THERE IS NO SPOON

I would argue that year 1999, in my lifetime (which is to say, since 1978), was the greatest year for American movies that we've seen. This was largely due to the hybridization between the aesthetically and thematically adventurous independent cinema of the late 80s and early 90s and a studio system that briefly saw a fiscal value in producing mid-budget movies for adults. The result: Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, Election, Boys Don't Cry, American Beauty, Eyes Wide Shut, The Sixth Sense (hey, the first time through it was fuckin great), The Iron Giant, The Straight Story, Magnolia (love it or hate it, that was a work of balls). Even oddities like The Blair Witch Project were interesting at the time.

But the picture that opened the floodgates that year, released in early spring because Warner Bros didn't know what the fuck they were dealing with, was The Matrix. The brainchild of Larry and Andy Wachowski, The Matrix was an alternately frustrating and fascinating melange of various different kinds of SF, comic books, Hong Kong action movies, and a whooooooole lotta “look at how smart I am reading this!” college student bookshelf porn. I remember seeing the trailer in something like February and going “what in the . . . what is . . . is that Keanu . . . wow . . . this is either going to be ridiculous or awesome, maybe both!”

Turns out, it was both. The Matrix is the story of how Keanu Reeves is the one man with the ability to bring about humanity's salvation, which is pretty fuckin ridiculous. But The Matrix is also the story of how two smartasses from Emerson and Bard convinced a major studio to give them $65 million to rip off William Gibson, troll Jean Baudrillard through wanton misinterpretation of his work, invent a new kind of special FX to make action scenes look cooler, openly endorse leather, latex, and sunglass fetishism, and actually get the line “It's our way or the highway” past all the layers of people who are supposed to read scripts at studios. That, my friends, is awesome.

The Matrix opens with a mysterious, appealingly androgynous woman named Trinity in a tight spot. Whoever she is, she's got every cop in the city interested in her, as well as some “Agents” (agency not specified) who warn the cops that they've got a live one on their hands.

Cop: I think we can handle one little girl.
Agent (Smith): No, lieutenant, your men are already dead.

Cut to Trinity beating the shit out of a roomful of cops. Mid-ass-kicking, she briefly levitates in slow motion and holds position before putting a boot to some cop's jaw. This is the first “huhwha wait what the fuck” moment in a series of several dozen. So, Trinity busts out a hot-shit-for-1999 cell phone and speaks briefly with a melodious-voiced gentleman named Morpheus, who tells her to believe that she can escape. It takes a whole bunch of evasive ability, and some supernatural athletic ability, to do so but eventually she does, vanishing into thin air a split second before one of the Agents drives a garbage truck into her phone booth. However, Trinity may have escaped, but the Agents know what she was after. Someone named Neo . . .

Introducing Keanu Reeves, aka Thomas Anderson, aka Neo. Keanu is a hacker and dealer of illicit software who keeps discs of questionable legality in a hollowed-out copy of Simulacra and Simulation. He's woken up by his computer, telling him “The Matrix has you.” Keanu, predictably, is confused. The computer tells him to “follow the white rabbit.” There's a knock on the door, and the mysterious text disappears. At the door is a customer for Keanu's black market software, a dipshit who believes “mescaline . . . [is] the only way to fly” (an acceptable sentiment if you're throwing an SF-ish Aldous Huxley reference in to show that you've read books, but utterly retarded if you pretend to know anything about actual drugs). In the first of many Alice in Wonderland references, Mescaline Guy's girlfriend has a white rabbit tattoo, so Keanu goes out clubbing with them.

At the club, Trinity approaches Keanu, who hilariously tells her “I thought you were a guy.” Oh, Keanu. The simplest things confuse you . . . Trinity tells Keanu she can unlock the mystery of what “The Matrix” is. The Matrix is apparently a point of interest to tin-foil hat hacker types, but no one quite knows what it is. EXCEPT TRINITY.

