i'm going to weigh in on the side of liking it overall, though with significant criticisms.
the phiolosophy was pretty elementary, and the delivery of such was more than a little tedious and forced at times. when they sat down at the Merovingian's table and he immediately started launching into his cause-and-effect spiel i was reminded of Waking Life, which is a really bad thing in my book. it wasn't profound, it wasn't especially watchable.
however, what the Wachowski's are doing deserves major credit. the overall effect of the movie is to break down the simple dualistic moral paradigm that is at the heart of the action genre by blurring the lines between the monolithic sides (human vs machine) and by undermining the moral and intellectual integrity of the "good guys" position.
they know that they're working in an action movie context, and they know that the movie they're making is one of the most eagerly anticipated sequels of all time. knowing that, they deliberately throw a bunch of roadblocks into the path of the action movie formula by questioning the overall purpose of the hero's actions at every turn and assaulting the moral clarity of "good guys vs bad guys" that lies at the base of the action movie genre. essentially, they've lured in the audience with "gun porn," if you want to call it that, and then set about attempting to destroy the genre.
the key on that front are the continuing issues relating to free will, choice, and control. in the first movie, everyone trusts the Oracle as this font of unquestioned wisdom, and everything revolves around her and her prophecy. this is in keeping with action movie and sci-fi/fantasy genre conventions to the point of being cliche. i mean, who in the audience doubted that the Oracle was trustworthy in the first one? who really believed for a second that Neo wouldn't end up being revealed as The One at the end of the Matrix? it's practically impossible to even conceive of the possibility of a mainstream Hollywood sci-fi action movie where things would go some other way.
now, right off the bat, when Neo goes to her, essentially to get instructions on what to do in the present crisis, the Oracle flat-out tells him that he has no real reason to trust anything she says. the Merovingian tells Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus that they're only doing what they're doing because that's what they were told to do (and, subtextually, because that's what genre convention and the script dictate). finally, the Architect reveals that the entire rebellion and the illusory freedom of Zion is essentially just a safety valve for the Matrix - some small number of human anomalies will inevitably rebel against the Matrix, so they just channel those rebellious forces through a structure of their own making.
(i would even go so far as to say that this is at least in part a self-critical move on the WB's part: they are aware that the film's "rebel chic" is part of the commodification of youthful rebellion by the society of the spectacle.)
this leads Neo to the point where he drops the bomb not only on Morpheus but also on the viewing audience:
"The Prophecy was a lie. It was just another system of control. I'm sorry."
in my book, that one line takes the action movie genre and throws it on its head, and that makes this movie successful on some important level.
i think it also serves to eliminate the usefulness of Neo as a Christ surrogate and the series as a whole as a CS Lewis-style pop culture Christian allegory, and, boldly for a conservative American audience, implies that Messianic religion is simply a means of control.
other things i liked:
- the complication of the humans vs machines dichotomy with the introduction of independent programs with their own agendas (the Merovingian, the Oracle, Seraph, the Twins, the Keymaker, Agent Smith).
- the increasing acknowledgement of machine/human interdependence (i'm not sure how much i bought the Architect's insistence that the machines didn't need humanity and that they were willing to accept the possibility of a reduced baseline-level existence - i think he was bluffing)
- Morpheus' place in human society. I was not at all expecting him to be who he was to their society: a sort of charismatic religious leader with a massive cult following on the fringes of the official military, the mad captain of a ship with a reputation for having a sort of pall of doom hanging over it. He's like the bastard child of David Koresh and Captain Ahab. seeing him move between being a virtual pariah in high-level government meetings to addressing the cheering throngs at the massive temple rally like some prophet out of the Old Testament was amazing.
- on a more shallow note, the Twins were the fucking bomb.
- pretty much all the fight scenes that Neo wasn't in, especially when Morpheus and the Twins started mixing it up in the garage.
what i didn't like:
- overall, too much of the philosophizing was forced, awkward, and elementary in actual execution, no matter how much i liked that it was being done at all.
- any fight scene with Neo in it, especially the Burly Brawl, which, despite being one of the big "action centerpieces," was a really good time to leave the theater to go and take a shit if you were so inclined. yawn. you know he can't lose. what's the point? |
