1 The Matrix Apocalyptic Melodrama Redux by Gregory Desilet The Matrix (1999) shares in depicting the same apocalyptic nightmare as well as succumbing to the same temptations of technological gimmickry in giving itself over almost entirely to special effects and visual fireworks. Also like The Terminator, The Matrix is followed by two sequels to form a trilogy of films in which the sequels do little more than serve as remakes of the original. Although touted by some as posing profound philosophical questions while also being “the most elaborately plotted action movie ever made,” The Matrix offers a plot every bit as absurdly paradoxical—and consequently as pretentiously unilluminating—as The Terminator. And finally, also like The Terminator, the plot of The Matrix, despite its appearance of complexity, ends up as little more than, in Roger Ebert’s words, “a superhero comic book in which the fate of the world comes down to a titanic fist-fight between the designated representatives of good and evil.” For Ebert the film “recycle[s] the same tired ideas” that have come to be a routine expectation from Joel Silver produced “exercises in violence.” Critical opinion of The Matrix varies widely, however. In his commentary on the film in The Blood Poets, Jake Horsley claims that The Matrix “may well be the outstanding American movie of the '90s” (1999b, 432). Horsley even suggests that the film may need to be included among the best of the century because it has “the kind of emotional power that one generally gets only from works of art... as such, it may well be the cheekiest, most audacious, and most exhilarating work of art since Citizen Kane” (1999b, 440). Glossing over the comic book aspects of the plot, Horsley remains impressed by its ingenious “gnostic” themes and marvels at how the Wachowski brothers, as writers and directors, could have conjured up such a “demonically inspired and wickedly effective pop parable.” This parable is for Horsley an “amazingly coherent blend of Philip K. Dick, H. P. Lovecraft, Jean Baudrillard, messianic prophecy, apocalyptic lore, martial arts, mysticism, and technological paranoia” (1999b, 432). Apparently Horsley does not play video games. The potpourri of influences he cites are all in evidence in various guises in video games of the 1990s—which suggests that the Wachowski brothers are probably video game enthusiasts. When thinking of the video game experience, it becomes easy to see where the Wachowskis got the idea for the film. The world of the “Matrix” is analogous to stepping into the virtual world of the video game—with the insidious difference that the simulation is so holographically and sensually perfect that it reproduces an experience of real life indistinguishable from real life. The theme is similar to the movie Tron (1982) but instead of entering into the electronic hardware, humans enter into a programmed world created by electronic software. For Horsley the excitement generated by the possibilities of this challenging illusion take the film beyond being a “piece of first-class entertainment” and into the creation of an “experience that bends our concepts of what is real and what is not, and leaves us in a very tight spot indeed” (1999b, 433). Contrary to what Horsley asserts, the film does not leave “us” in a very tight spot. Beneath its superficial and highly ornamental dalliance with the question of what is really real and what is not, it returns “us” to a very old and familiar spot. In setting up a tension between a programmed illusion and reality, the film presents a clear distinction between an inside (an illusion) and an absolute outside (the really real). But instead of genuinely wrestling with the