-Morpheus, The Matrix
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Today marks a special occasion: 18 years since The Matrix hit Australian cinemas for
the first time on 8th April 1999. This cult classic not only transformed
the visual science fiction genre with its groundbreaking special effects and
its incorporation of old Kung Fu wire techniques and choreography, it
questioned our societal and scientific perspective on the nature of reality.
What is real? What makes it real? Culturally influential
and now all grown up, here are six reasons The
Matrix remains my absolute favourite film of all time.
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| Image borrowed from Wondersinthedark.wordpress |
1. Style
Does this really need elaboration? Everything about this
masterpiece’s visual style was unique and paved the way for later films. The
Sydney cityscapes, the sunglasses, the severe haircuts, the green filter and
the camera angles – not to mention bullet
time, but we’ll get to that shortly – all combine beautifully to create the
Matrix ‘look’, but nothing holds it
together like the leather jumpsuits and trench coats. Just… so cool. An entirely
superficial look at my own works of fiction reveal that Renatus’s personal
style is heavily influenced by Neo’s. Wonder if he’s a fan, too?
2. Concept
You’ve been living in
a dream world, Neo. It was eighteen years ago, and nowadays when you watch
a brilliantly trippy movie (e.g., Inception)
people explain it to you as “the modern Matrix”
to describe the phenomena of being so utterly blown away by the implications of
a work of fiction that you actually need to watch it again to make sure it
really was just fiction. This was the cultural impact of The Matrix, aside from an internet full of What if I told you… memes. The idea that everything we call ‘real’
could be reduced to only electrical impulses interpreted by our primitive
brains and could not be substantiated as real in any furthermore convincing
sense seemed fine until we watched a film that said our brains were imprisoned
in a virtual reality to keep us distracted while evil robots fed on our inert
bodies. Eek! But there’s an upside – if you become aware of the system, you can
break free, and learn to push the boundaries of that false reality. Hence, Kung
Fu. Hence, bullet time. So much awesome.
3. Vision
We’ve all seen robot takeover stories, watched the
predictable build-up and the epic fight scenes between the disenfranchised but
heroic humans and the evil killer robots, which we eventually triumph over. But
what if that war has already been and gone, and we lost? What if we were
crushed so completely that even the memory of the obliteration of our way of
life has been forgotten to the ages, our minds enslaved to serve the purpose of
our own wayward machine creations even as we live our lives believing this will
never happen? You think that’s air you’re
breathing? This is not a future we’re often subjected to in cinema, where
the whitewashed handsome hero pilot can always pull out just one more stop to
save us all. Every time I watch (and rewatch… and rewatch) this film, I’m blown
away by the vision of the Wachowskis, appearing to set their story in the
modern day but actually placing our reality well into a future we should
already see coming. Because robots are bad.
4. Action
Yes! I can finally talk about bullet time, the cinematic technique
made famous by this film and generally used pretty poorly and excessively in
successive movies both in this franchise and in others. Some films had dabbled
with this technique previously, achieving a similar effect, but this is where
the magic happened, baby. Used artfully to demonstrate the Woke characters’
talent for bending the rules of the computer reality, in particular their
ability to jump really high before kicking people awesomely or Neo’s incredible
speed, the technique of using a ring of cameras to capture sequential images of
an event from many angles (later stitched together to create a temporal effect)
gained its name from the very cool scene in which Neo dodges bullets.
On the topic of action, the fight choreography is epic, and all the BS is totally
explainable within the realm of the storytelling, which so few big action films
bother to do. Old-school Kung Fu wire work and perfectly executed martial
artistry combine to give us some timelessly awesome sequences. Here we can make
special mention of the dojo scene, Neo vs Smith, and Trinity’s escape at the
beginning, but nothing does it like the lobby shootout, a.k.a. my favourite
scene in any film EVER.
5. Alice parallels
I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone reading a blog
entitled Six Impossible Things Before
Breakfast that I am something of an Alice
fan, though an adolescence of adoring both The
Matrix and its 150-year-old influencer Alice
in Wonderland has left me unsure which love came first and birthed the
other. The Matrix draws on themes and
references from the trip-out of a children’s tale about a little girl who maybe dreams up a world beyond her
imagining and struggles to apply her mundane, socialised logic to the wavery
rules of this strange new reality. The validity of her time in Wonderland is
left in question but the value of Alice’s tenacious curiosity and
open-mindedness in getting her as far as she gets is not. Neo’s experience runs
parallel to Alice’s.
6. Impact
A surprisingly philosophical film, The Matrix has provided me with many inspiring quotes to consider while I contemplate life and existence, but this is not the only way in which this film has influenced me. In so many ways, my fascination with the world the Wachowskis created has shaped the person I have become - encouraged me to question my own perceptions, demanded me to look past what I'm told to take as fact, and even introduced me to the world of fanfiction, where I learned so much about experimenting with writing that I still apply today.
Happy Australian birthday, Matrix. Welcome to the real world.
