So, on that last post.
Reasons why The Matrix: Reloaded is More of a Letdown than The Phantom Menace
We Already Knew (or Should Have Known) The Phantom Menace was coming
Greginak and Tod got this one.
George Lucas deserves lots of credit for Star Wars. Less credit for The Empire Strikes Back. More credit for Return of the Jedi. There is a pattern here. He directed nothing for over twenty years. Think about that for a minute. No matter how gifted you may be, if you don’t practice your skills for twenty years, there’s going to be some atrophy. Look at the guy’s list of writing credits. Now seriously, look at it again. He didn’t write anything of note for ten years, either. Now, I’ll say right off the bat that I adore Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I love Star Wars. I consider Willow to be a guilty pleasure. American Graffiti and THX1138 both deserve credit for being good films. What the heck else did this guy do for all this time? Turns out, not so much. This should have been a huge red flag.
Potential
The good Doctor Russell nailed this one.
Really, there wasn’t much of a need to do anything *new* with The Phantom Menace. It really didn’t have anywhere to go. Tangent: see Terminator: Salvation for another movie that had a whole plot already ready to go, and mucked it up as well – why is this hard? We already knew the story, at least the bones of it. Anakin Skywalker grows up, becomes a Jedi under Ben Kenobi, turns bad, gets knocked into a volcano, becomes Darth Vader. Now, George did a wretched, horrible job of living up to executing that story, but still, this is like going to see someone sing the Star Spangled Banner and seeing them Rosanne Barr it. The worst thing is, it’s a bad rendition of a song you’ve heard a hundred thousand times.
The Matrix, however, left us off with a major sense of anticipation. Neo is The One. He can do whatever he wants in The Matrix (as far as we know, but they sure pushed this pretty hard). It ends with him taking off and flying like Superman! Whoo! What is he going to do next?
Turns out, uh, that’s it.
Wait… that’s it? Yep, that’s it. Well, he’s still really good at Kung Fu. He can still stop bullets. But hey, the Kung Fu thing he already had down. So basically he can now fly and stop bullets. C’mon, man, The Sphinx can cut guns in half with the power of his mind! Really, if you can do whatever you can imagine, what’s the deal with flying? I can imagine teleportation, among other things. Apparently it never occurred to anybody that they should hand Neo a stack of old comic books to give him some ideas about what he ought to try imagining? Oh, I hear you saying, “But it turns out there are limits!” Well, okay, but then make that discovery process an integral part of the story.
Sure, there’s an obvious need to provide some tension, or nobody is going to watch this movie. We already had a mechanism for that, though: Neo’s superpowers only work in the Matrix. Outside, he’s a meat popsicle waiting for one of those squid things to show up and rip him into itty bits. Seems to me you can solve the “it’s hard to have tension when your good guy is Superman” problem pretty easily; the machines push a bunch of the squids through production and make it harder to find a safe place to jack in. Running chase scenes! Instead, they just sort of have Neo learn and/or try nothing new.
Potential II
At the end of The Matrix, we have the following bits of information: Neo can do anything he wants in The Matrix (except as previously noted, this ain’t all that) and the machines live in another system that is protected from the Matrix by the Agents, who “hold all the keys and guard all the doors”. Neo can beat the Agents. The only thing stopping him from freeing everybody all at once is that most people are so dependent on The Matrix that they’ll short-circuit if they get unplugged. The Wachowskis have solved the fate problem inherent in having a precog as part of the story line with a deftness that is remarkable: they’ve kept free will and just made the Oracle into somebody who sees enough to pull mental ninjitsu on people and results in them making choices that are predictable to her.
Lots of balance. Well done. Now let’s tear it all down!
Turns out, the Agents aren’t all that. They also don’t guard everything (in fact, they apparently don’t guard anything, that is a different guy’s job) and they don’t hold all the keys (in fact, there’s a guy who actually does hold all the keys, and we know this because his name gives it away). We’ve got a whole slew of new characters who aren’t Agents. They are actually more important than Agents. Oh, and we have Agents 2.0, because we need an excuse for more kung fu. Neo has apparently been freeing people all over the place (I thought this was a bad idea?) The Oracle is an AI – this was predictable. Tension in meatspace comes from the dumbest mechanic in the world: the leader of the free human world’s armies doesn’t like Neo because he doesn’t like Morpheus.
