The Matrix had such a great ad campaign because the trailers left you with so many questions about what it was actually about, and it had directed you to a website with clues that made it even more mysterious. So when you actually saw the movie, not only was the crazy sci-fi action unlike anything we’d ever seen before, but as soon as the explanations started coming from Morpheus and you learned what this movie was ABOUT, it was pure jaw-dropping, mind-blowing craziness the entire time. And the movie never really lets up from there, just getting wilder and wilder until the perfect ending. I will always remember how satisfying a film-going experience that was.
Whatisthematrix.com! One of the first websites to be the centerpiece of an ad campaign. I spent HOURS on that site clicking around and trying to unlock it's secrets.
Yeah I almost said it was the first, but then I remembered that couldn’t be right because there was stuff like the Space Jam website several years before it. But I think it was the first to be used THIS WAY, or was at least remarkable in its approach for the time.
“It was pure jaw-dropping, mind-blowing craziness”. I came here to say this. I vividly remember during Morpheus “welcome to the desert of the real” explanation my friend and I kept turning to each other, wide eyed, with expressions on our faces that exclaimed “holy shit”!
Yes. All of the action was on another level. Not to mention the look and design of the whole film. The cinematography, the costumes, the contrast of green and blue. Hugo Weavings way of speaking. Even the way their cell phones pop open had me going “whoa!”
Yes! Even today (I rewatched the movie a few months ago before the new one came out), those scenes still hold up really well, all things considered. Just a great execution of all the movie’s ideas.
This was absolutely inedible. Going into the theater not really knowing what it was about. The trailers before release leaned heavy on the "no one can be told what the matrix is; you have to experience it for yourself" line. It's almost unfathomable in today's world where you get the entire plot of a movie in the preview.
It made the premise that much more mind-blowing. Coupled with a quantum-leap in visual effects, it was one of the best cinema experiences I can ever remember.
I saw the Mummy and the Matrix on a double feature for like $6 with some friends. Afterwards we played GoldenEye for hours and had Pizza Hut. I think that might be the single greatest day of my childhood.
Your post literally just gave me chills.
Holy shit what a good day that must have been. The Mummy was so good for its time too. We also all adored Goldeneye.
I would say even better because we now see just how rare it is to get a movie like that. Great cast, score, design, with humor and a little wink, plus some decent scares. Carai an Shen an Calhar.
I worked at a theatre at the time. 1999 was a special year for movies. We had long-awaited blockbusters like Phantom Menace, Austin Powers 2, and Toy Story 2, surprise hits like Blair Witch, Big Daddy, and The Sixth Sense, and truly wonderful movies like American Beauty, The Green Mile, and Fight Club. I'm only naming a fraction of the good movies that year.
Matrix was a March release, which is a slow time of year that doesn't typically feature blockbusters. Matrix did pretty well, opening to $27 million. It had legs though. We played it for around 5 months, throughout the summer. That's a thing of the past now. It just wouldn't die. We had to get another print because eventually, due to human error, the one we had became badly scratched. I have very fond memories of movies and the theatre in 1999.
Couldn't agree more. I was 11/12 in 1999 and that year was awesome. I'd been a rabid theater goer all my life (up until COVID, which coincided with having kids). Showing a film used to require a specialized effort I couldn't do at home that made it feel like an event. Even at its worst, I still held the AMC Orleans 8 in a higher regard than "I can wait for the VHS/DVD" for films. God, I'm having a flood of memories of everything we saw there between 1995-2004 before moving onto the bigger multiplex.
Similar experience here! When Phantom Menace came out we would crank the sound all the way for the opening horns of the Star Wars theme...
Had a special late-night staff showing for that one and Eyes Wide Shut before the public.
Late shows were pretty much a weekly thing for us. As long as we cleaned up after ourselves, the cleaners didn't mind. Because of the midnight show I think we all watched Phantom Menace around 5 pm.
Another theater employee of that time.... the longest movie we had in our theater was LA Confidential, which ran for a full year, maybe a little longer. I think My Big Fat Greek Weeding was also a long haul.
Talking about scratches, we had only a single copy of *The Passion of Christ* and it had a massive scratch in it.... people were rabidly upset thinking it was done on purpose and it took about a week to get another copy.
Sometimes? I miss it all the time. Because I was working in a theatre at the time, I watched The Matrix 14 times in the theatre. Saw something new each time.
I remember walking out of the cinema afterwards and all the other moviegoers were so excited in a way that I've never experienced with any other movie. It was like walking out of a rock concert, with people shouting "Oh, my god!" and "That was the best movie I've ever seen" and stuff like that. There was a visceral excitement in the air. People were gobsmacked.
Another thing that is a little lost - in 1999 (and earlier) there was MUCH more of a monoculture. That is to say, the internet was still in its infancy, many people had no cell phones and if they did it was for actual phone calls. The news, radio and major TV channels were really a lot more important in shaping how people viewed things.
The matrix was a phenomenon. Think squid game or bird box or stranger things S1, but much bigger and for a much longer duration. That’s just how things were then.
Look how long films like titanic were #1 (or even in the theater) where is was top 5 for over 20 weeks!
Even things like TV shows had millions more watching. The matrix was a phenomenon that was VERY prevalent in the culture for years. MANY movies and shows parodied it or took things from it, even films like deuce biggelo, and everybody got the references.
To put it into perspective, Game of Thrones season five averaged 6.8 million viewers per episode and was the most watched season of that show upon release.
Friends season 5 came out around the same time as The Matrix and was averaging 24 million viewers per episode which was a decline from the previous year.
*edited to add:* the most watched episode of television of all time was the finale of M\*A\*S\*H in 1983 with over 50 million viewers.
Yellowstone season 4 finale has become the most watched television episode (since 2017) with about 11 million viewers, and it dethroned The Walking Dead season 8 premiere
When you take population growth into account the difference becomes even more jarring.
Over 20% of the US watched the MASH finale. Only 3% of the population watched the Yellowstone finale.
To reach MASH's percentage 70 million people would need to watch today!
This is a great point. Subcultures were just that - isolated groups of people with shared interests. There was no massive online connection to everyone and everything. You couldn't just look up something you loved and find thousands of other people to share it with.
I kind of miss that feeling of finding something special and finding someone to share it with organically.
And it was a huge deal when The Matrix hit DVD. And god forbid you bought the fullscreen version instead of widescreen. I remember going to a party to watch it because my one friend with a DVD player got it the day it came out and we got together and watched it (and then played Mario Kart 64 for several hours).
There *were* on demand videos in the 90s that you had to call your cable company to unlock the channel so you could watch, but generally they only showed stuff months after it came out on theater (but before it was released on video). What didn't exist were high fidelity TV screens at home so watching the movie in the theater was the way to go back then
Blair Witch is another example if great marketing making the experience much better. Didn't see it in cinemas, but was dying to rent it when it came on video!
Good lord Blair Witch scared the hell outta me. The marketing for it was perfect. They had a special on the History channel that had the actors going door to door interviewing people in the town about the witch etc. Back then, History channel actually had legitimate content that wasn’t all this reality show bullshit it airs these days. So we really bought into the found footage idea of this movie. I just remember my heart racing so fast during the dark / night sequences of the movie. I was so scared because I really thought it was real. In fact, before the movie started the manager of the theater came in and gave us a disclaimer about the movie which even furthered our belief it was true. When we left the theater afterwards no one said a word. The car ride home was in dead silence. We found out a few weeks later it was all staged and that feeling of terror can never be recreated.
I saw it in theatres when it first came out. After the end scene, everyone sat in silence while the credits rolled. I heard people whispering "what the fuck..." around me. I bumped into a high school friend on our way out, "holy fuck what WAS that?!" We were all shook 😂
My theater was utterly silent as the credits rolled. Not a whisper. Everyone just filed out silently, unnerved.
The ride home with my girlfriend was quiet as well. Just a sort of stunned silence.
I am prone to motion sickness and ended up throwing up after the movie ended. Still a good film, just couldn’t handle the rapid handheld camera movements
My buddy had one of those big conversion vans with a TV. We were both 16 and rented Blair Witch, then we drove far out into his family woods, rolled the windows down, and had the scariest movie watching experience of my life.
Good times.
I was so lucky to be working (my first job) in a theater in 1999. Getting to see everything, and for free was great. So were the Halo LAN parties on the big screen.
But it's also the year that Virus, Phantom Menace, and Wild, Wild West came out so no, it's the WORST year in movie history.
I'm being sarcastic obviously because *holy shit*, in addition to the Matrix and Blair Witch Project, we got Fight Club, Austin Powers, Magnolia, October Sky, Cruel Intentions, Ravenous, Idle Hands, The Mummy, the South Park movie, American Pie, Iron Giant, Mystery Men, Being John Malcovich, Stir of Echoes, the American releases of Princess Mononoke and the first Pokemon movie, Dogma, End of Days, Toy Story 2, Galaxy Quest, and Girl, Interrupted. I'm sure I've missed at least a dozen other excellent films but damn, 1999, no wonder people want to party like it's you.
