Some Thoughts on Matrix Reloaded Just wanted to get these down on (digital) paper for now, though I prefer to reserve judgment on the movie as a whole until Matrix Revolutions comes out. These are some of my impressions. The Matrix set a really high bar, by being fun, thought-provoking, and exciting, as well as being very innovative on several levels. I would have to say that Matrix was the Star Wars of this generation, in terms of its cultural impact as well as its influence on popular culture. One effect of influencing pop culture the way it did, though, was to dilute its effect to some degree. For example, contemporary wire-fu was somewhat new to US audiences when Matrix came out, but in the intervening four years it has become so commonplace that it is getting kind of played out. Part of the parameters of a sequel is to stay within the established feel of the universe created in the first movie, so by nature I didn't expect Matrix Reloaded to be as groundbreaking or visually innovative as the original. And for this reason I found Reloaded less satisfying than Matrix, though I still enjoyed the movie. Also, being part 2 in a trilogy, Reloaded was not as climactic as Matrix. It had to end but not end as it led into Revolutions. To its credit though, it did offer up some new, noodle-baking concepts about the Matrix and the nature of reality in the Matriverse. And it's nice to find that there may actually be answers to some of the unaddressed enigmas of Matrix, such as "Who is the Oracle?" and "Where did this Prophecy business come from?" Structurally, the Matrix was the classic Joseph Campbell "Hero's Journey." It's story similarity to Star Wars is glaringly obvious, with Neo as Luke, Morpheus as Obi-Wan. The parallels stack a mile high. This story structure is about the hero, a common man, reluctantly torn from his familiar world and guided upon a quest to discover a great power, growing from an ordinary man into a ture hero. It requires a change of the protagonist's character and lends itself well to a climax. On the other hand, Reloaded had more in common with Raymond Chandler detective stories. The detective goes looking for the answer to a mystery, and follows a trail of clues, each one leading to his next encounter. Each step of the way he gains another piece of the puzzle, and meets another interesting character, though really the story can include as many encounters as the writer likes, until he is exhausted of ideas. It's like a train into which the writer can insert as many cars as he likes. Finally, the detective arrives at the locomotive, the main force driving the mystery, who then makes sense of the clues for the detective and provides a solution to the mystery. In better versions of this story structure, the solution often resolves a greater mystery than the one that began the quest. The detective begins by, say, investigating a woman's disappearance, and ends up unraveling a conspiracy of crooked cops, or a money laundering ring. This type of story is more episodic in nature, and is not really centered around the growth or development of the character. Now that Neo is like a god (or playing in god mode), is there any more character growth remaining for him? Speaking of god mode, Neo has clearly unlocked that cheat code, which only five players before him have found. All the Zionists seem to have access to the all-weapons and unlimited-ammo cheats. And as we saw at the end of Matrix, somewhere along the way Neo must have picked up an extra life (just prior to unlocking god mode). And Trinity gets an extra life too in Reloaded. The Twins have the no-clipping cheat that lets them move thru walls. What other cheat codes can you spot in the Matrix? The whole thing about vampires and stuff being a part of the Matrix, a program gone awry, was an interesting idea, perhaps it's meant to encompass hallucinations in general, and UFO sightings/abduction fantasies. Perhaps it's also meant to work with the way the Twins could dematerialize into those Final Fantasy phantoms. Their phantom forms certainly were evocative of ghosts. They obviously worked hard on the fighting, using more intricate moves and combinations than in the first Matrix movie. However, some of the fighting seemed a little gratuitous. I don't want to judge too quickly, because Revolutions may give meaning to things that appear meaningless, but it did occasionally seem like they were checking their watches. "Hey, 15 minutes have passed, time to toss in another fight scene." None of the fights seemed more gratuitous than the one with Seraph, the Asian guy guarding the Oracle. "Hi, I'm Neo." "Let's fight.... Okay, that's enough, the Oracle will see you now." The fight with the many Agent Smiths in the park was just too obviously CGI. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't. It looked like Tekken 3. Some slight improvements and it would have looked like SoulCalibur. Okay, that was mean. But one thing Matrix established was a standard for high-quality visual effects, and I had hoped Reloaded would make this a legacy of the Matrix franchise. So it was a disappointment to see CGI look so obviously CGI. I thought the motion capture and animation could have been better, I thought the cloth simulator could have been better... It was a fun sequence, but it fell short of Matrix quality. The fight on top of the 18-wheeler was pretty cool. I like my 18-wheeler fights to not waste much time with the hero dangling off by one hand, and also not spend a lot of time in the cab, punching the driver. Raiders of the Lost Ark did a great job with truck fighting and stunts, so why cover old ground? By the way, for truck fighting afficionados, the Transporter had some decent bus & truck fighting. I mean, it was no Jackie Chan jumping off the top, thru windows, back on top, and over signs, but it's unfair to compare with Jackie. Even Jackie can't compare with Jackie anymore. Jackie's shit was REAL. The Matrix is fantasy. So it's supposed to look... fantastical. And it was