Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded
Much has been written about Larry and Andy Wachowski's film The Matrix and on practically every angle: from philosophical precedents to the realities of artificial intelligence. Religious scholars, too, have thrown their hats into the academic ring, expounding on the Gnostic, Buddhist and Christian aspects found therein. But as many have discovered, the Wachowski brothers are syncretists, pulling bits from here and there and then mixing it all together in a science fiction martial arts stew. They do this so thoroughly that when one tries to impose a singular religious paradigm on top of the film(s) slotting in the characters one by one, it seems to work only until put back within the context of the film(s) It is then when everything begins to unravel. Even though scholars have done it time and time again employing one religious worldview to understand The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded simply does not work. It's almost too simplistic a method for a film this complex. And this paper will demonstrate why. This article is available in Journal of Religion Film: https:/digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol7/iss2/6 The Matrix: Reloaded opened May 15 with much anticipation and fanfare. Not only did it vanquish its competition, knocking X2: X Men United from the No. 1 spot, but on its opening weekend it also earned $93.3 million, making it "the second highest first weekend grossing film of all time." It has been four years since part one of the trilogy opened and many wondered how, now that Neo (Keanu Reeves) was freed from his artificial intelligence slave masters, the saga would progress. Now we know not well. Two hundred and fifty thousand sentinels are rapidly drilling into Zion, the last human outpost, and Neo can't sleep, for his dreams contain unsettling images of Trinity's (Carrie Anne Moss) fate. But it's worse than that. When he encounters the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis) the Godlike creator of the Matrix. Neo learns that the prophecy might end the war but not in the way Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) has envisioned. In the final reel the film's spiritual leader is left a broken man, "I dreamed a dream, and now that dream is gone from me." A number of scholars have looked to The Bible to understand The Matrix, and rightly so. The basics seem to be there. Neo/Thomas Anderson is the One, the predetermined messiah who has the innate purpose of and ability to save humanity. His name says it all as so many have pointed out Neo is an anagram for the One. This Greek word also means new with the additional mantle of being something in a different or abnormal manner. This certainly fits Neo, who really is a "new and 1 Fielding: Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded Published by DigitalCommons@UNO, 2003 improved" human; he's superhuman. Unlike his shipmates, he can read the raw code without need of a computer monitor. By Reloaded he can fly, dodge and stop bullets and move at unimaginable speeds; he's Superman in a dystopian milieu. Before transforming into Neo, his hacker alter ego, he is Thomas Anderson, the respectable corporate programming drone. Even when he is enmeshed in the "dream world" his name hints at greater things. When broken into its components, Anderson becomes "Son of Man." The name Thomas also furthers ties the Bible to The Matrix, for in the beginning this character suffers from doubt. "No! I don't believe it. It's not possible," he tells Morpheus once he's learned the truth that human beings are grown in fields so that their body heat can be converted into batteries to run the master machine. Put all of this into a Christian context and it is not difficult to envision Neo as Christ, the man God sent to save humanity from evil forces. Building on this connection, in Reloaded when Neo and Trinity come out of the elevator into Zion, a large group of followers have assembled; waiting for the messiah's return. Many extend offerings or ask for help. "I have a son Jacob, please watch over him," one woman pleads. Another begs Neo to watch over her "daughter on the Icarus." Other scholars have turned to Buddhism to understand Neo, casting him as the Buddha or a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who forsakes nirvana to stay behind and help humanity. And evidence in the film(s) supports this, too. Morpheus 2 Journal of Religion Film, Vol. 7 [2003] Iss. 2, Art. 6 https:/digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol7/iss2/6 wakes Neo to the fact that the world he has taken to be real is anything but. It is maya, literally "deception, illusion The continually changing, impermanent phenomenal world of appearances and forms, of illusion or decision, which an unenlightened mind takes as the only reality." Only by seeing the truth will Neo be released from this "prison for your mind." One visual hint in The Matrix that Neo has surrendered himself to his new life takes place after his