Index – Culture – The Matrix was really about transgender people

That was the original goal. But the world wasn’t ready for that yet

– recently said one of the directors of the Matrix films, Lilly Wachowski, about what these films were really about. Lilly Wachowski was asked about the long-standing fan theory that the Matrix movies are actually about gender reassignment and transgender.

He said they couldn’t talk about it at the time because business, the corporate world, wasn’t open enough for it either. So even though he didn’t say so, funding for the film would likely have been compromised if it had been presented to the studios as a transgender allegory. However, the theory of “The Transgender Matrix” is widespread, and Lilly Wachowski says that transgender people regularly thanked her for movies.

Of course, if we look at the fate of the Wachowski brothers who made the original trilogy, it is not difficult to see why this theory became popular even without official confirmation. The brothers co-wrote and directed the first three Matrix films (Matrix 1999, Matrix – Reloaded, and Matrix – Revolutions 2003), as they have so far with all of their films. Back then, they still worked as Larry and Andy as men, and since then they have both changed gender, now living as women, Lana and Lilly Wachowski. Matrix 4 will be directed by older sister Lana alone, it is said that Lilly will not be returning because she is working on the Showtime drama series about transgender people, Work in Progress.

Lilly Wachowski cited the fate of one of the film’s characters as an example of the lack of preparation of the large companies that finance the film for this interpretive framework. The Switch in the first part (played by actress Belinda McClory) was thought by the writers and directors brothers as a character who lives in the real world as a man, but always appears in female form in the Matrix. However, in filmmaker Warner, it was thought that viewers would not understand this, which is why Switch became a woman in both reality and the Matrix. It is true that she is a rather masculine woman.

Male women, female men

The Wachowski brothers, however, hid countless transgender references in the movies. Starting with the character of the protagonist, Neo, who, like Thomas Anderson, lives an unhappy life as an office worker in a large company, and at all times feels that something is wrong with him and something wrong with the world. But only at night, under the pseudonym Neo, as a hacker in the virtual world can he be something of himself.

Neo gets to meet Trinity in this virtual world, whom he believes to be a man until they meet him in person. To Neo’s surprise, Trinity only notices with a flirtatious smile that all the boys think it’s about him.

Neo and Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss and Keanu Reeves), the central love couple in the Matrix movies, look like two eggs. They are both tall, slim, have short dark hair and wear tight-fitting black clothing in the Matrix. And in the real world, they don completely unisex ripped sweatshirts and pants. Even their facial features are similar, as if they were brothers. Or male and female versions of the same person. Trinity, like other female characters in the movies, Switch, Niobe, is a tough, determined, and masculine woman in many ways. Whereas Neo, especially at the beginning of the movie, is a lost man in need of tutelage and teaching.

And then we don’t even talk about the famous Sleeping Beauty kiss backwards in the first part, when it is not the prince who brings the woman to life with his kiss, but the woman who kisses the man to bring him back to life. Neo corresponds to this with the removal of a bullet and an internal heart massage in The Matrix Revolutions, but it is so unconvincing that we could leave it at that. The Reverse Sleeping Beauty Kiss, on the other hand, is beautiful, and its message is clear: The Wachowski brothers say there are no gender roles, just different personalities and different life situations. Those who suffer the roles that are imposed on them, or do not feel comfortable in the body in which they were born, are certainly forced to fight.

Continued in 2022

It is not yet known to what extent the transgender interpretation will be present in the next Matrix movie. The fourth part began filming in San Francisco in February this year and would have continued in Germany, but the coronavirus epidemic intervened and work stopped. They began work again in the summer, but the film could only hit theaters in 2022 at the earliest. His story is kept strictly secret, nothing has been leaked about him yet. Keanu Reeves has only revealed that the script is “very ambitious, but it has to be that way too.”

In any case, the world has changed a lot since 1999, when the first part was presented. Transgender people are much more visible than before, they may have appeared in more movies and series, and even today, it is not really special if a movie has a transgender lead. However, to this day, there are lively debates surrounding them, especially about transgender activism, just think of the case of JK Rowling. Or that one of the main problems of the Hungarian government in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic was making it impossible to legally change sex. Then Matrix 4 would also have something to talk about if the theme of transformation or gender identity also appears in the sequel.

(Cover image: IMDB)