Film Review #5 - The Matrix

Film Review #5 - "There is no spoon."  

There are few movies with the level of modernization and proper story adaptation of Christian belief as, The Matrix.  The movie starts in the place that each and every Christian does.  Looking for a savior or "The One".  In the case of the movie it doesn't take long for the audience to figure out who that is, Neo.  While the film itself benefits from an assortment of choreography and visual effects, it is the story which above all else grabs the audience inward.  Why shouldn't it?  It is after all the oldest story told.  The story hidden in place sight.  Retold by every culture in every period of human history.  The tale of good versus evil.  

In the case of the Matrix, the evil manifests itself as a race of artificially intelligent robots who have enslaved humanity in an endless repeat of a pseudo world of the mind.  This fake world supposedly takes place at the height of human history, the early 21st century, but there's no iPhone so I will disagree even though that particular piece of technology wasn't around when the movie was made.

At the core of the film are two questions, "What is real and how do we know it's real?"  Perhaps, it doesn't matter to the "Jesus is the only way because the Bible tells me so crowd", but for those of us who still happen to have enough audacity to question God, it matters a great deal.  Is it true that ignorance is bliss?  Adam and Eve may actually surprise us with their answer considering the fruit of tree after all bestowed knowledge on them that was unintended for them.

Without getting too far off track and turning this into a philosophical discussion, what can we learn from a secular movie where the hero dies, comes back to life as an ascended being?  That Christian story and mythology as the secular world would see it is alive and well in Hollywood and provides an excellent avenue for sparking some serious red vs blue pill type conversation.