I was pretty pleased with Matrix Reloaded. Maybe my case was contrary to yours. It was under-expectation, after a week-end of bashing it received from the Matrixed generation. After $134M and counting, I know I cannot possibly add anything new to the philosophy or the action about which you have already heard. And, seems someone already calls himself neo on this group. So let me be the morphius, and talk ABS crap with utter conviction ;)
This movie cannot decide if it wants to be a philosophy sermon or an action movie. The movie moves in and out clumsily between long philosophical interludes alternating with breakneck-paced action sequences. These are breathers for the action folks .. or the fights are the time of reflection for more philosophically bent.
First 30 mins are endless rants (and one useless rave session) in zion. The whole movie proceeds in Bullet-time .. Then comes the sermon by the chancellor in the engineering section. Reminded me ad verbatim of the closing lines of Terminator. In this world at war, one machine .. a terminator .. learnt the value of a human life more than us humans .. The highway chase (in my backdoor .. Hwy 101 !) also leaves the T2 chase scene far behind and totally pre-empts whatever T3 can offer us. It’s NOT the case of the concept totally lost to the execution. M2 does succeed in taking the M1 idea further and also offers us an idiots guide to philosophy in process.
Parallel matrices/worlds , causality Vs choice .. out of this world ? Entire ’’Back to the Future’’ trilogy is based on very idea of choice .. One reaction , one choice threads a multi-verse weaving parallel .. This ain’t philosophy dude, its college level physics. but ofcourse, dudes don’t take college level physics anymore. but do they go to school ? Causality goes even further back .. I learnt newtons third law of motion in 8th standard.
Cut to discourse 3. This time our lecturer is the venerable Oracle. Now every move Oracle makes has to have a profound interpretation to more enlightened amongst us .. Like ’’What was that Candy for ?’’ It symbolizes the eye-candy that we are about to see , Dear neo ..
Like mini-me of Austin powers, we got Many-me Agent Smith. (does Psmith and Psmith suit ye tintin fans ?! ;) He re-spawns if fragged as if it’s H/L Counter-Strike gone bonkers. (check out the Agent Smith song on Matrix sound-track : ’’Mera dil tota ban jaay .. kaisa me-too, me-too bole hai !)
The similarity to Powers doesn’t end here .. Even the other French villain (The one who has locked the key-maker .. so ironic!) borrows heavily from Dr. Evil with French accent replacing Evil’s German.
Then, comes the ga-ga-ga speed chase. Keymaker, the Chinese guy, looks majorly amused to see so many western folks kung-foo-fighting than he has ever seen in china. (check out the Keymaker song on Matrix sound-track :’’Hum tum ek kamare me band ho .. aur chabi kho jaay’’)
The plot is getting too convoluted now .. zion is not real, but neo’s love was real .. where do we go from there ?! What trinity and neo did will only produce hotmale spam !? I thought that was the dance of creation!
In the end, nothing seems what it seems to be .. The only thing that is certain the wait for Nov 05. That reminds me, just don’t torture yourself hearing 15 minutes of credits roll to thrash metal soundtrack, to have a glimpse of 30 secs of Revolutions trailer. Not worth it.
Point-2-ponder : If the oracle turned to be the one who’s prophecies do not materialize, then ofcourse we know that Oracle is none other than Larry Ellison. And having freed your mind like thus, do I need to tell you who is the maker of matrix.NET ?!
BTW, before I unplug let me quickly wrap up the plot for non-matriculate folks. This is also to redeem myself of the public opinion that maybe I did not get it at all, the most common insult thrown by the ’unplugged’ junta ..
Prologue : So, matrix is a huge operating system to which all human brains are plugged (like being logged into the internet). There’s a bunch of ’free souls’ , the resistance, who hack into the matrix and try to unplug the wired ones. Agents are the gatekeepers of matrix who keep the intruders away. Oracle is nother program within matrix who helps the resistance and has prophecised that a savior will free all humans. Enter Neo. Exit part one.
Reloaded begins with neo and gang entering zion, the last free human colory somewhere near earth’s core. Machines are launching an attack on zion and are to destroy it within 36 hrs. In this situ, Neo/trinity/morphius trio decide to go back to matrix, meet oracle and heed her advise. She leads them to key-maker, who has the key to the source of matrix. Neo meets the maker and the maker asks him to make a choice between his love and the source. Neo chooses love and goes back to fight so that we can see Revolutions six months later.
The big kahuna that comes at the climax (maybe if you dont get it, you think movie just ended) is that in the end it appears zion is a kind of QA environment set up my the maker to perfect the matrix if an anomaly is to happen. In a perfect OS, all programs should behave and no one would wont to break away. On contrary, in this installment, we learn that there are lot of breakaway programs called ghosts/ware wolves/free agents working at free will and able to penetrate zion too. To to avoid matrix becoming another Windows XP, Neo is a carefully designed anomaly who’s supposed to penetrate the resistance and return the learning back to the source. He’s a cog in just one such SDLC of matrix. but he’s the only one who’s chosen emotion over logic and lets see how the dooms day is fought in matrix revolutions.
The names of movies are too good and intuitive. Reloaded tells us that we are now in a particular version (V6.0) of matrix continuum reloaded after last neo went back to the source. Revolutions will probably say that this cycle repeats in an endless loop.