Monday, October 27, 2003
I thought I was going to be complaining about how long Play.com take to deliver anything but then at lunchtime my Matrix: Reloaded DVDs turned up so I've been watching that this afternoon. This is my third time of viewing it and my opinion has increased each time. Which is not to say it doesn't have flaws, it does and they're quite big. But I don't think they're as large as some other people have made out.
The biggest flaw is in the character of Smith. Both the producers and the directors insist that the Matrix is one-story-in-three-parts, not a film with two sequels. The treatment of Smith is the biggest reason to doubt that. He turns up in Reloaded in much the same way as one brings a character back for a sequel, for more of the same, rather than it's an organic development of the character. It seems as though the Bros. Wachowski's plans for the other two films initially didn't include Smith, then at some point either lat in the development of the first film or very early in the planning of the second and third it was decided to bring him back. They weren't sure how to do it so they had a pseudo-philosophical conversation between Smith and Neo which I've listened to three times now and am convinced is meaningless nonsense, then an equally pointless fight. What does Smith want? How can he infect anyone else, including people who aren't connected to The Matrix? Why, when he's in the 'real world' of Zion does he not kill Neo when he has the chance? As it is the revelation that he can be more than one person is botched when, after Neo's first fight with Agents we see two Smiths. It would be better if that were saved until Neo confronts Smith in the park and suddenly we have multiple Smiths face him. As it is that fight is an incredibly dull one and the worst in the film, mainly because we don't know why it's happening. It's pure set-piece 'look at what our computer graphics people can do' filler, as evidenced by the fact that even Neo gets bored and flies off.
When Morpheus, in training him in the first film, tells Neo that they will have to kill anyone who's plugged into the Matrix because they could become an Agent it had rather worrying fascististic overtones. These are more in evidence in this movie because the characters are generally less human and more machinelike, with few moments of humour. With Smith around that becomes 'trust no-one', though they don't know that yet.
The sexuality and gender representations in this film are pretty fucked up in places, the nurturing mother-Oracle, the stern father-Architect. When our heroes visit the Merovingian there's the sequence with the orgasmic cheesecake which, if not now infamous deserves to be, and the embarrassingly bad section with Neo kissing Persephone 'as if he were kissing Trinity', both blatant scenes of sad boys writing for the titillation of sadder fanboys (why they didn't just go all the way and insist that Trinity kisses Persephone as well/instead, well, let's not give them ideas). In the first film Morpheus was allowed to show his feminine side in his relationship with his crew on the Neb. In the second film he's all masculine, all the time, butting heads with Commander Lock in some half-arsed attempt to set up a conflict over which of them gets the girl, Niobe. The Morpheus from the first film wouldn't have made the speech in church that the second one makes. He's become a zealot, if the war ended tomorrow you'd half expect him to dedicate himself to a Jihad across the planet in the name of Paul Mua-sorry, Neo. In this film all the men are real men and the women there to be fought over. I've heard that in the computer game that accompanies this film we are given some sort of a reason for why Persephone would ask for a kiss, but what a shame we couldn't have the roles reversed and have the aesthete Merovingian wanting to snog Neo. Ahh well, we'll always have slash...
There's an intriguing accident too. Look at the scene where Trinity and Neo are having sex while everyone's partying in Zion (a bad party scene written by people who don't know how to party). Just surviving being a total stereotype of the Iron Bitch in the first film she becomes it in the second, despising any sign of weakness in herself. And from the expression on her face mid-coitus she is extremely unhappy with being penetrated by Neo, as though she would rather be the one doing the penetration. She's become like Eowyn in Lord of the Rings, not a woman who is an equal to men but a woman who would be a man because she feels women are inferior.
And are the Merovingian and Persephone a previous Neo and Trinity? It would help if I knew what the word Merovingian meant. I suppose it depends on what exactly happens to The One when he returns to the source. But in their performance I saw a Neo and Trinity that had tried to save the world and ultimately failed, so became these rather bored seen-it-all aesthetes who are only really interested in their own pleasure because it's pointless trying to change the system. After all, Persephone doesn't seem to have any actual powers, and who's to know how long the program has really been running, they have no way of knowing for sure, Morpheus has admitted it, and as the Architect says that the 'real world' of Zion is just another part of the Matrix there's no real world time to measure against. Like Neo, the Merovingian protects the Keymaker from the Agents, after his own fashion. Possibly, having tried the direct route as Neo once himself, he seeks to prevent a new Neo from finding the Keymaker hoping the anomaly will overload and destroy the Matrix for good. The fight with the Merovingian's goons is as good as the Neo/Smiths fight is bad. And there are certain similarities between their dress and the Neb crews dress from Matrix One. One of them wears white like Switch and one of them has a silk shirt like Epoch.
