The Matrix

As you can probably tell, I've changed the updates to once a week. Thursday seems better than Mondays due to the fact you all are fully into the work-week schedule and not recovering from an end of the weekend blowout.

Anyway, The Matrix. When this movie came out, it was revolutionary in a special effects sense and told a tale that many became infatuated with. The premise is cool, I won't lie...the world we know is nothing more than an illusion developed and pumped electronically directly into our minds by intelligent machines growing us in tubes as a source of energy. Wow. Impressive and ambitious definitely. Then we find out that we created the machines and, over time, drove them to the superiority mindset because of our conceited idea that we were better and that everything should obey our will. The robots rose up to defend, ended up enslaving. Of course, this is all backstory introduced through canon spin-offs, but still.

The story kicks off with a gravity-defying fight and chase, then we are introduced to the main character Neo, aka Thomas Anderson. Geeky hacker who is searching for the mysterious Morpheus, and in doing so finds just how messed up the world has become. See, it's not 1999...it's 2999 or so, and the "modern" world is a program. The robots aren't cruel to their crops; their first world was a Utopia, but our inherent desire for chaos caused human minds to reject the program and subsequently die. So the robots recreated 1999 and let us at it. Everything's mental in The Matrix, and outside it's steampunk future. But, as you all guessed, there are ways to plug back into the program via a backdoor, eliminating all of the laws of the program.

This movie was every computer geek's blissful dream; it made programing, hacking, and that whole deal cool. The main characters were all savvy with terminology and with information discs stored aboard their ships could practically instantaneously learn all forms of martial arts, vehicle operation, and languages. Mind over matter and the acceptance that what is around you is, in fact, an illusion could allow for huge jumps, wall-running, etc. I loved the movie, even without the hacker bias. It was cool and the cast was excellent, even Keanu.

Over all, it was fun, entertaining, and full of pseudo-Buddhist messages. Highly recommended; however, stay far away from its sequels. Where the first was good, they were bad. The story developed into a Messiah tale that became preachy and convoluted, but not in a good Lost sort of way.