From the beginning, The Matrix wanted us to ask a question: “What is the Matrix?” which was practically the tagline.
Did the film’s creators, Lilly and Lana Wachowski, anticipate the deluge of questions to follow swiftly thereafter? “How does the Oracle know everything?” “Why are the pills red and blue?” “What does it all mean?” While these questions were only enriched, let’s say, by the sequels and supplementary material, the answer might actually lie outside the Matrix, though still within that falling green code.
Like other groundbreaking sci-fi films before it, namely Star Wars and Alien, The Matrix is a pastiche of influences, including comic books, French philosophy, and Hong Kong cinema.
In The Matrix Reloaded, for example, Neo chooses to fight the endless Agent Smith copies instead of flying away, which is pulled directly from the kung fu playbook.
Like Gordon Liu in the Shaolin Temple, he’s testing himself,…
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