Quote Originally Posted by Reddish Mage View Post
I would really like to know where else you were introduced at the age of 11 to 1) post-modern deconstructionist and post-nihilism type media 2) Hollywood media featuring more slender vulnerable action hero guys and kick-ass females 3) mystical-philosophical-cyberpunk 4) total illusion scenarios.

Heck your pretty precocious if you already were exposed: post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk, manga-style media or even media in which the messianic hero has to go on a heavy trippy vision quest with a lot of people saying he's a failure and he can't do it.

The matrix is pretty ground-breaking for how trippy they make the story, the characters are not stock Hollywood types, and the philosophy isn't exactly something pre-teens are overexposed to.
It's not so much the Descartes' demon angle that's a cliche (or at least it wasn't at the time, before everyone started copying The Matrix) it's the various vacuous pseudo-profundities and hackneyed feelgood claptrap about the power of love that makes the philosophy of The Mateix subpar