Visual Style
The visual style of The Matrix draws
on its creators’ love for the comic book and Japanese animation
traditions, as well as reflecting an affinity with video game culture.
These stylistic elements include certain modes of framing and lighting,
along with an emphasis on violence. Clearly the bulk of the films,
and the bulk of their budgets, went into choreographing fight sequences.
Over the course of the trilogy, fights take place in subway stations,
in grand halls, on speeding eighteen-wheelers, in empty warehouses,
in spaceships, in the ravaged real world, and even in the sky above
the city as Neo and Agent Smith take to flying. Although the Matrix films
reference a dizzying variety of philosophies and religions, the
genre conventions of science fiction and action films tend to meld
large questions about the human condition with the pure entertainment
of fantastic spectacles.
The “bullet time” effect, for which the Matrix films
are famous, gives the audience the vicarious visual thrill of omniscience,
of being able to stop time and see an event from several points
of view at once. This technique offers the audience a feeling of
power over the temporal world of the film, as well as over the characters,
since the audience experiences the luxury of seeing the most phenomenal events
in slow motion and from more than one point of view. The characters
are fantastically fast and powerful, and this method of presenting
the action, rather than blinding or confusing the audience with
too much speed, imparts a feeling of control to the audience, as
if we have superpowers too.
The mise-en-scène (physical environment
of a film) displays the strong sense of metaphor throughout the
trilogy. The repetitive blandness of the grid in Thomas Anderson’s
plain, cubicle-laden corporate office symbolizes the Matrix’s stifling
system of control, and it visually illustrates the Matrix’s latitudinal/longitudinal
weblike code that Neo finally sees at the end of The Matrix.
The cylindrical Zion emphasizes the city’s communal nature, and
the dark sweep of the Machine City suggests the strange and massive
presence that might emit anything. The cold halls of the Nebuchadnezzar and
the decks strewn with wires emphasize the ragtag, underdog nature
of the crew, who build and repair the ship while on the run.
Finally, the world of The Matrix is appealing
because it is a world of shortcuts. Scenes change at a dizzying
pace. Cameras swoop in from every direction, cutting from the ground
to the sky and piercing walls and panes of glass. Thousands of guns
appear in an instant, summoned by a computer keystroke. Amazing
skills are downloaded instantly, instead of learned through a long
process, and philosophical ideas are suggested and referenced but
not fully developed. Though comic books tend to emphasize serialization and
multiple plotlines that gain depth and breadth over time, the books
can also be flipped through and a new episode started on a whim.
The quick, bite-size, transient spirit of comics matches the production
philosophy of the Matrix trilogy at every level.
