At heart of film is Christian story

'The Matrix' is a religious phenomenon.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Some of Hollywood's most enduring science-fiction films have borrowed greatly from the Bible.
Casting Keanu Reeves as a Christlike figure in "The Matrix" trilogy may seem blasphemous, but it's not new. Recent films, from "Signs" to "Contact" have used a sci-fi setting to discuss serious questions of faith.
But where previous films made vague references to the Christian story, "The Matrix," some theologians argue, appeals directly to the heart of Christian identity. Its script, however, draws on Platonic philosophy, Greek mythology, Buddhism, and postmodernism, religious experts say.
Its high-octane blend of comic-book action and lofty metaphysics fueled box-office sales in 1999 to more than $450 million worldwide. But it also created theological tension about the movie's symbolism. And with "The Matrix Reloaded" due out next week, the debate is likely to intensify over different interpretations of the trilogy.
"There's two ways to look at this from a Christian perspective," says Glenn Yeffeth, editor of the book "Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix." "One is that it's retelling the story of Christ," he says. "The other way to look at it is a very violent film filled with garden-variety blasphemy that exploits people's resonance with the Christian narrative to fool people into a story that is fundamentally atheistic."
Shapes public thought
Both sides see a movie phenomenon that, for better or worse, is shaping public thought about religion.
"The Matrix" is compelling people to examine the plurality of religions versus the unity of truth, says cultural critic Read Mercer Schuchardt. Like the movie's characters, who strive to understand what is real, Matrix fans are hoping the trilogy's second installment will help them unravel the film's tangled symbolism, say film experts.
After the film's 1999 debut, sci-fi fans, philosophers, Buddhists, and even evangelical Christians have found resonant themes in the story.
"There are hundreds of Matrix [Web sites] out there, and they're not about how cute Keanu Reeves looks," says Mr. Yeffeth. "The Christian parallels, the philosophical underpinnings -- this is a movie that ... captures people's intellectual imagination."
Some observers, however, are skeptical. A number of critics panned the first "Matrix" for being too pretentious. And some viewers balked at the marriage of kung fu fight scenes with a "Philosophy for Dummies" script.
The film's creators, brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski, in a Web chat, were asked to what extent their allusions to myths and philosophy were intentional. "All of it," they said.
A story, first
Like all myths, "The Matrix" is first and foremost a story. By day, Thomas Anderson (Reeves) is a cubicle-bound software programmer. By night, he's a computer hacker known as Neo with troubling questions about reality. A rebel group led by Morpheus recruits Neo and offers him a chance to discover the truth about the Matrix.
Neo is unplugged from the Matrix and realizes that humans are slaves to an empire of man-made, intelligent machines. The Matrix is a virtual-reality program hard-wired into the human brain to deceive mankind about this truth. Neo reluctantly accepts his mission to free the human race.
No one is seriously treating the script as a Neo-New Testament. But "The Matrix" story has stirred debate within the Christian community.
Author and dedicated Christian Kristenea LaVelle hoped her scriptural exegesis of the film, "The Reality Within the Matrix," would inspire Christians to apply the movie's gospel message to their own lives. Reaction to her book, however, has been mixed.
Unsettling for Christians
The film's bullet-laden violence and strong language, along with Eastern religious influences, she acknowledges, are unsettling to some Christians. But LaVelle says that "The Matrix" expresses the basic idea of Christian salvation. "The whole idea of being 'awakened' or 'un-plugged' is a reference to salvation." She recognizes, however, that her view is not universally accepted.
David Frankfurter, for one, disagrees. "I'd resist the notion of [Neo] as having anything to do with Jesus," says the professor of history and religious studies at the University of New Hampshire. "He's the classic hero figure from early Jewish literature."
Frankfurter and other religious experts say "The Matrix" does not represent orthodox Christianity nearly as much as Gnostic Christianity.
Gnosticism never developed a well-defined theology, but it depicts Jesus as a hero figure who saves mankind through "gnosis," or esoteric knowledge. In the Gnostic philosophy, the physical world is not part of God's creation, but a manifestation of a lower god -- a nightmarish reality that imprisons mankind, say religious experts. Gnostics believed they could achieve salvation, not by overcoming evil and sin with God's grace, but by learning the "higher knowledge" about reality.