{"id":50,"date":"2012-11-20T03:54:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T03:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/?p=50"},"modified":"2017-06-11T10:42:58","modified_gmt":"2017-06-11T14:42:58","slug":"please-watch-the-matrix-reloaded-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/?p=50","title":{"rendered":"Please watch The Matrix: Reloaded again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every time I watch The Matrix: Reloaded<\/em>, I like it more. It doesn’t mean much (and I know I use that phrasing a lot), because\u00a0after seeing it for the first time in theatres I spent\u00a0weeks putting my head around\u00a0microwave ovens trying to erase it from my brain, but I think, with time,\u00a0I learned to appreciate it for what it is. There’s also the fact that, at first, I\u00a0had to compare it to the first Matrix<\/em> movie, and now I compare it to The Matrix: Revolutions<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Which I did not learn to like. It will forever\u00a0blow goats.<\/p>\n

But Reloaded<\/em> is enjoyable, just not on the same level as its predecessor. Which is a bit weird, because it’s basically the same movie, but with every dial turned up to 11. All\u00a0the nice action scenes are there, and even more grandiose and over-the-top. The cyber-goth (or whatever…) aesthetics are there, and this time the Watchowskis\u00a0had a costume budget so the trenchcoats and sunglasses\u00a0look\u00a0nice (to be fair, the sunglasses did look nice in the original as well). The dystopian cyberpunk future was still there, and this time\u00a0we even got to see the fabled\u00a0Zion.\u00a0Why, then, is it not as good as the original?<\/p>\n

For the same reasons, though not to the same extent, that the Star Wars <\/em>prequels suck.<\/p>\n

For one, The Matrix<\/em> became a whole universe.\u00a0Ironic, because one of the strong points of the first movie was that, while being self-contained, it created an amazing,\u00a0rich and vivid\u00a0world. But we didn’t know much about it; the movie didn’t have time to go into too many details, so we had to imagine most of it, and it made the movie reach deeper inside the viewer. We had just enough information to make an educated guess, so we felt smart, and the movie seemed smarter for it. By the time\u00a0Reloaded<\/em>\u00a0came rolling, we had (or were about to have) the Animatrix<\/em> shorts\u00a0and the Enter the Matrix<\/em> video game, and the universe was then set firmly it its own history,\u00a0and all we could do\u00a0was nitpick at the inconsistencies, the outright mistakes, and what we just plain didn’t like.<\/p>\n

It really\u00a0didn’t help that most of what the Watchowskis came up with wasn’t as good as\u00a0what we had imagined (something that will reoccur between Reloaded<\/em> and Revolutions<\/em>, but I digress…). “The One” being a cyclical thing, the oracle being a program, the architect having planned the entire thing, vampires and ghosts being glitches from older versions of the matrix… some of it was inoffensive, but \u00a0most of it felt… off. Like midichlorians, just not on the same George-Lucas-forgot-his-medicine level of retarded. The philosophical undertones of the original\u00a0also became very heavy-handed in the sequel, which, in my opinion, made\u00a0the entire thing sound pompous, though (again)\u00a0not as badly as in Revolutions<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, it’s not a life-changing experience like the first one was (hyperbole…), but it’s still a cool wire-fu flick. And I’m not saying to lower your expectations, you should never do that, but judge it as a dumb (and I mean DUMB) kung-fu movie, and in this regard, it’s pretty good. It’s a pretty good, dumb kung-fu movie.<\/p>\n

It’s nice what they did with Neo; usually, when writers are stuck with an all-powerful character, in order to make them vulnerable, they either make them less powerful with a shitty plot twist (i.e.\u00a0TV’s Heroes<\/em>) or\u00a0introduce equally-powerful antagonists (i.e. Dragonball<\/em>), making the whole thing pointless. Instead, the Watchowskis decided to focus on Neo’s shortcomings, and the support characters, to build tension. They did “upgrade” the agents, but they’re still no threat to Neo, so it gets\u00a0a pass (It’s still kinda weird that Morpheus can keep up with them…).<\/p>\n

And I don’t care if it makes me sound like a 13 year-old, but, damn, that highway scene is, I think, my all-time favourite action scene (maybe second to Ip Man<\/em>‘s karate scene). Yes, the cars behave like they’re made of\u00a0styrofoam blocks held together with happy thoughts, but it looked cool. And the twins looked cool. And the million-Smiths-brawl looked cool. And Morpheus’ katana + glock w\/ extended mag\u00a0looked cool.\u00a0If they’d laid off the CGI a bit and relied more on wires, it would have been a great action flick with a shitty sequel.<\/p>\n

Revolutions<\/em> is beyond salvation though. Fuck did\u00a0it suck…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every time I watch The Matrix: Reloaded, I like it more. It doesn’t mean much (and I know I use that phrasing a lot), because\u00a0after seeing it for the first time in theatres I spent\u00a0weeks putting my head around\u00a0microwave ovens trying to erase it from my brain, but I think, with time,\u00a0I learned to appreciate it for what it is. There’s also the fact that, at first, I\u00a0had to compare it to the first Matrix…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[19,20,21],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-review","tag-matrix","tag-reloaded","tag-watchowski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cordlesspen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}