Albert Shoe in Widescreen apparently got me thinking a bit about escapism and quasi-mental breakdowns.  This inevitably led me to go back and think a bit harder about the Matrix. 

Allow me to explain that potentially unrelated link.

The Matrix follows the story of Mr. Anderson, an office worker drone who by day has a mind numbingly dull office job and by night leads a secret underground life by the name of Neo.  Mr. Anderson is contacted by a mysterious individual who then blows his mind by revealing that life is not real and that what Mr. Anderson believes to be his normal existence is in fact a computer simulation in order to keep his mind busy and his body dormant so that his life energy can be used as power for the robots that now rule the world.  He is also told that he is the single most important human in the world, because he is the prophesized “One” that will destroy the machines and let mankind rule once more.

Midway through the film, there’s a lovely little twist where the nature of the Matrix is revealed, and Neo goes through some beautifully executed training montages and finally overcomes adversity, becoming “The One” and proving that he can defeat machines in the Matrix that had previously been unbeatable.  This all ends with Neo on top but still open ended, allowing for the inevitable sequels.

Then things get a bit weird.

Tempting as it is to go on a “the original one is the best” and bang my particular drum about some film makers only being good until they’re given a blank cheque for a budget, I won’t, because then we’ll get back on to Star Wars and I’ll be here all day again.  I will merely reiterate that the second and third films feel very different from the first, and there are a few things that don’t entirely make sense (Agent Smith showing up in the real world, Neo’s powers showing up in the real world, The Key-maker, Morpheus being demoted from amazing-general to person-that-gets-shouted-at-constantly-by-Jada-Pinkett-Smith). 

The only way they can possibly make sense is that this is all part of Mr. Anderson’s psychotic episode which begins in earnest shortly after he is given a final warning by his boss.  There have been a few instances of his fantasy world bleeding through into his life already, probably induced by insomnia, but as soon as he is taken away by the agents and “bugged”, that indicates that Mr. Anderson is no longer sane.  In fact, the agents that came to take him away could possibly have been the men in white coats for all we know and the “bug” probably some kind of sedative.  Once he wakes up in his apartment after that, it is probably all completely in Mr. Anderson’s head as he is locked up in a padded room.  From that point in the film afterall, everything gets progressively stranger with more and more revolving around Neo as the most important person in the world as “The One” and he becomes more and more powerful in his personal fantasy. 

This is the only way it would be possible to reconcile all the little inconsistencies, the character degradation, the massive changes in style and pace, the sudden introduction of oft meaningless philosophy that rambles without saying anything and the sudden inclusion of “Matrix rules” in the real world.  The final shot of the last film should probably have been Keanu Reaves gibbering with a big smile on his face in his padded room with Agent Smith as his psychiatrist doing the best that he can to break him out of his fantasy.

You just watch those films again and see the direction it all goes.  It starts out mundane and ordinary, then it mixes in a bit of urban fantasy before suddenly jack knifing into out and out end of the world science fiction and then into pulpy science fiction into manga/anime that takes itself too seriously.  All of the secondary characters become throwaway individuals, and several one dimensional characters that we just can’t care about are introduced in the second and third films as Mr. Anderson is becoming less coherent and losing himself even more in his fantasy world, and ultimately, he becomes without doubt, the most important central figure and savior to all. 

Maybe his sacrifice at the end of the third film indicates that he’s played out his fantasy, or maybe that he couldn’t take it any more and killed himself, or that perhaps psychiatrist Smith got through to him and broke him out of it, represented by the big fight between Agent Smith and Neo at the end of the third film.  Regardless, this is the way that I shall be thinking of this trilogy from now on as it just makes more sense that way.

Additional Notes:

As I wrote the opening about Mr. Anderson’s double life, I couldn’t help thinking of the set up of Fight Club which is oddly appropriate. 

As a side note, Reloaded and Revolutions are not as bad as you remember them, although in a lot of places they’re much much worse.   I think what made them such a disappointment when they came out was…well, the disappointment.  There were so many amazing concepts that were introduced in the Matrix that everyone was desperate to see where they’d take it and what else they’d introduce.  The trailer was absolutely breathtaking and the character art looked amazing in many cases and intriguing in others.  The Wachowski brothers did of course set themselves the impossible task of pleasing their fan base:  At the end of the day, they made a film about a computer-science expert who by dint of spending all his time at his computer became the most powerful, important and amazing individual in the world, which appeals to the target demographic so hard that it feels like a marketing tactical nuke.  There was never any possibility of them following that up with anything less than a little disappointing.