The Matrix Co-Director Responds to the Right-Wing Spin on the Film

Lilly Wachowski has been chatting about how she deals with right-wing mouthpieces who misinterpret and misrepresent The Matrix, the groundbreaking sci-fi movie she co-directed with her sister Lana in 1999.

Over the last decade, Neo’s choice to take the red pill over the blue pill in the film and abandon his simulated world for the harsh realities of the real one has been co-opted by the right, particularly online, and being “red pilled” can now also refer to being radicalized by far-right and anti-feminist beliefs. Back in 2020, when Ivanka Trump and Elon Musk used a “red pill” reference from the film during the pandemic, Wachowski responded over on X with “Fuck both of you”, but says that ultimately she’s had to let go of her work and let people interpret it however they want.

“I look at all of the crazy, mutant theories around The Matrix films and the crazy ideologies that those films helped create, and I just go, ‘What are you doing? No! That’s wrong!’” Wachowski said on the So True with Caleb Hearon podcast. “But I have to let it go to some extent… You’re never gonna be able to make absolutely every person believe what you initially intended.”

But, she went on to explain, “That is what fascism does. It takes these things, these ideas that are generally acknowledged as questions or investigations or truisms about humanity and life, and they turn them to something else so that they remove the weight of what those things represent.”

Wachowski, who is a trans woman along with her Matrix co-director sister Lana, has previously explained that the film is not about any right-wing or anti-feminist ideologies, but about the transgender experience. Before studio Warner Bros. stepped in, the character of Switch in the first film was even supposed to change gender when she entered the simulated world.

Wachowski has said the world wasn’t ready to fully accept the film’s transformative themes at the time.