Escaping The Matrix

My English teachers “spoiled” a Christian reading of the movie for me by alerting me to a literary technique called the Christ-Like Character. The Matrix fit their mold perfectly.

In the end, the Matrix trilogy came down strongly on only one point, namely, that we have choice and choice is good. Hardly a revelation for Christians who have always believed that man is responsible for his actions.

The special effects that were once amazing had simply gotten old. I mean, just how many times can Agent Smith get hurled through the air and crash into a wall?

Loren Eaton is a youth culture analyst for Focus on the Family's Plugged In magazine. He graduated from Wheaton College and enjoys metaphysical poetry, Appalachian folk, a good mystery novel, really hard rock and long walks with his fiancée, Clara.

by Loren Eaton

Eric was the most excited I’d ever seen him. He was raving about his latest assignment, a Christian Worldview paper. Being one who’d had assignments instill a sudden, terrifying sense of falling, but never joy, I was curious. As I eavesdropped, two things became clear. He was planning to write about The Matrix — an unblemished jewel in the wasteland of modern cinema according to his estimation — and he was convinced that it contained the story of Christ.

Fast-forward four years to where I sat in a remarkably un-crowded theatre with my friend Al, a fan of the sci-fi franchise as equally faithful as Eric. We were waiting for The Matrix: Revolutions to start. “So,” I said as Al sucked on his Coke, “you’ve seen it already. How is it? What should I expect?” Al turned to me and, in the biggest surprise of the evening, said, “I was kind of disappointed.”

Al wasn’t the only one. At first audiences were pleasantly surprised when an erudite film about humans trapped in a virtual reality world suddenly appeared out of nowhere in 1999. It had style. It speculated on the nature of reality. And, oddly enough, it seemed to resonate with a host of biblical images. The first part of a trilogy, it was hailed as the Star Wars for a new generation. But as The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions landed in theaters, critics and fans alike watched their disillusionment grow, evidenced by shrinking box office grosses and increasingly scathing reviews. Why? I think there are three reasons why the Wachowski brothers’ project doomed audiences — particularly Christian audiences — to disappointment from the beginning.

The first is what I like to dub Neo’s messiah complex. The Judeo-Christian elements of the first Matrix sparked church hallway debates, countless term papers similar to Eric’s (I suspect), and a slow-burning hope in the hearts of many believers that perhaps this was the movie God was secretly using to articulate the Gospel, perhaps without the Wachawski brothers even knowing it. Christianity Today contributor Frederica Mathewes-Green incisively noted, “The presence of any Christian resonances in a mainstream movie is so intoxicating to some Christians that they embraced [The Matrix] with glee.”

While I especially enjoyed the first Matrix, I wasn’t one of the fans who started stockpiling sermons about the film. My English teachers had “spoiled” a Christian reading of the movie for me by alerting me to a literary technique called the Christ-Like Character. Basically, an author draws parallels between his protagonist and the Gospel accounts to heighten the drama of his work — not to communicate the Gospel. Hemmingway did it with Old Man and the Sea by having the titular old man battle a fish for three days and nights, cutting his hands and side while doing so. Ken Kesey did it in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by featuring his main character receiving electroshock therapy on a cross-shaped table.

The Matrix fit my teachers’ mold — perfectly. Neo exists to rescue humanity from bondage; he can perform miracles, such as healings and superhuman feats of agility; he is called to protect the last human city, dubbed Zion; and he is resurrected after dying. It’s easy to understand why Christians got excited. But by the time Revolutions rolled around, it became glaringly obvious that the series’ creators didn’t intend for Neo to be a recontextualized redeemer. Why? Well, he repeatedly doubted his “calling,” discovered that the prophecies surrounding him were fraudulent, and effortlessly executed scores of the very people he was supposed to be saving.

Reducing Christian narratives and imagery to mere symbolism disappointed some audiences. But a second reason prompted many to hold out hope for the films: their strong philosophical bent. The topics were big. Self-determination versus fate. The relationship between perception and reality. The nature of power and love. It was as if Nietzsche, Kant and Sartre had donned black leather and brandished large-caliber weapons. A kind of philosophical cottage industry even sprung up in the film’s wake. Books such as Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix and The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real landed on the shelves of local bookstores with chapters penned by philosophy professors from Muhlenberg College and King’s College. Surely there was some profundity intelligent viewers could mine — right?

Perhaps a bit too much profundity. Such weighty topics have swelled scholarly tomes for millennia and one could scarcely hope for them to receive satisfactory treatment in a trilogy, albeit one that was almost eight hours long. In the end, the trilogy came down strongly on only one point, namely, that we have choice and choice is good. Hardly a revelation for Christians who have always believed that man is responsible for his actions. I was personally struck by the observation of the evangelical film critic Jeffrey Overstreet, who said, “All that remains is an array of ideological relics, like traces from several archaeological digs scattered across the same floor.” Such a mess may be fascinating to look at for a while, but it’s ultimately unfulfilling.

In the midst of that rubble, audiences had a third and final cinematic “virtue” they could glean: All the hyper-stylized special-effects mayhem one could stomach. The Matrix was primarily an action franchise, and its shock-and-awe special effects broke all expected boundaries. Some viewers didn’t care about symbolism and philosophy. But they sure enjoyed watching spent casings churn out of a helicopter-mounted howitzer and seeing a man dodge speeding slugs.

They were the ones, I believe, who ended up most disappointed. It’s simply the law of diminishing returns. If someone has seen one explosion, the next one has to be Bigger and Louder! If one fistfight, the next dozen have to be even more Brutal and Visceral! The Matrix set the bar almost impossibly high for its two sequels and it didn’t help that the most famous scenes were quickly parodied ad nauseum. By the trilogy’s end, the stunts had become overwrought to the point of near-parody. (Think of the series’ final battle wherein punches land with the force of nuclear ordinance, but combatants somehow still stagger to their feet.) And the special effects that were once amazing had simply gotten old. I mean, just how many times can Agent Smith get hurled through the air and crash into a wall?

I never got to read Eric’s paper. Time swept us on to other projects with less “interesting” topics such as epistemology and Biblical ethics. But I never forgot the impact the movie had on him and I wonder if he experienced the same disappointment that so many others did in the past four years. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting that day I can sit in a darkened cineplex and enjoy a popular, quality film that not only echoes the Gospel, but contains it as well.