Avatar. The Avengers. Iron Man 3. Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The Dark Knight Rises.
These are five of the top ten all-time highest grossing movies. Their (arguable) inclusion in the Science Fiction canon begs a question of the genre: is it just the spectacle that we shell out to witness, or is there some more primitive itch that these kinds of events scratch?
This blog is dedicated to figuring out how it is that Science Fiction addresses the problem of defining "human."
The Matrix is a complete mind blowing concept. It depicts a dystopian future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality which is “The Matrix, which was created by machines which now pretty much rule the world. The main character Neo is the “one” that needs to lead the rebellion against the machines. If it was up to me I am not sure if I would choose the red pill or the blue pill. If I took the blue pill I would continue to be stuck in my boring life with a sucky job. But if I take the red pill my whole life would be enlightened and I could become part of something bigger. The whole concept of people being grown grossed me out though. My younger brother watched this with me then left the room after the part where Neo woke up in the pod thing. He literally said this is messed up then left the room for the rest of the movie. The only problem I would have with taking the red pill is waking up in the pod thing attached to a whole bunch of wires and having that thing on the back of my head and that the thing on the back of my head is the only way to connect me to The Matrix.
In terms of bleakness, it’s hard to top humans being harvested for energy while deceiving them into thinking that they are just living normal lives. I think that this is one of the more definitive examples of a dystopian setting. The body horror of it just adds even more. Even though it was really unsettling, I found it really cool. This is also a net example of what may happen if humans rely on machines too much. Early on, one of the abilities of the Agents is shown. They can be anyone. This adds more fuel to the ongoing deception in The Matrix. Aside from the main plot point, I think that there’s a theme of “always be skeptical” or something to that effect. Of course, thinking that we live in a false reality where there are men in suits trying to kill us is tinfoil hat territory. Another aspect of the Agents or at least Agent Smith is the self-awareness that they seem to have. I haven’t seen this movie in a long time and only remembered the last 40 minutes of it for obvious reasons but, I was shocked when Agent Smith said that he hated his role in The Matrix and wanted to leave despite being a program of sorts. To add, the human/virus comparison he made was pretty cool.
From Em: I’ve never seen this movie before, I’d been avoiding it. I had seen the scene where Neo get the scorpion thingy shoved in his stomach while channel flipping a few years ago, and I’m not into that sort of thing. This whole movie is about reality and what reality is and it just gets confusing. I mean I should have guessed, because during the opening bit where Neo is dealing computer programs, the camera lingers on the cover of the book he hides the programs in- “Simulation and Simulacra”. This seems incredibly deliberate, especially considering the later scene with The Oracle, and what she says about the vase, “Would you still have broken it if I hadn’t told you about it?” That sums up the whole rest of the movie, and the whole beginning of the movie. You don’t know what you know, but you know what you believe and that makes it your reality. This reminds me a lot of the cyborg discussion on Monday. If you extend your senses beyond what they are, how do you know what’s real? But how do we know this real? Why am I bothering to type this, if it’s not real? I think I need to go to sleep now, and that watching this movie late at night was a bad idea.
Dystopian science fiction is a genre I really enjoy. I think the ideas that it usually presents are really interesting and compelling, so the ideas presented in this movie were really cool to me (I'd never actually seen it until I had to watch it for this class). It's the perfect example of a dystopian society. The humans in the world are basically harvested and enslaved and forced to live in a false reality. Definitley horrible, and a worthy cause for the protagonists to fight against. I'm not super sure why Neo was the chosen one though, it seemed to just allow the movie to fall into that annoying trope where they take some average dude and call him the chosen one, and then he is inexplicably able to save the entire world with only like a week of training. Obviously this is just for wish fulfillment for the movie's target audience. I think I was just waiting for why he was so special to be explained to me, because it seemed to me like everyone else he was working with knew way more about what they were trying to do than he did. I also wasn't interested at all in the random romance that appeared within the last like 20 minutes of the movie. I don't even know why that was included. Maybe to make the audience more compassionate towards Neo and Trinity, but I thought that their whole fight against the enslavement and brainwashing of the entire human race kind of did that fine on its own. All in all it was a fun movie, despite the crazy amount of Kung fu fight scenes.
