Matrix Trilogy: Sci-Fi Action & Computer Gaming Fanatics Unite - Essay Sample

In 1999, a science fiction action film was created and titled the matrix trilogy (Wachowski et al,1999). The directors were computer gaming fanatics who loved graphic elements (Keegan,2018). This aspect propelled them to design the movie with the usual science fiction exaggeration, such as someone flying into the sky and one dodging bullet. The Wachowski brothers included the bullet-time technique of computer graphics in which on the part of the video is seen as proceeding in slow motion while the other parts continue normally. The movie has won four academy awards and has a rating of 91% by google users and 88% on the rotten tomatoes website (a popular website for downloading movies).

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Albeit the movie seems to be a simple sci-fi fiction, a deeper analysis indicates that it is far from this appearance (Wachowski et al,1999). The matrix was originally a book written by Sophia Stewart and was called “the third eye.” The information from the movie and the book is displayed as a dystopian time in which humanity unconsciously is trapped in a simulation. The matrix itself is a system formed by very intelligent machines to distract human beings from focusing on the essential elements of life. Concurrently, the system controlling humanity in the simulation uses human beings as sources of energy. There is a group of people in the system who have been liberated from the matrix system, and they work to free others in the same way.

In the film, it is the year 2199; the machines have advanced and surpassed human intelligence, thus controlling the world. They have created programs that handle everything, including breeding human beings for their energy. When a human being liberates oneself and starts to live contrary to the norms of the people and the intention of the machine, that person is executed by the programs made by the machines. At the same time, humanity lives in this form of slavery. The matrix, which is the ruler of the world in that year, has designed the simulated world in a way that human beings do not know that they are enslaved (Barnet. 2000). They prefer the slavish state more than the truth. One of the main components that have been made by the matrix to make human beings want the slavish life more than the truth is providing immediate gratifications that make a man have the sense of enjoying rather than working on getting the truth. This concept of the movie is also illustrated in Aldous Huxley book called the brave new world, the book written in 1931 before modern technology was established, warns that there was danger of the state controlling humanity with strong and powerful technologies (Huxley, 1988). One of the methods that will be used by the state to implement this control is the establishment of very sophisticated entertainment equipment that generates both ‘harmless’ and pleasure, which will be highly consumed and will be used as the foundation of the world’s state’s stability. In the book, there is a drug called soma, which is depended on by everyone who seeks to get pleasure after any frustration. The book illustrates the inconsistency between truth and happiness and how the consumer society behaves. All these are brought into the matrix, which is thought to be the brave new world.

The movie is split into three parts, the first starts with Neo, who has been on his computer desk the whole night and thus dozed off. Someone hacks into his computer and types on the terminal, “wake up the matrix has you…follow the white rabbit”. As he is getting shocked by how this is happening, he gets visited by his friends, one of them has a white rabbit tattoo on her shoulder. He accompanies them to a night club, and that’s where he meets Trinity, who introduces him to the liberals. The film proceeds to show how Neo meets the society of those who have been freed from the matrix. The captain of the liberals is called Morpheus, named after the dream god of Greek. Who informs Neo that he was existing in a dream world that is designed to hide the truth from him. When neo inquires as to what truth Morpheus talks about, he is told, “a slave you are Neo. Just Like everyone, you were born into slavery. Into a prison that does not allow you to taste or touch a prison for your mind.”

Morpheus tells Neo that the first of them were liberated by the man who had the ability to change what he wanted; he could remake the matrix; here, the film refers to ubermensch, also known as the overman, as written by Fredrick Nietzsche (Ansell-Pearson, 1992) after illustration Neo is taken through the process of emancipation. He is taken into the training of getting to know the truth and believing it. He is also taken to an oracle, who is named after the oracle of Delphi. On her door hangs a Latin phrase “temet nosce” which means know thyself. Her name also symbolized the term is used in complexity and computability theory, a machine used to evaluate decision problems. In the matrix, she is used as a guide to giving people prediction and decision analysis. While there, Neo experiences the effects of thoughts on the physical world. When he meets different children with advanced skills such as using thoughts to bend a spoon, he is taught by one of the children how to do it and ends up implementing it.

