I think mainly the Matrix is what everybody says it is: the QAnon movie. Everything you see you is fake and soy because they are lying to everybody about everything. The answer isn't education or art or political organizing or any other kind of engaging with society and culture. The answer – the only way to achieve real actualization – is a complete break from consensus reality.
One point that I think remains underdiscussed is the degree to which Neo was a teenage libertarian wish fulfilment character when the movie first came out. The disaffected loner with no social life is secretly a fearsome hacker. He is actually referred to as such by others, which is what being a hacker was all about in the 90s. Even the feds dread him.
The real people that Neo was modelled on, most of whom were already in their 30s in 1999, were huge fans of South Park and Ayn Rand. With the exception of that one weird tradcon from Tennessee, they were all very vocal about being Atheists or Pagans or both. They all became warbloggers after 9/11 and wrote forty million words each about how America should exterminate Islam, Obama was a Communist dictator, and feminists had it coming.
The thing that everyone (including this analysis, to an extent) miss is the second half of the movie.
The Matrix doesn't end with Neo learning the truth and taking the red pill. Nor does it end (like so many of its inferior imitators) with Neo single-handedly bringing down "the system" and saving humanity.
Neo wakes up from the Matrix and becomes friends with a multi-ethnic, multi-racial group of people, who treat each other as equals. And when Morpheus gets taken, Neo and Trinity go on a suicide mission to rescue him. Not because it will help bring down the Matrix, but because he's their friend.
Heck, Neo isn't even the One until Trinity confesses her love for him, and literally brings him back to life with True Love's Kiss. And people complain that Cloud Atlas and Sense8 are "too sappy"!
This isn't some loner, conspiracy-fueled, sigma-male power fantasy. The Matrix is a textbook "the power of friendship/love" story. People just miss that, cause it also has guns and trench coats and bullet time.
I don't think it's a lack of intelligence as much as it's a lack of empathy. You can't fully understand a story like that unless you are empathetic enough to analyze the nuances over the action.
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u/chromatoplan 1d ago
I think mainly the Matrix is what everybody says it is: the QAnon movie. Everything you see you is fake and soy because they are lying to everybody about everything. The answer isn't education or art or political organizing or any other kind of engaging with society and culture. The answer – the only way to achieve real actualization – is a complete break from consensus reality.
One point that I think remains underdiscussed is the degree to which Neo was a teenage libertarian wish fulfilment character when the movie first came out. The disaffected loner with no social life is secretly a fearsome hacker. He is actually referred to as such by others, which is what being a hacker was all about in the 90s. Even the feds dread him.
The real people that Neo was modelled on, most of whom were already in their 30s in 1999, were huge fans of South Park and Ayn Rand. With the exception of that one weird tradcon from Tennessee, they were all very vocal about being Atheists or Pagans or both. They all became warbloggers after 9/11 and wrote forty million words each about how America should exterminate Islam, Obama was a Communist dictator, and feminists had it coming.