The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by The Wachowskis (credited as The Wachowski Brothers) and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano. It depicts a dystopian future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality called “the Matrix”, created by sentient machines to subdue the human population, while their bodies’ heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. Computer programmer Neo learns this truth and is drawn into a rebellion against the machines, which involves other people who have been freed from the “dream world.” It is the most influential film of our time!
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1. Life Does Not Transcend Money & Borders
😎 Personal: Watching the opening of The Matrix: Revolutions, I couldn’t help but feel directly represented in my struggle to produce change for the Trainman so I can get back to fighting for the truth about money and borders. The programs Neo converse with obviously represent the entire families and communities that are likewise (but much more horrifically) stranded in our system. I live outside my city now, supported by father and partner and a small circle of very close friends. As Neo’s own family fights through Hell to help him out, The Wachowski filmmaking team give us a moment of peace, of eye-to-eyeness, and open their hearts unabashedly to the globe. This sequence used to feel a little superfluous and ponderous in its construction but that was before I truly understood that the symbolism used is much more naked, empathetic, and urgent.
2. Freedom Transcends Money & Borders
🔎#Factual: “I’m going to show these people a world without you. A world without rules or control, without borders or boundaries. Where we go from there I leave up to you.”
🔎#Factual: The Matrix is a project that includes a range of characters and types designed to transcend the segregation seen in places like The Matrix‘s real world setting Chicago.
🔧What Does It Have? What Does It Need?: The Matrix needs for its brown and differently abled players to be as empowered and lovely as the two white kung-fu master protagonists.
4. Believing in Yourself Transcends Money & Borders
🔎#Factual: At each moment of crushing near-defeat the only way any of the characters in The Matrix Trilogy make any headway is by believing in their self. Our heroes make a choice to love as the very nature of reality is deconstructed and hanging in the balance, and that is how their world eventually transcends restriction.
5. The Savior Transcends Money & Borders
🔎#Factual: Supported by everyday people, Neo is ritualistically sacrificed several times by the forces of this system, mirroring the myth of Jesus Christ.
🔧What Does It Have? What Does It Need?: It needs for everyone to be provided for so Neo & Trinity can just chill and enjoy their love.
😎 Personal: Same.
6. Partying Transcends Money & Borders
🔎#Factual: In The Matrix: Reloaded the most joyful moment is a Utopian cave rave full of love, life, and hope. As the forces trying to enslave us dig closer and closer, we dance!
🔧What Does It Have? What Does It Need?: IT NEEDS A LONGER RUNTIME.
🌏#Actionable: Shoutout to the Utopia Ball!
7. Love Transcends Money & Borders
🔎#Factual: Several romantic partnerships are key in The Matrix films, notwithstanding the intense familial love our protagonists exhibit for each other.
🔧What Does It Have? What Does It Need?: “Cookies need love like everything does.” 😎 Personal: I love my bae and my homies and together we will make it right!
8. Utopia Transcends Money & Borders
🔎#Factual:
In The Matrix Trilogy, Zion, the unplugged human haven, is shown without any discernible currency~ certainly nothing resembling money as it was used at the start of the 21st century.
🔧What Does It Have? What Does It Need?:
If life was asking a question with its production of and investment in The Matrix, The Matrix: Reloaded answers the question as soon as it intercuts a diverse, classless Zion rejoicing together while Neo and Trinity make love.
9. Hip-Hop Transcends Money & Borders
🔎#Factual:
The first two films end with rapper Zach De La Rocha & his band Rage Against The Machine rallying against inequality. Later in The Matrix: Reloaded credits is a song by fellow hip-hop rockers P.O.D. imploring you to “unlock these secrets in me” and decode hidden messages. Put together this clearly just means that these films are acknowledging that in real life “the Matrix” is restricted access to space & resources that we wish art could rescue us from politically.
🔧What Does It Have? What Does It Need?:
The people spoken for in these songs have righteous fury, shared culture, and love for each other but need housing, access to basic necessities and to not be targeted as dangerous or for slavery by the needs of maintaining the historical system of money and borders. P.O.D. need you to understand the meaning of the film The Matrix and use your powers to give a voice to the voiceless. “Do you see what I see? Do you hear what I hear?”
😎 Personal: Nu-metal made me a badass!
10. Future Transcends Money & Borders
🔎#Factual: In 1999, The Matrix was a metaphor for our lives in the (post-)modern reality of inequality. Neo was supposed to have flown above that inequality at the end of the first film to destroy borders and global injustice. He didn’t, so in 2003, The Matrix: Reloaded & Revolutions would be looking ahead to the endgame of restricted access to space & resources.
🔧What Does It Have? What Does It Need?: Millions of people anticipated the climax to Reloaded to provide an answer and herald a new global awakening. And when the Keymaker opens the Door of Light and The One enters…the films engage us in a recursive loop to be replayed out until the moment is right. Each time, the film tells the viewer to choose to forge ahead even when it seems like the systems holding up money and borders are too much, the genocide too complete. The Architect’s sequence visually references the fact that Neo is being viewed in a sequel to The Matrix, searching (again) for what the Matrix is and thus also anticipates a sense of our social media life via peeling layers of digital reality. Day after day, year after year, we return to these films needing something more to complete the mission. The only reason The Matrix films have not changed the world to the point of eradicating inequality is because art, other than religion, has never had power over money and borders. UNTIL NOW.
😎 Personal: Once upon a time, I was an avid re-watcher of The Matrix the same age as the little “Potential” telling Neo “There is no spoon, it is only your mind that bends.” I grew up with that in… mind. Watching it now, as an adult person with adult relationships and a curious consciousness I kept flexible, I am ready to finish the game!
🌏#Actionable: RSVP to support student gardens here!
~ @mtvxonews