It’s like the first movie was written by a couple of really smart guys who set up a lot of nice potential plot threads that could have turned out to have character and nuance, and the second movie was written by their younger brothers who got really stoned for about a week and then wrote the script in crayon.
The Action
The highway chase scene gets a pass. For the purposes of this post. There were some really noteworthy parts about this scene that made up for the complaints I have about it, plus a lot more.
Let’s talk about the dogpile fight scene between Neo and the Smith Formerly Known as An Agent. It didn’t look real, it looked like a CGI Keanu Reeves fighting a bunch of CGI’d Hugo Weavings. Compared to the fight scene between Morpheus and Neo in the first movie, this was a pile of bat guano. I’m a kung-fu movie fan. I’ve seen good fight scenes and bad ones (I’ll write a post about good fight scenes some day). This wasn’t a fight scene, it was like a quick session of the old 80s video game “Gauntlet”.
“Our Hero Beats Up 40+ Opponents” has been done in almost every kung-fu movie. Bruce Lee beats up the Karate School in The Chinese Connection is one of the better instances. This scene isn’t even as good as The Bride vs. the 88s. The fight scenes in Phantom at least were well choreographed lightsaber fights.
The Bad Guy
My favorite scene in the first movie is Agent Smith’s interrogation of Morpheus. The motivation of the character comes through. “It’s the smell… if there is such a thing.” Great line. He wants out of this job of caretaking the monkey cage. So… what’s his deal in the second movie?
We never really find out. Why is Smith after Neo? Why is Smith after the other machines? Why is he trying to take over The Matrix, when he hates it? Why on Earth would this entity become a human being and enter the real world? Why doesn’t he just strike a deal with Neo to take over the machines, so that he can live back in the machine mainframe, where he wants to be? The Agent Smith of the first movie is understandable. I can connect to him; he’s human, in many ways. The Agent Smith of the second movie is incomprehensible. He don’t make no sense! This might be the point (it is a science fiction gig, after all, and “we don’t understand our enemy” is a theme in SF), but if that’s the point, they handle it hooooooribly. There isn’t any inquiry on the part of the good guys, or of the other bad guys. There’s no theme to this theme.
Also, what Burt said about the Merovingian.
Reality is the Anchor of Fantasy
I need to write a full post about this topic, but this is my final complaint. Shortest possible (it’s getting late): the byplay between reality and fantasy (including the character part of the fiction that you’re supposed to find real and accessible) is the balancing act of good speculative fiction. The characters, the place, the social interactions, the technology, and (in the case of movies) the special effects need to combine the real and accessible with the fantastical and unreal in a way that lets the reader or audience become immersed in the story. The first movie did this. The second movie did not. My suspension of disbelief didn’t suspend. The effects relied too much on things that weren’t real to look and seem real. The characters didn’t seem like people. The bad guys didn’t make any sense. The story was wooden where it needed to be supple, plastic where it needed to be crystal, and tin where it needed to be steel. It looked, sounded, and felt like a cheap plastic toy version of the first movie. I ordered X-ray specs out of the back of the comic, and I got junk.
This, in the main, was a greater offense than The Phantom Menace, which felt like one of Donald Trump’s apartments. Everything was covered in gold, and underneath it wasn’t interesting. It was just tacky.
Reality is not the anchor. The Perception of Reality is the anchor.
Reality constantly generates Real Life Moments that an editor would laugh out of any fictional story. Truth is in fact stranger than fiction.
I am, in fact, interested in the difference between Reality and the perception of the same. I find telling truthful stories to be a great way to gauge the difference.
“Reality is the Anchor” sounds pithier.
Combining the real and the fantastical is about altering the perception of reality, though. That’s basically what I was trying to say (hey, it was late).
If you make a new post for people to argue in, how is the original thread going to get to 300 comments?
I don’t think I’m going to hit 150 on either, so the point is sort of moot.
I’m doing my part, just sayin’.
We appreciate your efforts in support of the Collective.
The thing about former Agent Smith was that, once he was deletion/merger with Neo at the end of The Matrix he pretty much ceased to exist as the person he had been. Agent Smith was a rational, self interested machine intelligence. Former Agent Smith became a malevolent incarnation of the balancing mathematical equations at the base of the Matrix: he was Neo’s nemesis and antithesis. His motivations are reduced to destruction and annihilation. There’s an ironic twist there as Agent Smith very scornfully decries the virus like behavior of humanity in The Matrix only to become a very literal virus himself after his deletion/merger with Neo.
