Equilibrium is still Christian Bale’s most important sci-fi movie

The first thing you typically hear about Equilibrium, Christian Bale’s 2002 dystopian sci-fi action movie, is that it’s a knockoff of The Matrix. That actually isn’t true. Equilibrium was already in the works when The Matrix hit theaters in 1999, and while it’s possible director Kurt Wimmer borrowed some ideas from the Wachowskis, either intentionally or through cultural osmosis, his movie is definitively its own thing — even if it still suffers from living in the shadow of one of the greatest films ever made.