The Matrix is Getting a Reboot Because Nothing is Sacred

You Can Only Milk a Cow So Long Before it Either Dies

Or Bites You on the Fucking Face

 

The Wachowski siblings’ classic sci-fi action film The Matrix is being set up for a remake by Warner Bros. I wish there was some far-reaching, metaphysical ultimatum that I could put to you after that statement, that you could either take the red pill to keep learning about this inconvenient reality or the blue pill to go back to your memes and/or porn. But, instead, all I can offer you is this blotchy, malformed jellybean containing stevia and laxatives. It tastes familiar, granted, but it’ll make you want to void your bowels and ultimately leave you feeling empty inside.

Honestly, what’s left at this point? What movie is safe from a latter day, unavoidably lacklustre reimagining if The Matrix isn’t? ‘Cause look, I’m not gonna make the claim that it’s the be-all and end-all of cinema, but it did quite literally redefine what an action movie could be – both visually and conceptually – and did a pretty fucking good job of it on its own terms.

Its influence on that genre, as well as sci-fi and quasi-philosophical filmmaking, is virtually unparalleled in the modern era. Without The Matrix, movies like Kill Bill, Inception and pretty much every Zack Snyder film – including Watchmen, which is actually pretty decent – would not exist in the form they do today. In that regard, it really has earned the right to remain an untouchable testament to its own legacy. But, noooo, apparently we need a new one now, where Neo spends his days trolling 4chan, Morpheus is hard into dabbing and Eddie Redmayne plays Agent Smith as an ambiguously withered soul, inevitably winning an Oscar for his bravery. Goddammit.

I mean, to be sure, if people want to conflate the outcry that has immediately followed the news of this remake with that accompanying the all-women Ghostbusters from last year, or even the upcoming Ocean’s Eight, then that’s their prerogative. Nevermind that the ire from those examples comes direct from an enraged bro-gade who almost ripped their dicks off in fury over the idea of seeing females in roles that are so dear to their frail sense of machismo. Or that the chief response to those rabid complaints was, “Well, how ’bout you just… don’t watch it? Idiot.”

What’s even more concerning, now that I’ve written that previous sentence I kinda feel like the world’s biggest hypocrite, in that I actively believe nothing in the world of pop culture is forced upon you. If you don’t like the guy who got elected, well then shit, that’s definitely gonna mess with your day-to-day. But if a movie you’re head-over-heels for gets remade and you keep bitching about it, you start to sound like the guy who moans about the cheap toilet paper he has to keep using when he breaks into his neighbour’s toilet.

So, that’s the sum of it in the end. It’s both shallow and impractical to care so much about this and deeply hard for me not to. If you personally don’t see the difference between a reboot of a piss-funny ghost caper, a tongue-and-cheek heist movie (which was, itself, already a remake) and The fucking Matrix, then we are just fundamentally different people.

In any case, I have no hesitation in saying that I’d have a similar reaction to hearing a remake of Pulp Fiction was in the works. Not that Tarantino’s opus and The Matrix are necessarily of the same calibre, just that each is as unique and impactful in their own way as to render a redo redundant. It’s the main difference between an homage and a cash-in: one expands on what has come before to achieve new heights; the other holds you down and takes your wallet while insisting that you’re having a good time.