Heavy Matrix: Reloaded Thoughts *Spoilers Alert!*

by Yizuman 19 Replies latest social entertainment

• 

  ballistic

  Thanks for that - I had completely missed the meaning of the film, and the explanation has turned it around for me, from what I found was a dissappointing film.

  Nice to see logical still posting
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  ashitaka

  Yeah, I caught that stuff. I personally really liked the movie. There is a lot that goes over the head, which is why people didn't like it. Matrix was two dimensional, Reloaded had a lot more than that.

  I think that Neo could definitely be a machine, seeing that he was there before, just like the oracle, keymaker, etc. I love the twist at the end. I thought it was incredible. It could be infinite Matrix's, or perhaps there are no machines at all. Maybe MAN elslaves man by doing this. And of course, maybe Smith is like a virus, and this brings down Zion. Maybe Smith is actually the good guy...LOL. Maybe there was no above-world apocolypse, and they walk into the world they left.

  Anybody see Dark City? We could see a mind-f*** along those lines.

  ash
• 

  Hamas

  Lo, the Matrix was a good movie, but thats all it is man, a movie.

  My brother started to go off on a tangent about it also, and how he waiting right until the end of the film to see the trailor to the next movie..... I think people take movies too seriously. He also told me that he left the cinema and 'had to sit down' because he was so 'amazed' at what he had seen. This boarders on insanity and sadness.

  Yet, whatever floats your boat.
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  dedalus

  There is a lot that goes over the head, which is why people didn't like it.

  Or maybe because the script was at times so pompously overwritten and clichéd. I mean, did you listen to these people talk? "Not all of you believe as I believe." "I believe my beliefs do not require you to believe." "I believe it is destiny that brought us together." "I believe I'd like a some fries with that burger." Seriously, count how many times the word "believe" is uttered in that movie, and then ask yourself if you like being smacked repeatedly upside the head with a paperback Portable Philosophy primer?

  Look, I liked the movie alright, enough to see it twice, even, and you can be sure I'll see the next one the day it comes out. However, a billion allusions to world philosophy doesn't make it a great. It was simply okay, stylistic to the point of fetishism, conceptually interesting, fun to watch. Yes, I'm curious about what happens next. But the dilettantism of its philosophizing merely amused me, somehow without irritating me too much, but also without arousing me to the masturbatory fit of allusion-making Ken Mondschein displayed in his review. I sympathize with viewers who were irritated, and don't think they're unintelligent or uneducated for disliking it.

  And I'm just curious what all you fans think of this:

  Neo and Trinity's kissy-face is cut in with the public-lewdness-in-a-cave of the decieved Zionites. The real meaning of the overlong rave scene is to contrast sacred and profane love.

  White love is consecrated, sacred, but black love is lewd and profane? Hmmm.

  Dedalus
• 

  dedalus

  Another review -- a favorable one -- that's not quite as self-important, or sychophantic as Ken Mondschein's:

  http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/cst-ftr-matrix14f.html

  THE MATRIX RELOADED / ***1/2 (R)

  May 14, 2003

  Neo Keanu Reeves
  Morpheus Laurence Fishburne
  Agent Smith Hugo Weaving
  Trinity Carrie-Anne Moss
  Oracle Gloria Foster
  Niobe Jada Pinkett Smith
  Zee Nona Gaye
  Lock Harry Lennix
  Link Harold Perrineau
  Persephone Monica Bellucci
  Twins Neil and Adrian Rayment

  Warner Bros. presents a film written and directed by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Running time: 138 minutes. Rated R (for sci-fi violence and some sexuality).

  BY ROGER EBERT

  Commander Lock: "Not everyone believes what you believe."

  Morpheus: "My beliefs do not require that they do."

  Characters are always talking like this in "The Matrix Reloaded," which plays like a collaboration involving a geek, a comic book and the smartest kid in Philosophy 101. Morpheus in particular unreels extended speeches that remind me of Laurence Olivier's remarks when he won his honorary Oscar--the speech that had Jon Voight going "God!" on TV, but in print turned out to be quasi-Shakespearean doublespeak. The speeches provide not meaning, but the effect of meaning: It sure sounds like those guys are saying some profound things.

  That will not prevent fanboys from analyzing the philosophy of "The Matrix Reloaded" in endless Web postings. Part of the fun is becoming an expert in the deep meaning of shallow pop mythology; there is something refreshingly ironic about becoming an authority on the transient extrusions of mass culture, and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) now joins Obi-Wan Kenobi as the Plato of our age.

  I say this not in disapproval, but in amusement. "The Matrix" (1999), written and directed by the brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski, inspired so much inflamed pseudo-philosophy that it's all "The Matrix Reloaded" can do to stay ahead of its followers. It is an immensely skillful sci-fi adventure, combining the usual elements: heroes and villains, special effects and stunts, chases and explosions, romance and oratory. It develops its world with more detail than the first movie was able to afford, gives us our first glimpse of the underground human city of Zion, burrows closer to the heart of the secret of the Matrix, and promotes its hero, Neo, from confused draftee to a Christ figure in training.