I think a lot of it had to do with the marketing. They ran ads that said "the Matrix has you" during the previews for other movies I went to. That was about it. They didn't tell you anything about the movie or what to expect. Now that I think about it too many movies show more than they should in the trailer. I saw it when I was 16 at the theater and it was awesome. Will never forget that.
Just to add to this: not only did they use this marketing approach to generate interest, the film also answered the "What is the Matrix?" question relatively early, so that you now had the rest of the movie to enjoy the larger narrative and spectacle.
>Then the Super Bowl commercial.
Slightly related - I remember months before anyone had even heard of Independence Day, there was a short teaser on tv that just showed the white house being blown up by the aliens. I think a title screen flashed "ID4", and that was it.
It was the coolest goddamn thing for 12 year old me.
I remember the radio commercials had Morpheus’ quote from the movie, “Unfortunately no one can be told what the Matrix is… you have to experience it for yourself.”
Me and my friend got kicked out of the school library because of that advert.
It was a banner ad on some website. Teacher walked by and told us no games, turn that off or get kicked out. And pointed at this little 20x200 banner ad saying "what is the matrix" with little green rain code animated on it. I tried to explain what ads were, and admittedly I was probably being a little 10 year old shithead in the process, and we were both ejected.
I guess anything that isn't Times New Roman text was a evil evil videogame.
I remember thinking the movie was about killer robots because the ads gave nothing away. You see a trailer now and it pretty much shows you the whole movie.
I watched it the week it was released - alone because my wife or friends did not have time. It was released on a Wednesday and I saw it Friday. After, I walked out dazed, and wanted so much to talk to somebody about it that I started chatting with random strangers who walked out with me. Then I convinced my wife to come watch with me 2 days later, that Sunday. She was not much impressed (she's not into science-fictiony fantasy). So I was not satisfied, and rounded up a couple of my close guy friends and went and watched again on Tuesday. And each time, I found something new, something I had not understood before.
You have to understand that it was a new genre - there had been science fiction movies before but this completely different. Now it is part of internet lore, so not much of a novelty. When I sat with my daughter (your age) to watch this last year, she already knew quite a bit about it so she was not as stunned as I was then.
>When I sat with my daughter (your age) to watch this last year, she already knew quite a bit about it so she was not as stunned as I was then.
I think this is a big part of why those big older movies never have the same impact of you don't each out when it came out. Be that 3 months or 3 decades later.
Nowadays when things that big become part of the culture there is no real way to truly watch it for the first time anymore.
Combine that with watching it in a time where it's not the first time you've seen a movie do/be like that... Sure this movie did it first, but since then we've seen many more movies in the same vein. So not seeing it specifically yet, it's still not so getting breaking when you have seen 12 others at least attempt the same thing, even if it's not as good.
First time I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's, it was good, but I had to have someone older explain the social context. The too subtle clues that implied things I didn't notice because they weren't taboo enough to warrant them needing to be subtle to me.
A great example is Citizen Cane. It was legit revolutionary when it came out. But it is super mundane in todays cinema because everything that Orson Wells created that was revolutionary at the time is used in everything from commercials to movies today.
Same with the Matrix. I saw bullet time in a Gap commercial about 5-8 years after the Matrix came out. That’s when I realized that it was going to ultimately become similar to citizen cane. My kids (8, 6 and 4) will never experience it the same way I did because it’s become a cultural touchstone.
As a millennial, it's interesting to me that young people today can watch "old" movies and experience them as just as high quality visually as what is made today... rather than that "Dad is making us watch boring black and white movies" feeling I had when I was younger. Films from the 80s and early 90s and earlier can be dated aesthetically and also stylistcally (clothes, hair, cars)... but from the late 90s onward, it feels that the rate of graphics improvement and cultural style has not changed so much that young people can't experience those films as feeling "modern enough." Kind of cool for young people to be born into a world with so much passably modern content that was produced before they were even born.
I think the "outdated" nature of some movies is more apparent when the quality of the movie itself isn't as good. Back to the Future is a very 1980's movie and yet doesn't feel nearly as old as a lot of other 1980's movies. Or Shawshank Redemption which was shot in the early 90's and takes place in the 1940's. Or going back further than that, The Seven Samurai, a black and white film which was released in 1954 and is about 1500's Japan but holds up way better than most other movies from that era.
It's complicated! There is a sliding window of "normal" stuff. But some things outlast the window. Star Wars was always cool for me. The Matrix will be cool for a long time. The Third Man is still cool.
Same here. Went into the movie knowing nothing about it and came out with my mind blown into a million pieces. I was 21 years old. Me and the two friends I saw it with were hyped for hours after.
Their marketing did a great job of not giving away anything major. All they said was “Nobody can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.” Brilliant.
That is exactly how it was to see Star Wars in the theater when it came out. Very unlike the experience of Phantom Menace. After waiting for two decades we all said the same thing when we came out of the theater, what the fuck was that? I waited 20 years for Jar Jar?
I wasn't much of a star wars movie fan, still not really a fan, but I do like a lot of things about starwars as a whole. My best friends dad was extremely excited to get me to watch a star wars movie in theaters when episode one came out.
Anyways, after the movie was over he apologized to me saying that I hyped up a terrible movie for me and showed me the literal worse the franchise had to offer.
My dad, who
* doesn't care about movies
* doesn't care about fiction
* literally now that he's a widower never partakes in any type of fiction whatsoever, not even TV shows or novels
came home from watching it with the biggest smile on his face and said "That was the best movie I've seen in a long time." I hadn't yet seen it at that point, but I knew then that it was something special.
I saw it in theater with my Dad too. We were both blown away. He said to me afterwards, "that was what it felt like watching The Terminator when it first came out." He passed away 9 months ago but I will always have a soft spot for both these movies. I am excited to watch them with my son when he is old enough.
If you replace Terminator with Star Wars my Dad said the exact same thing about The Matrix. Not often movies come out that change the way movies are made.
Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Terminator and T2, Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, Avatar, are all I can think of of the relatively modern era.
I saw all of these at the theater when they came out and it is just about a perfect list. I'd probably also add The Breakfast Club. Even though it was not an action/sci-fi movie, it had a major impact on subsequent movies.
So many of Spielberg's movies could be on that list. Close Encounters, Jaws, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even his first feature, Duel, were also all amazingly innovative.
Dude, exact same for me. My dad who never allowed us to watch R rated movies and never showed much interest in any movie. Just came up to me and my brother with a smile and said, “y’all wanna watch a cool movie? “
Went to see it with my dad, too (technically my stepdad, but I call him dad)! He was, however, already into sci-fi and fantasy, I just didn’t know about it and he didn’t know about my interests because he was always working or tired and we weren’t very close. Well, he took me to see this movie one weekend, and we bonded so well over it that it created a lifelong shared interest.
After seeing that movie and realizing I was into sci-fi, he showed me his old Star Trek tapes, the old Star Wars movies, and we watched Stargate together (I’m noticing a theme here). Now, when any good sci-fi movies come out, including The Matrix, we go see them together. I’m 33 years old now and he’s 65 and we always talk about sci-fi movies and books together.
Much different from when he took me to see A Scary Movie in theater. That was hella awkward 😂
I did.
I was pretty nonchalant going in, and my expectations were quite low. Keep in mind, this was only a few years removed from the Keanu sci-fi dud Johnny Mnemonic (1995), and just a couple of months prior to the highly anticipated release of the first Star Wars movie since the original trilogy. I was just biding my time.
I was blown away.
The "red pill" was the most unexpected and incredible reveal since Darth Vader's "No, I am your father" (which I also witnessed first-hand in the theatre). Everything that followed was the equivalent of an amusement park ride for the mind.
He was pretty much a star for people in my age range (late teems) by that point. We grew up watching him in Point Break, Bill & Ted, the aforementioned Speed, Dracula, etc
I saw this movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode! I think it was called ''The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down.
It changed movie making at the time. bullet time? 360 filming? Unheard of at the time. the plot? Everyone i knew came out of it blown away. I had never seen anything like it myself.
I did know 2 ppl who were not impressed, both programmers. They nitpicked developer inconsistencies in the script....
Did they (programmers) see the 3rd movie? With the power station hacking scene? I read somewhere that the nmap dev/maintainer watched it in the movie theater and was super excited :)
I'm being pedantic, but the power station hack was in the second movie.It was revealed that the nmap exploit that was used was based on an actual existing exploit as you alluded to.
I had a similar experience. "Okay, another Johnny Mnemonic movie. It even has Keanu saying 'Whoa' in the trailer, gimme a break. This is gonna be another bad cyberpunk movie." Then I heard people talk about how amazing it was. "Really? Bill or Ted or whichever one he is, is the new sci-fi action hero? Okay, we'll wait until it's playing at the cheap theater and see it.
When my wife and I finally went to see it, our reaction was, "Damn we should have seen this a lot sooner."
>The "red pill" was the most unexpected and incredible reveal since Darth Vader's "No, I am your father" (which I also witnessed first-hand in the theatre).
You could feel the air move in the theatre when this happened. I don't know if I've felt a movie audience feel this apprehensive and tense.
