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May 19, 2003

Reloaded Reflections

Like every good American, I popped out to the mutliplex this weekend to catch ‘The Matrix Reloaded‘. My trip was hardly optional; in one of the great marketing strategies of all time, producer Joel Silver managed to sneak in a ‘mandatory attendance’ clause into The Patriot Act last year. (Who says Hollywood and the Bush administration can’t get along?) Sadly, the Wachowski brothers appear to have replaced the original movie’s grandeur with a their own brand of ‘shock and awe’.

The Wachowski brothers managed to hit many of the same notes as they did in their groundbreaking original installment of ‘The Matrix’. Leather-clad cast? Check. Wire-fu? Check. Unintentional laughter derived from a Keanu Reeves line delivery? Check, check, and check. Something very important, however, did not carry over.

Amidst the roughly 3,421 literary references of the first film, Lewis Caroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’ take center-stage through the first third of the movie. From the white rabbit down to Neo’s literal absorption into a mirror, the film taps into a world beyond our normal sensory comprehension. As audience members, we experienced Neo’s confused perspective on how, above, to feel. The movie called upon both Neo and the audience to re-examine nothing less than our everyday sensory interactions with the world around us.

‘The Matrix Reloaded’, however, offers only a unidirectional mirror. It’s an extremely beautiful, and often times thrilling reflection, but it no longer allows us entry. Only our sense of sight is allowed free reign in the sequel. It’s entirely surface.

I revisited the original movie over the weekend as a primer for my state-mandated attendance for ‘Reloaded’. I was struck, above all, by the scope of the project. Not by its size, but rather, by its intimacy. It’s hard to think of what’s largely considered a special effects landmark as ‘intimate’, but by and large, it’s a philosophical treatise disguised as an amalgamation of anime, kung-fu films, and Playstation. Ideas are as important as visuals in this first installment, if not more so. The visuals are important, but serve the story.

Here, the ‘Playstation’ element looms larger than ever. Why does Neo fight 100-plus version of the nefarious Agent Smith? Because…well, it looks cool, right? And it allows Neo many wire-fu combinations to be achieved through complex button-combinations on your PS2 console. Indeed, Neo’s ultimate conflict in the movie is, in essence, whether he should hit the ‘Reset’ button for Zion. Having the movie completely upend the very notion of ‘The One"‘s function is one of its strongest points. However, to frame it within the context of a worldwide reboot cheapens the impact. It will be fun for gamers; it is bound to be frustrating for moviegoers.

This computer-generated world is indeed gorgeously designed, but designed to the point that one must step back and admire it from a distance. We cannot, as Neo did in the first installment, reach out and try to touch the surface of the image and see what’s behind it. We are encouraged by the very size of the project to stay quite far from the events on the screen and admire…not appreciate. The former can be achieved through the mind, but only the heart can achieve the latter.

Computer-generated (CG) effects are here to stay; there’s no point in arguing the merits of their place in the cinematic world. However, movies such as ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘X2: X-Men United’ employ CG and yet still manage to emotionally connect with audiences. Surely, it’s not an ‘either/or’ scenario. What’s the secret? Where’s the blueprint on how to do a successful, CG-driven movie that can connect with not only the mind, but the heart as well?

The blueprint lies in ‘Titanic’. Say what you will about the film’s artistic integrity; the love story, not a sinking ship, helped gross the film over $1 billion in ticket sales. Something about the DiCaprio/Winslet romance touched a majority of moviegoers and drove them again and again to see the film. In ‘Reloaded’, we see a lot of Neo/Trinity smooching, but never really know why they consummate their relationship in Zion. True love? A ‘No Dating’ policy on the Nebucadnezzar? The movie doesn’t tell us, Once again, we as an audience are denied an entry point through which we could emotionally connect to what’s occurring onscreen.

‘Lord of the Rings’ works largely because the movie takes its time to establish Hobbiton as a place worth saving. Especially in the DVD ‘Extended Edition’, we get to know it’s inhabitants, its culture, its industry. Through Bilbo’s party, we see why Frodo takes on the burden of the Ring: it’s a community (and by extension a world) worth saving.

