Posted on 11/08/2003 12:09:32 AM PST by JURB
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I had to clear my mind. Zero out the drive with random bits. A movie might help. Went to the mall, stood outside, thought: do I really want to do this? Ive read the reviews well, not the reviews themselves; people drop spoilers so casually now. (I should note that I consider anything more detailed than a cast list a spoiler.) But Id gotten the scent from the headlines and the message boards chatter: Matrix 3 was worse than 2. But I had to see it at some point. Might as well be now.
If you recall last springs review of #2: I thought it was a ponderous, boring mess. Sure, it had a certain buzz, but so does a beached flyblown whale carcass. The metaphysics were sophomoric, the acting stiff and pained, the action without consequence or drama. The FX, while amazing, were just a demo reel for new CGI programs. Nothing meant anything. Why should I root for Zion? The machines had built this enormous civilization for themselves, and the guys down in the Rave Hole hadnt even figured out how to make decent shoes. Me, Id be begging for admission to the Matrix, but not Morpheus and crew: oh, no, youre not sending me back to the world of steak, tailored shirts, cigars and fine bourbon! Im staying right down here in the Temple of No Particular Deity with Cornell West and that guy who used to be in Night Stalker! Im kidding, but not by much. See, the humans started this war. They lost. The machines enslaved them, and made the Matrix so theyd have happy dreams and turn out lots of energy. (The machines can build everything except nuclear power plants, it seems.) Supposedly the war still goes on, but I dont know why the machines even bother with the human remnants. In M3 the machiens mass an astonishing invasion force, a million tons of angry tentacled metal. Memo to machines: the human live in a pit. In the ground. It would be easier to roll a stone over the ventilation ducts, wouldnt it? Pump in some cholorform and fill the place with water. But nooo. The machines have to attack and destroy Zion, so the machine world will be safe from their gravest threat: three dozen heavily armed acrobats in black trenchcoats and sunglasses. Thats how I felt before I saw the film. Zero investment. So I paid my five dollars and prepared for that unique sensation you get in modern movies: being bored while battered repeatedly in the head. Credits. You get that familiar creepy green, that tell-tale chord on the sountrack, and then youre back where you were with the credits in the second movie, flitting through the pixels. But this time there was something different the viewpoint zooms in, and in, and in, and a golden fractal blooms for a second; hmmm. Then youre out, and out, and out, and back into the movie. And it is slooooow. For starters, anyway. Slow but not annoying; not yet. Thatll come, you figure, when we start talking about choice and destiny and belief and who is the One and all the rest of the stuff that gargled bong-water. I winced when we had Yet Another Metaphorical Character introduced - The Trainman, this time. He shuttles programs here and there, a real sensitive and charon kind of guy, etc. (Last time we had the Keymaster, and I kept expecting Rick Moranis to show up.) But this early scene had a certain beauty. It was set in a train station (purgatory, I suppose) and it introduced a few characters who had no Great Meaning. They werent essential to the plot. They had no symbolic weight. They smiled. They seemed like people, not archetypes, and right there I was reminded again what was wrong with the entire Matrix series. For all its hoohah about People, it has few individuals and very little humanity. Mannikins vs. Robots. Thats why we love Agent Smith. Hes the only one having fun. Hes like the Tony Roberts character in a Woody Allen movie. The director wants us to fear him but who wouldnt want to knock back some cold ones with Agent Smith? Missster Liiilechs, Ive missed you. Have a beeeeer. Dont tell me the Merovingian would be fun to kick around with, because his entire persona is based on the sort of Frenchman whod only put down his copy of Existentialisme Pour Les Idiots because it was his turn to load the little kids into the SS train cars. Morpheus was fun enough in the first film, but he turned into a mopey doughnut. Trinity went from mannish to man, ish. The Oracle is an interesting character, but Christ! Try to get a straight answer out of that woman! Are these cookies for me, Oracle? I think you know. No seriously, are you saving them for someone? Because you said you had company coming over later, and I dont want to take them if youd intended them for someone else, so - You dont know what you want to do, child. Look at you, all serious now. Lawd. But sometimes we do things we want to do, not knowing what we dont think we shouldn't. I - I dont understand. Neither do I. I wish I could tell you, Neo. I wish the script was better. But its not. Now if youll excuse me, Im going to look away and smoke somewhat unconvincingly. Im burying the lede again, arent I. I loved this one. Yes. Yes, I did. Chalk it up to the same reasons I enjoyed SW: Episode 2 low, low, low