Reloaded Questions  Hacking the 'Matrix' Master Code  Two
demographics enjoy pondering the philosophical intricacies of
The Matrix: stoners, and everyone else, excepting a few killjoy
anti-intellectuals. Someone around here is writing a whole book
on the first film, and it won't be the second or third such
offering. So, at the risk of inviting letters from the dude-
it's-just-a-movie club, what makes The Matrix the picture worth
a billion words?  Let's start by reminding ourselves that it is
just a movie. It's not a textbook, and it's not a Beckett play.
The Matrix took what makes cinema cinematic—the array of image
manipulation we mean when we say "movie magic"—and pushed it
forward a generation. It's a wire-fighting orgy riding a new
wave of special effects. It's that rare sci-fi film that
actually looked like it was from the future. "It's about," in
the deft analysis of one of the directors, "robots vs. kung fu."
But it's also about blue vs. red pills, reality vs. the
hypervirtual, Big Ideas both pre- and