Keanu Reeves as the Messianic Hero / Neo, Carrie-Ann Moss as Trinity, and Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus are at it again in The Matrix: Revolutions, the third in the trilogy.  What they're "at" is trying to save humanity from the evil designs of Agent Smith and legions of Sentinels. The sequel opens as Zion, the last human city in the universe is once again threatened by destruction at the hands of an army of computer warriors. Humanity is fighting for its survival, and as in the biblical battle of Armageddon, the stuggle which this movie portrays is as much the conflict between the good and evil within us as it is about any events in the world around us.

When The Matrix opened in 1999, few film critics realized the significance of what they were seeing. As I put it in my review of the original, the film's creators, Larry and Andy Wachowski, were shaping a new film genre: spirituality fiction. Borrowing and sometimes satirizing the conventions of the action film, the western, science fiction and other genres, the first in this trilogy was very much part of the high tech culture of the late 1990's. But the Wachowski brothers were attempting to do much more than mirror or comment upon pop culture. They were evidently trying to recast the more enduring themes of the world's great religious and philosophical traditions into a contemporary idiom. And they seemed to strike a responsive chord in the hearts and minds of the movie going public. 

"The Matrix touched a need in our consciousness," said Wanda Teays, who teaches philosophy at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles in an inteview with USA TODAY. "It's rare in action movies that audiences are asked to think, even though that's what we want. The Matrix made us think about everything from our faith to our destiny."

Also quoted in the USA TODAY report is Keanu Reeves. "I read the script over and over, trying to understand the world the Wachowski's envisioned. ... The one thing I sensed was that the brothers got it. They understood how connected the world is now to technology and to the media and to the Internet and to computers. It was the first film that truly got it. I just didn't know if the public would get it."

Apparently large segements of the movie going public did get it, for in the end The Matrix earned $171 million, but even more to the point, it inspired thousands of websites, at least seven books, and scores of college level courses that encouraged students to explore the film's many references to Christianity, Buddhism, the Bible, Plato, and what William James and others have referred to as the "perennial philosophy."

Coming out four years later, the final (?) unit in the series arrives in a world much changed since the first edition. Not only have the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought home to millions of movie viewers in this country the realization that fact can be more frightening than fiction, but the actual pyro-technics of a real war in Iraq have raised the bar in terms of what it takes to create a sense of "shock and awe."

Also, we remember that in 1999 the dot.com bubble was still expanding and internet companies were still attracting venture capitalists like flies. So it will be interesting to see if the Matrix forumlas that the Wachowski brothers invented in the twentieth century work as well now that the world has come down from its technological high and is in a state of collective recovery.