Re: [-empyre-] Tech drove the Matrix, it served the latter two.

["Patrick Lichty" <voyd@voyd.com>]

> I think you'd be hard pressed to convince me that technology (CGI) merely
> drove the Matrix.

I would agreee with you there, and if you think that this is where I was
going, then you completely missed the point.

The CGI and the hype about the CGI merely fetishized it.

The matrix was driven by technology and the culture that surrounds it: the
determinism that moves towards ubiquity, the same one that feeds the fear
that if you don't have the latest computer, you'll be left behind, and the
Moravecian wiring of the body, the Lain-esque merging of the wired and
physical worlds.

The matrix was not driven by CGI, but it was driven by technology.  The CGI
merely fetishized it. Under the current context, would a movie like TM be
interesting before Baudrillard and the rise of the video game?  Maybe, but I
seriously doubt its ability to capture the mass imagination.  The Matrix is
a movie of its time, as I would say about Serial Experiments Lain, which is
similar.

The Matrix is the result of a combination of cultural forces; manga (without
improved communications technologies it woudl never be as popular), the
Internet, and so on.

To place a movie like Moulin Rouge or LOTR in such a context would fail.
This may seem ludicrous, but the fetishization of The Matrix through its
critique/use of technology in built into it, unlike the other two.

The Matrix is about an entire life that's CGI, and that's why technical
wizardry and the deterministic approach of bigger, better, faster, more is
crucial to its narrative.