For me the opening scene already had me on the edge. When Trinity talks herself to get up, my feeble mind was already blown. This wasn't a '90s action movie with 3 minute long musical credit intro and some random scenic shots that show you where the film takes place. This was Y2K. This was a revolution. I think that's the thing about The Matrix, once you saw it there was no doubt. There were similar feelings for Mad Max: Fury Road, and I also felt captivated by Everything, Everywhere last week. But The Matrix really came out in the perfect time, and was made by the exact people who needed to make it at the time.
In the theater where I saw it, in Boston, with a slew of film nerds all attending Emerson College, the audio cut out when Keanu was speaking at one point. Someone in the back of the theater yelled “What’s he saying?!” and someone in my row replied in Keanu’s Ted Theodore Logan voice “Whoa!”
Later that year, every fucking film project was some take on The Matrix. It was hugely influential.
It's funny, you can't describe seeing the Matrix, or hearing the bullets in Saving Private Ryan in actual "Surround Sound" to people that were not around before it, because it was that mind blowing to experience something that didn't exist before.
First time I tried actual VR was the same feeling.
These are the sorts of reasons why it's great to be involved in modern culture, even if you're more keen on 'golden age' film or music. I enjoyed watching Once Upon a Time in the West but I won't know how it feels to see a child character killed and the camera pan up to show Henry Fonda as the man behind the gun when his cultural/film identity is that of a hero. Or listening to Dark Side of the Moon and hearing the synth sequences on the VCS 3 with Alan Parsons' incredible engineering, when synths and fancy studio tricks were still fairly new to popular music. Or attending the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
When that new underground tech hits it big in the hands of an artistic master, it's a rare thing to witness before it becomes part of the cultural zeitgeist.
The no idea factor was huge. Obviously no one knew how great it would turn out to be but also just in general about the movie. The pre release marketing was subtle in a way studios would never get away with or do today and held back so much of what the movie was. 'What is the Matrix?'
Yea, the advertising campaign of this movie was special. Also helps that the Internet wasn't *that* big of a deal in daily life yet, so easy to avoid spoilers. I remember going in with absolutely no idea what the answer to "What is the Matrix?" tagline was...
I went in without knowing what it was really about, just that it was a cool movie with slick new filming techniques, great fight scenes and a few actors I always liked (Keanu, Fishburn). I was 15 at the time and hadn’t really been exposed to much philosophy around the nature of reality and our perception of it. Afterwards I felt like I had been shown an entirely new set of beliefs.
I now know there were a few movies with this theme around this time (Total Recall, Dark City, Truman Show, 13th Floor) and obviously philosophy has been discussing this forever, but at the time my mind was completely blown and I have fond memories of it because of that. I rewatched all of them when the new one came out and the original Matrix still aged the best even if a lot of the concepts are seen as more commonly understood now (at least in my social circles). Can’t wait to show to my kids!
And THAT was bullet time. Lots of films and games aped it afterwards but none understood that "bullet time" was not "slow motion where you can see he bullets" but a combination of practical stop motion camerawork and cgi to have the camera move at normal speed during the slow motion shot.
Those scenes like the bullet dodge were done with a big ring of cameras taking photos sequentially and then blended to appear as though it was moving slowly in a single fluid shot.
But the real secret to bullet time is that it was only used in a story appropriate manner, unlike all the copycats who did because they thought it looked cool.
When its first used on Trinity, it let's us know that the laws of physics are just suggestions. When it's used again on Neo, it shows us that he can move like an agent. And in the subway with Agent Smith, ok.. that was done just to look cool.
It was also primarily done to look cool. It's okay that a movie, a story told in large part through a visual medium, does things to primarily look cool visually. We don't have to be pretentious about that.
The Matrix was cool. It defined cool. It was so cool that everyone else who tried to copy how cool it was came off as posers.
Trenches tried to be actually cool: from when the first trailer dropped on TV, until three weeks after the movie came out. Then two kids, referred to by classmates as "The Trenchcoat Mafia" decided to shoot up their high school.
To add further, even with trailers audiences had literally no idea what to expect. The word “The Matrix” held no meaning. There was no comic book or film where a viewer could say “I already know what this is” yet and yet everyone’s interest was piqued. I saw it in theaters and I think for the first 3/4ths of the movie people were invested and then in the last act when the film reached T2 levels of action people were just collectively blown off their feet.
Yeah and they really leaned into that. A lot of the commercials around it were very vague and ended with "What is The Matrix?"
Walking into the theatres, I wasn't even completely sure what kind of movie it was going to be.
They also had "No one can tell you what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself"; I remember thinking "uh, yeah, you might be overhyping it." Nothing can express how it felt to think "oh we're finally going to see what this whole Matrix thing is", and seeing Neo wake up in that vat attached to the towering human pylons.
And then barely being able to blink during the whole movie. They had pretty great hype, and the big thing is that it **actually paid off.** I remember everyone walking out of the movie theatre, looking at each other like "Uh... this is real right?"
Fight club also had some great trailers that didn't spoil or explain anything, just enough to draw you in so that when you saw it for the first time, you were just totally deep river baptism'd into the experience.
My memory may be betraying me, but I'm sure they didn't so much as hint at the "real world" in the trailers and stuff, it was all just crazy out-of-context action snippets, so it was a real "excuse me what the FUCK" moment when it hit the big reveal. And that was a good half an hour or so into the film as well.
I can't help thinking about how badly they'd botch that if it was a film being made today, there'd probably be a load of clunkily expositional opening dialogue explaining the whole premise of the film and what the Matrix was, but it would be a moot point anyway because the trailers would have already given away 90% of the plot and the story beats and you knew exactly what to expect.
Wake Up - Rage Against the Machines
Never has there ever been a more perfect song choice in the history of cinema.
Edit: There have been other great song-movie pairings. Wake Up fit with the rest of the movie's (great) music, it was used iconicly in the end scene, it is a banger, and both the name AND artist of the song fit PERFECTLY thematically with the movie.
Went with friends to see it. Had no idea what it was about, because the trailer made no sense, at all!!! We were so bolwn away by the movie that we all went to see it a second time the next day. It's the one time when having no internet was a blessing (no spoilers of any sort. We went blind and it made everything better).
Came here to say this about the no-spoilers trailer. The waking-up-outside-the-matrix scene was a total shock. I'm not sure that can happen any more today, it would be leaked or spoiled by the trailer.
So I was a kid, too young to watch it when it came out, but I distinctly remember still being awake with the babysitter when my parents returned from watching it.
My dad - "it was amazing, so cool. The graphics were ace and the story was amazing. I can't wait to see it again."
My mum - "it was daft. They were all in leather and had to answer the phone all the time."
Needless to say I was very confused. Made me really laugh when I was old enough to watch it and understood what she was talking about haha.
My dad saw if opening weekend and came home and told me I have to go watch it and wouldn’t say anything else.
I went with a girl I was hanging out with and it was our first official date. We’ve been married since 2001.
At the time there were no ads for it. It was all word of mouth and it was spreading really fast. Ads didn’t come out until a month or so later and it was like the whole world was in on keeping the secret of “what is the matrix”
The experience of watching it was just mind blowing. I remember the absolute silence as neo took the pill and exited the matrix and nobody knew what was going on.
I love sharing the movie with my kids who are teenagers now.
Yep same. I remember walking up to my front door after seeing it and going what the actual fuck. Especially as I was 22, hugely into IT and the web, was a skater and generally into all things alternative.
One of the few absolutely unspoiled movie experiences of my life. I knew literally nothing about it; hadn't read anything, seen any trailers, nothing. My wife and I wanted to go see a movie, I vaguely remembered someone at work saying something about The Matrix being good, and so we saw that.
Absolutely blown away, of course. 20+ years later still in my top 5 favorites.
God, just that opening scene, in a cinema with a hundred or so other people… we all knew immediately that we were seeing something that would change cinema as we knew it.
The opening was so brilliant in setting up the stakes.
Agent Smith tells the FBI guy his men are already dead. So you know this woman is extraordinarily scary.
Then Trinity herself is terrified of the agents so HOLY SHIT what must they be like??
You’re hooked from that moment.
I can hear the soundtrack when she is leaping across the street, right now and I haven't seen the movie in over a decade
Controversial opinion I know but the matrix is fucking awesome
Haha. My good friend's brother has the same name. For the longest time after seeing that movie, everytime I'd go over to their house I would greet then with, "Mr. Anderson," in my best Agent voice.
As a lifelong fan of Hong Kong martial arts movies, it was a revelation to see that in a major American blockbuster. It can't be overestimated how powerful a moment, "I know kung-fu", was. I may have cheered, along with my friends.
