![]() Neo stops some bullets, because he can, indeed, see The Matrix. In addition to The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, and (arguably) Being John Malkovich, among others, flirt with “end of history” themes. And if that’s true, then why do these protagonists feel so dissatisfied? These movies clustered around the second term of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and 1999 is rife with them. “End of history” movies tend to take as their starting point the idea that, yeah, everything seems like it’s great and is just going to keep getting better. Capitalism and liberal democracy were just the way to organize one’s society, and the end of the Cold War had “proved” that. ![]() Fukuyama argued that humankind had pretty much figured things out. The Matrix is probably the most famous film out of a micro-generation of movies I like to call “end of history” movies, after the Francis Fukuyama book of the same name, published in 1992. It’s 1999, and nothing will ever go wrong again! Neo flies up into the sky, and Rage Against the Machine plays. With the help of Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), Neo claims his mantle as “the one” and begins the process of helping humanity rise up against its oppressors. Neo (Keanu Reeves), a computer hacker who stumbles upon a massive secret about his reality: Humanity has been subjugated by machines, and the world is just a simulation we’ve all been plugged into, so we can serve as batteries to our robot overlords. In case you’ve forgotten, The Matrix follows the story of one Thomas Anderson, a.k.a. Era 1: The Matrix comes out and is an instant smash (1999) back to the Matrix, across five eras of the franchise’s history. Now, with a fourth film in the series coming out on December 22, it’s time to go back. But its sequels were divisive, and its ideas about questioning reality have influenced political reactionaries in dangerous ways. It’s probably the most influential American movie since Star Wars came out in 1977 (and it is now almost exactly as old as Star Wars was when The Matrix came out), and it’s by far the most popular piece of art created by trans people. ![]() The film captured a growing sense that nothing was real and everything was manipulated on some level, a sense that has only grown in the 22 years since the movie came out. And the movie’s masterstroke was setting its story in a world that felt very like the actual world in 1999, rather than an overtly fictional setting (as was the case with Dark City). In the minds of Lana and Lilly Wachowski, all of these elements blended and fit together seamlessly. And the feeling of watching The Matrix in 1999 was almost overwhelming. Heck, the movie’s premise is almost identical to 1998’s Dark City, a very good film you should check out.īut I’m not talking about the movie’s component parts I’m talking about how the movie felt. (And versions of the technique used to create this effect had been used throughout film history.)Īnd, yes, its script drew heavily from philosophy texts, comic books, and classic sci-fi. Its central moment of visual spectacle - time slowing down as the camera twists around, say, Neo dodging bullets - had been used a few months earlier in an ad for the Gap. Yes, if you were the sort of film watcher who consumed everything, you could spot how indebted the film was to wuxia martial arts epics, to anime, and to the films of James Cameron (among other action directors). When it came out on March 31, 1999, The Matrix felt like no other film that had ever existed.
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