Woman of the Month: Trinity

Trinity from The Matrix franchise 

Let’s kick off the year by talking about Trinity. I’ve just seen The Matrix Resurrections and there’s a lot to say.

In terms of feminist icons, Trinity doesn’t quite get the same level of attention as those other sci-fi queens, the likes of Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor. But why not? First introduced in 1999, she’s got a lot going on.

Trinity is the star of the riveting opening sequence, a jaw-dropping action set-piece that introduces bullet time, the film’s black leather aesthetic, the importance of pay-phones, and the shimmering lines of green data that makes up the Matrix.

The one and only explicit nod to her gender is when she first meets Neo and he remarks: “I thought you were a guy,” to which she wryly responds: “most guys do.” And she gets some of the film’s best scenes, from ordering herself to: “get up Trinity, get up,” when she’s frozen with terror, to the undisputed best moment of the whole franchise: “dodge this.”

What often goes unremarked upon is the incredible performance by Carrie Anne Moss, who captures to perfection the Action Girl and Ice Queen tropes, and yet is still brimming with emotion and unspoken conviction. (Seriously, watch her face when Neo asks her what the Oracle told her – in hindsight we know that it’s that she’ll fall in love with him, something she’s not remotely ready to say out loud at this point, but which is right there on her face... even behind sunglasses!)

It’s a shame therefore, that her most lasting pop-culture contribution is the use of her name in coining the term Trinity Syndrome. This basically amounts to a female character who – during the course of the story – is never allowed to be as cool as she was in her introductory scene. Instead, she will take on the role of guide, confidant, love interest or (worst of all) distressed damsel/fridged woman for the sake of the male protagonist, the true hero of the story.

This guy will most likely be the audience surrogate: ignorant and untrained in the details of the world-building, and a blank slate personality-wise. It’s usually the woman’s task to show him the ropes before he inevitably surpasses her in skills and importance. But hey – there’s still an opening for his girlfriend!

Give or take a few of these elements and you can see how prolific it is: Valka and Astrid, Mera and Atlanna, Tigress and Wyldstyle (lampshaded in the sequel), Tauriel and Alice Quinn. Heck, Penny way back in the Inspector Gadget cartoons, played entirely for laughs! We can still like these female characters – more often than not they come with great designs, are filled with spunk and skill, played by great actresses, even have plenty of dimensionality – the rub is that they’re not ever allowed to be the main character.

How does all this relate to Trinity? It’s true that the narrative laid out for her in the first film is not to be the Chosen One, but to identify him through the act of falling in love with him. It throws up the question: does she loves Neo for himself, or does she loves him because the Oracle prepped her to do so, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy style?

Not helping is that there’s no clear reason outside this prophecy as to why she would love Neo, beyond the fact that he looks like Keanu Reeves, exuding those chill Keanu Reeves vibes (I mean, I get it – but I would have preferred a little more).

It’s an odd conundrum for me, as though I can enjoy this plot-twist in the spirit with which it’s given, I can still recognize the limitations it places on Trinity. That her most important contribution to the plot is to fall in love is something that can’t help but grate a little.

Sequels Reloaded and Revolutions (at least as far as I can recall, it’s been years since I saw them) are not particularly kind to Trinity – she still gets some cool action sequences, but the climax of the first film involves her being saved by Neo, and in the second one she dies in a remarkably stupid and anticlimactic way.

As such, I was deeply interested in seeing how she would be handled in Resurrections. In the twenty years since the first film, Lana Wachowski has undoubtedly become aware of the term Trinity Syndrome and (like Phil Lord and Chris Miller in The Lego Movie sequel) had the opportunity to challenge it this time around. So did she?

SPOILERS

Kinda?

Trinity didn’t exactly get the massive upheaval in narrative importance that I was hoping for, and Neo is still very much the protagonist, but there’s definitely some interrogation of the trope at work. What transpires after the original trilogy (as far as I can tell – I’ve only seen it once and there’s a lot to absorb) is that Neo and Trinity’s bodies were taken away by rogue machines, brought back to life, and plugged back into the Matrix. Their love for each other is a form of powerful energy (just go with it) that leads a program known as the Analyst to create a situation in which they are together yet apart, in real life as well as in the Matrix. When Neo is freed for the second time, he has only one goal: get Trinity out as well.

But of course, realizing that she’s been put in the role of a passive distressed damsel, the script works overtime to emphasize that she must choose this. Will she return to Neo, or will she remain in the role of a soccer mum; a life of obligations to needy children and a husband that’s literally called Chad? What do you think?

She rejects her false identity as “Tiffany” and kicks ass. In the climactic scene, Neo falls and Trinity flies. Then she beats the crap out of the machine that put her in this nightmare scenario and goes forth to change the world for the better.

It’s not quite the triumphant repudiation of Trinity Syndrome I was hoping for, but hey – I’ll take it. Trinity lives again. She has the same power-set as her boyfriend. A fifty-four year old woman is allowed a reality-altering love story. She and Neo literally fly off into the sunset together.

All things considered, Trinity remains a bit of an enigma. Lana Wachowski is on record as being inspired to write Resurrections after the death of her parents, and this sentiment is clearly the driving force of the film itself: to bring comfort and catharsis to herself and an audience that didn’t get a happy ending the first time around. There’s a surprising softness and kindness in this film, just as there is a surprising softness and kindness in Neo and Trinity. If it means that Trinity, on her own terms, is still just a tad underserved – well, I can live with that in exchange for the sight of her whirling away through the sky, hand in hand with the man she loves.