Agent Smith, Definitely...
Nov. 8th, 2003 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenOkay, now that the majority of the people who might see this have seen The Matrix Revolutions, I feel I can post how I feel/felt about the ending to the series I've been more obsessed with than any other.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! It's over! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Ahem.
I'm glad I got to see The Matrix Revolutions once before I went with FAS. We're not a quiet bunch, and I don't think I would have known what to make of it at all if it had been my first time. I went to Revolutions as part of a three-movie showing at the Village Cinemas on Bourke St. I think this is possibly why, when the curtain closed on Revs, I was, well, furious. I can honestly say I've never been...mad at a movie before. I've seen some stinkers (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comes to mind), but I've never been just outraged by a movie. I think it's the investment I put into the series, the faith (sorely tested faith--me and Morpheus are like this now) I had in the Wachowskis to end it all gracefully.
Getting ahead of myself, so I'll back up. I'm one of a very few people I know who liked Reloaded at all. The problem with a sequel to The Matrix is maintaining any sense of surprise. Everything that made The Matrix original--the fight scenes, the CGI, the bullet-time, the fashion, the score, the soundtrack's spot-on inclusion, the mystery of what the Matrix was--has been cheapened in the four years since the movie came out. Everyone who can afford a modest effects budget does the bullet-time slo-mo these days. The fashion was just reused in Underworld, among others, and the actor-cum-stuntman, doing his/her own stunts is getting more and more popular. The Matrix Reloaded had a lot working against it, but I think it succeeded admirably. The philosophy was more blatant only because people went crazy on the first one scouring the references and knew that they'd be in the next ones--it's not subtle, there's no way it can be if people are already primed to look for it. But Reloaded did something neat which was to actually create more mystery, more questions, returning the series to where The Matrix began. People liked The Matrix for having to figure out the riddle as you went along, for being exposed to the secret; once the secret's out, what next? Reloaded did well to pat us on the back and say 'that's so cute, you think you've got it!' then throw us for a total loop. It added depth, dimensions, possibilities, all of them seeming to stem from this fundamental question of what determined soul/consciousness/reality.
Revolutions...didn't follow up on any of it, I don't think. I left the theater so angry I might have cried. The second time around, however, I warmed up to it. The first time out, I had a hard time believing that the movie "fit" into the text of the other two. I couldn't remember how it began, for a start, which is to say its beginning was inauspicious and a tad slow, even if funny. Matrix and Reloaded had great openers, a jump into action that drew you in. Revolutions just sorta dropped you next to people in the real world not doing much of anything that you could identify right off. The movie, as a film, not necessarily as a sequel, a part of this franchise, but just as a piece of film art, wasn't well constructed, either. The beginning was too rushed--things jumped from A to B to C as if the Wachowskis had forgotten to erase part of their branching ideas for what could happen when they shot the film.
An example: getting Neo back. Okay, he's trapped. Seraph calls: Go to the Oracle. Oracle says: go with Seraph. Seraph says: catch Train Man. They fail, Neo can't get to the train, now the Merovingian knows where he is. Seraph: let's go back to the Oracle. Trinity: No, let's go to the Merovingian. Merovingian: Do this, get Neo back. Trinity: No. They get Neo back, go to take Neo out. Neo: no, wait, back to the Oracle.
See what I mean? There's all this consulting just to explain information that was contained in Enter the Matrix. It's a shame. There's no way to do this putting the story in a game thing without it risking alienating the audience who didn't play it and annoying the piss out of someone (LIKE ME) who has played it. Instead, people are pissed things were left out of Reloaded and they explained what was missing in Revolutions anyway (sort of--it was nicely skipped over how both Niobe and Ghost in the game would have been seeing the Oracle differently, in favor of just Niobe's version, I guess--they sure as hell didn't explain what she told Ghost about why the child--Sati, as we learn--was important at all). So much exposition. I can't believe people thought it was better than Reloaded on that score. Reloaded might have had more dialogue (which I doubt, but I will concede if it's true), but it was spaced out. Revolutions smacks you hard across the face with the big, fat, smelly herring of exposition (even when it was good or clever, like Rama-Kandra's discussion of karma and love, which I rather liked), then just brings it up again in bits later (the constant use of the word 'belief' made me want to scream at times).
So, it was all talk, even when Trinity, Morpheus, and Seraph were kicking ass in the coat check at Club Hell. And just like that, in the space of no time at all, Neo's fixed. He wants out, he looks like he might start panicking about not getting out, and then bam! Trinity springs him. Reloaded scared a lot of people with Neo's sentinel-and-self deactivating act (mostly because people worried it might be used to justify a 'the real world's not real either' argument), but it's never really answered. The Oracle says it's because of the source, sure, but how? Maggie talks about Bane's scarring across the brain from Smith's download. If Neo had some of that, okay, I can see a bullshit reason for his abilities, but there's not really even so much as that. And then when he blows up the bombs at the machine city--he can blow up thousands of those but not a few (no more than 15 I'd say) sentinels? Please. And Sati? She's supposed to be soooooo important, but she's really just, well, another friggin' child actor (the only thing I give her is the way she says Neo's name---Nay-o. I liked that, but liking her accent and her acting/her purpose is another matter--in fact, she has no purpose, her parents said so, so how come she's important again?).
