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Movie Review: The Matrix (Trilogy)

Reviewed October 2006

by Obi Akwani, MGV Editor

The Matrix
Matrix Reloaded
Matrix Revolutions

Science fiction or otherwise, the Matrix in my opinion is one of the greatest movies ever made. Its subject matter is at once deep and complex and of critical concern to our civilization. It tackles the questions surrounding power, freedom and society. The cinematographers took advantage of technological advancements to introduce surreal elements that not only helped the actors achieve dazzling performances; they also fit right into the theme of the movie.

The movie begins most promisingly as some eavesdroppers are cyber-monitoring the activities of one individual. It is a nightmarish futuristic scenario of government agents ever more watching and monitoring everyone's activities and eliminating or deleting dissidents. The Matrix is a world of such high professional specialization that people are stark ignorant of everything beyond their specialty.

The object of the cyber-monitors is to recruit the individual whose activities -- his sleeping, his waking, his eating and his toiletry habits -- they are following electronically.

And you'll be quite in order to ask, how that is possible. It so happens that this is a world where everything is electronic or more appropriately, everything consists of bits and bites. All reality has been translated, by some twist that is only possible in a fictional world, into the zeros and ones with which computers represent the reality of substances and ideas.

And who is the architect of this feat? It is none other than the computer machines themselves. Not too far into the movie, we are given to know how this happened. These higher machines, long the workhorses of humanity had, unbeknown to the human beings they served, been gradually taking over control. There is nothing atypical about that. Since the advent of the computer into common usage there has been an increased fascination with artificial intelligence and its possibilities. That has been the basis of many science fiction movies from 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Terminator. In the Matrix, the artificial intelligence idea is taken to its ultimate imaginative conclusion. The machines have not only gained true intelligence, they have applied that intelligence to the problem of creating a completely ordered world. The laws of nature do not apply anymore, or so it seems. Humans realize too late what is happening.

The war that ensues is between man and machine. But unlike in the other science fiction movies – The Terminator, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger played the ultimate killer machine, and A Space Odyssey – the machines in the Matrix do not lose the war. Like in the remake of that other science fiction movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with Canadian actor, Donald Sutherland, the script for the Matrix appears to have been written by the alien invaders, the triumphant machines.

This virtual machine world of the Matrix is populated by completely ignorant humans, whose oblivion is so total that they have no inkling of their thrall-slave status to the machines.

However, the victory of the machines appears not to be so complete because of the presence of a rebel group of humans. But as the movie progresses it emerges that this indeed is a script written for the machines. The ending of the movie is most disappointing, unless you are one of the machines. The victory of the machines is indeed complete. The total annihilation of the humans is prevented by the machines recognition of their mutual need for each other.

The Matrix with its spectacular special effects and supernatural physical feats of its characters appears to be beyond human experience. But this is never the case in any artistic creation. In fact, every story told, every movie made, is based on human experience. In that vein, the Matrix is based on contemporary human experience. It is a metaphor for our contemporary social conditions.

The makers of the movie draw upon the symbols of past cultural expressions to make their points in the Matrix. This is evident in the themes and character names in the movie.

In the movie, the world as we know it is destroyed. In the war with the machines, as narrated by Captain Morpheus, one of the leaders of the human rebellion, man had scorched the sky obliterating sunlight in an attempt to deprive the machines of a source of energy. This is probably a metaphor for the excesses of industrial society, because beyond the metaphor, there is no explanation as to how man expected to survive without the sun. In society's push for industrial production and technological advancement, it is destroying the very environment upon which it depends.

Having lost the sun in the war, the victorious machines decide to put the humans to vegetative slave labor in order to produce the energy to ensure their survival. In doing this, the machines create an imaginary world in which they hold human imagination captive. In this virtual world, humans can live out their entire existence without moving a muscle. Human future in such existence is bleak. The machines have achieved a total omnipotent power over humans. But there is yet hope for the humans.

Through a fluke on the part of the machine architects of the Matrix there is a fundamental flaw in the program designed to run the virtual world they created for their human thralls. This anomaly in the program of the Matrix results in one of the human thralls regaining his natural consciousness and proceeding to free others as well. Eventually this renegade band of conscious humans establishes an underground colony from where they launch a rebellion to overthrow the machines and free humanity completely.

The Matrix can be viewed as a criticism of contemporary social conditions especially that part of it that seeks to penalize everything and everyone that does not conform to the status quo.

The names of the main characters have symbolic meaning as well. Morpheus comes from Greek mythology. It is the name of the god of dreams. Captain Morpheus is the dreamer, the one who keeps up the hope of the humans for an eventual redemption or liberation from the machines. The humans expect the coming of a savior whom they call the One. This 'The One' is an appellation taken directly out of Neo-Platonic philosophy. In Neo-Platonism ‘The One’ is perfect and the source of everything.

The humans in the Matrix, led by Morpheus, find their 'One' in a character by the name of Thomas Anderson. In ordinary life, Anderson is an Internet hacker with the cyber moniker 'Neo.' Before he is found by Morpheus and his crew, which includes a female character called Trinity, Neo is one of the hordes of ignorant humans who populate the Matrix.

Neo's sense of destiny is reinforced by the Oracle, a female character unique to the Matrix, who seems capable of foretelling the future and apparently aids the humans in their quest for freedom. Through her he meets the Merovingian, a powerful character who appears to have no existence beyond the Matrix. There are many such characters: Mr. Smith, who is one of many agents of the system; the Architect, who claims to be the creator of the Matrix; and the Key Maker, an unassuming individual whose only function appears to be to make keys for every use.

Neo fights valiantly growing in power and a sense of destiny, but toward the end (in Reloaded, the second of the Matrix trilogy) he is convinced by the Architect that the only way to save his fellow humans is for him to rejoin the Matrix by returning to the source. This is classic Neo-Platonism. In the doctrin of Neo-Platonism redemption comes to the debased soul when it works its way back into purity or to the source. This is the choice which the Architect presents to Neo. However, the source in the Matrix is nothing but a mechanical contraption where human beings are help prisoners in a vegetable state.

Before leaving the Architect, Neo warns him that he should make sure they do not meet again. There is inherent threat in that warning which the Architect seems to fully understand and accept. He assures Neo that they wouldn't meet again.

In the final installment, Revolutions, Neo first destroys the renegade and independent former agent Smith, before allowing himself to be plugged back into the Matrix as a final sacrifice that saves free humanity from anihilation by the machines.