Exploring the Matrix Visions of the Cyber Present

Chapter One To makeThe Matrixcost over sixty million dollars. I don't know if you've ever hung out much with people commanding dozens of millions of dollars. Once I attended the World Economic Forum, where the planet's ultra-rich people flock in large crowds. This event took place in New York, in the jittery, heavily armed post-9/11 period, and the vibe there was very, veryMatrixindeed. There were swarms of armed bodyguards, marbled halls with swishing bronze elevators, glum, impassive federal agents, expensive eyewear, Forum groupies in sexy tailored costumes, the Secret Service in black bulletproof SWAT gear.... Very intense, very out-there, very designery, very Wachowski Brothers. The World Economic Forum is not supposed to be scary. It's a philanthropic event. The Forum is all for the public good, and the worldwide betterment of the human condition. That is the public rationale, at least. That is the Blue Pill version, as it were. However, you don't have to be a Seattle rioter or Naomi Klein to get it about the World Economic Forum's extreme disconnection from the man-in-the-street. The attendees there ... they were uniformly courteous and scarily intelligent people, but they bear just the same relationship to a middle-class American that a middle-class American bears to an illiterate Venezuelan campesino. They are from a different level of reality. They dwell in a seamless world of private jets to the Waldorf-Astoria, where public space is the eight feet between the doorman and the limo. Much the same goes for the galactic gulf that separatesThe Matrixfrom its street-level inspirations in underground comix and sci-fi paperbacks. I doubt that anyone understands this better than Larry and Andy Wachowski. Somehow, and I give them every credit, they were able to metabolize the Hollywood red pill and leap to the dizziest levels of the military-entertainment complex. I've never met the Wachowski Brothers, but I have every confidence that they get it. Otherwise, two guys with their exquisite design sense would never choose to wear Converse sneakers and backwards baseball caps. Luc Besson directed the science-fiction filmThe Fifth Element, a film that eats at the same cafeteria withThe Matrix, feasting at a global gumbo of counterculture sources. Luc Besson was at the World Economic Forum sitting at a table behind me, and he was the worst-dressed guy in the Waldorf-Astoria. Luc was so bad-boy, so confrontational, so in-your-face, that it was indescribable in any language other than French. And Luc really belonged there, that was the good part. When those Swiss captains of industry saw Luc in his four-day beard and bulging monocolor T-shirt, it cheered them all up. They sort of glanced at him sidelong and whispered. They were honored, really. The Matrixmay have budgeted for sixty-eight million, but for an ailing Warner Bros. it brought in way over two hundred million, and that was before the sequels. That was before the plastic action figures, the animeacute; cartoons, comic books, and the thriving onlineMatrixcult groups. I enjoyed the hell out of that movie, and five years later I was still thinking about it fondly, and finally getting around to making this arch critical assessment. Man, a record like that speaks for itself. Contemporary movie people, especially supremely rich and powerful ones like Steven Spielberg, they really get it about the homely authenticity of Levi's jeans and white tube-socks. Because they know all about how to dress very attractive people very attractively. They've got it down to a literal science, they can measure the colored glint off polyvinyl with digital light meters. Why would movie pros ever dress like their actors? If you're a director and you dress up like a star, it's like confessing to your colleagues that you swallowed the baited hook. Therefore, inThe Matrix[read more]