The war in Zion. Pretty good, actually. I liked Charlie, Zee's partner--closest believable impersonation of Ellen Ripley pulled off ever since, well, Ellen Ripley. Mifune was cool, can't help it--he played an Uruk-hai in The Two Towers, according to his filmography, so yeah, that gives him bonus points. I liked his speech, too, it was simple (unlike so many others), and his attitude towards the kid was believably menacing at first (and man, did his death suck, but points again for the neat-o makeup). Lock was an asshole, but I think I understood him better--he's in an unlikeable position of having to do what will save the people and hopefully win but he doesn't get to be the heroic captain coming in last minute to blow the EMP. He's got a thankless job, so I feel a touch more appreciative, even as I realize he's an asshole. Liked the big mechas, the APUs (was it just me, or did it almost look like they were going to start doing the Haka when they all stepped to the side when activated? maybe it's just me), nice anime-reference touch there. Loved the Sentinels. They're perhaps the most fascinating design and application of artificial intelligence to structure. AI works like a hive mind, and the sentinels behaved like worker/warrior bees (even with the buzzing!)--there is no one mind-one body like with people, there's just a goal that you reach by everyone working at it and the goal passes to the next structure instead of dying with one sentinel that's struck down. It's amazing, and here's where they used the Animatrix reference really well--the AI never started the war, they were attacked first by greedy humans. The war they won because they had no limitations, no fear, they just kept moving for a cause. They have an adavantage over humans, and they exploit it. It's really quite different, and it illuminated for me that age-old problem of trying to understand people who think differently--there is no fame in the AI world, no 'tall poppies.' I was always scared of the idea of the Borg from Star Trek because of the way they operated; you were just a unit of a many, not you. It scares us because we're taught we're all individuals and to strive for that. I managed to find empathy with the machine-way when you see how truly effective it is.
Then there's the bad in Zion--namely the Kid. I punched Kate in the arm for saying she liked him. That was the worst use of anything from The Animatrix--the kid saying "Neo, I believe." That didn't even work in his friggin chapter of Animatrix, it just came out of nowhere (he'd never met Neo, didn't know it was Neo to whom he was talking when Neo warned him he needed to escape). The Kid is just friggin annoying. Good for him, he learned to fight, etc etc. But so did Zee, even if her whole reason was as eye-rollingly annoying as anything else (okay okay, I get it, I give in, love rules, okay!? Happy now!?!) Zee was better for not having the big-ass machine to protect her and facing off with Charlie against the sentinels anyway. Still not a Zee fan.
The Good/Bad Lesser Characters Rap up:
Morpheus----Larry Fishburne should be pissed. He got all crazy in Reloaded, but it looked like they forgot he was a captain and an ass-kicked in this one. I think he missed hitting anyone with his guns in Club Hell, didn't have much fighting there at all, and Niobe made him her bitch when she was flying. Hello? Character assassination? Fine, he's in doubt, but suddenly he's Neo's total disciple? I don't think so, not Morpheus. In Reloaded, he was still John the Baptist, spreading the word. He didn't deserve to have his feet cut from under him, but he definitely didn't deserve to have no confidence or faith at all--and certainly not to have everyone dump shit on him all the time.
Niobe----You go girl. She kicked ass and took names with the flying, and her telling off of Rolland was great. She wasn't a bitch, or a sassy black chick (yay for no racial stereotyping), she just was kick-ass. Did not like her being a Neo supporter so , so much because, seeing as Neo barely knows anything about her, she really doesn't have anything to know about him either. (again, with the belief thing--if the Oracle told her she could help Neo or not, fine, help him, but don't lie and say you get it or you believe in someone you barely know if you're not buying the One story)
Link---inoffensive, unnecessary, still no Tank in terms of his chuminess with the crew, but pretty funny
Oracle----not as bad as I feared. She was pretty severe in the game, less fun than Gloria Foster, less fun here, but she's still good if different. I would have killed to have seen Gloria Foster in that last scene with the Architect though, she would have rocked that guy's world. Also, loved the Architect--another very put-upon character who just does what he was meant to do. Can't fault him for anything but his overly huge vocabulary.
Seraph----Wanted more of him. He's got a good, toned-down look without losing any element of cool. Did not like his solution to the Smith invasion of hiding in a bathroom. Hello, rooftops?
Merv (SNERK!!!!) and Persephone---If it weren't for Trinity's line and the Merovingian's campy smarmy-ness, they would have been entirely pointless. As was, they were just mostly pointless. Liked his outfit, loathed hers--it's like they realized that there was all of one actress in the films who had a chest size larger than A-cup and decided to make the most of it at all times. Like it was in her contract or something.
The Majors:
I cannot say enough about Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. The three Matrix films do not really fit together as neatly as a trilogy should. The Matrix stands on its own, with the sequels almost like commentary, like remakes. The sequels feel to me as attached to the original as the prequels to Star Wars do to that trilogy; it's more like a fan-made commentary than part of the grand text of the original. However, I can see how all three are meant to be connected, which means, if you must consider them all together, there has to be something uniting three very different feeling movies. I think that it's Agent Smith. He's just too perfect for words. In the beginning, there was Smith, at the end, there will be, too. He starts off so cranky, so willing to do whatever he has to eliminate his problems. He moves on to having still more problems--he's not only not away from humans, he's escaped into one and has many of himself, and, I think, a serious grudge problem with Neo. He finishes by embracing his power as a means of getting his revenge--his line "Is it over?" to himself, the last self he can make because the last person who was still himself in the Matrix, Neo, has let himself be absorbed.
Hugo's been there, man, he's been there 100% the whole time. He scared the pants off people with his chill demeanor in the first, and then he'd turn around, cross his legs, play with his cufflinks and glasses, and, very genially, tell humans they were a dying race of lower lifeforms as if this were the most novel and funny thing he had just realized about the world. It's his half smile, I think, and he just lives it up. "I'm sorry, this is a dead end" and "Still using all the muscles except the one that really matters?" were just fantastic lines that might have been stupid if not for Hugo Weaving (ditto for "me me me" and "me, too", and most of his lines in Reloaded). Agent Smith was there again for Revolutions, taking a much needed piss out of the whole philosophy gone mad talk; I loved how a copy of himself made fun of the Oracle's words to Sati with Hugo's great reading and SMILE at "Cookies need love like everything does!" The slapping away of the plate to see if he could get a rise out of the Oracle, trying to get her to admit the paradox of choice and free will versus her vision of the future. Then, in a complete 180, when the Oracle calls him a bastard, the utter recriminating seriousness of "You would know, Mom" and his down-to business politeness with the "Yes, ma'am" as he absorbs her.
