Audience Reach of The Matrix

Does anyone else think it’s weird that The Matrix is a Holistic Optionlock story? This would make the Audience Reach as

OPTIONLOCK + HOLISTIC = FEMALE AUDIENCES

But I’m pretty sure almost every male I know absolutely loved The Matrix when it came out, saw it multiple times, etc. And didn’t need to watch it with their significant others.*

What am I missing? Is Neo’s holistic style kind of downplayed enough not to annoy males? Or maybe, the movie was just so darn good that we loved it anyway and chalked Neo’s annoying holism up to disliking poor Keanu in the role?

* I have a pet theory that you can enjoy films/shows that wouldn’t normally Reach you as well, by watching it with someone of the opposite (mental) sex. Maybe I’ll post more about that later.

Maybe it has something to do with the wrapping paper?

As in, the story presents itself as an action movie with dramatic fight scenes and special effects and the like and while, yes, the movie itself is a holistic optionlock, it’s based in a genre that leans towards men in terms of typical audience appeal. Plus, there’s the fact that most of the main cast are men, which, even if the mental sex of the main character is female, doesn’t change the fact that it’s mostly a bunch of dudes on the movie poster, you know?

My guess would be that the film, through packaging alone, attracted more of a male audience than a female one, but that it’s a good enough movie that most of the people who watched it left with a positive opinion, regardless of their gender.

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The fact that the Wachowski brothers are now the Wachowski sisters might not be completely irrelevant in this. They might not be the most stereotypical minds out there making action movies, which could explain why The Matrix is such an anomaly.

Dude! Exactly my conclusion after watching Interstellar with my GF who’s pretty much as holistic as human beings can get. The first time I saw the film, I left the theater confused about the sequence of events. Watching it with her made it a totally different experience.

I never took it that an audience reach of female meant males wouldn’t like it. Since Dramatica says that males are okay with optionlock or time lock, the Audience Reach of female really only comes from the holistic problem solving which keeps linear problem solvers from empathizing with the main character. So my take is that males can love a movie with a female reach, but just have more problems putting themselves in the main characters shoes than a female would.

For instance, I love the Matrix, but I can’t imagine myself in Neo’s place and deciding to jump into Agent Smiths body to explode him from the inside. That part always seemed a bit out there to me, even in a movie as out there as the Matrix. I can accept the idea that everyone is in a computer program. I can put myself in the shoes of a guy who lives in a dream world. I can put myself in the shoes of a guy who has to realize that there is something more to reality than he knows. I can put myself in the shoes of a guy who has to understand that there is no spoon. But I can’t, in those same shoes, imagine jumping inside Agent Smith to destroy him. Doesn’t mean I didn’t like it, just didn’t get that part.

As I typed the examples of how I could imagine myself in Neo’s shoes, it occurred to me that I don’t really know if those are linear or holistic examples, but it made me wonder something. In the hands of a writer who hasn’t heard of Dramatica, could a main character waiver between linear and holistic problem solving (the same way The Dark Knight waivers between Action and Decision drivers, or the way characters can waiver between Steadfast and Changed before deciding)? After all, everyone is supposed to be capable of both, right? Could that be why everyone likes this movie that’s supposed to have a female reach? The guys get the parts where Neo is more linear and the girls get the parts where he is more holistic?

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LOL…the guys dragged the gals to the movie, and the gals had a good time, too!

This is how I always took it, too.

I just can’t convince myself that Audience Reach matches up with Audience Appeal. Blazing Saddles is a holistic/‘female’ reach movie, as is Team America. I just don’t see those movies being somehow more appealing to women than to men. I have a lot more questions regarding the theory that Reach correlates with ‘people that will watch the movie’, but that’s for another time. Don’t want to hijack the thread.

I think I lean closer to the original definition of reach as an empathy/sympathy barometer between Linear and Holistic thinkers. There are just too many variables for me to believe a character’s mental sex affects the interest of an entire section of the audience without more evidence (My Problem: Disbelief – same as Neo! Spooky.).

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I totally agree. I would normally never spend a second on The Gilmore Girls on my own, but my wife is on her second binge-watch and I’ve found myself becoming quite engrossed in these characters lives.

Thanks for all the comments everyone. I think it makes sense to me now. When you combine the “wrapping paper” as @Audz aptly put it, with the fact that Reach is more of a tendency than a guarantee, and you end up with males audiences maybe just finding Neo slightly annoying at times, but still loving the movie.

@Gregolas it would be interesting to watch The Matrix and look for examples of both Holistic and Linear problem-solving from Neo. I’m really not sure what you’d find. I can certainly see the over-the-top (and awesome) destruction of the building lobby as being a Holistic thing – the logical thing to do would’ve been to sneak in quietly and get as close to Morpheus as possible before alerting the Agents. But all that insane destruction was a way of changing the balance of forces within the Matrix.

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It was just a thought. It’s been too long since I’ve watched it to think of anything too specific as an example and it may not play out that way at all. I’ll have to add it to my list of movies to watch for Dramatica purposes.

Great visualization. Yes, that is totally it.

And I’m pretty fairly certain that Neo was written as a Holistic character through and through:

Wachowski Brothers of Matrix Fame Now the Wachowski Sisters

This is when it becomes clearer to return back to the original Female Mental Sex over Holistic…

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