WIRED: What is your first memory of the original? Matrix?
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: I may be 14 years old. I remember trying to lean back, trying to do that while I was dodging bullets — trying to develop a hundred arms and moving so fast and slow that I turned into a man.
Time bullet. Easily one of the most entertaining moments in the movie.
For me, it’s about what’s possible in my own imagination, the different ways I can go out and fight, the different superpowers I can imagine that I have.
Neo could only do that because of course he was in a virtual world — a “neural interaction simulation” as Morpheus put it. Does reality ever feel unreal to you?
[Laughs.] Yes, buddy. We just came out of a damn pandemic. One of the things that makes reality seem a bit weird – like there’s change in the universe – is variability.
What is an example?
One is the way we relate to technology, the way we communicate with others, the feeling that we can be in many places at once. It opens up the other conversation people are having about what is real and what is unreal, what is needed to experience reality. The more conversations we have, the more susceptible we are to the possibility that it could all be a dream or that it could all be a simulation or an alternate reality.
Do you think it’s possible to make things meaningful, to live a meaningful life, if the world doesn’t feel all of that for real?
Sure. It is not only possible but important to find meaning in everything. You know, a lot of times it takes something, a dream world or some other kind of experience, to take you into your own quote-free “real world.” As long as your mind and heart are open, you will find meaning in any world your mind allows you to be in.
It sounds like you have a complicated view of technology.
I am a hypocrite. I love it when it works for me, and I hate it when it doesn’t. Social media, it’s an ultimate reality on its own. It’s a real universe. People spend as much time there – it’s funny when I say “there” because it makes it a real place – as they do in the real world.
Is that healthy?
You have to respect that fact. One doesn’t want to be left behind, but one also doesn’t want to be so consumed by the other world, the tech world that you become stagnant in this world. A lot of things still matter in this world – touch and relationships, real conversation and discomfort. Technology is designed with convenience in mind. It’s designed to make things easier, to make life a little more comfortable. But we need discomfort. We need discomfort to grow.
In a way, that is the message of the original Matrix trilogy. The Wachowskis have shown us a largely non-white world, who, despite being oppressed, are fighting for a better tomorrow. People who don’t want to be defined by how the status quo defines them. What is your interpretation of the future they are trying to envision?