Now, contrast Hobbiton with Zion. In the first movie, Zion took on mythic proportions in the minds of the audience, due to its invisibility. In ‘Reloaded’, we finally see what the characters are fighting to save. Yet all we’re allowed to see is largely a topographical, not anthropological, view of Zion. We see its sheer scope; we visit its engineering floors; we see the large cave halls. We sense its size without ever sensing its heart.


What we don’t see, in other words, is a city worth saving. Neo and his compatriots are, by and large, outside of this city, even within its borders. They shy away from virtually every inhabitant. (Indeed, Neo and Trinity may be the only two members of Zion not at the rally.) If the protagonists seem so uninterested in the city, why should we as an audience care for it either? By the time the Nebucadnezzar departs, all we know really about Zion is that its citizens, by and large, dance really poorly.

In the character of Persephone, played by Monica Bellucci, we have perhaps the best metaphor for the ‘Reloaded’ audience. In order to give Neo the Keymaker, she asks only for a kiss…a kiss to remind her how to feel. This type of sensory desire mirrors that of the audience…by having a work of art which only engages on the visual level, it prevents the audience from going through the looking glass of the screen and truly engaging with the picture. They, too, long to feel inside this world again.

$95 million in opening-week ticket sales means many people must have admired the movie; I just wonder how many of them appreciated it.

Posted by Ryan McGee at May 19, 2003 01:33 PM

Comments

I totally agree. The eye candy alone is worth the price of admission, however I did leave with a deepseated need for more. Granted, Trinity is superhot, and well, I can understand a certain want of privacy, but that seemed to be a major underlying theme in the whole Zion scene. I might could see that Neo, in his dreams having the thought of losing her, might hold on with all he's got, but she doesn't have such motivation.

The fight scenes are extraordinary, but somewhat less convincing than the one on one that occured for the most part in the first movie. The Neo/Agent Smith conflict in the first movie was to me a pivotal point, however it seems to be overloaded in this movie to the point of being somewhat ridiculous. Sometimes less is more.

Posted by: Derek at May 19, 2003 01:55 PM

Few points:

* I don't think Neo and Trinity getting it on was in any way supposed to be the FIRST time they got it on. After all, they've even been at Zion before in the last six months. I took it as more like sailors coming into port after a few months -- it's their first time in awhile where they wouldn't be disturbed by sudden Sentinel attacks. Hence, time to get it on.

* You forgot one important part of Zion: nipples... lots and lots of nipples. Still, your point is pretty well taken. Most of the Zion folks we met (Niobe, the Commander, the Councillor, Cornell West) were stiffs. Inside the Matrix, you have a world close to our own, its rules understandable. And where it differs from our own, it's because it's cooler, with the leather, the cool lighting, the rampant gun-play, etc. Outside the Matrix, everyone wears ratty sweaters and seems stressed. Not so much on the fun side... except for some reason, when they dance, they trade the ratty sweaters for see-through clothing.

* I think the whole reason Link is in the movie is that he's so much more an Everyman than anyone else. Neo was that role in the first film, but he's too active a presence in this one. Link is the decent guy, doing a good job, remaining a little skeptical who gradually gets won over by the grandeur of what he sees -- sort of the Winston in Ghostbusters figure. He's our window in, especially to remind us of how, in a world that regularly defies physics, Neo regularly does the impossible. (And considering how much "[Sharp inhalation of breath] It's a very exciting time!" was one of my beloved lines from the first film, I'm sort of shocked that I liked link significantly more than any of the now-dead crew members from the first film.) Link is a character that would never exist in a Latter Day Lucas film.

* At the viewing I saw, the Key Maker got the biggest reaction. He got the laughs, he got the "Awwws." So there are human touches, but both Link and the Key Maker are fringe characters. It's not as powerful as having your main character providing the humanity, as the first movie did.

