First Matrix Reloaded Review 776
EpsCylonB writes "The IMDB is reporting that the London Daily mirror has the first review of the Matrix Reloaded. Sounds like the Wachowski borthers have gone for an all out action movie which is a shame if true. What I liked most about the original was the way it blended stunning action with a subtle philosphical theme about how we percieve reality." I'll hold judgement until the closing credits myself.
Its a sequel (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh come on (Score:4, Insightful)
If by philosophy you mean the sort of thoughts you have when you get stoned and are fascinated by the Winamp visualization plugins, then I'll agree. But if by philosophy you mean anything vaguely legitimate on an academic level (I'm talking about old dead Greek and European guys here), then you're sorely mistaken.
The "message" of the Matrix, if it can be called that, is sort of like Plato's Allegory of the cave, minus any actual intellectualism and plus a lot of guns. Don't get me wrong, it's a helluva lot of fun to watch, but you'd be hard pressed to sell it (or the vaunted "Fight Club") as a "philosophical" movie. The Matrix is philosophy in the same sense that pop music is music.
Or maybe that's just my arrogant elitist opinion. Mod down if you really want to, I suppose.
"The Philosophy of the Matrix" (Score:2, Insightful)
Action vs. Philosophy (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah yeah call me whatever. I think the first one was so ground breaking and that, it can't be matched. No matter HOW many Agent Smiths Neo gives a beat down too. Those new white "thingermabobs" that can go invincible and do that sword kung fu-- they don't really appeal to me either.
I think the first Matrix was in and of itself worthy on its own. I understand that some people want to learn about Zion though and the resistance. Oh well. I don't expect a huge amount of "revolutionary" in this, just more special effects.
Mission Impossible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seeing that the action sequences in the first movie were moderately successful, they capitalized upon them, and as a result, the second movie had a horrible story, a dumbed down plot, and way too much senseless action.
Lets hope the matrix sequel doesn't end up the same way.
Philosophy and the matrix... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Philosophy and the matrix... (Score:2, Insightful)
As Plato said in Phaedrus, "the writer cannot determine his audience". and I have a feeling that most people who enjoyed The Matrix won't be able to handle lofty philosophical concepts, much less a fiercely logical structured argument for the existence of God and reality, without constant diversions in the form of gun battles, sex scenes, and other forms of violent eye candy.
Advertising for The Matrix Reloaded has been awful (Score:5, Insightful)
"subtle phillosophical theme" ? (Score:2, Insightful)
And lets face it, if you liked the phillosophical theme you would have preferred Dark City, the matrix predecessor that had a very similar plot (without the action and the kung foo).
You may as well admit it -- you liked the action.
Subtle? (Score:2, Insightful)
Subtle? It was about as subtle as a foot long brown shit sitting in the middle of a white tablecloth. Philosophical content was borderline nil. The movie was kung fu, action, kung fu, babes and kung fu.
Also it's "i" before "e" except after "c".
the philosophy in the first movie (Score:3, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with Pop philosophy, but people need read the original works. Hopefully, the movie inspired some people to go read the original text and really get a mind altering experience.
Re:640 Agent Smiths ought to be enough for anybody (Score:5, Insightful)
Why use humans at all? If all you need is a powersource, stick in sheep? Less troublesome by half
a) There're no sheep left after the war between humans and machines, presumably;
and 2) Your brain produces enough electricity to power a microwave. I'm not sure how other mammals compare in this regard, but I doubt they fare much better.
The caloric efficiency of using bodies as massive networked energy sources is a concept I don't buy. Cripes. Burning wood has to be more efficient.
Yeah, the efficiency thing bugged me too. You can't just keep feeding dead people to new people without losing at least the body heat of the living in the process. Perhaps there's another unexplained food source, maybe algae or something. As for trees, the sky has been 'burnt', so no solar energy gets through (which would've been the optimal solution anyway, at least until the machines develop some other source of energy based of fusion or something).
Moreover, who cares what people in the matrix think? If they revolt, so what?
Actually, I think the preceding two points you made answer this one nicely, if we consider the Matrix a stop-gap measure used by the machines to perpetuate themselves until such a time as they no longer need humans. They may even be using human scientists within the Matrix to provide solutions to problems which they, as machines, haven't the creative insight to solve for themselves. Approached from this point of view, the eventual extermination of the human race by the machines becomes an inevitablility if the humans to not wake up and overthrow them.
