10 Things That Were Only Cool In The Matrix

It was a game-changer back in 1999 and ‘The Matrix’ still holds up brilliantly years later, but the Wachowskis’ cyber-thriller has started to show its age ever so slightly…

Perhaps it’s the crushing reality of real life that feels like a disappointment compared to the digital illusion of ‘The Matrix’, because the movie is absolutely rammed with awesome stuff that looks sad and tragic in the cold light of day.

Trenchcoats

Seeing Keanu Reeves stride through ‘The Matrix’ in his sunglasses and his long black trenchcoat was awesome: it’s the sartorial stuff iconic movie stars are made of. Trenchcoats in real life, however, are considerably more difficult to pull off.

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Ever since the unfortunate Columbine connection, the word “trenchcoat” always seems to invite the suffix “mafia”. Then, of course, there’s the fact that it’s very difficult to look comfortable in a trenchcoat, particularly in high temperatures: you might think you look cool, but as you swish your way down the street listening to Rage Against The Machine, there’s probably a photo of you being uploaded to www.GothsInHotWeather.blogspot.co.uk.

Flip-phones

It’s a phone… that flips! Before the smartphone was the flip-phone – an entirely pointless device that separated your mobile’s screen and keypad via hinge, seemingly for one reason and one reason only: the modicum of cool you felt while whipping it out and putting it to your ear. Though it looked super slick back in ‘99 when Neo used one, no one is impressed by your crummy little flip-phone nowadays – it makes you look like a technological Neanderthal. Enjoy your 9000th game of Snake on your phone while the rest of us browse the web, listen to music and swap photos of sweating Goths.

Bullet-time

In 1999, when digital effects were still finding their feet, the Wachowskis’ implementation of bullet-time was nothing short of astounding: a visual feat that opened up the two-dimensional plane of film and took it to a whole new level. Sadly, bullet-time was such a killer app that every subsequent movie and its sequel found a way to shoehorn it into their action scenes, meaning the novelty wore off fast. These days, bullet-time can be found in residence on Phillip Schofield’s ITV quiz show ‘The Cube’. How the mighty have fallen.

Hacking

It’s a quintessentially 90s phenomenon; a period when nobody really understood what computers were or what they could do, but everyone was absolutely 100% certain that computer hackers were super-dangerous and super-trendy. In The Matrix, hacking is an essential means to defeat the evil machine overlords which have enslaved the human race. In real life, hacking is something bored nerds do in their bedrooms to put pictures of cats on other peoples’ websites. And no, posting a hilarious message on someone’s Facebook when they forget to log off does not make you The One.

Killing lots of innocent people

Troubling at the best of times, it seems the only acceptable reason to shoot lots of innocent people dead is when you’re trying to release them from digital slavery in an artificial construct into which they’re plugged. Everyone remembers when Neo and Trinity storm the building lobby in ‘The Matrix’ with guns, lots of guns; what people seem to forget is the fact that almost everyone on the wrong end of their bullet-time shenanigans was an innocent in the grand scheme of things – they were just security guards who weren’t being paid enough to take on gun-toting nutjobs wearing trenchcoats. Seriously guys: mass murder is only cool in ‘The Matrix’. Consider this a life lesson.

Big sweaty raves

We don’t know how many big sweaty raves you’ve been to lately, but we’ll wager that any event you attend that requires you to wear a vest and dance to deafening hardcore Belgian trance isn’t half as much fun as ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ makes it look. In the movie, the resistance were dancing their troubles away in an expression of their inherent humanity – something no machine would understand. At real raves, you’re trying to dance to Orbital in a field in Somerset but there’s a skinny white bloke with dreads called Jeremy who’s blowing a whistle in your ear and trying to grind on you.

Asking, like, a hundred questions in a row

To be fair to Neo, the Matrix is a fairly difficult concept to wrap your noggin around, and listening to The Architect explain it requires a dictionary definition every other word. Therefore we forgave Thomas Anderson’s persistent line of enquiry as to who/what/where/when/why everything was as it was. But outside of the Matrix, asking a string of one-word questions makes you sound like an annoying child with ADD on a long car journey.

Saying ‘Woah!’

Keanu Reeves can get away with saying stuff like “Woah!” because a) he is Keanu Reeves, and b) he channels a likeable dumbness that he’s been cultivating ever since Bill & Ted went on an excellent adventure. The fact is, you saying “Woah!” at whatever trifling matter has merited your exclamation almost certainly makes you look like a stoner who considers ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’ as the greatest achievement in cinematic history.

Cartwheels

Having never been in a gun battle it’s difficult for us to give you any tips on what to do, but we can certainly tell you what not to do – and top of that list would be ‘perform a seemingly impossible cartwheel while under heavy machine gun fire’. In the film, the Wachowskis’ bullet ballet saw the cast twirl and spin to avoid injury, athletically running up walls and performing acrobatic cartwheels. Try that sort of stuff while you’re actually being shot at and chances are if the bullets don’t get you, a severely pulled hamstring will. Die with dignity, not with a dead leg.

Keanu Reeves

Woah. Harsh. It’s been a long road for Keanu Reeves post-‘Matrix’ trilogy, and if we’re being entirely honest with ourselves, he’s not particularly excelled himself back in the real world. ‘Constantine’? A misfire. ‘Street Kings’? Didn’t see it and neither did you. ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’? The day you lost two hours. ‘47 Ronin’? Only the biggest flop of all time. We’ll give him ‘A Scanner Darkly’ but his après-Neo CV hardly pops off the page. As sad Keanu glumly eats another sandwich, we bet he’s wishing he could plug himself back in ‘The Matrix’ and take that blue pill.

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Image credits: Warner Bros./Gothsinhotweather/REX/ITV/Twitter