Unfortunately I had to read a lot of material outside of the Matrix movies to get most of that. I’m not sure how easily it could have been conveyed within the Matrix movies themselves. They would have had to amp up both the Architect and Oracles roles and have added a lot more exposition so I don’t think it would have turned out well.
As for the Merovingian, well he pretty much was what he was: a parasitic mafia figure building himself an underworld empire on the fringes of the Matrix system and then using a lot of puffed up language to try and make himself seem more than a parasitic mafia figure.
“Unfortunately I had to read a lot of material outside of the Matrix movies to get most of that”
My only addition to why Mr. Cahalan is wrong was that no one says about the Matrix, while adjusting their eyeglasses, “Well, in the Extended Universe…”
But I see I was wrong about that.
Donnie Darko did the whole extended universe thing really really well.
What can I say? They did an MMO. It explained things. I was curious about their mythos so I read up. *shrugs*
The problem with this, North, is that is more or less the explanation I invented in my own head while arguing about this with drunk friends after seeing the movie.
That’s really bad storytelling. The Bad Guy is essential. You shouldn’t have to invent a wide ranging story to explain his/her behavior. At least the germ of the seed needs to be part of the story.
Also, if you’re going to basically invent a whole new bad guy that has no links to the previous bad guy whatsoever, don’t cast the actor that played the previous bad guy as the new bad guy. People try to relate the two incarnations. If this is the actual “according to Wachowskis” reasoning behind the Smith formerly known as an Agent, why didn’t they have a new bad guy the audience could figure out without bringing in the “Why would Agent Smith do THAT?” issue? Heck, you could have still brought back Agent Smith *as* Agent Smith.
I hate “Extended Universes” very often. They’re so very often badly done.
I didn’t mind the explanation but I did mind that they didn’t even seem to bother trying to explain it. The scene with the Architect, for instance, discussed the nature of the Matrix and the system of “The one” pretty well but the Architect never mentioned “Oh by the way, you seem to have created some rampaging virus that’s screwing everything up on top of everything.” I agree it doesn’t work with the movies.
You know, this particular deeply held dissastisfaction with the Bad Guy could have been solved by a few lines in that scene with the Architect, you’re right.
I’d still be hatin’ for all the other reasons, though.
Well since I loved the Architect I’d have happily taken any more screen time for him. But again this probably feeds back to how the Animatrix flipped me around to very strong sympathy for the machine position.
What I liked about the Agent Smith fight:
Most of the one guy vs. 40 guy fights I’ve seen have been one guy taking on 40 guys… one at a time. “Black Ninja Style”, I believe the term is.
In this fight, they were all fighting Neo and it wasn’t one at a time. Now, maybe it wasn’t as cool as Black Ninja Style allows. Sure. But they didn’t let you sit there and ask “why are they only fighting him one at a time if they’re all the same guy?”
That’s a fair point.
You know who did this pretty well? Raiders.
The scene in the marketplace is a bunch of guys against Indy and they neither take turns running at him or just gangpile him (which is how 10 guys actually attack one dude, but that makes for a short movie). It was pretty well done.
Everything in Raiders was pretty much awesome.
Oddly enough I kindof liked Last Crusade more than Raiders.
Not so odd! I loved the Last Crusade, and thought it captured all of the elements of fun and heart that made Raiders so great, in a way Temple of Doom just didn’t. (In our house we do not mention the *other* movie.)
Last Crusade is more family fun, granted.
Jack is still freaked about Raiders (I showed it to him too early). Last Crusade isn’t as scary.
Plus the bird/umbrella scene is worth the entire movie.
You hit my point about the scene. It was unique in that sense and I liked it because of that.
You know who also did this pretty well?
Kung-Fu Hustle.
They didn’t exactly all pile on at once, but that’s because The Hero used the environment to his advantage. Still, when he’s out in the open, they don’t take turns.
Now I’m starting to think of other “Mono a Lotta-Mono” fight scenes.
There was definite missed opportunity in M:RL. One of the thing I wished they had done is have a parallel action scene in the real world and the Matrix. Normally I hate that artsu crap in my movies, but the Matrix begged for some.
Three other issues killed Reloaded.
