Weirdest nine months actually, it came out on March 31st.
To be fair, every decade has weird movies and the 90's was no exception. Lot of good movies came out in that decade as well however. Heck just the list of Sci-fi movies from the 90's has some good entries in the list.
It was before the sequels came out. After Revolutions,I can't even enjoy the first one as an action movie anymore. I see it and all I can think is, "this is all just meaningless bullshit. Because the sequels happened."
Oddly enough, I partially blame The Matrix for the Phantom Menace fairing as poorly as it did. Episode I was a bad movie, mind you, but once people saw The Matrix it had no real possibility of wowing anybody visually.
Phantom Menace faired poorly? It was the highest grossing movie of the year it came out with over 400 million dollars domestic and over 900 million dollars in world-wide box office. At the time, it was the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time. (Because of the 3D re-release It is to date the most financially successful film of the Star Wars franchise and the 5th highest grossing domestic film of all time.)
Whether you think the movie was good or not, by any measure it was a mammoth hit.
Of course it was. Even adjusted for inflation, it's the 17th highest money maker domestically. 900 million is 900 million. And by no financial measure did it "fair poorly."
And I'm betting a lot of that was earned on the first weekend as all the Star Wars fans, left dry for decades, lined up around the corner to see it. That's not so much a measure of how good TPM menace was but how good the first trilogy was.
A better measure is seeing how the other films fared after fans had learned the hard way what to expect from Fat Lucas.
I made the original Phantom Menace comment. I meant that it was poorly received by people, partly because it was a bad movie and partly because the effects in The Matrix had changed people's expectations about VFX and action sequences. Sorry.
The mythos of The Matrix is primarily inspired by Christian Gnosticism, a series of "Christian" teachings deemed heretical by the early Christian Church (not least because one of the main tenants of pretty much all versions of Gnosticism is that the guy who created the Physical world is an evil jerk and not the same guy as the supreme ruler of the Spiritual world, which is contrary to the mainstream Christian idea that the Supreme God and the Creator God are the same guy and also Good).
Some Gnostic ideas seem to have been inspired by Plato's teachings, such as spirit = good and matter = evil, and since Plato and Socrates' ideas of logic and debate and such are also very influential in modern philosophy, that's one of the reasons why you'll see "Matrix like" hypothetical arguments pop up in Philosophy class.
I remember a lot of people asking "But what if the Matrix is real?" too. The first Matrix came out my freshman year of college and many of my (quite possibly high) classmates would ardently defend the idea that were we all in the Matrix, we would not know it and therefor we could not disprove the theory that we are all in the Matrix now.
OK, in his defense, this guy is still pimply-faced and looks like he's maybe in his teens or early twenties, so in 1999 he could have been pretty young. Even if he was ten years old, that would possibly explain why everyone he knew thought it was real.
The 90s were a paradise for all kinds of conspiracy theorists! I don't miss the 90s. At least not that part.
ReplyDeleteI miss a lot of the bands.
DeleteI miss the prosperity.
DeleteConspiracy theories have only gotten worse since then.
DeleteThe Matrix came out in 1999. It must've been the weirdest seven months of the 90s for him.
ReplyDeleteWeirdest nine months actually, it came out on March 31st.
DeleteTo be fair, every decade has weird movies and the 90's was no exception. Lot of good movies came out in that decade as well however. Heck just the list of Sci-fi movies from the 90's has some good entries in the list.
"Remember back when everybody thought The Matrix was REAL?"
ReplyDeleteUhhhhh...no?
I'm having trouble remembering back when anybody thought The Matrix was good.
DeleteIt was before the sequels came out. After Revolutions,I can't even enjoy the first one as an action movie anymore. I see it and all I can think is, "this is all just meaningless bullshit. Because the sequels happened."
DeleteOddly enough, I partially blame The Matrix for the Phantom Menace fairing as poorly as it did. Episode I was a bad movie, mind you, but once people saw The Matrix it had no real possibility of wowing anybody visually.
DeletePhantom Menace faired poorly? It was the highest grossing movie of the year it came out with over 400 million dollars domestic and over 900 million dollars in world-wide box office. At the time, it was the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time. (Because of the 3D re-release It is to date the most financially successful film of the Star Wars franchise and the 5th highest grossing domestic film of all time.)
DeleteWhether you think the movie was good or not, by any measure it was a mammoth hit.
By any measure? Really?
DeleteNot by any measure where you take inflation into account.
Of course it was. Even adjusted for inflation, it's the 17th highest money maker domestically. 900 million is 900 million. And by no financial measure did it "fair poorly."
Delete17th is not 5th highest.
DeleteAnd I'm betting a lot of that was earned on the first weekend as all the Star Wars fans, left dry for decades, lined up around the corner to see it. That's not so much a measure of how good TPM menace was but how good the first trilogy was.
A better measure is seeing how the other films fared after fans had learned the hard way what to expect from Fat Lucas.
I made the original Phantom Menace comment. I meant that it was poorly received by people, partly because it was a bad movie and partly because the effects in The Matrix had changed people's expectations about VFX and action sequences. Sorry.
DeleteYeah, that definitely happened in the 90s.
ReplyDeleteYou know what, I actually have his back on this one. I actually DO remember tons of people that went on and on about that very thing...
ReplyDeleteDon't philosophy students still do this?
DeleteThe mythos of The Matrix is primarily inspired by Christian Gnosticism, a series of "Christian" teachings deemed heretical by the early Christian Church (not least because one of the main tenants of pretty much all versions of Gnosticism is that the guy who created the Physical world is an evil jerk and not the same guy as the supreme ruler of the Spiritual world, which is contrary to the mainstream Christian idea that the Supreme God and the Creator God are the same guy and also Good).
DeleteSome Gnostic ideas seem to have been inspired by Plato's teachings, such as spirit = good and matter = evil, and since Plato and Socrates' ideas of logic and debate and such are also very influential in modern philosophy, that's one of the reasons why you'll see "Matrix like" hypothetical arguments pop up in Philosophy class.
I remember a lot of people asking "But what if the Matrix is real?" too. The first Matrix came out my freshman year of college and many of my (quite possibly high) classmates would ardently defend the idea that were we all in the Matrix, we would not know it and therefor we could not disprove the theory that we are all in the Matrix now.
DeleteThe Matrix was a good movie. Pity they never made any sequels to it.
ReplyDeleteOK, in his defense, this guy is still pimply-faced and looks like he's maybe in his teens or early twenties, so in 1999 he could have been pretty young. Even if he was ten years old, that would possibly explain why everyone he knew thought it was real.
ReplyDeleteIt's just one of these "and by everybody i mean me" situations.
ReplyDeletePoor woman has had her boyfriend replaced by Agent Smith. :(
ReplyDelete