The Matrix | One of the best trilogies of all time
We have seen the above scene many times everywhere and it has taken over the internet and become a phenomenon in pop culture for quite some time.
This scene is used to describe between facing a hard choice or continuing to live in comfortable ignorance. Is it better to be ignorant but comfortable or to know but uncomfortable?
The Matrix is one of the most influential films in changing the Hollywood industry. This film was released in 1999 by Lana Wachowskis and has won 4 Academy Awards.
At that time, this film successfully displayed very innovative visual effects, iconic images and fight scenes with very cool choreography. This film covers themes of reality, love, truth, life in simulation and even religion.
When watching we will be made to ask, What is the real truth? Do we really want the truth? Do humans really have freedom?
The scene about the two choices above provides dualities that oppose each other, Illusion versus Truth, IA versus Man, Control versus Freedom, Determinism versus Free Will, Purity versus Mixture, Conformity versus Difference, Reason versus Faith and others.
The Matrix (1999)
Tells the story of a man named Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer and hacker with the pseudonym Neo. When he realized that the world he lived in was just a digital illusion called The Matrix. Then Neo joined a resistance organization where he would later realize that he was "The One", a figure in a prophecy with superpowers who would free humans from The Matrix. Like the messiah figure in a religious story.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
In this second film, the real liberation has not happened because "The One" turns out to be just an unavoidable anomaly in the system that has been planned by The Matrix. Neo's specialness is just part of a larger project to keep humanity trapped. This second film also expands the Matrix universe by exploring in more detail about the city of Zeon, the last refuge of humanity.
At the end of the film, Neo risks the lives of all humanity to save Trinity, his true love.
The Matrix Revolutios (2003)
In the third film, we see the impact of Neo's choices that resulted in the Matrix deteriorating in the hands of Agent Smith, so that Neo, who was previously blind, made a deal with the Matrix to defeat Agent Smith in exchange for humans being freed from The Matrix, ending the war between humans and machines and giving greater hope for the future.
Points we can take from the film The Matrix
The basic idea of Matrix is about questions. How do we know what our reality really is? Is what we have been living all this time just an illusion. Plato, one of the great philosophers, has a theory that is almost the same as the storyline of this film, namely The Cave, where what we feel is not always the truth or reality, like Neo's journey from the Matrix world filled with illusions to the real world that looks dystopian. In his Allegory Plato describes a group of people who have lived their entire lives in a cave, they can only look at the cave wall. The fire is burning behind them, there are people holding sticks with animals sticking out of the wall. The people in the cave only know one reality, namely the shadows they see on the wall and they believe that that is the real reality.
One day, a person like Neo is released to be shown the real reality behind the shadows and comes out of the cave and can see the perfect details of the scenery, here he begins to realize that what he thought was real all this time was just an illusion, just like Neo who realized that the Matrix was just an illusion and there is a real world behind all this.
By @naja