RED OR BLUE? : THE MATRIX MOVIE AND ITS PHILOSOPHY

The Matrix Movie: Questioning Reality

“What is the Matrix?” is a question that Neo, the main character of the movie, frequently asks himself. This is truly a question that everyone who watches the Matrix movie for the first time asks themselves. The Matrix movie is a well-known trilogy today. Numerous analyzes have been made on the film and even teachers have used this film as a subject in philosophy classes.

In this article, we will talk about the first Matrix movie. This movie may be the most important and interesting movie of the trilogy. It is quite difficult to summarize every feature of this movie worth analyzing in a single article. For this reason, we will do a universal analysis on what people generally feel after watching the movie.

How do we know whether we are awake or not? What is the truth? What is unreal? If you've watched the movie, I'm sure you've asked yourself these questions at least once. It is possible that you questioned these before watching The Matrix. Most of us have felt like we cannot act according to our free will. Some of us have thought that our behavior is predetermined, influenced by something, or that we live in a world like Nietzsche's. Sometimes we have even thought that we were being manipulated, under control, and that we might be in a dream. The Matrix movie answers all these questions. This film is a contemporary myth that provides solutions to some of humanity's dilemmas.


Technological developments have enslaved us. New technological devices, becoming more intelligent day by day, have gained their own will. They reached and even exceeded human intelligence. But resources are dwindling and these machines need feeding. For this reason, after the war, machines began to enslave people, turning them into resources to feed on. People were forced to live in a dream: sleeping their entire lives while hooked up to a machine that fed them.

This dystopian and terrifying future is becoming less absurd every day. Some people resisted in Zion; They managed to live in the only free city they could reach the Matrix with the intention of freeing more people and fighting to save them from slavery. This is the visual world that most permeates science fiction, but it also contains criticism and power. It makes us question our own reality. How do I know if I'm living in a dream? Do I make my own decisions?

What is Matrix?

The first thing we try to explain is what the Matrix is. The person who answers this question is Morfeo. Morfeo says, “The Matrix is a universe built in front of your eyes to hide the truth from you.” This means that the Matrix deceives our senses: it is not actually real, but we perceive it as real.

Plato says that our senses are misleading and unreliable. In short, this myth of Plato is about people examining the bottom of the cave with their hands and feet tied. The fire behind them reflects shadows on the ground, which they watch carefully. The reality of these people is what is behind them because that is all they know. This is the only thing they can access and perceive with their senses.

If one of these people escapes from the cave, he can access the real world, knowledge. Initially, the light dazzles them, they feel pain, and they adapt. When he returns to the cave, his friends probably think he is lying and try to kill him. These friends are only aware of one reality, and as a result they try to protect that reality no matter what.

This reminds us of the times when Galileo or Copernicus lived. In the Matrix, Neo has a thought, a doubt, that he cannot get out of his mind. As in Alice in Wonderland, Neo follows the rabbit which takes him to the burrow. But this time, rather than reaching a fantastic and unreal place, Neo reaches the real world, the world that contains the ideas presented by Plato.


One of the interesting things about the movie Matrix is that it provides an answer to reality. It takes everyday things like déjà vu, gives them meaning and adapts them to the proposed system. The Matrix is a kind of virtual reality where we all sleep and experience what is happening as if it were real. Isn't it true that when we wear virtual reality glasses, all our senses perceive it as real, even though we know it is not real? This is more or less the situation that developed in the Matrix movie. We assume that what we perceive with our senses is real, and as a result we stop questioning whether we are awake or not.

On the other hand, the question Neo asks about his own reality reminds us of Descartes. He solves the problem by talking about the evil genius that manipulates and deceives us, just like the machines in the Matrix do. Descartes doubts everything, and The Matrix pushes us to doubt our senses.

This is all a reference to Hilary Putnam. Putnam talks about something akin to evil genius. How do we know that we are not just brains in tubes? How do we know we're not living in a shared dream? These questions are questions that can be encountered in The Matrix, also put forward by Putnam. It's like a situation that everyone shares without realizing the nature of what we're experiencing.

Are We Free?

If we are living in a shared dream, that is, if even the dream does not belong only to us, we must ask ourselves whether there is really such a thing as fate and whether our actions really belong to us. One of the most interesting characters about this is Oracle. He is the person who tells Neo that he can make decisions and that he is the sole owner of the decisions he makes. This is suspicious since the Oracle character is associated with fate. The movie The Matrix constantly bases our decisions on our decisions: red or blue pill, knowing or not knowing the truth. Some also associate this freedom of choice with Sartre's existentialism.


If there is no such thing as fate and nothing is decided, then we are the ones who write our own destiny with our own decisions. But the movie Matrix also reveals the possibility that there is such a thing as fate, that it is something already determined. He also presents an argument that contradicts this. At this point, Oracle, like Morpheus, is one of the most important characters whose existence does not refute any of the previous hypotheses. Just as Morpheus believes in fate, he also believes in the power of decision-making.

The movie Matrix also touches upon the issue of knowledge and happiness. When they leave the simulation, we see that the real world they are in is not a good world. They realize a terrifying truth and dive into the world of shadows. At this point we can ask ourselves whether access to knowledge is good and whether it truly brings happiness. Most of us see happiness as our ultimate goal.

Cifra is the repentant character of the film. He wants to reach the truth, and when he finally reaches the truth, he decides to return to the unreal world. He wants to return to the world of fantasy and reject reality. Cifra chooses to live an ignorant life without knowing the truth.

The philosophical questions raised through the movie Matrix are really interesting questions. These questions push us into a temporary state of questioning and observation. It also causes us to question our own decisions, our happiness, and the world around us. There is no doubt that the movie The Matrix is a movie that professors should show in philosophy classes because it seems to answer certain philosophical questions without preconceptions. This movie allows us to open our minds and question everything.