The Matrix is, in my opinion, a film that has helped to define what a good modern sci-fi movie looks like. A lot of the stunts in The Matrix were groundbreaking for their time and definitely influenced many sci-fi and other action movies that have come after it. The period of time during which the film was released, when this country was collectively losing their shit over Y2K, probably made the plot especially relatable to many viewers. The whole concept of our reality just being a computer program designed to subdue mankind while machines use our bodies as batteries is completely mind-blowing. I thought it was important that in the movie Morpheus emphasizes that he can't just tell Neo what the Matrix is and that he can only show him because he wouldn’t believe it otherwise. I also really like the little paradoxes that arise when dealing with the Oracle's predictions. Like, if she hadn't told Neo about the vase before he broke it would he have even broken it at all if she hadn't told him, because the only reason he turned and knocked the vase over was because she told him he was going to. It's kind of like the "what came first the chicken or the egg" question. I don't have an answer obviously, and think the Wachowski brothers did either and that’s why the movie gets a little foggy when it comes to what makes Neo the One. Is Neo the One because Morpheus believes he is and the Oracle told him he would find the One? Or is Neo the One because Trinity loves him and the Oracle told her she would fall in love with the One? If he was the one all along why wouldn't the Oracle just tell him that in the first place instead of the whole "either you die or Morpheus dies" drama? Maybe Neo would only be able to fulfill the prophecy if he discovered his powers on his own. That would explain what Morpheus meant by the difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
The first time I watched the Matrix was back when I was in high school. A teacher from a class showed it to us and I was confused about what the movie was about. I watched the Matrix again during this weekend and I had a better understanding of it. I guess watching it a second time and learning more about science fiction made me understand it unlike before. When I first saw the movie in high school I was not entertained by it because of the whole science fiction and that I did not understand it but now I have a completely different opinion on the movie. I enjoyed the movie because of its plot and the use of great special effects, fight scenes and more. Everything was perfect in this movie, I would say it is one of the best science fiction movie. The movie is so popular that several shows would have scenes similar to the fight scenes in the Matrix. If people did not watch the Matrix yet then they should plan to one day because they are missing out on a great movie. If they plan to watch it then they probably will have to watch it more than once because it has a confusing and interesting plot. The movie is basically about control and power and how the decisions one makes will decide ones fate in society. I will probably watch the movie again for the third time in the future since it is a movie that one cannot forget and not watch again.
I've always enjoyed this movie for its countless kung Fu scenes and classic bullet-dodging, wall-running tricks. But it also calls attention to the concept of reality, and challenges people’s belief that reality is a universally lived-in idea. But the Matrix asks what is reality, and how do we know what reality is? Is reality universal? I would argue no. In relation to our discussion from Monday, I would say that our senses are our reality, at least, our physical one. The information the senses retrieve and carry to the brain for interpretation are what construct everyday motions, reactions, and most thoughts. To alter any one of these senses would be to alter the way the brain interprets and interacts with the world, thus one’s reality. Our senses are what we know; they’re physical evidence that something exists. Without them we would certainly go crazy, not to mention be completely incapable of surviving. Essentially, I believe reality is a matter of interpretation and perspective. Neo takes a bold move when he consumes the red pill. He says to hell with everything he knows of the physical world and chooses enlightenment. I think on a less existential what-is-real level, the Matrix creates an allegory for the Man and the System. Neo wakes up in a pod within a chasm of billions of other pods, hooked to wires and being grown for energy. I think this screams out to mass media, government conspiracy, and the world we live in today. Government = Agents while Matrix = society. The Matrix is meant to be a brain-washing society thriving in ignorance and lack of free-thinking. Sometimes, when I look at the news headlines or over hear a mind-numbing conversation in the hall about Kim Kardashian, not only does a part of me die, but I become more convinced that this media craze has taken over people’s brains. We spoke on Monday about how unsettling it is for our minds and brains to be tampered with, well the fact is that they already are. The connection we now have with technology can be extremely beneficial, but it allows a lot of negative factors to leak in as well. Agents/the government can see what we google, what we type, what we post on an English class blog. Our thoughts are monitored –the ones we express, anyway- and twisted and regurgitated back to us to feed the Machine. Have you ever been on Facebook and seen an advertisement for your favorite beverage, store, or music artist? I have, and it’s because of what I googled last week. Am I the only one freaked out by this or are people just comfortable living in the Matrix?
