Watching The Matrix. Again. And again...

The Ultimate Matrix Collection. Ten DVDs. Dirt cheap.

There is some fiction in your truth,
and some truth in your fiction.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I rate The Ultimate Matrix Collection 10 DVDs box somewhere around 9000. But of course, I loved the movies already. Chances are you don't. Because this trilogy never got the worship it deserves. They sell this box dirt cheap now, so there is no excuse: buy it.

I and The Matrix

I watched the first movie [Wikipedia, IMDb] back when it was released last millennium like most decent people. I liked it too. Of course. Biblical references - cool. Rehash of Plato cave fable - cool. Awesome kung fu - cool.

But I didn't trip half as much as the Christians. They were going crazy. Here they had their Jesus story gift wrapped for the young computer geek generation to swallow. Never mind the Messiah figure flirting a chick called Trinity clad in leather. Never mind the heroes beating up cops half the time. I guess you could say it did have something for most of us.

Four years later I was blown away by The Matrix Reloaded [Wikipedia, IMDb]. First of all I guess I was physically pushed back in my cinema seat like some kind of jet take-off. Second, the story was obviously deep enough for you to quickly realize you'd have to enjoy it several times to fully grasp it.

In the true spirit of Neo, I went home and downloaded a copy. The Korean subtitles just added to the overall hacker look and feel of it. I watched the thing over and over again. I read thousands of posts on Internet discussion forums. And I ended up doing a rather long email correspondence with a certified Christian, who'd loved the first movie but was critical of the sequel. The reason the Christians rejected Reloaded was part of the reason I really loved it. Why?

For the obvious reason that it's basically about Jesus fighting God. My Christian buddy had a bit of difficulty accepting that twist to the story. I still have the email around in which he ends up saying that it's perfectly fine to edit the Bible because some of it may have been inspired by "wrong sources". I guess that's logical. Some of these evangelical dudes could have been talking to Satan not God. But doesn't that leave the people interpreting the thing word for word with a bit of a problem?

I watched the scene with Neo talking to The Architect over and over again. I'd wake in the morning and have an inner voice going on...

I am the Architect. I created the Matrix. [...] The Matrix is older than you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next, in which case this is the 6th version. [...] The first Matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art - flawless, sublime. A triumph equalled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being. Thus, I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature. However, I was again frustrated by failure. I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. [...] nearly 99% of all test subjects accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level. While this answer functioned, it was obviously fundamentally flawed, thus creating the otherwise contradictory systemic anomaly, that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself. Ergo those that refused the program, while a minority, if unchecked, would constitute an escalating probablility of disaster.

You have your Garden of Eden stuff, Creation stuff, trilogy plot revealed et cetera. All of it in words a bit too complicated for most people to really get while you're sweating about the survival of Trinity. I happened to have just finished reading something about Mayan mythology. They had their real world go under a couple of times too - including a flooding with just one man and one woman surviving. Beautiful.

Anyway, those stupid, puny and despicable reviewers thrashing it missed just that: somehow the Wachowski brothers had us geeks and sci-fi fans reading about Plato, gnosticism, Buddhism, Kant, Popper, object oriented Greek philosophy and lots of insanely trippy stuff like that. Isn't that kind of a feat in itself!? Forget about all the Oscars they didn't get and ready your Pulitzer and Nobel prices.

Later that same year The Matrix Revolutions [Wikipedia, IMDb] came out. In some ironic justice I won my cinema ticket from Microsoft. The catch was we had to sit through a .Net propaganda show. Worth it for the "when do you release a stable OS" question from the crowd though. The movie was not quite as good as I'd expected. Luckily my worst fear wasn't fulfilled: that Zion would be a "Matrix within the Matrix". That would have dumped the whole project to the ground. I probably would have left the building in rage.

My only beef with it now is they apparently put all the brainy scenes in Reloaded and all cheesy action scenes in Revolutions. None of them are composed like a standard drama. So by themselves they are not as perfect movies as the initial Matrix movie was. But as a trilogy they rule.