He keeps nagging everyone to justify their exposition and lofty ideas, he's such a challenge to the romanticism of the rest of the characters; I think he just shined with absolute radiance when he's beaten Neo, and asks why Neo keeps getting up. Neo's answer seems pathetic compared to just how logical Smith's doubt and derision sounds---"Is it for love? Do you even know?" Neo chooses to fight? Fine, Smith chooses to kick his ass. I actually felt bad for Smith when he asks "Is it over?" because he seems so despondant, as if he can finally, when there is no one else but him, admit that he's just wanted it to be over, to not have to care about revenge or life or anything. He's not so bad once you get to know him :) When he loses, he sees the self he made of Neo exploding, he's like "It's not fair" and I kinda agree. It's not quite fair. He did win, after all. Hugo Weavings' made him too much fun, too much better than anyone else to have him just deserve to lose.
I quite liked the guy who played Bane's imitations, too. He got the voice right, the inflections, the disdain ("look past the soft gelatin of these dull cow eyes"--I sometimes think Neo's eyes have that kind of look to them, no offense Keanu). I liked his revelation that Trinity is the number two person on his "You piss me off most" list. I wish he hadn't been so easy to get rid of, but he was a delightful Smith-clone for a while. But he could never top the original, even as much as I liked him. I won't hear anything bad about Hugo Weaving. Nothing. He's the best thing that ever happened to the sequels, and probably to the original as well. Everyone knows he's the one I like quoting the best because of the voice--the "Mr. Anderson"s, the virus speech, etc. Long live Hugo Weaving.
Where does that leave me with regards to the two main good characters? Trinity. Alas, poor Trinity. I'd been hearing rumors of her death in a stupid, non-combat way. It wasn't entirely stupid, though it was pretty random. In The Matrix, she was untouchable. There was a reason for Agent Smith to hate her so much; she out-soldiered Morpheus, had more determination than anyone else, and enough strength to spare to support Neo. In fact, that was the problem from the end of the first one to her death in Revolutions. Trinity was a warrior, then she was a girl-friend, and then, to quote the Bane-Smith, just Neo's "bitch." It's not true, not really, but it is at the same time. She is Neo's strength, but he only ever is her weakness, her vulnerable spot. Neo can't do anything without her--he needs her to be the One, needs her to keep going. He'd be only marginally effective without her. She, on the other hand, though she can't fight Agents, can beat them nonetheless, has survived for years on her own abilities when she isn't any better than the normal unplugged (though she is the best of them, she has no extra-human abilities, is all I mean). She does not need Neo. Not in any way, shape, or form. Yet she loves him--and it seems a bit one-sided no matter how much he clings to her (Carrie-Anne Moss does a better job of making lovey faces, I guess). So, she goes off, dies telling him that she loves him and how grateful she is for....what? Yes, he loves her (I guess we all just need Rama-Kandra and Persephone's x-ray vision to read the love in his code or something), yes he needs her. Did she have some enabling or co-dependent complex? What precisely has having Neo brought into her life? Sex? *scratches head*
I know I'm being harsh, that I'll turn around and yell at myself for being jaded and I'll be all gooey and like "but she loved him and you can't dictate that, can't make it work or stop working". I know I'll do it because I was just plain unimpressed the first time around with how they wrote her off and the second time I cried pretty hard. I was pissed that her death lost any emotional involvement on the audience's part. We only get upset when we think our characters are vulnerable. Trinity died not half a day ago and came back. It's like "okay, now what?" in terms of being afraid of her death. She seems more afraid of it then I was or anyone with me was, I think. She was scared to go with Neo. If she wasn't afraid to die, what was she afraid of? There's no way her death can have the same effect when we've seen her overcome it, even when we know there's nothing to be done this time. She wasn't even soooo badly wounded; mortally, yes, but not like the bullet to the heart from before. I put the punctures at about stomach and liver height on her torso (not high enough for the heart, tho she might have clipped a lung). Those would kill her, worse, they'd kill her slowly, so, in all fairness, she'd have time for all she told Neo while her digestive and detoxifying enzymes ate through the rest of her body and blood pooled in the peritoneal cavity (is that right? Someone check me on that, it's been a while since I've been in the lab). It just sucked that she wouldn't go down fighting. Yay, she wasn't killed by Agent Smith (okay, but c'mon, call Neo to warn him about Bane? Try focusing on one thing at a time. It's okay to be selfish some of the time there, Trin), or overtly by a machine, but just by random accident? Yes, randomness is shocking, reminds us of the awful truth of war (Charlie's death, things falling on the APUS--anyone remember that seen in Saving Private Ryan where a guy misses getting a bullet to the head 'cause it bounces of his helmet in a freak coincidence, he takes it off and bam, bullet through the brain? that was effective), but when it doesn't, when it happens outside of a fight, it's just...well, it's a write-off. It's character assassination, dimunition. Poor Trinity. She didn't deserve reduction to a one-note girl-friend role, just like Morpheus didn't deserve to be the dismissed fanatic (especially as he ended up being right).
'And then there was the One'
You all know I like Keanu Reeves. I like a lot of things he's done no one else likes--Feeling Minnesota is a great example, and, according to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bottleofred, Constantine will be another--and I forgive him a lot because of this bias. I didn't think he did too bad a job this time around. There were a few lines and scenes he played well, especially as no one ever gives him any credit and was expecting him to goof it up anyway. Trinity's death scene was one of them. Look at X-Men 2, when James Marsden has to convey, without use of his eyes, how much Jean Grey's death affects Cyclops. The pained frown, the cry he can't suppress, ending in the scene with the president where, when the Professor mentions loss, you see him swallow painfully. I know no one else liked Cyke (and I know I'm biased again), but James Marsden did a really great job with a really challenging handicap--not being able to see his eyes. I think Keanu did the same. He sounded genuinely choked up, like he didn't get (sweet, dumb Neo) why he couldn't just hang onto Trinity, tell her not to leave him. It's what made her whole speech to him worth it, to see the pain in him grow more severe because he knew not only that he was losing her but that he couldn't do anything about it this time. I half wonder if it didn't help I couldn't see his eyes. The Devil's Advocate had him mourning for his wife when she committed suicide practically right in front of him, and the distress in his face then comes back to me in memory as slightly comic, even though I remembered thinking at the time I saw that movie, that he was spot-on.
