Old Heads, what was it like watching The Matrix for the first time in '99?

[Legal]

I remember seeing this in theaters. Pure, unadulterated piff.

I remember people being confused about the story, and being confused about how they were confused. It was all pretty straightforward to me. Especially since they had a lengthy scene in the middle of the movie that essentially recaps and explains the movie up to that point.

What I really liked is that the heroes were all flawed in some way. Trinity gives everyone that work, but when she dives into the stairwell, she has to convince herself that she can get up and run. Neo has all the potential in the world, but he doesn't believe. To think about it, he actually fails at the end, but is ultimately brought around by Trinity's faith in him. Morpheus is incredibly wise and powerful, but has the blindness to everything but the cause of a religious zealot. You can't even be all that mad about the traitor turning his back on everyone because you see how miserable real life is.

While the sequels are okay with me, their true flaws are that they made all the characters fairly one dimensional.

 

[jaguar paw]

It changed my scope on what this world could be. It kicked the curiosity up a notch in my head.

 

[wire28]

It was cool. Special effects didn't blow me away too much. I was more blown away by the special effects in Terminator 2, but that could be because i was like 7 years old when that came out.

Lie, brehs

 

[Geek Nasty]

It was cool. Special effects didn't blow me away too much. I was more blown away by the special effects in Terminator 2, but that could be because i was like 7 years old when that came out.

Yeah T2 was the iconic scifi hit that made people go

I really loved the Matrix concept but I didnt like the John Wooish overly stylized fight scenes. A lot of younger people thought it was the GOAT

funny though i liked the sequels more than most people

 

[Vandelay]

I wasn't pressed to see it. I was 15 at the time. My homie saw it and was blown away. Next thing I remember is the Columbine killers acted it out.

I think I saw it on VHS a year after it came out. Bulletime to this day is one of the coolest effects I have seen on film. It instantly became one of the best action movies I ever saw, but the story premise is something that I started to gain interest just prior to watching the movie; what is reality and the role robots and AI will play in the future of our world. So it became one of my favorite movies period.

I liked how they kinda dumbed the story down for popular consumption while making one of the most revolutionary action movies ever.

 

[feelosofer]

Marketing was ahead of it's time because they went out their way to not tell you what the movie was about. So I went with my wife to see the movie and it was mind blowing, not even so much the special effects but the whole concept. One of the first DVDs I copped too when it came out.

 

[re'up]

My friend and I saw it, first weekend, I don't even remember the trailers, or marketing, but we saw almost every movie in the theaters, esp. the kinds of action gunfight heavy movies, like The Matrix probably was marketed as.

I was only 13, so I am sure a lot of the themes, and visual style was lost on me, as I was more prone to plot based analysis back then, barely graduated from the age when we would see a movie like The Rock, and want to recreate the movie with our own toy guns and backyards as movie sets.

I think I was mostly unmoved, and we liked the final shootout, the ending scenes, all the action, but a lot was probably over my head, and probably doesn't even interest me much today. I never saw it again, that I can remember. My friend and I probably left the theater and grabbed Rubio's and went home.

 

[funkee]

Saw it in the theater by myself at 17 my senior year of high school (one of my friends stood me up). Was absolutely in awe of what I just watched. Told a bunch of my boys about it the next day at school and we all went to see the matinee that day (classes were done at 12:30 for most seniors), like 10-15 of us.

 

[Elle Driver]

I was mostly impressed by bullet time.

 

[the cool]

I went to the midnight showing on acid

 

[Ironman]

Saw it with my fam opening weekend and from jump when Trinity was kicking ass I was
They the lobby and bullet dodges scenes my theater went fukking nuts

 

[PoorAndDangerous]

I don't think I saw it in theaters. But it was one of the first DVD's me and my family got, watched it and my mind was just blown.

 

[hex]

Saw it in theaters a couple weeks after it came out with a couple friends. No offense to any of the younger posters....but if you were like, 7 or a tween or some shyt then obviously it blew your mind. You were a kid. I was 23 in 1999, and it was the craziest thing I'd seen in cinema, up to that point. Came back to work the next day and people were asking me "so what was it about?" and I just told them "you have to see it"....which was more or less what Morpheus told Neo. The marketing and intentional secrecy for that movie was A-1, because people actually did have to see it. Trying to explain it wouldn't really work.

Fred.

 

[Monoblock]

I’ve had two life changing experiences in a movie theater. The first was Terminator 2 and the second was the Matrix. I’ve never felt the amount of tension and suspense that I had when Neo was running in the hallways trying to get out of the matrix before or since.

Same here. I was a kid but I remember at the time my sister worked at the movies and I use to watch everything for free. T2 blew my fukkin mind as a kid. That liquid T1000 Terminator chasing John out of the mall had my anxiety high as hell I was legit scared for that nikka John.

 

[KalKal]

Old heads There are people in their 20s who still seen this movie when it came out

I'm old enough to remember the original Star Wars trilogy, and by the time I saw The Matrix it had already been in theaters for a while and totally overhyped, so I'll admit at the time my attitude was very cynical about it.

I came at it with an attitude like "what is this new cyberpunk/Johnny Mnemonic fad movie DARING to compete with the upcoming STAR WARS Episode I movie!"
So, of course, I totally nitpicked it to death when I first saw it.
Like, the marketing really played up the whole idea of "No one can tell you what The Matrix means...you have to see it yourself!".
But when I saw it, I was thinking "Its JUST a virtual world, not like we haven't seen that 1000 times."
Plus, I thought "They're ripping off the Freddy Krueger rule of dying in the dream kills you in real life. How original!!"
As for the special effects, I was thinking "We JUST saw those same Slow Motion effects in Blade, along with the similar 'Black trench coat' look. All they did was combine it with digital Jet Li-style wirework Kung Fu, and that stupid GAP commercial technology!"




But, since I was already in nitpicking mode, and since I at least know some basic physics, what REALLY pissed me off at the time was the whole idea of getting MORE energy out of a human than you put into it. I thought "That's idiotic!! They already hinted at a PERFECT explanation that the human brain was part of the Matrix CPU. Making them the power source is just stupid!"

And something about the "rich fashion model looking people fighting against THE MAN" really rubbed me the wrong way.
Plus, I has already seen "The Truman Show" which I thought was a better "artificial reality" movie, and "Fight Club" was just around the corner (and when I saw it, that was my favorite movie of all time).

Add all that up, and for a long time I was really biased against The Matrix.


So, I have a confession to make:
It took me YEARS to be able to admit that The Matrix is actually a better movie than "The Phantom Menace".
I didn't really start warming up to "The Matrix" until I saw "The Animatrix". That's when I realized that there was a lot of potential in that universe. (Which of course they wasted in the sequels).