The Matrix Trilogy

Comment: Having just read what Lisa Nakamura feels about this movie it does invoke other feelings about the movie. I did enjoy the trilogy and found it was interesting how the characters where moved and created. For Keanu Reeves to be the lead actor was quite the stretch in the beginning as many people have said. His acting skills are somewhat limited and the supporting cast of Laurence Fishburne he gets over shadowed with such great actors. One can see how they set the cast and with the second and third movies they added a larger mix of ethnicities to get a better blend of what they felt the people of Zion would be like. Having heard what some of the actors and actresses said about the first movie one can see where they went with this idea.
The whole gaze of how the machines are portrayed is interesting. Having them all be straight laced white business men I think is making a jab at how our society was back in the 40’s and 50’s with the ‘Man’ being the one in charge. All sections of society bowed down to what the ‘Man’ did. He was the caregiver and the head of the household. He brought home the income so it was his place to be in charge. Something in the lines of the classic look of Leave It to Beaver I think. So when we see the people of Zion we get the total mixed package of everyone living day to day and no particular race/ethnicity is ruling the city. Now, with a lot of other sci-fi we do get the heavy Asian feel but for this movie from a cultural point of view it was very subdued. I think that our society now expects for action movies that the fight scenes will involve some kind of martial art and so it is very over blown in some reactions to it. Kind of like how the fight scenes were in the movies from the 70’s. Rough and tumble with nary any kind of martial art fighting style. It is now what we expect to see so when someone does something different it catches our eye. This is what the Matrix did for us in that it did something new with what we expected and now we see it copied in many places.
Overall, there are many subtle happenings going on in these movies. A person can take them for what they are, entertainment, or they can scrutinize them, analyze them and make it out to be more than what it might have been intended to be.