Sources Used:
Clover, Joshua. The Matrix. BFI Modern Classics / BFI Film Classics (Series). British Film Institute, 2004.
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“I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.” So Neo says at the end of 1999’s The Matrix, a passage that Joshua Clover isolates as evidence that The Matrix is “not a vision of the future, but a start to it” (23). As such, his analysis of the film hinges on its historical moment: America in 1999. What we want to do here is extend Clover’s argument about The Matrix and its historical setting by testing it against other 1999 films and those in the years that have since followed. If, as Clover writes, The Matrix’s “profound influence on visual culture meant that a broad swath of popular culture would bear the marks of its futurism forward” (23), then in much the same way the films of 1999 set the tone for Hollywood ever since.
1999 had many important films, but perhaps there is no better place to start than with The Matrix itself. In terms of its effect on Hollywood, the film congealed the concept of the blockbuster. Citing this film exactly, Sean Connery, in 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, stated that the two reasons why he accepted the lead role were that he had turned down an offer to be in The Matrix and that he wanted to be in a blockbuster film like The Matrix--even though he did not quite understand them--because that was what everyone was talking about. The Matrix, with its revolutionary special effects and computer animation, also engendered the big-budget, CGI-heavy action film, perhaps the best followup of which is 2009’s Avatar. (In fact, director James Cameron put off filming Avatar for almost ten years until Hollywood possessed the technology to do it.)
The Blair Witch Project was also released in 1999, giving audiences a taste of what has since been referred to as the “found footage” film. Garnering an unsuspecting $140 million, the film gave way to many popular films of the same genre, such as the Paranormal Activity series beginning in 2007. To enjoy these films, we have to believe that what we are watching is real, similar to how Cypher desires to reenter the Matrix so that he can enjoy the taste of steak without being conscious of the fact that it is not real.
Another landmark film from 1999 was The Sixth Sense, a discussion of which perhaps deserves a separate paper altogether. Not only would this film be perfect fodder for Clover’s argument about Edge-of-the-Construct films--seeing as Bruce Willis’ realization at the end of the movie that he has in fact been dead all along eerily recalls the moment when one finds the edge of the construct--but more important, Sixth Sense popularized the “twist ending” in film, which has become a staple of movie-making ever since. Perhaps it should not surprise one, then, that 1999’s Fight Club also features an important twist ending, the moment when Edward Norton’s character realizes that Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) is part of his split personality.
Speaking of Fight Club, it was based on a 1996 novel of the same name, which testifies to what is perhaps the most lasting feature of 1999 films’ on Hollywood ever since: its grand urge to subsume. In describing how the film industry subsumed the video game industry with respect to The Matrix, Clover writes that “Hollywood understood the challenge, as it has mostly understood such insults to its supremacy, as something to be assimilated” (25). Fight Club, like The Matrix, was successful financially, as were several other 1999 films based on preexisting, written stories (The Iron Giant, Tarzan, and Eyes Wide Shut). From 1999 on, Hollywood assimilated almost all of the best (and worst) books as an easy way to make movies and thus make money. This month’s first installment in The Hunger Games trilogy is just one good example of this tendency.
But perhaps the books-converted-to-movies example is too often repeated these days, almost to the point of being trite. In other words, what else has Hollywood, in its quest to win what Clover calls “the endgame of millennial merger mania” (74), subsumed? Certainly the superhero genre beginning with 2000’s X-Men. (In fact, in 2009 Disney, one of the biggest producers of Hollywood films, acquired Marvel.) Adding to this, since 1999 Hollywood took over: kid’s cartoons (The Smurfs); playing card games (Pokemon: The Movie); fairy tales (Shrek); television shows (Star Trek); music festivals (Woodstock); the Beatles (Across the Universe); theme park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean); history (The King’s Speech); and, the New Testament (The Passion of the Christ). And let us not forget its assimilation of Facebook, the most popular social medium in the past decade, with 2010’s The Social Network (which itself was based on a book), commodifying it for its own benefit. The whole process resembles Elaine Scarry’s notion of replication as beauty, but almost seems to pervert it massively when one considers that the endgame of all this replication is economy and totality.
One might ask: is anything safe from this assimilation? The Oscars weighed in on this in favor of Hollywood, showing as they did that nostalgia for the silent films of an era before Hollywood, before the rise of films like The Matrix, are also fair game for commercialization, since The Artist, a silent film, took the Academy Award for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. Perhaps the world we live in is simply one where we exist solely to re-exist on the big screen.
