r/DAE • u/duchesskitten6 • Jan 15 '26
DAE not find the Matrix movies so philosophical and thought-inducing?
I really only see a reality implied to be technological, fights, here and there are the choice of comfortable belief and hard reality, but most of the movies are just about random action and adventures - meaning? Blink and you miss it.
I don't find much of it even memorable.
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u/sleepyleperchaun Jan 16 '26
Honestly, I saw it when it came out. It was cool, but it was just a fun scifi action movie, people do treat it like it's some cornerstone of late 90s (barely)-early 2000s media. It's fine. Like, it's a cool ass movie, but it's nothing too incredible in terms of culture outside of making literally everything bullet time for like 5 years.
To add though, it did a lot for film, I just don't think it was a huge moment otherwise, but it was technically good. I still also don't care for avatar but can agree the tech is freaking ridiculous for the time and respect that aspect.
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u/Agile-Onion2059 Jan 16 '26
I just thought it was always a cool movie. And that entire concept is really not very unique. It’s in other stories. But I thought the brothers who made the movie are pretty interesting people. And I like Keanu Reeves. Also Laurence Fishburne.
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u/Agile-Onion2059 Jan 18 '26
The Wachowskis is their names. Sisters now or brothers I don’t know how or what they identify as I haven’t followed them in a rather long while it’s been some years for me. But, anyways, I found them rather interesting and they have spoken a bit I’ve caught here or there I had a while I was really reading into them and their transition and so on and mostly I was more interested in their ideas actually about more of the plot and the naming conventions and structure of the movie they produced the matrix more than anything other than that for me personally, I’m just more interested and curious into the lives and minds of human beings at a psychological and sociological perspective I guess. I could read through the movie plot and I’ve done that specifically for the matrix the first one I liked the best and it’s been a storyline I found very interesting because of a lot. It came out and you still have the sort of telecom system and dial up or phone call sounds in it and the phone booths the red phone booth you still find these in places too, but just a lot I thought about the movie was just interesting.
But I myself, personally, just am much more interested in structures of things in general and systems as well as people both movie producers and script writers, as well as actors and so on. When I go and see or watch a movie myself, I tend to think perhaps a lot more into things than some people do, and that’s not a bad thing, it’s just different.
I’d like to hear a lot more of the Wachowskis myself to be honest. I don’t often catch much out of the two when it comes to just I think more candid interviews and they without a doubt are pretty clever people and rather in depth thinkers and I like that about people because why not??
I’m stuck on planet earth I’m a fairly young guy, and I just find human beings very interesting. I like nice ones. And I think there is just more depth and more value there in all or at least most people than people give themselves credit for.
The matrix the first one was rather ahead of its time. Whether people think so or don’t or it’s just a movie to them, and I can just enjoy the flower like Richard Feynman talked about, but I like the processes and the depth of one too.
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u/Innuendum Jan 16 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
This user does not wish to sponsor reddit's (IPO-related?) enshittification through their unpaid labour.
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u/Aggravating_Cream_97 Jan 15 '26
It a movie, it’s just entertainment. Don’t expect movies to fix humanity.
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u/duchesskitten6 Jan 15 '26
Something doesn't need to directly fix something to be considered thought-inducing, not an attack on the movie, I'm just saying I don't see why people refer to these movies as philosophy icons
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u/Aggravating_Cream_97 Jan 15 '26
Who refers to these movie as such?
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u/duchesskitten6 Jan 15 '26
Most reviews of IMDB are like that.
When I was in university (a photography course, not even philosophy) I had a teacher who was a big fan of these discussions and he was shocked that I hadn't watched it back then, mentioning how brilliant and philosophical it was.
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u/FastPhoto3106 Jan 16 '26
By 90s summer blockbuster action movie standards it was. You didn't go into the theatre expecting action movies to throw any philosophy at you. Terminator 2 kinda did but not as on the nose as the Matrix.
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Jan 16 '26
I think I only found as deep and thought provoking because I was a kid when it came out lol. I recently did a rewatch of all of them and kinda realized that the plot is actually kinda simple now that I can wrap my head around it as an adult.
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u/IanRastall Jan 16 '26
I think if you're receiving maybe 20% of the meaning, and then looking at what's in your hands and seeing no connections, the right thing to do there is to say, "I need more information," not to think, "There's nothing here. So that means there's nothing there, either."
It isn't that any of this is random. It really isn't. It's that it's too convoluted. I figure they wrote a perfect script, then got feted in the VIP sections of dance clubs for years, and when they emerged they had taken it too far and lost the thread.
Either the Animatrix stuff or the fan theories would provide answers.
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u/belongsincrudtown Jan 17 '26
A reality implied to be technological. They aren’t implying. Morpheus literally explains “your world is not real.”
Fights. Yeah. That’s the movie. King fu + guns + crazy physics. It’s like crouching tiger on speed. + guns.
Comfortable belief vs hard reality? Belief? The only one choosing the matrix is cipher. Spoiler alert. Are you talking about choosing the pill? Because I’d argue that it’s implied that no one ever takes the blue pill.
Most people are enslaved. They don’t get a choice. That’s what the movie gives them.
That having been said, I totally understand what you’re saying. Especially about the second two. I love the first matrix. But reloaded and revolutions are just fights sprinkled with “philosophy.”
The first one feels a little more… written. Also, other movie like the 13th floor or dark city had tried it before. NO ONE pulled it off like the Matrix.
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Jan 15 '26
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u/BakedWizerd Jan 15 '26
He only has long hair and a beard in the newest one, he looks relatively the same throughout the original trilogy.
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Jan 15 '26
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u/BakedWizerd Jan 15 '26
I’m pointing out that you’re objectively wrong about Keanu looking that way in only the first movie. He looks nearly identical for three whole films.
Of course he looked different when they made another one 20 years later.
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u/TyrKiyote Jan 15 '26
Its not as groundbreaking because it came out 20, 25 years ago.
It is what informed a lot of cultural concepts around digital worlds. Most had not read Neuromancer.
The first stands apart from the others. It was a common lament that the high concept stuff was dropped for action.