I
first saw the trailer for the The Matrix before Analyze This, back
in 1999. It wowed the audience. It looked to me like the film was building on
the aesthetics of Alex Proyas’ Dark City, albeit with big stars and a
big budget. When it was released later that spring it was an energizing jolt of
filmmaking, updating the same mythology we’ve seen countless times before,
filtering it through state-of-the-art sci-fi and Eastern philosophy. Although I
didn’t believe it to be the best film of the year, I did feel that it should
have at least been nominated for an Academy Award. It was a defining cultural
moment of 1999 and set the bar for what was to come.
What was to come was an avalanche of rip offs and spoofs, apparently influencing
everything from Scary Movie to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The
fight scenes and “Bullet Time” effects became part of our cinematic
landscape, dooming The Matrix as a victim of its own success. As well,
digital imagery surged to the point of creating virtual worlds in films like The
Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter, to name a few.
Four years after the original, Andy and Larry Wachowski have presented their
follow-up: The Matrix Reloaded. The Matrix Reloaded is not a very
good film. It features no plot, wooden performances of underwritten characters,
tin dialogue and boring, overdone action sequences. To make matters worse, the
filmmakers genuinely believe that they’re philosophers.
I knew things were going to be shaky when I read the press notes, which include
producer Joel Silver proclaiming: “These guys didn’t just raise the bar for
action filmmaking, for visionary storytelling, for what is visually possible --
they obliterated it.” The first 30 minutes proceeded to play like a bad
1950’s biblical epic translated to sci-fi.
Whereas the original felt fresh and cutting-edge, Reloaded seems bloated
and self-important. Characters walk around heralding pseudo-intellectual ideas
in an attempt to raise the film’s happenings to profundity. Meanwhile, the
drama of Neo (Keanu Reeves) trying to save humanity from the machines is
deficient, because the Wachowski’s have failed to dramatize a humanity worth
saving. The people in this film are as artificial as their computer counterparts
and thus illicit no sympathy.
This drags into the action sequences where it’s particularly destructive. How
am I supposed to care about the warriors when I’m consciously aware that
it’s all digital -- and LOOKS digital? It’s about as engrossing as watching
a video game playing against itself.
There are plenty of red herrings throughout, which are easy to pick apart. For
instance, when Neo meets the creator of The Matrix, he’s told that he’s not
The One. He’s just a glitch and there have been many Neos before him -- and to
be sure, we’re shown a multitude of screens displaying that. However, unless
the machines have been cloning humans in the real world, something
unsubstantiated, how could this be? Every Neo looks the same, and the machine
versions of all the characters look exactly like they do in the real world, so
that would suggest that even the real world isn’t the real world -- otherwise
there would be a physical record of other Neos who looked exactly like this one.
Furthermore, Neo is told that either he can save humanity or try to save Trinity
(Carrie-Anne Moss), but that the latter is foolish because she dies anyhow --
yet he does save her. And in a way that’s laughably absurd and seems to break
any established rules. But then again, the Wachowski’s are trying to make Neo
into another Jesus Christ (he even flies like Superman),
so anything’s possible.
But back to the multiple Neo thing -- perhaps, being that we see Agent Smith
(Hugo Weaving) rapidly multiplying himself, this is really just a set-up for The
Matrix Revolutions, where we might see a battle between multiple Neos and Agent
Smiths.
What the Wachowski’s are missing in all of their overdone action and
philosophizing is that by making Neo superhuman, with the ability to do just
about anything, they’ve effectively neutralized not only their drama, but
their ideas. Their ideas seem to revolve around the concept of choice. If Neo
can bring people back to life, then they’ve negated the underlying root of all
choice: mortality. So, what’s the ultimate conclusion? By destroying The
Matrix he’ll have to live as a mortal in the real world? How original and
deep!
The success of the original didn’t lie in what was done, so much as how it was
done. Here, all we’ve got is how it was done. More speed-ramping. More kung
fu. More jumping in the air like Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid. Even
Bill Pope’s cinematography seemed tighter and better choreographed the first
time -- here, everything is about poses. (They’ve even ripped off the touch
screen designs from last year’s Minority Report.)
The only sequence that felt fresh involved a software designer (Lambert Wilson)
and his wife (Monica Bellucci). Their marital cat and mouse was witty and gave
the film a bit of psychology and character. Yet it quickly gave way to more
action.
The Wachowski’s have refrained from all press since their first feature Bound.
It seems like they’re trying to create a Kubrickian image for themselves by
letting their work speak for itself. I think it’s because their work has
nothing to say and, therefore, they have nothing to say. At least they haven’t
embarrassed themselves by talking religion with Bill Moyers, like George Lucas
did. It’ll still do an easy $300 million.
GRADE: C
New Article: DIGITAL RAGE
-Copyright
2003 by Jamie Stuart