Speaking of the eyes, I thought he did extraordinarily well with the yelp of pain when he was blinded. I don't know why that stuck with me save for it was the first time we'd ever heard Neo scream in pain. Most of the time, as Smith pounds on him or Morpheus did in the first movie, he's grunted, exhaled heavily, and kept going. There was something primal about it, made me shiver all the more for the location of the mutilation (anyone who knows me knows I do not like things involving eyes; boy did Minority Report give me a squick). When Trinity hears him and goes "oh no" it seems hollow because his pain is so well conveyed. The same is true when he calls out to her after winning--he sounds thoroughly beaten and in pain and relieved and reassuring her all at the same time. It's amazing how many things he fits into that one word, her name, letting her know he needs help but is okay all at once.
I admit the early scenes are less well done. The talk with Rama-Kandra is all about Rama-Kandra, the Oracle re-visit is just another depressed and moody showing on his part, the whole "I need time" speech just irritated me. His request for a ship, how blank he looks when Trinity tells him she's going with. He says he's scared, which makes sense, but I don't think he got it quite right. It's something you just have to take for granted, like the fact he loves Trinity. He's been told more than he's said he loves her, mostly to relieve the pressure from Keanu, I imagine. A part of it is a similar reduction of Neo's character that's occurred in the sequels. This is something that's bothered me since I saw Revolutions the first time. The Matrix ended with such hope--no, not an assurance of victory (Reloaded in fact promised there wouldn't be), but this chance, this possibility that there was a new way to make the machines see reason, to maybe declare a truce without further insanity. The sequels, for all their talk of hope, have none. Neo's lost it totally. He might have been the naif, the new guy, the hopeless case with too much responsibility he didn't think he deserved (no great power to justify it, to use Spider-Man terminology), but he ended the movie with a kind of confidence, almost cocky (I love the just-hinted at smile at the audience when he puts the sunglasses on at the end). He's a one-note nervous nelly in the sequels, even though the Oracle seems to think he was less confident in the first movie. It pissed me off. Yes, he has to deal with not being super-powered all the time, but he doesn't have faith that his superpowers can even do any good, which is ridiculous.
Which is why I loved some of the times where he broke, where he wasn't unsure so much as disheartened. Very different, even if they're both depressing as hell. One of the best lines Keanu gave was when he talked to the scary head thing:
Deus Ex Machina: We don't need you! We need nothing!
Neo: If that's true, then I've made a terrible mistake and you should kill me now.
Neo knows it won't refuse, that it can't, and, even if it doesn't mean he lives/wins, he's right when he says he can stop it and he knows he's right. It's the first time he's taken any initiative or had any confidence in soooooo long. Keanu makes it sound so sure and yet so grief-stricken, even relieved all at once, I nearly clapped. Neo doesn't care if he dies--he's expecting it either way--it would be more of a relief to him to die at that point, but the grief is insurmountable---he's lost Trinity, and, if the machine were to refuse him, it would be on his head for her senseless and ultimately purposeless death.
Which leads to the so-called Superbrawl. I wish they'd saved the money. It was cool enough, especially the slow-mo punch Neo delivers, smacking through raindrops, but it wasn't really even as satisfying as the fist-fight between Neo and Bane. There's something so old-fashioned and quaint about a slugging in a movie like The Matrix; the sounds were so realistic, it really made me realize how stylized the fights in the Matrix were, and I appreciated the frailty of life outside better---the sounds, the blood, the injury, even without Neo's blinding, they were more engaging for their 'realism.' It was the end of the Superbrawl I liked best, with Neo lying in the puddle and struggling. It's been a while since we saw him so injured he could barely move, I'd say not since Smith tossed him on the train tracks in the first movie and he fell to the ground, hitting his head, and just laying there before trying to move. He did it very well, like when the Train Man shoved him, just stunned, but still trying to keep going. I may not have liked his answer to why he fought, but I did admire the fact he kept going, how he managed one last salvaging of dignity with the punch that threw Smith through the ground. He kept faltering, though, it was heart-breaking when he landed, looking unconscious as Smith triumphed. When he stood up to trick Smith into absorbing him, there was such sadness in his eyes I nearly cried again. I watched carefull this time because I couldn't remember what he did while being absorbed. He looks up and closes his eyes. Beautiful. It was like the last act of the hero who knows his work is done, a giving in, an acceptance that shows no hesitation, no worry. Brilliant.
I hated that they killed my characters. Their deaths weren't as effective since they'd died before, but I guess it had to be. I still maintain Revolutions was the worst of the three, but I'm less angry with it than I was the first time, more able to appreciate the tragedy and ignore (since forgiving is a bit of a stretch) the character assassinations, the stupid lines (oooh the Kid and that kid). I think, with time, I might even see how it makes some kind of coherence with the second one. But The Matrix will always be a victim of a dichotomy, a duplicity in its nature. It will stand alone as one of the best sci-fi, action movies of all time. It must needs also be the Bible from which the faith of the sequels is based. I think that sums up how I feel about both Reloaded and Revolutions. If The Matrix is the purity of a God, the sequels are the well-meaning but ultimately misguided faiths that try to emulate the law of that God. God will always stand on his own, but the followers cannot exist on their own, if you take my meaning.
I say, that's a great metaphor, given the imagery of the whole series (and yes, the Christ/King Arthur ending did not escape me). I must now deal with the repercussions of knowing too much. Of knowing that, though I will always wish The Matrix could have been the be-all, end-all (no matter how I lusted for new texts to expand it), I must accept in some fashion that the sequels will forever taint the way I view the first movie. They may, in time, be truly inseparable, but I doubt it. I know myself well enough to know that the original is always better than its imitators, even when the imitations are 'canon' (again, with the Episodes I and II example). I must also learn to let go because there is no new surprise to come. However I may feel about the conclusion, I must concede that it is concluded, the text that lay wide open in 1999 is now a closed book. I will try to summon up some interest in The Matrix Online or the supposed sequel they were going to make to Enter the Matrix, but I doubt, given that the major narrative has ended, that I will ever be so fannish again. Haunted, yes, but fannish? It remains to be seen.
I need a moment of silence here, so I'll update the rest of last evening later.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! It's over! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Ahem.
