It is nonetheless easy to understand the intellectual attraction of The Matrix: is it not that The Matrix is one of the films which function as a kind of Rorschach test setting in motion the universalized process of recognition, like the proverbial painting of God which seems always to stare directly at you, from wherever you look at it – practically every orientation seems to recognize itself in it?

– Slavoj Zizek in CTHEORY

Zizek says so much more. It’s all about the “Big Other,” but this quote is my favorite part.

This week Entertainment Weekly featured Natalie Portman and an article on Star Wars. The picture looks so much like the cover of L. Frank Baum’s Ozma of Oz that I am beginning to wonder if Oz was influential to the production designers.

Interestingly enough, an article in the Chicago Reader points out that “the underwater city of Otoh Gunga could probably be traced back to John R. Neill’s illustrations in one of the Oz books,” so others have noticed this similarity too.