Matrix ordinations

Bizarre. You know how things just waft through your brain when you wake up sometimes, for no particular reason?

Today I got up and found myself thinking about The Matrix as I did my morning stuff. One of the things I thought about was how, after seeing the first film, I had always wondered, if Neo needed the help of Morpheus and the other Zion-ists to escape from the Matrix, then how did Neo’s predecessor get out so many years before; and I thought about how the sequels actually answered this, but in a way that rather undermined the Christian overtones of the first film and was thus kind of a letdown.

One of the other things I thought about was this line from the always quotable Mark Steyn’s review of the third film: “This is the big final showdown between the denizens of Zion and the Sentinels, and the Wachowskis lay off the psychedelic LP liner notes philosophizing to concentrate on a not altogether comfortable mix of your basic up-against-the-clock action sequences and celestial choirs on the soundtrack serenading Keanu as if it’s consecration day and he’s the last gay bishop on the planet.”

And then I started thinking about superheroes in cassocks, possibly because I’m meeting my priest for lunch today and he’s been known to wear sunglasses in mock imitation of Neo and the rest (although, based on what he wore to my engagement costume party last year, I think he’s a bigger fan of The Shadow).

And then, once I finished my morning stuff, I picked up my newspaper and saw this Ottawa Citizen story, which jumps off of this Catholic News Service story, which talks about a recruitment initiative begun by this priest. Life is full of coincidences, no?

UPDATE: Jeffrey Overstreet notes that this attempt to cash in on The Matrix is “about five years behind the trend.” Quite true. The franchise is too old to be hip, but too young to be retro.

Keep in mind, too, that the priest in question, Fr. Jonathan Meyer, is 28 years old now and thus would have been 21 or 22 — almost the perfect target demographic for this franchise — when the first film came out. It’s not too hard to imagine that the film played a big part in his studies at college, or seminary, or wherever.