| Well, I just got around to watching my DVD of THE
MATRIX:
Revolutions. I will grudgingly admit, the movie
improves somewhat on the second viewing -- but only a little.
The trilogy as a whole still ends not with a bang but with
a thud. As arrogant as it seems, I think the Wachowski
brothers at the end didn't quite grasp their own material.
As such the final chapter fell back on the choppy logic
and style-over-substance of its anime roots without rising
to the (almost subconscious) elegance and originality of
the first. Below I try to scope out what I thought The
Matrix had to say and how the final version might
have said it. |
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| I must begin with a confession. I actually liked THE
MATRIX: Reloaded, apparently making me
one of a handful of people in the world. I liked Reloaded precisely
because it was open-ended, unresolved, and indeed confusing.
The scene with the Architect, nearly universally derided
by fandom, struck me as the heart of that movie. It turned
everything upside down and opened up the possibility that The
Matrix trilogy really would be a step into the the
unknown, a breaking of convention with Hollywood. At the
time, I was fond of saying that anyone who didn't like Reloaded probably
didn't understand it. The assumption was, the
third movie would pay for all and reveal the intricate
and almost transcendent whole behind all the fragments
lying on the floor. |
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| Well, Revolutions is out and I've seen
it a couple of times, and it's safe to say that it is not what
I'd hoped for. Almost all of the deep philosophical veins of
the second one turn out to be dead-ends, dropped for no apparent
reason or ignored completely. At some point I will collect my
observations on Reloaded and point out what that movie
seemed to be saying, that this one bungled. Right now I want
to focus on how the Wachowski brothers could have salvaged Revolutions and
been true to their own earlier vision -- or at least, to what
their vision seemed to be. To get there, we need to understand
what The Matrix is about. |
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| The Matrix is about one simple question:
Why? |
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