Why Everybody Has Read The Matrix Wrong, Part 1: Why The Matrix Was Neither Groundbreaking Nor Particularly Impressive If You Looked Below the Surface

 

Over the last twenty five years I've watched the Wachowski siblings The Matrix and the first two sequels countless times. I've made no secret of the fact that I feel that they completely frittered away the talent showed in their debut film Bound with films that are nothing but popcorn.

Now pedants would call me a snob because the opinion of pop culture and quite a few major critics is that The Matrix is one of the most revolutionary films ever made. I suspect that's simply because none of those people had any experience with so much of the movies of that era or the literature of that time.

In recent years we've seen an entire internet following of a kind of misogyny based on the so-called 'Red Pill' version of it and the Wachowskis have recent taken to arguing that the 'manosphere' has misinterpreted their vision. On that they have a point – but I'm pretty sure it's not one they want to be proud of.

By this point I've seen the film enough times – more than I comfortably want to – to have gathered quite a few impressions of it. And the truth is I'm pretty sure everybody from day one has been reading The Matrix wrong. So I will be discussed why so many people have misinterpreted it. First from the stand point of culture and genre.

Let's start with the fact that in the 1990s there were a lot of movies that were based on the idea of virtual reality. Some of them were just dumb action films like the bizarrely dumb Denzel Washington vehicle Virtuosity in which Washington played a cop tracked with hunting down Sid 6.7 (a movie Russell Crowe has to have regretted making for the last thirty years) a combinations of hundreds of serial killers. Far more inventive was the 1995 neo-noir masterpiece Strange Days in which Kathryn Bigelow showed us a picture of 1999 Lost Angeles were one is fed virtual fantasies as a kind of addiction. Bleak and extremely well-acted by Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Lewis and Angela Bassett this movie bombed at the box office but became a cult classic.

Most incredibly in 1998 came Alex Proyas' Dark City  a movie that Roger Ebert named the best film of the year ahead of Saving Private Ryan and would one day name one of the greatest films ever made. For sheer scope and imagination it remains one of the most dazzling films of all time and it's hard not to imagine filmmakers like Christopher Nolan being influenced years and decades later. The movie takes place in a distant galaxy on a planet controlled by The Strangers, a mythical alien race who 'mix and match the memories of our inhabitants like so much paint'. Rufus Sewell plays John Murdoch an amnesiac who thinks he is a serial killer and has vague memories of a distant time. William Hurt plays an inspector trying to solve a set of killings. Kiefer Sutherland plays Dr. Schreiber who has been forced to work with them.

There have been arguments as to whether the final cut is the true way to see this film. All I know is that I've seen it several times and in any version it is a masterpiece. I didn't see a film this visually stunning with a plot until I saw Inception in the theaters and the performances are superb all the way through, particularly Sutherland who has never played a character more physically and emotionally broken in his film repertoire before and rarely has since. It's radically daring, has a plot to match and is more horrifying in its ideas that anything else.

All of which is to say that by comparison there isn't anything close to that level of originality in The Matrix. The idea of people living in a virtual simulation was one that sci-fi writers such as William Gibson had been writing for years and in truth it wasn't that different plot-wise from so many stories in The Twilight Zone. Indeed Star Trek: The Next Generation did at least one story and shows from the 1990s The Outer Limits and Lois & Clark: The Adventures of Superman covered the same ground in an hour.  As Ebert noted there was nothing that remarkable about the virtual reality in The Matrix. "It's like real life, only more expensive."

Similarly the idea of being controlled by an AI was also a plot of numerous sci-fi novels and TV shows over the years. The only difference between the Machines in the Matrix and HAL or The Quartermass Experiment was better effects. From the idea of using technology as a plot point Strange  Days  is infinitely superior.

I think part of the reason The Matrix seems like its about more than it is has to do with the fact that they cast Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus. Fishburne's presence is much like Alec Guiness in Star Wars: his voice and delivery lends gravitas to dialogue that really doesn't say that much at the end of the day. I'll grant you the screenplay is better than Lucas's but that's saying very little.  In his review of Reloaded Ebert compared it to Laurence Olivier giving a speech at the Oscars in 1978. Jon Voight was wowed by it at the time but when it was over it was clear it was just drivel.