For some reason, my dad had me and my sister watch this movie when we were around elementary-school age. It totally scared both of us (my sister being one year younger than me), and I don't think either of us finished it then. Watching it again, I'm pretty sure it was the giant robot squid's first appearance that had me and my sister out of the TV room and under our covers that night.
Having actually finished it now, I'm more disturbed by the movie's challenging of reality, or our perception of it. I think we've all wondered at one point whether or not all of this is "real" and that we're not just living in some sort of dream. The first time I recall for me was when my mock trial club-advisor (of all people) in middle school asked the question while we were eating lunch or something. He mentioned something about how our reality could actually just be one giant game of The Sims (which is a simulator where you control the lives of a family of people) being played by someone "up there" (God, basically).
We all laughed about it at the time, but it’s actually pretty eerie when you realize that there’s no way for us to determine whether or not our reality is actually “reality”, and The Matrix was the thing that kind of brought that to my attention. After Neo took the red pill, I was thinking, “But what if this still isn’t reality?” all the way through the end of the film.
Theoretically, “reality” as a term holds no meaning (in that there’s no difference between reality and illusion) and we’re all just a bunch of electrical signals for each of our brains to interpret, as Morpheus put it. And this is about as far as my brain is willing to go before I have to start thinking about other, less depressing things.
Like, for example, is The Matrix technically a cyberpunk film? It had a somewhat Bladerunner-esque aesthetic (mostly at the beginning), and I’d say the whole “high-tech, low-living” thing was present. Though, in this case, all of humanity is doing the low-living and the folks doing the high-living are also literally the high-tech, the robots.
When I was younger, I always enjoyed the Matrix, however I never really understood the higher levels of thought it was attempting to convey until I watched it (and the rest of the series) more recently. I like the how the Matrix plays with the idea of choice and how it would affect us if we knew our own choices before we made them (talking with the Oracle). In the beginning when Morpheus saves Neo from the Matrix, he presents him with two pills, a red and a blue pill. We as the audience, and Morpheus the cunning outsider in this instance know full well which one Neo will pick. Partially due to the nature of the movie, and partly because we know of human curiosity. In my opinion there never was a red pill (the one that does not escape the Matrix). It was as if Morpheus was only offering him up the blue pill, because human curiosity dictates what he would have chosen. Humans for the most part and predictable and similar in how they think, or at least the end result, and it is easily exploitable. This is seen in religion and politics, as well as in cons and magic tricks. The idea is that the human psychology is mapable and one can predict its end pathways of choice.
The one thing that still bugs me about the Matrix though, is that the robots are still the enemy as in most Science fiction stories. I do enjoy the creative aspect of the Robots needing to feed off of the humans for survival and the creation of the Matrix. The whole, can’t make it perfect because people revolted at how unrealistic it is, and are perfectly okay with the hardships of “realistic” life is a nod towards the idea Brad was making about “Bullshit jobs”.
The last point that I like about the Matrix itself, is the notion that we believe that things are real based upon our physical reactions with them, and the overwhelmingly small percentage of being held in a projected state of realism, i.e. the Matrix. This point makes me think of Rene Descartes who though along the lines of not actually existing and being at the whims of what his mind created. Though weird this mofo invented the Cartesian coordinates that we use today.
