I went to see The Matrix Reloaded last night, with two other Samizdatistas, who will no doubt share their opinions with you here. Based on my impressions, which ranged from boredom to frustration with the pomposity of the characters, I concluded that the film is so firmly wedged up its own backside that it is unlikely to re-emerge for the next sequel due in November. The Matrix Reloaded is a far cry from the original film’s mind-twisting plot, lacking its predecessor’s film noir atmosphere and plausible ontological riddles.
David Edelstein of Slate has put it so much better:
The grim news is that The Matrix Reloaded is as messy and flat-footed as its predecessor is nimble and shapely. It’s an ugly, bloated, repetitive movie that builds to a punch line that should have come an hour earlier (at least). Then it ends as it’s just beginning: Stay tuned for The Matrix Revolutions, coming in November to 8,000 theaters near you.
Almost from the start, Reloaded feels different from the original—more stilted, mechanical, blockbuster-business-as-usual, Lucasoid. Dull staging, tin-eared dialogue (I haven’t even told you about Eurotrash king and queen of evil, played by Lambert Wilson and Monica Bellucci), bad acting: What went wrong? Have the Wachowskis been pickling in their own self-importance for too long? When they made the original, they’d come off their terrific low-budget lesbian noir Bound (1996), and they gave The Matrix a lean, no-nonsense, B-movie thrust. Here they seem to be bogged down by their budget and by Owen Paterson’s top-heavy sets, and almost every sequence goes on for too long and to no particular end.
We can speculate on these things when you’ve seen the movie. And you will see it—and maybe even convince yourself it’s spectacular. (Some people thought The Phantom Menace [1999] was a good movie—there’s a collective delusion for you.) But a bigger bang for your buck would be the Wachowskis’ related package of nine short animated films, The Animatrix, which proves that peoplelike cartoons can be much more enlivening than cartoonlike people. In The Matrix, Neo broke through the artificial into the real; in The Matrix Reloaded, he’s stuck in a bigger simulation, with no exit in sight.
I am sure this will upset many a Matrix affictionado. I too was genuinely looking forward to seeing the film. I loved the first one and still cannot comprehend how the same people managed to produce such stilted, pompous and at times boring sequel. Sure, the special effects are amazing and will enter the film-making history, just as the first one did. (The motorbike in the car chasing scenes did quicken even my pulse briefly.) But do they compensate for the feeble plot and insufferable dialogue? Well, I don’t think so.
Plot-wise it was just a re-tread of WWII men-on-a-mission action movies like Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen, The Heroes of Telemark etc. Mismatched bunch of heroes have get a document/blow up a building/capture a General. Before they can do that, they have to find someone who has promised to help them sneak into a heavily guarded place. But there’s a twist! One of them’s a spy! Cue fights, explosions, car chases etc.
I have no intention of seeing another movie since I enjoyed “Gone with the Wind” so much. But I’d like to know if, in “M ReLd’d,” there is any modern political message in the movie related to “Zion”.
Well Gabriel just isn’t a connoisseur (connois-sewer?) of crap movies like me. It is not a patch on the first Matrix, for sure, but it is still a hoot.
Depends on what kind of “Crap” it is.
Some films can accurately be described as shite (And analysed as such, with riduculous characters, poor acting, inconsistencies in the plot, and so forth). But they are still an enjoyable hour and a half.
My candidate for best shite film of all time was “Highlander”.
Sean Connery playing a spanish egyptian
Christopher Lambert playing a scotsman
Clancy Brown playing a villian as Rik Mayall doing an impersonation of Lee Van Cleef.
Fantastic film though, right up there with Hudson Hawk!
Eamon
The first movie is also pompous and deeply stupid, but it is simultaneously very entertaining. The trouble with this one is that the first hour is even more pompous and stupid, but is also extremely dreary and should have been almost entirely removed in the editing room. The remainder of the film at least became more entertaining – at least until Neo met up with Colonel Sanders in the room with all the TV screens, at which point my bogometer went completely off the charts. The film did have one or two fine set pieces. The fight with the 100 Hugo Weavings was at least fun, although pointless. The freeway chase did at least dazzle me with its level of technical accomplishment, even if it dead feel more like the granddaddy of all motor racing type computer games than an actual movie.
I liked the film, but then I like trashy films with no meaning to them (like Perry). I like fist fights, explosions, car/bike chases, explosions, special effects, exposions in films I watch. I don’t expect these films to have deep and meaningful plots, if I wanted a film that like that I’d go and watch a film by Jan Svankmajer where you can ponder over the meaning of it all for hours or days.
They do try to play on the fact that Neo is ‘The One’ and I won’t give away the plot by going into more detail, but this character building attempt is an important part of the film considering the end of the film. But trying to do a film with exposions etc and meaningfull plot building/dialog usuall fails, so I don’t expect it.
