The Keanu Reeves Project: The Matrix

THE MATRIX (1999) - Neo

1999 was arguably one of the greatest years in movie history.  I was a senior in high school in the spring and a freshman in college in the fall, so I have distinct memories of watching many of these movies in theaters or pirated versions in my freshman year dorm room.  I mean just look at what came out in 1999:

*Star Wars Episode 1 (Yes, it surely sucked but I can't even describe the anticipation of this coming out)
*The Sixth Sense - unquestionably M Night Shyamalan's best movie/only good movie, which I saw in theaters prior to the ending being ruined by everyone
*Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me - A gigantic hit sequel and potentially better than the original although roughly 90% of the jokes were recycled from the first one
*Toy Story 2 - I never saw this one but another gigantic sequel
*Tarzan - A Disney release that made nearly $200 Million
*The Blair Witch Project - A movie that could only exist in a burgeoning internet world that made $140 Million on an approximately $3 budget
*American Pie - A movie that reinvented the gross-out teen comedy, which I had the fortunate time to see on opening weekend in a packed theater full of us rowdy teens
*American Beauty - Are we still allowed to like Kevin Spacey movies?
*Bowfinger - A hilarious movie (at least at the time) that flew a bit under the radar
*Three Kings - A criminally underrated movie about the first Iraq war
*Varsity Blues - One of my favorite bad movies of all time
*Fight Club - Not as good as the book but still, it was Fight Club
*Dogma - Kevin Smith's second best work after Clerks
*Saving Private Ryan - Worth watching for just the first 20 minutes alone
*Arlington Road - I don't know if this holds up but I loved this movie in 1999
*Stir of Echoes - Under the radar horror movie that further helped me out for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
*Being John Malkovich - One of the weirdest movies I'd ever seen to this point and one of my favorites ever
*Go - Perfectly encapsulated 1999 in 90 minutes
*Rushmore - A perfect movie and one of Wes Anderson's best
*Election - Based on the book of the same name, a great dark comedy
*A Simple Plan - Won't say anything otherwise I'll spoil the whole movie
*Office Space - A movie I probably saw dozens of times, notably because one of our dormmates always had this on his TV in a seemingly never ending 24/7 loop
*Run Lola Run - One of the first foreign language films I can remember seeing and being blown away by


And that's not even all of them!  To put it in short, 1999 was an amazing year for movies, and so the release of "The Matrix" on March 31 is just a small part of an outstanding year.

There's no point in doing a recap of this movie.  If you've been reading this blog (all six of you), you've seen the movie.  And if amazingly you're reading this blog and HAVEN'T seen this movie, what the fuck are you doing?  Go watch "The Matrix."  Like right now.

I just watched it again for the 20th or 30th time and it's still totally fucking great.  So instead of recapping, I am just going to run through my memories of seeing this for the first time, some of my favorite parts, and then getting to my scattered thoughts.

My first viewing of the Matrix was on the Saturday night of its opening weekend.  The movie had been marketed ad nauseam and so there was no way that 17 year old me wasn't going to be going to see it as early as possible.

1999 was a time before you could reserve seats online and well before assigned seating in theaters.  So when my friend (let's just call him Bruce) showed up 45 minutes late to my other friend's house to meet up before heading out, I knew we were in trouble.

Bruce was a constant source of problems and frustration in my senior year in high school, mostly automobile related, as he nearly got me killed no less than a half dozen times due to his completely incompetent driving skills.  I'll never forget the time he cut off three or four drivers in traffic once because he never checked his mirrors.  When I implored him to check his blind spot before changing lanes, he told me, completely seriously, "This car doesn't have a blind spot," in a line that made me want to never have to get into a vehicle with him again.  What a fucking idiot.

So it was on this night that Bruce's lateness was probably going to fuck us.  By the time we got to the theater, the line for tickets seemed never-ending and we were at the back of it.  At this point, it was not impossible that we'd get to the front only to find out the movie was sold out.  Fortunately, we finally got our tickets, but were some of the last people to walk into the theater, forcing us to all split up and leaving me to watch "The Matrix" for the first time in the front row, all the way to one side.  It was an incredibly shitty experience to see this movie for the first time, my neck craning up and to the right trying to see what the hell was going on.  Fucking Bruce.

