On 31.3.1999 the amazing movie "The Matrix" was released – and it new cultural icon for the Internet age was born.
It’s theme is certainly an old one: a heroes descent from ignorance to full power. This was hardly a new tale. And Keanu Reeves was already used to playing messianic roles.
But the setting of the Matrix, it’s environment and Kafka-like mentality hit the Zeitgeist of the final days of the last millennium. It was sexy, it was sterile, it was brutal, it was naked, it was inhuman, it was technical.
The underlying theme of a technology overpowering humanity was nothing new either, but this newest incarnation of this story was even harder to ignore than older scifi flicks. We do live in the age of the Internet, we live in the age of total computerization, we also live in a interconnected – disconnected human society.
The Matrix perfectly touched our own ignorance: how we love to enjoy the perfect illusion of a hedonistic life before we die. We don’t like to wake up and see how reality really looks like.
Everything is an illusion got a new meaning with this movie.
PS: Too bad that the other two parts are basically a remake of itself.
