The Matrix

 Theatre is life,
 Cinema is art,
 Television is furniture
  -- GarrisonKeillor? (attr?)

 Life is life,
 Cinema is cinema,
 Television is television

 Live is life,
 na-naa-naa-na-naa

What is the Matrix? The 2D array of cubicles in your company.

Yeah, and when Neo woke up, he was PrairieDogging it. <grin>

I like The Matrix. But I find it disturbing that it is owned by AOL (see AmericaOnline), along with many of my other favorite movies.

Well, you better get used to it now that we have allowed AOL and Time Warner to become the biggest monopoly in the world. I'm flabbergasted that people complain left and right about MicroSoft but allow a merger of the monopoly AOL (90% market share!) and Time Warner - monopoly on cable in many cities in the US, monopoly on TV stations, monopoly on magazines, monopoly on newspapers in many cities in the US. I have already written my congressman. Everyone should.

The Matrix. (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0133093) I just went for the visuals, since I'm an old computer graphics hand. But I found the base plot line tolerable, even interesting, the plot and acting tolerable, and the visuals Extremely well integrated into the movie - not the "let's stop the movie for 10 seconds so everyone can see our computer generation capabilities", but fully woven into the action. So I liked it, and have found a few others with the same experience. -- Alistair

I, too, liked The Matrix. While it's kind of a dumb plot, it somehow spoke to me, inspired me to get out there and make stuff happen. And the slow-motion bullet-dodging thing is a really good example of how flow feels when you've got it right. -- RonJeffries

I found myself folding up into my "thinking really hard during flow" pose during this movie. (I can tell because my feet go to sleep.) My major complaint is that the hero blows away a lot of innocent bystanders at the climax. -- BetsyHanesPerry

I thought it was a little better than average, and would have been a better story if it had less GratuitousViolence: three minutes of automatic fire isn't that much better than thirty seconds. Thinking about it afterwards, I rather think in the rooftop scene the guy with the pistol would have missed at that range even without magic, but then I'm JustaProgrammer, not a marksman. -- MartinPool

Agents ought to be quite accurate and stable and have fairly good weaponry, so apart from the StormTrooper? complex they could be expected to hit better than a real-life human facing similar conditions.

Ontheotherhand: Pointless Violence DOES make a film interesting. Think about how boring it would have been with no shooting at all.

Remember: Every "AI" he killed was also the death of an innocent bystander.

They were hostages, not bystanders. When you resist an oppressive group like the Matrix's machines, it's quite likely that hostages will die and there's not much you can really do about it. (Unless you can negotiate, which is not a factor in The Matrix.) -- JoshuaJuran

As for the lobby shootout, I found it very much resembled a video game. Next time you watch the movie, pay attention to that scene, and listen to the music (it reminds me of the Quake II soundtrack). And notice that when Neo and Trinity have cleared the room and finally enter the elevator, the bodies have already vanished. When the elevator blows up, the bullet damage is gone. It's not reality, it's not real, and it's not meant to be. -- jj

: Interesting idea, but you are wrong about the damage in the lobby. If you watch the scene closely, you will see that there actually is something lying in the back of the hall, what might as well be the dead bodies.
: When the elevator blows up, damages from the prior shooting can be seen too. That they are not as heavy as the ones seen before is explained on IMDb by the fact, that this is the back of the hall, which is less damaged in the prior scene too. The damage still seems to be too little. Search for "hallway" at http://us.imdb.com/Goofs?0133093

Also check out the Neo/Morpheus matchup - Mortal Kombat, anyone? -- jj

Innocent? Bystanders? Remember the training program (the one with "The Woman in the Red Dress") in which Morpheus explains to Neo "Most of these people are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to defend it." Its not just that the Agents can take over the virtual bodies of real people, but that they lack the outside perspective which would allow them to aid in their own liberation. But no comment is made about trying not to kill innocent bystanders. The guards in the lobby, on the roof top, anyone who isn't currently an agent. And just as in Star Wars, there is no time to show the other side of the coin, the effects of the loss of life. Not even in the case of Cypher's rampage and the death of the crew. Dramatic pacing and all that rot. Mortal Kombat is not such a bad analogy, as this whole movie has the feel of a video game, of an unreality, even without a reset button. Sure, Neo gets to come back from the dead, but only him. The Oracle said that either he or Morpheus would die, and sure enough he did, but it didn't stick. "You rise to fight again." -- DougPhilips

The Matrix was filmed in SydneyCity, even if the street names are from Chicago. For Sydney residents, it's an odd feeling to see the place where we live up on the big screen, more so to know we are living in the "pinnacle of human civilization". Also, large areas of central Sydney were buzzed by black helicopters for several weeks while they were filming it. But I liked the Matrix anyway (I've only seen it twice, my wife has seen it three times, and other Sydneysiders four or five times - much better than the Phantom Menace). -- JamesNoble

I second that odd feeling. I've been out of Sydney for two years and had no idea that the film was made there. I go along expecting a surreal hollywood special effects extravaganza and bam! I'm back home. Weird. Even the interior sets were unmistakably Australian. The film itself was somewhat satisfying - like a poor man's version of "Ubik" - but that one unbearable point in the premise, using humans as power sources, did it a disservice. I think I'll have to see it again to figure out if I actually like it.