That's a pretty fair comparison to so much of the dialogue Fishburne delivers throughout the trilogy and you could extend to so many of the other actors and actresses such as Gloria Foster and Mary Alice as The Oracle when they talk about Neo's mission and him being the One. Does what they say mean anything? Not really. Does it sound like its important? Absolutely and you understand why Keanu Reeves only questions himself after he's left their presence. I wouldn't want to argue with them either even if I knew they weren't making any sense.

Now before I go any further I don't hate the first Matrix film. I think its immensely overrated and I'm depressed that the Wachowskis chose to go from Bound to a movie that is just a fancier and more elaborate version of 1992's The Lawnmower Man in terms of basic plot idea. For what it is The Matrix is a very good film. It is a technological masterpiece that deserved the Oscars it won, the action sequences are incredibly good and many of the moments do haunt me, such as how Cypher reveals his betrayal of Morpheus and then kills Apac and Switch while they are powerless to do anything. (I really wish there had been a way to bring Joe Pantiliano back for the sequels.). I think Carrie-Ann Moss is by far the best thing of the entire trilogy as Trinity and I'm sorry that career never took off the way it should have. And if it The Matrix had just ended after the first film I probably would have been willing to let it go. Its in the sequels that the larger problem becomes clear – and no its not just the plot becomes harder to comprehend.

It's that at the end of the day there are no good guys when it comes to the final two movies. Let me explain.

Morpheus tells Neo when he's finally able to see and move what the Matrix is. I think its been lost over all the brilliant kung fu and Keanu Reeves flying and agents and famous actors saying deep sounding things in some of the most purple prose that anyone except Chris Carter has written what it actually is. The thing is Morpheus tells us that its there to turn a human being into a Duracell Battery.

We're told and shown 'the endless fields where humans are no long born…we are grown…where they liquify to dead to feed the living." Interestingly outside of the simulation we never go to one of those fields and I don't think that's a coincidence.

Now every sci-fi film or TV show I've seen before as well the majority that have happen since that deal with the subjugation of Earth by some force, whether it is an alien race or intelligent machines, involves some form of resistance to overthrow it and the purpose of the lead character is to help the resistance do so. In fact Dark City itself does exactly that and there are clear parallels between Murdoch and Schreiber's relationship and Neo and Morpheus.

Schreiber knows that Murdoch is different from the others and once Murdoch finds Schreiber tells him in great detail who the Strangers are and who Murdoch has been in relation to the planet. He reveals in great detail that there is 'nothing beyond the City'. He then helps John realize his true potential and find away to defeat the Strangers in a climatic battle. And in the aftermath Murdoch rebuilds the planet into something close to Earth.

Morpheus, like Schreiber is present to reveal Neo's potential the change the world, in this case to shape the Matrix. And the ending of the first film seems to imply that 'The One' is now going to help liberate humanity from the rule of the Machines and the Matrix. Except…that is not the point of Reloaded and Revolutions. (I have yet to see Resurrections but since the basic premise is that basically nothing has changed since the third film I'm going to leave it out.)

Now I've watched both films multiple times over the years and while the basic plot remains hard to follow under all of the portentous monologues that interrupts the action sequences the main purpose seems to be to end the war between the Machines and Zion.  The Machines wants to kill everyone in Zion and that is because Morpheus, Neo and the rest of those in the various ships are…

…liberating a handful of people. I'm not sure of the exact number but its somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000. We never hear of any raids on the fields, any attempts to destroy the Machines or to dissolve the Matrix itself which in case you've forgotten is the main source of the Machines power. Without them they'd theoretically be gone.

Now no matter how many times I watch these films I only see three sets of combatants: the people of Zion, the Machines and Agent Smith who seems to represent a threat to all of them. The Wachowskis never seem intent on explaining how this happened, apparently being more interested in seeing Keanu Reeves fight hundreds of Hugo Weavings. They never really explain how Smith manages to be both in the Matrix and one of the survivors at the same time even though they have two whole movies to do so.

