During a discussion recently about actors who should play super heroes who, to date, have not, Keanu’s name came up. An argument immediately broke out, as I firmly place Neo in the ranks of superheroes (code-name, super-powers, pro-social agenda, and also HE LITERALLY FLIES AWAY LIKE SUPERMAN AT THE END OF THE FIRST FILM) while my family argued that he’s never played one, unless you count John Wick. I’d also count him as a super-type, albeit the movie-style modern anti-hero rather than a true superhero, but either way, the Neo argument leads us to today’s Kung-Fu-knowing query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) would love to slow time and dodge bullets, even if I’d probably only use it to get a decent swallow of water between calls at work, asking: Neo from ‘The Matrix’: Superhero or Not A Superhero?
3 Comments
i’m gonna say not a superhero. what happens in the matrix isn’t real, and all the flipping, flying, kung-fu’ing Keanu’s doing while plugged in is about the equivalent of entering cheat codes into GTA. if anything, John Wick does more superheroic stuff (purely in action rather than motivation) than Neo does in the real world.
Not a super-hero, just an annoying plot device that ultimately undercut its own narrative potential.
Another Keanu question would be, “What about Constantine?”
Not a superhero. I’d approach this as a genre thing. Neo is a cyberpunk hacker, he’s like a really creative programmer and can’t do anything unusual outside the program.