I had a related experience recently watching KoyAanisQatsi with a bunch of friends who are American manufacturing engineers. They kept saying things like, "Okay, that's the Carlsbad flower fields", "yeah, that's the San Onofre reactor", and "Wow, that Grand Canyon sure is something". For me and most Australian viewers, these images had been abstract, mysterious, and iconic. For these guys, a lot of the movie was just a travelogue. But the weirdest part was when we got to some of the factory-floor sequences. Huge intimidating spider-like arms blast rivets into skeletal alien automobile chassis in a terrifying firehose of welding sparks and my geek friends say, "cool! You know we could use a rig like that down on the new TRZN line ..." -- PeterMerel

The end was shit but I liked the wake-up sequence and something about the whole film did make me feel quite trippy once I was back outside. -- AweToss

Yeah... didn't like the pseudo-sleeping beauty bit! Too cheesy. But I still can't help quoting from the movie! -- AsKer?

Though it would still have been BadHollywoodScience?, a better explanation that wouldn't destroy the plot would be that the ArtificialIntelligences wanted highly parallel processors, and since humans only use 10% of their brains, they could plug the humans in and get the other 90 -- DanHankins

What about the following explanation: the AIs are programmed to maximize the number of humans that lead a "satisfying" live, where "satisfying" is so defined that the AI cannot simply keep the humans in coma all the time but has to spend resources on all kinds of expensive stuff. So the AI figures out that it can fulfill its mission best (i.e. most humans at given resource limits) by simply hooking all humans up in this VR illusion.

In this setup, the AI would essentially be "benevolent". It would still fight the Resistance, of course, since they use resources inefficiently. -- StephanHouben

Yes, if they needed energy from a biological source they would have been better off burning the goo they fed to the enslaved humans.

....or use the energy from guinea pig brains; they're used to enslavement anyways.

Perhaps the intelligences of the Matrix themselves are computed in the spare cycles of the sleepers brains? And our "dreams" are bleed-through from the thoughts of those AIs into our own minds? You could have fun with such a concept - when Neo jacked out he might have carried a vital algorithm away locked in his head, the same thing which makes him "the One" being also the key to the entire distributed computer.

In this sense, 'the search for the one' becomes a crapshoot - just keep jacking out people until you get one holding some key data

What I enjoyed most about The Matrix was how it plays a trick on the audience that watches it. Some of the audience went to see the film for surface reasons. They wanted to see an action film, and that's what they saw. Some wanted to see a special effects film, and that's what they focused on. Others wanted to see violence and gun-play, and that's what they got.

Much like Neo waking up to see his life was a surface illusion, the film itself presents an illusion to the audience. If you were told that The Matrix was really a film about ZenBuddhism and related philosophies, would you have gone to see the film? Probably not. So like the illusion the machines created for the humans in The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers create an illusion for you. The machines create their illusion to keep the humans subservient. The Wachoski brothers create their illusion to keep the audience from running away from a film featuring a ton of Eastern philosophy.

It's a film about sunglasses, isn't it?

Think of it as your mother mashing up aspirin in apple sauce. -- JohnPassaniti

Hrm. EasternPhilosophy? Like what?

I'd say the entire theme of illusion and being confined by perceived limitations that do not actually exist. Examples are the sparring scene and the spoon-bending scene. I can't remember the exact words...

"Do you think my speed and strength have anything to do with my muscles?"

"Don't try to bend the spoon. That's impossible... There is no spoon. It's then you realize that it's not the spoon that bends but rather your mind."

-- JasonYip

ThereIsNoSpoon

N'est pas une pipe.

Morpheus had several great quotes in this vein - if he'd been short, green, and with long ears (and had spoken twisted Germanic syntax) he could have been in another movie... To wit:

"You think that's air you're breathing?"

YouThinkThatsCodeYoureWriting

and my personal favorite

"Stop trying to hit me, and hit me.

StopTryingToCodeMeAndCodeMe

Oh, you mean EasternAphorisms! Ok.

