyscrapers, Alien for secondary characters and decor, Superman and True Lies for stunts, and Videodrome for paranoia.
The Wachowski brothers steal shamelessly from Brazil, Blade Runner, the Alien and Terminator movies, Total Recall, Men in Black , and Star Trek .
The first sequence of The Matrix takes place in the same rainy, black, besotted City of the Bleak Future that every film since Blade Runner has prophecied as our collective apocalyptic doom.
The movie's most obvious similarities are to "Blade Runner" for its dark, shadowy look; to "The Terminator" for its intellectual nucleus; and to "Dark City" for its overall feel.
That may be an easy way for the filmmakers to defend criticisms of lack of originality, but it also places The Matrix firmly within the tradition of Postmodern classics like Blade Runner, the film to which I believe The Matrix is destined to serve as a bookend.
Not only is Ghost in the Shell a close runner up to 1988’s Akira as one of the best Manga-based anime films (the Manga for both sagas began in the same publication: Young Magazine), but serves as an animated prototype for 1999’s The Matrix.
The philosophical concepts pondered here — the intersection of mankind and machinery, the troubling, anesthetizing spread of mass technology — are no longer as startling as they were in an era before “The Matrix,” to name the most significant beneficiary of “Ghost in the Shell’s” influence.
Ghost in the Shell doesn’t have that mainstream pedigree, but Mamoru Oshii’s once-groundbreaking cyberpunk visual aesthetic — which inspired The Matrix — gives Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders and his production team a blueprint to achieve some seriously eye-popping work.
While many aspects of Ghost in the Shell will be familiar to Americans from the likes of Steven Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence: A.I. and Minority Report , James Cameron’s Avatar and above all The Matrix , that’s a tribute to the massive cultural influence of Ghost in the Shell .
What many people forget when comparing The Matrix to its own sequels (or the Star Wars prequels , or any other maligned sci-fi epic ) is that this 1999 original has bad dialogue too.
Star Wars is an especially big influence on The Matrix.
Commentators have found influences from Plato and Descartes, Lewis Carroll and Star Wars .
This is simpleminded fun for roughly the first hour, until the movie becomes overwhelmed by its many sources--Blade Runner (rainy and trash-laden streets), Men in Black (men in dark suits with shades), Star Wars for mythology, Die Hard for skyscrapers, Alien for secondary characters and decor, Superman and True Lies for stunts, and Videodrome for paranoia.
The trilogy concept, of course, reminds us that every young sci-fi writer wants to start the next "Star Wars" saga.
If Hitchcock was the inspiration for "Bound," then a mixture of sci-fi novelist Philip Dick (who wrote the stories that later became "Total Recall" and "Blade Runner") and bullet happy action gurus Sam Peckinpah ("The Wild Bunch") and John Woo ("The Killer") clearly influenced this one.
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If Hitchcock was the inspiration for "Bound," then a mixture of sci-fi novelist Philip Dick (who wrote the stories that later became "Total Recall" and "Blade Runner") and bullet happy action gurus Sam Peckinpah ("The Wild Bunch") and John Woo ("The Killer") clearly influenced this one.
"The Matrix" recycles the premises of " Dark City " and " Strange Days ," turns up the heat and the volume, and borrows the gravity-defying choreography of Hong Kong action movies.
He is both Thomas Anderson, a skilled but occasionally flighty tech-head working in a corporate cubicle, and Neo, an ingenious hacker who black-markets software and is a hero to the same grungy cult of hangers-on who attended Juliette Lewis's concerts in Strange Days .
Apparently, as hints of their desperation to brainwash its audience about its so-called inventiveness, or lack thereof, the Wachowski Brothers have actually decided to bombard us with cross references to other past works of film and literature (namely "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz").
You've never seen this kind of stylized action-brought stateside by Hong Kong fight coordinator Yuen Wo Ping ("Drunken Master")--this side of the pond.
Director Yuen Woo-ping came to some prominence in Hollywood during later years with his fight choreography of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
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Influenced by -- or more accurately, borrowing -- elements from other sci-fi movies such as "Total Recall," "Dreamscape" and the "Terminator" films, this picture may occasionally flounder and certainly won't appeal to all audiences, but it's certainly nothing short of a wild time at the movies.
"Total Recall," among other science-fiction works, similarly explored the intersection of physical and mental landscapes, the "Terminator" movies previously envisioned a time-spanning man-versus-machine battleground, and Neo's training as a possibly predestined hero is reminiscent of a certain Jedi knight.
The Wachowski brothers steal shamelessly from Brazil, Blade Runner, the Alien and Terminator movies, Total Recall, Men in Black , and Star Trek .
Before “The Matrix” and “Vanilla Sky” (or “Abre Los Ojos”), before “Memento” and “Waking Life”, there was “Total Recall”.
Memento , Fight Club , Inception , and aye, yes, The Matrix ; films of that sort.
Using the pantheon of movie iconography from the past 100 years - from "High Noon" showdowns, to bad kung fu, to love's first kiss - the writing/directing team of the Wachowski brothers, Larry and Andy, achieves a fantastic, hodgepodge symmetry using hacker noir, comedy and mindless action.
But what a grand and glorious purpose it is, evoking "Alice in Wonderland," "Men in Black," "Blade Runner," the Holy Bible, Greek mythology, TV's old "Kung Fu" series, James Bond, "The Terminator," "High Noon," "Alien" and "Star Wars."