Now I've never been able to understand who the climax plays out and how Neo manages to defeat all of the hundreds of thousands of Smiths by letting himself be sacrificed to one. I know there are countless websites that will explain this point to me but that's not the point of this article. What I do know is that in the denouement the Architect and the Oracle have a conversation and The Oracle says:

"What about the others? The ones who want out?"

The Architect says: "Obviously they will be set free."

Now I grant you I may have missed the point through the jubilation of the War being ended, the fact that Neo somehow is dead but might come back and the presence of a rainbow. But it sounds to me that all that these two movies have been about is not some kind of liberation of mankind or defeating the Machines but essentially some kind of Cold War where the Machines agree to leave Zion alone and Zion agrees to let the Machines keep growing humans and feeding them with the dead as long as you allow those who want to leave to join our community.

And of course the Matrix will be allowed to continue to exist and countless millions will be kept as unknowing slaves while occasionally people of Zion come in to do martial arts and give long speeches. (Again Resurrection would seem to argue that was the case.)

Now I have no use for Star Wars  even Episodes 4-6 but at least when Jedi ended everyone in the galaxy had been liberated from the rule of The Empire. They weren't celebrating because they reached détente with Palpatine and he'd agreed to let them keep a handful of planets. But that is the victory that Revolutions is supposed to give us as the cause for all the people we've seen die horribly in the last two movies. This is what Trinity died for? This is what Neo died for? (Yes I know there both alive in the next film but there was a fifteen year gap. The viewer could be forgiven for thinking that.)

Neo himself seems willing to acknowledge that this was never the point of what he was doing. When the Architect tells him that his failure to comply will lead to a systemic failure which causes the Matrix to shut down, Neo says calmly: "You won't do that. You need humans to survive." The Architect says just as calmly: "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept." And need I remind you that a few minutes later he is willing to let the entire species die to save Trinity.  Some white savior he is.

The fact that in three films the Wachowskis weren't willing to do what Alex Proyas was more than willing to do in one is not the main reason I have so many problems with the first three Matrix films but let's not pretend it’s not a big one.  We've followed Neo's journey for three films, six and a half hours, endless fights, lots of special effects and dialogue that makes the kind of things George Lucas wrote over the years seems like Noel Coward. And what's the end result? The majority of humanity – 99 percent of it, according to the film's own plot  – is still exactly where it was when Morpheus started searching for him! Mr. Anderson might have well taken the blue pill for all the good he did for everyone he was working in his software company during this period.

All of the trilogies I've seen like this (Lord of the Rings and Nolan's Dark Knight Series) try to either build their movies to a climax with the heroes journey.  The various Phases of the MCU have a similar dynamic (I haven't seen them but that's what I've observed). Action film franchises like Fast & Furious have a single story at the center, those movies based off books have an endgame in mind and for all their flaws each set of trilogies in Star Wars had a goal at the end.  The first three Matrix films are the only franchise I've seen in nearly thirty years of viewing film where, for all of the action and special effects, you could make a convincing argument that the status quo is the same from before the films began.  And considering that Resurrections seemed to reverse everything that ended that trilogy there's an argument that even what happened in Zion and with the Machines was pushed back to zero as well.

I'm not saying this as an elitist who has problems with blockbuster films: for all the formulaic aspects to the overwhelming majority they have the benefit of having a beginning, middle and end, even when they take multiple films to get there.  The Matrix films almost by themselves don't seem willing to get that far. And considering that the second two films are ostensibly all about the war between the Machines and Zion, it's telling the Wachowskis spent so much of the second film as well as the third in The Matrix where theoretically the major conflict isn't happening.  At a certain level I get it – this is more fun that watching the somewhat cliched post-apocalyptic world that is the aftermath – but it undercuts the argument that these films are about anything deeper than getting to see Keanu Reeves fly through the air. The threat of the apocalypse is, as Smith himself, almost as artificial as the Matrix itself.

So that's why I believe that the place the original film as well as the franchise has been another one of those pop culture stand-outs where millions have seized on it even though there's no there there. In the second part I'm going to deal with why there very well might political interpretation of it that is elitist and bigoted – and it's not the one the right has misconstrued it as for its own gain.