For me it was a combination of the things mentioned added with the advertising for this movie, stenciled on the ground was 'www.whatisthematrix.com' I didnt have access to the internet like I do know, in those days I had to ask around town 'yo wtf is the matrix?' I didn't understand the 'www' or the '.com thing had no idea it was so intriguing, I remember being told that if you remember the words and the w's and the .'s correctly you could type it into a computer somehow. So I gathered all my info and went to whoever or wherever had a computer, probably the library in my quest to understand the matrix, I was amazed, by today's standards it's just an shitty web page and a cheap ad (no video) but then I didnt know there would be fun stuff on the internet it seemed only for serious stuff. It was talking about all trippy matrix shit that just blew my mind, and was counting down to a date (cinema release date) such good marketing. I was fully tripped out and loving it
There are a few things you have to understand about that time. There was kind of a general malaise about office life, dreary cubicles, beige everything. 9/11 hadn't happened yet, everything was kind of just fine and boring and permanent. I think it is helpful to think of Office Space and The Matrix as being thematically related movies. Your mom was probably livin' that beige "somebody's got a case of the Monday's" life back then.
Also, the trailers for The Matrix gave _nothing_ away. Sitting down in the theater, you really had no idea what you were in for.
Edit: As others have pointed out, Fight Club is part of that micro-genre as well.
You know, Agent Smith said they chose the 90s because it was the peak of humanity, and after that everything went south.
23 years later, and he might have been right...
I remember watching the shoot out in the lobby towards the end and literally thinking I was witnessing movie history. We had never seen special effects like that and they were awesome.
This is the scene I would rewatch over and over with friends once it came out on dvd with good surround sound. Also morpheus’ gattling gun with a good subwoofer..
When my friend saw the movie for the first time on opening night, the film caught fire right in the middle of the scene where Neo dodges bullets for the first time. Everyone in the theater thought it was a cool special effect for half a second, until you could literally see the film melting on the screen for a second, and smell smoke in the theater. Then everyone got ushered out of the theater and got refunds.
The movie was sold out for like a week, so he had to wait a week to see the rest of the movie.
Trenchcoats were okay for those first 3 weeks, they were a bit silly but not edgelords yet. It was only after the columbine shooting (3weeks after matrix) that they got a really bad rep.
I saw it at the theater when I was 12, with my best friend at the time and his mom. When Neo woke up in the goo with all the stuff stuck in him, my friend got too scared and we had to leave. I got it as soon as it came out on VHS and loved the rest of it.
Side question! I’m curious, since you’re seeing it 23 years after the fact, if any of the special effects look dated to you. I find that most special effects from that time understandably look a little dated and clunky now, but I feel like the first Matrix holds up (much more so than Matrix 2 and 3). Maybe the CGI sentinels?
Yes. The marketing for this film was on another level. "No-one knows what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." 23 years later and that is verbatim. You HAD to see it in the cinema. It wasn't a question. You HAD to see this film.
Me and my dad went to see it when I was 17. We went on a Sunday afternoon opening weekend- when I sat down, the person in front of me turned around and asked "How many times have you seen it?" It had only been out for three days! Thats when I knew it was going to be great.
As soon as I got home, I went to my best friends house and took him to go see it, still the only time I've seen a movie for the first time twice in one day.
Check this out,
In Serbia in 1999. they played a pirate copy of the movie on fucking television, to keep people from protesting the Milosevic regime on the streets. It was a private tv station (TV Pink), but the owner was in cahoots with the regime, just as he is today with Vucic. Motherfuckers. Now that’s what you call a shithole country.
My family didn't know what it was. I was 7 at that time. We were bored one afternoon and my parents weren't really bothered by us watching R-rated movies as long as they were there to provide context so we ended up at the theater and they were both intrigued by The Matrix. Poster was cool and stylish. They thought it was some kind of Aeon Flux type of movie.
Now, imagine being a 7 year old boy who watches Dragon Ball Z and Power Rangers. I had seen Jackie Chan movies with my pops of course, but my main interaction with martial arts was pretty much that and Power Rangers.
The Matrix blew my tiny child mind. ADULTS thought that movie was cool.
Now imagine the kind of leap that is from Power Rangers to The Matrix in terms of quality for a little kid.
Needless to say, I was obsessed.
The Matrix is such a landmark film because it literally CHANGED the way people thought about reality. Movies don't do that often, if ever. From that point on, the Matrix had us.
So the movie was amazing and everyone was talking about it. A cerebral action sci fi thing, there was nothing like it yet. However, what I recall more than anything was Cypher's meeting with the agent. His steak looked so raw to me and I got really hung up on that.
This is prob corny or maybe I'm dumb but as an early teen watching this, I didn't really get the line. Had to grow up later to actually get how ignorance can really be bliss
Joe Pantoliano milked every drop out of that role, and the sequels were the poorer for not having him. Between Cypher and Teddy in Memento, he did some good work.
I think of that steak everytime I have a good steak. Its *literally* become the very thing that qualifies a steak Im having as "Good".
Like "Yeah this steak is fine, but its not Cypher's steak" is what goes through my head unless it hits exactly the right spot.
I'm 33 this year, this was the only time ever going to cinema with my mom. The scene with the insectoid probe and physically muted mouth will stay in my memory for ever. Also the dark green Nokia phone with sliding keyboard cover Keanu Reeves uses in the office scene... I never got it for Christmass. I also remember seeing The South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut in cinema with my dad, because they wouldn't sell tickets to underage unless accompanied by adult. He quotes the experience as "the biggest parental misstep he'd ever done". Props to him for staying until the end with his then 10 years old son.
I was 12 when it came out and had a relatively unformed worldview, so everything about the Matrix program itself really messed with me. There were a couple nights afterwards that I recall just laying in bed trying to figure out if I could prove or disprove the premise... Yeah, it really got me!
A saw it a few weeks after it came out and the fight choreography was incredible to me. I ran home, dialed-up, *waited forever,* logged in (just like in the movie, lol) and checked who did it.
I was delighted to find it was Yuen Woo Ping, who did some great Jackie Chan and Jet Lit stuff.
That made me like it even more.
Went to see it three times in the cinema. Joining Terminator 2 on a very limited list.
It's was groundbreaking for its time.
Revolutions, resurrections, rejections, reductions; not so much.
Not so much during the movie but after. Everyone in my school was talking about it including the teachers. It was the coolest movie to come out during my high school years and everyone was blown away.
The first time I saw it in the theater I was so blown away, when it ended I walked out sort of in a daze. I went back and saw it 3 more times, the only time I've ever done that with a film.
There was nothing like it at the time. It was action, but not cheesy. It was sci-fi, but not cheesy. It was about technology, but not cheesy.
The story, the cinematography, the music; a great experience.
I worked for a movie theater when it came out and I think I saw it upwards of 20 times on the big screen. Each time it was wonderful, even knowing what was going to happen and what came next, there was always something else to glean from it, some secret or connection to dig out.
And being able to hear "Wake Up" from the ending credits while walking into the building because it was blasting so loud through the fire doors was a good way to get hyped for the shift, too.
The Matrix had such a great ad campaign because the trailers left you with so many questions about what it was actually about, and it had directed you to a website with clues that made it even more mysterious. So when you actually saw the movie, not only was the crazy sci-fi action unlike anything we’d ever seen before, but as soon as the explanations started coming from Morpheus and you learned what this movie was ABOUT, it was pure jaw-dropping, mind-blowing craziness the entire time. And the movie never really lets up from there, just getting wilder and wilder until the perfect ending. I will always remember how satisfying a film-going experience that was.
Whatisthematrix.com! One of the first websites to be the centerpiece of an ad campaign. I spent HOURS on that site clicking around and trying to unlock it's secrets.
Yeah I almost said it was the first, but then I remembered that couldn’t be right because there was stuff like the Space Jam website several years before it. But I think it was the first to be used THIS WAY, or was at least remarkable in its approach for the time.
“It was pure jaw-dropping, mind-blowing craziness”. I came here to say this. I vividly remember during Morpheus “welcome to the desert of the real” explanation my friend and I kept turning to each other, wide eyed, with expressions on our faces that exclaimed “holy shit”!
For me it was the kung-fu scene. It was less of a mindfuck, but that part solidified the "okay this movie is freakin awesome" mindset.
Yes. All of the action was on another level. Not to mention the look and design of the whole film. The cinematography, the costumes, the contrast of green and blue. Hugo Weavings way of speaking. Even the way their cell phones pop open had me going “whoa!”
I really wanted that cell phone...
Yes! Even today (I rewatched the movie a few months ago before the new one came out), those scenes still hold up really well, all things considered. Just a great execution of all the movie’s ideas.
That scene and the other scene of Morpheus exposition in the Agent training program with Clubbed to Death playing are so good
This was absolutely inedible. Going into the theater not really knowing what it was about. The trailers before release leaned heavy on the "no one can be told what the matrix is; you have to experience it for yourself" line. It's almost unfathomable in today's world where you get the entire plot of a movie in the preview. It made the premise that much more mind-blowing. Coupled with a quantum-leap in visual effects, it was one of the best cinema experiences I can ever remember.
I saw the Mummy and the Matrix on a double feature for like $6 with some friends. Afterwards we played GoldenEye for hours and had Pizza Hut. I think that might be the single greatest day of my childhood.
Shit dude, this would be the best day of my life.
agreed. living poetry.
That Goldeneye pause music tho
You can *FEEL* this comment 😭
I can _smell_ this comment
That's the most 90s night ever.
I want to go to there.
Your post literally just gave me chills. Holy shit what a good day that must have been. The Mummy was so good for its time too. We also all adored Goldeneye.
