Since the release of the original and revolutionary The Matrix 22 and 1/2 years ago the red pill vs. blue pill metaphor has completely embedded itself into the mass mindset. You knew it had really penetrated when Elon Musk invoked it 16 months ago, and Ivanka Trump responded “taken!” The blue pill means safety and security by way of mediocrity and tedium, and the red pill is about illumination and “whoa!” and adventures in Wonderland. We’ve all been chewing on this notion since the late Clinton administration.
And yet Lana Wachowski, director, co-writer and producer of The Matrix Resurrections (Warner Bros., 12.22), felt obliged to literalize and re-boot the metaphor by showing us actual pills of a red and blue color in the new trailer. My response was “really?” The metaphor has to be re-explained because…what, GenZ never got the memo or something?
Why would anyone want to make another film with the word “Matrix” in it at all? It’s been 18 years since the double-shot poison cocktail of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions killed this franchise but good. Why would anyone want to drink from the same glass again?
From “Shoulda Quit When They Were Ahead“, posted on 4.1.14: “I remember paying to see the original The Matrix in the old multiplex at the Beverly Connection, on the southeast corner of La Cienega and Beverly Boulevard. It was opening weekend, and I remember floating out of the theatre and listening to the chatter as the crowd trudged down the stairway exit. A visionary knockout. The first grade-A cyber adventure. Bullet time! Obviously a hit.
“For the next four years I was convinced that the press-shy Wachowskis, who’d also directed the brilliant and hot-lesbo-sexy Bound, were pointing the way into 21st Century cinema and that everything they would henceforth create would dazzle as much as The Matrix, if not more so.
“And then The Matrix Reloaded came out a little more than four years later (5.15.03) and the millions who’d flipped over The Matrix were standing around with dazed expressions going “wait…what? ” And then The Matrix Revolutions opened on 11.5.03 and that was it…dead, finished, imploded. Larry and Andy who?