As Neo and the others come to visit the Merovingian we see someone being led away. It's not the Keymaker, who is it? It looks a bit like the human Smith infected but in the matrix he looks like Smith now. So who is it? He looks meaningfully at Neo.
Other people have complained it's too long but I enjoyed the freeway scene, though the fact that no machine intelligence seems able to shoot straight is as annoying in this film as it was in the first one. And Morpheus seems able to hold his own fighting an Agent surprisingly well considering the drubbing he got from Smith in the first film.
It's taken me about three goes to understand the whole point of the Architect scene. The only thing I'm still not sure about is whether Neo alone is the anomaly or Neo and all the super programs together. See, I'm guessing that Smith wants revenge against Neo for cutting him off from the mainframe so he becomes a renegade for deletion, but he's better now than he was before. Does Neo have power that Smith doesn't have and wants?
And as Zion is part of the Matrix, what is the REAL world like? Is there one in any meaningful sense any more? From something the Architect says it seems to be fairly similar to the 'Real World' within the Matrix. Did the Architect and the Oracle create it based on the Real World as they searched for a solution to stop the Matrix crashing? And how much do the programs in the Matrix know of this? Was this the 'perfect paradise' Agent Smith mentioned in the first film? The Merovingian has met previous Neo's did they steal the Keymaker from him every time? He seems determined to stop him escaping, surely he would have had better security after five previous successful attempts to steal him? Would the Keymaker come back to life if the Matrix were restarted, again? And the Oracle seems to be the most important character in the world, apart from the Architect, surely she isn't vulnerable to being deleted as an anomaly by the Agents too? When she tells Neo there is no Free Will, just the understanding of our choices, she seems to imply we have free will enough to decide whether we understand a choice or not.
All in all, I have a lot of questions which will hopefully be explained next month when the last part comes out.
The biggest flaw is in the character of Smith. Both the producers and the directors insist that the Matrix is one-story-in-three-parts, not a film with two sequels. The treatment of Smith is the biggest reason to doubt that. He turns up in Reloaded in much the same way as one brings a character back for a sequel, for more of the same, rather than it's an organic development of the character. It seems as though the Bros. Wachowski's plans for the other two films initially didn't include Smith, then at some point either lat in the development of the first film or very early in the planning of the second and third it was decided to bring him back. They weren't sure how to do it so they had a pseudo-philosophical conversation between Smith and Neo which I've listened to three times now and am convinced is meaningless nonsense, then an equally pointless fight. What does Smith want? How can he infect anyone else, including people who aren't connected to The Matrix? Why, when he's in the 'real world' of Zion does he not kill Neo when he has the chance? As it is the revelation that he can be more than one person is botched when, after Neo's first fight with Agents we see two Smiths. It would be better if that were saved until Neo confronts Smith in the park and suddenly we have multiple Smiths face him. As it is that fight is an incredibly dull one and the worst in the film, mainly because we don't know why it's happening. It's pure set-piece 'look at what our computer graphics people can do' filler, as evidenced by the fact that even Neo gets bored and flies off.
When Morpheus, in training him in the first film, tells Neo that they will have to kill anyone who's plugged into the Matrix because they could become an Agent it had rather worrying fascististic overtones. These are more in evidence in this movie because the characters are generally less human and more machinelike, with few moments of humour. With Smith around that becomes 'trust no-one', though they don't know that yet.
