The Matrix
Christ is one prototype for comic book superheroes: he transcends earthly laws and fights evil powers. His first episode may have ended badly, with that bloody business on the cross, but the Second Coming promises a blockbuster sequel. And in The Matrix Andy and Larry Wachowski–a Chicago duo who graduated from writing Marvel comic books to making movies inflected with comic graphics–cast Keanu Reeves as a Christlike hero whose Net moniker is Neo. He is “the One,” prophesied to return to earth as the savior of humanity, which is enslaved by the Matrix, an all-encompassing virtual-reality program overseen by omnipotent computers. Neo performs miracles and smites devils by rewriting code: here Christ is the ur-hacker.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Larry Wachowski told American Cinematographer that the main goal in The Matrix was to make “an intellectual action movie.” Yet critics have been quick to point out the film’s borrowings from other sci-fi movies, dismissing its Christian touches as so much pseudophilosophical pastiche. More impressive than the Wachowskis’ knowing sci-fi allusions, however, are their coherently interlaced themes of Christian theology and the deconstruction of cyber-dystopias. What’s most amazing about this $60 million secular escapist fantasy–driven by 12,000-frames-per-second special effects–is its evangelizing for Christ, Marx, and cultural philosopher Jean Baudrillard to a computer-literate teen demographic.
Marxist imagery of false consciousness and institutional opiates also abounds, though the pedagogy of the oppressed has been updated for the computer-literate. What Neo never realizes until making contact with Morpheus is that reality as he knows it is a massive, almost seamless simulation. (The sign outside on the skyscraper where Neo works reads “METACORTEX,” but the sign inside reads “METR CORTECH.”) A few angst-ridden souls like Neo sense that the world is awry, but the vast majority don’t have a clue. Our minds live in the Matrix while our bodies lie immobilized in translucent pod-beds, stacked like the curved stories of Marina Towers, where we dream our lives, eyes shut in a collective hallucination. Computers believe that they’ve evolved beyond us, but they need us as batteries to run on: we’re each good for 120 volts, generated by synapses in our central nervous systems, and for 25,000 BTUs of heat.
The Matrix does a good job of repackaging Baudrillard’s critique of hyperreality, as well as riffing on Christ, Marx, Lewis Carroll, and L. Frank Baum. Just as George Lucas repopularized mythologist Joseph Campbell in Star Wars, the Wachowskis in The Matrix glamorize deconstructionism as a radical weapon for decoding signs and unplugging the masses from their virtual-reality opiates. The Matrix offers more than a thrill ride, illuminating the Wachowskis’ belief “in the importance of mythology and the way it informs culture.” They also flatter their youthful fans by encouraging them to identify with Reeves’s neo-Christ. “We never free a mind once it reaches a certain age,” explains Morpheus. “Most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.”
