watching movies one cup at a time

I remember seeing the first Matrix trailer during the Super Bowl that year. It was pretty minimal. Basically all it consisted of was the line “What Is The Matrix?” accompanied by the now infamous shot of Keanu Reeves bending backwards, dodging bullets in impossible slow motion. But the cultural reaction was immediate. “Did you see that? What the hell IS the Matrix?” The buzz was started.

Honestly I wasn’t too impressed by the commercial. It definitely looked like a cool movie and I did think I’d go see it, but I figured it was just another “virtual reality” movie. Towards the end of the ’90s, there was a big wave of movies taking advantage of the internet boom and people’s fascination with anything that had the word “cyber” in it. Mixed in with that were “end-of-the-millennium” fears tied into the whole Y2K virus thing (remember that? Pure nonsense). And some general mistrust of technology going too far into our private lives as some folks claimed the internet would take us over like a computer virus. So there were these lame psuedo-sci fi-cyber movies like Johnnie Mnemonic (also starring Reeves) that were getting spit out that never lived up to expectations. And along comes the Matrix with terrible actor Keanu again and I wasn’t setting the bar too high for this one.

As the film got closer to opening, we got more images from the flick. Guns, black leather, martial arts and Laurence Fishburne looking badass. Okay, you got my full attention, what the hell is the matrix? My guess was they were talking about some kind of virtual reality thing like in the movie They Live. And if you broke out of it, you would see the world without the virtual reality cover over it. Kind of like someone turning the lights on you can see the person you’re talking to is really a robot or an alien or something. No big deal. Boy was I wrong.

It takes a LOT to surprise me these days when it comes to movies. I have seen so many I can usually predict what’s going to happen based on the same tried-and-true formulas that get recycled over and over. Plus little things like if the filmmakers include something in the movie that seems irrelevant at the time, chances are it is really really relevant. Like when they linger a little too long on a character that seems insignificant, chances are that’s the serial killer or the serial killer’s next victim. So often I can see stuff coming a mile away. Not the Matrix. Oh no. The movie is going along, it’s real good, I’m liking it. Carrie-Ann Moss at the beginning was awesome. Then we get to the scene where Neo can take the blue pill or the red pill. Still I’m totally expecting the virtual reality typical story where it’s going to be like someone turning on a light. Then I get surprised. I get completely surprised.

Keanu’s character, Neo wakes up in a liquid pod high on a tower FILLED with liquid pods. A huge robot spider thing sees he’s awake and literally flushes him to be disposed of. He gets thrown around and eventually picked up by Laurence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus’ ship where Morpheus says “Welcome to the real world.”

Oh S***! I did not see that coming at all. Holy chicken chunks, what’s going on here? Humans as batteries? Planet taken over by machines? The world is a blacked-out hell where humans are grown in fields? It was a lot to take it and that’s why it was so refreshing. It was an original story, original look, original special effects first used ever in this film. It had so much going for it that set off a cultural nuclear bomb. Everyone saw this movie and everyone couldn’t get enough.

Hundreds of imitators followed and you can still see it’s influence all over the place - TV, movies, music, visual art. Coming out in 1999, right before the new millennium, it captured a moment perfectly and set the world on fire.

What I particularly liked about the movie was that it challenged the whole idea of what’s real. It did so in a literal sense but also in a philosophical sense. The human slaves in the Matrix think they are in a real environment and that’s based purely on brain impulses. Basically their brains are in that real environment even though it doesn’t actually exist in a physical form and they aren’t really anywhere except a pod somewhere. But if the brain thinks it’s real, isn’t it real? The character, Cypher, wanted to go back into the Matrix as a slave because he didn’t care if it was real or not. He wanted the created reality over the actual reality, and his mind wouldn’t know the difference. So what is real? I also loved Agent Smith’s whole monologue on the human race being a virus on the planet. It’s pretty convincing if you think about it.

Add that to some kick-ass fight scenes, groundbreaking special effects, truly frightening robot squid things, and a whole Christ allegory and you’ve got one amazing flick.

More soon.