not sure for others, but knowing martial arts myself, the fight scenes are horrible. The storyline is ok, but odd...I am talking about the last one? The one where he halted the machines in the "real" world?
and I actually like Keanu, lol
To me, Matrix was cheesy...like a dork fest gone bad...in which all the dorks actually think they are cool...taking themselves a little too serious, hehe.
Matrix - cosplay convention...with a serious twist
go rent Warriors of Virtue and Casshern...both combined would be a perfect basis for DBZ in terms of appearance and design. They really need people who know the stuff. Heck, even the funny man, Stephen Chow knows martial arts...and you realize it when you see him do it.
I don't even consider the Matrix sequels as legitimate sequels to the greatness that is the original Matrix. The sequels were horrendous, over the top, completely unnecessary and exploitative, kinda like DragonBall GT actually.
I know what you mean about the martial arts not being truly authentic, but I personally like it that way: simplified and focused... I'd rather have talented actors who do some adequate martial arts training rather then really bad actors who are real life ninjas - I find those movies get distracting when it just focuses on martial arts on a technical level rather than making the moves relevant to every shot, as we see in Hollywood.
I don't see how you can get authentic martial arts into DBZ either... the manga and the TV show never portrayed their martial arts styles in that way, it was always over the top and unrealistic, like matching fist to fist punches, fighting and blocking with legs while crossing arms, doing back flip kicks, etc...
I don't agree with the Matrix being dorky, it actually has a tremendous amount of class for a movie of its genre and is a technical and artistic masterpiece in film making, I think one of the many defining films of our time.
What I find dorky are some fans who tend to focus a little too much on the superficial elements of the movie - and I also find the spin-offs and hype-machine pretty dorky (Animatrix, sequels, video game, bullet-time parodies, etc..) But as a standalone film, myself being a very picky film-enthusiast, watching it was one of the best experiences of my life, and I enjoy revisiting the film over and over again, picking up things I hadn't picked up before.
I will look into those two movies you suggested. Casshern looks really good in particular.