Twelve years after the release of the first film, in 1999, the Matrix saga has a fourth part, Matrix Resurrections.
The opportunity to revisit a series of films that will have marked history and minds.
“Revolutionary”, “visual slap”, “cult” but above all “visionary”, Matrix will have collected a number of laudatory epithets.
The first film indeed upset the codes of cinema of the time, and inspired a genre of films in its own right. Many Internet users and the media go so far as to assert that the Matrix would have been so far ahead of its time that it would have "predicted" certain elements of our present. The celebration of geek culture, the inspiration of video games and Japanese animes, but also hyperconnection, the development of artificial intelligence, or the overexploitation of natural resources would have been themes that would have been "predicted" by the movie.
Without completely refuting this idea, Elie During, philosopher, teacher and author of the book “Matrix, philosophical machine” qualifies this point of view.
"Manga culture, geek culture, science fiction (…) all of this was in the air and was part of a certain popular culture" he explains.
But Matrix did anticipate certain events all the same: its message of uprising against the established order marks the beginnings of the emancipation movements during the 2010s, for example.
However, today, such a reading of the contemporary world no longer seems to work: “The Matrix is a closing fable of the 20th century.
Today, the geopolitical and ideological benchmarks are much more vague, ”says Elie During.