The Matrix Reloaded

When the Wachowski duo put together the first Matrix, their main motivation was to bring the visual forms of Eastern anime and fighting movies into a feature-length whole and a different setting. Thus, they had to create a script that would be able to incorporate all the elements of these films in a meaningful way into a Western pop culture setting. In so doing, they allowed an alternative computer world to emerge, within which time and space can be bent in every possible way to create a new perception of familiar situations for the viewer. The first Matrix was released at exactly the right time. At the end of the static period of the "end of history", when the workings of the world's systems seemed unthinkable, the rigid organizations of the powerful unbreakable, and the only thing moving forward was computing, creating a brand new communications environment as an alternative to that unchanging real environment. Thus, the original film succeeded not only because of a well-written script, a well-delivered macrocosm, or a rewriting of genre conventions, but also because it came at the best possible time. Had it been made in 1994, when it was written, it's possible that it would have been nothing more than a Strange Days-type underground cult today. ________ This soaring introduction is necessary for understanding why The Matrix Reloaded looks the way it does, and why it also features a completely unbelievably cretinous parody of a script. It's no use obscuring the fact that after the monumental success of the original Matrix, the Wachowskis started to think quite highly of themselves. And no wonder. Listening to the mouth-to-mouth odes from all quarters about what visionaries, philosophers, and mouthpieces of your generation you are would influence even the most impenetrable solipsist. When this sense of self-aggrandizement meets unlimited creative resources, The Matrix Reloaded is the most glaring example of completely understandable... uh, huh huh.... causality. The Wachowskis continued to insist on creating a never-before-seen visual spectacle while at the same time creating a massive philosophical work that would suck in all schools of thought and religion like a sponge and place them in different contexts. From a screenwriting point of view, then, it's a total disaster. The film consists almost entirely of monologues, which mostly try very clumsily to pass as dialogue. Whereas these only serve to take the film from one visual episode to another. The result often seems to be that one character meets another character who has some information needed to move the plot along. First, however, there must be a virtually uninterrupted lecture on some aspect of the Matrix universe. After that, in two sentences, the character learns what must happen in order for the plot to move forward. With the monologue scenes themselves spanning the quality spectrum – from the amazing anti-climax of The Architect, where I devoured every word, to the mind-numbing wtf scenes with Persephone, maybe written by a child. ________ The problem with Zion: the Matrix shits completely in its own mouth with the Zion scenes, because its strength thus far has been in young disconnected malcontents hacking into an artificial, machine-controlled world to destroy it from within and free the people connected to it. Suddenly, though, we find ourselves in a situation where the "free people" are actually the old world who care about nothing less than guarding their threshing floors from their enemies, while everyone there lives in some industrial paraphrase of suburban houses, goes shopping, and still looks terribly bourgeois thanks to the fact that they're all sporting threads from Sanu Babu. I guess I get the design idea, where in the last gasp of humanity at the Earth's core, everyone is dressed in tribalism and Africanism, but there's nothing to be done, it looks really, really incredibly idiotic. About as idiotic as a normal Zion press conference ending with a rave between lava pools (sic!). Which, by the way, Trinity dressed up so nicely for only to have Neo bring her home again immediately after her arrival, where he did her missionary style, prematurely ejaculated, and cried while doing it. Anyway, at least the elaboration of the Morpheus myth, where this infallible mentor of the first installment pays in the second installment like Zion's answer to Jaroslav Dušek, where while everyone is counting guns before the invasion, he's gotten some myth about the Chosen One out of a crossword puzzle he keeps annoying everyone with, is quite amusing. ________ Last item: the spectacle. The Wachowskis were absolutely obsessed with the idea of coming up with something never before seen in the movies for the second installment. They not only had at their backs the shadow of the effects innovation of the second installment but they also couldn't ignore the rapid technical advancement that LOTR had overcome audiences with. At the same time, they had themselves fallen under the spell of the very rapidly advancing CGI possibilities, where what was utterly unthinkable three years ago was now just about render speed. In this blank-check special effects euphoria, where the only limit was not to do anything that had already been done, they created sequences that, while truly unparalleled in terms of choreography, imagination, and framing, showed how terribly fast and comically digital technology can get old. When you’re watching a film today (2021) where digital characters fight who seem graphically stuck in a 2010 video game, and the film isn't afraid to shoot them in full light and enormous slow motion (!), you almost wonder if a pre-production rip of the film has made its way to you. What’s more, the film otherwise suffers quite a bit from a certain general "sloppiness", with me spotting the film crew several times in all sorts of reflections (those glasses are a plague, sure), the digital characters occasionally blurring textures (the virtual Smith suffers quite a lot from this, his hair falling through the collar of his shirt at the back of his neck, that would be the first thing I'd yell at the Architect in the Q&A if I were Neo), and I was downright annoyed when the film's spotlight shone completely openly on the characters in two scenes. (06/03/2021) (less) (more)