As the movie continues, it is discovered to be the philosophy of liberation in disguise. Probably it was not intended to be a science fiction movie after all. The characters of the movie are symbolic, and the nature of the operation is metaphoric. The main character is named Neo, which is an anagram for the word ‘one.’ Neo has at first double personality; he lives as a computer hacker and, in another dimension, is a formal employee who pays taxes and works as a programmer; his real name is Thomas Anderson. This name is attributed to the Gospel of Thomas, which was removed from the Christian bible for unknown reasons by those who intended to rule the world. The name Andros which is the Greek word for man. The antagonist in the movie, which is the agent that is part of the matrix, is called smith, a driver, using a car registered as “IS 5416” this symbolizes an excerpt from the Judaic and Christian bible, Isaiah 54:16, which says, “Behold I have created the smith that bloweth coals of fire and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work, and I have created the waster to destroy” (Amzallag and Yona,2018)

The machines in the movie intended to completely destroy the place inhabited by those who are freed from mental slavery. All efforts of these people to fight the machines fail as the machines have the exponential number of weapons and programs that attack humanity. Neo then decides to transcend to the machine’s mainframe, where he makes a deal with them by informing them that they had a common enemy. The machine halts the process of wiping out the liberals and focus on helping neo fight agent Smith in the movie, who had multiplied himself to become several copies and intended to destroy both the liberals and the machines. He finally succeeds by diffusing and getting into agent smith and fighting him from inside. This is symbolic as it is realized that agent smith was Neo’s negative mental part.

The film has faced numerous analyses by scholars who have recently established it as a philosophy (Irwin, 2002). It has also been realized that indeed human beings are on the verge of being controlled by a system that intends to gain total power and turn mankind into tools for energy production without them knowing that they are being enslaved. The film thus turns out to be more than a film. It is an epiphany to man to reconsider the day to day habits that have tied one to the hedonic treadmill of instant gratification. Without this, humanity will live throughout life without getting to be conscious, similar to the concept of the fish, which is illustrated like this. Early in the morning, there are two young fish swimming and they meet an older fish which nodes and says, “Good morning, how is the water?” the two fish continue swimming then one turns to the other and asks “what the hell is water?” (Roiland,2009).

References

Amzallag, N., & Yona, S. (2018). The significance of the rhetorical ambiguity in Isaiah 54: 16. Old Testament Essays, 31(2), 323-338.http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S1010-99192018000200003&script=sci_arttext&tlng=es

Ansell-Pearson, K. (1992). Who is the Ubermensch? Time, truth, and woman in Nietzsche. Journal of the History of Ideas, 309-331.https://www.jstor.org/stable/2709876?casa_token=n89blrVl6z4AAAAA:w8XwHwTl9QFyioM0HRzfUT_CXfwzBZULHpCzXg4knK8uRsb5tsxmjc7jNEkjlwCJEp6zK6Xf1jXnXbMEI01wQyRiDMUVEeojTD0_vtwrlJwIdKuxt_Jd

Barnett, P. C. (2000). Reviving cyberpunk:(Re) constructing the subject and mapping cyberspace in the Wachowski Brother's film The Matrix. Extrapolation (pre-2012), 41(4), 359.http://search.proquest.com/openview/9d941ed80a8b45f3c3095c65d1660844/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=48414

Huxley, A. (1998). Brave New World (1932). London: Vintage.http://www.cathietravers.com/2014pdf_frames/utopia.pdf

Irwin, W. (Ed.). (2002). The matrix and philosophy: Welcome to the desert of the real (Vol. 3). Open Court Publishing.https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=GSE5qlwGzCAC&oi=fnd&pg=PP14&dq=the+matrix+philosophy&ots=ImhXMzwn22&sig=qTYQXA4UeRGDfgvEVo9nVxxe_FA

Keegan, C. M. (2018). Lana and Lilly Wachowski. University of Illinois Press.https://www.academia.edu/download/58210164/LanaandLillyWachowski_SensingTransgenderIntro.pdf

Roiland, J. (2009). Getting Away from It All: The Literary Journalism of David Foster Wallace and Nietzsche’s Concept of Oblivion. Literary Journalism Studies, 1(2), 89.https://abrahamson.medill.northwestern.edu/WWW/IALJS/LJS_v1n2_complete_issue.pdf#page=91

Wachowski, A., Wachowski, L., Reeves, K., Fishburne, L., Moss, C. A., Weaving, H., ... & Staenberg, Z. (1999). Matrix. Burbank: Warner Home Video.https://deacademic.com/dic.nsf/dewiki/1381913