It is not the spoon that bends.
It is only yourself.

The Ultimate Matrix Collection

A few years go by and I notice a shop selling the 10 DVD box for practically nothing. I order it on the spot and count the days for it to arrive in the mail, and the days they spend looking for it down at the post office! They finally find it. So, what did I get from the box that I didn't get from the Korean AVI-file? A whole lot I tell you.

Obviously I got the three movies each with your typical bonus disc. And a booklet in which the Wachowski brothers promises that bonus material is more interesting than the typical "cast and crew reminisces such as, 'remember that day... they changed caterers, god, what a day that was...'" They fulfill that promise. Because first of all the movies have alternative "sound tracks" one being commentaries by Dr. Cornel West and Ken Wilber as well as some critics. So if you simply don't get the plot, you can actually have it spelled out for you.

I haven't watched all those six discs in their entirety yet. But it appears I got something good waiting. A documentary on "bullet time" - hmmm. Tons of music that I have to listen to with a crappy embedded player - hmmm. The 23 cut scenes from the computer game Enter the Matrix - yes please!

I also got The Animatrix [Wikipedia, IMDb] DVD. I never watched those because I never liked manga. Some of them are unnecessary and just lame manga-like fighting. Some of them are absolutely brilliant. Like Kid's Story by Shinichiro Watanabe. That one is amazing. And of course Final Flight of the Osiris could have been in the movies as it is actually part of the plot. Two of them, The Second Renaissance parts one and two, gives you the whole background story straight up so they are also an obligatory watch for the fan. Yes, there's a documentary on the making of the animations. OK that was seven discs.

The last three discs are in a cover called The Matrix Experience. Two of these appear to be pretty much your typical bonus disc kind of bonus discs. Which is of course fine if you're really a fan. Burly Man Chronicles appear to be exactly the typical "cast and crew reminisces such as, 'remember that day... they changed caterers, god, what a day that was...'" stuff. The Zion Archive is a collection of the "crumbs" - the trailers, storyboards, design phase drawings et cetera. I'm sure they will take away a couple of hours of my life.

And then there is The Roots of the Matrix disc. That contains two films about an hour long each. The second is computer experts and natural scientists discussing the technological aspects of the plot. Alright. But the first one is worth it's weight in gold. Return to Source: Philosophy & The Matrix: "Scholars, philosophers and theorists deconstruct the intellectual underpinnings of the trilogy."

That even includes a slightly bitter comment on Neo's character in relation to the gnostic idea. A comment my Christian buddy would probably love. Anyway, that's what it appears to me:

"At the end of the first film Neo has attained what he was supposed to attain. So he is the master. He is the adept. There is nowhere else for him to go in terms of this gnosis. And what I think the second film shows is that that may be true but the gnosis is only a means to another end. It's not an end in itself. In the first film we only get that glimpse of the really ugly, drab, horrible, real world. The desert of the real. And we spend most of the time in the realm of mentally projected images. In the second film we finally get some bodies. [...The rave/sex scene is] a celebration of embodiment. It's a celebration of physicality and sensuality. There's no ideas. There's no minds. And there's a real interesting contrast there because their dance is a ritual. It's a communal event. [...] This is their sacrament. And one of the important things about it is that it's public. Everybody's body is equal. But what Neo and Trinity are doing is dangerous because it's private, it's the elevation of a certain body over all the other bodies, and you're not fighting for the survival of the group anymore. You're fighting for this one person that you love, but he's supposed to be special. So if gnosticism is about freeing yourself from those attatchments then Neo is definitely a failure at that."
- Donna Bowman. Assistant professor of Religious Studies, The Honours College, University of Central Arkansas.

Don't worry. Her comment is clipped to go with another one explaining a bit about tantra. For some reason critics of the Reloaded movie usually mention this rave/sex scene. Get real people. That scene is essential.

And so is this box. But should you choose to go buy it?

Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.

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