- Hello friends.
The Matrix is turning 20,
yet Keanu Reeves somehow still looks younger than all of us.
Pretty sure he's a warlock.
The Wachowski's film broke new ground
with its innovative action sequences
and taught a new generation of teenagers the word nihilism.
Seriously this movie's tagline could've been,
you don't get it, dad.
Yes, The Matrix started a revolution,
but did Hollywood take away the wrong lessons from the film?
This week on Heat Vision Breakdown,
we look at the complicated legacy
of the lauded sci-fi action classic.
And no, before you say it, I'm not going to say,
whoa or I know kung fu or anything like that.
(record scratches)
- What about, there is no spoon?
- You know what, David Castaneda from Umbrella Academy,
if that's the way you want to do it,
then you can do it yourself.
- There is no spoon.
(lively electronic music)
- Back in the early '90s,
the Wachowskis were just aspiring filmmakers
who no one knew would change the cinematic landscape.
They sold the script for 1995's Assassins for $1 million
and then watched in horror
as the Antonio Banderas-Sylvester Stallone movie
was re-written into something the siblings didn't recognize.
They then wrote and directed the indie horror movie Bound,
which became a modest success,
but all along, they were dreaming of The Matrix.
The Matrix launched a cinematic landscape without limits.
Originally conceived as a comic,
the plot drew inspiration from Japanese anime,
such as Ghost In the Shell,
the works of sci-fi maestro Philip K. Dick,
and the undergrad philosophy course
that made your brother Steve so insufferable
during Christmas break.
We get it, you read Nietzsche.
Stitching together their influences,
the Wachowskis created an original world of their own
that felt unlike anything we'd seen
in American blockbusters.
In doing so, they invited other filmmakers
to break the mold, push boundaries,
and to ask their audiences to think about
narratively-simplistic action films on a deeper level.
Yet, when we look at what came after The Matrix,
that doesn't seem the lesson that many took away from it.
Doesn't even seem to be the lesson
that the Wachowskis took away from it,
given the direction the trilogy took after 1999.
Rather than deep questions about the nature of reality,
the most persistent vestiges of The Matrix's influence
are black leather costumes, gun fights, and bullet time.
Movie's like Christian Bale's Equilibrium,
about a society where emotions have been made illegal,
guess they don't have Twitter,
tried to have a message, but didn't totally nail it.
While other movies didn't even bother
with a pseudo-deep message,
but did ape The Matrix's style
with slow-mo gun fights, rotating cameras,
and heroes who wear trench coats and sunglasses indoors.
Even video games such as Max Payne,
Fear, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004,
oh yeah, ripped-off bullet time.
But if you think that Tiger jacking The Matrix
was the weirdest thing that happened,
then clearly you're forgetting
that The Gap used the combined powers
of swing music and bullet time
to hock their khaki in the late '90s.
("Jump Jive An' Wail" )
To be fair, it's hard to blame imitators
for trying to cash in on The Matrix's success.
That's a tongue twister.
The film essentially encapsulated
the time period it was released in.
Y2K had given rise to renewed fears
of a tech-powered apocalypse,
late '90s acts such as Rob Zombie,
Marilyn Manson, and Rage Against the Machine,
all part of The Matrix's soundtrack,
were at the height of their popularity
and the list of people who wore Oakleys
wasn't just made up of guys selling Adderall at night clubs.
To emphasize just how late '90s The Matrix actually is,
remember that dial-up internet was a central plot point
that the entirety of the film's action revolved around.
(imitates dial-up)
(screaming)
I dunno if this is bad, per se.
While some great genre films such as
Alien and The Dark Knight feel timeless
and as if they could be made during any time period,
others such as The Warriors,
or The Terminator or even The Matrix,
capture the feeling of their current moment
and reflect the society's hopes and fears on the big screen.
The Matrix is a snapshot
of the zeitgeist and anxieties of the 1990s.
We were all worried about new technology
like the rise of the internet and cloning sheep.
But the Wachowskis distilled those feelings
on film through their own lens.
Did we all think we'd be responsible for the apocalypse
and a near future that saw us all harvested in baby farms
for the sole purpose of becoming batteries
to supply energy to the machines,
who used all that said energy
to endlessly grow more babies,
which eventually became batteries to fuel said harvesting?
You know, sounds kind of silly when you lay it out like that.
Regardless of some of the dated aspects of the script,
try playing a drinking game every time
someone says the one
and you'll end up like Leslie Mann
in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
- What is this?
- The judge recommended I get one.
- The Wachowskis were incredibly ambitious
in their filmmaking for The Matrix.
Take bullet time, for example.
It took two years and $750,000 to complete.
They believed they could pull it off, however,
despite this literally being how they described it
in the script.
"His gun booms as we enter the liquid space of bullet time."
Is that it, seriously?
Okay, sure, it's rough, but the seeds were there
and what the Wachowskis were able to actually put on screen
was mind-blowing for the time
and staggeringly influential for filmmaking
for the next decade.
The Matrix has had dark connotations.
Politicians at the time blamed it in part
for the mass shooting at Columbine High School,
which occurred weeks after the film's opening.
And the term red pill has been co-opted by so many groups
pushing different agendas,
that it hardly even registers
as a film reference at this point.
But The Matrix also opened people's minds.
And that's a testament to the Wachowskis.
It sounds like a joke,
but some scientists seriously have considered
the possibility that we're all living
in a fabricated reality.
Even Elon Musk has said there's only
a one-in-billion's chance that we aren't
living in a simulation.
And that guy invented PayPal,
so he knows what he's talking about.
- I've had so many simulation discussions, it's crazy.
- [Interviewer] Okay.
- Big budget action films can often feel derivative,
both in the plotting and actual action sequences,
and stand-outs in the genre are rarer than you might think.
The Matrix's bullet time,
The Raid or John Wick's choreography,
The French Connection's car chase,
Fury Road's insane practical effects and stunts,
all these moments and innovations propel the genre forward,
but it's important to understand why.
It is not simply the spectacle
that was put on the screen by the filmmaker,
it was the innovation and creativity
to create something new and entirely unexpected
that makes them classics.
It also helps if you have a literal immortal being
like Keanu Reeves as your star.
So what do you guys think?
What's the legacy of The Matrix?
Let us know in the comments right down there.
Don't forget to subscribe
and join us here every Friday morning
for new episodes of Heat Vision Breakdown.
- Hey, David, we left this ice cream for you.
- Oh, that's nice.
There's no spoon.
- You said it.
- Ugh, Castaneda!
(upbeat music plays)