Right when things get interesting, the club beat turns into Keanu's alarm clock. He's late for work at Metacortex, “one of the top software companies in the world.” Keanu's boss, an asshole, lectures him in very arch tones about punctuality, and the effect thereof on his job security. So Keanu, aptly chastened, goes to his cubicle, where a courier delivers him one of those hot-shit late 90s cell phones, on which Keanu gets a call from Trinity's boss, Morpheus. Apparently Bad Dudes are on their way to bust Keanu, and Morpheus tries to get him out—somehow he knows the exact layout of Keanu's office, prompting a “How do you know all this?” from our Most Blessed Intellect—only Morpheus' instructions require a leap of faith Keanu's not yet ready to take, and the Bad Dudes succeed in hauling Keanu's ass in.

At this point, we see Hugo Weaving get to be fucking stupid awesome. As the head Agent, he breaks it down to Keanu in an impossible-to-imitate monotone:

“It seems that you've been living two lives. One life, you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, pay your taxes, and you . . . help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias 'Neo' and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.”

Keanu is unimpressed. He gives Hugo Weaving the finger, and (like many poorly informed civilians who watch too much TV) believing he is entitled to a phone call, asks for one. Hugo gives a great “oh foolish mortal” smile and—seemingly magically—revokes Keanu's power of speech, before getting his dudes to hold Keanu down as he drops this really gross robot with tentacles down Keanu's bellybutton.

Keanu wakes up, convinced that the previous scene was a dream, until Morpheus calls him up on the phone again and apologizes for the business with the Agents, and informs Keanu that he is “The One.” It is then incumbent on Trinity to pick Keanu up in a really cool car and remove the gross robot with a big science-fictiony looking device, which she does, following some truly vomitous dialogue from her Scandinavian lesbian friend. They then take Keanu to a beautifully photographed building, inside which is a beatific black man with a shaved head, sunglasses without earpieces, and a long leather coat. He introduces himself thus.

“Hello, Neo. As you no doubt have guessed, I am Morpheus.”

Intros don't get any better than that, man. Morpheus discourses on the nature of the Matrix, describing it vaguely but vividly as an omnipresent infrastructure of power, oppressing the entire human race. Morpheus explains to Keanu that he has two choices, symbolized by two pills. One will put him to sleep, and he'll wake up, untroubled by any of this Matrix business. The other, however, will reveal the truth to Keanu. Keanu, reflected in Morpheus' sunglasses, reaches for truth, and after a final warning that after he takes the pill, there's no going back, Keanu knocks it back. Morpheus escorts Keanu into the next room, where Trinity, the group from the car, and a bald, squirrely Joe Pantoliano await. They strap Keanu into a chair and then some Weird Shit Starts Happening.

Suddenly, a bald, eyebrowless Keanu wakes up in this weird goop with all kinds of wires sticking out of him. These wires explode off him, and he's unceremoniously dumped out his goop pod into a sewer, where a futuristic looking craft grabs him with a grappling hook and reels him into safety.

Introducing Morpheus et al once again! It turns out, as Morpheus explains to Keanu, that the reality Keanu has grown up knowing is a massively complex virtual reality simulation created by malicious autocratic machines so that they can keep humanity dreaming in goop pods while the machines use the bioelectricity generated by the human body to keep running. (This is but one of many “what the fuck?” moments that show the Wachowski's passionate fidelity to the latter half of the phrase “science fiction.”) In reality, it is somewhere in the late 22nd, early 23rd century, but no one exactly knows.

Also, in reality, Morpheus' sexy, stylish crew is grungy, pasty, and needs a shower. As Keanu's hair grows in a bit, he gets to know the crew—two of whom are from a place called “Zion” that is described as “the last human city”—and experiences the joy of direct-to-brain martial arts training. Keanu, legendarily, wakes up from this training with this timeless line:

Keanu: “I know kung fu.”
Morpheus: “Show me.”

They beam to this awesome, high-ceilinged dojo and begin to spar. The ship's dork scampers into the break room and announces: “Morpheus is fightin' Neo!” and everyone hauls ass to watch. Morpheus spends most of the fight beating the piss out of Keanu, all the while exhorting him “You're faster than this!” and coming up with gems like, “You think that's air you're breathing?” Finally, Keanu does some blurry fast kung fu, shocking the crew.

