The Matrix: Revolutions or Revloting?

(posted to alt.books.dean-koontz of all places)

I have to concur with you Chris... I just saw it Saturday night
instead of going to Loy Kra-Thong fesivals here in Bangkok.  Now I
wish I'd spent my time lighting a candle and incense and floating it
down the Chao Phraya river for good luck instead of wasting money on
that lame film.

Let's backtrack...

The Matrix was the most fantastic, original, fresh movie idea to hit
the screens in 1999, without doubt.  It left the door open for
another, but it didn't *require* it to be complete.  They ended the
first one the way you'd expect a comic book to end... you know
there'll be another comic book but you don't need to go get it to
understand this one. Sit back and burp, you digested a whole story
complete with all the trimmings... suspense, action, some drama for
pacing... nice movie.

Then they decide to jump on the bandwagon the way most all Hollywood
film industry people do on most things... (Brad Pitt is about to
appear in "TROY"... visiting the story of Helen, no doubt....
following a couple years after we got our first Roman gladiator
picture in decades... not counting "Caligula") And by bandwagon here I
mean not in the theme of the movie, but copying the filming schedule
of the "Lord Of The Rings" franchise and shooting the next 2 sequels
in succession at one time.  Bad idea.  Peter Jackson was right to do
it for LOTR if only to maintain continuity across 3 very epic films.
But to get lazy and make 2 Matrix sequels at once was nonsense.  I
think both films suffered as a result.

Matrix: Reloaded was passable.  It was strong on cool new
characters... the two ghostie twins... the Architecht... the Frenchman
and his wife...all the people of Zion, the council, and of course the
love triangle involving Morpheus.  (Didn't anyone ever tell the
Wachowski brothers that religious zealots don't usually maintain
healthy relationships with women?) and the action sequences for film
#2 were stepped up accordingly. (3 years to work it out) The freeway
chase was rippin.  Okay so maybe Neo flying in at the last microsecond
was a little cheesy, but hey... the guy was in Nepal. I could smell it
coming when Neo met the Architecht.  He's gonna cloud up the story I
just know it.  Sure enough.

So now we're at this turd, I mean, third installment.  What Chris said
about the Neo vs Smith fight was right on the money.  I said aloud in
the theater, "Okay we get it, enough already."  It was the 2nd or 3rd
kung fu payoff scene for all the martial arts nuts, but they obscured
all the best moves with a blinding sheet of rain for starters, and
finding a cheat to build Smith up to Neo's level.  Well fuck.  He
spent the last 2 films getting better than Smith.  And if Smith is a
logical program... albeit one that has run amok, he would still be
guided by logic over emotion.  Logic would dictate that if your aim is
to defeat a foe and you've copied yourself a zillion times, you sic at
least a few hundred thousand at the guy, not go head to head with the
Kwisatz Hadderach of Sydney Australia all by your lonesome.  Stupid.

Oh and Neo kissing Trinity every 30 minutes?  We got it.  You two like
each other a lot.

So what did all the fighting and dying get us?  What did mankind...
the humans in Zion, what did they gain?

A cease fire.

You know how many cease fires they've had in Israel?  

No destruction of the machine world ... machine city... they didn't
even make a serious dent in the sentinel population.  Neo copped a
deal with the machines and was at all times, totally under their
control.  Not very God-like if you ask me.  The machine "god" or
spokesmodel or whatever he was... looked like Oz from 1938 to me... he
basically decided to tolerate humans if Neo did a little wet work for
him.  No defeat means no victory for the bipeds.  The machines were
minutes away from soundly beating their way through Zion's every
defense, and Neo manages once again to whuppp Smith once and for all.
(Or was this 3rd and for all?) I think Hugo Weaving is probably a nice
guy and he has a killer delivery pattern for his Smith character...
and he was Elrond, so his stock is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay up in
Hollywood... and I think they used him too much, allowing audience
praise for his first appearance guide the story line.  I bet they had
no plans for Smith past the hallway until the boxoffice sold like
crazy and Weaving appeared as an elf in another major film and
suddenly a thug is now a star. A draw.  People wanted to see more of
the agent who talks strangely, than of the hero Neo.

Film ends... we got Oracle and her bodyguard and a little stray girl
proggie who was written in Calcutta, sitting in a park looking at a
beautiful cityscape and sunset.  MUST BE IN THE MATRIX.  And all the
humans from the Matrix are gone now, because they were all Smiths and
we saw what happened to bad little Smiths.  So it's just 4 very
strange programs discussing things in a beautiful park... oh we got to
see the grubby, underground, starving REAL humans celebrate for about
6 seconds, but when the party's over they're still in a world
dominated by machines, living underground, and will probably never
ever see that sunset the Oracle and friends are enjoying.

Oh but the war's over now.  Right.  That was the point.  

Would you be satisfied with a cease fire?  What if the machine leader
changes its collective mind again and decides, "Nahh... fuck em." and
wipes all the humans out now that they're probably trying to establish
*trade* of some sort with the mechanical occupying force?  "Much
easier now... the dock's open, the holes are dug, the humans smile and
wave at us now... Time to finish up."

Bah... I'm sorry I went to #2 now, that's how bad #3 sucked.  It
throws suckiness back on Reloaded, which wasn't really all that bad in
hindsight.


dana