I just finished watching the last two Matrix movies and I realized that there are many parallels with traditional western film stereotypical scenes. The romance between the two characters Neo (which is "One" flipped around) and Trinity is much like any other romance between a man and a woman in a western film. The gun-slinging in all three of the movies was "inexorably" western, since at least 50 shots were fired before one person would get hit, and then that shot would be the greatest aimed shot ever fired from a gun. The people of Zion were like members of a small town who were getting attacked by a hoard of outlaws, which in this trilogy's case would be the Sentinels that borrow into Zion and attack it during Revolutions. Neo was a cowboy, Morpheus was a sherrif, Trinity was the Love Affair/Gunslinger Female, and the Agents inside the system (which were also the machines in the physical world) were the outlaws. With regards to the outlaws, the Smith Program would represent one outlaw that took over a larger group of outlaws, or replicated himself inside the Matrix, to become more of a threat to the main character (Neo, the "Blondie" of the Future) than any of the other outlaws (agents) until the main conflict was no longer between anybody but Neo and Agent Smith. Lastly, the largest stereotype that has been perpetuated from many Western films was that the good guy eventually won and saved the day. I would say that he would have also gotten the girl, but that happened earlier in the trilogy at the end of the first movie.
The most eye-opening thing for me today was that I saw that the western film genre was the predecessor of the action film genre. I never noticed such strong correlations between what America expects from a good action movie and what America used to get during the time when spaghetti westerns were very common. I'm going to watch the first Matrix movie tomorrow or Saturday so that I can get a closer glimpse of the rolling newspaper scene. I have already seen one in one of the other movies. If I remember correctly, it was Reloaded where I saw Neo looking down a quiet hallway in the Matrix while looking for somebody, and in the distance at the end of the hallway/alleyway, you could see a newspaper rolling along like tumble weed.
Sources:
"Neo and Agent Smith punch". Screen shot. media.collegepublisher.com. 07 Nov. 2003. 23 Apr. 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment