Matrix Reloaded: "It’s Harry Potter with Guns"
Wednesday, April 30th, 2003
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My editor Chris Suellentrop has done it again. Not content to have every Harry Potter fan on Earth out to get him, he’s now taken on the Matrix. But give him credit - for once, someone who doesn’t write in Perl has seen the Matrix for what it is:
Despite all appearances, the movie is not a dystopia. Rather, it’s a utopia, a geek paradise. The Matrix is a sci-fi John Hughes movie, in which a misfit learns that he’s actually cool. At the software company where Keanu Reeves works, his boss might as well be the principal castigating Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club when he says: “You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe that you are special. That somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously, you are mistaken.” Of course, we learn that the oppressive Figure of Authority is the one who is mistaken. But instead of going to the prom, Keanu gets to pack heat, learn kung fu, wear a black trench coat and sunglasses, and, to top it off, he gets a hot, ass-kicking girlfriend who sports fetish wear. What kind of dystopia is this? No one wants to be Winston Smith in 1984, but everyone wants to be Neo (or Trinity, or Morpheus) …
Let’s hear it for hot, ass-kicking girlfriends with the right kind of fetish wear: A dog-eared O’Reilly manual. Did she really marry me? I must have taken the blue pill.
