It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since we first met Neo, Morpheus, Trinity and Agent Smith in the Wachowski siblings groundbreaking movie The Matrix. Just as Star Wars (a.k.a. Star Wars: A New Hope) represented a quantum leap in visual effects wed to timeless storytelling, so visual wizardry such as “bullet time” cinematography wowed audiences in April 1999.
To celebrate its 25th anniversary (albeit a few months late), The Matrix is getting a Fathom Events rerelease on Sunday night, September 22. We thought it would be a good time to revisit this influential film once more. You’ll find Paul Asay’s review of this influential classic here.
There’s plenty of content here to ponder, though I’m skeptical with 25 years of ratings creep whether The Matrix would still receive an R rating or not. But the film’s provocative themes exploring artificial intelligence, identity and the nature of reality seem arguably more relevant today than they did back in the last millennium.
With that in mind, we’re using The Matrix’s rerelease as a catalyst to launch a new feature on our YouTube channel that we’re calling “Plugged In Rewind.” In this first conversation, Plugged In’s Paul Asay and I unpack a bit more in-depth conversation about this film than perhaps you’re used to finding in our reviews. Our hope is that this talk about the themes and ideas, worldview and content in this landmark movie might be a catalyst for you think deeper about it—and movies in general—as well. Paul and I had a ton of fun making this, and hopefully you’ll have fun watching it, too.
Also veering a bit from our typical approach in our reviews, you’ll hear a lot of our subjective thoughts about The Matrix, especially as they relate to certain spiritual ideas that the film touches on. We’d love to invite you to join us for that conversation in the comments, then like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Let us know what you think, both about The Matrix as well as this new format for conversation that we’re debuting here.
In the weeks to come, you can look forward to more of these deep dives in our Rewind video feature, including The Dark Knight and the two recent Dune movies.
7 Responses
This was great! Definitely looking forward to more of these. Lots of interesting thoughts given, many of which I hadn’t heard before.
If you aren’t already, would you consider 2001: A Space Odyssey as another topic for conversation? Although it explores many themes and ideas that go against Christian beliefs, as the Matrix does, many positive spiritual parallels could be drawn from it.
I really do not understand Christian’s infatuation with The Matrix films. It is all about degeneracy, just with a touch of Biblical name drops here and there for artistic merit and nothing more. And considering what has been revealed by the creators of the film, perhaps everyone was too enthralled by bullet time in 99 to see the deeper picture that was making God appear like a cruel overlord over those “enlightened” who want to make their own way and define their own life. If I remember correctly, a character says that someone is his “personal Jesus” and that messed up scene with the spoon boy. According to this film, we are living in a false reality constructed by terrible people (The Church) who wants us to stop us from revealing our true selves by having us drugged, (red pill blue pill), and they make it very clear who those types of people are. There is a reason the villain refuses to acknowledge Neo by his self appointed hacker name Neo, it is targeting those who don’t want to affirm the perception people make for themselves, the Christians, and instead turn the Christians into soulless enforcers of an evil god who can’t empathize with anyone. And if you don’t believe me, just look at the sequels and why they fell apart. That inward desire for transformation by the authors kept growing and growing and spilling onto the page, because out of the desires of the heart so will it come out of the mouth.
If you really want something that is artistic, but actually has something worth saying, try the short film Parable (1964). It is one of the most beautiful examples of Christ’s mission on earth, while at the same time delving into visual imagery that has stuck with me ever since I saw it way back when as a teen in the 90s. And it deals in the cruelness of the world, covering social issues like racism and sexism, but is genuine and does not point to looking within ourselves to overcome these sins.
By the way, I know something created by a secular writer is definitely not going to have Biblical themes, but I am really uncomfortable with Christians attempting to squeeze something remotely looking “Christian” out of a film that is so blatantly against them. It is like when secular people try and squeeze something out of the Bible that so clearly goes against their humanistic beliefs. There is not going to be compatibility, because the Bible is sharper than a two edge sword, cutting through bone and marrow into the spirit.
I think parts of this are questionable, but parts of this have merit. Plugged In complained for twenty years how the series’ Christian themes were both too flimsy and too blended with other spiritualities to really stand on their own. I haven’t seen #4 yet but have heard it’s mostly a troll of Warner Bros.
“something created by a secular writer is definitely not going to have Biblical themes”
You might enjoy Martin Scorsese’s “Silence.” Hayao Miyazaki’s “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” despite being about a young witch, is probably the most overtly ‘Christ-like’ movie I’ve ever seen in terms of the laudable virtues and ethics it celebrates. The Fred Rogers movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” also celebrates Christian virtues despite not necessarily being marketed as a Christian film, but despite being an excellent movie, I thought it was unsuited for its PG rating because of language, violence, and some surreal sequences, and it may be too intense for some children.
“I am really uncomfortable with Christians attempting to squeeze something remotely looking “Christian” out of a film that is so blatantly against them”
This was a fair point, though I don’t think the Matrix movies were “anti-Christian” per se so much as “Christianity + Hinduism + Buddhism + Alice in Wonderland,” which is why I don’t think the “there is no spoon” scene was ‘messed up,’ as you put it. It wasn’t Christian because it wasn’t meant to be Christian. Its worldview reminded me more of what I think Buddhism teaches about the material reality (that it’s illusory, though the extent to which this is a literal teaching has been argued over). And that doesn’t in itself make it ‘messed up.’ If you or I had been raised Buddhist, we might be thinking Christianity is ‘messed up,’ but that wouldn’t necessarily make it so. Also I don’t know why a person who (understandably) saw a hacker as a villain and a threat, and knew this person’s legal identity, would bother to use his alias, except maybe to mock him.
I’m pretty sure they are referring to the film’s themes on sexuality without explicitly saying that. Because in the third film Smith does mention Neo by his name Neo, which falls back on the idea of the world finally recognizing the reality you have created for yourself. I’m pretty sure it is common knowledge by now what the character Switch was intended to be.
Eh, I agree with you about the spoon scene, but maybe they were spooked because it was coming out of the mouth of a kid? Which is a little unsettling. I personally dislike the films due to the one big scene in the sequels that basically confirms the idea that truth is relative with a large party that definitely deserved the R rating. I mean, the answer to an overwhelming confirmation of certain death, even for a secular viewer, isn’t to indulge in human passions. After I became a Christian, I recognized the films for what they were and left the world to indulge in the own stuff.
Oh and to clarify, when Smith said Neo’s hacker name in the third film it caused him confusion and disgust, which again ties back to the idea of certain individuals preferring “dead-naming” versus accepting the new identity.
Okay, I’ll write this again because it looked like Plugged in was censoring my comment, but here we go.
I’m pretty sure they are referring to the film’s themes on sexuality without explicitly saying that. Because in the third film Smith does mention Neo by his name Neo, which falls back on the idea of the world finally recognizing the reality you have created for yourself. I’m pretty sure it is common knowledge by now what the character Switch was intended to be.
I agree with you about the spoon scene, but maybe they were spooked because it was coming out of the mouth of a kid? Which is a little unsettling. I personally dislike the films due to the one big scene in the sequels that basically confirms the idea that truth is relative with a large party that definitely deserved the R rating. I mean, the answer to an overwhelming confirmation of certain death, even for a secular viewer, isn’t to indulge in human passions. After I became a Christian, I recognized the films for what they were and left the world to indulge in the own stuff. And again, Smith hated saying Neo’s name in third film, which speaks to the idea of people preferring “deadnaming” over the new identity someone made for themself.
Thanks, Max! We’ll definitely put it on our list of possibilities. It’s a really interesting film, and it might make for a very interesting discussion.