“I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.” So Neo says at the end of 1999’s The Matrix, a passage that Joshua Clover isolates as evidence that The Matrix is “not a vision of the future, but a start to it” (23). As such, his analysis of the film hinges on its historical moment: America in 1999. What we want to do here is extend Clover’s argument about The Matrix and its historical setting by testing it against other 1999 films and those in the years that have since followed. If, as Clover writes, The Matrix’s “profound influence on visual culture meant that a broad swath of popular culture would bear the marks of its futurism forward” (23), then in much the same way the films of 1999 set the tone for Hollywood ever since.
1999 had many important films, but perhaps there is no better place to start than with The Matrix itself. In terms of its effect on Hollywood, the film congealed the concept of the blockbuster. Citing this film exactly, Sean Connery, in 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, stated that the two reasons why he accepted the lead role were that he had turned down an offer to be in The Matrix and that he wanted to be in a blockbuster film like The Matrix--even though he did not quite understand them--because that was what everyone was talking about. The Matrix, with its revolutionary special effects and computer animation, also engendered the big-budget, CGI-heavy action film, perhaps the best followup of which is 2009’s Avatar. (In fact, director James Cameron put off filming Avatar for almost ten years until Hollywood possessed the technology to do it.)
The Blair Witch Project was also released in 1999, giving audiences a taste of what has since been referred to as the “found footage” film. Garnering an unsuspecting $140 million, the film gave way to many popular films of the same genre, such as the Paranormal Activity series beginning in 2007. To enjoy these films, we have to believe that what we are watching is real, similar to how Cypher desires to reenter the Matrix so that he can enjoy the taste of steak without being conscious of the fact that it is not real.
Another landmark film from 1999 was The Sixth Sense, a discussion of which perhaps deserves a separate paper altogether. Not only would this film be perfect fodder for Clover’s argument about Edge-of-the-Construct films--seeing as Bruce Willis’ realization at the end of the movie that he has in fact been dead all along eerily recalls the moment when one finds the edge of the construct--but more important, Sixth Sense popularized the “twist ending” in film, which has become a staple of movie-making ever since. Perhaps it should not surprise one, then, that 1999’s Fight Club also features an important twist ending, the moment when Edward Norton’s character realizes that Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) is part of his split personality.
Speaking of Fight Club, it was based on a 1996 novel of the same name, which testifies to what is perhaps the most lasting feature of 1999 films’ on Hollywood ever since: its grand urge to subsume. In describing how the film industry subsumed the video game industry with respect to The Matrix, Clover writes that “Hollywood understood the challenge, as it has mostly understood such insults to its supremacy, as something to be assimilated” (25). Fight Club, like The Matrix, was successful financially, as were several other 1999 films based on preexisting, written stories (The Iron Giant, Tarzan, and Eyes Wide Shut). From 1999 on, Hollywood assimilated almost all of the best (and worst) books as an easy way to make movies and thus make money. This month’s first installment in The Hunger Games trilogy is just one good example of this tendency.
But perhaps the books-converted-to-movies example is too often repeated these days, almost to the point of being trite. In other words, what else has Hollywood, in its quest to win what Clover calls “the endgame of millennial merger mania” (74), subsumed? Certainly the superhero genre beginning with 2000’s X-Men. (In fact, in 2009 Disney, one of the biggest producers of Hollywood films, acquired Marvel.) Adding to this, since 1999 Hollywood took over: kid’s cartoons (The Smurfs); playing card games (Pokemon: The Movie); fairy tales (Shrek); television shows (Star Trek); music festivals (Woodstock); the Beatles (Across the Universe); theme park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean); history (The King’s Speech); and, the New Testament (The Passion of the Christ). And let us not forget its assimilation of Facebook, the most popular social medium in the past decade, with 2010’s The Social Network (which itself was based on a book), commodifying it for its own benefit. The whole process resembles Elaine Scarry’s notion of replication as beauty, but almost seems to pervert it massively when one considers that the endgame of all this replication is economy and totality.
One might ask: is anything safe from this assimilation? The Oscars weighed in on this in favor of Hollywood, showing as they did that nostalgia for the silent films of an era before Hollywood, before the rise of films like The Matrix, are also fair game for commercialization, since The Artist, a silent film, took the Academy Award for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. Perhaps the world we live in is simply one where we exist solely to re-exist on the big screen.
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