The sexuality and gender representations in this film are pretty fucked up in places, the nurturing mother-Oracle, the stern father-Architect. When our heroes visit the Merovingian there's the sequence with the orgasmic cheesecake which, if not now infamous deserves to be, and the embarrassingly bad section with Neo kissing Persephone 'as if he were kissing Trinity', both blatant scenes of sad boys writing for the titillation of sadder fanboys (why they didn't just go all the way and insist that Trinity kisses Persephone as well/instead, well, let's not give them ideas). In the first film Morpheus was allowed to show his feminine side in his relationship with his crew on the Neb. In the second film he's all masculine, all the time, butting heads with Commander Lock in some half-arsed attempt to set up a conflict over which of them gets the girl, Niobe. The Morpheus from the first film wouldn't have made the speech in church that the second one makes. He's become a zealot, if the war ended tomorrow you'd half expect him to dedicate himself to a Jihad across the planet in the name of Paul Mua-sorry, Neo. In this film all the men are real men and the women there to be fought over. I've heard that in the computer game that accompanies this film we are given some sort of a reason for why Persephone would ask for a kiss, but what a shame we couldn't have the roles reversed and have the aesthete Merovingian wanting to snog Neo. Ahh well, we'll always have slash...
There's an intriguing accident too. Look at the scene where Trinity and Neo are having sex while everyone's partying in Zion (a bad party scene written by people who don't know how to party). Just surviving being a total stereotype of the Iron Bitch in the first film she becomes it in the second, despising any sign of weakness in herself. And from the expression on her face mid-coitus she is extremely unhappy with being penetrated by Neo, as though she would rather be the one doing the penetration. She's become like Eowyn in Lord of the Rings, not a woman who is an equal to men but a woman who would be a man because she feels women are inferior.
And are the Merovingian and Persephone a previous Neo and Trinity? It would help if I knew what the word Merovingian meant. I suppose it depends on what exactly happens to The One when he returns to the source. But in their performance I saw a Neo and Trinity that had tried to save the world and ultimately failed, so became these rather bored seen-it-all aesthetes who are only really interested in their own pleasure because it's pointless trying to change the system. After all, Persephone doesn't seem to have any actual powers, and who's to know how long the program has really been running, they have no way of knowing for sure, Morpheus has admitted it, and as the Architect says that the 'real world' of Zion is just another part of the Matrix there's no real world time to measure against. Like Neo, the Merovingian protects the Keymaker from the Agents, after his own fashion. Possibly, having tried the direct route as Neo once himself, he seeks to prevent a new Neo from finding the Keymaker hoping the anomaly will overload and destroy the Matrix for good. The fight with the Merovingian's goons is as good as the Neo/Smiths fight is bad. And there are certain similarities between their dress and the Neb crews dress from Matrix One. One of them wears white like Switch and one of them has a silk shirt like Epoch.
As Neo and the others come to visit the Merovingian we see someone being led away. It's not the Keymaker, who is it? It looks a bit like the human Smith infected but in the matrix he looks like Smith now. So who is it? He looks meaningfully at Neo.
Other people have complained it's too long but I enjoyed the freeway scene, though the fact that no machine intelligence seems able to shoot straight is as annoying in this film as it was in the first one. And Morpheus seems able to hold his own fighting an Agent surprisingly well considering the drubbing he got from Smith in the first film.
It's taken me about three goes to understand the whole point of the Architect scene. The only thing I'm still not sure about is whether Neo alone is the anomaly or Neo and all the super programs together. See, I'm guessing that Smith wants revenge against Neo for cutting him off from the mainframe so he becomes a renegade for deletion, but he's better now than he was before. Does Neo have power that Smith doesn't have and wants?
And as Zion is part of the Matrix, what is the REAL world like? Is there one in any meaningful sense any more? From something the Architect says it seems to be fairly similar to the 'Real World' within the Matrix. Did the Architect and the Oracle create it based on the Real World as they searched for a solution to stop the Matrix crashing? And how much do the programs in the Matrix know of this? Was this the 'perfect paradise' Agent Smith mentioned in the first film? The Merovingian has met previous Neo's did they steal the Keymaker from him every time? He seems determined to stop him escaping, surely he would have had better security after five previous successful attempts to steal him? Would the Keymaker come back to life if the Matrix were restarted, again? And the Oracle seems to be the most important character in the world, apart from the Architect, surely she isn't vulnerable to being deleted as an anomaly by the Agents too? When she tells Neo there is no Free Will, just the understanding of our choices, she seems to imply we have free will enough to decide whether we understand a choice or not.
All in all, I have a lot of questions which will hopefully be explained next month when the last part comes out.
