This had to have been pondered before
somewhere, but here's my question to ol' Morpheus if he gets
his wish, beats the machines and sets the human race free… now
what? I mean we saw what it took to get Neo close to
normal in the original Matrix movie, now imagine if The Matrix
is collapsed and the billions of humans that are in The Matrix
are now spit out of those life bubbles. I would imagine
the overwhelming majority of them would just die, and then for
those few that lived, it's not like there's a viable planet
for these people to live on, right? And Zion can only hold so
many people. I don't know if Morpheus and them thought
this out all the way through is all I'm saying. If
Morpheus were to take a step back and think about it, maybe
billions living brainwashed in the Matrix isn't such a bad
thing. Just throwing that out there.
Much maligned, reviled, but still loved by some, we are going
jump on the time machine magic carpet and take a look at 'The
Matrix: Reloaded' for a minute as I revisit the trilogy
wedged in the middle of my glorious defunct HD-DVD box
set.
By now we all know, as Neo (Keanu Reeves) knows, he is The One
and The One is going to end this war. How is he going to
do this? Nobody, including Neo, has a clue but Morpheus
(Laurence Fishburne) knows this one thing like he knows
nothing else. One thing is for sure, If Neo is the one
to end this war then homeboy better do it soon because the
machines are drilling into the earth even as we speak and they
will be in Zion in no time flat to murder every single member
of the human race that isn't connected to the Matrix.
Not cool. Regardless, Neo is like Jesus Christ in Zion
with people bringing him gifts and praying to him stuff, when
all Neo wants to do is sex up his girlfriend Trinity
(Carrie-Anne Moss). I mean that's ALL he wants to
do. Saving the world be damned. Also, Nona Gaye
lives in Zion which now officially makes Zion most awesomest
place in all the universe.
What next? That would be a dizzying mix
of convolution and spectacular action sequences, that's what's
next. If you get confused about anything you have to do
while inside The Matrix, especially considering these people
seem to have a complete inability to think for themselves, you
go see The Oracle (the late Gloria Foster) who will spout off
a series of cryptic, indecipherable nonsense parables for our
characters to follow. But before that happens Neo has to
meet her bodyguard Seraph (Colin Chou) which serves little
point except for a chance to see some Yuen-wo Ping fight
choreography. This will ultimately lead to Neo having to
meet the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), The Matrix's defacto
version of Satan, his wife Persephone as played by Monica
Bellucci and her breasts, more kung fu fights, albino twins,
more cryptic nonsensical parables, and we also have the
resurfacing of Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) who has somehow
reassembled his code to become a self-replicating virus and
wants to destroy everything, including the machine
world. But most importantly he will meet The Architect
of The Matrix (Helmut Bakatis) whose blatant overuse of
conjunctions mixed with gobleygook will place him in the
annals of cinematic history.
Neo has a decision to make. Save true love or save the
human race. The choice is obvious, ergo… his decision
will be unreasonable… vis-à-vis… I wish the old man would
envision a world where his mouth moved little and espoused
even less. Oh! There goes a pretty explosion!
'The Matrix: Reloaded'... was frustrating. Most would
agree that it's not as good as the first movie, though many
disagree on the value of this particular episode of the Matrix
universe. While the fist movie did have its fair share
of philosophical talkity-talk, the majority of that movie and
what made that movie great, in addition to the revolutionary
special effects and storytelling stylings, was that the
majority of the movie was spent watching Neo's
awakening. He did not accept the fact that he was The
One until the very end and it was our journey along with Neo's
self discovery that played a large part in making 'The Matrix'
what it was.
The Wachowski's take a different slant with 'Reloaded' which
is almost all philosophical, parabolic discourse since almost
every character speaks in circles. Now depending on whom
you talk to these circles either lead to absolutely nowhere or
they lead to absolute clarity. I met a young lady who
said she got what The Architect was droning on about
immediately and didn't know what the confusion wall all about,
and there are others who just wished he'd put a sock in his
mouth or that Neo would kick in him in the face. I'm
kind of in the sock group on this issue.
But it's not like 'The Matrix: Reloaded' wasn't
entertaining. The movie was crazy entertaining, it's
bananas how entertaining 'Reloaded' is at times. Who
could ever get tired of people walking on ceilings shooting at
each other with high powered automatic weaponry? I know
I can't. Yes, you could ask yourself why these people
are walking on ceilings, especially when this puts them square
in the path of open fire, but I wouldn't ask that. And
the freeway chase sequence, to this very day, is still one the
best single action sequences I've ever seen.
But then there's always banal philosophical yakity yak
trailing close behind to bring down our action high.
Regardless of all of that, despite our ultimate frustration
with this film, I would classify 'The Matrix: Reloaded' as a
good movie, with its main crime is that it didn't improve upon
the original like a good epic trilogy should do. See
'The Dark Knight', 'The Empire Strikes Back' or 'The Two
Towers' for an example of this. This still leaves us
with 'The Matrix: Revolutions' to deal with. That one
we're not too sure about.
