‘The Matrix’ right-wing appropriation is always ‘going to happen’: Director Lilly Wachowski

Lilly Wachowski, one half of the Wachowski duo behind 1999’s The Matrix, is reflecting on the legacy of the original film’s place among right-wing ideology.

“You have to let go of your work. People are gonna interpret it however they interpret it,” she stated on the So True with Caleb Hearon podcast.

While the trans filmmaker admitted that the “crazy, mutant theories around ‘The Matrix’ films” sometimes makes her go, “‘What are you doing? No! That’s wrong!’”, she added that “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.”

According to Variety, the “blue pill or red pill” sequence in the sci-fi franchise’s first film “is the most famous example of the film being appropriated by the right.”

The film’s red pill makes Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, wake up to the reality of his artificially manufactured world.

“In the political context, ‘red pilled’ is a term for someone who has ‘woken up’ to the truth about society and often aligns with radical far-right ideology,” the publication’s report further explained.

Wachowski addressed the movement as saying that the “right-wing ideology appropriates absolutely everything.”

“They appropriate left-wing points of view and they mutate them for their own propaganda, for their own to obfuscate what the real message is. This is what fascism does. And so, of course, that’s going to happen,” she added.

Lilly Wachowski, who had directed the original Matrix film while she was still going by Andy Wachowski, has previously shared that the story is supposed to be an allegory for transgenderism. Her sister and co-director Lana Wachowski, born Larry Wachowski, had made the film while they were known as the Wachowski Brothers.