UNDERSTANDING THE MATRIX Written and Compiled by David Allen Rivera (2008) "The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth." (Morpheus) TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Discovering The Matrix …………… …..……………………………..…………………2 Chapter Two: The Call (Scenes 1-43)………………….…..…………………….….……………..…9 Chapter Three: The Training and Equipping (Scenes 44-82)………………….………………….90 Chapter Four: A Destiny Revealed (Scenes 84-220)……………………………………………..129 Chapter Five: The Truth……………..………………………………………………………….……214 Sources Consulted & Acknowledgements……………..…………….……………………….……229 All Scripture quotations are from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible 2 CHAPTER ONE DISCOVERING THE MATRIX In 1999, Warner Bros. released a little movie called The Matrix . While most movies are made to entertain, and are fairly straight forward in their approach, The Matrix challenged its viewers. Incredibly unique was the fact that different people who saw it, had different interpretations of its meaning. For people to devote their time into discussing the "meaning" of a Hollywood movie illustrates the shear impact it has had. Few movies have been dissected like The Matrix . This book considers the interpretations, the observations, the symbolism, and the spiritual significance of The Matrix , and puts it into perspective. Are you ready to discover the truth behind The Matrix ? FINDING A TREASURE I never saw The Matrix when it came out in 1999. This was a time when the pastor of our church was chastening the congregation (mostly the men) about going to R-rated movies, and renting R-rated videos. Even though it wasn't something that I did a lot, I am an action movie kind of guy, and as you know, most action movies contain bad language, some sexual content, as well as gratuitous violence. That actually began to change with the release of the R-rated Braveheart , The Patriot , and Gladiator , as well as the PG-13 rated The Mask of Zorro . 3 However, I understood the ramifications of what he was talking about, because as Christians, we need to guard ourselves as far as the things we allow in our minds. Just as "we are what we eat," the same holds true for the things that we watch and listen to. When you're hammering a nail, and you slip and hit your thumb, what is the first word that comes out of your mouth? If it's a four-letter word other than "ouch," then maybe you need to address the root of why that happens. If you're not taking in things which contain bad language, then it's not in you to come out. We are to have the "mind of Christ," and part of that is having the discernment to dwell on Godly things. "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ." (1 Corinthians 2:14-16) I remember going through all of my videos, and asking the Lord about which ones I could keep, and which ones I should get rid of. And even though I didn't have a lot of videos which were "bad" per se, I felt led to get rid of most of them. Of course, one of the other things which had come into play here was the addiction to television. I began to realize that television can come between you and God. It can affect your ability to have an intimate relationship with Him. When you spend an inordinate amount of time watching television and DVDs, as well as going to the movies, it can pull you away from things like reading and studying the Bible, and praying, which are necessary for spiritual edification. So, when The Matrix came out, and I saw that it was rated-R, and I didn't even consider going to see it. Fast forward to a year later– June of 2000. Our church ran a Bible School which was administered by Bill Anderson Ministries International, and we were having a graduation dinner for the students. Afterward, Rev. Anderson (pastor of the New Covenant Living Outreach Center in Sandusky, Michigan) gave an informal talk to encourage us. Surprisingly, he said that he had seen The Matrix , and began outlining all of the parallels that illustrated a person's spiritual rebirth. Needless to say, we were quite surprised, because not only did he watch an R-rated movie, but he was using it for a sermon illustration. Well, in the next couple days, many of us ran out to rent The Matrix . The first time I saw it, it didn't really hit me about what it represented. Probably– because I was still a bit apprehensive. My wife ended up renting it a couple times, but I actually only saw bits and pieces of it. Each time I saw it, I began to see different things. It wasn't until after I saw the television broadcast premiere on TNT, that the whole concept began to come together and gel. FROM PAPER TO THE SCREEN- THE WACHOWSKI BROTHERS The Matrix was an idea developed by two brothers, Larry Wachowski (born in 1965) and Andy Wachowski (born in 1967). Besides a liberal application of Biblical tradition, there were also some Buddhism (just as there was in Star Wars), Hinduism, and a hint of New Age. There are some generous helpings from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland , science fiction classics like Blade Runner , the Terminator , and recent entries like Dark City , the 1998 futuristic thriller 4 directed by Alex Proyas. Their idea was to translate their love of comic books (especially the art of Geof Darrow), Japanese Anime and kung-fu movies into an "intellectual action movie." The brothers are both married, and live near each other on Chicago's North Side. They are college dropouts. Larry attended Bard for two years, and Andy went to Emerson College. They first worked as comic book writers, writing for the now-defunct series Ectokid , a title from a line of comics created by horror novelist Clive Barker. The artist for Ectokid was Steve Skroce, a former Spiderman artist, who also worked on the Gambit series for Marvel Comics. After reading a book about the legendary B-movie director Roger Corman, they decided on a career in movie-making. The Brothers wrote a script which became the 1995 action movie Assassins , starring Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas. They were so disillusioned about how the movie ultimately turned out, that they tried to legally have their names removed from the movie– but couldn't. They studied the works of directors Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Billy Wilder, Ridley Scott, George Lucas, and Fritz Land; and in 1996 they wrote, and made their directorial debut with the movie Bound . Andy said: "We started out thinking of this ( The Matrix ) as a comic book. We filled notebook after notebook with ideas. Essentially that's where the script came from." The brothers hired two cartoonist friends– Geof Darrow (creator of the comic book Hard Boiled ) and Skroce, who worked with them on Ectokid , who produced a 400-page, scene-by-scene comic book, based on the script written by the Wachowski's. For a few years, they pitched the idea to different studios, but each time they were told that the movie was too complex, and that the movie audience wouldn't get it. Ultimately, their comic book was shown to the Warner Brothers Studio, where Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the WB Studio President for World-Wide Production, kept track of the script and helped push it through; as did Joel Silver, the producer of Assassins (who would also produce The Matrix ), who helped to get the movie off the ground. Bonaventura said: "When you read the script, you knew it was a new and different kind of movie. It had great action and great characters...a few of us didn't find it incomprehensible and felt the brothers would be able to execute visually what some people had a hard time understanding when they read it." Keanu Reeves said about the Wachowski brothers: "They are the most beautiful, decent people I've ever met. I think the film is like nothing I've ever seen before. It is a new take. It's a new way of telling stories…It's dense with ideas and you can look at it from different angles. As Larry Wachowski would say, 'The pain of knowledge, the pain that it brings.' Once you go through that, your life can open up and you can experience love. It's about love." The brothers had admitted to Reeves that he was the first one to actually understand the story. Keanu said: "When I first met the brothers, they showed me a book, which was drawings and kind of like a graphic novel. I was already familiar with some of their comic book material and films that had influenced their work. This book had storyboards and the color schemes and certain action sequences that they call 'bullet time.' And when I saw that, and the script itself, I was like, 'Wow!' They were just aching and ready to make this film." Carrie-Ann Moss said: "To be honest, it took me twice reading it to fully get it.