Object-ive Review: Control's Benicoff TV

Here is a take on The Matrix that may be controversial or not. I don’t know, because I’ve never heard anyone complain about it but me: Neo looks stupid when he flies. There is probably something to be said about pop culture archetypes and the collective unconscious and why it’s actually good and clever that Neo flies like Superman, but I do not care. Consider me a pioneer of petty gripes about 20 year old films. Even in a movie awash with trench coats and sunglasses, it is too much cool.

It took me a while to work out why, of all the overly cool, deliberately stupid things that happen in The Matrix, Neo flying is the one that takes me out of the films. My conclusion is this: it is not just cool, it is slick. Slick like crude oil is slick. Frictionless. Lacking any physical relation to the world around it. I do not know the exact thought process behind why Control’s hero Jesse flies the way she does upon discovering the altered Benicoff TV item, but I would not be surprised if someone pulled up a video of Neo flying in the Matrix and just said: “Not like that. Do the exact opposite of whatever he’s doing”.