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The Matrix Trilogy

Posted by admin on January 6th, 2011

When it was released in 1999, The Matrix was nothing short of a revelation. Though it could be argued that no particular element was completely original, The Matrix showed us a new combination of martial arts, gunplay, and science fiction, wrapped up in a plot layered with philosophical overtones that echoed Plato, among others. Did I mention breathtaking special effects?

Reaction to The Matrix was swift and enthusiastic. Fans lined up to see The Matrix again and again, and some of the signature effects from the movies were being emulated everywhere, even in long distance phone service ads. In short, The Matrix was a colossal hit for the little-known Wachowski brothers, and catapulted the status of stars like Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Laurence Fishburne.

The Matrix also benefitted from being perfectly targetted to a medium that was just coming into its own, the DVD. In its first week, The Matrix DVD broke sales records for the medium with almost 800,000 units sold in the U.S. alone, became the first title ever to sell a million discs, and went on to sell 30 million. In fact, the disc stayed on the Billboard best-selling chart for 100 weeks.

Originally, The Matrix had been conceived of as a trilogy, but Hollywood wasn’t going to sign a couple of unknowns like the Wachowski brothers to a three-picture commitment on an unproven vehicle. Once the sales numbers started to come in for The Matrix, however, planning for the sequels was fast tracked. They ultimately decided to shoot the next two pictures at once, an ambitious undertaking. They added to the franchise with additional titles, The Matrix Revisited, The Animatrix, and a video game, Enter The Matrix.

The Matrix seemed poised to become one of the greatest franchises in Hollywood history, and in many ways it has lived up to that promise. The three movies that form the core of the franchise are all in the top 60 all-time worldwide box office list, with combined sales of over $1.6 billion. In fact, The Matrix Reloaded was called the top-selling R-rated movie of all time, and the video game, Enter The Matrix, sold over 1 million copies. Estimates are that the total sales for the franchise have topped $3 billion.

Commercially speaking, The Matrix Reloaded was the top performer of the franchise, but the majority of fans seem to agree that the first movie was their favourite. It’s possible this is a by-product of how the trilogy came to be told: We can speculate that the studio kept a much tighter reign on the Wachowski brothers when they were drafting the script for The Matrix, but left them more leeway on The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. As a result, many of the characters that had been meant to permeate the series were trimmed, but showed up in the later chapters. If true, it might explain why the plot of The Matrix was less challenging, and in some ways almost escapist, while The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions demand much more from the viewer, simply to follow the parade of characters moving in and out of the storlyine.

In the end, The Matrix will endure as a core element of popular culture in the millennial era. We can hope that the series demonstrated to the major studios that a motion picture can can challenge its audience and draw from a multitude of sources, and still achieve box office success.

Links

Official Movie Site of The Matrix

What Is The Matrix?

Merchandise for The Matrix series

The Matrix Shop

Matrix Posters

Matrix Eye Wear

Philosophy and The Matrix

Plato’s Allegory of The Cave, Matrix and Language Manipulation

Allegory of The Cave, The Matrix: What is Reality?

Forget Sci-Fi and Guns … The Matrix is Really About Religion

The Matrix Revolutions: Back to a Messianic Allegory