A few thoughts:
I thought the film was a very good sequel to, y'know, The Matrix. It had the same cod philosophy, leather stylings, action, "lite" characterizations, implausible plot holes, random kewl bits and, buried deep underneath, a kind of interesting look at an actual concept and a bit more substance than yer bog standard action movie. And, like its predecessor, it made me very happy.
It's my thesis that most of the really valid criticisms of this film are aesthetic rather than substantive. I'd certainly agree that they could've done to run the dialogue past Grant Morrisson or William Goldman before taking the shoot began. But I can't help but think that people who claim that it was shallow or nonsensical maybe need to watch the first film again and see if they could really defend it from such accusations.
If anything, I thought that the philosophical question "Do we have free will, or is it an illusion?" is a much more interesting one than the original film's "What if all reality was an illusion?" AFAIK, Descartes trounced the demon pretty thoroughly back in Meditation #1, while philosophical heavyweights are still pondering the notion of "freedom".
Aesthetically, I can see what's not to like. My personal bugbears were the dialogue, particularly Morpheus's speech in Zion, and the general political setup of Zion. I long for a future where people *don't* wear silly headgear and meet in big amphitheatres and get ruled by Councilor Tharquin or whatever.
However, I really liked all the fight scenes. Neo gets to remake the best bits of Superman we never saw, flying around like a comet, devestating a street like a still from The Authority, tossing hundreds of Smiths in the air like a videogame. Handling a character of that power level is incredibly difficult and I actually thought they did a really good job of it.
But it's the other characters who really get to make the difference. The inescapable problem with the Neo scenes is that he isn't in much danger. But as long as you've got Morpheus and Trinity to fight agents you can still have danger. The Twins were great, but I'd've preferred if another, more charismatic Agent had been introduced - Smith's replacement, maybe. The Agents as they appeared on camera just didn't have the screen presence to be intimidating, which is what made Hugo Weaving so great.
A comment on the "middle America" thing: I used to live in Topeka, KS, which is about as "middle America" as you get. Most of the people I knew there were smart, politically aware, savvy and all the rest of it. But I can't help but remember the time that Silas Hoover and I went to see 'Independence Day' on July 4th. When the movie ended and we were both thinking "What a cheezy piece of crap," the whole of the rest of the cinema came to their feet cheering wildly. People were holding lighters in the air like a Bruce Springsteen concert and screaming. I kid you not. Silas and I hunkered in our seats, wondering how "By golly, the Americans have done it!" could be inspiring to anybody. My point, I guess, is that there is a demographic out there for whom the Matrix movies maybe do offer a hint of something more, but I'd be hesitant to mistake it for lying in any particular place, which is what I think people take "middle America" as meaning. More likely, it means MOR-America, which is a bit different, IMO.
So, overall, the movie was not the perfect slice of genius that I think people were hoping for. But I thought it was pretty entertaining and delivered about what I expected. I'm looking forward to seeing it again in the next couple of days and that, to me, is the sign that at some essential level it "worked". |