Kyle McKenna The Matrix I’m going to start by saying that I am a huge fan of The Matrix trilogy and have loved them for a long time, therefore my comments may seem a bit one sided. With that said I’d also like to add that I believe the second film of the trilogy fits the class better than the other two. I also believe the second was the most well done of all the films. There are so many intriguing parts of the entire Matrix universe that make this film an awesome entry into the cyberpunk genre and for many I believe it is the pinnacle of what is possible with the genre itself. Though in my opinion Blade Runner was hands down the best written and directed film in the genre it was too far ahead of its time and the technology needed to fully make the film was just not ready. However in the case of The Matrix, technology of filmmaking has finally met up with the ideas the film was attempting to portray. One of my favorite parts of the original film was the scene where Neo meets the Oracle for the first time. Before entering the kitchen he meets a group of monk like children moving blocks and bending spoons with their minds. I believe this one simple line of dialogue between Neo and the younger boy sets the tone for the entirety of entire film. The boy looks at Neo and says “You must remember one thing…...there is no spoon..”. There is no spoon signifies that everything he has been lead to believe is real is false, there is no spoon, there is no reality in which he is currently existing and anything is truly possible. This is the purpose of The One, he is there to show that reality is false and that to be human, he is a rallying cry to believe in the impossible. Now obviously Neo represents a Moses type figure, a man who rallies the slaves of the world to overthrow the God kings of old. His powers are given to him and his purpose is to deliver the ones who are being used to Zion (not super subtle there) or the promised land. However in the following films Neo’s role begins to change, he moves from a Moses like figure and transforms in a Jesus like savior who (spoiler alert) eventually sacrifices himself for the greater good, to purge the world of its evil.
The sheer metaphorical idea of the blue pill and the red pill is pretty huge, and one of the most iconic images of our generation. Heck, the Red pill/blue pill symbolism is so huge it has its own Wikipedia page explaining the choice between the two.
The red pill is painful; "The truth hurts," as they say. To know suddenly everything is really a lie, and to realize one day that everything you thought you knew was not real? Reality crashing down onto anyone's shoulders like that would be incredibly difficult to deal with, but nonetheless, Neo does what I think a lot of people would probably like to in his situation, which is, of course, taking the red pill. Now, just because we'd all LIKE to do this does not mean we would. As we saw for Neo, it opened up a can of worms unlike any other, in which machines were all but ruling the world. That could be a lot to handle.
Then there's the blue pill. "Ignorance is bliss," right? Forget all about it, go home, go to bed. For myself, I wouldn't be able to tolerate those few moments of my knowing I chose the blue before it all went away. But for many, the overwhelming reality of the red pill might just be too much, and thus the blue would be a sort of salvation and freedom from knowing the horrible truth. Or, perhaps even worse, being in Neo's position and knowing that they could -discover- the horrible truth in just a few brief moments.
The Matrix is a complete mind blowing concept. It depicts a dystopian future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality which is “The Matrix, which was created by machines which now pretty much rule the world. The main character Neo is the “one” that needs to lead the rebellion against the machines. If it was up to me I am not sure if I would choose the red pill or the blue pill. If I took the blue pill I would continue to be stuck in my boring life with a sucky job. But if I take the red pill my whole life would be enlightened and I could become part of something bigger. The whole concept of people being grown grossed me out though. My younger brother watched this with me then left the room after the part where Neo woke up in the pod thing. He literally said this is messed up then left the room for the rest of the movie. The only problem I would have with taking the red pill is waking up in the pod thing attached to a whole bunch of wires and having that thing on the back of my head and that the thing on the back of my head is the only way to connect me to The Matrix.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of bleakness, it’s hard to top humans being harvested for energy while deceiving them into thinking that they are just living normal lives. I think that this is one of the more definitive examples of a dystopian setting. The body horror of it just adds even more. Even though it was really unsettling, I found it really cool. This is also a net example of what may happen if humans rely on machines too much.
ReplyDeleteEarly on, one of the abilities of the Agents is shown. They can be anyone. This adds more fuel to the ongoing deception in The Matrix. Aside from the main plot point, I think that there’s a theme of “always be skeptical” or something to that effect. Of course, thinking that we live in a false reality where there are men in suits trying to kill us is tinfoil hat territory.
Another aspect of the Agents or at least Agent Smith is the self-awareness that they seem to have. I haven’t seen this movie in a long time and only remembered the last 40 minutes of it for obvious reasons but, I was shocked when Agent Smith said that he hated his role in The Matrix and wanted to leave despite being a program of sorts. To add, the human/virus comparison he made was pretty cool.
From Em:
ReplyDeleteI’ve never seen this movie before, I’d been avoiding it. I had seen the scene where Neo get the scorpion thingy shoved in his stomach while channel flipping a few years ago, and I’m not into that sort of thing.