expectations, matinee time frame, need for diversion, juvenile love of spectacle, guilty indulgence in sci-fi nonsense. But its a better movie. It looks and feels more like the first than the second. Theres 62% less pontificating. Smith is Smithier than ever. Yes, some of the death soliloquies take a day and a half; yes, every war cliché is on parade with its pants down; yes, yes, yes. Yes theres the council of Sonorous Robed People discussing the imminent extinction of humanity with all the passion of some suburban selectmen debating a sewer extension; yes the future of the species depending on someone manually piloting a blimp through a drinking straw at 2394 MPH instead of turning it over to the computer; yes yes yes. Yes the final scenes dont exactly make sense - how did Neo do that? What exactly did he do? What happens now? Doesnt matter. The invasion of Zion was one of the most impressive visual achievements Ive ever seen on the screen and this was one of the set-pieces the critics sniffed at. The scenes en route to the Machine City: whoa, to quote the poet. And the final fight between Neo and Smith is every comic book I read as a kid come to life and amped up beyond anything I dreamed. I never thought I would see things like that. Having seen them, Im grateful. Five bucks for that? Hell, I would have paid eight. We still see the limits of technology, though. Computer graphics can make a thousand flying squid flow through a hole in a vast concrete dome; they can bring to live tanks the size of mountains, animate robot oracles whose face is made up of a million pieces of metal swarming in frantic concert. But they cant take 27 pounds of Laurence Fishburn. When Ive seen a movie I found interesting, I go back to the reviews Id avoided. One such review was on Aint It Cool News, penned by AICNs head red, Harry Knowles. Mr. Knowles is an interesting character for a variety of reasons he lent legitimacy to the fervent fan-boy demographic, gave them a voice and some influence through the popularity of his site. He got a book out of the site; good for him. He got a TV show which runs somewhere on the planet, and is producing a movie; good for him. He has passion for movies and a voracious appetite for the genre. Bravo! Alas, he cannot write. He is a horrid stylist; he writes like someone mashing the keyboard with bratwursts; his politics have the sophistication of a preschool crayon drawing, and his self-confidence in his insights is matched only by his inability to see how fatuous his work often sounds. Mr. Knowles is often held up as an example of New Media, one of those outsiders whove wrested the mike from the old tired media. Usually I support that sort of thing, but if ever there was an argument for restricting the role of Critic to the white-gloved aesthetes, the Lucius Beebes, the Jay Shermans, the guys who, yknow, have done it, with a laidy, nudge nudge, its Harry Knowles. His review of Matrix 3 proves that if you cant say something coherent, just say it in purple-tinted boldface 20-point Arial: You see, The Machines Theyre the United States and Capitalism. Ultimately they want society operating in the 9 to 5, eat your food, grab a movie, raise the kids, go to church and get back to work sort of daze. Thats the Machine way. Dont worry about the MEANING OF IT ALL just do your job, be a battery and power the big society forward. No, Harry, the machines symbolize any organized society that lacks or denies free will. If you think thats the United States, then consider the number of times the authorities have come to your house, pried you off the sofa and put you to work in the steel mill. It takes a special kind of idiot to think that people who go to church and raise children dont worry about the Meaning of It All. Its not the banality of Knowles remark thats remarkable, its the fact that he holds himself out as someone who doesnt do the 9 to 5, raises kids, goes to church, and goes to work in a daze. He has a completely different life - made possible entirely by Capitalism, and the United States. Ultimately Neo, Morpheus, the rebel alliance essentially In a lot of ways theyre the bad guys. You see, theyre fucking everything up. The come into our Society blow shit up. Yes, he wrote that. And posted it. Cause problems. Get all violent and shit. Do little hit and run missions. Neo is for his people basically, hes Bin Laden living in a cave somewhere Oh, my God. 9/11 was a little hit and run mission, eh. Noted. and the Machines theyre drilling to put a stop to it all. Now, the problem is the only person that can put a stop to The War on Terrorism are the terrorist. He are, are he? Essentially, Bin Laden has to come forward, tell his people theyll be ok, give himself up, negotiate a cease fire and allow his life to be the symbol of peaceful co-existence between both cultures. The Machines and The Humans The Capitalist and The Fundamentalist Extremists Get this man a seat on the Security Council. Only Nixon can go to China! Only Kirk can go to Chronos! Only Bin Laden can make peace, if he agrees to be the symbol of peaceful co-existence between Capitalism and Humans. NOW What is Agent Smith? Essentially, Agent Smith was Communism. If we are