I can’t help but second most of what’s in this post about The Matrix ten years later, especially this bit:
The movie also tapped into the anger a lot of people feel but never quite express, the pent-up resentments of our world that lead a packed theatre in the rural South to cheer a fetish-clad woman pounding the police into pulp. It fed the part in all of us that not only felt there was something deeply wrong with the world around us, but wanted to make “them” pay.
Seen in this light, many of The Matrix’s absurdities make sense. Using humans as a power source? Utterly, laughably impractical. As a metaphor for that nagging sensation that some vast structure is leeching your life? Perfect.
The writer of the post and I are the same age. We were both 16 when we saw the film for the first time in theatres. (Actually, I was 15; my birthday’s next week.) It’s surprisingly gratifying to read analysis of the film written by someone who had roughly the same experience. I remember leaving the theatre feeling like I could fly. I remember cosplaying Trinity at Halloween (who didn’t?). I remember the way that most action films thereafter felt like a pale imitation, because they hadn’t nailed the central point of the film’s “cartoon violence”…that the people in the movie really were just cartoons.
Go read the piece. David Forbes’ other work is stellar, and makes me feel like a total slacker.