Cyberpunk sucker punch

Rating: Null/10 (3 September 2010)

The Wachowski Brothers released "The Matrix" in 1999. The film starred Keanu Reeves as Neo, a man who realises that "reality" as perceived by most humans is actually an elaborate simulation called "the Matrix", created by sentient machines to subdue humans and essentially use them for slave labour. A massive box-office hit, the film's archetypal "Hero's Journey" connected with audiences, particular young males. Like "Star Wars", The New Testament, "Lord of the Rings" and virtually every "modern myth", it was filled with talk of "destiny", "chosen ones", "salvation", "special missions" and supernatural powers (the force/the code), which of course only our prophesied hero, Neo, possesses.
The Wachowskis released two sequels ("Reloaded" and "Revolutions") several years later. Disparaged by fan-boys, these two films created a sort of anti-myth. Or more precisely, the machine villains of the franchise were revealed to have created an artificial myth in order to give false hope to the film's human heroes, and by extension, the film's audience. It's not so much that the sequels deconstruct what Joseph Campbell famously called the "monomyth" or the "Hero's Journey", but that they embodied a kind of postmodern scepticism of the "metanarrative", and so treat the film's myths as a further layer of Matrix simulation which people "plug into" to further delude themselves.
"The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal." Pilosopher Jean Lyotard wrote decades ago. "Where, after the meta-narratives, can legitimacy thus reside?" Echoing Lyotard's words, "The Matrix" franchise highlights a subtle cultural shift, the totalising nature of meta-narratives, and their reliance on some form of "transcendent and universal truth", now increasingly rejected.
What the Wachowskis show is that the "master narrative" is always created and reinforced by power structures (ie the villainous machines in the film), that they are never to be trusted, that they are designed to embody progress towards a specific goal, that they dismiss the naturally existing chaos of the universe, that they are created to marshal people toward some theoretical doctrine and that they serve only to placate subjects with notions of "order", "structure" and "hope".
And so "The Matrix" sequels have interesting (ie seemingly annoying) reversals which few myths possess. Firstly, our hero (Neo) is actually the film's "bad guy". Secondly, the closest the franchise has to a good guy is Agent Smith, whom most perceive as the villain. Thirdly, far from being "the Chosen One", Neo becomes just another iteration in a long line of manipulative computer programs. Fourthly, Zion, the city which Neo is foretold to "save", is itself just another level of simulation, a memory cache designed to house radicals and provide the illusion of hope, choice and free-will, its panel of leaders all computer programs designed to foster a belief in Neo. Fifthly, the film's Oracle is not a benevolent "helper figure" (ie Yoda), but is really working for the machines and is attempting to instigate the Matrix equivalent of "multiculuralism", the passive assimilation or social integration between mankind and machine. In other words, the "efficiency obsessed" machines (like some dystopian version of a drone reliant capitalist technocracy) don't want to waste time fighting humans, they want the human rebels (ethnic minorities and outcast hackers) to willingly "join them" and so have constructed an elaborate myth to engender this symbiotic merger.
Sixthly, the franchise's dialogue/acting becomes increasingly, and deliberately, phony. Everyone in the sequels speaks of determinism and of every micro-event being preordained. Everything you see in the sequels is thus not only programmed, but has happened repeatedly before in cycles, and is anticipated by super computer characters (some of whom possess ironic self awareness) which process zillions of different variables, tracing cause and effect to such an extent that they know exactly "what happens next".
The notion of "choice being an illusion" is important to the franchise. Previous versions of the Matrix (essentially a jail for humans) didn't work because "human slaves" didn't have a choice. Gradually the machines allowed the slaves to have "the illusion of choice", but this too didn't work. Choice was not the problem. The problem was that humans opted for what the machine's perceived to be "the wrong choices" and sometimes "no choice at all" (radical non-participation). Thereofore, the machines created Neo to encourage others to obey "their choice" and "be participatory". The problem was, after six cycles, Neo got smart. The goal then became to con Neo; to trick him into believing that he too could choose. Extrapolate this theme to the real world and you have all kinds of sinister ramifications.
Seventhly, far from a rebel, Neo has been supported by the system all along. Eightly, like Satan, Agent Smith throws himself out of "heaven" when he realises he is "facing deletion". If Neo is part of the system, Smith is the enemy of the system. He wants to bring it crashing down. This is similar to the writings of many Gnostics who view Satan as the "hero" of Genesis, as he sought to free God's subjects from their subservience and false realities. Ninthly, many complain about the film's "fake sets" and "fake action scenes", but once you realise that these characters and landscapes are supposed to be digital simulations, it all works. Why should they obey the laws of physics?
Finally, "Love" and "the hero's sacrifice" are key themes in myths. With the Wachowskis, however, these things are subverted. A character called Trinity is created to "install" love and self-sacrifice into the deluded Neo, whilst other characters (the elder's conversation at the water refinery, the birth of Sati through "machine love" etc) are created to subtly introduce Neo to the idea of a symbiotic relationship between machines and man. The franchise's "myth" is therefore a sort of unholy trinity (between man, machine and the ghosts in the matrix) in which "enlightened" and "free" humans are wilfully re-imprisoned by their false Saviour. Creepy.
8.5/10 – Subversive anti-blockbuster.