Dialectics: Good versus Evil in "The Matrix"

Yeah, I know already. Good versus evil is an incredibly cliché and generic subject that has been done twenty billion times by every movie, book, work of art, or story since the dawn of language and literature and all that great stuff. I mean, one of the first written stories, "The Epic of Gilgamesh" was pretty much a tale of good versus evil along with a bunch of prostitutes, ogre-monster guardians, and an epic friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the original Bros. How much better can it get? But seriously, I know that this topic has been done time and time again. What I think is interesting is how "The Matrix" chose to do it.

Good versus evil can be done in tons of different ways. It can be very clean and clear cut, like in superhero movies like "Batman", where we know off the bat that the Joker is the evil villain and Batman is the awesome hero who has to save the day. It can be like the Mario games, where you have a series of evil henchmen that you have to beat before you get to the ultimate villain, Bowser. It can be less direct, like in "Hannibal", where he isn't known to be evil and is trusted by the "good guys" to help track down the evil killers. Basically, one evil is fighting another evil with good while doing evil things outside of their knowledge. Those are only three examples of thousands of ways that people have used good versus evil.

Memories...

So now we get to "The Matrix". When the movie starts off, we have no idea what's going on. There are a bunch of rapidly changing green characters flashing across a completely black screen which dissolve into the title sequence. Then green source code appears as what seems to be a telephone conversation carries on in the background. The source code then rapidly changes into green numbers that fly across the screen at breakneck speed. A code seems to be being broken. Someone's relieving someone from a duty. A man named Morpheus is mentioned, someone seems worried that the line isn't safe, et cetera. We've all seen the movie.

Anyways, after this title sequence, cops go into a room and chase down a strangely dressed woman. Our attention is drawn to her here. At this point, we are already trying to figure out if she is the good guy or the bad guy--it is our nature as action movie and Hollywood fans to want to know who we should be rooting for throughout the film. But it is early in the film yet, so we shift our attention elsewhere, knowing that we will find out who the good guy is and who the bad guy is very soon. We're Americans--we don't wait. We'll get the hero spoon fed to us eventually.

'MURICA!

 So eventually we meet Neo/Mistah Anderson, and we know that he is our protagonist. Most people generally associate protagonist with good and antagonist with bad, but that is not always the case. So on goes the movie, and suddenly we get to the blue pill/red pill scene. Neo chooses the red pill, he goes through his metaphorical rebirth, and then the real story of good and evil begins. The entire time that Neo is in the "real world" with Morpheus and Trinity and the rest of the gang, we as an audience are told that where Neo came from is called the Matrix and that machines are controlling us and using our bodies as source fuel for them. It is here that we meet our "bad guys". We then classify the movie into this: The good guys and our protagonist Neo are fighting against the evil robots that are controlling our minds. But wait--there's a double agent. And a bunch of actual Agents. Are they good or evil? 

The Agents, the Mr. Smiths, seem evil to us. They want to wipe out the human race with information from Morpheus so that we won't be a nuisance anymore, but they are doing it so that they can leave the Matrix because they hate it there. Morpheus tore Neo, Trinity, and two others out of their hibernating state of bliss to show them the "true" world. Though this seems like an act of bravery and liberty, how to Trinity, Neo, and creepy goatee guy feel about it? Creepy goatee guy obviously hates it since he tries to return to that state of ignorance. Morpheus himself is kind of shady. He's recruiting all these people to save the human race because that's what he thinks is right. But what if we shouldn't be saved? Wouldn't that make him evil?

Agent Elrond is all I saw the whole time

Throughout the movie, we can't be clear who is evil and who is good. We want to classify them, but it isn't clear enough. Everyone has double motives from the creepy goatee guy, to Morpheus, to the Agents. Good guys are evil and bad guys are good. We can't really distinguish evil from good due to the pure amount of subject matter present in the movie. That is why I think that "The Matrix" was an interesting movie with a different kind of good versus evil--it reads as a simple sci-fi/action adventure, but the good and evil struggle is actually what we are watching the whole time. 

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