Jul 26, 2003 02:07 PM
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(Updated Jul 26, 2003 02:10 PM)
PLEASE DO NOT STAB ME IN THE BACK because I have placed a review on The Matrix in the Matrix Reloaded Section. I never realised that you're only allowed to place one review on one product, and I spent so much time writing this I have to share it, so bare with me and sorry for those of you who hate it when people put their reviews in the wrong section! :(
Now that I have watched The Matrix, directed by the Wachowski brothers, and have studied every nook and cranny this film has, it has freaked the living daylights out of me. And seriously I’m not joking. In my last review on the Matrix I said that I had fallen in love with the film and that I didn’t believe that AI could ever exist. Well now I’m going to change my mind.
You ask why have she changed her mind?
Well for starters I live in a tiny little minute country isolated in the pacific. New Zealand although it is a modern country isn’t as advanced as other countries that like to play around with technology, like for example America. New Zealand government also doesn’t have the money to fiddle with all these kinds of technologies. The second reason I changed my mind is that at the moment I’m studying genetics in science. I’ve learnt a bit about cloning. If you’ve ever heard of a sheep named “Dolly” she was an exact clone of her mother. How freaky is that? So if a sheep can be cloned then theoretically a human can be cloned. You see our science is getting so advanced that you do come to wonder and acutely think about the creation of AI.
The Matrix with its many themes and layers leaves you incessantly questioning our lives. This film makes you think twice and arises many philosophies and attitudes. Here are three of my points.
THE CREATION OF OUR OWN DOOM
Today in this very world, if you still believe that this is OUR world, we are working towards the creation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Artificial Intelligence being the development of intelligence that’s much higher than the human race. In the film we see that humans initially “marvel” over the creation of the AI when it is celebrated in the early 21st Century. In the film we also see that the creation of AI is the creation of our own doom, this film implies this and illustrates it in such a way that you begin to deem what may happen if AI was created. When AI is created in our world we will expect them to obey us as we will create it for our own benefits. In the film the AI don’t obey the humans, their reason being that they’re more intelligent than humans and why should the humans be more dominant over the AI because of this. A war commences between the two rivalries, and AI come out with the victory after the humans lead themselves into more doom after they scorch the sky, thinking it will kill the AI as they need it as a source of energy. The AI had only one more source of energy and that is the humans. So they produced fields of power plants where humans were installed into pods so that energy could be obtained from them. So the theme of ‘creating our doom’ revolves around the creation of the Artificial Intelligence. Do we still want to create these things, or is the question do we need to create these things?
A point or perhaps a flaw in the film about how the humans dealt with the AI when at war. The humans scorched the sky, meaning they blew up the Sun. Therefore in the film the earth became a dark world. If the humans blew up the sun then wouldn’t the universe have collapsed. The planets wouldn’t have anything to orbit around! So the humans created the doom of the whole universe.
REALITY, WHAT IS IT?
The Matrix questions what reality is in our lives. In the film we learn the difference between what is real and what isn’t. In the film we know what isn’t real because we see it through a mirror and also the scenes have a slight green tinge to them. The Matrix was created by the AI to pacify the humans’ minds so that they wouldn’t come out of their pods. Everything we see in the Matrix is fake and therefore represented through a green tinge and occasionally through mirrors. As a viewer of the film we can distinguish reality. In our lives though we cannot. This is what makes the viewer constantly chew over. How can we distinguish between what is real and what isn’t? This is highlighted at the start of the film when Neo a person in the Matrix is searching for something but doesn’t know what. This can be aligned to what we think about, an answer to what reality really is. Another point in the film that highlights this is when Trinity a person who knows what reality is, contacts Neo who doesn’t know what reality is. She says to Thomas “It’s the question that drives us Neo,” referring to the question of reality.
In the film someone (can’t remember who and when) says something along the lines of the humans in the Matrix know that there’s something wrong in the world and that it plays at them as a splinter in the back of their minds. We don’t know for sure everything about our world, do we? Although we all follow certain beliefs and religions we do not know for certain where we are going to end up after life, we don’t know where our journey is going to end and how. That is a splinter that appears in the back of our minds.
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH?
The Matrix is a thinking persons film because it insinuates the truth. During the entire film we are provoked to think whether or not it is best to know the truth. A character that has been freed from the Matrix is Cypher. He doesn’t like the truth, as a matter of fact he hates it so much that his secret mission in the film is to try and get back into a pod in the power plant so that he can be with the Matrix once again. He hates the real world where he has to eat synthetic food because there’s no solar energy anymore to grow plants. By studying the character Cypher we come to think about what world we’d like to live in, we come to think whether we’d like to be blinded from the truth like him. This is highlighted when Cypher visits the Matrix and is eating a steak. He knows the steak isn’t real, he knows that when he puts it into his mouth his mind is telling him that it is juicy and delicious. He then explains that, “Ignorance is bliss.”
This film has so much depth that it doesn’t make you stop thinking! “The Matrix is a thinking persons film” is a true statement.
IF YOU READ THIS REVIEW PLEASE AT LEAST LEAVE A RATING. I cannot stand it when so many people read the review but such a minority rate and an even smaller minority comment. COMMENTS AND KIND CRITICISM ARE APPRECIATED.
