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In the early 2000s, The Matrix franchise was at the very cutting edge of VFX. The first movie pioneered photorealistic virtual environments and dazzled audiences with the “bullet time” effect. When it came time for the sequels, the Wachowskis pushed the boat out even further, breaking new ground in digital doubles of Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving.
Viewed now, the more the CGI pushes the boundaries, the more obvious the flaws are. This means the fights in 1999’s The Matrix – which are based around the actual actors – look the best, and now there’s a fun fan theory as to why that might be.
If the Matrix is a computer system, perhaps the more crazy the fights get, the more processing power is being used. Anyone with an older gaming PC will know that you sometimes need to dial back visual settings to achieve a smoother frame rate, so could this be what’s happening here?
Replies don’t give this much credit, pointing out that the Matrix is already processing a huge amount of data every second and wonders whether “managing a thousand different people would be harder than managing a thousand of the same Agent?” Processing problems aside, it’s true that by the final rain-soaked fight in The Matrix Revolutions, the system is beginning to fall apart as the Smith virus takes hold.
Then again, having rewatched the trilogy not so long ago, you might be surprised how many of these effects stood up to scrutiny. Sure, it’s easy to see the problems in the Burly Brawl when watched in 4K, but we think the later Revolutions fights have aged well – particularly in comparison to genuinely shoddy modern CGI as seen in The Flash.
But let’s just pretend 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections didn’t happen….