Long before the arrival of Matrix In 1999, the term Cyberspace was born in 1968 in the Danish artistic sphere. However, she was william Gibson who gave him the technological conception that characterizes him to this day in his novel Neuromancer (1984). There he defined them as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in all countries. A graphical representation of data abstracted from all computers in the human system. An unthinkable complexity. Lines of light arranged in the non-space of the mind, conglomerates and constellations of information. Like city lights receding into the distance…”
It did not take long for this virtual space, which had already been previously imagined in the novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), by Philip K. Dick, and the film tron (1982), became a necessary terrain for science fiction to explore. Tapes like The future Avenger (1990), Virtuosity (1995) and City in darkness (1998) tried it with little success.
Enters…
History changed when Wool and Lilly Wachowskitwo creatives who enjoyed anonymity and whose only credits included the script for Assassins (1995) and the direction of Partners in crime (1996), convinced Warner Bros. to give them almost $65 million to carry out a project that would redefine the direction of science fiction forever. That’s how it was born Matrix.
The basic premise introduces us to a simulated world created by machines to control human consciousness. A revolutionary and visually spectacular concept. But it also has great depth as it draws inspiration from all kinds of philosophical currents. The Allegory of the Cave with which Plato analyzed the differences between the sensory world and the intelligible world; the First Meditation in which Rene Descartes He alleged that excessive reliance on the senses can generate false illusions; the Critique of Pure Reason with which Immanuel Kant He distinguished between sensitive emotions and the representations that arose from them; or the essay Simulacres et Simulation in which Jean Baudrillard concluded that contemporary man lives in a world mentally alien to reality. To this we add different religious elements extracted from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism.
Red or blue capsule
What is the Matrix? The question, which served tagline and was even included in the film’s script, it remains difficult to explain. Morpheus already said it: “No one can tell you what the Matrix is. You need to see it for yourself”.
Matrix It was a phenomenon in every sense of the word. Its global box office of $463.5 million was the fourth-highest grossing of 1999. Even more important was that its narrative complexity earned it a combination rarely seen: an extensive fan base that came to be compared to that of Star Wars [vía] and a cult status that unleashed all kinds of theories. Some sought to fill the gaps in history; others tried to prove its truth.
Such is the case of the teacher Nick Bostromthe astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the technology entrepreneur elon Musk, who have agreed on the high possibilities that we live in a virtual world. Not satisfied with this, the Bank of America reported that there is a 20% to 50% chance that we live in a simulated reality, because “It is conceivable that, with advances in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and computing power, members of future civilizations would decide to run a simulation about their ancestors.”.
Reality or fiction?
Nobody knows, just like The fervent followers of this theory do not know what would happen if the programmers got fed up with the game. Whatever the answer, it was like this Matrix It was positioned as the most important metafiction in all of history. He did so by leaving behind the fantastic character that had always characterized science fiction and generating a complex reflection on our own existence in an increasingly technological world.
The film industry was quick to react to this impressive response. There were many films that replicated the narrative and aesthetic bases created by the Wachowskis for the construction of their own realities: The cell (2000), Paprika (2005) and A Skanner Darkly (2006) are some of the most immediate examples. To this we add the revolutionary bullet-time, exploited to exhaustion after being immortalized by Neo while dodging enemy bullets. The best use of him outside of the Wachowski trilogy was in the irreverent Shrek (2001).
Unfortunately, the legacy of Matrix was tainted when the film was accused of having inspired Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in the murder of 12 students during the massacre of Columbine. The accusers argued that the event occurred only a month after the premiere, the young people left videos where they appeared in black clothing and dark glasses and that the high levels of violence in the film could have influenced their behavior. The cinematic impact on the massacres in the United States has continued to be debated ever since.
Back to the Matrix
Many years have passed since the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar saved humanity from destruction. And after Matrix Resurrections (2021) one might think that there are no more stories left to tell in Zion. As the Pythoness said, “everything that has a beginning has an end”. But humans are unpredictable and it should not be ruled out that a new Chosen One returns to the source for a temporary dissemination of the code for reinsertion into the main program. Or what is the same, the rescue of the franchise for a new adventure. Only time will tell.
Luis Miguel Cruz Someday I’ll join the X-Men, the Rebel Alliance, or the Night’s Watch. Proud member of Cine PREMIERE since 2008.