* It's always pretty tough to end a film in medias res -- to bring the action to a complete stop and yet make it clear there's more to come. Star Trek II did it pretty well, X2 does a great job, Fellowship did a great job, Two Towers did sort of an Eh job, Empire strikes back was also pretty good. Matrix Reloaded does a super-sloppy job. Four major plot points crammed into the last 3-4 minutes with no set-up or explanation. It felt like a May cliffhanger for a TV show. I was expecting J.R. to be shot.

* The big problem with CGI is because you can create other worlds, filmmakers expect just making the world will be enough. And sometimes, it is, but only for a few seconds. The first Coruscant scene in Phantom Menace was pretty cool, but only for a few seconds. All subsequent scenes, and all the scenes in Attack of the Fetts just didn't have the same "Whoa!" feeling. Zion was sort of like that too -- you seen one huge futuristic city, you seen 'em all. The shots of the Nebucadnezzar in action were the least interesting CGI shots of the first film. I still stick by about 75% of the fight sequence being both cool and important to the story for "Reloaded," but the only time setting alone is going to carry a movie is in a Merchant Ivory film.

Posted by: Commander Foley at May 19, 2003 02:04 PM

So much of this movie could have been condensed. Did we need the 15 minute Agent Smith fight scene - one that left me begging to see a real actor on screen? The premise was neat on some of the effects, but were they necessary at all?

Ryan, I totally agree with you about it not serving the story. Very pretty to look at, but so obviously CGI that I didn't care.

And how much of the dialog was repeated to drive into our heads "Choice."
Yeah, got it the first time, and the second. Hey, the third, too. The 15th time? Geez, shut up already!

Posted by: Cat at May 19, 2003 02:05 PM

The characters that had the most life were, ironically, Agent Smith, the Keymaker, and the French dude. Two were programs, and the last one, (I think), is a Neo-type hacker who chooses pleasure over morality. That sorta says something when the computer programs have more personality than the Dirty Foot People.

Link is indeed the literally "link" to humanity, but those scenes were terrible with his girlfriend. Or wife. Who was she? We dunno. I understand the idea, just don't like the execution. Like most college theatre productions...neat ideas in theory, but the actual event leaves me a bit non-plussed.

Posted by: ryan at May 19, 2003 02:25 PM

DAMN. Remind me never to link to one of my reviews. While I seem to play to the "See Spot Run" crowd your review was excellent without giving anything away.

Bravo. I'm mad jealous, but bravo.

Posted by: A.J. at May 19, 2003 07:25 PM

Posted by: josh at May 20, 2003 12:35 AM

and if you want some neat info on the first one try this http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0509/p16s01-almo.html

Posted by: josh at May 20, 2003 12:40 AM

When I say the second one is all surface, I am talking about visually, not intellectually. There are some ideas behind the movie, to be sure, albeit amazingly muddled ones, about fate versus self-determinism. However, these ideas by and large are subsumed within the visuals, whereas in the first installment, ideas and visuals stood on equal ground.

Posted by: ryan at May 20, 2003 09:07 AM

I loved this review, Ryan. I think you hit quite a few things on the head with it, I also reviewed it here, so give me an idea of what you think eh?

Everyone has so much to say about the movie but I think what made it so "comment" worthy was the fact they crammed in so much at such small points of the movie...

Posted by: Choz* at May 23, 2003 12:36 PM

Consider the agent smith quote from the first film (paraphrased and perhaps less than 100% accurate, but bear with me):

every mammal on this planet develops an equilibrium with its enviroment...(we) multiply until every resource is consumed...(we) are a virus...

In being defeated, smith suffers a major blow to his sense of purpose, and inadvertently, his ego. the link he talks about isn't so much a link with the one as a link he develops with humanity. Hence, mindles self replication, as he is in fact not so far from human now.

Granted, there was an element of "hey everyone, look at me!" ego stroking on the part of the directors in the smith fight in reloaded, but I still think they wanted to convey a certain something more than the cool factor.

Posted by: me at October 22, 2003 11:13 PM