This whole movie is about reality and what reality is and it just gets confusing. I mean I should have guessed, because during the opening bit where Neo is dealing computer programs, the camera lingers on the cover of the book he hides the programs in- “Simulation and Simulacra”. This seems incredibly deliberate, especially considering the later scene with The Oracle, and what she says about the vase, “Would you still have broken it if I hadn’t told you about it?” That sums up the whole rest of the movie, and the whole beginning of the movie. You don’t know what you know, but you know what you believe and that makes it your reality.
This reminds me a lot of the cyborg discussion on Monday. If you extend your senses beyond what they are, how do you know what’s real? But how do we know this real? Why am I bothering to type this, if it’s not real? I think I need to go to sleep now, and that watching this movie late at night was a bad idea.
From Stephanie:
ReplyDeleteDystopian science fiction is a genre I really enjoy. I think the ideas that it usually presents are really interesting and compelling, so the ideas presented in this movie were really cool to me (I'd never actually seen it until I had to watch it for this class). It's the perfect example of a dystopian society. The humans in the world are basically harvested and enslaved and forced to live in a false reality. Definitley horrible, and a worthy cause for the protagonists to fight against.
I'm not super sure why Neo was the chosen one though, it seemed to just allow the movie to fall into that annoying trope where they take some average dude and call him the chosen one, and then he is inexplicably able to save the entire world with only like a week of training. Obviously this is just for wish fulfillment for the movie's target audience. I think I was just waiting for why he was so special to be explained to me, because it seemed to me like everyone else he was working with knew way more about what they were trying to do than he did. I also wasn't interested at all in the random romance that appeared within the last like 20 minutes of the movie. I don't even know why that was included. Maybe to make the audience more compassionate towards Neo and Trinity, but I thought that their whole fight against the enslavement and brainwashing of the entire human race kind of did that fine on its own.
All in all it was a fun movie, despite the crazy amount of Kung fu fight scenes.
The Matrix is, in my opinion, a film that has helped to define what a good modern sci-fi movie looks like. A lot of the stunts in The Matrix were groundbreaking for their time and definitely influenced many sci-fi and other action movies that have come after it. The period of time during which the film was released, when this country was collectively losing their shit over Y2K, probably made the plot especially relatable to many viewers.
ReplyDeleteThe whole concept of our reality just being a computer program designed to subdue mankind while machines use our bodies as batteries is completely mind-blowing. I thought it was important that in the movie Morpheus emphasizes that he can't just tell Neo what the Matrix is and that he can only show him because he wouldn’t believe it otherwise.
I also really like the little paradoxes that arise when dealing with the Oracle's predictions. Like, if she hadn't told Neo about the vase before he broke it would he have even broken it at all if she hadn't told him, because the only reason he turned and knocked the vase over was because she told him he was going to. It's kind of like the "what came first the chicken or the egg" question. I don't have an answer obviously, and think the Wachowski brothers did either and that’s why the movie gets a little foggy when it comes to what makes Neo the One. Is Neo the One because Morpheus believes he is and the Oracle told him he would find the One? Or is Neo the One because Trinity loves him and the Oracle told her she would fall in love with the One? If he was the one all along why wouldn't the Oracle just tell him that in the first place instead of the whole "either you die or Morpheus dies" drama? Maybe Neo would only be able to fulfill the prophecy if he discovered his powers on his own. That would explain what Morpheus meant by the difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
The first time I watched the Matrix was back when I was in high school. A teacher from a class showed it to us and I was confused about what the movie was about. I watched the Matrix again during this weekend and I had a better understanding of it. I guess watching it a second time and learning more about science fiction made me understand it unlike before. When I first saw the movie in high school I was not entertained by it because of the whole science fiction and that I did not understand it but now I have a completely different opinion on the movie. I enjoyed the movie because of its plot and the use of great special effects, fight scenes and more. Everything was perfect in this movie, I would say it is one of the best science fiction movie. The movie is so popular that several shows would have scenes similar to the fight scenes in the Matrix. If people did not watch the Matrix yet then they should plan to one day because they are missing out on a great movie. If they plan to watch it then they probably will have to watch it more than once because it has a confusing and interesting plot. The movie is basically about control and power and how the decisions one makes will decide ones fate in society. I will probably watch the movie again for the third time in the future since it is a movie that one cannot forget and not watch again.
