ComplainerMan

Really, though. It’s so black and white. Either you like it or you hate it, which sort of makes sense considering the nature of the film. Personally, I like it, so I’ll be going from that angle for the most part. I won’t gush, I’ll touch all bases, for better or for worse. First of all, Matrix is a futuristic, philosophical statement about the nature of man and machine. That much is vague, but relatively certain. It is set in a world where the prime of humankind is trapped within a digital world known as (I wonder) the Matrix.

Humanity realized the dream of a sentient artificial intelligence. It grew strong, and powerful, thriving off of solar energy. As the course of causality would have it, humanity came to fear their creation, and began to develop weapons against it. The A.I. detected this threat and responded accordingly, forcing the humans to shroud the skies, cutting off the energy source of the machines. Again, as causality would have it, the machines found another power source. Bioelectricity, the source of which was human beings. Crap, right? But how would they harvest the energy from unwilling humans? Growing them without allowing consciousness would not permit the development required to produce the optimal energy.

The Matrix was born as a method of control. It was made to be a virtual world to allow the mind to develop without real experience, a world with programmed rules. Rules, rigid as they were, were meant to be broken. That’s where The One comes in. Thomas Anderson in his false life, Neo in the real world.  His purpose is to defy the system and lead humanity to freedom through a series of rule-defiant “miracles.”

Now you see, that’s where the overbearingly philosophical aspect comes into play. I mean, hell, Matrix could be an allegory for humanity’s dependence on machines, a plight against the development of A.I., a comparison between those with power and those without… There are a whole lot of ways to interpret the movie. Or, you can not look deep at all and just accept everything at face-value. In that case, it would be a robots and guns action movie with lots of special effects that lacks meaning. Hence, black and white.

That’s a fair amount of positive and neutral stuff, so I’ll focus on the negatives now, just to keep it fair. I think characterization is a good place to start, so let’s bash on Keanu Reeves a little bit. Thomas Anderson starts off as an everyday, cynical sort of guy with no real aspirations aside from meeting the enigma Morpheus. In the end, he is sought by Morpheus and recognized as Neo, his hacker alias. After Neo’s rescued from the Matrix, he begins a steady spiral into the stoic, combat philosopher badass. Fortunately, he spends most of the movie learning how to be a badass while screwing it up most of the time. Y’know, that’s actually not so negative.

To be fair, Matrix is good movie. They keep everything pretty on-the-level the first time around, but when come the sequels… Yeah. I loathe to admit, but I’ll have to side with the popular opinion to a fault. The first movie was fantastic, original, visually appealing, and the sequels were less satisfactory. I believe the other movies came off as less appealing because they dramatically altered the tone and feel of the series. What was once centralized within the Matrix, the digital prison, soon grew to focus more on the underground, high-grade steampunk city and all the robe-wearing inhabitants. It’s like trying to mix ancient history with far future. It just feels wrong. Everyone lives like a tribe, yet in a world where so many non-sentient machines are readily available? Eh.

That’s all I’ve got. Overall, it’s a good movie with great effects and a great message or three. It doesn’t get pretentious until the sequels, so you can feel free to like the first one without fear of being judged. Enjoy!