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| OH GOD THE SUCK! (Matrix 3) by Mischief Maker 03/19/2006, 1:10pm PST | ||||
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| Jesus. H. Fucking. Reeves.
I was SO ready to forgive them for Matrix 2. Cut the chatter, have a kickass Zion battle, then defeat the evil machines. That's all we really wanted. Let's recap Matrix 1 and TEH PHENOMENON. "The Matrix" took a really basic idea in buddhism (reality is an illusion created by your senses) then did a neat twist on it (kinda like if you were plugged into VIRTUALREALITY) then asked what would be a cool consequence of that (if you figured it out and learned how to bend the rules you'd have all sorts of superpowers) then made the real lasting effect of "the Matrix" on american action movies (introduced hong kong wire-fu) then earned themselves a smartypants cookie by adding an example of a Zen koan in action (The oracle's prediction that morpheus would die in order to spur Neo into action (don't tell me, show me)) that made the movie sort of an intro to your Easter Philosophy 101 class. To the wire-fu, hollywood responded with more and more and sillier and sillier wire-fu movies (the Nadir being "The Musketeer" in which french swordsmen swing around on wires and furiously wave their rapiers at each other) until everyone got sick of it and hollywood returned to cheaper CGI effects. I guess the W bros decided at this point the only thing that seperated the matrix movies from the rest of the pile was TEH PHANTASTIC PHILOSOPHY, but what was there left to do? Neo discovered the god cheat, and him being the Zen master already meant the eastern philosophy well had dried up. They ended up returning to their art film hack roots and used confusion. Just like conveniently placed gas tankers in action movies or terminal cancer in dramas, making everything really confusing is the final sanctuary of art film hacks who've written themselves into a corner. If you cultivate an air of highbrow intellectualism, then have none of it make sense, pretentious goateed coffehouse types and obese basement-dweeling shut ins will assume that there's a really deep message hidden from common eyes and then work themselves into a froth coming up with lunatic hole-filling explanations of why the emperor is in fact wearing a fabulous gown. It's cheap, lazy, and ends up making your movies an hour longer than they need to be. SO, now that the deepness of the matrix sequels is down for the count, let's start on the Matrix 3. The movie is about 2 and a half hours long. There's maybe a half hour of action total in the thing. Guess what fills the rest of it? I knew this movie was going downhill the minute the adorable indian family started talking about how programs feel love. Given that point, and having seen the (horrible) animatrix, what's the absolute worst way this trilogy could end? With all the dialouge in this movie, it's amazing how many loose threads go untied. Still wondering why all that tense music was playing while boob lady kissed Neo? Does the architect make good on his threat to kill all the humans in the power plants? What exactly is the connection between Neo and Agent Smith? These and more are never explained. The main selling point, the Zion battle, was disappointing. No Helm's Deep sense of dread here. Sentinels are apparantly way less fearsome and badass than we've been lead to believe. A single guy spraying two machine guns indiscriminately (while going RRRAAAAGH!!!) can block a mass of sentinels so thick they look like one solid CLOUD. Most of the battle is watching tracers zap at the hole in the ceiling as a cloud of sentinels pours through. In fact, they use the clouds so much I can't help but wonder if that's a cheap trick to simplify the effects while making it seem more realistic that a tiny troop of robo gunners could fight them off instead of thousands of sentinels zipping individually around like a swarm of bees. (At this point I'm supposed to say that I don't usually like gratuitous gore in movies BUT...) I wanted to see some gore in the Zion battle. After all we've seen of the Sentinels' nasty grabber tentacles, chomping mandibles, and white hot laser beams, we should be lead to believe that facing these things would result in a very nasty demise. You know, to add some tension to the "desperate" battle. Instead the primary battle tactic used by them is ramming into shit while occasionally grabbing a soldier and dropping him from a great height. At one point the battlebot commander gets swarmed and sliced up by a cloud. Afterward we see the damage done and are horrified to find that the titanium blades of the hideous sentinels made QUARTER-INCH DEEP cuts in his face! What monstrous machines! Then again, I guess they can't make them that bad, what with the inevitable gay ending coming up. How 'bout Neo? Well he manages to become an even sillier messiah. Just like Paul in Dune 2, Neo gets his eyes zapped out but can still "see" for reasons that are never properly explained. Trinity dies, but not so quickly that she can't make a 10 minute speech about the importance of love before her perforated stomach leaks acid to eat away at her organs while her perforated lungs fill with blood and drown her. Neo's sobs of remorse serve to remind us all that Keanu Reeves doesn't just suck at playing messiahs. *OMFG! Ending spoilers ahead!* Like I said, the W bros used up their Eastern Philosophy in part 1, so they had Neo do what we all grew up knowing Messiahs do. Everyone with me now, "He turns the other cheek and sacrifices himself to bring love and good to the world." Why the machines keep their end of the bargain (stop the attack on Zion if Neo defeats Smith) after Neo dies is a mystery. They even give things a pat wrapping up by having the architect say that all the people in the Matrix who want out will be free to go. Yay! Humanity is still enslaved, but the misfits are free to go grub in the dirt while the programs in the matrix still have the power they need to feel love for each other. Hell, the adorable indian girl program even causes a beautiful sunrise so we think the matrix is a nice place for the people still trapped in power plants with tubes in their ass instead of the "prison for your mind" from the first movie. No one in the theater stood up and clapped at the end of my screening. Final musings: I like how the W bros admit that no one is going to remember Menzoberaazan or whatever the fuck his name is (what's he supposed to be with a name like that, a BIS NPC?) and just have everyone call him "the frenchman." With all the token blacks (and smaller proportion of other minorities) the W bros have to give their movie "realness," it's funny that at the battle of Zion only men get to ride the cool robowalkers while women have to grub around pipes with shitty home-made rocket launchers. Also that the christ-figure is white. The new oracle actress is a milqetoast reflection of the dead one, yet I swear she gets more screen time than any other character in this movie. Everything that has a beginning has an end... sometimes just not soon enough. |
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