I still remember some of my initial thoughts from when I saw this movie for the first time.  For instance, within the first five minutes, I knew I was in for something like I'd never seen before:

360 spin kick

Or the "bullet-time" sequence which prior to then was something that you might have only seen in video games:

"Whoa"

Or the shoot-out in the lobby, which combined with the soundtrack, is still one of my favorite action sequences of any movie, even if it doesn't come close to comparison with anything from the "John Wick" trilogy.  But for 1999, this was brilliant.

"Guns.  Lots of guns."

"The Matrix" also has some particularly stand-out performances by Carrie Ann Moss (formerly an unknown) and Hugo Weaving.  But Keanu Reeves is perfectly cast as Neo, and if not for the four months (!!) of martial arts training that he and the other stars conducted prior to filming, there's a good chance "John Wick" wouldn't exist today.  That of course isn't even to mention that "The Matrix" is where Keanu first hooked up with his body double, Chad Stahelski, who he went on to collaborate with again when Stahelski was massively promoted to directing the "John Wick" franchise.

"The Matrix" is also beautifully shot, even though the use of filters (green for the matrix, blue for the real world, and yellow for the one scene that takes place in the dojo simulation) is still a little distracting for me to watch, maybe now more than ever after having to sit through the complete waste of time that was "Little Buddha."

I know Kung Fu!

I actually only realized in reading up some trivia on the movie that this was just the second movie directed by the Wachowski's.  It sort of blows my mind that the two of them were given a gigantic budget after having only directed "Bound," and written "Assassins."  And it's funny because whenever I hear about the Wachowski's, I always think about how prolific I feel like they are, even though their entire careers are almost completely "Matrix" related.  But hey, if you can make over a billion dollars on a movie franchise, I guess you've done pretty well for yourself even if you're also associated with "Jupiter Ascending."

Anyway, "The Matrix" is fucking awesome and still one of my favorite movies, Keanu and otherwise.  I continue to look at this as a rare science fiction movie that holds up, in the same vein that many people (myself included) feel about "Terminator 2" and "Blade Runner."  

Some further scattered thoughts:

*Hey, the "real world" of "The Matrix" is starting to look moderately more appealing than the real world of 2020.  Sure, we're all slaves to highly intelligent AI, but at least those of us that are set free get to eat slop and hang out with Carrie Ann Moss and Keanu Reeves.  

*I used to LOVE the soundtrack to this movie, featuring songs like "Dragula," by Rob Zombie, "Wake Up," by Rage Against the Machine, "Du Hast" by Rammstein and more.  I used to drive around with this on all the time.

*The actor that plays Mouse looks a lot like young Pete Davidson

I'd write a Pete Davidson quote, but I don't know any

*The very long list of actors who were either considered or offered the roles of Trinity, Neo, and Morpheus is bonkers and I am not going to bother to list them all here.  So I'll just say this, can you even fucking imagine what this movie would have looked like with THIS guy playing Neo?

No seriously, David Schwimmer as Neo??

For the record, the only place I read that David Schwimmer was in consideration is IMDB, so I am going to take that with a grain of salt because even this is too hard to believe. 

Box Office Information: $173 Million Domestic/$292 Million International for $465 Million Worldwide on a $65 million budget.  $307 Million domestic inflation adjusted.  Yeah, I'd say this was a success, and that's even before the two and soon to be three sequels.  "The Matrix" is also the 289th all time domestic movie and the 28th highest domestic box office for an R rated movie.  It also had an average theater run of over three months per theater, which is pretty impressive.

Rotten Tomatoes: 88% Critics/85% Audience.  I'm a little surprised this isn't over 90% on both accounts.  I suppose you could get a little nit-picky about some plot logic and I actually read one of the only negative critic reviews because I was curious.  That particular writer didn't like the movie because it "borrowed" from a lot of other films, thought it was too violent, and didn't love Keanu's casting, among other things.  She also suggested that the 1998 movie "Dark City," is a better movie.  It's funny because these two movies are often compared and I also watched "Dark City" for the first time in 20 years before rewatching "The Matrix."  While "Dark City" is a really good movie, I don't think it is nearly as great as "The Matrix."

IMDB: 8.7

My Movie Rating: 9.5/10.  I'm only docking it a half point for some of the plot logic that doesn't always make sense, but who really cares.  

Keanu Rating: 9/10.  He's really good in this, and you have to admire the dude (and the rest of the cast) to the work they put into making this.  

Up Next:  Well, it's one of two things depending on my mood.  Officially, the next movie is some obscure independent movie called "Me and Will," but because I'm pretty sure he's barely in it, I might skip it and head straight to "The Replacements."