I'm glad I got to see The Matrix Revolutions once before I went with FAS. We're not a quiet bunch, and I don't think I would have known what to make of it at all if it had been my first time. I went to Revolutions as part of a three-movie showing at the Village Cinemas on Bourke St. I think this is possibly why, when the curtain closed on Revs, I was, well, furious. I can honestly say I've never been...mad at a movie before. I've seen some stinkers (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comes to mind), but I've never been just outraged by a movie. I think it's the investment I put into the series, the faith (sorely tested faith--me and Morpheus are like this now) I had in the Wachowskis to end it all gracefully.
Getting ahead of myself, so I'll back up. I'm one of a very few people I know who liked Reloaded at all. The problem with a sequel to The Matrix is maintaining any sense of surprise. Everything that made The Matrix original--the fight scenes, the CGI, the bullet-time, the fashion, the score, the soundtrack's spot-on inclusion, the mystery of what the Matrix was--has been cheapened in the four years since the movie came out. Everyone who can afford a modest effects budget does the bullet-time slo-mo these days. The fashion was just reused in Underworld, among others, and the actor-cum-stuntman, doing his/her own stunts is getting more and more popular. The Matrix Reloaded had a lot working against it, but I think it succeeded admirably. The philosophy was more blatant only because people went crazy on the first one scouring the references and knew that they'd be in the next ones--it's not subtle, there's no way it can be if people are already primed to look for it. But Reloaded did something neat which was to actually create more mystery, more questions, returning the series to where The Matrix began. People liked The Matrix for having to figure out the riddle as you went along, for being exposed to the secret; once the secret's out, what next? Reloaded did well to pat us on the back and say 'that's so cute, you think you've got it!' then throw us for a total loop. It added depth, dimensions, possibilities, all of them seeming to stem from this fundamental question of what determined soul/consciousness/reality.
Revolutions...didn't follow up on any of it, I don't think. I left the theater so angry I might have cried. The second time around, however, I warmed up to it. The first time out, I had a hard time believing that the movie "fit" into the text of the other two. I couldn't remember how it began, for a start, which is to say its beginning was inauspicious and a tad slow, even if funny. Matrix and Reloaded had great openers, a jump into action that drew you in. Revolutions just sorta dropped you next to people in the real world not doing much of anything that you could identify right off. The movie, as a film, not necessarily as a sequel, a part of this franchise, but just as a piece of film art, wasn't well constructed, either. The beginning was too rushed--things jumped from A to B to C as if the Wachowskis had forgotten to erase part of their branching ideas for what could happen when they shot the film.
An example: getting Neo back. Okay, he's trapped. Seraph calls: Go to the Oracle. Oracle says: go with Seraph. Seraph says: catch Train Man. They fail, Neo can't get to the train, now the Merovingian knows where he is. Seraph: let's go back to the Oracle. Trinity: No, let's go to the Merovingian. Merovingian: Do this, get Neo back. Trinity: No. They get Neo back, go to take Neo out. Neo: no, wait, back to the Oracle.
See what I mean? There's all this consulting just to explain information that was contained in Enter the Matrix. It's a shame. There's no way to do this putting the story in a game thing without it risking alienating the audience who didn't play it and annoying the piss out of someone (LIKE ME) who has played it. Instead, people are pissed things were left out of Reloaded and they explained what was missing in Revolutions anyway (sort of--it was nicely skipped over how both Niobe and Ghost in the game would have been seeing the Oracle differently, in favor of just Niobe's version, I guess--they sure as hell didn't explain what she told Ghost about why the child--Sati, as we learn--was important at all). So much exposition. I can't believe people thought it was better than Reloaded on that score. Reloaded might have had more dialogue (which I doubt, but I will concede if it's true), but it was spaced out. Revolutions smacks you hard across the face with the big, fat, smelly herring of exposition (even when it was good or clever, like Rama-Kandra's discussion of karma and love, which I rather liked), then just brings it up again in bits later (the constant use of the word 'belief' made me want to scream at times).
So, it was all talk, even when Trinity, Morpheus, and Seraph were kicking ass in the coat check at Club Hell. And just like that, in the space of no time at all, Neo's fixed. He wants out, he looks like he might start panicking about not getting out, and then bam! Trinity springs him. Reloaded scared a lot of people with Neo's sentinel-and-self deactivating act (mostly because people worried it might be used to justify a 'the real world's not real either' argument), but it's never really answered. The Oracle says it's because of the source, sure, but how? Maggie talks about Bane's scarring across the brain from Smith's download. If Neo had some of that, okay, I can see a bullshit reason for his abilities, but there's not really even so much as that. And then when he blows up the bombs at the machine city--he can blow up thousands of those but not a few (no more than 15 I'd say) sentinels? Please. And Sati? She's supposed to be soooooo important, but she's really just, well, another friggin' child actor (the only thing I give her is the way she says Neo's name---Nay-o. I liked that, but liking her accent and her acting/her purpose is another matter--in fact, she has no purpose, her parents said so, so how come she's important again?).
The war in Zion. Pretty good, actually. I liked Charlie, Zee's partner--closest believable impersonation of Ellen Ripley pulled off ever since, well, Ellen Ripley. Mifune was cool, can't help it--he played an Uruk-hai in The Two Towers, according to his filmography, so yeah, that gives him bonus points. I liked his speech, too, it was simple (unlike so many others), and his attitude towards the kid was believably menacing at first (and man, did his death suck, but points again for the neat-o makeup). Lock was an asshole, but I think I understood him better--he's in an unlikeable position of having to do what will save the people and hopefully win but he doesn't get to be the heroic captain coming in last minute to blow the EMP. He's got a thankless job, so I feel a touch more appreciative, even as I realize he's an asshole. Liked the big mechas, the APUs (was it just me, or did it almost look like they were going to start doing the Haka when they all stepped to the side when activated? maybe it's just me), nice anime-reference touch there. Loved the Sentinels. They're perhaps the most fascinating design and application of artificial intelligence to structure. AI works like a hive mind, and the sentinels behaved like worker/warrior bees (even with the buzzing!)--there is no one mind-one body like with people, there's just a goal that you reach by everyone working at it and the goal passes to the next structure instead of dying with one sentinel that's struck down. It's amazing, and here's where they used the Animatrix reference really well--the AI never started the war, they were attacked first by greedy humans. The war they won because they had no limitations, no fear, they just kept moving for a cause. They have an adavantage over humans, and they exploit it. It's really quite different, and it illuminated for me that age-old problem of trying to understand people who think differently--there is no fame in the AI world, no 'tall poppies.' I was always scared of the idea of the Borg from Star Trek because of the way they operated; you were just a unit of a many, not you. It scares us because we're taught we're all individuals and to strive for that. I managed to find empathy with the machine-way when you see how truly effective it is.
