There is No Spoon- A Matrix Retrospective

It has you.

This time fifteen years ago as I was finishing out my eighth-grade year of school, I was also preparing for what was to be a great moment in my geek life. Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace was only a month away, and I could hardly contain myself. For me this was going to mark the first time that I actually got to see a Star Wars film on the silver screen. Sadly though there was a significant lack of interesting movies in the theater to tide me over at that moment. Seemingly the only thing to watch til the big release was some new sci-fi action flick called The Matrix.

Having only briefly seen a couple trailers for it (and a handful of T.V. spots on the odd occasion) The Matrix did manage to pique my interests, but only in the most marginal sense. I didn't feel any real distinctively strong compulsion to run out to my local cinema and see it on opening weekend. When its debut passed by, a close friend of mine came to me extolling the highest of praises on the picture, and encouraged me to see it as quickly as possible. In the end I'm glad that I took his advice because The Matrix almost immediately turned out to be one of my all-time favorite movies!

Ever since that first viewing I can honestly say that The Matrix still has me in the best ways possible. In fact I've actually held a Matrix trilogy marathon every April every year since 2004! Impressively enough, this year stands as my tenth whole year that I've been doing this marathon, and it has yet to loose its luster in my eyes. Of course I will concede that the second and third films are not nearly as solid as the first, but it is with good reason that The Matrix Trilogy has remained on my shelf. It's easily one of the most influential set of movies for me on a creative level.

To help further put my feelings into perspective on the matter, The Matrix was (and still is) essentially an amalgamation of all the tropes and little nerdy things I've loved throughout my life rolled into one big piece of entertainment. It was filled to the brim with high-octane over-the-top martial-arts action. The actors were all dressed in stylish and sleek, yet totally bad-ass outfits. Topnotch special effects on elements such as futuristic killer robots, battleships, and guns were littered throughout the experience. The score was a winning combo of symphonic, techno, and heavy-metal music that made me want to bang my head til my eyes hurt. Add in an endearing cast of heroes, a gloriously fun/awesome villain, a captivating universe, and you might have been solid enough to win all the awards. But it didn't stop there, as the philosophical core to the story not only put an emphasis on multiple viewings to extrapolate different interpretations of the material, but was just as engaging with its entertainment as it was indulgent with its intelligence. It even prominently featured my two favorite colors green and black. Honestly the only things this franchise was missing was a light-saber duel, a huge dragon, and someone throwing a kamehameha wave, but nobody is perfect I suppose...

From practically the outset of the first movie it was obvious that the Wachowskis were nerds just like me, and especially film enthusiasts at heart. The subtle (and sometimes blatant) nods to several pieces of media made for a fun experience if you were simply trying to catch all of the references. At its core there are shout-outs to such novels as William Gibson's genre defining Neuromancer, and literary classics like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. More philosophical works such as Serial Experiments Lain along with Simulacra and Simulation were ultimately foundational to forming the narrative's overall concept. Iconic scenes such as the sub-way showdown between Neo and Agent Smith were intended to evoke the classic spaghetti-western "pistols at high-noon" showdowns of the 1960's and 1970's. Lawrence Fishburne's role as the ever-wise Morpheus was a clear homage to the mentor archetype from near countless kung fu flicks. A great deal of the action was influenced by director John Woo, and the movie Fist of Legend, along with anime films such as Ninja Scroll, Akira, and especially Ghost in the Shell. Even aspects of the fashion seemed to be pulled from the likes of the sci-fi tabletop RPGs Shadowrun and Cyberpunk. Oddly enough, much like how it is said the machines created the matrix in the story, the Wachowskis simply amalgamated many of the things they loved in order to create an illusion everyone could believe.

All-time coolness achieved!

At the time of its release The Matrix was almost unlike anything mainstream American audiences had ever seen. If you were an avid fan of sci-fi and anime you (more than likely) had already seen aspects in one way or another that resembled The Matrix, but for a lot of people this was a mind-blowing experience in 1999. Even for someone like myself (who had been exposed to such things) it was still awe-inspiring to see the Wachowski siblings bring all of those elements to life for a (then) modern film.

It was incredibly vindicating to see audiences respond so lovingly towards The Matrix, and honestly I can't say in retrospect that I'm surprised at all by it. All of the essentials for it to become a Hollywood sensation were in place. The martial-arts choreography for the fight scenes were astounding, the gun-play sequences were groundbreaking, and innovative work on camera techniques/special effects made The Matrix an absolute spectacle to behold.