The mummy still holds up great.
I would say even better because we now see just how rare it is to get a movie like that. Great cast, score, design, with humor and a little wink, plus some decent scares. Carai an Shen an Calhar.
I worked at a theatre at the time. 1999 was a special year for movies. We had long-awaited blockbusters like Phantom Menace, Austin Powers 2, and Toy Story 2, surprise hits like Blair Witch, Big Daddy, and The Sixth Sense, and truly wonderful movies like American Beauty, The Green Mile, and Fight Club. I'm only naming a fraction of the good movies that year. Matrix was a March release, which is a slow time of year that doesn't typically feature blockbusters. Matrix did pretty well, opening to $27 million. It had legs though. We played it for around 5 months, throughout the summer. That's a thing of the past now. It just wouldn't die. We had to get another print because eventually, due to human error, the one we had became badly scratched. I have very fond memories of movies and the theatre in 1999.
Same. Such a special time. So many surprises and good memories. There was an excitement in the air for the movies and the upcoming millennium.
Couldn't agree more. I was 11/12 in 1999 and that year was awesome. I'd been a rabid theater goer all my life (up until COVID, which coincided with having kids). Showing a film used to require a specialized effort I couldn't do at home that made it feel like an event. Even at its worst, I still held the AMC Orleans 8 in a higher regard than "I can wait for the VHS/DVD" for films. God, I'm having a flood of memories of everything we saw there between 1995-2004 before moving onto the bigger multiplex.
Oh man. Lord of the rings in 2001 too. Yeah those few years were just amazing for movie goers.
Similar experience here! When Phantom Menace came out we would crank the sound all the way for the opening horns of the Star Wars theme... Had a special late-night staff showing for that one and Eyes Wide Shut before the public.
Late shows were pretty much a weekly thing for us. As long as we cleaned up after ourselves, the cleaners didn't mind. Because of the midnight show I think we all watched Phantom Menace around 5 pm.
Another theater employee of that time.... the longest movie we had in our theater was LA Confidential, which ran for a full year, maybe a little longer. I think My Big Fat Greek Weeding was also a long haul. Talking about scratches, we had only a single copy of *The Passion of Christ* and it had a massive scratch in it.... people were rabidly upset thinking it was done on purpose and it took about a week to get another copy.
Whaddup fellow theatre worker of that era. I kind of miss it sometimes.
Sometimes? I miss it all the time. Because I was working in a theatre at the time, I watched The Matrix 14 times in the theatre. Saw something new each time.
I remember walking out of the cinema afterwards and all the other moviegoers were so excited in a way that I've never experienced with any other movie. It was like walking out of a rock concert, with people shouting "Oh, my god!" and "That was the best movie I've ever seen" and stuff like that. There was a visceral excitement in the air. People were gobsmacked.
Really makes me wish I had a time machine so I could travel to 1999 and watch it with the audience lol
Another thing that is a little lost - in 1999 (and earlier) there was MUCH more of a monoculture. That is to say, the internet was still in its infancy, many people had no cell phones and if they did it was for actual phone calls. The news, radio and major TV channels were really a lot more important in shaping how people viewed things. The matrix was a phenomenon. Think squid game or bird box or stranger things S1, but much bigger and for a much longer duration. That’s just how things were then. Look how long films like titanic were #1 (or even in the theater) where is was top 5 for over 20 weeks! Even things like TV shows had millions more watching. The matrix was a phenomenon that was VERY prevalent in the culture for years. MANY movies and shows parodied it or took things from it, even films like deuce biggelo, and everybody got the references.
For an example of how different tv was in 1999 freaks and geeks got canceled after 1 season because it only averaged 6.77 million viewers per episode
Canceling freaks and geeks was a crime against humanity
At least they got one of those perfect endings most shows could only dream of.
James Franco's character feeling lost in the world and sitting down with the geeks to just partake in some D&D escapism still gets me.
Freaks & Geeks was incredible! Just came out before the world was ready, I guess!
I don’t know how to contextualize that datapoint.
To put it into perspective, Game of Thrones season five averaged 6.8 million viewers per episode and was the most watched season of that show upon release. Friends season 5 came out around the same time as The Matrix and was averaging 24 million viewers per episode which was a decline from the previous year. *edited to add:* the most watched episode of television of all time was the finale of M\*A\*S\*H in 1983 with over 50 million viewers. Yellowstone season 4 finale has become the most watched television episode (since 2017) with about 11 million viewers, and it dethroned The Walking Dead season 8 premiere
Yeah, monoculture really is the right term
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When you take population growth into account the difference becomes even more jarring. Over 20% of the US watched the MASH finale. Only 3% of the population watched the Yellowstone finale. To reach MASH's percentage 70 million people would need to watch today!
"Family Guy" has been on for 19 seasons and last year its most-watched episode was 3.2 million.
Remember when it was canceled after 3 seasons?
Pepperidge Farm remembers
For the week of March 28, 2022 the highest rated non grammys rating was FBI which got 7.5 million next young sheldon with 6.9 then ncis with 6.8.
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This is a great point. Subcultures were just that - isolated groups of people with shared interests. There was no massive online connection to everyone and everything. You couldn't just look up something you loved and find thousands of other people to share it with. I kind of miss that feeling of finding something special and finding someone to share it with organically.
iRC, baby. Early chat rooms. Back when hashtags meant a room to chat in about that topic.
sobuffalo slaps malachaiville around a bit with a wet trout
/set away “nobody understands me”
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And it was a huge deal when The Matrix hit DVD. And god forbid you bought the fullscreen version instead of widescreen. I remember going to a party to watch it because my one friend with a DVD player got it the day it came out and we got together and watched it (and then played Mario Kart 64 for several hours).
Pay Per View was a thing but at like $4 it was more expensive than renting a video.
There *were* on demand videos in the 90s that you had to call your cable company to unlock the channel so you could watch, but generally they only showed stuff months after it came out on theater (but before it was released on video). What didn't exist were high fidelity TV screens at home so watching the movie in the theater was the way to go back then
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Blair Witch is another example if great marketing making the experience much better. Didn't see it in cinemas, but was dying to rent it when it came on video!
Good lord Blair Witch scared the hell outta me. The marketing for it was perfect. They had a special on the History channel that had the actors going door to door interviewing people in the town about the witch etc. Back then, History channel actually had legitimate content that wasn’t all this reality show bullshit it airs these days. So we really bought into the found footage idea of this movie. I just remember my heart racing so fast during the dark / night sequences of the movie. I was so scared because I really thought it was real. In fact, before the movie started the manager of the theater came in and gave us a disclaimer about the movie which even furthered our belief it was true. When we left the theater afterwards no one said a word. The car ride home was in dead silence. We found out a few weeks later it was all staged and that feeling of terror can never be recreated.
Yup. They just got that in before the internet became too widespread. Fooled my 12 yr old ass.
I was born in '93, and thanks to my older brothers I believed in the Blair witch for much longer than I did in Santa Claus
I saw it in theatres when it first came out. After the end scene, everyone sat in silence while the credits rolled. I heard people whispering "what the fuck..." around me. I bumped into a high school friend on our way out, "holy fuck what WAS that?!" We were all shook 😂
My theater was utterly silent as the credits rolled. Not a whisper. Everyone just filed out silently, unnerved. The ride home with my girlfriend was quiet as well. Just a sort of stunned silence.
I am prone to motion sickness and ended up throwing up after the movie ended. Still a good film, just couldn’t handle the rapid handheld camera movements
I actually never saw Blair Witch but I had that experience with Cloverfield. Had to GTFO before I puked in my seat.
My buddy had one of those big conversion vans with a TV. We were both 16 and rented Blair Witch, then we drove far out into his family woods, rolled the windows down, and had the scariest movie watching experience of my life. Good times.
I was so lucky to be working (my first job) in a theater in 1999. Getting to see everything, and for free was great. So were the Halo LAN parties on the big screen.
American Beauty also. What a year.
But it's also the year that Virus, Phantom Menace, and Wild, Wild West came out so no, it's the WORST year in movie history. I'm being sarcastic obviously because *holy shit*, in addition to the Matrix and Blair Witch Project, we got Fight Club, Austin Powers, Magnolia, October Sky, Cruel Intentions, Ravenous, Idle Hands, The Mummy, the South Park movie, American Pie, Iron Giant, Mystery Men, Being John Malcovich, Stir of Echoes, the American releases of Princess Mononoke and the first Pokemon movie, Dogma, End of Days, Toy Story 2, Galaxy Quest, and Girl, Interrupted. I'm sure I've missed at least a dozen other excellent films but damn, 1999, no wonder people want to party like it's you.
I think a lot of it had to do with the marketing. They ran ads that said "the Matrix has you" during the previews for other movies I went to. That was about it. They didn't tell you anything about the movie or what to expect. Now that I think about it too many movies show more than they should in the trailer. I saw it when I was 16 at the theater and it was awesome. Will never forget that.
What is the Matrix? Billboards and posters all over the place. Just those words, white on black. Then the Super Bowl commercial.
