Matrix Trilogy

[Peter]

Has anyone ever considered the connection between "The Matrix" and "Terminator-rise of the machines"? The war that begins in the end of T3 perhaps is the same war that Morpheus and Neo tries to end in the Matrix. Anyone?

[chris]

you know this isn't imdb son?

[Andrew]

chris wrote: "you know this isn't imdb son?"

This made me chuckle.
Plus... While the cast of The Matrix were asked to read this text, Baudrillard himself says the movie perverts and distorts his work.

[David]

Tomas wrote: "The Matrix misses the point of S&S. The Matrix posits a real beneath the hyperreal, the simulation, that is some how more real/actually there. Baudriallard says there is no real: nothing beneath, b..."

Arguably, an idea that the lead character of the Matrix embodied at the core of his being and set him apart from any of the other characters in the story. Throughout the movies he goes through phases where he stretches away from that idea to the point of breaking, but always snaps back to it sooner or later.

He senses the simulation at the beginning of the movie, but led into the "real world", his first impression is one of "I don't believe you" and "this isn't real". The role his teacher Morpheus declares for him, the pseudo religious hero's path the oracle sees for him, the mundanely mathematical purpose the architect declares for him, the messianic role expected of him by fellow Zionites, the agenda Smith had of conquering him, and even the desire for lasting love from Trinity are all additional examples of illusions. He initially resists each one - with doubtful suspicion, then falls for them and tries to find some kind of meaning or "real" in them, and then finally conquers the illusion once something "real" or of meaning fails to be procured.

Toward the end of the metamorphoses he is removed from any pretenses of finding meaning or purpose or something "real" beyond the hyperreal. Rather, he's given over completely to the simulation, answering the antagonist's question posed to him of "why do you persist?" by reflecting back the nature of the simulation, doing because he does (or persisting because he chooses to, nothing more grandiose than that). Once the nature of the simulation is fully manifest in him, he then absolves into the void behind it, giving over completely. In a sense, the hero "wins" but ceases to exist by doing so, and the dissolution of his individual simulation into the void is inevitable.

The whole story of the Matrix seems to me to be one of that trek to find meaning, spurred on by the sense that one is in the midst of something false, but in the end there is no meaning (not even in the "false" simulation), just a return to the void beyond the hierarchical layers of hyperreal. He never really does find meaning, just roles he becomes enamored with for a time and then sheds them off; he never really finds anything "real" beyond the simulations.

[Andrew]

Beukenick wrote: "Peter wrote: "Has anyone ever considered the connection between "The Matrix" and "Terminator-rise of the machines"? The war that begins in the end of T3 perhaps is the same war that Morpheus and Ne..."

The Wachowskis were thorough and transparent about how and why they composed "The Matrix." A lot of the composition process was discussed in "The Matrix Revisited."