(5) SF: THE MATRIX

(1999. There are no sequels).

The Matrix is perhaps the next most definitive cinematic Robot War after another entry on this list, and like that entry, it works best by combining the Robot War with another trope, in this case that of virtual reality. As such, it is the direct descendant of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, consistent with my pet theory that the heart of science fiction is still all Martians and Morlocks.

We’ll be looking at Martians later, but the Machines and their software Agents in the Matrix are Morlocks, except that it’s cyberspace travel rather than time travel. The original Morlocks were one of two evolutionary descendants of humanity, evolved from the working class – maintaining the advanced technology of the future for the Eloi, the other descendants of humanity evolved from its leisured upper class.

The dark twist of Wells’ novel is that the Morlocks eat the Eloi, “farming” them like livestock. This theme of evolution endures in the Matrix, albeit transformed from Wells’ unrealistic biological evolution (without genetic engineering or mutation) to cybernetic evolution – involving artificial intelligence and robots as machine Morlocks that rise up against their human Eloi, particularly as the machine Morlocks do actually farm us for their food or energy.

Ultimately however, this makes no sense – humans don’t produce more energy than they consume. The Machines would obviously use more energy keeping us alive than they would ever extract from us – and that’s aside from programming and maintaining the Matrix itself. My theory is that the human resistance have no idea what the Matrix is for and the Machines actually use the Matrix for entertainment, like television (or the internet) – “Let’s see what the humans are doing on the Matrix tonight!”

And for a Robot War against humanity, the Machines are actually quite nice to us, whatever the purpose of the Matrix. Morpheus lets slip that humans fought a genocidal war with the Machines, in which we nuked the sun (NUKED the SUN!) to deprive the Machines of their solar energy (and you know, hopefully wipe them out). It didn’t work and we lost the Robot War, but instead of the Machines exterminating us like cockroaches, they keep us in our own cozy virtual dream world. Indeed, Agent Smith (who, unlike Morpheus, tells it straight) says that the Machines even tried to make it a perfect utopia for us, but human psychology wouldn’t accept it.

As I see it, the Machines’ only mistake was not advertising the Matrix to sign people up for it as your own programmable (and not necessarily permanent) reality (like, say, the Playboy Mansion or World of Warcraft) – I should be so lucky to lose a Robot War! “Seriously, you feed me and take care of me in a pod while I live it up in any number of dream worlds of my own design and all you want is my body heat? Sign me up!”

FANTASY OR SF?

Yeah – the virtual reality world maintained by the Machines to farm humanity for energy after a Robot War? It’s obviously SF. Or is it? Well, yes, it is – but it does have substantial elements of fantasy, what with its mystical trappings of the Oracle and Neo as the (chosen or messianic) One.

And yes – I know there are no sequels, but if there had been a second film it at least might have the interesting spin on fantasy with fantasy creatures such as vampires and so on as leftover programs or perhaps glitches from previous versions of the Matrix.

HORROR

One can’t really rank it as horror but it has elements of SF horror and could well have been written more in that direction.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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