ReplyDeleteFrom Katrina
ReplyDeleteI've always enjoyed this movie for its countless kung Fu scenes and classic bullet-dodging, wall-running tricks. But it also calls attention to the concept of reality, and challenges people’s belief that reality is a universally lived-in idea. But the Matrix asks what is reality, and how do we know what reality is?
Is reality universal? I would argue no. In relation to our discussion from Monday, I would say that our senses are our reality, at least, our physical one. The information the senses retrieve and carry to the brain for interpretation are what construct everyday motions, reactions, and most thoughts. To alter any one of these senses would be to alter the way the brain interprets and interacts with the world, thus one’s reality. Our senses are what we know; they’re physical evidence that something exists. Without them we would certainly go crazy, not to mention be completely incapable of surviving. Essentially, I believe reality is a matter of interpretation and perspective. Neo takes a bold move when he consumes the red pill. He says to hell with everything he knows of the physical world and chooses enlightenment.
I think on a less existential what-is-real level, the Matrix creates an allegory for the Man and the System. Neo wakes up in a pod within a chasm of billions of other pods, hooked to wires and being grown for energy. I think this screams out to mass media, government conspiracy, and the world we live in today. Government = Agents while Matrix = society. The Matrix is meant to be a brain-washing society thriving in ignorance and lack of free-thinking. Sometimes, when I look at the news headlines or over hear a mind-numbing conversation in the hall about Kim Kardashian, not only does a part of me die, but I become more convinced that this media craze has taken over people’s brains. We spoke on Monday about how unsettling it is for our minds and brains to be tampered with, well the fact is that they already are. The connection we now have with technology can be extremely beneficial, but it allows a lot of negative factors to leak in as well. Agents/the government can see what we google, what we type, what we post on an English class blog. Our thoughts are monitored –the ones we express, anyway- and twisted and regurgitated back to us to feed the Machine. Have you ever been on Facebook and seen an advertisement for your favorite beverage, store, or music artist? I have, and it’s because of what I googled last week. Am I the only one freaked out by this or are people just comfortable living in the Matrix?
For some reason, my dad had me and my sister watch this movie when we were around elementary-school age. It totally scared both of us (my sister being one year younger than me), and I don't think either of us finished it then. Watching it again, I'm pretty sure it was the giant robot squid's first appearance that had me and my sister out of the TV room and under our covers that night.
ReplyDeleteHaving actually finished it now, I'm more disturbed by the movie's challenging of reality, or our perception of it. I think we've all wondered at one point whether or not all of this is "real" and that we're not just living in some sort of dream. The first time I recall for me was when my mock trial club-advisor (of all people) in middle school asked the question while we were eating lunch or something. He mentioned something about how our reality could actually just be one giant game of The Sims (which is a simulator where you control the lives of a family of people) being played by someone "up there" (God, basically).
We all laughed about it at the time, but it’s actually pretty eerie when you realize that there’s no way for us to determine whether or not our reality is actually “reality”, and The Matrix was the thing that kind of brought that to my attention. After Neo took the red pill, I was thinking, “But what if this still isn’t reality?” all the way through the end of the film.
Theoretically, “reality” as a term holds no meaning (in that there’s no difference between reality and illusion) and we’re all just a bunch of electrical signals for each of our brains to interpret, as Morpheus put it. And this is about as far as my brain is willing to go before I have to start thinking about other, less depressing things.
Like, for example, is The Matrix technically a cyberpunk film? It had a somewhat Bladerunner-esque aesthetic (mostly at the beginning), and I’d say the whole “high-tech, low-living” thing was present. Though, in this case, all of humanity is doing the low-living and the folks doing the high-living are also literally the high-tech, the robots.