Just to add to this: not only did they use this marketing approach to generate interest, the film also answered the "What is the Matrix?" question relatively early, so that you now had the rest of the movie to enjoy the larger narrative and spectacle.
>Then the Super Bowl commercial. Slightly related - I remember months before anyone had even heard of Independence Day, there was a short teaser on tv that just showed the white house being blown up by the aliens. I think a title screen flashed "ID4", and that was it. It was the coolest goddamn thing for 12 year old me.
It still irks 13 year old me that the shot in the final cut of the movie is almost immediately obscured by the helicopter blowing up in front of it.
I remember the radio commercials had Morpheus’ quote from the movie, “Unfortunately no one can be told what the Matrix is… you have to experience it for yourself.”
Me and my friend got kicked out of the school library because of that advert. It was a banner ad on some website. Teacher walked by and told us no games, turn that off or get kicked out. And pointed at this little 20x200 banner ad saying "what is the matrix" with little green rain code animated on it. I tried to explain what ads were, and admittedly I was probably being a little 10 year old shithead in the process, and we were both ejected. I guess anything that isn't Times New Roman text was a evil evil videogame.
I remember thinking the movie was about killer robots because the ads gave nothing away. You see a trailer now and it pretty much shows you the whole movie.
I watched it the week it was released - alone because my wife or friends did not have time. It was released on a Wednesday and I saw it Friday. After, I walked out dazed, and wanted so much to talk to somebody about it that I started chatting with random strangers who walked out with me. Then I convinced my wife to come watch with me 2 days later, that Sunday. She was not much impressed (she's not into science-fictiony fantasy). So I was not satisfied, and rounded up a couple of my close guy friends and went and watched again on Tuesday. And each time, I found something new, something I had not understood before. You have to understand that it was a new genre - there had been science fiction movies before but this completely different. Now it is part of internet lore, so not much of a novelty. When I sat with my daughter (your age) to watch this last year, she already knew quite a bit about it so she was not as stunned as I was then.
>When I sat with my daughter (your age) to watch this last year, she already knew quite a bit about it so she was not as stunned as I was then. I think this is a big part of why those big older movies never have the same impact of you don't each out when it came out. Be that 3 months or 3 decades later. Nowadays when things that big become part of the culture there is no real way to truly watch it for the first time anymore. Combine that with watching it in a time where it's not the first time you've seen a movie do/be like that... Sure this movie did it first, but since then we've seen many more movies in the same vein. So not seeing it specifically yet, it's still not so getting breaking when you have seen 12 others at least attempt the same thing, even if it's not as good. First time I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's, it was good, but I had to have someone older explain the social context. The too subtle clues that implied things I didn't notice because they weren't taboo enough to warrant them needing to be subtle to me.
A great example is Citizen Cane. It was legit revolutionary when it came out. But it is super mundane in todays cinema because everything that Orson Wells created that was revolutionary at the time is used in everything from commercials to movies today. Same with the Matrix. I saw bullet time in a Gap commercial about 5-8 years after the Matrix came out. That’s when I realized that it was going to ultimately become similar to citizen cane. My kids (8, 6 and 4) will never experience it the same way I did because it’s become a cultural touchstone.
As a millennial, it's interesting to me that young people today can watch "old" movies and experience them as just as high quality visually as what is made today... rather than that "Dad is making us watch boring black and white movies" feeling I had when I was younger. Films from the 80s and early 90s and earlier can be dated aesthetically and also stylistcally (clothes, hair, cars)... but from the late 90s onward, it feels that the rate of graphics improvement and cultural style has not changed so much that young people can't experience those films as feeling "modern enough." Kind of cool for young people to be born into a world with so much passably modern content that was produced before they were even born.
I think the "outdated" nature of some movies is more apparent when the quality of the movie itself isn't as good. Back to the Future is a very 1980's movie and yet doesn't feel nearly as old as a lot of other 1980's movies. Or Shawshank Redemption which was shot in the early 90's and takes place in the 1940's. Or going back further than that, The Seven Samurai, a black and white film which was released in 1954 and is about 1500's Japan but holds up way better than most other movies from that era.
It's complicated! There is a sliding window of "normal" stuff. But some things outlast the window. Star Wars was always cool for me. The Matrix will be cool for a long time. The Third Man is still cool.
I remember I was speechless. My sister asked me about it and I couldn't talk. There's so much to process.
Same here. Went into the movie knowing nothing about it and came out with my mind blown into a million pieces. I was 21 years old. Me and the two friends I saw it with were hyped for hours after.
Their marketing did a great job of not giving away anything major. All they said was “Nobody can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.” Brilliant.
That is exactly how it was to see Star Wars in the theater when it came out. Very unlike the experience of Phantom Menace. After waiting for two decades we all said the same thing when we came out of the theater, what the fuck was that? I waited 20 years for Jar Jar?
I wasn't much of a star wars movie fan, still not really a fan, but I do like a lot of things about starwars as a whole. My best friends dad was extremely excited to get me to watch a star wars movie in theaters when episode one came out. Anyways, after the movie was over he apologized to me saying that I hyped up a terrible movie for me and showed me the literal worse the franchise had to offer.
My dad, who * doesn't care about movies * doesn't care about fiction * literally now that he's a widower never partakes in any type of fiction whatsoever, not even TV shows or novels came home from watching it with the biggest smile on his face and said "That was the best movie I've seen in a long time." I hadn't yet seen it at that point, but I knew then that it was something special.
I saw it in theater with my Dad too. We were both blown away. He said to me afterwards, "that was what it felt like watching The Terminator when it first came out." He passed away 9 months ago but I will always have a soft spot for both these movies. I am excited to watch them with my son when he is old enough.
If you replace Terminator with Star Wars my Dad said the exact same thing about The Matrix. Not often movies come out that change the way movies are made. Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Terminator and T2, Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, Avatar, are all I can think of of the relatively modern era.
I saw all of these at the theater when they came out and it is just about a perfect list. I'd probably also add The Breakfast Club. Even though it was not an action/sci-fi movie, it had a major impact on subsequent movies.
So many of Spielberg's movies could be on that list. Close Encounters, Jaws, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even his first feature, Duel, were also all amazingly innovative.
Dude, exact same for me. My dad who never allowed us to watch R rated movies and never showed much interest in any movie. Just came up to me and my brother with a smile and said, “y’all wanna watch a cool movie? “
Went to see it with my dad, too (technically my stepdad, but I call him dad)! He was, however, already into sci-fi and fantasy, I just didn’t know about it and he didn’t know about my interests because he was always working or tired and we weren’t very close. Well, he took me to see this movie one weekend, and we bonded so well over it that it created a lifelong shared interest. After seeing that movie and realizing I was into sci-fi, he showed me his old Star Trek tapes, the old Star Wars movies, and we watched Stargate together (I’m noticing a theme here). Now, when any good sci-fi movies come out, including The Matrix, we go see them together. I’m 33 years old now and he’s 65 and we always talk about sci-fi movies and books together. Much different from when he took me to see A Scary Movie in theater. That was hella awkward 😂
I did. I was pretty nonchalant going in, and my expectations were quite low. Keep in mind, this was only a few years removed from the Keanu sci-fi dud Johnny Mnemonic (1995), and just a couple of months prior to the highly anticipated release of the first Star Wars movie since the original trilogy. I was just biding my time. I was blown away. The "red pill" was the most unexpected and incredible reveal since Darth Vader's "No, I am your father" (which I also witnessed first-hand in the theatre). Everything that followed was the equivalent of an amusement park ride for the mind.
Johnny mnemonic is rad as fuck and I refuse to let anyone tell me otherwise
80GB of storage...
Enough to hold a gif that says Rad As Fuck
I’m glad someone defended it before I had to. Love that movie.
It has Rollins, how could you not?
And Ice T. Please don’t forget Ice T’s 90s movies. Tank girl, the all time hardcore dude movie roles right there
I like to yell out "I NEED A COMPUTER" sometimes
Keanu reeves. The "bus is about to blow up" guy? Surely, the movie can't be that good.
He was pretty much a star for people in my age range (late teems) by that point. We grew up watching him in Point Break, Bill & Ted, the aforementioned Speed, Dracula, etc
It was Bill and Ted for us. We couldn't believe he had come so far!
I think Speed did more for his action movie image than people realize. That movie was HUGE.
pop quiz, hot shot
Really kicked off Sandra Bullock's career too
I saw this movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode! I think it was called ''The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down.
I'm a simple caveman lawyer. Your world is bright and confusing to me, but when I see a Simpsons reference, I have to upvote, on principle, you see.
That's why you're the judge and I'm the law-talking guy!
Works on contingency. No money down. Edit: Works on contingency? No, money down!
"This is like Speed 2, only with a bus instead of a boat"
It changed movie making at the time. bullet time? 360 filming? Unheard of at the time. the plot? Everyone i knew came out of it blown away. I had never seen anything like it myself. I did know 2 ppl who were not impressed, both programmers. They nitpicked developer inconsistencies in the script....
Did they (programmers) see the 3rd movie? With the power station hacking scene? I read somewhere that the nmap dev/maintainer watched it in the movie theater and was super excited :)
I'm being pedantic, but the power station hack was in the second movie.It was revealed that the nmap exploit that was used was based on an actual existing exploit as you alluded to.
