On this day twenty-six years ago, the first "Matrix" was released

The first "Matrix", which was released on March 31, 1999, is famous, among other things, for the fact that in the early 2000s, with its idea of ​​the existence and interpenetration of the material and virtual worlds, it caused a surge of enthusiastic reviews from intellectuals.

The "know-it-all" (in this case, precisely in quotation marks) Wikipedia even names Plato and "Alice in Wonderland" among the supposed sources of the film, but does not name the most direct and immediate one. Namely, the general idea and even some of the characters of “The Matrix” “grew” from William Gibson’s novel “Neuromancer”, a canonical book for the “cyberpunk” genre, which, a decade and a half before the release of “The Matrix”, received the highest literary awards in the science fiction genre – “Hugo” and “Nebula” and introduced such concepts as “cyberspace” and “virtual reality” into popular culture.

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And it was the heroine of "Neuromancer", the mercenary bodyguard Molly, with her superhuman fighting qualities, who became the prototype a decade and a half later of a similar image of Trinity in "The Matrix". 

Later, in the 2000s, the Matrix trilogy became a new word in film production. The third film in the franchise was the first film whose premiere took place simultaneously in cinemas of all major world cities on November 5, 2003, taking into account the time difference in different time zones. For this, for example, the film had to premiere in Tokyo no later than 11 p.m., and be launched in Los Angeles at 6 a.m.

And a few years later it became clear that the trilogy of brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski pales in comparison to what they did to themselves in real life. Larry Wachowski, a brutal man by appearance, and even married, later admitted that he always felt like a woman, hated his male body and because of this was close to suicide more than once. Finally, in 2003, he (or was it she?) came out, got divorced, changed his gender, became Lana Wachowski - and then married again, to the owner of a BDSM club, dominatrix Karin Winslow. Andy Wachowski, who experienced the same problems as his brother, held out with coming out for another ten years - and did it only under the threat of journalists that they would do it for him. In the end, he became Lilly Wachowski, but as some Western media wrote a few years ago, he, unlike Lana, has problems with his new self-identification. There was even a version that this is why (supposedly, Lilly is depressed) Lana filmed the fourth film of the franchise "The Matrix: Resurrection" alone.

Thus, the personal origins of the theme of "The Matrix" became clear - could Lana and Lilly, being still men, perceive their own lives in bodies that they hated as reality? And couldn't it seem to them that they live in these male bodies as in "The Matrix", from which they need to break out into the real world?

Returning to the end of the nineties and the beginning of the noughties, we note that "The Matrix" became a rare example of the interpenetration of "mass" and "high" cultures. It is no coincidence that the most popular philosopher of that time, Slavoj Zizek, took the title of his book of that time, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, from it.

And although the film has already become a fact of history, some scenes in it still look as if they were filmed today.

Photo: Wikipedia