1999 was an unbelievable year for cinema. It birthed revolutionary horror flicks (The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense), iconic romantic-comedies (Notting Hill, 10 Things I Hate About You) and gave us the disappointing prequel to the zeitgeist-defining Star Wars trilogy. But no film’s legacy can beat that of the head-spinning, groundbreaking, cult-classic, The Matrix.
If you haven’t dived into The Matrix before, there’s never been a better time to do so than in 2019.
While the film could be dubbed as “dated” through its constant use of flip-phones and dinosaur-sized computers, I promise you, it’s a lot more futuristic under the surface-level. From its use of technology to its ability to make me question my literal existence, I’m a firm believer that The Matrix is essentially just a 90’s version of Black Mirror.
Hear me out.
Genre-wise, they both take influence from film noir, martial arts and superhero flicks, but keep dystopian sci-fi at the forefront. And, at their core, both projects present audiences with a pessimistic view of the world, as a result of our relationship with technology.
Another similarity between The Matrix and Black Mirror is that they both illustrate futuristic worlds where the human race is put under a spell by technology. Albeit in different ways.
In the Black Mirror episode Nosedive, the Netflix-watcher is presented with a world where technology becomes a definitive part of our social status and the way we communicate to everyone else. No one can escape technology and the world screws over anyone that tries to.
The Matrix presented a ’90s cinema-goer with the same concept, except taken to extremities, as it illustrated a world where the human race is living under the spell of technology, in a virtual reality. Very different stories, but the same bottom line: we’re all hooked on technology and there’s no way out.
Black Mirror and The Matrix also question free will in a multi-layered way, which is a whole existential mood.
In the episode Fifteen Million Merits, the protagonist (Bing) is a slave to the corporate world as he’s forced to pedal on a bike all day. After getting fed up with the boring day-to-day routine, he breaks the mould to eventually find himself in another vicious day-to-day routine, where he remains a slave to the corporate world.
Sound familiar? That’s because we watched this same story unfold decades prior. At the start of The Matrix we’re introduced to Neo, who is a computer nerd who’s a slave to the corporate machine. As he attempts to escape his version of reality, he realises an even bigger slave to the machine as he’s literally being used by AI for his energy. Same, same, but different!
Thematic concerns aside, what really links The Matrix and Black Mirror is the fact that they both used technology to raise issues about technology in respective eras. Both projects reflected massive Hollywood shifts at the time with The Matrix marking the transition to digital cinema and Black Mirror marking the transition to the era of streaming.
But more importantly, both projects flex state-of-the-art technological advancements like The Matrix’s infamous bullet-scene and Black Mirror’s choose your own adventure.
Can you imagine if audiences had the ability to choose the blue pill in The Matrix? Would have been a much shorter movie, that’s for sure.