cool to see Morpheus with the sword. He and Trinity both got some well-deserved time in the spotlight. The whole freeway sequence was obviously intended as a major set piece, and it certainly fit the bill. I found the speed and motion of the car chase genuinely thrilling, which is saying something considering how commonplace car chases are. It was also fun to see Niobe show up in the nick of time, though it made me wonder why we didn't see more of her. But I'm willing to wait and see if it isn't just buildup to Revolutions, when she'll get a real chance to shine. I hope it isn't just Niobe product placement. As I understand it, the Enter the Matrix game is supposed to take place concurrently to Reloaded, and follow storylines of some of the off-screen characters. Niobe is a major character in this game, and while we see little of her in Reloaded, we obviously know that she cares about Morpheus, that she captains her "ship" out to find him, eventually ending up in the Matrix and tracking him down on the freeway. The potential for adventure, in her "ship," in the Matrix, and on the freeway (as well as afterward), is almost limitless, and a clever way for the Wachowski brothers to expand upon the story of the movie without making the movie experience dependant upon playing the game. I'm just hoping that we get some kind of payoff in Revolutions to the introduction of her character, and that she's not just stuck in for the merchandising of the spinoff game. And speaking of product placement, did you all notice the Samsung Matrix phone Morpheus had? Of course, the movies are titled the Matrix, and they are about the Matrix, not the Real World. So it isn't surprising that the least interesting part of the Matriverse is the Real World. I hope it does turn out to be a subroutine of the larger Matrix, because I found little resonance in Zion. It, more than anything, seemed like a fake Star Trek planet in that we-all-dress-the-same, matte-painting way. And that rave/sex scene went on a little long for my taste. Sure Neo is the hero, but it'd be more realistic for him to be more of a geek in the Real World. He hasn't been out of the Matrix for very long (did they say 6 months?), he's spent all his time in the computer world of the Matrix, where he totally rules. His muscles should still be fairly atrophied. In another movie, he'd be the nerdy supporting character the hero brings along to hack the security system in order to break in and kill the bad guys. Except that in the Matrix movies, the computer system is the bad guy, so we don't really need the hero, just the computer geek. Am I the only person who has noticed that Neo is wearing a dress thru the whole movie? He's not wearing, like, really wide pants like those Aikido guys do. And don't give me that it's-a-long-coat bullshit. It's all fitted from the waits up, then from the waist down it's a freaking skirt. Hello, it's a dress! Also, I'm not buying the excuse of needing loose clothing in order to do kung fu. Trinity wears skin-tight vinyl, and she can kick her leg up forward and knock out a guy BEHIND her (she does this in her first scene in Matrix) so don't tell me that the One, who can reorder the Matrix to his will, can't fight in men's clothing. Having said that, I should also mention that it's a cool man-dress and I want one. But it is a dress. What's next? Does he wear a bra in Revolutions? Smith is an interesting guy. He's obviously intent on doing Neo in, but he's also not on the side of the Agents. I look forward to finding out what is at the core of his motivations. Int Matrix, Smith calls human beings a virus. I'm sure it is intentional irony that he, himself, is now a virus. I wonder how many Agents there are, and if by turing one into himself Smith really eradicates it. In the the first movie, there seemed to only be three Agents who kept coming back after their respective defeats by leaping into another body. And there didn't seem to be more than one of each Agent at a time. Also, Smith's ability to replicate himself is presented as an amazing thing, so one might gather that each Agent is a unique program unto itself, with no other copies in the Matrix. So when Smith transforms one of them, does he actually transform the program into a copy of himself, eliminating the original? And once eliminated, is it possible for that Agent reappear in the Matrix, restored from a backup copy at it were? If the Real World turns out to also be a part fo the Matrix, then there is really no telling who is really a human (if such do exist) and who is a program. Because making it to the Real World doesn't mean any more than shunting data from one system to another, like opening up this Notepad text file in Word. Neo is referred to as "the anomaly," and described as the result of cumulative inconsistencies in the Matrix, derived from giving humans some semblance of free will. Sure, the Architect calls Neo "human," but this may be simply descriptive, like when Kirk called Spock "the most human" soul he'd ever known. Can Neo be the chaos-effect accumulation of incongruencies within the Matrix if he is a human mind in the machine? How could these changes in the computer program of the Matrix affect his human mind? If he's the result of a flaw in the Matrix, wouldn't it make sense for him to be part of the Matrix himself, like one of the Agent programs? And if Neo is a program, then how many of the other "people" are also programs? Maybe all of the "Zionists" are errant programs, spawned of the Matrix's flaws, and Neo is the One because his "flaws" have reached a certain degree of power. If all the free humans are really programs, that would explain their ability to manipulate the Matrix the way they do, running faster, defying gravity, etc. Architect: Neo, I am your father. Neo: No! That's not true! That's impossible! If they were all "born" of the same digital parent, wouldn't that make Trinity his sister? See, I told you it was like Star Wars! May 22, 2003 Other Matrix Jeffreviews: Matrix Revisited