| Okay now I’ve got Matrix on the brain. Going to self-indulgently reply to myself instead of just editing my first post bc this is totally off topic and I just want to spitball about The Matrix. I think a lot of my problems with The Matrix are rooted in how it (mal-)adapts Campbell’s hero’s journey. Here’s the basic outline of the hero’s journey: - There’s a mundane (“real”, we’ll come back to that) world and a magical world. A problem in the magical world threatens the mundane world. (Sauron is rising in the east, Grendel is lurking in the forest, etc) - A hero is identified in the mundane world who has the power to navigate both. (Luke is both a farm boy and a jedi. Neo is a programmer and the chosen one) - The hero enters the magical world and resolves the problem. - The hero (usually) returns to the mundane world, bringing power from the magical world. Even if the hero doesn’t return, the mundane world is brought to a new equilibrium. This is the real point of the story: the hero’s journey isn’t about the magical world, it’s about healing the mundane world. The twist in The Matrix is that the mundane world turns out to be an illusion. But that’s a trick: the “real” world, unplugged from the matrix, is in a story sense magical. It’s a fantastical sci-fi world, just as far down the rabbit hole as the matrix itself. So the last, most important step in the hero’s journey falls apart. You can’t heal the mundane world if it doesn’t exist. This helps move the focus of the story back to the first stages, the ego-fulfillment part where the hero is identified. Everyone remembers the red pill and “I know kung-fu”; not so much the incoherent sequels. We’re actually circling back around to Baudrillard here, but I think maybe not in the way the Wachowskis intended. I think you could also probably read Total Recall as an anti-Matrix. If The Matrix is about the allure of imagining yourself to be innately a hero, Total Recall is about the danger. |