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Its always specious to seek the cause of real-life murder in a killers pop-culture fascinations.
Neither breaks a sweat or exhibits any emotion other than a look of slightly perturbed professionalism.
Its slaughter as squad walk, a violation of the unwritten adventure-movie rule not to make murder look heroic.
Two decades later, that invasion scene remains exciting, upsetting, and just a touch goofy.
(As the guards fire back, Neo turns cartwheels, which probably doesnt actually help avoid bullets.)
InThe Matrix,the bullets get more screen timethan the people they kill.
In fact, no studio blockbuster would dare anything quite like it again.
Even the giddily bloodyKingsmanfilms make the case in each scene that their corpsesdeserveto be corpses.
ButThe Matrixwas too huge, too cool, too seductive not to imitate.
More pressingly, you see it in the PG-13s.
Everything trenchant in the Wachowskis original vision is, in these housebroken derivations, now all-American wholesome.
Theyre slaughters you’ve got the option to feel good about.
