feeling listless

Film Saw The Matrix Reloaded yesterday with my brothers in India (in other words I waited so long to see the film, it was out in that country already) and since there is no point in reviewing it at this stage I thought I would just offer some ruminations. This is a spoiler fest for anyone who hasn’t seen it though.

The Opening
Opening the film with a premonition feels like a fairly standard bit of plotting, especially for anyone who’s seen any tv science fiction or fantasy series in the past few decades. It also feels like a way of echoing the opening scene of the first film, whilst at the same time giving the film an action packed way in. The trouble is we’re almost automatically in an exposition scene about the robots trying to break into Zion which only makes sense if you’re seen The Animatrix episode Last Flight of the Osiris, which really should have been tacked onto front of this as a bonus short (I mean who actually saw it before Dreamcatcher) ? Then nothing really happens for about twenty minutes. The Brothers Warchowski play a dangerous game here, as their playing on the fact that people will be prepared to watch this much chatting because ‘hey, it’s The Matrix’. I’ve a feeling when seen with the third film it’ll make more sense.

The Middle
Something the first film lacked and this film misses even more is the sense of The Matrix being a place. They are forever banging on about wanting to win the war and free the humans, but we don’t have a sense of the people living with The Matrix. The Animatrix covers this to some extent but I would like to see this more in the films. You would expect some expression of interest from the populace what with the explosions and such on the freeway and Neo flying about and all of the missing persons (those who are possessed by the agents) would be reported somewhere or talked about or is the clean-up operation that good. In addition, the treatment of the people still hooked up to The Matrix is always interesting. At the start of this film the implication is that the security guards are real people just clocking off work. Does that mean that it’s OK for them to be gun fodder for Trinity and friends? Aren’t they the very people that Neo is fighting for? Taking to it farthest conclusion, the reception scene in the first film is mass murder on a massive scale, the security just defending themselves from the aggressor …

The Ending
What if when they leave The Matrix at the end of the film they’ve actually left The Matrix version six and entered The Matrix version seven, created to resemble their new version of the real world, Zion and all, and that’s why Neo is manifesting powers. And for an even bigger shock, how about that all of the films are in fact taking place in layers of the same Matrix, everything they’re experiencing is a simulation and at the end of The Matrix Revolutions Neo becomes the first to break through into some actual real world?

All of which said. I did love it though ...