Thread: Was the Matrix a rip off?

Not to stear away from the exciting topic of who's choreographed/fake fighting is best, but...

If you are thinking that the common thread between Ghost in the Shell and the Matrix are the questions of "What is real?", "What comprises a person?", "What can we really know is true?" then they are both rip offs.

A movie that pops to mind that predates both is Brazil. But none of them can point blame at the others. The questions they explore have been around for quite a long time. These films explore basic ideas of epistemology in a somewhat simple fashion.

The similarities come because as computers have become better and better at portraying things to us and we begin to envision what they may do in the future-- they become the perfect vehicle to use as a means of considering that what we see and do may not be "real".

But Plato wrote of the men in the cave watching shadows on the wall quite a while back and he was responding to ideas that were around long before he came on the scene.

This is not to even mention that almost all art of any kind is derivative in some way or another. It is impossible for it to be otherwise. People (normal ones any way) do not live in a vacuum.

I liked the matrix but Ghost in the Shell is a much better film in my opinion. It really spends more time looking at the issues of what makes a person a person. And it is the only anime I have run across yet that quotes the Bible. Real interesting to me.

Well- the balcony is closed until next time.