Lastly, this is a nitpick I know, but bullets travel at well over the speed of sound. I don't care how fast you pull the trigger, with the action of a semi-automatic, the bullets will likely be 100 feet apart between shots.
That's true if you or I are firing the gun. If an Agent inside the Matrix is firing the gun, however, the results may be somewhat different.
Of course, you still have to jump through a lot of suspension-of-disbelief hoops to buy the premise of the movie, so if you don't appreciate crazy scifi kung-fu stoner philosophy flicks with Carrie-Anne Moss in skin-tight leather outfits, you're more than welcome to spend your movie dollar seeing The Lizzie McGuire Movie [go.com]
Re:Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)
It is. "The Truman Show" is Plato's allegory of the cave. "The Matrix" is a different concept.
But if by philosophy you mean anything vaguely legitimate on an academic level (I'm talking about old dead Greek and European guys here), then you're sorely mistaken.
Wow. I wasn't aware that you had to be a dead greek or european to have "legitimate" ideas about philosophy. Holy ethnocentrism batman! I suppose you're willing to just ignore any sort of eastern philosophy? Or is it just that you have to be dead before your ideas are worth anything?
While "The Matrix" wasn't an old, dusty book, it sure was a legitimate discussion of certain philosophical ideas. Maybe you're just too easily distracted by action sequences.
It didn't contain any truly revolutionay ideas, but I don't think Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" did either. Both were a good story, that people can actually grasp. Who do you think they're both so popular?
I suppose you're so eager to belittle "The Matrix" since it means people can get access to certain ideas that you had to learn in a more painful manner. No one could ever learn anything worthwhile except from a book that was written by a dead white guy. Geez. Who educated you?
The Matrix vs. The Thirteenth Floor (Score:2, Insightful)
Subtle? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen numerous movies with more subtle themes. The Matrix is about kicking ass and wearing leather.
Re:Philosophy and the matrix... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, the 'philosophy' of the Matrix was just a set up for the theme of the movie. There was nothing at all 'deep' to it, unless your normal fare of this stuff consists of the questions Seinfeld asks during his stand-up routine at the end of his horrid show.
What's depressing is that so many people seem to think the crap that was in The Matrix consisted of Important Questions About Existence(TM). That says more about the educational system than anything else.
But I wouldn't sweat it. The Matrix was great, brainless fun, and that's exactly as it should be.
Max
Re:I'm sorry to say it... (Score:5, Insightful)
The message must be appropriate to the medium.
Movies affect the senses in order to affect the mind. Books turn that around.
Therefore, for a movie to be a "philosophical" movie, it is more important that it show the results of its motivation in a sensual manner (sensuous is acceptable as well, depending on your motivation ;-) and allow the audience to create its own framework for analysis than to spell it out for them.
The point of the questioning in The Matrix was to provide an easily-graspable starting point for anyone to start thinking about what he had seen and felt from the movie. The action sequences were there --- at least in part --- for us to entertain ourselves with the construct so created.
Fiction lies within the realm of "what if." It is the responsibility of the fiction writer to produce an entertaining read for his audience (even if that audience is just himself). We ask a bit more of science fiction, in that the what if must also consider philosophical ramifications, but we often balk if said philosophy bits are presented in the raw and not worked into the story.
The point is that exposition and essay such as Descart and Herodotus wrote is completely inappropriate to a science fiction movie, and more suited to the medium in which they wrote. Otherwise they would have been writing plays or poems and songs such as their artistic bretheren were doing.
The dialogues of Plato also are ill-suited to the movie medium. The closest good (by which I mean literary or otherwise of artistic merit) movie to the dialogues would be Waking Life --- and even that is half-baked if considered as a philosophical essay.
The mistake is not in the creation, it is in the analysis of the critic: we do not analyse poems as we do philosophical journal articles, so why insist that movies serve as such?
Another thing that bugs me about the above post: the author is only considering what is actually said in the movie. In a visual and auditory medium, that is insipid: would Apocalypse Now play so well as a radio show?
Also, it is considered of higher intellectual integrity to kindly consider a piece's arguments and fill them out as you would if you were the person proposing them in opposition to your own arguments. Knocking a work because it does not address what you are arguing is of very low class. Perhaps you should read Aquinas, or talk to any Ancient Philosophy 101 teacher.
