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Those are just the movie references. The Wachowskis, both dropouts from good colleges (Larry from Bard, Andy from Emerson), want to weld classic lit, hallucinogenic imagery and a wild world of philosophical surmises to pop culture. The Bible meets Batman; Lewis Carroll collides with William Gibson; Greek and geek mythology bump and run. Hell, you may find string theory in The Matrix.
As the children of a businessman and a nurse, the boys created comic books, and the obsession continued into their 20s. "Jack Kirby comics interested us," says Andy. "We liked the idea of punching guys through brick walls and over-the-top action like that." But they connected as well with older, more revered sources. "The Bible seeks to answer a lot of relevant questions for man," says Larry. "In the film we refer to the story of Nebuchadnezzar; he has a dream he can't remember but keeps searching for an answer. Then there's the whole idea of a messiah. It's not just a Judeo-Christian myth; it also plays into the search for the reincarnation of the Buddha."
The search--the quest--informs Greek myths ("We have Orpheus and Morpheus in the film," says Larry) as well as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "It's a story about consciousness," says Larry, "a child's perception of an adult's world. The Matrix is about the birth and evolution of consciousness. It starts off crazy, then things start to make sense." It can also be read as a variant on Gibson's Neuromancer, the 1986 cyberpunk classic about a computer cowboy on the run. "It'd be near impossible to make a movie out of that," says Larry. "We knew the way to make it relevant was to turn what we view as the real world into a virtual reality."
And now, for extra credit: theoretical mathematics. The lads became fascinated, Larry says, "by the idea that math and theology are almost the same. They begin with a supposition you can derive a whole host of laws or rules from. And when you take all of them to the infinity point, you wind up at the same place: these unanswerable mysteries really become about personal perception. Neo's journey is affected by all these rules, all these people trying to tell him what the truth is. He doesn't accept anything until he gets to his own end point, his own rebirth."
Great, guys, but is Joe Popcorn supposed to carry a Matrix concordance in his head? "We wrote the story for ourselves and hoped others would pick up on it," says Larry. "Every studio we showed it to thought no one would understand it. We told them it would be complex and dense, but we were also going to shoot the best action scenes and coolest computer graphics ever. Even if audiences didn't get all of the references, we knew they'd at least have a good time with the visuals."
Kind of like Star Wars, eh, where the kids came for the laser show and stayed for the course in Joseph Campbell? Well, maybe not. "The Force is good, fun stuff," says Larry. "I grew up on those movies. But we were hoping to do something a little more sophisticated with The Matrix."
Comparisons aside, the brothers have shown they can make a science-fiction epic that both probes and throbs. George Lucas' May tricks are a month away, but Andy and Larry have proved that right now they're the big Wachowski.
--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles