Bullet-time-the slow-motion effect used in the movie to depict bullets rippling through the air-itself became a metaphor for viewers dislodging themselves from space and time to see the world from a new dimension. A glitch in the Matrix, too, has come to mean something inexplicable and surreal happening in an otherwise normal situation. The Matrix became shorthand for the uncanny feeling that our media-saturated, hyper-commercialized, machine-mediated culture had alienated us from some primal human reality. The film also introduced a vocabulary to describe many of its associated sensations. Since its release in 1999, The Matrix has endured as a potent representation of the technologically motivated identity crisis of the early 21st century. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” “You take the blue pill,” he says, “the story ends-you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. He proffers two capsules, one in each hand (they are reflected in his tiny sunglass lenses). Morpheus has just shown us that the world we thought was real is merely a simulation, and that the actual real world is mired in an interminable, violent power struggle between robots and humans. Whether they choose to see her vision is up to them.In The Matrix, Morpheus, a cool bald guy wearing sunglasses and a black crocodile trench coat, offers Keanu Reeves (and, by extension, the audience) a choice. Filmmakers don’t often get much of a say in how their work is adopted and interpreted, but with Matrix Resurrections, Lana Wachowski has a chance-after more than 20 years of fans interpreting them in their own ways-to stipulate how she wants her movies to be viewed. In the years since 2003, both of the series' creators have come out as trans women, and Lilly Wachowski has noted that the franchise is an allegory for trans identity. It must speak to long-time fans and also answer some of their extrapolations from the source material. It was during those years that the Wachowskis’ central metaphor was co-opted by forces antithetical to their vision-a shift that gives this new Matrix even higher stakes. It was harder to see then, but a cultural shift was beginning, one that would change the political landscape forever and ultimately help usher in the era of Donald Trump. By the time the original trilogy wrapped in 2003, 9/11 had happened and George W. The economy was strong and capitalism was the counterculture’s main enemy. When the original Matrix premiered in 1999, it was the tail-end of Bill Clinton's presidency. Click the red, and the voice of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (who is playing an as-yet-unnamed character, but seems to be filling the Morpheus role this time around) recites the time of day before saying “that couldn’t be further from the truth.” Click the blue, and it’s the voice of Neil Patrick Harris saying “you’ve lost your capacity to discern reality from fiction.” Harris, it seems, is Neo’s therapist, delivering a never-ending stream of blue pills. There they were, right on the landing page: a red pill and a blue one. Or at least it was until Tuesday, when a mysterious new landing page emerged on, teasing the trailer that dropped this morning. The phrase perhaps reached its nadir last year when Elon Musk sent a tweet encouraging his followers to “take the red pill,” to which then-presidential adviser Ivanka Trump responded “Taken!” Not one to let her work be misconstrued, Lilly Wachowski-who, along with her sister Lana, created the Matrix franchise-quickly responded “ fuck both of you.” It was one of the first, if not the first, times the movie’s creators expressed discontent at the way their creation had been co-opted by the darker corners of the internet. Most recently, the idea of “red-pilling” has become a metaphor for a certain kind of political awakening, an adoption of far-right, and often misogynistic, views. In the two decades since, the sociopolitical meaning of red pill vs. His narrative arc was changed, and a meme was born. In 1999, Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus presented this option to Keanu Reeves’ Neo, who gulped down the red one with only the slightest trepidation. Take the blue, remain in blissful ignorance. Swallow the red and it’s like eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil-suddenly all the universe’s dark secrets are revealed. The choice has always been, relatively speaking, simple: red pill or blue pill.
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