The point of philosophy is not to bash another's views, but to discover Truth and the constructs towards Truth. That's why we call it philosophy.
All the same, I thank you for your post because it was one of the first in its vein cogent enough to respond to.
PS: Yes, I feel the same way towards people who consider The Matrix to be the be-all-end-all of solipsistic philosophy. Then again, it's not the worst introduction to it, and I've been shocked by how few people are familiar with solipsistic arguments.
Review contradicts itself (Score:2, Insightful)
Huh??? So if you're a fan of the philosophy it will leave you cold, but yet it is crammed full of the philosophy that fans of the original loved??
If you're looking for a deep, meaningful cinematic experience then The Matrix Reloaded is not for you. But if it's a non-stop rollercoaster ride you're after, then this movie is light years ahead of anything that's gone before.
Ok great, so it's going to be a good action flick, but why does he assume that even though it is 'crammed full' of the philosophy content, that you won't like it? Just because he wasn't a fan of that part of the film?
methinks this review was written rather hastily, no?
Re:Philosophy and the matrix... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's full of unsupported statements like "For there can be no doubt that God possesses the power of producing all the objects I am able distinctly to conceive", and early on, he admits that "the belief that there is a God who is all powerful, and who created me, such as I am, has, for a long time, obtained steady possession of my mind". IOW, it is a profession of faith, and at best, a philosophical justification thereof.
So no, Descartes Meditations cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as a "fiercely logical structured argument for the existence of God and reality". A fiercely logical argument would tear that work to shreds, as important as it might be in the history of existential thought.
Re:Philosophy and the matrix... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh come on (Score:3, Insightful)
You can find Buddhism [nisargadatta.net], Christianity [metaphilm.com], both Buddhism and Christianity [unomaha.edu], and tons more.
Last time I google'd, which was a year or two ago, many more (and, might I say, better) articles were found by Google on the first few pages.
The obvious stuff: Zion, Trinity, NeoOne, even more at Raiders News [raidersnewsupdate.com]. It may be news to some at /., but "Oracle" isn't only a database, too...
Basically, the film (great as it is) has borrowed from just about everything it can find. Its great achievement is combining all these things into a single, reasonably coherent film. Let's hope the next are as good, and not just "But what if a computer-created bus had no breaks" and "What about a cruise ship?"
Re:640 Agent Smiths ought to be enough for anybody (Score:0, Insightful)
They aren't LITERALY using the electricity from the people!
It meant the robots where using the peoples spirit, their soul, their dreams, their creativity, not their actual electricity! Sheesh!
The same way corporations use labor power. They aren't paying you to type the keyboard they are paying you for your brain process mixed with your education. A robot can punch keys on a keyboard, a robot can't program!
Man maybe slashdot people are good at math but you guys would fail a literature course with flying colors. oi.
Re:Philosophy and the matrix... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Subtle? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah. English has some wierd spellings, huh?
Re:I'm sorry to say it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hang on though, such experts would either ignore it as not their problem, or investigate it further as such.
I suspect you're more the "Philosophy 101" type who says "Trinity - I've heard that word; Zion - I've heard that word, too" without any actual understanding.
The Matrix is a strange, and inconsistent film (not least - why, in a simulated world, do simulated telephones have such significance?!) but to dismiss the entire thing in a single viewing is a sign either of an incredible life experience, or of an incredible ignorance.
It's only a film, that is true, but there is more to it than Independance Day, which, to be fair, a Media Studies student could hopefully be able to get /something/ out of after a 3rd viewing.
Re:Oh come on (Score:2, Insightful)
har har har (Score:5, Insightful)
ROTFLMAO.
Oh yes, The Matrix, a movie, was so very, very subtle. And philosophic. It practically put Plato to shame. Oh, we are so sophisticated here. Hmmm. Could we build on this deep, deep insight and discuss how Biodome compares with Kierkegaard? "No! I will not be limited by your limited metaphysical world!"
Re:Oh come on (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The people who are gifted enough to leave the "cave" first poorly adjust - see Neo in new environment. The people who return, in order to "liberate" the caged are laughed at, and told that the true light has blinded them, as they are unable to identify the objects on the wall.