Morpheus puts Keanu to some more tests: one involves jumping off a building and forgetting that you're supposed to fall (that everyone flunks the first time, Keanu, The One or not, being no exception) and another intended to teach the lesson that hot blondes in red dresses are really Hugo Weaving in disguise (Ed. Note: the author nodded sagely at this lesson upon first seeing the movie, having always preferred brunettes). Once Keanu, like all true intellects, learns that gravity doesn't really exist and blondes are no fuckin' good, Morpheus takes him, in the Matrix, to see the “Oracle.”

Meanwhile, Joe Pantoliano is selling out Morpheus to the Agents, in exchange for being put back in the Matrix (in fairness, reality fuckin sucks in the Matrix trilogy; no running water, no clean clothes, dickheads like Morpheus walking around babbling their Zen/Zoroastrian/Christian/Hippie religious jive, and all there is to eat is amino acid snot). This, narratively, is one of the biggest no-brainers in the whole picture—how the fuck do you have Joe Pantoliano in a movie and not have him be a duplicitous scumbag? That was why The Fugitive was so innovative; the idea of Joe Pantoliano as a good guy was almost as cinematically earth-shattering as the introduction of color.

Keanu goes to the Oracle, and meets a bunch of precocious psychic kids in the living room. One little Hari Krishna with an English accent is bending spoons with his mind, and Keanu (being, presumably, stoned) sits down to dig it. The English Hari Krishna kid drops some knowledge:

EHK kid: “Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead . . . only try to realize the truth.
Keanu: “What truth?”
EHK kid: “There is no spoon.”
Keanu: “There is no spoon?”
EHK kid: “Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”

Keanu then bends a spoon, before being informed that the Oracle will see him. The Oracle sits Keanu down, flirts with him, calls him a retard, offers him a cookie, and doesn't really say much of anything definite, but Keanu assumes that she's telling him he's not The One—because he doesn't believe it—so she bids him a fond farewell, and warns him that something fucked up is about to happen to Morpheus, which jolts Keanu.

On the way out, he tries to warn Morpheus, but Morpheus cuts him off and won't hear it. They then, naturally, walk right into a trap set by the Agents with Joe Pantoliano's help. There's a massive gun battle where the ship's dork—in the Matrix—gets cut to shreds by machine gun fire and dies in real life since “the body cannot live without the mind” (more horseshit science: how the fuck do you explain Terri Schiavo, John Mayer, or the Knicks front office, huh, Wachowskis?) and the Agents capture Morpheus.

Joe Pantoliano gets back to “reality” and hijacks the ship, killing the two not-in-Matrix crew guys, and then, all the while creepily professing his love for Trinity over cell phone, unplugging the taciturn brown dude and the Scandinavian lesbian, before one of the “dead” crew members picks up some kind of laser gun, wastes Joey Pants, and gets Trinity and Keanu back to “reality.”

Here we have a bit of a dilemma: Morpheus let himself be taken by the Agents so that Trinity could get Keanu away safely, because Morpheus believes Keanu is The One. Keanu believes that the Oracle told him he isn't The One (even though she didn't tell him shit that could be definitively interpreted either way, the mark of any good oracle) so he's hell-bent to go back into the Matrix and get Morpheus out. Trinity is not having it, believing that if Keanu dies, Morpheus will have sacrificed himself for nothing. Keanu then contradictorily explains that he isn't The One, but that he has an absolute confidence that he can get Morpheus out, something only The One should really be able to do. So they arrive at a compromise, which Keanu articulates thus:

“Guns. Lots of guns.”

And so Keanu and Trinity beam into the Matrix and proceed to have one of the coolest gun battles of all time (watch here). After dispatching all available bad guys, they hop on an elevator and blow it up so they can get up to the top floor faster (hey, shit, I'm just along for the ride at this point, fuck logic), Keanu gets the chance to say “there is no spoon” again, and they end up on the roof. An Agent draws down on Keanu, and we have the iconic “Keanu bending backward to duck the bullet while the bullets ripple through the air toward him as the virtual camera circles Keanu, concluding with the bullet grazing Keanu's leg” shot. Which Trinity immediately almost ruins with the retarded line “Dodge this” before lickin' off a shot right through the Agent's head. But shitty dialogue is as crucial an element to The Matrix as the green tint in the Matrix or bullet time or pretentious literary and theological references, so we need “Dodge this.”

