Into the Matrix with Keanu Reeves

Is it possible we’re living in a world that isn’t what we think it is?

That’s the big question posed by The Matrix movie trilogy, one of Ashar’s favorite series and the reason she’s decided she wants to study philosophy this year, in large part thanks to its compelling star.

That’s why we’re celebrating Keanu Reeves today with some awesome facts, movie ideas and more!

Keanu Reeves unit study from Unschool Rules

All about Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon, on Sept. 2, 1964, and raised around the world before becoming a naturalized Canadian citizen.

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His father was Hawaiian-American, and Keanu means “cool breeze over mountains” in Hawaiian. It’s derived from his great-great-uncle’s name, Keaweaheulu, which means “cool breeze raising.”

Keanu dropped out of high school (in fact, he attended four high schools in five years and was expelled from one of them). However, he’d been acting since he was 9 years old, and after he dropped out, he pursued acting. He had several roles in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, and he was in a band called Dogstar, where he played bass guitar, in the 1990s.

In 1992, he played Jonathan Harker in the Francis Ford Coppola version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which we’re hoping to watch since that’s one of the classics Ashar is reading this year, and in 1994 starred in Speed, which we’ve seen most of as well and want to catch the rest of soon!

But it was the Matrix trilogy – The Matrix, in 1999, and The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, both in 2003 – that brought him arguably the most fame generally as well as in our family.

(Ashar also recommends Reeves’ 2013 movie Man of Tai Chi, which she watched on Netflix. “It’s mostly a fighting movie,” she said.)

Reeves has his own star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. He gave $50 million of the $70 million he made for the last two Matrix movies – or maybe more, some accounts say as much as $75 million – to the makeup and special effects crews for the movies. That floored us when we found out about it – pretty cool!

He’s also a huge motorcycle rider, and has been in a huge number of fairly serious accidents. He’s still alive, but he’s got a lot of scars, fake teeth, a plate in his neck… it’s been pretty bad!

Books and movies related to The Matrix

The movie trilogy: The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are all available super-cheap on one DVD.
On philosophy: The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real is a deep-thinking book Ashar has been working her way through this year.
More philosophy: More Matrix and Philosophy: Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded is the sequel to the book above, and one Ashar wants to read as well.
Even more philosophy: Like a Splinter in Your Mind: The Philosophy Behind the Matrix Trilogy is from a different series, but features one of Ashar’s favorite quotes from the original movie, in which Morpheus is talking to Neo about his growing awareness that something in his world is a little… off.

A cool behind-the-scenes video

Special effects were one of the highlights of The Matrix. Here’s a look at how “flying” happened in The Matrix.

Some of the best clips from The Matrix

This nine-clip series shows some of the best scenes from the original film. If you haven’t seen it, there’s a lot of cool action and food for thought to check out!

However, the very first clip there starts just after Ashar’s favorite line, about the splinter in your mind. She was adamant that we needed to include that too! You can check that out here.

Ideas for discussion

What is “reality”? While most of us can be pretty sure we’re not living in an entirely fabricated “Matrix” world, what about the special effects in the movies above? What about Photoshopped celebrity pictures? Where are we kind of intersecting with a reality that isn’t quite what it seems? This topic fascinates me.
What are the comparative religious influences of The Matrix? If you’ve seen The Matrix, you know there are a lot of religious references and parallels in it, to Christianity, Buddhism and more. Can you spot some of these references? Do you know where they come from? Ashar has been reading about some of the problems inherent in the religious structure in The Matrix, where Neo is worshipped as a savior, as “The One.” But it makes you think about our desire as humans, especially during bad times, to have a savior figure or a deliverer who will take away all their problems.
What are the splinters in your mind? What are those things that you know but you can’t quite grasp or explain? Ashar’s example is that Neo, when he’s “Mr. Anderson” in the Matrix, is able to grasp the idea of the Matrix, even without being outside of it. I think all of us have things like this – things we “just know” or grasp or feel intuitively that go beyond rational thought. Some of them are good understandings, and some of these “splinters” are bad, like things we know just aren’t right but can’t quite figure out why. But if you can identify them, it’s a way to take that splinter out, as Ashar put it.

Join the birthday party

If you’re interested, there are many more cool facts about famous people with September birthdays from my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers. Click the image below to check them out!