The Matrix (1999)
I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it.
THE SUMMARY: A humble computer programmer and hacker is confronted with the opportunity to see the truth that artificial intelligence has trapped humanity in an artificial reality, and fulfills his prophecy to fight the illusion and break others from its grip. I’d seen at least some of this movie long ago, and of course I was familiar with its most famous ‘red pill’ concept, but on a fresh and full watch, The Matrix is truly excellent. Like its premise, once it is seen, it cannot be unseen.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER DRACULLAMA: What if we really are in the Matrix and are products of our programming and environment? A great action movie and mindbender.
THE BEST: Even with a major life event for me this weekend (as discussed in my Saturday video post), I can’t stop thinking about all the ways The Matrix makes me… well, think. On several of these themes, there’s an essay’s worth of possible analysis, but I’ll keep it brief to be readable.
Humans will engineer our own extinction: It’s a foregone conclusion. We’ve made survival in this world too easy, and so we’ll inadvertently manufacture our own doom, because we can’t maintain humility and have to play God. It’s a straight line from Alexa to Matrix sentinels.
Pro tip - the bad guys are anti-human: As part of an excellent performance (among several other excellent performances) from Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith, Smith speaks to Morpheus about human beings as a virus, describing us as a ‘disease,’ or a ‘cancer of this planet.’ Key point: Smith is evil because he thinks human prosperity is secondary to other environmental interests. Apply that lesson to current politics as you may.
To be so dependent on the system, you’ll fight for your own slavery: In describing the Matrix to Neo, Morpheus says most ‘are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.’ In other words, if slavery is comfortable, the slaves will fight to preserve the slavery. If government can create a class of dependents, those dependents will fight to preserve their government dependency, at the cost of their own freedom. Thus be wary of anybody offering such comfortable dependency.
Knowing something you can’t explain: When Morpheus meets Neo, he says ‘what you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life.’ It’s exactly how I feel about moral truth and its origins. I know there’s a moral order to this world - it’s plainly obvious. Where it came from I can’t explain, but I know it’s there, and it always has been. Understanding and explaining it better is why Bible Study season two kicks of soon.
I hate almost all romance, but The Matrix kinda has a point: Please spare me the obligatory romance - I just don’t care. Which is how I initially felt about Trinity’s resurrection-by-kiss with Neo. I don’t care at all about the kiss itself, but I do care about the broader truth: even with superpowers, a man doesn’t reach his full potential without a woman’s love. No money, no strength, no intelligence, no anything is a substitute for completing manhood with a wife and child. Case in point, Neo isn’t complete until he has Trinity.
Can you actually will something true?: A primary premise of the movie is that by believing he is ‘the one,’ Neo becomes ‘the one.’ Through a mindset, he wills something true. Some of this may be ‘rule-bending’ within the Matrix only, but on the general point of believing something into reality, it’s one I appreciate and hate simultaneously.
It’s certainly true that attitudes affect outcomes, to the extent they affect effort to change things we are capable of changing. But that last piece is a major qualifier. A positive attitude toward the possible can make it real. A positive attitude toward the impossible is delusion. Just because you want something to be true doesn’t make something true, and there’s nothing beneficial in pretending that it does.
So what’s the difference? I suppose it’s a question of what comes first: you, or the rules of the natural world. Great achievements happen when we discover and understand how the natural world operates and work within that framework. Degeneracy and suffering happen when we reject or deny those rules, and think we can make the rules ourselves.
We succeed when we have the humility to understand that we didn’t make the world, and only operate within it. We fail when we play God, and think the rules are up to us.
Oh yeah - the reference everyone knows, even me: Even though the ‘red pill’ meme and philosophy is well-worn now, there’s significant depth to it. Do you prefer comfortable illusion or dangerous truth? Would you rather live a lie if it means your life is easy, or know the truth and all the obstacles that come with it? There is no higher value in this world than truth itself, so making it secondary to anything is a dangerous game. Comfortable lies are only comfortable until they aren’t, when the truth emerges and the comfort disappears.
The action holds up pretty well: All of that, and I haven’t even mentioned the action chops of this movie. The gunplay is excellent, with the (albeit too brief) selection of the proper firearm for any legendary modern shootout, the MP5 (or MP5K, in this case). The martial arts work is very impressive too - much of it was done on wires, requiring significant training for the actors. While it wasn’t the first use of ‘bullet time,’ or slowing down the action to see bullet paths, The Matrix popularized the concept, which was later borrowed by many video games I played in my younger years. You don’t even have to get lost in thought to enjoy this movie. It has plenty of popcorn value in its action too.
Red pill or blue pill
Agent Smith says humanity is a virus
Great scene, other than throwing the MP5s aside
THE WORST:
How did Neo not shoot Morpheus with the helicopter minigun?: Yeah, I know - Neo didn’t believe he would shoot Morpheus, so he didn’t, because whatever Neo wants happens, or whatever the concept is here. But c’mon. Neo unloads a minigun straight at Morpheus for several sustained seconds. Morpheus should now be a smoothie for the sentinels, but he’s totally unscathed.
It has been retroactively declared pro-tranny propaganda: This is not the fault of the movie. It’s only the fault of the dudes-who-think-they’re-chicks who wrote it. In 2016 ‘Lilly’ (Andy) Wachowski gave a speech at the GLAAD media awards, discussing re-examining his and his brother’s work through ‘the lens of [their] transness.’ While Wachowski didn’t say the movie was originally written with transgender themes in mind, nearly twenty years later at the time, now the movie’s themes of ‘transformation, self-image, and identity’ are clearly transgender-relevant.
If there’s one thing more hilarious and hideous than the Wachowskis themselves, it’s the irony - transgender ideology is the ultimate illusion. There’s probably no belief the real matrix pushes harder than men and women being interchangeable. But maybe the reason the Wachowskis wrote such an excellent story is because to some extent, they experience it. They actively choose comfortable illusion. They pop the trans blue pill every day.
If Neo believes he won’t shoot Morpheus by pointing a machine gun at his face and holding down the trigger, he won’t.
‘Lilly’ pushes the blue pill
THE RATING: 5/5 Wickies. Among the elite in thought-provoking philosophy and action. Impossible to forget, even if you want to.
YOUR RATING: Vote here ⬇
NEXT WEEK: The Godfather (1972)
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