Then there's the bad in Zion--namely the Kid. I punched Kate in the arm for saying she liked him. That was the worst use of anything from The Animatrix--the kid saying "Neo, I believe." That didn't even work in his friggin chapter of Animatrix, it just came out of nowhere (he'd never met Neo, didn't know it was Neo to whom he was talking when Neo warned him he needed to escape). The Kid is just friggin annoying. Good for him, he learned to fight, etc etc. But so did Zee, even if her whole reason was as eye-rollingly annoying as anything else (okay okay, I get it, I give in, love rules, okay!? Happy now!?!) Zee was better for not having the big-ass machine to protect her and facing off with Charlie against the sentinels anyway. Still not a Zee fan.
The Good/Bad Lesser Characters Rap up:
Morpheus----Larry Fishburne should be pissed. He got all crazy in Reloaded, but it looked like they forgot he was a captain and an ass-kicked in this one. I think he missed hitting anyone with his guns in Club Hell, didn't have much fighting there at all, and Niobe made him her bitch when she was flying. Hello? Character assassination? Fine, he's in doubt, but suddenly he's Neo's total disciple? I don't think so, not Morpheus. In Reloaded, he was still John the Baptist, spreading the word. He didn't deserve to have his feet cut from under him, but he definitely didn't deserve to have no confidence or faith at all--and certainly not to have everyone dump shit on him all the time.
Niobe----You go girl. She kicked ass and took names with the flying, and her telling off of Rolland was great. She wasn't a bitch, or a sassy black chick (yay for no racial stereotyping), she just was kick-ass. Did not like her being a Neo supporter so , so much because, seeing as Neo barely knows anything about her, she really doesn't have anything to know about him either. (again, with the belief thing--if the Oracle told her she could help Neo or not, fine, help him, but don't lie and say you get it or you believe in someone you barely know if you're not buying the One story)
Link---inoffensive, unnecessary, still no Tank in terms of his chuminess with the crew, but pretty funny
Oracle----not as bad as I feared. She was pretty severe in the game, less fun than Gloria Foster, less fun here, but she's still good if different. I would have killed to have seen Gloria Foster in that last scene with the Architect though, she would have rocked that guy's world. Also, loved the Architect--another very put-upon character who just does what he was meant to do. Can't fault him for anything but his overly huge vocabulary.
Seraph----Wanted more of him. He's got a good, toned-down look without losing any element of cool. Did not like his solution to the Smith invasion of hiding in a bathroom. Hello, rooftops?
Merv (SNERK!!!!) and Persephone---If it weren't for Trinity's line and the Merovingian's campy smarmy-ness, they would have been entirely pointless. As was, they were just mostly pointless. Liked his outfit, loathed hers--it's like they realized that there was all of one actress in the films who had a chest size larger than A-cup and decided to make the most of it at all times. Like it was in her contract or something.
The Majors:
I cannot say enough about Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. The three Matrix films do not really fit together as neatly as a trilogy should. The Matrix stands on its own, with the sequels almost like commentary, like remakes. The sequels feel to me as attached to the original as the prequels to Star Wars do to that trilogy; it's more like a fan-made commentary than part of the grand text of the original. However, I can see how all three are meant to be connected, which means, if you must consider them all together, there has to be something uniting three very different feeling movies. I think that it's Agent Smith. He's just too perfect for words. In the beginning, there was Smith, at the end, there will be, too. He starts off so cranky, so willing to do whatever he has to eliminate his problems. He moves on to having still more problems--he's not only not away from humans, he's escaped into one and has many of himself, and, I think, a serious grudge problem with Neo. He finishes by embracing his power as a means of getting his revenge--his line "Is it over?" to himself, the last self he can make because the last person who was still himself in the Matrix, Neo, has let himself be absorbed.
Hugo's been there, man, he's been there 100% the whole time. He scared the pants off people with his chill demeanor in the first, and then he'd turn around, cross his legs, play with his cufflinks and glasses, and, very genially, tell humans they were a dying race of lower lifeforms as if this were the most novel and funny thing he had just realized about the world. It's his half smile, I think, and he just lives it up. "I'm sorry, this is a dead end" and "Still using all the muscles except the one that really matters?" were just fantastic lines that might have been stupid if not for Hugo Weaving (ditto for "me me me" and "me, too", and most of his lines in Reloaded). Agent Smith was there again for Revolutions, taking a much needed piss out of the whole philosophy gone mad talk; I loved how a copy of himself made fun of the Oracle's words to Sati with Hugo's great reading and SMILE at "Cookies need love like everything does!" The slapping away of the plate to see if he could get a rise out of the Oracle, trying to get her to admit the paradox of choice and free will versus her vision of the future. Then, in a complete 180, when the Oracle calls him a bastard, the utter recriminating seriousness of "You would know, Mom" and his down-to business politeness with the "Yes, ma'am" as he absorbs her.
He keeps nagging everyone to justify their exposition and lofty ideas, he's such a challenge to the romanticism of the rest of the characters; I think he just shined with absolute radiance when he's beaten Neo, and asks why Neo keeps getting up. Neo's answer seems pathetic compared to just how logical Smith's doubt and derision sounds---"Is it for love? Do you even know?" Neo chooses to fight? Fine, Smith chooses to kick his ass. I actually felt bad for Smith when he asks "Is it over?" because he seems so despondant, as if he can finally, when there is no one else but him, admit that he's just wanted it to be over, to not have to care about revenge or life or anything. He's not so bad once you get to know him :) When he loses, he sees the self he made of Neo exploding, he's like "It's not fair" and I kinda agree. It's not quite fair. He did win, after all. Hugo Weavings' made him too much fun, too much better than anyone else to have him just deserve to lose.