Enjoy the film for what it is, a film that has lots of leather/PVC clad men and women fighting each other, with explosions and car chases to break up the fight scenes. Don’t get too het up about the lack of plot, because quite frankly it doesn’t matter.
Anyway I thought that Dark City was a much better film than Matrix (the first film) and it came out before Matrix did and it did the whole idea of ‘reality isn’t what you think it is’ better. See it if you haven’t already.
P.S. I liked phantom menace and didn’t think it was as bad as everyone made it out to be.
I’m entirely with David about Dark City. Wonderful visuals, wonderful sense of mood, much more intelligence, in some ways very similar plot.
Yep, I am totally with Dave and Michael as they mention two of my favourite films. I am a great fan of Svankmajer and Dark City was indeed similar to The Matrix’s plot but better.
Dave, a fair point about explosions and PVC clad people but if I wanted just that, I’d play a computer game (which is why I don’t…).
Whatever…
Come on the scene where the lady in the restuarant eats the ‘o’ cake was fun and original.
Sure there were some annoying speedbumps, but ‘stilted and pompous’ are not the words that I would use to describe this film.
James Dudek: Actually, pompous does not even begin to describe the portentous tone all characters take on. All The Time. They Talk Like This About Everything Although PURPOSE, and CHOICE and CONTROL seem to be especially Popular. It’s just full of the kind of cod theology that pollutes Hollywood on a regular basis.
Sadly, they left the only really interesting idea for the very end, and then didn’t even really exploit it (in fact, it might very well be something I made up, I’m not sure) — the idea of whether Neo had ever really left the Matrix, or if he only *thought* he had escaped. They should have focused on that and not on the psuedo-philosophical and completely stale and unoriginal “free will/choice” theme. In the first movie, the Matrix was treated as real — this movie reduced it to a Freshman Psych 101 level metaphor. They tried, and failed, to make a B movie have “levels.” Bad move.
As it was, everyone talked too much and there was not a single scene, not a one, that did not go on for 10-15 minutes longer than it should have.
However, it was very attractively shot.
Aside: WHAT a wasted opportunity — when the EuroWife told Neo to kiss her and “make her feel like she was [Trinity]” — WHY didn’t she morph into a Trinity clone and try to kill them? Isn’t that the sort of thing the matrix is meant for? Instead of just gratuitous “Keanu Reeves is so sexy and irresistable” kissy-poo? Bleah. Anyway.
The chocolate-O scene was definitely written by a woman. 🙂
Dark City was AWESOME but not as slick — more profound, but less fulfilling. Frankly I enjoyed Matrix 1 more, probably because it did not scare me (I’m easily scared. 🙂 Also because I saw it (Dark City) in a cheap-*** theatre in total darkness and came out with one of the most resounding headaches of my life, with a guy who did not like me as much as I wanted him to. Odd little things affect your opinions so much…
Gabriel,
“Cod theology.” Sounds like a religion for our time — tell us more!
Even if nothing behind the term, this could catch on.
To me it was fun while the action was there (except for the pointless fight between Neo and the Oracle’s bodyguard), but other than that it was a festival of triteness.
Everyone in Zion is either wearing their bathrobe, pajamas or a mumu.
The characters, including the agents, are worse shots than the A-Team or Bond movie minions.
The heroes are supposed to be hackers, but they don’t bother creating cheat codes so they can walk thru walls and have super powers.
Neo has super powers, yet he only uses them to save people from explosions (at the last second when they would die from the kinetic energy and heat). If he’s as powerful as they suggest he is he could have wiped out all his foes in seconds instead of fortnights (or so it felt). But then there would be no story.
Any story that requires huge gaping logic holes for it to hang together is lame.
Programs aren’t machines. Machines are hardware, programs are software. So the rogue programs in the Matrix would be like the sentient holograms in Star Trek and should either be on the human’s side or their own, not the machines.
All that voguing is mondo-gay. No wonder the film has techno music. So where the gay people in all those sweaty e-fueled rave shots?
The Neo crew’s fashion sense seems to be “black is the new black.” I guess their lack of imagination in clothes mirrors their lack of imagination in fighting the power.
Shooting endless amounts of ammo at people and not hitting them is a waste of time. So why do it? And kung fu? Why not LAWS rockets, RPGS, grenades?
They go around killing all these minimum wage dorky security guards by the dozen as if that’s cool.
A quarter million killer bots are coming to destroy their city and what do they do? Rave!
I could go on, but why bother…
I thought the first film was quite overrated and dull in parts, still plodding around in the ‘Dark Star’/’Alien’/’Bladerunner’ territory that seemed fresh in 1981. All those green digits on black screens, for example. Totally 70s.