1) They wanted to make it a multimedia experience. Some of the story went to the game. Some of the story went to the Animatrix. Some of the story went to the movie. This left gaps in the story as well as forced them to stretch out the story parts that they did have with underground raves and whatnot.
Story sidenote: I originally figured that the Merovingian was going to turn out to be a former “One”. Maybe someone who could have been Neo but became disillusioned and just settled for being king of his own little area.
Second story sidenote: Remember when agents were supposed to be people you ran from? What happened with that in the second movie?
2) Remember how the first Matrix was about freeing humanity? Why did we drop that angle? We got to the point where, by the beginning of the third movie, Neo met two computer programs who were trying to get their daughter program to some form of freespace. When did this become Tron?
3) As we now know, the Wachowskis didn’t actually write the first movie. They just ripped off someone else. So it was essentially two talentless clowns who ripped off the right script that made the Matrix. This was probably the biggest factor as to why the other movies sucked.
Re: #2: The encounter between Neo and the Machine intellegences and their daughter Sati was a pivotal moment in the Matrix trilogy. That encounter changed the machines in Neo’s mind from implacable murderous malfunctioning devices to a society of reasoning and (importantly) feeling beings who could, possibly, be reasoned with. Those three (the Machines think and feel and care) coupled with Smith (there is something in here the Machines can’t handle but might be able to with my help) led to the excursion to Zero-One in the third movie and his deal with the machines.
which was, frankly, also kinda lame. Neo is there, saying “whoa. Peace” and the machine actually listened even though Zion’s last defenses had been beaten down instead of “You beat Agent Smith. Cool. Incidently, I deleted my promise to you. *Yoinks out plug*
As for Agent Smith, there was a simple answer from the start. With the first movie, a friend and I were discussing how the MCP (I’m gonna call him that because that would have been less of a letdown.) and I brought up 9/11. If you know that Neo is in a building, delete the building and everything in it. Yeah, you lose a few thousand but, when you have a few billion human batteries, you can afford to. Sure, by the end fight in Revolutions, the Smith problem had gotten away from the MCP but that’s a case of “making the villain be stupid to railroad the plot”. (I worked IT for eight years and y’know what you do if Agent Smith is running around your server? You shut it down and isolate it.) As for the remaining batteries, just tell them that New York was hit by a nuke.
(Yes, I realize that the bad guys weren’t the only ones who were stupid. Seriously, if I was facing a bad guy whose big weakness was EMP, I would have stockpiled, at least, a hundred of those EMP generators at Xion. Coffeemakers and belt buckles would have come with EMP attachments. At the very least, I would have recalled all the other ships from the beginning. But no, let’s do the power armor with machinegun thing. That’ll work.)
I could go on but the whole thing was just poor filler. Neo didn’t have to see the offspring of a spreadsheet and a word processing program to say “the enemy of my enemy….” and make the same excursion. Much like midichlorians, we didn’t need the added filler for Neo to say “whoa, peace” to the MCP.
The robots weren’t exactly rocket scientists either. Beings advanced enough to take over the world and how do they plan to attack humans? By stepping on them.
Yeah, well, that goes back to my “Why don’t Terminators just use flamethrowers and napalm bombs?” argument.
In fact, now that I think about it, it runs counter to the original movie.
Agent Smith was only able to break free of the MCP’s control because Neo was inside him. (Wow. Looking back on that, that’s some imagery right there. I think I’ll leave that as I wrote it so you too can share a vision of Neo/Smith slashfic.) Everyone else was supposed either directly controlled by the MCP or the autonomous agents still seemed to have loyalty programs.
All of a sudden, we find that the MCP doesn’t seem to be in control of much of everything. We have a subway that takes lil’ programs to Freespace ….. wherever that would be within the MCP’s own network. We see the Merovingan’s agents openly attacking agents. What’s next? Some of the squids decide that they just don’t feel like attacking humans and they start playing Go Fish with each other.
Did you get the idea that we suddenly shifted from the MCP controlling everything to a system without a real centralized driving force?
Request received to dupe this post and its predecessor by someone at IO9 to run this, lightly edited, “really soon”. Since I’m all about the Creative Commons, I said yes.
Assuming this isn’t a joke, I’ll let ya’ll know when it gets up.
Awesome!
Wow, congrats, Patrick, I’m a big fan of i09 and would love to see this up there.