I quite liked the guy who played Bane's imitations, too. He got the voice right, the inflections, the disdain ("look past the soft gelatin of these dull cow eyes"--I sometimes think Neo's eyes have that kind of look to them, no offense Keanu). I liked his revelation that Trinity is the number two person on his "You piss me off most" list. I wish he hadn't been so easy to get rid of, but he was a delightful Smith-clone for a while. But he could never top the original, even as much as I liked him. I won't hear anything bad about Hugo Weaving. Nothing. He's the best thing that ever happened to the sequels, and probably to the original as well. Everyone knows he's the one I like quoting the best because of the voice--the "Mr. Anderson"s, the virus speech, etc. Long live Hugo Weaving.
Where does that leave me with regards to the two main good characters? Trinity. Alas, poor Trinity. I'd been hearing rumors of her death in a stupid, non-combat way. It wasn't entirely stupid, though it was pretty random. In The Matrix, she was untouchable. There was a reason for Agent Smith to hate her so much; she out-soldiered Morpheus, had more determination than anyone else, and enough strength to spare to support Neo. In fact, that was the problem from the end of the first one to her death in Revolutions. Trinity was a warrior, then she was a girl-friend, and then, to quote the Bane-Smith, just Neo's "bitch." It's not true, not really, but it is at the same time. She is Neo's strength, but he only ever is her weakness, her vulnerable spot. Neo can't do anything without her--he needs her to be the One, needs her to keep going. He'd be only marginally effective without her. She, on the other hand, though she can't fight Agents, can beat them nonetheless, has survived for years on her own abilities when she isn't any better than the normal unplugged (though she is the best of them, she has no extra-human abilities, is all I mean). She does not need Neo. Not in any way, shape, or form. Yet she loves him--and it seems a bit one-sided no matter how much he clings to her (Carrie-Anne Moss does a better job of making lovey faces, I guess). So, she goes off, dies telling him that she loves him and how grateful she is for....what? Yes, he loves her (I guess we all just need Rama-Kandra and Persephone's x-ray vision to read the love in his code or something), yes he needs her. Did she have some enabling or co-dependent complex? What precisely has having Neo brought into her life? Sex? *scratches head*
I know I'm being harsh, that I'll turn around and yell at myself for being jaded and I'll be all gooey and like "but she loved him and you can't dictate that, can't make it work or stop working". I know I'll do it because I was just plain unimpressed the first time around with how they wrote her off and the second time I cried pretty hard. I was pissed that her death lost any emotional involvement on the audience's part. We only get upset when we think our characters are vulnerable. Trinity died not half a day ago and came back. It's like "okay, now what?" in terms of being afraid of her death. She seems more afraid of it then I was or anyone with me was, I think. She was scared to go with Neo. If she wasn't afraid to die, what was she afraid of? There's no way her death can have the same effect when we've seen her overcome it, even when we know there's nothing to be done this time. She wasn't even soooo badly wounded; mortally, yes, but not like the bullet to the heart from before. I put the punctures at about stomach and liver height on her torso (not high enough for the heart, tho she might have clipped a lung). Those would kill her, worse, they'd kill her slowly, so, in all fairness, she'd have time for all she told Neo while her digestive and detoxifying enzymes ate through the rest of her body and blood pooled in the peritoneal cavity (is that right? Someone check me on that, it's been a while since I've been in the lab). It just sucked that she wouldn't go down fighting. Yay, she wasn't killed by Agent Smith (okay, but c'mon, call Neo to warn him about Bane? Try focusing on one thing at a time. It's okay to be selfish some of the time there, Trin), or overtly by a machine, but just by random accident? Yes, randomness is shocking, reminds us of the awful truth of war (Charlie's death, things falling on the APUS--anyone remember that seen in Saving Private Ryan where a guy misses getting a bullet to the head 'cause it bounces of his helmet in a freak coincidence, he takes it off and bam, bullet through the brain? that was effective), but when it doesn't, when it happens outside of a fight, it's just...well, it's a write-off. It's character assassination, dimunition. Poor Trinity. She didn't deserve reduction to a one-note girl-friend role, just like Morpheus didn't deserve to be the dismissed fanatic (especially as he ended up being right).
'And then there was the One'
You all know I like Keanu Reeves. I like a lot of things he's done no one else likes--Feeling Minnesota is a great example, and, according to
bottleofred, Constantine will be another--and I forgive him a lot because of this bias. I didn't think he did too bad a job this time around. There were a few lines and scenes he played well, especially as no one ever gives him any credit and was expecting him to goof it up anyway. Trinity's death scene was one of them. Look at X-Men 2, when James Marsden has to convey, without use of his eyes, how much Jean Grey's death affects Cyclops. The pained frown, the cry he can't suppress, ending in the scene with the president where, when the Professor mentions loss, you see him swallow painfully. I know no one else liked Cyke (and I know I'm biased again), but James Marsden did a really great job with a really challenging handicap--not being able to see his eyes. I think Keanu did the same. He sounded genuinely choked up, like he didn't get (sweet, dumb Neo) why he couldn't just hang onto Trinity, tell her not to leave him. It's what made her whole speech to him worth it, to see the pain in him grow more severe because he knew not only that he was losing her but that he couldn't do anything about it this time. I half wonder if it didn't help I couldn't see his eyes. The Devil's Advocate had him mourning for his wife when she committed suicide practically right in front of him, and the distress in his face then comes back to me in memory as slightly comic, even though I remembered thinking at the time I saw that movie, that he was spot-on.Speaking of the eyes, I thought he did extraordinarily well with the yelp of pain when he was blinded. I don't know why that stuck with me save for it was the first time we'd ever heard Neo scream in pain. Most of the time, as Smith pounds on him or Morpheus did in the first movie, he's grunted, exhaled heavily, and kept going. There was something primal about it, made me shiver all the more for the location of the mutilation (anyone who knows me knows I do not like things involving eyes; boy did Minority Report give me a squick). When Trinity hears him and goes "oh no" it seems hollow because his pain is so well conveyed. The same is true when he calls out to her after winning--he sounds thoroughly beaten and in pain and relieved and reassuring her all at the same time. It's amazing how many things he fits into that one word, her name, letting her know he needs help but is okay all at once.
