![]() For there to be a real world, there has to be a simulation, and vice-versa. The heroic, red-pilled revolutionaries end up spending most of their screen time back in The Matrix. While in narrative terms, there’s a choice of pills, in structural terms, there’s no choice: viewers have to take both. At the time the first film dropped, in 1999, the most widely prescribed oestrogen for trans women in the US was Premarin – a red pill. This was a thing even before the films’ directors, the Wachowskis, transitioned. ![]() It’s ironic that the other subculture to have embraced The Matrix franchise is trans people, particularly trans women, for whom it’s a story about coming out. It’s both ironic and not that the main subculture to have adopted this language is extremely online men, who want to believe that everything they’ve been taught about how the world works – and, in particular, how gender works – is all a scam to which they have woken up. There’s a whole subculture that already imagines itself as ‘red-pilled’. If you accept that the films are real, then you accept that The Matrix exists, so you’re in it and, paradoxically, compelled to choose your pills. Which, of course, is a double-bind: even to acknowledge these films exist makes it impossible to not take a pill. They’re written with an ‘I don’t buy it’ tone. Courtesy: Warner BrosĪ lot of reviews of the most recent film in the franchise, The Matrix Resurrections (2021), profess to take neither. In narrative terms, it’s red pill versus blue pill but, structurally, the choice is actually to take both pills – or neither. To enjoy the world of The Matrix, we must accept this conceit of an exit from the simulation, within what is obviously a pure extrusion of it. ‘Welcome to the desert of the real,’ as Morpheus says to Neo (Keanu Reeves) when he takes the red one, stealing a line from Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1981). They really trained me up to be able to have what we call the toolbox.My favourite meme from The Matrix film series (1999–ongoing) has an incredulous Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) ask: ‘What do you mean you took both pills?’ In the narrative arc, the blue pill takes you to the simulated world the red pill is your exit. It’s a big show… ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ was the hardest physical role I’ve ever had in my career so far. Reeves added to Total Film magazine, “’John Wick: Chapter 4′ has the most action of any of the films, which is saying a lot. ![]() And you see the effort and the commitment from the team.” “You know, nunchucks, which was challenging… ‘John Wick’ action asks just a little bit more. It’s new levels of action,” Reeves said about “John Wick: Chapter 4” last month. It’s a sequel he’s already touted as the hardest action movie he’s ever had to film. Reeves is back for a fourth “John Wick” movie later this month. But here are a few: ‘River’s Edge,’ ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,’ ‘Matrix’ trilogy, ‘The Devil’s Advocate,’ ‘A Scanner Darkly,’ ‘My Own Private Idaho,’ ‘Point Break,’ ‘John Wick.'” “I’ve been very fortunate to work on a few films that have changed my life. “Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!! Fuck, aaaaaahhhhhhhhh,” Reeves reacted. That question nearly created a Reeves breakdown. Reeves refused to pick sides, just as he refused to name his best movie. “But the jiu-jitsu in ‘John Wick’ being integrated with judo and gunfights can never be touched in its own way.” “Nothing can ever compare to the kung fu training from ‘The Matrix’ because it was so unique and my first time,” Reeves answered. Does Reeves like the kung fu training for “The Matrix” more then he does the jiu-jitsu for “John Wick”? Reeves has keepsakes from both of his beloved action franchises, “The Matrix” and “John Wick,” but he refused to compare the two series when asked which one has the more preferable action scenes.
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