Sure, I can enjoy The Matrix as a futuristic action-fantasy flick, but it aspires to so much more and fails in crucial respects.
It crashes and burns as science fiction the moment Morpheus shows us the Duracell battery. Oily smoke from the plot's wreckage fills the theater when magical bullet holes appear in persons who are jacked in to the Matrix.
It exploits cyberpunk trappings (mainly shades, urban decay, and black leather) so thoroughly that it's on everyone's list of cyberpunk movies, but it's not cyberpunk. Contrast with Robocop-- or, hell, Max Headroom. As I watched what promised to be an exemplar of my favorite science-fiction genre, I couldn't help feeling ripped off. I'd be happy to elaborate.
It's also widely touted as an exemplar of the "postmodern" movie. I don't think so. Sure, you have your shifting frames of reference and your world of illusions, but the story presumes to refer to a real reality outside of and superior to the artificial Matrix. That's a fine story, but it's not what I would call "postmodern," for any number of reasons that I'd be glad to enumerate. Contrast with Adaptation, Mulholland Drive, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to name a few.
I mean, The Matrix is essentially Gnostic. It doesn't just borrow from Gnosticism or offer Gnostic tenets as a possible framework for the action, as a really "postmodern" story might. Instead, it's pretty much a straightforward Gnostic allegory. And isn't Gnosticism premodern?
I could have enjoyed the movie without these reservations if it had only taken the approach of a movie like Tremors: Here are some monsters; we don't know or care where they came from; now let's see what the characters do about them. Instead, the movie offers a lot of lofty explanations that fail, with a bunch of superficial philosophical and literary window dressing. Too bad, because the fight scenes were really cool.
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