The Matrix Reloaded - My Review
05-17-03, 02:39 PM
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The Matrix Reloaded - My Review
In 1999, a movie was released that would garner a cult following that hasn't stopped growing since. That movie was The Matrix. The movie combined gravity-defying martial arts, over-the-top, never-before seen special effects, and a premise that proved resoundingly effective in inducing a cerebral wet dream for philosophy junkies.
What is The Matrix? Put simply, it is that which we perceive as reality, and that reality is nothing more than a dream world concoted by super, artificially intelligent machines, in an effort to keep us oblivious to the truth:
Our bodies are being used as a natural power source to keep the machines alive, hundreds of years in the future, from what we are being led to believe is present day 2003. That which we perceive as our physical bodies is nothing more than a digital representation of our physical selves. Worse, we were never actually born. We were grown and harvested.
Remove the veil that is The Matrix, and we see the world for what it truly is:
A post-apocolyptic landscape ruled by machines.
I have lost count of the number of times I've watched my DVD copy of The Matrix. It is absolutely that good.
Fast forward four years later, and The Matrix Reloaded has arrived at last. The movie picks up 6 months after the events of the first film. Several hundred more people have been 'unplugged' from the Matrix, and the machines are now boring down toward Zion - the only remaining human city on Earth, located several miles under the surface - in a final attempt to destroy Zion, and exterminate the human race once and for all.
The action takes several minutes to pick up, but once it does, the eye candy is delivered in spades. Unfortunately, the eye candy is about the only thing The Matrix Reloaded has going for it. Worse, it leaves one feeling a sense of been-there-done-that, which winds up inadvertantly lifting the veil from the script to reveal plot holes that are too blatant to be ignored. To add insult to injury, the plot holes can be traced back to the original film. We were simply too dazzled by the special effects to notice them:
* Injuries in the Matrix cause injuries in real life
If you want to break my leg or rupture my internal organs, you have to hit me with something.
* Déjà vu
During one scene in The Matrix, Neo sees a cat walk by, then sees the exact same event again, like an instant replay, and says, "Déjà vu." It is then explained that déjà vu is a glitch in the Matrix.
Déjà vu is a wholly mental phenomenon; an odd sense that you've been somewhere or done or seen something before, when you know you couldn't possibly have. It is not the repeated perception of something. Additionally, since the Matrix only controls sensory perceptions, not thoughts, real déjà vu couldn't possibly be a glitch in the Matrix.
* If one can violate the rules of the Matrix by simply willing it, then the machines are terrible software engineers.
In any decent client-server system, all security is done on the server side, where actions attempted by clients are carefully checked against their list of allowable actions. If the Matrix was properly configured, the physics-defying antics of Neo and his friends would be quite impossible.
* The Matrix is our false reality.
The purpose of the Matrix is to convince us that what we perceive as reality is truly reality. Nothing is real, yet, we cannot possibly know that until we are 'unplugged'. To that end, one significant question demands an answer that we have yet to be given:
Why do none of the earth-shattering, over-the-top action sequences that take place within the Matrix seem to have any visible effect on the reactions of those civilians who are still part of the system? Imagine yourself on a freeway one morning, and you see a well-groomed man in a three-piece suit climb out of a car and leap onto the hood of another, competely crushing the front end of the car, causing it to flip over several times, resulting a multi-car collision. Would that not cause considerable upset among other civilians traveling on the same highway?
Clearly, it's not a case of people being conditioned to accept such extraordinary feats as normal, because, when Neo was first unplugged, one of the primary tasks he had to accomplish was to learn to believe that he could perform such super-human feats while in the Matrix. If these feats were thought to be routine by the people living in the Matrix - though unaware of it (ie those who've not yet been unplugged) - then there would be no need for someone to develop the belief that they can do anything since they would already assume that they could.
Finally, and briefly, I found Reloaded far too preachy, and meandered too long on some of the philosophical concepts. While I didn't find it difficult to wrap my head around some of those concepts, there were several occasions during the movie that I found myself thinking, "Ok, I get the point! Move on!"
For the record, I didn't go expecting to be disappointed. In fact, I was a full hour and 15 minutes early enough to be 10th in a line of nearly 100 people by the time the doors opened. I fully expected it to blow even X2 away.
I wasn't looking for flaws or plot holes. What happened to me is that I became so overwhelmed with the FX that I started losing touch with the film and began noticing the holes, and it was those aspects of the movie that wound up impacting me most in what I thought of the movie.
Case in point: One of the more undeniably spectacular sequences in the movie involves Agent Smith. Though seemingly "deleted" at the end of The Matrix, Smith has somehow survived due to his connection with Neo. What’s more, he has developed the power to replicate himself. When Smith catches up with Neo, the result is an all-out brawl in which Neo must take on over 100 Agent Smiths at once. The effects in this scene are truly stunning, and the movie starts being fun again. The battle is marred only by Neo’s solution for ending it, which left me wondering why he just didn’t do it earlier.
I enjoyed Reloaded, somewhat, and am looking forward to the conclusion of the trilogy, but it is definitely not the Sci-Fi/Action blockbuster of the year - or the great follow-up to the original - that I was hoping it would be.
