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I had some time off today, so I thought I'd go and catch the new Matrix film. I've heard nothing but bad things about it. Still, I figured that it probably had really big special effects, and they would probably be, umm, better on the big screen. So, off to a matinee showing I went.
The movie spent a good bit of time making homages to the original. The opening fight scene (Trinity, Morpheus and another guy go to the Merovingian's place) closely resembles the fight scene in the original Matrix where Neo and Trinity go into the office building to rescue Morpheus from the agents. And, that same fight scene has Trinity doing the same praying mantis suspended-in-midair kick from the original one. The final fight between Neo and Agent Smith (oh, come on, like any of these are spoiliers) makes several references to training between the Neo and Morpheus from the original Matrix.
And, speaking of the Merovingian's place, what was up with the costuming? I haven't seen that much kink since, well, I don't think I've ever seen that much. Needless to say, someone has a serious fetish thing going on when it came to the costumes...
But the fetishes didn't stop there. It seems that there's a big thing for big guns and lots of explosions (but this particular thing is hardly limited to a Matrix movie). But the big fight scene (again, is this actually a spoiler for anyone?) featured humans fighting with what seemed to be machine guns and what was more or less bazookas. That's the best that humans can come up with over the several centuries that have passed? And the EMP can only be in a ship? No mini-EMP grenades? No big EMPs to guard the home? WTF?
There seemed to be an effort to up the "philosophical" angle to this film. The first film had something along the lines of philosophy (although it was nothing that couldn't be gleaned from a fifteen minutes in any second year metaphysics course). This one seemed more focused on existentialism, but even then it was rather cursory. And what philosophy there was in this flick was delivered in a pretentious, pontificating fashion that sucked the life out of any possible thought there might have been.
The ending. This is how they choose to end this series? Of all the possible ways they could have ended it, it was this way? Even the brothers Wachowski (who wrote and directed this opus) knew the ending was bad -- they even named one of the characters the Deus Ex Machina.
I have to give credit to one of the actors, though. Ian Bliss played the character of Bane, and he was the one from Reloaded that was infected by the Agent Smith virus. He had to mimic the style of Hugo Weaving in a believable way, and he did. Every moment he was on the screen called to mind Weaving's Smith.
Watch time :44
Posted by Casper at November 24, 2003 07:40 PM