What I wonder is the bullet time effect. If memory serves me well, I think bullet time was used first in the movie Lost in Space when they entered light speed. It shows 1 or 2 of the members jumping into each other's arms and the camera zooms around them and freezes. I remember this because everyone in the theatre was like "WOAH COOL!" because they didn't understand why they froze (theory has it when you enter light speed, time slows down to such an extent that time around you travels very fast while you do not age. Hence why when they exited light speed they were in the future by like 15 years.)
And it was also used in the movie Wing Commander, same concept, they entered a hyper space jump point and time froze as the camera moved around. However I think this movie came out just after The Matrix. Lemme check
Edit:
Ok, according to this site (NOT IMDB rubthebuddahs), Wing Commander came out BEFORE The Matrix
http://www.movie-list.com/w/wingcommander.shtml
http://www.movie-list.com/m/matrix.shtml
But according to this article on MSNBC, they make it out as if The Matrix was the first to use bullet time (do Ctrl+F and type bullet)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/850165.asp?
Um ok...but it was used before The Matrix, so I guess you can say they copied other movies. I'd write to MSNBC and tell them my argument but they wouldn't give a ****.Nothing from the movie has been swiped as often as “bullet time,” the dazzling FX trick in which the camera appears to **** 360 degrees around a central image. It was jammed into “Charlie’s Angels” and parodied in “Shrek” and “Scary Movie.” If you watched the Super Bowl last year, you saw a crude version of it on Fox, which used the technology (cleverly, for a change) to show big plays from numerous angles. At first, Silver says, the Wachowskis were tickled by the copycatting, but soon they began noticing fight scenes—like the one in “Charlie’s Angels”—that were shot exactly like theirs.