Hear Me Out: ‘The Matrix’ is the ultimate 1990s movie
The 1990s was one hell of a decade for culture. Across the world, countless artistic mediums received some of their best works, and in few places were things as promising as cinema. With the likes of Titanic, The Shawshank Redemption, Schindler’s List, Pulp Fiction, and Fight Club all coming to the fore in Hollywood, as well as a series of prominent independent movies making notable waves, the final decade of the 20th century was a stark celebration of brilliance.
However, just as the clock was threatening to tick over into the next millennium, ushering in the strange and uncharted era of the 2000s, the ’90s saw its most ubiquitous movie. In March of 1999, at the Mann Village Theater, the American cinema world feasted upon the brilliance of the Wachowski’s science fiction action film The Matrix, which invariably changed the sci-fi movie genre and the cinematic medium forever.
Sure, there are arguments to be made for so many other movies serving as the ultimate 1990s film. Still, The Matrix epitomised everything great about the era and simultaneously served as a work suggestive of what was to come over the following years. With truly iconic performances from Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving, the first Matrix movie was just about everything any 1990s cinema-goer could wish for – and then some.
For those who might not know, The Matrix tells of a dystopian future in which humankind is entrapped in a simulated reality created by a race of machines that use human body heat as an energy source. Within the Matrix reality, hacker Thomas Anderson, going by the name ‘Neo’, discovers the truth and finds himself in a battle to save humankind and its machine oppressors.
On the surface, that story might sound pretty standard for a science fiction movie of the 1990s, but it was the way it was told that made the film so damn iconic. Featuring some of the most impressive martial arts sequences ever committed to film, a visual aesthetic that was at once cybergothic and cyberpunk and an exploration of complex philosophical forms of enquiry like Plato’s cave and Jean Baudrillard’s simulacra that didn’t alienate the average audience member, The Matrix was simply a cut above the rest.
With all that in mind, it’s easy to see why The Matrix is the most important film of the 1990s. To explain it further, consider the kind of society that emerged during the era and the one it was soon to transform into in the 21st century. The internet finally appeared as a usable piece of technology in the 1990s, and The Matrix taps heavily into the Telnet hacker communities of the era as a basis for its hacking facet.
What became of the internet was essentially a form of mass communication that invariably felt like a form of entrapment, and looking at today’s concerns with internet privacy, “listening” algorithms, the dangers of artificial intelligence and a feeling of complete reliance on technology and one can see the visionary quality of the Wachowski’s film. Considering its address to our modern concerns and ills, it can be easy to see The Matrix as a 21st-century movie. Still, with equal attention to everything that 1990s cinema wanted to be, it sits comfortably at the top of the 20th century’s final act.
1990s cinema had action, which The Matrix undoubtedly delivered. It had coolness, also achieved by The Matrix ten times over (even by today’s standards), with black leather outfits and a nu-metal/industrial techno soundtrack. It had humour and heart, which the Wachowskis detailed in abundance. Furthermore, The Matrix took the special effects of the past decade and mastered them, creating the iconic “bullet time” visual effects and infusing its action with a green, binary cybernetic aesthetic, making it one of the most iconic films of all time.
If the 1990s retained the rebellious attitude of the late 20th century, then it was shown in full force with The Matrix. Sure, so many other brilliant movies of the decade are well worth consideration as the best of the era. Still, all things considered, and certainly thinking about the way it ushered in the next era of cinema, then the Matrix, known and celebrated for its philosophical insight, influence on action cinema, fashion and academic discourse, and capturing of the turn of the millennium zeitgeist, is the ultimate 1990s movie.
