Author: Li Nixiang
As the blockbuster screening of the 10th Beijing International Film Festival this year, the new 4K restored version of the "The Matrix" trilogy will be screened in some theaters in Beijing, and audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy the most important movie in history on the big screen. One of the science fiction series, together to appreciate its shocking unique audio-visual effects and deep scientific and technological reflection.
As the big IP of science fiction movies, the classic status of the "Matrix" series of movies has long been beyond doubt. The film tells a grand civilization fable, which not only includes the thinking and observation of human civilization, but also deeply touches the cultural evolution and ethical reflection of the virtual AI world. The image takes the maternal world/robots as a mirror, reflecting human thinking about their own existence. The discussion of the "human-machine relationship" is also closely related to the complex power relations and ideological discourses in the real world. When the time comes to 2020, the world depicted in the movie seems to be getting closer and closer. We even have a chance to see "The Matrix 4" two years later, it can be said to be a lifetime series!
Technology Reflection: Does Redemption Exist?
Like all classic sci-fi movies, "The Matrix" always runs through humans’ inquiries and reflections on modern civilization and scientific rationality with "technology" as the core. The construction of the dystopian cyberpunk world in the film is exactly this. The product of ideas. In fact, as early as 1921 in the science fiction film "Metropolis", director Fritz Lang creatively virtualized the future world of highly developed mechanical civilization. However, the technologically advanced mechanical city in the film has become a prison for mankind, and optimistic technological beliefs have been replaced by dystopian technological reflections. Knowledge and technology have become tools for the upper class to rule the lower laborers, and promote the separation and solidification of social classes.
In "Blade Runner" (1982), the dark temperament of apocalyptic cyberpunk has been rendered to the extreme: the gloomy and gloomy image space, the humid and suffocating apocalyptic atmosphere, the selfish and indifferent human beings are trapped in loneliness and despair. "The Matrix" undoubtedly expands and spectacles the doomsday space of traditional science fiction themes. The dark shades and monotonous/ restrained colors in the film (code green infiltrates the entire film sequence) allow the image space (real and virtual world) to be revealed A boring and decadent temperament that is hard to hide. The cool characters and sharp body movements seem to have become a kind of over-rational footnote, a certain kind of regularity, restraint and suppression of human nature.
If science is the representative of enlightenment, reason, and order in the development of modern society, and modern people’s disenchantment of religion, mythology and other values, then the reflection on modernity and science contained in science fiction films in Europe and America is "Christ Salvation" and The excavation of the theme of "religious/divine interpretation" provides a reasonable space. Whether it is the "Son of God" Fratz, who saves people like Jesus in "Metropolis", or Roy, who interprets his life experience in the rain in "Blade Runner," all seem to point certain redemptive possibilities to religious suffering and epiphany. . In "The Matrix", the film seeks and believes in the "savior" structure of the entire story, and embeds the reincarnation and fatalistic thoughts of Eastern Zen Buddhism into the theme of Western heroes fighting against the fate to achieve a modern interpretation of religious values. . The self-sacrifice on Neo’s cross at the end of the trilogy and the religious traceability of the naming details such as "Neo"/"The ChosenOne" (Savior) Zion (Zion) and Trinity (Trinity) also seem to provide some proof. In addition, the pioneering creation of time and space in the film is like "Bullet Time." As a modern technological creation, when subverting and expanding the ideology of the image, it forms an interesting tension with the technical reflection and expression in the image and becomes the image of The Matrix. Sequence reflects another aspect of technology.
Identity: How to define "person"?
AI's confusion and questioning of identity are common motifs in science fiction movies. If the identity confusion of "Blade Runner" revolves around the pursuit of memory and the feeling of life, then the discussion of "The Matrix" on the issue of identity is connected with the discussion of "real and virtual" and the discussion of "human nature". definition.
The film constructs two mutually contrasting worlds: the illusory and beautiful "virtual world" set by the mother body and the "real world" in which humans are hypnotized and enslaved by machines and lose their dignity and freedom. The interpretation of "truth and falsehood" in the film is full of Cartesian suspicion and existentialism. Just as the film will show the separation of human spirit and body in an intuitive way, and bluntly stated that "reality is nothing more than an electronic signal interpreted by the brain" (Morpheus). He has repeatedly affirmed the free choice of Neo as an independent individual, and his existentialist practice has broken through the fatalistic prophecies time and time again. Neo’s choice of the red pill in "The Matrix 1" is his acceptance of the cruel "reality", and it is also a key step for him to leap from a controlled slave to a free man with subjective consciousness. In contrast, Saifo’s identity crisis and value confusion lie in his “inversion” of the "real-virtual" cognition. Unfortunately, the plot setting of Saifo's moral betrayal may conceal the audience's view of the "virtual-virtual". Deep digging and realization of the proposition of truth.
