What Would’ve Happened if eXistenZ (1999) Had Been Released Before The Matrix?

Today is the fourth and final installment of my January series inspired by creative laziness! By the time you’re reading this, my month-long film class at Birmingham-Southern College has just wrapped up. Well, the class portion has, at least; my students still have one more paper to turn in, which also means I have one more paper to grade. Anyway, this week, we covered horror and sci-fi films from the 21st century, including WALL-E, Most Beautiful Island, and Dual. I also cheated a little bit and included eXistenZ, partially because I had a short week last week and didn’t get to include two films from the 90s, but also because eXistenZ is very much concerned with the 21st century. But wait, there’s more!

I love a good cinematic “what if?” scenario. What if a different actor had taken an iconic role? What if a director hadn’t died before making their long-gestating passion project? What if an awards season had gone a different route?

One of my favorites is a bit of a stretch, but hear me out: What if eXistenZ had been released a month before The Matrix instead of a month after?

Many of you may be asking “Okay, but what the hell is eXistenZ though? And why are you writing the ‘x’ and the ‘z’ like that?” I will address the first question throughout the rest of this piece. The second question can only be answered by David Cronenberg. (Picture him staring at you with cold, humorless, unblinking eyes. There’s your answer.)

The easiest way to frame this is to say that it’s a quieter example of the “two films about the same thing at the same time” scenario that gave us Dante’s Peak and Volcano within three months of each other in 1997 or Deep Impact and Armageddon within two months of each other in 1998.* But the similarities shared between eXistenZ and The Matrix are a bit more complex than “volcano” or “asteroid.”

Before I hit you with any information about the film itself, let me serve you a quote from eXistenZ that kinda states the whole thing plainly (if vaguely): “We’re both stumbling around in this unformed world, whose rules and objectives are largely unknown, seemingly indecipherable, or even possibly nonexistent, always on the verge of being killed by forces that we don’t understand.”

Sounds reminiscent of Neo’s journey in The Matrix, doesn’t it? But that’s Jude Law’s character (Ted) in eXistenZ, summarizing a new, fully immersive virtual reality video game designed by Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character (Allegra). There are a couple of interesting things to be noted here. The first is that in eXistenZ, the simulation is what our heroes enter as opposed to what the heroes in The Matrix are escaping from. The second is that Leigh’s character, an iconic and controversial game developer, is closer to a Neo than a Trinity, which makes Jude Law (Allegra’s combination publicist and security guard) more or less a Trinity-esque sidekick.

The similarities are all over the place. There are weird things happening with guns and bullets. There are “bio-ports” (as they’re called in eXistenZ) being inserted into human flesh to activate virtual worlds. There’s a group of rogue fanatics trying to put a stop to all of it. There’s the incredible futuristic aesthetic of 90s sci-fi films. They both have the letter “x” in the title. The list goes on.

There’s just the little issue of the timing. The Matrix was released on March 31, 1999, and while it didn’t immediately bust any blocks (it made a little over $37 million opening weekend), strong word of mouth kept the film in the top spot at the box office until May 6.** And in the midst of Matrix-mania, eXistenZ arrived to little fanfare on April 23, making less in its entire theatrical run ($2.9 million) than The Matrix did on that day by itself ($3.7 million).

Would things have been completely different had the dates been reversed? Well, probably not. Though I like them both, I think The Matrix is a better film by a pretty solid margin, and its legacy is undeniable. But I think eXistenZ could’ve made a bigger impact outside of The Matrix’s shadow.

I’ve already mentioned the comparable star power of the two leads.*** But consider the directors. Cronenberg wasn’t exactly a household name or a box office titan, but he had been making great films for more than two decades at this point. Not only that, eXistenZ was his follow-up to Crash, one of his most beloved and controversial films. So he’d been working in prestige films with celebrity actors for a while at that point, including Jeff Goldblum, Jeremy Irons, Christopher Walken, James Woods, and then Holly Hunter and James Spader in the aforementioned Crash. I’d like to think he had some cachet at the time.

Meanwhile, the Wachowskis had only directed one film (Bound) before The Matrix. But they had one thing that Cronenberg never really cared about: audience accessibility. As Roger Ebert noted in his (positive!) review of eXistenZ, in which he couldn’t help but compare the two films, “The Matrix is mainstream sci-fi, but eXistenZ…is much stranger.” He added that both films are loaded with special effects, but those of eXistenZ are “gooey, indescribable organic things.”****

Cronenberg has always possessed a singular creative vision, and for that reason above any others, I think The Matrix would’ve surpassed his film and become a sensation no matter what. But had eXistenZ been released a few months or even a few weeks earlier than The Matrix, I think it could’ve done much better at the box office, which would’ve sparked another significant “two films about the same thing at the same time” conversation.***** Which I wouldn’t have been a part of anyway, seeing as I was 12 when both of these films were released.******

*How cool is it that this happened in three straight years in the late 90s? We used to have it all.

**I will always think it’s hilariously clever that Warner Bros. and the Wachowskis decided to release the film on Easter weekend. I bet it led to some interesting family conversations.

***Jude Law wasn’t the star that Keanu Reeves was at the time, but Jennifer Jason Leigh balances the scales when compared to Carrie-Ann Moss, who was mostly a TV actor before The Matrix. The further down the lists you go, the more even it seems. Lawrence Fishburne and Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm and Hugo Weaving, etc.

****It should be noted that Ebert gave both films three out of four stars. He was the realest.

*****My editor John would like for me to point out that this has happened twice regarding Alabama icon Truman Capote. Two narrative features about Capote himself in 2005 and 2006, then a pair of documentaries in 2019 and 2020. The Capoteverse is wild.

******A year later, I did a weekend-long church lock-in sort of thing in the spring, which wrapped with all of us receiving a small gift from our parents just to let us know that they love us and they’re proud of us. My parents gave me a VHS copy of The Matrix, which I’d probably been pretty eager to see when I was 13. I’m telling you, folks, it’s an Easter movie.

eXistenZ is now streaming on Kanopy, and it is available to rent elsewhere.