The matrix was many young people's first introduction to rudimentary concepts of philosophy. Most of them aren't even that "deep", but given that the average youth of today has been given as much encouragement to read and expand their knowledge as the average Hun was encouraged to PLEASE sack our cities, we really don't enjoy living that much after all, it's not that surprising that so many people thought the matrix was original, deep, or... i dunno, meaningful.

I found it quite alarming that after the Wikowski (whatever their name is) brothers were sued for and found guilty of stealing the whole plot to The Matrix from some old woman who'd submitted it to a publishing company they worked for years ago, all the little Matrix fanboys who'd been praising these ripoff artists as genuises and possibly prophets turned with unbridled venom upon the woman who actually wrote it, and said she was just in it for the money and trying to slander the names of their heros.

I wish I could say that sort of pathos was original, but the stupidity inherent in the human species is the only thing that's remotely meaningful in all of this.

The Da Vinci code is, from all i've heard, a nice little work of fiction. It brings up the Merovingian legends again which we hadn't heard of in a while (and, surprise surprise, were ripped off for the Matrix sequels), and it probably, from what I can tell, touches on the Cathars a bit as well.

The thing is, it's fiction. and yet you've got hordes of braindead suburbanites thinking that Jesus got it on and populated the world with superbabies.

Sure, why not. while we're at it, Zeus peed on a woman in a sea chest and Persius came about from it and killed a gorgon sister.

Now THAT was original.