As good a movie as The Matrix unquestionably is, venturing into many interesting thoughts and philosophies, one has to understand that the father of all of this is William Gibson.
He invented not only cyberspace, but also the Matrix; the place in which you interact with information in physical form. This his hero Case did in Neuromancer (1984), and this is something Johnny Mnemonic did.
What the Wachowski brothers have done is to take it to another level, give it a little twist: What if the physical manifestations of information started to question their own existance? What is reality?
When the people in Gibson's novels are trying to get in to cyberspace, the people in Wachowski's movie are trying to get out. This is a pivotal thing that not many have cared to take notice of. People have been so busy declaring The Matrix so unique that they cannot see that Gibson already did it, and Philip K. Dick before him.
He invented not only cyberspace, but also the Matrix; the place in which you interact with information in physical form. This his hero Case did in Neuromancer (1984), and this is something Johnny Mnemonic did.
What the Wachowski brothers have done is to take it to another level, give it a little twist: What if the physical manifestations of information started to question their own existance? What is reality?
When the people in Gibson's novels are trying to get in to cyberspace, the people in Wachowski's movie are trying to get out. This is a pivotal thing that not many have cared to take notice of. People have been so busy declaring The Matrix so unique that they cannot see that Gibson already did it, and Philip K. Dick before him.