all the same, then there is no reason for violence. Resistance is Futile. Communism was fantastic as it represents an ideology that the Capitalist and the Extremists both hated. And it was spreading and taking over and trying to assimilate cultures and suppress belief systems. Or you could say AGENT SMITH is that Born Again Christian type that is trying to eradicate anothers belief system and ultimately the elimination of both either politically, humanly or functionally is a move towards peace. You cant make this up. You can only stand in awe. If I can untangle the wet knotted shoelaces of Knowles prose, he seems to be saying that we can only live in peace when everyone agrees to believe in nothing but peace. Why, if we stop insisting that people should be free to choose, and they stop insisting that everyone should choose Islamic law, well all get along just fine. Ultimately, its about reaching understandings by which both sides can co-exist and live. Its about stopping the madness because it is madness. Because tearing each other apart is a waste of resources. The toil on both societies is counter-productive to co-habitation on this big green planet of ours. What societies? The Capitalists and the Bin Ladens? What the hell is he talking about? Whos tearing who apart? The Religious Fundamentalists and the Rebel Alliance? The Imperial Stormtroopers and the Ewoks? Ultimately what they believe or we believe is inconsequential. Spoken like a man with no beliefs. Or, more accurately, spoken like someone who thinks that line above demonstrates some sort of intellectual sophistication lost on people who do the whole work-kids-church thing. Trust me, Harry what someone believes is of great consequence. And if your society believes nothing it ends up making its last stand in the Temple of No Particular Belief System with the squiddies hammering on the door, possessed of a terrible certainty: they believe you should die. What gets you through your cold dark nights and hours of depression to that day in the sun well it may be entirely different from mine, but what doesnt work is governing by MESSIAHS positive or negative. Keep in mind this is a movie review about a movie where Keanu Reeves flies around and saves the world because he is, well, the Messiah. Sort of. In any case, whos being governed by Messiahs on this big green planet of ours? Any self-appointed Messiahs out there addressing his Parliament, pushing through a new highway bill, smiting the unbelievers, extending the minimum wage? Then we have a society RULED as opposed to a society governed. Thats why all Messiahs must die. Why religion should stay out of governing bodies, and ultimately we should adopt a live and let live sort of way of life. Well tolerate the machines enslaving our species, and theyll tolerate our desire to live underground and hold raves. Win win. And the fighting, well as all good geeks that were raised with WARGAMES, the only way to win is not to play. A lesson that is hard fought and learned in this film. Yes, they fight to learn not to fight, because what does Neos fighting do for the humans? Beside liberation, freedom, and an end to war? To quote a politician, I suppose thats a good thing. But they had to fight to get it! Ashes, I tell you these triumphs taste like ashes! I dont know whats more frightening the idea that anyone takes this boy seriously, or the idea that hes right: an entire generation got their moral instruction from a Matthew Broderick movie about a computer named after a Burger King specialty. I took away something else from the Matrix trilogy: it is a product of deeply confused people. They want it all. They want individualism and community; they want secularism and transcendence; they want the purity of committed love and the licentious fun of an S&M club; they want peace and the thrill of violence; they want God, but they want to design him on their own screens with their own programs by their own terms for their own needs, and having defined the divine on their own terms, they bristle when anyone suggests they have simply built a room with a mirror and flattering lighting. All three Matrix movies, seen in total, ache for a God. But they cant quite go all the way. Theyre like three movies about circular flat meat patties that can never quite bring themselves to say the word hamburger. Philosophically, the Matrix movies are banal, but theyre no worse than the empty animism of George Lucas Force-centric cosmology. As dramas, they lag but Wagner wasnt thrill-a-minute, either. The moments of emotional connection are few, but theyre there, almost like Burma-Shave signs spaced out every hundred miles. Overall, theyre overrated, but overall theyre worth it - there are times when they have the same strange thrill you got as a kid when you chewed tinfoil and it hit a filling. New, strange, electric, disturbing. The first movie is still the best; the second is still the worst. Amazing sights await in the third, and little else, but we live in a world of amazing sights. To top what youve seen so far in your life is no small feat. And certainly worth five dollars. |
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There's 2 hours I'll never get back again.
