"Will you take the blue or the red pill?" - The Matrix

Although The Matrix might be a little bit old, it is still a very popular and relevant movie for today’s society that has been influenced a lot by technology, which is still in steady development. And it is this movie that, I would argue, is a good movie, in contrast to Spiderman: No Way Home. That will be explained later.

 

What is the movie about?

The action classic of Matrix is about the main character, computer programmer Thomas Anderson/Neo (played by Keanu Reeves), who finds out about the Matrix. Not knowing what that is, he gets contacted by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), who tells him to meet Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), as he has the answer to what the Matrix is.

Despite the attempts to guide Neo to a safe location, Neo surrenders to the police and is interrogated on Morpheus, who is deemed to be a terrorist. After refusing to collaborate with the police, a bug gets inserted into his stomach. Suddenly, he wakes up believing that it was just a nightmare that he had dreamed of. But Trinity extracts the bug when they meet Morpheus again, showing him that it was not just a nightmare.

There, Morpheus offers the infamous red and blue pills to Neo; the blue would make him forget everything that had happened and make him return to usual life, and the red would make him see reality. He chooses the one that shows him the truth: Machines have been gathering their energy from humans that lived in small liquid-filled pods. That was the result of a war between humankind and machines at the beginning of the 21st century, where the machines won and have been showing humans a false reality.

Morpheus and Trinity manage to get Neo onto the ship Nebuchadnezzar of the rebels, who were not captured by machines and are trying to get other humans out of the Matrix. From there, the fight for survival and liberation of the other humans continues.

 

Why is this movie a good movie?

Firstly, the reason why this movie is a good movie, in my opinion, is because The Matrix references philosophical ideas like Plato’s allegory of the cave. In that allegory, humans live inside of a dark cave from birth and are used to only seeing shadows on a wall, which are projected onto the wall by a flame behind them. Moreover, these people cannot turn their heads. These people, then, become used to only seeing the shadows of things and people on the wall. But if you were to take one of those imprisoned people outside the cave, they would then find the real world outside. This allegory can be interpreted in many ways, but the most prominent one is to see as the dichotomy between the ideal object (outside of the cave) and the concrete examples in the real world, which deviate from the ideal object (inside of the cave). An example to clarify this concept is the image of a cat that you have in your head, as opposed to an actual cat in the real world. How that can be understood is that one must also look past the initial sensory input and try to understand the world with their reason, according to Plato. The resemblance to the allegory of the cave raises the Matrix to a more philosophical level because that allegory is one of the many experiments that have shed doubt on the “truthfulness” of our world.

Secondly, despite its elaborate action scenes, that were inspired by martial arts and Japanese animation and that have inspired a lot of subsequent films, The Matrix makes the viewer reflect on their use of technology in their lives. As some have described our smartphones as extensions of our bodies, on par with our limbs, and, as technology develops even more as a part of us, like the chips that Elon Musk is planning to plant into people’s brains, one does need to ask: Is it possible that a Matrix-like scenario could unfold in the future?

In addition to the points mentioned above, we also must consider that computer generated imagery and virtual reality are also developing at a very steady pace and that sometimes those virtual realities, which we also see in video games, almost resemble the real world. Another example of that is the Metaverse, that was recently launched by Facebook, or virtual reality chats that were launched a couple of years ago, which eerily resemble the Matrix since people can interact with each other in a simulated reality with their headsets.

Yet, another fact to keep in mind is that scientists who have also been inspired by The Matrix to think about the feasibility of it are not sure whether machines would cause such a dystopian world in the future, as we see it in Matrix, if computers develop a consciousness. Some scientists, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, think about it in a different way: According to him, there is no evidence in favor and no evidence against us already living in a simulation. But we also have to take into account that all of these claims are very speculative and that there is a need for further research and development; therefore, what will happen remains to be seen in the future. And The Matrix definitely makes us think about the future of our technologically advancing society, which makes this movie a good movie, in my opinion.

 Written by Stefan Mustafić