What is The Matrix? Put simply, it is that which we perceive as reality, and that reality is nothing more than a dream world concoted by super, artificially intelligent machines, in an effort to keep us oblivious to the truth:
Our bodies are being used as a natural power source to keep the machines alive, hundreds of years in the future, from what we are being led to believe is present day 2003. That which we perceive as our physical bodies is nothing more than a digital representation of our physical selves. Worse, we were never actually born. We were grown and harvested.
Remove the veil that is The Matrix, and we see the world for what it truly is:
A post-apocolyptic landscape ruled by machines.
I have lost count of the number of times I've watched my DVD copy of The Matrix. It is absolutely that good.
Fast forward four years later, and The Matrix Reloaded has arrived at last. The movie picks up 6 months after the events of the first film. Several hundred more people have been 'unplugged' from the Matrix, and the machines are now boring down toward Zion - the only remaining human city on Earth, located several miles under the surface - in a final attempt to destroy Zion, and exterminate the human race once and for all.
The action takes several minutes to pick up, but once it does, the eye candy is delivered in spades. Unfortunately, the eye candy is about the only thing The Matrix Reloaded has going for it. Worse, it leaves one feeling a sense of been-there-done-that, which winds up inadvertantly lifting the veil from the script to reveal plot holes that are too blatant to be ignored. To add insult to injury, the plot holes can be traced back to the original film. We were simply too dazzled by the special effects to notice them:
* Injuries in the Matrix cause injuries in real life
If you want to break my leg or rupture my internal organs, you have to hit me with something.
* Déjà vu
During one scene in The Matrix, Neo sees a cat walk by, then sees the exact same event again, like an instant replay, and says, "Déjà vu." It is then explained that déjà vu is a glitch in the Matrix.
Déjà vu is a wholly mental phenomenon; an odd sense that you've been somewhere or done or seen something before, when you know you couldn't possibly have. It is not the repeated perception of something. Additionally, since the Matrix only controls sensory perceptions, not thoughts, real déjà vu couldn't possibly be a glitch in the Matrix.
* If one can violate the rules of the Matrix by simply willing it, then the machines are terrible software engineers.
In any decent client-server system, all security is done on the server side, where actions attempted by clients are carefully checked against their list of allowable actions. If the Matrix was properly configured, the physics-defying antics of Neo and his friends would be quite impossible.
* The Matrix is our false reality.
The purpose of the Matrix is to convince us that what we perceive as reality is truly reality. Nothing is real, yet, we cannot possibly know that until we are 'unplugged'. To that end, one significant question demands an answer that we have yet to be given:
Why do none of the earth-shattering, over-the-top action sequences that take place within the Matrix seem to have any visible effect on the reactions of those civilians who are still part of the system? Imagine yourself on a freeway one morning, and you see a well-groomed man in a three-piece suit climb out of a car and leap onto the hood of another, competely crushing the front end of the car, causing it to flip over several times, resulting a multi-car collision. Would that not cause considerable upset among other civilians traveling on the same highway?
Clearly, it's not a case of people being conditioned to accept such extraordinary feats as normal, because, when Neo was first unplugged, one of the primary tasks he had to accomplish was to learn to believe that he could perform such super-human feats while in the Matrix. If these feats were thought to be routine by the people living in the Matrix - though unaware of it (ie those who've not yet been unplugged) - then there would be no need for someone to develop the belief that they can do anything since they would already assume that they could.
Finally, and briefly, I found Reloaded far too preachy, and meandered too long on some of the philosophical concepts. While I didn't find it difficult to wrap my head around some of those concepts, there were several occasions during the movie that I found myself thinking, "Ok, I get the point! Move on!"
For the record, I didn't go expecting to be disappointed. In fact, I was a full hour and 15 minutes early enough to be 10th in a line of nearly 100 people by the time the doors opened. I fully expected it to blow even X2 away.
I wasn't looking for flaws or plot holes. What happened to me is that I became so overwhelmed with the FX that I started losing touch with the film and began noticing the holes, and it was those aspects of the movie that wound up impacting me most in what I thought of the movie.
Case in point: One of the more undeniably spectacular sequences in the movie involves Agent Smith. Though seemingly "deleted" at the end of The Matrix, Smith has somehow survived due to his connection with Neo. What’s more, he has developed the power to replicate himself. When Smith catches up with Neo, the result is an all-out brawl in which Neo must take on over 100 Agent Smiths at once. The effects in this scene are truly stunning, and the movie starts being fun again. The battle is marred only by Neo’s solution for ending it, which left me wondering why he just didn’t do it earlier.
I enjoyed Reloaded, somewhat, and am looking forward to the conclusion of the trilogy, but it is definitely not the Sci-Fi/Action blockbuster of the year - or the great follow-up to the original - that I was hoping it would be.
Last edited by Nyghtfall; 05-17-03 at 02:43 PM.
05-17-03, 02:40 PM
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Wrong forum buddy
http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/forumdi...?s=&forumid=34
http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/forumdi...?s=&forumid=34
05-17-03, 03:16 PM
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Sorry
My sincerest apologies, everyone. I didn't see the reference to the new forum before posting. If my review can be transferred over, I encourage the moderators to do so, please.
Thank you.
Thank you.