When I was younger, I always enjoyed the Matrix, however I never really understood the higher levels of thought it was attempting to convey until I watched it (and the rest of the series) more recently. I like the how the Matrix plays with the idea of choice and how it would affect us if we knew our own choices before we made them (talking with the Oracle). In the beginning when Morpheus saves Neo from the Matrix, he presents him with two pills, a red and a blue pill. We as the audience, and Morpheus the cunning outsider in this instance know full well which one Neo will pick. Partially due to the nature of the movie, and partly because we know of human curiosity. In my opinion there never was a red pill (the one that does not escape the Matrix). It was as if Morpheus was only offering him up the blue pill, because human curiosity dictates what he would have chosen. Humans for the most part and predictable and similar in how they think, or at least the end result, and it is easily exploitable. This is seen in religion and politics, as well as in cons and magic tricks. The idea is that the human psychology is mapable and one can predict its end pathways of choice.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that still bugs me about the Matrix though, is that the robots are still the enemy as in most Science fiction stories. I do enjoy the creative aspect of the Robots needing to feed off of the humans for survival and the creation of the Matrix. The whole, can’t make it perfect because people revolted at how unrealistic it is, and are perfectly okay with the hardships of “realistic” life is a nod towards the idea Brad was making about “Bullshit jobs”.
The last point that I like about the Matrix itself, is the notion that we believe that things are real based upon our physical reactions with them, and the overwhelmingly small percentage of being held in a projected state of realism, i.e. the Matrix. This point makes me think of Rene Descartes who though along the lines of not actually existing and being at the whims of what his mind created. Though weird this mofo invented the Cartesian coordinates that we use today.
Kyle McKenna
ReplyDeleteThe Matrix
I’m going to start by saying that I am a huge fan of The Matrix trilogy and have loved them for a long time, therefore my comments may seem a bit one sided. With that said I’d also like to add that I believe the second film of the trilogy fits the class better than the other two. I also believe the second was the most well done of all the films.
There are so many intriguing parts of the entire Matrix universe that make this film an awesome entry into the cyberpunk genre and for many I believe it is the pinnacle of what is possible with the genre itself. Though in my opinion Blade Runner was hands down the best written and directed film in the genre it was too far ahead of its time and the technology needed to fully make the film was just not ready. However in the case of The Matrix, technology of filmmaking has finally met up with the ideas the film was attempting to portray.
One of my favorite parts of the original film was the scene where Neo meets the Oracle for the first time. Before entering the kitchen he meets a group of monk like children moving blocks and bending spoons with their minds. I believe this one simple line of dialogue between Neo and the younger boy sets the tone for the entirety of entire film. The boy looks at Neo and says “You must remember one thing…...there is no spoon..”. There is no spoon signifies that everything he has been lead to believe is real is false, there is no spoon, there is no reality in which he is currently existing and anything is truly possible. This is the purpose of The One, he is there to show that reality is false and that to be human, he is a rallying cry to believe in the impossible.
Now obviously Neo represents a Moses type figure, a man who rallies the slaves of the world to overthrow the God kings of old. His powers are given to him and his purpose is to deliver the ones who are being used to Zion (not super subtle there) or the promised land. However in the following films Neo’s role begins to change, he moves from a Moses like figure and transforms in a Jesus like savior who (spoiler alert) eventually sacrifices himself for the greater good, to purge the world of its evil.
The sheer metaphorical idea of the blue pill and the red pill is pretty huge, and one of the most iconic images of our generation. Heck, the Red pill/blue pill symbolism is so huge it has its own Wikipedia page explaining the choice between the two.
ReplyDeleteThe red pill is painful; "The truth hurts," as they say. To know suddenly everything is really a lie, and to realize one day that everything you thought you knew was not real? Reality crashing down onto anyone's shoulders like that would be incredibly difficult to deal with, but nonetheless, Neo does what I think a lot of people would probably like to in his situation, which is, of course, taking the red pill. Now, just because we'd all LIKE to do this does not mean we would. As we saw for Neo, it opened up a can of worms unlike any other, in which machines were all but ruling the world. That could be a lot to handle.
Then there's the blue pill. "Ignorance is bliss," right? Forget all about it, go home, go to bed. For myself, I wouldn't be able to tolerate those few moments of my knowing I chose the blue before it all went away. But for many, the overwhelming reality of the red pill might just be too much, and thus the blue would be a sort of salvation and freedom from knowing the horrible truth. Or, perhaps even worse, being in Neo's position and knowing that they could -discover- the horrible truth in just a few brief moments.