To revisit this...
... in anticipation of the 4th movie, I rewatched 1-3 last week, and my opinions on 2 and 3 have softened a bit.
I saw the first movie on-release, when I was in my mid-teens and pretty much the perfect age for it. I liked everything in it. I was a kid who was a huge fan of cyberpunk fiction, did karate and loved anime, in particular Akira and Ghost in the Shell, so it was practically made for me. I got totally swept up in the hype. I didn't go all mallninja like some people, buying a black coat and getting cybergoth dreads, but it definitely affected my music taste at the time.
I think, consequently, I had built it up in my mind to be subjectively better than it objectively was; so when I saw the 2nd and 3rd a fair bit later, I felt they were pale imitiations of the original.
Watching them again, in 2021... I still think the first film is the best of the bunch, and that the sequels maybe expanded the lore a bit far in a very different direction to what I feel is suggested in movie 1. However, I don't think the movie holds up anywhere near as well as it does in my memory, and as a result I don't see it as a "holy text" anymore. In particular, I enjoyed Revolutions much more this time around (still not a fan of the sequence with the French aristocrat guy).
Though I would say, it's a shame the movies don't really clarify the "matrix in a bigger matrix" concept, i.e. the idea that the entire movie trilogy takes place in an even larger matrix, and that none of the characters are ever in the "real" world, to explain why Neo is able to control things in the real world - that he might be "the one" in a greater sense than his predecessors.
Originally posted by Asura
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I saw the first movie on-release, when I was in my mid-teens and pretty much the perfect age for it. I liked everything in it. I was a kid who was a huge fan of cyberpunk fiction, did karate and loved anime, in particular Akira and Ghost in the Shell, so it was practically made for me. I got totally swept up in the hype. I didn't go all mallninja like some people, buying a black coat and getting cybergoth dreads, but it definitely affected my music taste at the time.
I think, consequently, I had built it up in my mind to be subjectively better than it objectively was; so when I saw the 2nd and 3rd a fair bit later, I felt they were pale imitiations of the original.
Watching them again, in 2021... I still think the first film is the best of the bunch, and that the sequels maybe expanded the lore a bit far in a very different direction to what I feel is suggested in movie 1. However, I don't think the movie holds up anywhere near as well as it does in my memory, and as a result I don't see it as a "holy text" anymore. In particular, I enjoyed Revolutions much more this time around (still not a fan of the sequence with the French aristocrat guy).
Though I would say, it's a shame the movies don't really clarify the "matrix in a bigger matrix" concept, i.e. the idea that the entire movie trilogy takes place in an even larger matrix, and that none of the characters are ever in the "real" world, to explain why Neo is able to control things in the real world - that he might be "the one" in a greater sense than his predecessors.
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