Matrix 1 was fun in parts too, though. While the character I most wanted to know more about was the girl who invites Neo to the party in the beginning, once we’re off into the Plato’s Cave metaphor I felt Matrix was a solid 6 out of 10 with some good bits.
My hunch is that sequels often disappoint because they help to make clear the thinness of the original. The excitement of the first go at an idea can often carry some weak plot and character ideas without the audience noticing.
Once we revisit a set of characters and a plot device from another angle however, the flimsiness of our first enchantment can become clearer.
I haven’t seen Reloaded yet but I would like to soon. Everyone I’ve talked to has said that it’s awesome and they loved it.
Ugh. When that stupid rave thing started, with that shittyawfulcrappy “music”, I kept thinking to myself: if I’d been there, I would have thought, “I took the red pill — for THIS?”
Put me back into the Matrix, daddy — reality sucks. The way it was portrayed in Matrix II.
I won’t bother with III.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, b/c it was exactly what I was expecting. I was simply expecting to see Neo use his new powers to kick some serious ass, and to learn a little more about what the Matrix is. That’s exactly what happened.
The Burly Brawl was awesome, especially when Neo grabbed the steel sign pole and started swatting Smith’s out of the park like A-rod at the Little Leagues. The Chateau kung-fu weapons fight was cool too, with a fine instance of irony occuring when Neo stopped a barbed sword blade with the edge his hand, only to suffer a tiny cut and a few drops of blood. Merovingian, attempting to rally his men, lamely exclaims, “You see, he is just a man!” That gave me a chuckle, and I pompously imagine the Wachowski’s chuckling along with me. 😉
The scene with the Architect was most interesting, imo. I defy anyone to claim that they predicted the plot twist the Architect threw into the mix – that Zion is merely a tool to control the “remainder of an unbalanced equation” – the 1% of humans whose minds naturally reject the Matrix. Whereas Neo’s 5 successors all sold out, so to speak, and chose to preserve both humanity and the Matrix’s control over it, Neo rejected that choice and chose to continue fighting the machines even if it meant the end of the human race – all for the love of a woman. Quite powerful. I am anxious to see how he overcomes this self-inflicted mess in Revolutions.
By the way, did anyone stay through the credits to watch the Revolutions trailer at the end? Apparently, there will be a showdown between Neo and Smith, both in the Matrix and in the real world. There’s a quick scene of Neo fighting Bane (eg, the guy Smith downloaded himself into) in the real world, and there’s another scene of Neo fighting Smith in the Matrix. All the while, the Oracle’s voice is saying, presumably to Neo, “You are the only one who stands in his way. If you do not stop him tonight, I fear there will be no tomorrow.” The Oracle also admonishes Neo in Reloaded: “What do all men with power want? More power.” Could it be that the renegade Agent Smith is attempting to take over entire the Matrix and machine world for himself, and ironically only the human Neo can stop him?
As for the theory that Zion is simply a Matrix within a Matrix, I tend to disagree. I’ve seen Reloaded twice now, and I think the Wachowski’s know their audiences will cry BULLSHIT if it turns out that Zion is part of the Matrix, and I don’t think they intend to take it that way. Rather, I think Neo’s experience in the Matrix has altered his mind and is giving him some powers in the real world (normal humans only use <10% of their mind after all, perhaps Neo is learning to use the other 90%). The idea that virtual reality training can expand the human mind was already explored in the movie Lawnmower Man, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the Wachowski’s have resurrected it. However, I expect that they will drop subtle, confounding hints in Revolutions to keep people arguing this point indefinitely.
Finally, I want to address the common criticism that the Matrix movies are not the original wonders many people seem to think they are. Of course they are not. According to Jean Baudrillard’s postmodernist philosophy, Simulacra and Simulation, which heavily influenced the Wachowski bro’s, there is nothing truly original in postmodernity anymore. Every idea, every creation, is merely a copy of a copy of a copy ad infinitum. It has literally all been done before, and everything that appears new is simply a modified repeat of something already done or created in the past. The Wachowski’s did not attempt to escape that dictum, rather they embraced it. The individual parts of the movies – the familiar plot, the metaphysics, the characterizations are all old ideas applied in a new way (and even whether the new way is truly new is debatable). The question is, is the total more than the sum of the parts? Eg, did the Wachowski’s achieve originality from unoriginality?
As a someone who deplored Star Wars Episode 1 (all the movie was useless filler between the cool pod race and the final Jedi duel), I thoroughly enjoyed Reloaded. Perhaps it was simply b/c I had very limited expectations for it – see Neo kick some ass and learn a little more about the Matrix. Along the way, the movie treated me to some funny irony, interesting philosophical questions, and a worthy plot twist. So it’s not perfect, so what? It’s easily in the top 90th percentile of Hollywood movies, and that’s good enough for me.
