Her psychic powers are trusted without hesitation.Ī loose comparison to Christ is presented inasmuch as Neo is the “chosen one” destined to save mankind. Almost everything they believe is based on what the Oracle says. Spiritual Content: Mysticism and prophesies play a large role in the freedom fighters’ worldview. After over two hours of almost non-stop fighting, viewers are left with the feeling that the characters of the film have played a distant second to the special effects-filled action scenes. Especially when a bug-like creature penetrates Neo’s belly and is later forcibly extracted.Īction is often shown with slow-motion dream-like clarity, firmly planting the images in moviegoers minds. That doesn’t mean gore isn’t a problem though. One man is stabbed in the head.īlood drips from mouths as internal organs are pummeled in one scene, but the remainder of the fighting is highly choreographed and largely gore-free. Bodies are repeatedly bludgeoned, ripped apart by machine-gun bullets, slammed through concrete walls, burned with electrical blasts, exploded and hit by a train. Violent Content: Excruciatingly drawn-out sequences feature slow-motion gun battles and hand-to-hand combat including kung-fu fighting. (Pun intended.) A short conversation occurs in which one computer programmer offers Neo an interlude with a digital woman. Reality, regardless of how dreary, is better for man than the mindless exercise of comfort and luxury easily provided by the Matrix. Positive Elements: Truth is worth more than life itself for the freedom fighters. Then reintroduced into the Matrix, Neo must defeat the Machines. Plucked out of the Matrix by the freedom fighters, he is trained to fight. If your mind can transcend the illusion, you can leap tall buildings in a single bound.Įnter Neo, the One whose appearance has been prophesized by the Oracle (an old woman with psychic powers). If you think you are falling from the top of a skyscraper, you are. Everything centers on how much your mind can disbelieve. Since nothing is real inside, laws of physics need not apply.
A few of them re-enter the Matrix to battle the Machines which present themselves in the form of humans. They form a colony called Zion in the real world (which is otherwise lifeless). It’s at this point that the film opens with a select group of men and women who have hacked their way out of the Matrix, discovering their true identity. The world “seems” to still be normal, but in fact the bodies of humans are contained in chambers on large “farms” and their minds are linked into a worldwide virtual reality computer program called the Matrix. And the Machines win.Īfter discovering they can subsist using electricity generated by the human body, the Machines create a grand illusion to fool humans into serving them.
In the resulting power struggle, the world is decimated. Late in the 21st century, man develops artificial intelligence (referred to simply as the Machines). Or does it? This is revisionist history-in the future. Is life real or illusion? Twentieth century life flows on as normal. So goes the question posed in The Matrix. “How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world if you didn’t wake from the dream?”