The choice of "real and virtual" in the film seems to be related to the choice of identity and value, and is also connected to thinking about the connotation of human nature.
For the understanding of human nature, the director sets up a series of oppositions to discuss, such as sensibility and rationality, chaos and order. In the end, people's emotions/sensibility will be reversed to order/rationality and reach a new balance. For example, in the narrative setting, the first-generation maternal system collapsed because of being too perfect, the Prophet’s "love" finally completed the upgrade of the maternal system, and the red lady and the rebellion of Saifu all revealed some affirmative secular desires. mean. The perceptual/desired/defective parts of the human nature are accepted, while the logical, purposeful, and controllable pure reason has been sublated to a certain extent. Under the premise that the boundary between real and virtual is broken, the director makes "love" the key to measuring "truth" and defining "human." Of course, the "love" in the film is not limited to the love of men and women. The appearance of the useless program Sati has undoubtedly expanded the definition of "person".
Human-machine relationship: symbiosis or surrender?
Looking back at the entire Matrix Building, the beginning of the story stems from the irreconcilable "man-machine contradiction." The 2003 animated version of the story tells that humans invented artificial intelligence, but regarded it as human property. The human rights and ethical issues of AI have been greatly ignored. The relationship between man and machine is more of a kind of slavery (human to machine one-way Enslavement). At this point, the relationship between humans and AI "oppression and resistance" was born from this. The complete defeat of mankind, and the machine world invented the matrix matrix to control the consciousness of man, reconstructed a certain absolute "surrender" relationship between man and machine at the beginning of the narrative, but this time the surrender is human. As the story progresses, Neo continues to understand the operating rules of the matrix system. From pill selection to prophetic guidance, almost every decision is accompanied by reflections and doubts about "independent will and machine will". It is worth noting that although the "The Matrix" series has a complete and self-consistent worldview, the "The Matrix" 1 is a more popular and Hollywood-like structure than the "The Matrix" 2-3, and the latter two The department has a clear deconstruction and subversion of the previous work. Among them, the deconstruction of "independent will" at the end of "The Matrix 3" makes Neo's self-sacrificing "salvation" behavior appear fatal and tragic. The panic and unwillingness before Smith's defeat also confirmed the "machine consciousness" as a powerful restraint and influence of ideology.
To reorganize the context of the story and regard each system restart as a fable for the evolution of human civilization, then the interdependent but confrontational roles of the prophet and the architect set up like radicals and conservatives of social evolution. The result of the power struggle is the new balance reached at the end of "The Matrix 3", that is, the "symbiosis" state of man and machine. At the end, the realization of Zion's salvation and the rise of the sun by Sati and the existence of a legal identity in the mother world also express the possibility of human and machine coexistence. Different from the stereotyped depiction of human-computer relationship in traditional movies, that is, using robots as mirrors to observe human society, but it is inevitable to reveal the contradictory expressions of anthropocentric consciousness: such as the little boy in "Artificial Intelligence" and Edward in "Edward Scissorhands" , Contrast the ugliness and flaws in human nature with absolute simplicity and kindness, or demonize and extremeize robots in images to release humans’ fear of alien (technological) forces, such as Hal 9000 in "A Space Odyssey" And the image of Ava in "Mechanic Ji". At the end of "The Matrix" 3, the symbiosis of humans and machines is undoubtedly an interpretation and affirmation of non-anthropocentrism. In addition, the infinite reproduction of Smith also conveys the director's fear and reflection on Western colonial expansion. What’s interesting is that the symbiosis here is different from our country’s emphasis on the coexistence of human beings, human beings and nature. ) The result of mutual checks and balances in the process of power struggle.
As a classic sci-fi movie, "The Matrix" raises many questions that are worthy of our repeated thinking and chewing: reflections on technological progress and modernity, the relationship between humans and AI (other)/self, the value of religious beliefs, reality and fiction The boundaries of “human”, as well as the questioning and endless thinking about the existence of “human”. It may be an attempt that we can carry out for deeper excavation and thinking based on predecessor images. The relationship between man and self, man and machine is still worth questioning and reflection.
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