Do, or do not. There is no try. --Short green guy

Movies pitched based on their computer graphics effects suck. VR movies with high body counts suck. Real VR forces you to out-think & out-maneuver your opponent. Dumb violence gives dumb movies undeserved energy. In-flight movies suck.

That resistance leader with the little mirrored sunglasses was cool, though. Think about the meaning of him watching you and reflecting back to you your illusion of yourself... ;-)

-- PhilipCraigPlumlee

Whilst browsing the AntiPatternsBook, I came across, at the bottom of page 131, a reference to a certain short story; if I may be so bold as to quote directly from the text:

: "The reality of today's software technology is analogous to an intriguing short story in Stephen Gaskin's 'Mind at Play' [Gaskin79]. In the story, people are driving shiny new cars and living comfortable lives. However, there is one man who wants to see the world as it really exists. He approaches an authority figure who can remove all illusions from his perception. Then, when he looks at the world, he sees people walking in the streets pretending to be driving fancy cars. In other words, the luxurious lifestyles were phony. In the end, the man recants, and asks to be returned to his prior state of disillusionment."

I'd never heard of StephenGaskin before. I am not the first person to be struck by this passage.

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~vbm/2000_07_09_archive.html

-- TomAnderson

ps whilst editing, I glance up from the text-area to the title bar of my browser - it says "Edit TheMatrix" :).

Probably a common theme. Jack Vance explored this in his 1965 short story "Eyes of the Overworld". -- AndyPierce

See also...

http://www.whatisthematrix.com/ -- They have cool comics set in the matrix world at that site.
http://www.thisistherealmatrix.com/ -- Rather cool ASCII implementation of the above. Commissioned by BalticMill?, Newcastle.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0133093
http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Movies_and_Film/Titles/Science_Fiction_and_Fantasy/Matrix__The/
MoviesToConsider or maybe even MoviesWorthBuying

Zen? I don't see that. More like "The Karate Kid" with a decent choreographer. "Wax on, wax off." -- RIH

And some wanted to see a deep-and-meaningful movie full of EasternAphorisms and insights into Zen. That's what they got.

The "world-as-illusion" storyline isn't new, and it's not especially Zen-like. If anything, the main thrust of the Matrix (that you can be outside of the system, and need to be outside to control it) is against the main thrust of Zen teachings (as I understand them, anyway). Neo had to wake up to become the Chosen One; he couldn't have stayed inside and gained the skills that he did.

While Neo stepped outside to see the way things are, he had to step back in before he could apply it. Somehow, the Matrix defies sterile manipulation from a computer console, even for the AIs. -- LexSpoon

In so far as the movie has a main thrust, it would be to realize as a movie the comic book ideas that the directors had. As far as need to be outside to control it, not quite. Neo couldn't be outside the system, he had to be immersed in it. He had to question everything, to overthrow the belief in the rules as presented to him. Very Zen, for some values of "Very" and "Zen." You cannot control the system from outside, you can only control it by becoming "one" with it. Neo's being "outside the system" allowed for an easier way to come to that realization, but his awakening to the system had to be from his experiences within the system. -- DougPhilips

"He had to question everything"? Then it's odd that after Neo awoke from his pod, he never once wondered whether what he was experiencing - the reality behind the machine-mediated, mundane illusion - was real. This blasé acceptance of the new situation was the opposite of questioning the nature of reality. This undermined any claim the movie might have to being a film for thinking people. Great flash combined with sixth grade philosophy.

'They had to leave something for the next two movies. Bet final conclusion will be something MIB-esq, like it's all just TalkieToster? dreaming."

I loved this movie, especially since one cannot really take it seriously. In the hallway scene, when Neo makes a one-handed cartwheel while shooting, he additionally just had to pick his nose with his pinky and you would have the perfect WeirdAl video. -- MarkoSchulz

Hmm... it seems quite popular to dislike the movie.

Not as much as to like it, from the people I've ran into.

Personally, I thought it had all the messianism of the StarWars trilogy with none of the wonder. The part where the helicopter hit the skyscraper was pretty rad, though. -- FrancisHwang

I liked it better when it was called DarkCity. -- EricHodges

For Gods sake, guys, it's the ChristMessiahSaviour? story for the 21st Century. (Older than time itself.) Hero needs to 'know', finds out info but doesn't believe in himself/his abilities, begins to understand in possibility, begins to believe in self but needs to 'fight', is tested, finally understands transcendence; the only way to overcome is to transform from within with 'love & light'. The next movie will be about how he 'wakes up' the sleeping population. Let he who has eyes see.

If you haven't watched it enough yet, try again and look for the message. You may like to note that EVERY SINGLE PROP (every sign, every piece of graffiti, every chair, every bullet) in this movie has a double or hidden meaning. Happy hunting! -- CamillaWatson?