It occurred to me a week or two ago that I’d never actually seen The Matrix. I love the Wachowskis, but that’s from their Netflix Sense8 series, which carried wonderful messages about commonality, understanding, love and kindness.
The Matrix was something I hated by proxy. When it came out, I had to listen to way too many dudebros (including one particularly obnoxious one named Jeff) who went on and on and on about the core concept of living in a non-existent reality, and as a result, I went, well, I’m not watching that. It’s like you people have never read any science fiction before – or read fucking Alice In Wonderland. Heard of Plato.
Every single one of them wanted to be Neo, to feed that Messiah complex, that only they and they alone were special, they and a handful of others, and they most special of all. Oh, and they get the girl in latex with the nice you-know-whats who’s kind of a badass (but still, submissive to them).
Anyway, somehow, after that initial decision not to go watch it fifty times in the theatre with the rest of the dudebros, I somehow avoided it for the next twenty-four years.
I finally watched it, and as a sci-fi action, it’s okay, though the effects are a little cheesy in the nowadays. If you want good hard action, John Wick and Atomic Blonde are better options. The plot holes and things that didn’t make sense were a bit much. You want to break free of the predetermined role, get out into the Matrix, where you’re immediately called “the One” and put on a pre-determined path? How does that break you free of determinism? Of “Fate”?
The religious aspects are a bit much for me. Anyway, cheesecake popcorn filler, as far as I’m concerned, thus validating my dismissal of all the dudebros who’ve never bothered to pick up a Philip K. Dick novel or actually read Lewis Carroll. If The Matrix blew your mind, I bet you also believed that the Fast & Furious movies have plots, or that Moulin Rouge was actual art, and not just pretentious drivel trying to disguise itself as cleverness.
Thus ends Misanthrope Monday and its first genuine rant.
Target: 1200 words
Written: 3033 words, comic: Bike #1