Posted on

The Matrix – Post 2

The Matrix – Chosen by Someone from Outside your World

The Matrix posits an entire world in which people think they’re living in reality but are really living in a dreamworld created by a super-intelligence. In this world, some people realize something is wrong “like a splinter in your mind,” as Morpheus tells Neo. The Matrix is all around; you can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church. “It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you to the truth.” The truth that everyone is a “slave, born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or feel or taste, a prison for your mind.”

Continue reading “The Matrix – Post 2”

Posted on

The Matrix – Post 1

The Matrix – Too Complex to Pin Down

The Matrix has been studied from so many perspectives, perhaps showing how brilliant the movie is.  There’s really no telling what the beliefs of the movie’s makers are; there’s such a montage of meaning in it.  Analyzing all the underlying meaning is daunting, but that is not my goal with movies.  Because I want to edify my Christian faith when watching a movie, I’m always going to gravitate to the biblical meanings that were either intentionally or accidentally in the movie.  I believe it appears in all aspects of life even in artistic works.  I don’t contend that there are no other meanings; I just don’t see the need to go there.  Reviewing it from a biblical perspective only is still daunting.  In the Matrix are the obvious Christian messages and the not so obvious. But it’s odd for a movie to be so wrapped up into a worldview that so parallels the Christian or biblical worldview as The Matrix does.  It will take several posts to get anywhere with this movie, so here are my initial thoughts. Continue reading “The Matrix – Post 1”

Posted on

Donnie Darko – 3rd Movie Post

Donnie Darko = Christ Figure?

Donnie, knowing all things, preparing to change time

It took me awhile to figure this one out. Normally one viewing is enough for me to get the Christian view of a movie. I find it in just about every movie I watch. It doesn’t matter whether the writer or directors intended a Christian view or not; I normally see it. It’s as if Christ is impossible to avoid in writing stories about humanity. Perhaps it was the complexity of Donnie Darko that kept me from seeing it until I’d watched it four times. Or better yet, it was the fact that the movie is full of so much that remind you of something thoughtful, something from your youth, something realistically or surrealistically engaging. The details of the movie are so good that you don’t readily see the theme that runs throughout.

Continue reading “Donnie Darko – 3rd Movie Post”

Posted on

Interstellar

Interstellar

Download the pdf of this analysis:  Interstellar

Cooper, the Father, promising his daughter he’ll return

“Interstellar” came out in 2014. It’s about time and family, but it contains a theological explanation of covenant family and dominion also. Long before seeing it and while sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, I picked up a magazine and noticed an article about the movie. It explained that the makers went to an actual theoretical physicist to learn how to represent a black hole and a worm hole in the movie’s special effects. The scientist allegedly took the equations governing the theoretical operations of these phenomena and matched it with special effects software for a video representation. But when they actually saw the image the equations created, they had made an entirely new scientific discovery as to the operation of the phenomena. Perhaps the first time that a scientific discovery occurred within the special effects process in the making of a movie. Continue reading “Interstellar”

Posted on

Inception – post 2

Inception 2 – Sin & Reality

Cobb facing nothingness-what saves him

Download the Inception analysis pdf:  Inception

In Inception, death is a constant presence. It moves a person from one form of reality to another. However, Dom’s imagination, the memory of his wife, the guilt he lives with keeps him returning to a fantasy world of the mind. That fantasy world is an attraction, a pull, even a call to death. It is what draws him to what killed his wife, and it keeps him from the reality of his own children. Is not sin a belief in more than one reality, as Mal asks at the end? Therefore, what can destroy Dom is his sin? Sin allures us with attractive fantasies, and it justifies our engaging in it because their can’t be just one reality, that of God and His just hatred of sin.

Continue reading “Inception – post 2”

Posted on

Inception – 1st Movie Post

Inception

Cobb facing nothingness – what saves him

After hearing a sermon on our relationship with our heavenly father, I’m more convinced than ever that Eames’ statement is the key theme of the movie: “You have to start with something much more basic . . . the relationship with the father.” The statement appears throughout the movie in a variety of ways. Jesus told his mother that he must be about his father’s business. That statement defined his life and death – doing only what he saw the father doing Continue reading “Inception – 1st Movie Post”