Photo credit: Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett Collection
It's a few months to the release of another part of The Matrix and it seems fitting to talk about how great the first 3 parts were. The Wachowskis did a number with this franchise; from the casting to the drama, visual effects, and character development. They made proper CGI for its time, very interesting dialogues, and gave us a three-part action thriller that has so far established itself as timeless.
The franchise represented a cocktail of all the best content out there at the time; from Japanese animation to cyberpunk fiction (the dark nerd vibes), comic books to Greek mythology. It only shows proper courtesy that I praise the beauty of their death-defying stunts in a sentence of its own. Heck, even the Bible was a great inspiration to the story; with names of locations culled, biblical references, and the famous car number plate (Isaiah 54:16 ) of one of the best villains in cinematic history. Did you know that the character “Morpheus” represents the John the Baptist figure prophesying the coming of the chosen one as John the Baptist was preaching in the desert about the coming Messiah, Jesus; and the name Neo literally means "the one"?
It is hard to talk about The Matrix without giving reverence to the madness that Hugo Weaving displayed in that movie. His embodiment of the character “Agent Smith” was stellar; from his mannerism to the way he spoke, body language, and theatrical character expressions - I still get goosebumps when I remember how he says “Mr. Anderson”.His character was so well done that he gave a certain cult villain a run for his money without needing 5 yards of material as a cape, and autotune.
Did you also know that he was the character V in V for vendetta? As well as Megatron in the transformers? The man deserves a blog post of his own, to be honest.
Matrix gave us everything; villains subtly transforming to anti-heroes, suspense, an origin story, climactic twists, interesting combat, a few legendary car chases and death-defying stunts, heartwarming romance but to mention a few. I could shed a tear if I continue to describe how beautiful The Matrix was and I really can not wait for the new installment to come out. I do hope that Lana Wachowski will do it justice without her sister by her side as they did in the first three. Fingers crossed.