Movie Recommendation: The Matrix (1999) – A Feminist Action Film

The Matrix had a seismic effect on culture when it arrived in 1999, becoming the subject of college courses, theses, and endless essays. The story featured a central male hero, but it’s also a demonstration of women’s power through Trinity.

Feminism wasn’t the main theme people took from The Matrix back in the Nineties, though. Philosophy deep-dives were most popular when The Matrix came out, as were commentaries on religion. Neo-as-Jesus is a very popular topic in particular.

Later, when both Wachowski sisters became open about their lives as women, analyses of The Matrix as a transgender narrative took some dominance. In a BBC article, Lilly Wachowski explained how one character in the movie was meant to be explicitly trans, and the overall themes of transformation come from the same place as Lilly and Lana’s journeys through gender identity.

The intersection of all facets of The Matrix certainly makes room for complicated analysis, but I’m going to keep it simple today: The Matrix is a science fiction action movie made by women, and their movie is feminist.

The late Nineties was the thick of third wave feminism. In third wave feminist theory, you can tell whether something is feminist based upon who has agency and power, and who has to be rescued. The goal was generally for women to be treated equally to men. (As an aside, we should note that mainstream third wave feminism was very much white feminism; gains made for white women were often not extended to nonwhite women. And this is before the nuances of a gender spectrum entered popular discourse.)

Neo is the hero of the movie, and identified as The One, but he’s not the first hero we meet in The Matrix. That honor goes to Trinity. In the opening scene, Trinity must escape Agents of the system who catch her hacking. She’s the first to display Matrix-bending powers. Nobody is sent to rescue her. She must use her own wits to reach the extraction point, and she does—narrowly.

Trinity becomes Neo’s rescuer. She’s the one who draws him toward his red pill moment and tries to keep him out of Agent hands. Initially, Neo has to be saved a lot. He’s new to the role of hero. Hardened but idealistic, Trinity is not new to heroics at all.

She’s actually like Neo 1.0 within the confines of the story. Morpheus thought she was The One, so Trinity received the same training he did, before he did. She’s established to be a hacker like Neo—and a more legendary one. Neo and Trinity even visually mirror each other at times. They’ve both got short black hair, pallid skin, and wear all-black. It’s easy to imagine them as different gender expressions of the exact same archetype.

In the most literal way, Trinity is equal to Neo.

Although she’s a sexualized presence, wearing the same fetish-like gear as her cohort, she has total agency. The story takes no opportunities to sexually exploit Trinity or kneecap her power. Only Neo and Morpheus experience capture and intimate physical attack from the Agents.

It’s common for women to be expected to be submissive to men in a heterosexual relationship, but even as a relationship develops, Trinity doesn’t lose power by romancing Neo. Trinity remains an equal partner in rescuing Morpheus (involving my favorite action scenes of the movie) and is the only person who can save Neo from his own death.

You can tell Trinity is a woman written by women who see her as a complete person, and the Wachowski sisters’ vision helped pave a path for all kinds of woman filmmakers. Even after twenty-six years, The Matrix remains both spectacle and substance, inviting the marginalized to see their struggles in the fight of revolutionaries against the system—especially women who can look up to Trinity.

Author: SM Reine

Half-Tellarite SM Reine is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of fantasy. She’s been publishing since 2011 and a nerd since forever.

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