When we restarted Mutant Reviewers — rebooted it, even — in 2020, one of the big jobs was to continue the project of bringing over all of the older reviews from the previous website and format them here. For me, that meant a whole lot of blasts-from-the-past reading, and it was kind of funny to note that we loved to name-drop certain big movies at the time all over the place like Moulin Rouge and X-Men.

But no film is probably referenced more on this site than The Matrix, at least in the original 1997-2014 run we had. Mutant Reviewers happened to come into being right about the time that this movie took the geek world by storm, and we kind of couldn’t shut up about it for a decade or so afterward. To be fair, so many other filmmakers were trying to ape it too, so it’s not like this was solely on us.

Fast-forward to September 2024 — the 25th anniversary of The Matrix. The film actually came out in March 1999, so this wasn’t the anniversary month, but close enough. And I got all excited to see that it was coming back to theaters for a weekend showing as part of Fathom Events. So I rounded up my two teenagers and took them to a more grown-up scifi film than they had seen before.

I was curious how they’d take it. Except for seeing a mention of this movie in a Foxtrot comic, my kids were born well after The Matrix phenomenon and had no impression of it, as a film or as pop culture. I guess it would’ve been like someone taking a younger me to see a Clint Eastwood western. I didn’t expect them to love it or anything, but I had this opportunity to share a significant movie milestone on the big screen with them, so I took it.

It was annoying that before the movie, they showed some really dumb “reflections on The Matrix” short film that tried to spoil everything about it. I actually had my kids close their eyes and put their fingers in their ears for this — I know, that’s so silly, but my wife agreed when I told her when we got home. There’s only one chance to experience something for the first time, and you don’t want it ruined.

So how was it? For me, it was… fine? I haven’t seen The Matrix since about the mid-2000s, so it’s definitely been a while. Some parts held up. Some really didn’t. Large plot holes leaped out at me (why would Morpheus tell Neo on a knowingly tapped line where to meet him? And why weren’t the Agents using the bug tracker?). There was some eye-rolling slow-motion pretentiousness that made me feel like the directors were trying to copy John Woo. And the “love” story with Trinity never made sense and still comes out of nowhere as does Neo’s deus ex resurrection.

But it’s still a pretty great flick. The whole otherworldly tone of the Matrix comes through rather nicely when the characters are in it, the escape down the inside of the building walls was cool, and — for the most part — the CGI is rock-solid. I’d forgotten that this was a long movie, some two-and-a-half hours, but the pacing kept it from being a chore.

What did my children think with their fresh perspective? My son said it was “cool” but didn’t talk much about it afterward the way he does when he sees older movies (like Jurassic Park) that really makes an impression. And my geeky daughter kind of hated it. She liked the concept and the music, she said, but it was darker than she prefers and she really disliked all the people being killed. It’s probably why I haven’t shown her Temple of Doom yet.

It’s OK. I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to try to push my pop culture on my kids… too much. They can like what I like and they can not. It’s their choice. I really wasn’t expecting them to think that this was the best thing since virtual sliced bread, especially living in an era where movies are CGI’d out of their minds.

But now I kind of want to show my daughter Dark City and see if I can spark her interest with a more thoughtful take on this same sort of world.