The Matrix

For the month of May, I will be looking at a series that looked like it had some potential with the first movie, but the sequels were really poor. You might be thinking, “That could be a number of franchises.” True, but I’m talking about a series that Nostalgia Critic already covered last year. In case you don’t know, I’m talking about “The Matrix series.” That’s right, May will be “Matrix Month” on this blog. Let’s get started with the 1999 adrenaline-rushing action flick “The Matrix.”

Thomas Anderson, played by Keanu Reeves, is a computer programmer by day and a hacker by night, called Neo in the cyber world. His employer, played by David Aston, notices that he has a problem with authority. Neo is trying to find Morpheus, a legendary hacker who knows the answer to the question he keeps thinking: What is the Matrix? There is a lot of talk about it in the cyber world but no one knows the answer.

Trinity, played by the hot Carrie-Anne Moss, calls Neo to a dance club and warns him that he is being hunted by the authorities who believe Morpheus is the most dangerous man alive. Neo is not able to escape these three Secret Service looking agents, Neo is captured and interrogated by the evil Agent Smith, played by Hugo Weaving. Smith and his two men, played by Paul Goddard and Robert Taylor, put a centipede-looking tracking device in his body and Trinity later removes it while she is driving him to meet Morpheus.

Neo has two options to choose from. Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne, gives him two pills. The blue pill will let him stay in his current life while the red pill lets him enter the Matrix where he will be able to learn about it. He chooses the red pill, and the truth is almost more than he can comprehend. The reality he thought was real is actually created and run by advanced machines who get their powers from hibernating womb pods that have sleeping humans. People are nothing to these machines other than batteries. The everyday world of modern buildings, busy streets, work places, and dance clubs are a computer-generated dream world, “a neural-interactive simulation.” However, Morpheus is a free human and with a small team of compatriots, he wants to protect the secret location of Zion, a human monopoly, and work to free their people.

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat said in their review, “This super-duper science fiction film, winner of four Academy Awards, is a pop postmodern treasure-trove of images and references from literature, religion, other movies, mythology, science, and technology. Directors Larry and Andy Wachowski, who also wrote the screenplay, have designed it so you can pick and choose your own thematic entry points and re-experience the drama again and again.” You could look at this film as an exploration of the fight between machines and human beings. Look at the speech by Agent Smith, one of the highly intelligent cyber-human, to his sworn enemy, Morpheus: “There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern [as humanity]: a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet. You are the plague, and we are the cure.”

This movie will be of special interest to Christians as the approach to this film calls Neo a Christ figure. At the beginning of the movie, a hacker arrives at Neo’s door with some money to buy mescaline and says, “Hallelujah! You’re my savior, man, my own personal Jesus Christ.” After he meets Morpheus, Neo is told he is “The One” (Neo is an anagram for One) they have been waiting for to free humans from their captivity. In one of the most interesting scenes in the film, he meets the Oracle, played by Gloria Foster, an African American in her kitchen. She tells him words of wisdom as well as freshly baked cookies. The Oracle has been in the resistance movement from the start and has predicted the arrival of the One who will bring freedom to the people. The Oracle tells Neo, “You’ve got the gift but it looks like you’re waiting for something.”

She’s right. Neo must first go under more training in the Matrix. He fights with Cypher, played by the great Joe Pantoliano, a traitor inside the resistance movement, and fails a leap of faith jump. Brussat said, “The filmmakers swerve away from the essence of the Christian Gospel when they make this Christ figure into a liberator who uses excessive violence to achieve his goals. Like so many others, the Wachowski brothers can't get beyond the myth of redemptive violence, the traditional linchpin of American cultural history and a central message of many Hollywood movies. The life-restoring kiss that Trinity gives to the dead Neo is a touching image of love as resurrection but not even that healing scene can wipe away the disappointment we feel that blazing guns are proffered as the inevitable way to fight the evil ones in power.”

Brussat goes on to say, “Some viewers have identified Gnostic and Buddhist references in The Matrix, and this is another way to enter this story.” Here, Neo is a good-hearted man on the path to enlightenment who finds out that the suffering of the world is because of ignorance, greed, craving, and attachment. The tests and trials he endures in his martial arts training with Morpheus makes him see the power of the mind to change conditions and bring the change. A young boy, played by Rowan Witt, waiting to meet the Oracle shows this ability to think outside of the box.

In the climactic fight with Agent Smith, Neo’s imagination and instinct makes him bend and break the rules which the cyber-humans are not able to do. Brussat credited, “This scene holds the key to what makes The Matrix such an enthralling adventure on so many different levels. The vast and untapped potential of imagination is the force that can save the human race and release us from enslavement to ignorance and the follies of craving and attachment.” In the opening scene, the film sums up what everything is. Neo is asleep in front of his computer and his monitor says, “Wake up, Neo.”

This is actually a good movie that everyone should check out. If you haven’t seen it yet, see it now. This is a must. It’s not like one of the greatest movies ever made, but it’s still a good movie that is worth seeing. I had only seen parts of this movie when I was a teenager. When I was 14, I was sleeping over my aunt's house and I finally watched the whole movie there since my cousin had borrowed it from another one of our cousins. It wasn't until I was in college that I saw the movie again since I was taking a class where I studied the English Bible as a piece of literature (which shocked me when I saw that as the title of the class). I was working with another one of my classmates on a project where we were assigned to watch this movie and talk about the Christian symbolism in it, which it's filled with. Just see the movie to find out. 

Bear in mind that this is the only movie in the series that has a re-watch value, which I will go into further when I review the sequels.

What can be said about the sequels? Those who have seen the sequels already know what to say about them, but I will let you know my thoughts next week in the second installment of “The Matrix Month.”