I admit the early scenes are less well done. The talk with Rama-Kandra is all about Rama-Kandra, the Oracle re-visit is just another depressed and moody showing on his part, the whole "I need time" speech just irritated me. His request for a ship, how blank he looks when Trinity tells him she's going with. He says he's scared, which makes sense, but I don't think he got it quite right. It's something you just have to take for granted, like the fact he loves Trinity. He's been told more than he's said he loves her, mostly to relieve the pressure from Keanu, I imagine. A part of it is a similar reduction of Neo's character that's occurred in the sequels. This is something that's bothered me since I saw Revolutions the first time. The Matrix ended with such hope--no, not an assurance of victory (Reloaded in fact promised there wouldn't be), but this chance, this possibility that there was a new way to make the machines see reason, to maybe declare a truce without further insanity. The sequels, for all their talk of hope, have none. Neo's lost it totally. He might have been the naif, the new guy, the hopeless case with too much responsibility he didn't think he deserved (no great power to justify it, to use Spider-Man terminology), but he ended the movie with a kind of confidence, almost cocky (I love the just-hinted at smile at the audience when he puts the sunglasses on at the end). He's a one-note nervous nelly in the sequels, even though the Oracle seems to think he was less confident in the first movie. It pissed me off. Yes, he has to deal with not being super-powered all the time, but he doesn't have faith that his superpowers can even do any good, which is ridiculous.
Which is why I loved some of the times where he broke, where he wasn't unsure so much as disheartened. Very different, even if they're both depressing as hell. One of the best lines Keanu gave was when he talked to the scary head thing:
Deus Ex Machina: We don't need you! We need nothing!
Neo: If that's true, then I've made a terrible mistake and you should kill me now.
Neo knows it won't refuse, that it can't, and, even if it doesn't mean he lives/wins, he's right when he says he can stop it and he knows he's right. It's the first time he's taken any initiative or had any confidence in soooooo long. Keanu makes it sound so sure and yet so grief-stricken, even relieved all at once, I nearly clapped. Neo doesn't care if he dies--he's expecting it either way--it would be more of a relief to him to die at that point, but the grief is insurmountable---he's lost Trinity, and, if the machine were to refuse him, it would be on his head for her senseless and ultimately purposeless death.
Which leads to the so-called Superbrawl. I wish they'd saved the money. It was cool enough, especially the slow-mo punch Neo delivers, smacking through raindrops, but it wasn't really even as satisfying as the fist-fight between Neo and Bane. There's something so old-fashioned and quaint about a slugging in a movie like The Matrix; the sounds were so realistic, it really made me realize how stylized the fights in the Matrix were, and I appreciated the frailty of life outside better---the sounds, the blood, the injury, even without Neo's blinding, they were more engaging for their 'realism.' It was the end of the Superbrawl I liked best, with Neo lying in the puddle and struggling. It's been a while since we saw him so injured he could barely move, I'd say not since Smith tossed him on the train tracks in the first movie and he fell to the ground, hitting his head, and just laying there before trying to move. He did it very well, like when the Train Man shoved him, just stunned, but still trying to keep going. I may not have liked his answer to why he fought, but I did admire the fact he kept going, how he managed one last salvaging of dignity with the punch that threw Smith through the ground. He kept faltering, though, it was heart-breaking when he landed, looking unconscious as Smith triumphed. When he stood up to trick Smith into absorbing him, there was such sadness in his eyes I nearly cried again. I watched carefull this time because I couldn't remember what he did while being absorbed. He looks up and closes his eyes. Beautiful. It was like the last act of the hero who knows his work is done, a giving in, an acceptance that shows no hesitation, no worry. Brilliant.
I hated that they killed my characters. Their deaths weren't as effective since they'd died before, but I guess it had to be. I still maintain Revolutions was the worst of the three, but I'm less angry with it than I was the first time, more able to appreciate the tragedy and ignore (since forgiving is a bit of a stretch) the character assassinations, the stupid lines (oooh the Kid and that kid). I think, with time, I might even see how it makes some kind of coherence with the second one. But The Matrix will always be a victim of a dichotomy, a duplicity in its nature. It will stand alone as one of the best sci-fi, action movies of all time. It must needs also be the Bible from which the faith of the sequels is based. I think that sums up how I feel about both Reloaded and Revolutions. If The Matrix is the purity of a God, the sequels are the well-meaning but ultimately misguided faiths that try to emulate the law of that God. God will always stand on his own, but the followers cannot exist on their own, if you take my meaning.
I say, that's a great metaphor, given the imagery of the whole series (and yes, the Christ/King Arthur ending did not escape me). I must now deal with the repercussions of knowing too much. Of knowing that, though I will always wish The Matrix could have been the be-all, end-all (no matter how I lusted for new texts to expand it), I must accept in some fashion that the sequels will forever taint the way I view the first movie. They may, in time, be truly inseparable, but I doubt it. I know myself well enough to know that the original is always better than its imitators, even when the imitations are 'canon' (again, with the Episodes I and II example). I must also learn to let go because there is no new surprise to come. However I may feel about the conclusion, I must concede that it is concluded, the text that lay wide open in 1999 is now a closed book. I will try to summon up some interest in The Matrix Online or the supposed sequel they were going to make to Enter the Matrix, but I doubt, given that the major narrative has ended, that I will ever be so fannish again. Haunted, yes, but fannish? It remains to be seen.
I need a moment of silence here, so I'll update the rest of last evening later.
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Date: 2003-11-10 09:20 am (UTC)The kid is far more important than you know (let just say the fact that she had no purpose is part of the reason why she was so important).
Neo's abilities outside of the matrix can be explained in a few ways (I'll spare you the whole machine empathy psionic ability angle and stick to the more tangible). The reason why he could deal with dozens of those things while getting to the machine city is because all he had to do is start the auto destruct program and move on to the next one unlike the sentinels where he actually tore into their code and messed them up completely.
Oh and the best argument (which had my instructor in the computer lab in the place I was training last week grinning), "Matrix Combat" - how buffer overflow and object oriented models would translate into fist fights.