10 Cinematic Reasons Why Growing Up in the 90s-00s Was the Best

2. The Perfect Age to See Action Films Re-Defined After "The Matrix"

We now live in a day and age where we can download any film in existence to our computer if we so sought it out enough (slight exaggeration). If we want to revisit the Bruce Lee action days, there's nothing to stop us. But one fundamental thing we got to see early on in our earlier stages of development was the impact one movie can have on an entire genre of long-withstanding film. Enter arguably the greatest year for film, 1999, and The Matrix. The Wachowski's, with their topsy-turny vision of a film, completely rewrote the rules of perception when it came to action. Directors stopped being interested in the slam-bang for a while and started to find the beauty in the chaos. The sensibility in taking time to slow things down and analyze them from angles that refused to be stagnant. It's not that movies before The Matrix were simple plant-a-camera-and-shoot action films, it's that the movie made action and how it was perceived integral. Because of that, we have a plethora of ways to view action films, and seeing this movie at its hype in our youth really helped cultivate both the idea that everything there is to be done in Hollywood maybe hasn't been done, and to reinvigorate filmmaking in a genre, you just had to be fearlessly inventive. But of course, there is only one reason and one reason alone that made, particularly, the 2000s the best time to grow up with cinema.
 
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Contributor
Contributor

Cameron Carpenter is an aspiring screenwriter, current film and journalism student, and self-diagnosed cinephile, which only sounds bad in certain circles. Devoted fan of comics, movies, theater, Jesus Christ, Sidney Lumet, and Peter O'Toole, he sometimes spends too much time on his Scribd and comicbookmovie.com, but doesn't think you're one to judge, devoted reader. You can follow him on Twitter to watch him talk to people you didn't know exist. Oh, and Daredevil is quite the big deal around here (my head).