What Made "The Matrix" a Hit?

[Kim Welch]

What do you think made the "Matrix" a hit?

Update, November 2026
The Matrix (1999) combined a strong mythic story with groundbreaking visual effects like "bullet time," Hong Kong-style wire work and a distinctive green-tinted look. It worked because the effects served the story and its themes, not the other way around.

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[DerekEastham]

Marketing

 

[Digigenic]

The Ultimate Hack

The Ultimate Hack

The Ultimate Hack

Instead of marketing the first Matrix to the mainstream by traditional means, they created a cult following on the internet. Marketing for maximum sociological impact with an audience who essentially controlled the internet and the spread of its content was pure marketing genius.
The story itself was not only interesting on screen, but it stimulated conversation, debates, particularly online, where the film's target audience could identify with the prime characters, being hackers or wannabe hackers, they felt they had been spoken to directly and that they were a part of it, i.e. changing their handles to Neo, Morph, Trinity, etc.
Indeed, they were a part of it; they were a part of a mass promotional scheme of the film to millions of people by creating a subculture within a subculture in the biggest promotional pipeline available, the internet. By doing this, the film's popularity spread like a virus, and was the ultimate hack. So, I'm going to say it was initially the internet cult following that made the first one such a success, and of course marketing the rest of the series to the masses through all available outlets like it was the second coming of Christ enveloped the general mainstream.

 

[Nexus]

In a moment of resurrection and return on my part, I would have to say it was a success because of the inner ideas that the movie created. The usual, be careful about what you create because what you create will control you kind of thing. This idea wasn't just said like in other movies, that's what this was based on. For those that are not aware of the storyline BEFORE the movies, as can be understood in watching "The Animatrix" Men had created the robots and put them into the world, much like what the city of Chicago looked like with all of the robots in "I, Robot," but that's a different movie of great caliber.

In "The Animatrix" the writers of "The Matrix" and the others showed the world exactly how not to act. The Men had created these machines to be their slaves and over the course of time, the machines evolved. AI (artificial intelligence) had taken over in some machines' minds and the Robots soon began to resist the Human race. At one point the Machines coordinated an assassination of a group of highly important people (I think it was the UN). This spawned a great hate towards the Robots, and caused them to move to a remote location and begin their own civilization.

When the Machines began to have an economical gain on the Humans, as evident by the Machines' incredible ability to create new technologies instantaneously (seeing as how they only crunch ones and zeros to make logical programs and formulas) The Humans soon attacked and with an overwhelming ability to counterattack any human barrage... the Machines quickly defeated the first attack. Because of the need for Solar power, the Humans caused the sky to be forever covered by clouds. This, if I remember correctly, caused the Machines to begin using a different source of energy, Humans.

In order to skip much of the storyline, the Humans were driven underground to close to the Earth's core, and created a city of the last of the Human race, Zion.

--To Be Continued--