I think it’s fair to say that The Matrix is the worst movie ever made. The Matrix is so bad that the best thing about it is Keanu Reeves’s acting, which is really dishing it out [1]. We’re not talking so bad it’s good here, the kind of movie that comes out the other side, like perhaps Primer, and we’re not talking about the kind of movie that’s so bad it comes out the other side into good but then keeps going and comes out the other side into bad again, like Plan 9 from Outer Space. No, The Matrix is just bad, full stop. That’s why I love it so much. [2]
There’s one part in it when Agent Smith is talking about early iterations of the Matrix. At first the computers had created a perfect simulated world, where all the humans thought they lived in peace and prosperity and everyone was happy and nice and there was no war or greed or suffering. Within two years, the computers faced an armed insurrection. So the computers reprogrammed: the next iteration had natural disasters and inequality and cruelty and misfortune and want and Donald Trump. And then all the humans were happy.
Complete bollocks, of course. [3]
Footnotes
[1] Actually, I think Reeves is a good actor – I’m joking here. I think he’s a bit typecast as wooden, and that’s obviously very lucrative for him so he doesn’t mind. I also like the way he effaces himself: he’s no prima donna, which makes me admire him even more.
[2] My mum used to have an expression, said of small but greedy children: “her eyes are bigger than her stomach.” It means the child wants a big plate of ice-cream, but when she actually gets it, she finds it impossible to eat. Well, it isn’t that the Wachowskis are without talent: it’s that their eyes are bigger than their stomach, philosophically and artistically speaking.
[3] See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/ and many other places.
If you fancy reading gnostic sci-fi done right, try Flicker by Theodore Roszak. Other psychotic death-and-resurrection cults are available.