What is the Matrix?

That question, subject of a lengthy advertising campaign, seriously changed my life.

Well, my standards in movies, at the very least.

This movie is the benchmark to which everything observed since will be measured, and probably found wanting. It is a shining light in a world otherwise covered by a cloud of darkness formed by the half baked movie ideas of the likes of Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, and unfortunately, Will Ferrell.

It is hope.

Here’s the deal. I walked into that movie expecting some explosions, and gun fights, and funky special effects, and Keanu Reeves playing the vague, half-stoned character he’s been pedalling since Bill and Ted first graced our screens. I mean, anyone whose catchphrase is “woah” must be at least semi-high, right?

I walked into that movie expecting exactly that, and that was exactly what I got. That, and so much more.

I walked out of that movie, and was changed. It is to date the only movie that I have walked out of, and had to question whether the streetlight, the taxi, the rubbish bin, the very street in front of me was real. I looked around at the world outside the cinema, and had to question everything.

Was the idiot 12 year-old really there? Was that the smell of stale beer and three-day old vomit? Or was it all the Matrix? Was this life, or was it a lie fed to us by machines who have conquered humanity in a post-apocalyptic future and keep us alive only as comatose, but dreaming, batteries?

I touched the side of the building, and told myself it was really there. It WAS really there. I was sure. But again, I wasn’t.

Now THIS, people of the wider interwebz area, THIS is what a piece of cinema is supposed to do. THIS is the effect that it should have on those that partake in its silver screened glory. Not wonder if a Jacuzzi can really go back in time, not question if a pair of male figure skaters can win a mixed world championship, THIS is the way it should be.

I’m not going to bore you with the details of a movie that you have undoubtedly seen, an appreciated to the full extent of its sheer brilliance. I mean, you, avid reader, are of an intelligence quotient high enough to be partaking of this here online magazine. So let’s not go over the details, for my telling of them will surely not be of the same standard.

Let’s just have a moments silence for the ingenuity that is The Matrix. A movie that revolutionized storytelling for generations.

Amen.

Of course we’re only talking about the first Matrix movie. The others that share a name, share nothing else. In fact, they shall not be named. How apt in a month when we’re all about Harry Potter.

Of course, those so called “sequels” were infinitely more evil than any dark wizard.

   -- Jason Murdoch