Three years ago the National Film Registry chose 25 films to be preserved in the Library of Congress, something they have done every year since 1989 in an effort to highlight the need to preserve American film heritage. Under the conditions of the National Film Preservation Act, these movies are selected for inclusion based on their cultural, historical or aesthetical significance. Back in 2012, one of these films was The Matrix. The Wachowskis sci-fi thriller was released thirteen years earlier and between now and then has grossed $463 million, spawning two sequels as well as numerous video games, comics and animated short movies, all of which the original directors had a hand in. For those of you too young or too anti-Keanu Reeves to be familiar with it, the Matrix is the story of a future dystopia created by sentinel machines with the purpose of subduing humankind so that their bodies can be used as an energy source. When a computer hacker named Neo learns that the reailty he lives in isnt actually reailty at all, he joins the fight against his oppressors, and its a pretty impressive fight to witness. With stunning action sequences and bullet ballet that popularised the use of 'bullet time' slow motion in Hollywood, this mind-boggling movie is a thrill ride from start to finish. Trouble is, its a ride thats been done countless times before, and done in such a similar fashion that you begin to realise that The Matrix is simply a mish-mash of all the stand-out titles from the cyberpunk genre it claims to be a front runner of. Its one thing to pay homage to anothers work in your own (as they do with the coloured pills that reference Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland) but taking that work and using it as part of your own without so much as bothering to change names, plots and appearances is a little below the belt. Here are 7 examples of the Wachowskis doing exactly that.