To begin the parade of annoyances, Cornel West got way too many lines this time and I couldn't help thinking that the limp, deadpan performance by the Crown Prince of Academia was actually one of the best in the film.
I have to give some kudos, though. The second best part of the film (you always have to give props to the CG department) was the acting by the traitor guy who does a dead-on impersonation of Hugo Weaving. It took me about 90 seconds to know he was channelling Smith. It took Neo 4 "Mr. Anderson"s and 2 roundhouse kicks to the head to figure it out. In his case, the acting was too good. Whoda thought?
If Neo and Trinity never told you they were in love, would you believe them? I thought from the beginning that their love was only because Trinity was the only chick on the ship. Neo would have fallen in love with Morpheus if Trinity weren't there. Her death scene was eternally long and too long in coming.
OK, explain this to me: A rag-tag bunch of humans living underground and having their civilization wiped out every few generations manage to build highly sophisticated robot-suits???
The special effects were breathtaking, but I found myself not caring a whit as to how they related to the story. If there was a story. Oh, and the Oracle had to re-form herself. I get it. It wasn't because the actress that played her last time died. It was all part of the story. Riiiiiight.
But to top it all off, here we have some sort of Messiah, a chosen one who sacrifices his sight, his lover and (probably) himself for . . . detente.
What the hell is that? No great revival of the human race. No revolution against the machines. No revelation that the real world was just another level of the Matrix and Neo's journey was pointless. Nothing interesting, just a promise by the architect to leave Zion alone and to release the humans if they manage to one day become self-aware and want to leave the Matrix. (I suppose they'd have to go through that red pill/blue pill nonsense.)
What a rip-off! These idiots were celebrating because they get to live in squalor cowering from the all-powerful (and all-benevolent, apparently) machine.
Of course, if the Whatchamacallit brothers actually intended that, it would be a brilliant and highly cynical take on the nature of man and God.
Somehow, I don't think so.
Oh, well, at least one of the villains was French.
"Everything that has a beginning, has an end." Mercifully.
Personally, I think they just wanted to keep the franchise alive.
I won't even attempt to write a long meaningless bongwater-induced essay on the philosophical implications of the storyline. I REALLY enjoyed the first movie. The second was disappointing and I actually was drumming my fingers on the arm of my seat in the theater during some of the fight scenes because I was totally bored. Now, the third. Hmmmmmmmm............
I'll make one comment: The amalgamated face at the end of the movie, representing (I guess) the AI conciousness says, "It's finished". Isn't that Christ's line? Shouldn't Neo have said this since HE'S the Savior? I didn't like this misattribution of the words. It spoiled the ending for me.
All in all though, amazing special Fx during the fight for Zion.
Awaiting ROTK.
The problem with this is that, by the rules previously expounded within the Matrix trilogy, less than 1% of humanity ever even questions "the Matrix" in the first place. 99% will be content to exercise their "free will" by staying in the Matrix (which is going to get better and better as the AIs can now reproduce and evolve; i.e. the little girl who created a colorful sunrise).
In short, what Neo "won" was a victory for the machines over humanity: 99% will stay in stasis, the "select" 1% will be freed to Zion (a dismal underground city) to disco-dance all day long, and no more serious efforts at rebellion will occur anymore (why should the humans rebel anymore? Neo fulfilled the "prophecy" and the war is "over"!). Who wins in this deal? The machines.
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