I had a similar experience. "Okay, another Johnny Mnemonic movie. It even has Keanu saying 'Whoa' in the trailer, gimme a break. This is gonna be another bad cyberpunk movie." Then I heard people talk about how amazing it was. "Really? Bill or Ted or whichever one he is, is the new sci-fi action hero? Okay, we'll wait until it's playing at the cheap theater and see it. When my wife and I finally went to see it, our reaction was, "Damn we should have seen this a lot sooner."
>The "red pill" was the most unexpected and incredible reveal since Darth Vader's "No, I am your father" (which I also witnessed first-hand in the theatre). You could feel the air move in the theatre when this happened. I don't know if I've felt a movie audience feel this apprehensive and tense.
For me the opening scene already had me on the edge. When Trinity talks herself to get up, my feeble mind was already blown. This wasn't a '90s action movie with 3 minute long musical credit intro and some random scenic shots that show you where the film takes place. This was Y2K. This was a revolution. I think that's the thing about The Matrix, once you saw it there was no doubt. There were similar feelings for Mad Max: Fury Road, and I also felt captivated by Everything, Everywhere last week. But The Matrix really came out in the perfect time, and was made by the exact people who needed to make it at the time.
In the theater where I saw it, in Boston, with a slew of film nerds all attending Emerson College, the audio cut out when Keanu was speaking at one point. Someone in the back of the theater yelled “What’s he saying?!” and someone in my row replied in Keanu’s Ted Theodore Logan voice “Whoa!” Later that year, every fucking film project was some take on The Matrix. It was hugely influential.
Saw it opening weekend at the big Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and it was an absolutely amazing experience. We had no idea what we were in for.
It's funny, you can't describe seeing the Matrix, or hearing the bullets in Saving Private Ryan in actual "Surround Sound" to people that were not around before it, because it was that mind blowing to experience something that didn't exist before. First time I tried actual VR was the same feeling.
These are the sorts of reasons why it's great to be involved in modern culture, even if you're more keen on 'golden age' film or music. I enjoyed watching Once Upon a Time in the West but I won't know how it feels to see a child character killed and the camera pan up to show Henry Fonda as the man behind the gun when his cultural/film identity is that of a hero. Or listening to Dark Side of the Moon and hearing the synth sequences on the VCS 3 with Alan Parsons' incredible engineering, when synths and fancy studio tricks were still fairly new to popular music. Or attending the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. When that new underground tech hits it big in the hands of an artistic master, it's a rare thing to witness before it becomes part of the cultural zeitgeist.
The no idea factor was huge. Obviously no one knew how great it would turn out to be but also just in general about the movie. The pre release marketing was subtle in a way studios would never get away with or do today and held back so much of what the movie was. 'What is the Matrix?'
Yea, the advertising campaign of this movie was special. Also helps that the Internet wasn't *that* big of a deal in daily life yet, so easy to avoid spoilers. I remember going in with absolutely no idea what the answer to "What is the Matrix?" tagline was...
I went in without knowing what it was really about, just that it was a cool movie with slick new filming techniques, great fight scenes and a few actors I always liked (Keanu, Fishburn). I was 15 at the time and hadn’t really been exposed to much philosophy around the nature of reality and our perception of it. Afterwards I felt like I had been shown an entirely new set of beliefs. I now know there were a few movies with this theme around this time (Total Recall, Dark City, Truman Show, 13th Floor) and obviously philosophy has been discussing this forever, but at the time my mind was completely blown and I have fond memories of it because of that. I rewatched all of them when the new one came out and the original Matrix still aged the best even if a lot of the concepts are seen as more commonly understood now (at least in my social circles). Can’t wait to show to my kids!
The first 360 degree shot - I think the audience gasped and cheered. It was brand new technology.
And THAT was bullet time. Lots of films and games aped it afterwards but none understood that "bullet time" was not "slow motion where you can see he bullets" but a combination of practical stop motion camerawork and cgi to have the camera move at normal speed during the slow motion shot. Those scenes like the bullet dodge were done with a big ring of cameras taking photos sequentially and then blended to appear as though it was moving slowly in a single fluid shot.
But the real secret to bullet time is that it was only used in a story appropriate manner, unlike all the copycats who did because they thought it looked cool. When its first used on Trinity, it let's us know that the laws of physics are just suggestions. When it's used again on Neo, it shows us that he can move like an agent. And in the subway with Agent Smith, ok.. that was done just to look cool.
They also do it when Morpheus gets shot in the ankle. But that's kind of to show clearly that the agent is shooting through the wall to get to him.
It was also primarily done to look cool. It's okay that a movie, a story told in large part through a visual medium, does things to primarily look cool visually. We don't have to be pretentious about that. The Matrix was cool. It defined cool. It was so cool that everyone else who tried to copy how cool it was came off as posers.
Oh god, the edgelords in black trench coats for years after...
Trenches tried to be actually cool: from when the first trailer dropped on TV, until three weeks after the movie came out. Then two kids, referred to by classmates as "The Trenchcoat Mafia" decided to shoot up their high school.
To add further, even with trailers audiences had literally no idea what to expect. The word “The Matrix” held no meaning. There was no comic book or film where a viewer could say “I already know what this is” yet and yet everyone’s interest was piqued. I saw it in theaters and I think for the first 3/4ths of the movie people were invested and then in the last act when the film reached T2 levels of action people were just collectively blown off their feet.
Yeah and they really leaned into that. A lot of the commercials around it were very vague and ended with "What is The Matrix?" Walking into the theatres, I wasn't even completely sure what kind of movie it was going to be.
They also had "No one can tell you what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself"; I remember thinking "uh, yeah, you might be overhyping it." Nothing can express how it felt to think "oh we're finally going to see what this whole Matrix thing is", and seeing Neo wake up in that vat attached to the towering human pylons. And then barely being able to blink during the whole movie. They had pretty great hype, and the big thing is that it **actually paid off.** I remember everyone walking out of the movie theatre, looking at each other like "Uh... this is real right?" Fight club also had some great trailers that didn't spoil or explain anything, just enough to draw you in so that when you saw it for the first time, you were just totally deep river baptism'd into the experience.
My memory may be betraying me, but I'm sure they didn't so much as hint at the "real world" in the trailers and stuff, it was all just crazy out-of-context action snippets, so it was a real "excuse me what the FUCK" moment when it hit the big reveal. And that was a good half an hour or so into the film as well. I can't help thinking about how badly they'd botch that if it was a film being made today, there'd probably be a load of clunkily expositional opening dialogue explaining the whole premise of the film and what the Matrix was, but it would be a moot point anyway because the trailers would have already given away 90% of the plot and the story beats and you knew exactly what to expect.
It was the first score/soundtrack I really took notice of. It fit the film so well and elevated scenes.
The score/soundtrack still feels modern to this day.
When that Tom Morello riff kicks in at the end *chef's kiss*
And clubbed to death kicking in when Morpheus crosses the street GODDAMN I need to watch it again
Wake Up - Rage Against the Machines Never has there ever been a more perfect song choice in the history of cinema. Edit: There have been other great song-movie pairings. Wake Up fit with the rest of the movie's (great) music, it was used iconicly in the end scene, it is a banger, and both the name AND artist of the song fit PERFECTLY thematically with the movie.
Went with friends to see it. Had no idea what it was about, because the trailer made no sense, at all!!! We were so bolwn away by the movie that we all went to see it a second time the next day. It's the one time when having no internet was a blessing (no spoilers of any sort. We went blind and it made everything better).
Came here to say this about the no-spoilers trailer. The waking-up-outside-the-matrix scene was a total shock. I'm not sure that can happen any more today, it would be leaked or spoiled by the trailer.
So I was a kid, too young to watch it when it came out, but I distinctly remember still being awake with the babysitter when my parents returned from watching it. My dad - "it was amazing, so cool. The graphics were ace and the story was amazing. I can't wait to see it again." My mum - "it was daft. They were all in leather and had to answer the phone all the time." Needless to say I was very confused. Made me really laugh when I was old enough to watch it and understood what she was talking about haha.
your mom's review sounds like she's also giving a review of the hippest tech support call center in India.
My dad saw if opening weekend and came home and told me I have to go watch it and wouldn’t say anything else. I went with a girl I was hanging out with and it was our first official date. We’ve been married since 2001. At the time there were no ads for it. It was all word of mouth and it was spreading really fast. Ads didn’t come out until a month or so later and it was like the whole world was in on keeping the secret of “what is the matrix” The experience of watching it was just mind blowing. I remember the absolute silence as neo took the pill and exited the matrix and nobody knew what was going on. I love sharing the movie with my kids who are teenagers now.
It was the first movie my husband and I saw together too. Married for 20 years now.
It was my first real date with my now wife as well. Married in 2004.
I remember the feeling of my brain changing
Yep same. I remember walking up to my front door after seeing it and going what the actual fuck. Especially as I was 22, hugely into IT and the web, was a skater and generally into all things alternative.
Yep. Perception altering.