Kim is not the geek in the family–As he made painfully obvious above.
I liked it. But I will admit it was a crappy movie. I just thought the special effects were kewwwl.
It’s not unusual for filmmakers who get a lot of money from a film to spend way too much on the sequel–or think they are touched. Some of them get over themselves (Spielberg after 1941) and some never do (Coppola).
“As for the theory that Zion is simply a Matrix within a Matrix, I tend to disagree. I’ve seen Reloaded twice now, and I think the Wachowski’s know their audiences will cry BULLSHIT if it turns out that Zion is part of the Matrix, and I don’t think they intend to take it that way.”
Of course Zion is not part of the Matrix — I don’t doubt that, but it might have been interesting if Neo had for a second or two. (It would have been semi-substantiated by his reality warping powers *outside* the matrix, though there will probably be another explanation for that.) The Architect touched on it for a bare second, but it might have been interesting to see it built on throughout the whole movie, as opposed to a throwaway line. It would have held my attention longer than two hours of “can we choose?” “is choice real?” “yadda yadda destiny yadda?”
Just an idea — it’s not my movie, after all.
So — everyone in Zion has floaty silken robes in attractive earth shades, but Neo, the freakin “ONE,” can’t get a clean shirt without holes in it? I’m just saying. Pet peeve.
I think I survived the movie by pretending it was anime. It used a lot of the style and conventions — a lot of things I’m willing to put up with in a foreign language by attributing it to cultural difference. (It’s harder to do in English, but possible.)
Matrix 1 ended at a good place — mystery solved, “saviour” located, potential for massive change hinted at, audience left with hope. It might have been a good stopping-place for the entire franchise. Too late now. I won’t see M2 twice, and probably won’t buy the DVD (I have the first one, yes I’m geeky but it was on sale), but I will see the third movie — I want to know how the story ends, on the basis of the first film.
Of course Zion is not part of the Matrix — I don’t doubt that, but it might have been interesting if Neo had for a second or two.
True, however it’s difficult for Neo to consider that since he went into a coma the instant after he finished using his powers outside the Matrix for the first time. Maybe that idea will occur to him in Revolutions when he wakes up.
The Architect touched on it for a bare second,
He did? Are you saying the Architect insinuated that Zion is another Matrix? I came to the conclusion from that scene that Zion is real, yet still controlled by the machines.
Another issue that precludes Zion being part of the Matrix is that, in the first movie we learned that Neo could sense the unreality of the Matrix even before he was unplugged. Morpheus put it into words – a “splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” If Zion was merely another Matrix, Neo should be able to sense it (and most likely Morpheus and Trinity too), but he doesn’t.
but Neo, the freakin “ONE,” can’t get a clean shirt without holes in it?
Lol, maybe he likes the dirty slob hacker look. Actually, he has a very composed “residual self image” inside the Matrix. You would think that if that was his preferred image of himself, he would try to mimic it in the real world.
I think I survived the movie by pretending it was anime.
That’s another media style the Wachowski’s drew upon to make this movie. In fact, many years ago they originally envisioned the Matrix as an anime movie + comic book series.
Matrix 1 ended at a good place — mystery solved, “saviour” located, potential for massive change hinted at, audience left with hope. It might have been a good stopping-place for the entire franchise.
It definitely made for a compelling, complete, stand-alone movie, but I don’t think that would have been a good stopping place for the franchise. While The Matrix resolved the issue of Neo’s identity as The One, it left unresolved the not insignificant issue of the enslavement of the majority of the human race. The understood point of the first movie was that if Neo was truly The One, he would be able to free humanity. Gotta tie up that lose end before the franchise can be considered complete. That is even more the case since the W’s made all those Animatrix prequals giving the backstory of the rise of the machines and the conflict b/t humanity and the machines that led to the creation of the Matrix.
Well, well…Mr. Anderson! You see, we are everywhere, even on this board! who are you fighting with? we are just so many…
Matrix is a reminder, to wake up. It’s loaded with hit and run, explosions and impossible things, but what if we are really, living in a Matrix or Matrix is beginning to form. Those who deny Information Age, and it growing grip on our lives, are the reloaded versions of those Middle Ages Churches, that were ready to burn anyone, who were or the order of Galileo.
As Morpheus says: Free Your Mind!
he message in Matrix is not for average minds, it is for all minds though, but if you could maintain your ‘sanity’ after reading A Thousand Plateaus of Deleuse & Guattari, then you might be better able to see what The Matrix stands for.
A.