grayestofghosts | Rewatch of The Matrix (1999) (Reply)

I rewatched The Matrix(1999) last night for like the first time since middle school for research and I guess I have thoughts, now that I’ve had time to properly digest.

Inevitable “gosh everyone looks so young!” Now I’m used to Lawrence Fishburne from Hannibal and Keanu Reeves from John Wick. I haven’t seen anything Carrie-Anne Moss has been up to since but apparently she was in another Frankenstein movie in 2015 which I may be obligated to watch if I can find it on streaming given my Frankenstein fixation (though it doesn’t fit the original plot it seems to fit thematically, from the summary, maybe)
Some of the effects hold up much better than others. Even originally the squids looked strange to me in how they moved in the original, swimming in air, so they looked the same quality to me whereas online people think they look less impressive than modern effects The agent exploding looked especially goofy but a lot of it did seem to hold up, especially near the beginning — the mirror scene, the mouth and bug, etc. I saw a comment that “bullet time” looks retro now but I’m not sure if that’s due to the effect itself but rather its overuse in parody/pastiche
I do think that’s a big part of the impression of watching the film today, that because it was THE thing just before memes started proliferating, everything in it has been parodied to death so seeing the original unadulterated version feels a bit surreal. The heavy stylization of not just the effects but dialogue and movement makes the whole thing surreal (intended) but also a bit goofy now (unintended).
Despite being so heavily stylized, the shots still felt longer and overall the film still felt less polished than modern action films. I am not sure how much of this is the HD now or how everything is over-edited for smoothness, which ironically added a weird layer of reality over the intended surreality, which was probably not intended at the time.
I know everyone treats The Matrix as lore-heavy and this may be an effect of everyone knowing the plot by cultural osmosis now, but… the film itself didn’t seem super lore-heavy, it is stylized like it’s lore-heavy but the actual film is pretty straightforward though there is a lot of exposition. It feels kind of like Inception in that way, that it presents itself as dreamlike but the film itself, despite the effects, is pretty straightforward and easy to follow. Then again, it’s probably more that there is a lot of Matrix lore, but the first movie needed to stand alone to get into theatres. I remember my brother being a bit obsessed and would tell me stuff he found online about “lore” and even had a copy of The Ani-Matrix. There was a lot, but the first movie had to be a sensation first, I guess.
In terms of “lore” about the creation of the film itself, I’ve heard the character Switch was supposed to be one gender in the Matrix and another in reality, essentially that this character was supposed to be trans. I love textually and subtextually trans characters and of course loved Switch immediately despite them having essentially no development but, thinking about the original plan, I’m not even sure what that would mean? Like, how you appear in the matrix has to do with a ‘residual memory’ of yourself, but also with training you can control it, so if you were trans, would how you look in the matrix after training be a reflection of your real gender? But does that really thematically go with how this group wants everyone to be free of the matrix? Or, would the matrix, being “realistic” and oppressive, force you to take on the appearance of the assigned gender? I mean there’s the assumption that someone in a ragtag group of freedom fighters would have spotty access to trans treatments at best but the medical tech aboard the Nebudchannezzar seems really advanced so it’s possible they’re synthesizing their own hormones and etc. Like I’d imagine a trans character may try out a different gender in the training programs first and then trying to get treatment so eventually presenting the same both inside and outside the matrix, but that would be difficult to portray if the film was not about them (and in 1999, it absolutely would not be). The nude-colored shirt Switch wore under their blazer to give the impression of being shirtless looked like a nod to this idea even if it was questionable as originally conceived.
Speaking of Switch’s clothes, the heavy all-black fashion stylization that I recall was exaggerated. Aside from Switch wearing white, there’s also Morpheus’s green tie, and if you look closely the gold lining of Agent Smith’s blazer (which was a nice touch!). Somehow all of these touches got lost in parody and pastiche.
I was not raised Christian at all so the religious references did not feel quite so over-the-top when I first saw it, but now I’m just like, wow. Along with the name ‘Switch’ this film does not do subtlety.
You would think with the famous scene of Neo and Trinity shooting up the security checkpoint would be a good demonstration of how those points are generally just theatre and actually create bottlenecks for people in line in them but alas I’ve never seen it cited as a demonstration of the concept.
There’s a lot of warranted criticism about the Wachowski’s portrayal of race in their works but the film is still overtly about rescuing a Black man, a known terrorist and apparently “the most dangerous man in the world”, and this is mostly done by shooting up uniformed security officers and agents, and they succeed at it. I get that this film was made pre-911 but I still wonder if this concept would fly these days.

Anyway I felt obligated to give the film a rewatch because it’s thematically similar to something I’ve been working on but stylistically different — and I’m realizing stylistically extremely different, even if the themes are a bit more similar than I even remembered. As it is I’ve managed to talk myself out of the idea that you can’t do something that’s been “done before” because the people who liked the first thing are always going to be thirsty for more content!