So Trinity and Keanu get Morpheus out, and the Agents shoot down their helicopter—which, in a massively awesome moment, Keanu asks Trinity “You know how to fly this thing?” and Trinity goes “Not yet” before calling her techie for a direct-to-brain helicopter pilot program download, which he gives her, and her eyelashes flutter before she up and flies the thing expertly—only to have Keanu basically stop the fucking thing from crashing into the building before Trinity gets killed with his bare hands. This, of course, leads to a push in on a breathless, aroused Morpheus murmuring “He is The One . . .” and telling Neo “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” (Ed. Note: the great unresolved mystery of The Matrix is where Morpheus buys his weed.)

Our intrepid heroes get to a payphone in the subway where they can be beamed back home, only Keanu is trapped after Hugo Weaving shoots the phone. Morpheus and Trinity can only look on in horror as Keanu has a balls-out kung fu fight with Hugo Weaving, which Keanu actually kind of wins, only to see Hugo Weaving cheat and respawn, at which point Keanu says fuck it and runs. He steals a cell phone, calls home: “Mr. Wizard, get me the hell out of here!” and Morpheus' dude sends Keanu to a hotel room (the same one Trinity started the movie in, interestingly) where Agent Hugo Weaving is waiting for Keanu with a big ass gun. He puts a clip in Keanu, who collapses. Dies. AND THEN RISES FROM THE DEAD! Right as a bunch of stupid looking robots are tearing Morpheus' ship apart! Morpheus says “He is The One!” again. Keanu only truly becomes Neo in this moment, as he stops a barrage of bullets from the Agents in midair, sees the Matrix as source code while inside it—something no one else can do—and kills/absorbs Hugo Weaving by flying through his stomach, after which the whole Matrix goes BWOMMMMM and the other two Agents fucking run their asses off. Neo then remembers “oh shit, I have to get back home before Morpheus has to set off the EMP to duck the stupid-looking robots” and he grabs the phone just in time. Epilogue: Neo calls up the machines to talk some shit before flying away as Rage Against the Machine (hurf hurf hurf) blasts over the closing credits.

I left a couple things out. The whole stupid-looking robot/EMP subplot is introduced way early, but everything that happens on the Nebuchadnezzar (Morpheus' ship) is so fucking stupid that I tend to either fast-forward or check my e-mail or read a book during those scenes. And, also, I left out the whole thing about Trinity and Neo falling in love, because the only screen couples I remember having less sexual chemistry are Keanu and Lori Petty in Point Break and Keanu and Sandra Bullock in Speed (for some bizarre and inexplicable reason—wink wink nudge nudge—Keanu had terrific sexual chemistry with River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho and with Patrick Swayze in Point Break). And it's not because I'm one of those cynical shitheads who rolls his eyes every time love is the all-powerful force that conquers evil; it worked in the Harry Potter books, it works on Lost, it works all over the place. It just doesn't work when Keanu has to be interested in a chick, especially when that chick is Trinty, goddess of leather dykes.

Those caveats aside, The Matrix is a fucking terrific ride. As an action movie, it's top-notch. As an action movie to smoke weed to, it's nonpareil (sample quote, circa 2001: “Dude, did you realize the Matrix is green, dude? And fuckin the English Hari Krishna kid is clearly blazed when he fuckin tells Keanu there is no spoon, dude! That's how come he has an English accent! He's telling Keanu to smoke weed, but the machines want you to do smack. Dude that's fuckin' hardcore, dude, this movie is so smart.”) As a deep philosophical statement about the nature of autocracy or dystopian SF about recalcitrant computers, you're better off reading Neuromancer. However, The Matrix looks so cool, and sounds so cool, and has such a great cast—Laurence Fishburne joins the Eddie Sakamura All-Stars of actors who will forever be called by their most iconic character name, becoming Morpheus forever—that the plot holes and truly fucktarded science really don't matter. Look at Keanu doing kung fu, man. Just look at that man go.


STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO: THE SEQUELS! WHEREIN THE AUTHOR BREAKS HIS OWN WORLD RECORD FOR USE OF THE WORDS “FUCK,” “RETARDED,” AND “FUCKTARDED!”