  As we learned in "The Matrix," the Machines need human bodies, millions and millions of them, for their ability to generate electricity. In an astonishing sequence, we saw countless bodies locked in pods around central cores that extended out of sight above and below. The Matrix is the virtual reality that provides the minds of these sleepers with the illusion that they are active and productive. Questions arise, such as, is there no more efficient way to generate power? And why give the humans dreams when they would generate just as much energy if comatose? And why create such a complex virtual world for each and every one of them, when they could all be given the same illusion and be none the wiser? Why is each dreamer himself or herself, occupying the same body in virtual reality as the one asleep in the pod?

  But never mind. We are grateful that 250,000 humans have escaped from the grid of the Matrix, and gathered to build Zion, which is "near the Earth's core--where there is more heat." As the movie opens, we are alarmed to learn that the Machines are drilling toward Zion so quickly that they will arrive in 36 hours. We may also wonder if Zion and its free citizens really exist, or if the humans only think so, but that leads to a logical loop ending in madness.

  Neo (Keanu Reeves) has been required to fly, to master martial arts, and to learn that his faith and belief can make things happen. His fights all take place within virtual reality spaces, while he reclines in a chair and is linked to the cyberworld, but he can really be killed, because if the mind thinks it is dead, "the body is controlled by the mind." All of the fight sequences, therefore, are logically contests not between physical bodies, but between video game-players, and the Neo in the big fight scenes is actually his avatar.

  The visionary Morpheus, inspired by the prophecies of the Oracle, instructed Neo--who gained the confidence to leap great distances, to fly and in "Reloaded" destroys dozens of clones of Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) in martial combat. That fight scene is made with the wonders of digital effects and the choreography of the Hong Kong action director Yuen Wo Ping, who also did the fights in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." It provides one of the three great set pieces in the movie.

  The second comes when Morpheus returns to Zion and addresses the assembled multitude--an audience that looks like a mosh pit crossed with the underground slaves in "Metropolis." After his speech, the citizens dance in a percussion-driven frenzy, which is intercut with Neo and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) having sex. I think their real bodies are having the sex, although you can never be sure.

  The third sensational sequence is a chase involving cars, motorcycles and trailer trucks, with gloriously choreographed moves including leaps into the air as a truck continues to move underneath. That this scene logically takes place in cyberspace does not diminish its thrilling 14-minute fun ride, although we might wonder--when deadly enemies meet in one of these virtual spaces, who programmed it? (I am sure I will get untold thousands of e-mails explaining it all to me.)

  I became aware, during the film, that a majority of the major characters were played by African Americans. Neo and Trinity are white, and so is Agent Smith, but consider Morpheus; his superior Commander Lock (Harry Lennix); the beautiful and deadly Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith), who once loved Morpheus and now is with Lock, although she explains enigmatically that some things never change; the programmer Link (Harold Perrineau); Link's wife, Zee (Nona Gaye), who has the obligatory scene where she complains he's away from home too much, and the Oracle (the late Gloria Foster, very portentous). From what we can see of the extras, the population of Zion is largely black.

  It has become commonplace for science fiction epics to feature one or two African-American stars, but we've come a long way since Billy Dee Williams in "Return of the Jedi." The Wachowski brothers use so many African Americans, I suspect, not for their box-office appeal, because the Matrix is the star of the movie, and not because they are good actors (which they are), but because to the white teenagers who are the primary audience for this movie, African-Americans embody a cool, a cachet, an authenticy. Morpheus is the power center of the movie, and Neo's role is essentially to study under him and absorb his mojo.

  The film ends with "To Be Concluded," a reminder that the third film in the trilogy arrives in November. Toward the end, there are scenes involving characters who seem pregnant with possibilities for Part 3. One is the Architect (Helmut Bakaltis), who says he designed the Matrix and revises everything Neo thinks he knows about it. Is the Architect a human, or an avatar of the Machines? The thing is, you can never know for sure. He seems to hint that when you strip away one level of false virtual reality, you find another level beneath. Maybe everything so far is several levels up?

  Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time tells the story of a cosmologist whose speech is interrupted by a little old lady who informs him that the universe rests on the back of a turtle. "Ah, yes, madame," the scientist replies, "but what does the turtle rest on?" The old lady shoots back: "You can't trick me, young man. It's nothing but turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down."

  Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.
• 

  teejay

  White love is consecrated, sacred, but black love is lewd and profane? Hmmm. -- Dedalus

  Hard to miss that, Dedalus. Even the music helped symbolize the Heavenly love between neo and trinity as opposed to the more debased, gutteral love of the (black) masses. I'm thinking... "whatever".
• 

  dedalus

  Even the music helped symbolize the Heavenly love between neo and trinity ...

  Techno?

  Dedalus
• 

  SYN

  Well, Morpheus definitely fights better than Neo, that's for sure. He has all the COOL moves LOL, and the way he handles that sword at the end is just the coolest
• 

  Nickey

  dedalus,

  I knew there was some racism goin' on!
• 

  avishai

  Hard to miss that, Dedalus. Even the music helped symbolize the Heavenly love between neo and trinity as opposed to the more debased, gutteral love of the (black) masses. I'm thinking... "whatever".

  The dance scene just reminded me of the burning man festival. So closely someone on the staff has to have been there.