But I won't be so brazen as to declare that The Matrix was an out-right "original film." Ideas such as mankind warring against a machine empire, or virtual worlds were nothing remotely new to fiction, and were dated tropes/concepts even by 1999 standards. Chinese cinema had been creating elaborate martial-arts films for decades before The Matrix was ever conceptualized. Notions of introspective literature and religious doctrines had long been applied to entertainment before the Wachowski siblings ever put pen to paper to write their first script.The philosophical rhetoric and overtones of "What is real?" had been touched on plenty of times before by copious amounts of storytellers, and in some cases (such as the incredible Dark City) were explored vastly more in-depth more-so than The Matrix ever could. Even the film's most iconic element "bullet-time" (and the slow-motion rotating camera technique) had been utilized by bands such as Accept all the way back in the 80's for music videos. 

What The Matrix brought to the table though was a sense of flair and style that had seldom been seen on the big screen. Its cinematography was heavily inspired by western comicbooks more so than film; so much to the point that in many ways The Matrix was a comicbook movie before comicbook movies became a thing. The machines that pursued our heroes were not of the typical hominid form, but facsimiles of creatures such as squids and insects. Humanity's war against their oppressors was not so much fought in the conventional sense as it was fought literally (and figuratively) in the mind. Eastern philosophy worked in conjunction to biblical imagery instead of just focusing on one for the allusions of the story. In the end, The Matrix's greatest artistic achievement was actually making everything that felt old feel new again.

Admit it, they still look cool.

After the credits rolled on the first film everyone had only one thing on their mind: When would we get the sequel? A proper sequel to The Matrix wouldn't come until 2003, a whole four years later. In the time leading up to the sequel's release movies such as Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones had already come out, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was coming to a close. It was certainly a great time to be a geek, and in my last year of high-school I couldn't wait to see what the Wachowskis had in store to top their last installment.

Tragically The Matrix: Reloaded failed to live up to the audience's expectations, and was critically panned by the majority of its peers. Complaints of a meandering and convoluted plot, overly indulgent action and naval-gazing dialogue along with a painfully inconclusive ending were what people hounded Reloaded with, but personally I feel that The Matrix: Reloaded has gotten a bit of a bad rap. While I will agree that the first film was a far superior piece, and that Reloaded was very-much in love with its own voice and ideas, I think what we really had here was a situation where the first movie was simply so good, and so fundamentally complete that it just became too hard of an act to follow.

Despite what many have said to the contrary, Reloaded did actually manage to do quite a few things right. For one, there was a notable effort to have more world-building with the sequel. A slew of new ideas, enemies, and challenges were all introduced with Reloaded, and regardless of its overall execution it ultimately did expand what the matrix was as a setting. We upped the stakes for the heroes and villains not just from a global stance, but from a personal stance. The war between mankind and the machines grew more intense with this installment, where the fate of both the physical world and the virtual world hung in the balance. The pivotal themes of belief and sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds now worked in tandem with the new theme of finding purpose in a world where self-actualization seemed impossible. The emergence of Neo as"The One" necessitated the machines to change tactics and even upgrade their ever-deadly Agents to combat the growing human resistance. The re-introduction of Smith as a (literally viral) wild-card antagonist not only brought back a beloved villain from the first movie, but added in a much-needed element of dread. Aspects of the narrative we thought we knew for a certainty were now brought into question. We discovered greater mysteries about the matrix itself, and even the plot twist about the nature of Neo and his abilities was a legitimately good (if somewhat obfuscated) reveal.

The action sequences became even more elaborate, with one fight scene (The Burly Brawl) having more motions in its choreography alone than the entirety of the first film combined. The Chateau fight was (in many regards) an even more impressive battle than the technical achievement that The Burly Brawl brought to the table, and in my opinion the highway chase sequence in Reloaded has stood as not only a major highlight of the action Reloaded provided, but also one of the greatest chase scenes ever committed to celluloid. The scale of the chase constantly built upon itself, making things all the more pulse pounding. Characters jump from car to car to motorcycle to bridge to truck etc. all while having insane over-the-top martial arts choreography, and its iconography has managed to resonate as a great action beat to this very day in my mind.

At least they still look cool.

That isn't to say though that Reloaded doesn't deserve some of its criticisms. The dialogue and the performances were notably more stilted/wooden here, and Hugo Weaving's performance as Smith very-much traversed into narmy/campy territory. I also will not hesitate to admit that I felt Reloaded failed to truly deliver on a degree of its promises and concepts. When the prospect of such entities a ghosts, vampires, werewolves, aliens, angels, etc. was introduced as something that existed in the world of the matrix, it ultimately (in my eyes) let those ideas down hard; barring the characters known only as "The Twins" who could turn into a really awesome looking ghost form. Sometimes I like to imagine how much more amazing The Chateau Fight in Reloaded could have been if everyone (who were confirmed to be renegade programs that had crazy powers) changed into some gnarly "matrix version" of a classic film monster.