muscles have been rebuilt. When he goes to meet the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar his head is still covered with a dark stubble and his shoulders are wrapped in a blanket, making this recent initiate resemble a Buddhist monk. And life on the ship is anything but luxurious. Like the monks of so many traditions, these prophecy followers subsist on a single bowl of bland "gruel" and cope with cold, cramped accommodations. In addition to Buddhism, Flannery Dailey and Wagner look to Gnosticism for elucidation and conclude that Neo must be the "redeemer figure who willingly enters the world in order to share liberating knowledge, facilitating escape for anyone able to understand." All of these approaches work on a certain level but are far from decoding The Matrix trilogy. The problem with associating Neo with Jesus, the Buddha or the Gnostic redeemer is that all these traditions have negative attitudes toward the physical body. In Matthew 16:21, Jesus tells Peter, "You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." In 3 Fielding: Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded Published by DigitalCommons@UNO, 2003 Galatians 5:16 Paul writes, "live by the spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the spirit, and what the spirit desires is opposed to the flesh Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness .envy, drunkenness, carousing I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." And in 1 Peter 11, the author writes "I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against your soul." Finally consider what God did to the wicked cities Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:15 22. Even today Christians think of Jesus as celibate and when anyone tries to present him as anything else The Last Temptation of Christ springs to mind the placards come out and the teeth gnash. Before he became the Buddha, the enlightened one was Siddhartha, a married prince who also had a son, appropriately named Rahula or "fetter." When he "woke up" to reality that sickness, old age and death wait for us all he cast off his family, becoming an ascetic. Even when he found the Middle Way, he didn't go back to being a householder. At the core of his teachings is the fact that not only is craving or desire, the thirst for sensual pleasure and the becoming and passing away, the root of suffering but it is the very thing that keeps us shackled to the wheel of birth and rebirth. 4 Journal of Religion Film, Vol. 7 [2003] Iss. 2, Art. 6 https:/digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol7/iss2/6 As for the Gnostics, they were dualists who had a revulsion of the human body. To them the spirit was everything. "The majority of the sects demanded an ascetic life with rules for the mortification of the flesh and a special prohibition on marriage (or at least on procreation) so that the divine soul might be liberated from the bonds of sense and bodily appetite and assisted to turn itself toward higher things." So what does all this have to do with Neo? Although he may seem to be celibate in The Matrix, by Reloaded his lust is clearly a driving force. The first time we see that the love between Trinity and Neo is far from a Platonic ideal is in a Zion elevator, when alone the two grapple passionately. Their relationship escalates to an almost five minute sex act intercut with images of sweat drenched Zionists bumping and grinding in the Temple. Those who have equated this serene messiah with the chaste Jesus and Buddha might be left scratching their heads. What's more puzzling is how does this make us reassess Cypher (Joe Pantoliano) the supposed Judas Iscariot of the piece. In The Matrix he meets with Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) at a cyber created restaurant where he drinks fine wine, smokes a cigar and eats a juicy steak. He will give up Morpheus if the Agent will reinsert him into the Matrix. "Ignorance is bliss," Cypher says. From this scene, scholars have shouted a mighty "aha." Cypher, who embraces the sensual world and its distractions, must be the villain. Then we remember what Mouse (Matt 5 Fielding: Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded Published by DigitalCommons@UNO, 2003 Doran) tells Neo while he and the crew of the Nebuchadnezzer are dining on their bland bowl of "synthesized aminos, vitamins and minerals:" "To deny our impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human." Mouse refers here not only to the woman in the red dress but also to those things that give a person pleasure. The only significant difference between Cypher and Neo is that one responds to his "impulses" in the dream world and the other acts on them in the real world. Those using Buddhism to understand The Matrix cast Morpheus as a sort of Zen dogen or master. Unfortunately, he's neither an expert warrior nor very "enlightened" nothing more than a trick; a way to control the humans. Although the freed humans believe they can make a choice, their choices only lead them closer to their oblit