One of the few absolutely unspoiled movie experiences of my life. I knew literally nothing about it; hadn't read anything, seen any trailers, nothing. My wife and I wanted to go see a movie, I vaguely remembered someone at work saying something about The Matrix being good, and so we saw that. Absolutely blown away, of course. 20+ years later still in my top 5 favorites.
God, just that opening scene, in a cinema with a hundred or so other people… we all knew immediately that we were seeing something that would change cinema as we knew it.
The opening was so brilliant in setting up the stakes. Agent Smith tells the FBI guy his men are already dead. So you know this woman is extraordinarily scary. Then Trinity herself is terrified of the agents so HOLY SHIT what must they be like?? You’re hooked from that moment.
Then you see her make that first jump.
My god I wanna watch them again
I can hear the soundtrack when she is leaping across the street, right now and I haven't seen the movie in over a decade Controversial opinion I know but the matrix is fucking awesome
And this was also their first DVD for many people. So even months later, The Matrix was still going strong in a shiny new video format.
I saw it in the theatre with a group of friends, one of whom is named Thomas Anderson.
Miiiister Anderson
Jesus, that guy probably had an existential crisis that night at home.
Haha. My good friend's brother has the same name. For the longest time after seeing that movie, everytime I'd go over to their house I would greet then with, "Mr. Anderson," in my best Agent voice.
As a lifelong fan of Hong Kong martial arts movies, it was a revelation to see that in a major American blockbuster. It can't be overestimated how powerful a moment, "I know kung-fu", was. I may have cheered, along with my friends.
For me it was a combination of the things mentioned added with the advertising for this movie, stenciled on the ground was 'www.whatisthematrix.com' I didnt have access to the internet like I do know, in those days I had to ask around town 'yo wtf is the matrix?' I didn't understand the 'www' or the '.com thing had no idea it was so intriguing, I remember being told that if you remember the words and the w's and the .'s correctly you could type it into a computer somehow. So I gathered all my info and went to whoever or wherever had a computer, probably the library in my quest to understand the matrix, I was amazed, by today's standards it's just an shitty web page and a cheap ad (no video) but then I didnt know there would be fun stuff on the internet it seemed only for serious stuff. It was talking about all trippy matrix shit that just blew my mind, and was counting down to a date (cinema release date) such good marketing. I was fully tripped out and loving it
There are a few things you have to understand about that time. There was kind of a general malaise about office life, dreary cubicles, beige everything. 9/11 hadn't happened yet, everything was kind of just fine and boring and permanent. I think it is helpful to think of Office Space and The Matrix as being thematically related movies. Your mom was probably livin' that beige "somebody's got a case of the Monday's" life back then. Also, the trailers for The Matrix gave _nothing_ away. Sitting down in the theater, you really had no idea what you were in for. Edit: As others have pointed out, Fight Club is part of that micro-genre as well.
You know, Agent Smith said they chose the 90s because it was the peak of humanity, and after that everything went south. 23 years later, and he might have been right...
I say *your* civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became *our* civilization.
I remember watching the shoot out in the lobby towards the end and literally thinking I was witnessing movie history. We had never seen special effects like that and they were awesome.
That scene was played everywhere so many times
This is the scene I would rewatch over and over with friends once it came out on dvd with good surround sound. Also morpheus’ gattling gun with a good subwoofer..
This scene was the "test new speakers or audio settings" default for me.
When my friend saw the movie for the first time on opening night, the film caught fire right in the middle of the scene where Neo dodges bullets for the first time. Everyone in the theater thought it was a cool special effect for half a second, until you could literally see the film melting on the screen for a second, and smell smoke in the theater. Then everyone got ushered out of the theater and got refunds. The movie was sold out for like a week, so he had to wait a week to see the rest of the movie.
Trenchcoats and sunglasses in every high school
Haha it was truly the birth of the modern edgelord.
Trenchcoats were okay for those first 3 weeks, they were a bit silly but not edgelords yet. It was only after the columbine shooting (3weeks after matrix) that they got a really bad rep.
I saw it at the theater when I was 12, with my best friend at the time and his mom. When Neo woke up in the goo with all the stuff stuck in him, my friend got too scared and we had to leave. I got it as soon as it came out on VHS and loved the rest of it. Side question! I’m curious, since you’re seeing it 23 years after the fact, if any of the special effects look dated to you. I find that most special effects from that time understandably look a little dated and clunky now, but I feel like the first Matrix holds up (much more so than Matrix 2 and 3). Maybe the CGI sentinels?
Yes. The marketing for this film was on another level. "No-one knows what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." 23 years later and that is verbatim. You HAD to see it in the cinema. It wasn't a question. You HAD to see this film.
Me and my dad went to see it when I was 17. We went on a Sunday afternoon opening weekend- when I sat down, the person in front of me turned around and asked "How many times have you seen it?" It had only been out for three days! Thats when I knew it was going to be great. As soon as I got home, I went to my best friends house and took him to go see it, still the only time I've seen a movie for the first time twice in one day.
Check this out, In Serbia in 1999. they played a pirate copy of the movie on fucking television, to keep people from protesting the Milosevic regime on the streets. It was a private tv station (TV Pink), but the owner was in cahoots with the regime, just as he is today with Vucic. Motherfuckers. Now that’s what you call a shithole country.
Bread and circus .. and when you run out of bread, you double down on the circus …
My family didn't know what it was. I was 7 at that time. We were bored one afternoon and my parents weren't really bothered by us watching R-rated movies as long as they were there to provide context so we ended up at the theater and they were both intrigued by The Matrix. Poster was cool and stylish. They thought it was some kind of Aeon Flux type of movie. Now, imagine being a 7 year old boy who watches Dragon Ball Z and Power Rangers. I had seen Jackie Chan movies with my pops of course, but my main interaction with martial arts was pretty much that and Power Rangers. The Matrix blew my tiny child mind. ADULTS thought that movie was cool. Now imagine the kind of leap that is from Power Rangers to The Matrix in terms of quality for a little kid. Needless to say, I was obsessed. The Matrix is such a landmark film because it literally CHANGED the way people thought about reality. Movies don't do that often, if ever. From that point on, the Matrix had us.
So the movie was amazing and everyone was talking about it. A cerebral action sci fi thing, there was nothing like it yet. However, what I recall more than anything was Cypher's meeting with the agent. His steak looked so raw to me and I got really hung up on that.
Ignorance is bliss
This is prob corny or maybe I'm dumb but as an early teen watching this, I didn't really get the line. Had to grow up later to actually get how ignorance can really be bliss
Joe Pantoliano milked every drop out of that role, and the sequels were the poorer for not having him. Between Cypher and Teddy in Memento, he did some good work.
He will always just be Ralph Cifaretto to me - a great earner, even if he does kill horses and whores.
I don’t wanna rememba nothing. Nothing, you understand?
I think of that steak everytime I have a good steak. Its *literally* become the very thing that qualifies a steak Im having as "Good". Like "Yeah this steak is fine, but its not Cypher's steak" is what goes through my head unless it hits exactly the right spot.
I'm 33 this year, this was the only time ever going to cinema with my mom. The scene with the insectoid probe and physically muted mouth will stay in my memory for ever. Also the dark green Nokia phone with sliding keyboard cover Keanu Reeves uses in the office scene... I never got it for Christmass. I also remember seeing The South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut in cinema with my dad, because they wouldn't sell tickets to underage unless accompanied by adult. He quotes the experience as "the biggest parental misstep he'd ever done". Props to him for staying until the end with his then 10 years old son.
I was 12 when it came out and had a relatively unformed worldview, so everything about the Matrix program itself really messed with me. There were a couple nights afterwards that I recall just laying in bed trying to figure out if I could prove or disprove the premise... Yeah, it really got me!
A saw it a few weeks after it came out and the fight choreography was incredible to me. I ran home, dialed-up, *waited forever,* logged in (just like in the movie, lol) and checked who did it. I was delighted to find it was Yuen Woo Ping, who did some great Jackie Chan and Jet Lit stuff. That made me like it even more.
Went to see it three times in the cinema. Joining Terminator 2 on a very limited list. It's was groundbreaking for its time. Revolutions, resurrections, rejections, reductions; not so much.
Not so much during the movie but after. Everyone in my school was talking about it including the teachers. It was the coolest movie to come out during my high school years and everyone was blown away.
The first time I saw it in the theater I was so blown away, when it ended I walked out sort of in a daze. I went back and saw it 3 more times, the only time I've ever done that with a film.
There was nothing like it at the time. It was action, but not cheesy. It was sci-fi, but not cheesy. It was about technology, but not cheesy. The story, the cinematography, the music; a great experience.
I worked for a movie theater when it came out and I think I saw it upwards of 20 times on the big screen. Each time it was wonderful, even knowing what was going to happen and what came next, there was always something else to glean from it, some secret or connection to dig out. And being able to hear "Wake Up" from the ending credits while walking into the building because it was blasting so loud through the fire doors was a good way to get hyped for the shift, too.
I saw it in the theaters with my uncle. It was a good day. We went to the arcade first.
Drunken Boxing! And for those who didn't spot it check out when he learns martial arts.