(Granted, I know what we got was the result of budgetary constraints, and it would've been ridiculously expensive to make at the time, but damn if it wouldn't have looked cool.)

The inconclusive ending for Reloaded also didn't help as it made the whole experience feel painfully incomplete to me. Thankfully we didn't wait long as the conclusion came in November of 2003. The Matrix: Revolutions was dropped into audience's laps, but yet again failed to meet expectations. After Reloaded fans were hoping for something incredible to help the series bounce back to form, but sadly Revolutions ended up coming off as an even more convoluted mess in regards to the plot, with new characters being introduced at the last possible second to the story. Out of the three films I've always felt Revolutions was the weakest, but that it also had some of the most awesomely iconic parts of the trilogy.

The battle between the humans and the machines for Zion in Revolutions was quite frankly (as far as I'm concerned) one of the coolest war scenes ever. If your tastes are anything like mine, this war had it all; sweet mech-suits, fearsome robots, and tons of bullets. I seriously don't think anyone who saw Revolutions could deny that parts like Capt. Mifune's last stand against the sentinel hoard was freaking awesome just on iconography alone. Niobe's run was also one of the most awesome ship battle/chases too, with spectacular effects and stunts all coming together to create on hell of a ride.

While aspects of these scenes did feel quite a bit cliche' at times, I can't help but think that was the point in a way. Seeing how the Matrix trilogy was the Wachowski's love letter to all the things that inspired them, I can see why some of those old-hat cliches' made it into the sequences at large. If anything else, the Wachowskis at least showed that they understood what looked cool and what was iconic for a movie.

Which brings me to the hands down, bar none, best part of Revolutions; the final fight between Neo and Smith. This was easily one of the most awesome final fights I'd ever seen at that time. As an avid anime geek (and particularly a Dragonball fan) it was so gratifying to see two characters go at it in a super-powered brawl to the death. The choreography for the fight was fantastic, as it possessed an intensity to every move that felt appropriately powerful and out of this world. The musical score of "Neodammerung" punctuated each and every blow, and has maintained its status as one of the best final fight themes of all-time for me. The stakes of the battle made every moment feel important, even down to parts of the cinematography. It was awe-inspiring to watch it unfold, and not since Star Wars Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back have I seen a silhouette battle between the hero and villain done to this high of a caliber.

I will also admit that a part of me just loves the idea of everything in a conflict coming down to one decisive battle. Knowing that Neo and Smith's last encounter was going to be them fighting it out in the middle of a gigantic thunderstorm while the rest of the world watched had me giddy with ultra-mega-nerd-joy. This scene was so evocative of all the phenomenal climaxes that the anime genre had become known for that I couldn't help but get totally pumped by it all. By the end of their epic battle I felt fulfilled almost purely by the action alone.

Just. Plain. Awesome.

In all honesty, I actually started concocting my own story after watching the entire trilogy at my first Matrix marathon, just because I found this one fight to be so inspiring. Every year that I hold my Matrix marathon I'm reminded of that first moment in April of 2004, and how the trilogy as a whole inspired an entire story and cast of characters in my mind. Now that wasn't because I thought that the trilogy was something great, but I did see ways that the plot and characters could be improved. The more that I contemplated about all the different parts, and how I would have done them, the more serious I got about writing my own story so I could do a narrative like this justice.

Granted, the idea for the story has somewhat mutated over the course of ten years, and now resembles something more akin to Star Wars, Gold Digger, and Saga (albeit with a strong Matrix-esque vibe) but the root of its inspiration has never changed. Every year I feel a little bit better about the Matrix trilogy and what the Wachowskis did with it. Surprisingly enough, the trilogy has managed to hold up even ten years later (at least in my eyes) and it continues to give me some degree of inspiration every time it comes up on my television. It was because of the initial push from The Matrix that I now have a full cast of characters who are all dressed in sleek yet totally bad-ass outfits, that are doing super-powered kung-fu antics in the vastness of space. I have all sorts of crazy-awesome science fantasy things populating this universe, making for a continuity where almost anything could essentially exist. Much like the Wachowskis, my stance on this story has pretty much been nothing but to make my love letter to everything that I've ever felt defined me as a geek.

While I could go into the my feelings on the franchise and how it expanded into other mediums, I think I'll save that for another installment. I will say this much on the matter though, I don't think the extended works like The Animatrix or the videogames (Enter the Matrix/The Matrix: Path of Neo) were all that bad. Some of them were pretty good. They made the universe of The Matrix feel bigger and even answered some burning questions that fans had since the beginning. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a trilogy that needs some watching.

(For those who are curious about this project I've been working on for the past ten years, it's called The Nexus. More details coming soon)