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andrewduckerHow to review the Matrix Reloaded.....
As cultural event, a massively hyped Rhino of an film, trampling all in its path?
As geek culture, in the year of the comic book, joining X2, The Hulk, League of Extradordinary Gentlemen and others as examples of imagination gone wild with the promise of special effects that can finally match our imaginations?
As sequel, feeling the need to outdo its groundbreaking brother by upping all the stakes, from bullets to lovescenes (via the obligatory technobabble)?
As religion, with it’s talk of Belief and Prophecy, Destiny and Purpose, Oracles and Architects (and yes, all of those words sound capitalised in the film)?
Or just as entertainment, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
The problem is that it’s all of the above.
The Wachowski Brothers are clearly very clever people – they’ve seen the effect their film has had, they’ve noticed the care and attention that internet maniacs have spent dissecting the smallest detail of their films, analysing all the little in-jokes and references, and they’ve packed the new one with even more.
You can’t think of Matrix Reloaded as a single film – The first one had a definite structure, feeding you with confusing information in the first half and then explaining it all in the second (well, when I say all I obviously don’t mean it). Reloaded is obviously the first half of a film, filled with clues and build-up, but no answers or explanations – or at least not ones that actually lead anywhere except further down the rabbit hole.
Keanu and Friends are ignorant pawns, reliant on others to hand them information, one drop at a time as they fight their way past one end of level baddie after another. As is traditional in computer games, the previous Big Bad Guy is now just another monster to kill, tough, but by no means impossible. The new bad guys (Smiths - Thousands of ‘em! Twin Albinos! People with swords!) are bigger, badder, better and most definitely More. We see Zion in more detail and the cracks beneath the surface of what Neo has been told. And we get infodumped with so much confusing information in between the fight scenes that we’re going to need the DVD, a copy of the script and the help of the Internet Legion of Matrix Investigators before we actually understand what the explanations were supposed to mean (if, indeed, they were supposed to mean anything more than “Now you must go to the next level and kick the next Boss Guy in the head until his life-meter reaches zero.”
All in all it was good, but not the second coming. I will be going to see the third one, in the vague hope of seeing them bringing it together with a coherent explanation. I’ll not be holding my breath though.
7.5/10
Oh - and stay until after all the credits for a trailer for Matrix Revolutions.
ObQuotes:
Agent Thompson: You!
Agent Smith: Yes, me.
[turns Thompson into another Smith]
Agent Smith: Me... me... me...
Agent Smith Clone: Me too.
Commander Lock: Not everyone believes what you do Morpheus.
Morpheus: My beliefs do not require them to.
The Oracle: So, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way.
Neo: You're not human, are you?
The Oracle: Well, it's harder to get much more obvious than that.
As cultural event, a massively hyped Rhino of an film, trampling all in its path?
As geek culture, in the year of the comic book, joining X2, The Hulk, League of Extradordinary Gentlemen and others as examples of imagination gone wild with the promise of special effects that can finally match our imaginations?
As sequel, feeling the need to outdo its groundbreaking brother by upping all the stakes, from bullets to lovescenes (via the obligatory technobabble)?
As religion, with it’s talk of Belief and Prophecy, Destiny and Purpose, Oracles and Architects (and yes, all of those words sound capitalised in the film)?
Or just as entertainment, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
The problem is that it’s all of the above.
The Wachowski Brothers are clearly very clever people – they’ve seen the effect their film has had, they’ve noticed the care and attention that internet maniacs have spent dissecting the smallest detail of their films, analysing all the little in-jokes and references, and they’ve packed the new one with even more.
You can’t think of Matrix Reloaded as a single film – The first one had a definite structure, feeding you with confusing information in the first half and then explaining it all in the second (well, when I say all I obviously don’t mean it). Reloaded is obviously the first half of a film, filled with clues and build-up, but no answers or explanations – or at least not ones that actually lead anywhere except further down the rabbit hole.
Keanu and Friends are ignorant pawns, reliant on others to hand them information, one drop at a time as they fight their way past one end of level baddie after another. As is traditional in computer games, the previous Big Bad Guy is now just another monster to kill, tough, but by no means impossible. The new bad guys (Smiths - Thousands of ‘em! Twin Albinos! People with swords!) are bigger, badder, better and most definitely More. We see Zion in more detail and the cracks beneath the surface of what Neo has been told. And we get infodumped with so much confusing information in between the fight scenes that we’re going to need the DVD, a copy of the script and the help of the Internet Legion of Matrix Investigators before we actually understand what the explanations were supposed to mean (if, indeed, they were supposed to mean anything more than “Now you must go to the next level and kick the next Boss Guy in the head until his life-meter reaches zero.”
All in all it was good, but not the second coming. I will be going to see the third one, in the vague hope of seeing them bringing it together with a coherent explanation. I’ll not be holding my breath though.
7.5/10
Oh - and stay until after all the credits for a trailer for Matrix Revolutions.
ObQuotes:
Agent Thompson: You!
Agent Smith: Yes, me.
[turns Thompson into another Smith]
Agent Smith: Me... me... me...
Agent Smith Clone: Me too.
Commander Lock: Not everyone believes what you do Morpheus.
Morpheus: My beliefs do not require them to.
The Oracle: So, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way.
Neo: You're not human, are you?
The Oracle: Well, it's harder to get much more obvious than that.