2) The "Philosophers", the ones who see the true light, are reluctant but feel obligated to return to the cave in order to free them, much like the characters in the matrix, who face countless obstacles but still persist.
The Cave Allegory is quite well played out in the Matrix. Don't be so quick to bash his comment.
Re:Philosophy and the matrix... (Score:2, Insightful)
There was a school of thought centered upon your very argument. They were ant-logic and anti-science. I can't remember their name, but they were mostly debated into oblivion a long, long time ago.
And proving that there can be no proof of a God that performs meaningful actions is infinitely more difficult than you claim. Especially when you do not define God.
Re:Philosophy and the matrix... (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, I prefer an action film have a bit more than guns and gore, but I certainly don't need a deep meaningful discussion on "why." All I need for a really good action flick is a little character development (so I care who wins), a defined setting, and a coherent plot. Once you have that, you just add action and stir.
In an action flick, plot and setting are there to move the action along. Everything else is just too subtle to play in a film like this.
If you want cyberpunk with philosophy, go read a Gibson novel.
honestly folks (Score:5, Insightful)
The X-Men saga is about as interesting philisophically with the alagory (that whole civil rights thing). Then again, I'm excited about these flicks as well.
Both, I think fall in the good movies as opposed to good films category (call me snobby! please!). Apocalypse Now was a great film. Fritz Lang's catalogue were great films. The Matrix and The Matrix:Reloaded, must see? YES! Great film? eeehhhhh.... Derivative, but well presented? Probably. Only time will tell what people really think of these.
Re:Its a sequel (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're wrong. Name just ONE innovative factor in "Matrix" - one that was not borrowed from John Woo, "Ghost In The Shell", "Neuromancer", "Superman", Baudrillard, Dick, Stanislaw Lem (cough) etc. I am a big fan of "Matrix", but let us juse our words wisely. Cool? Yes. Entertaining? Yes. Breathtaking? Yes. Worth seeing again and again and again? Oh yessir, just look at my DVD copy of "Matrix". Innovative? Definitely not.
Re:Its a sequel (Score:3, Insightful)
You can take the film apart and analyse each element but the fact is that the Wachkowski brothers were the people who put it all together and brought it to the mainstream. Inevitably they are going to get credit.
Re:Philosophy and the matrix... (Score:2, Insightful)
Then perhaps you haven't read enough western philosophy? The father of "modern" philosophy, Plato, believed that the world we see is only an incomplete projection from a world of ideas. His most famous example of this is the cave analogy, where the people in the cave only see the shadows of things in front of the cave entrance, and believe what they see in front of them is all there is.
Rene Descartes pondered what we can tell for sure about the world around us. His famous conclusion was "Cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"). He meant, that one person may be just tormented by some demon who feeds him sensory information, but by thinking, the person can know for sure that he exists, and only that.
I think your claim that western philosophy doesn't discuss the reality of the world is false. Reading a few books by Nietzsche doesn't make anyone a philosopher. I would recommend an exellent book "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder [amazon.com] as an introduction to the basics of western philosophy.
Re:I'm sorry to say it... (Score:1, Insightful)
"The point of the questioning in The Matrix was to provide an easily-graspable starting point for anyone to start thinking about what he had seen and felt from the movie. The action sequences were there --- at least in part --- for us to entertain ourselves with the construct so created."
It's getting a little tiresome reading people knocking the Matrix for its lack of philosophy, despite its pretensions. Like this is somehow a difficult target, and you're a genius for pointing this out to the less well read among us. These budding directors and critics would only be satisfied with a film version of The Republic; "Oh my god, they cut out so much dialogue", "I can't believe they didn't release it in the original Greek, with subtitles. .
Maybe the first couple people who introduced this line of thought, like FOUR YEARS AGO should be commended for their clairity of vision, but the rest of you are just jumping on the bandwagon to look superior in decrying a massively popular movie. It's okay, I've been in your shoes before. Nothing is ever good enough, intelligent enough, well crafted enough, especially if lots of people actually enjoyed it. Troglodytes, all of 'em!
How many people in the viewing audience do you think have read any great work of western philosophy, let alone understood it? The underpinings to the Matrix are better thought out then any action movie of the last couple decades (if I'm wrong here, I'm eager to be proven wrong. Name some movies [in any genre] that introduce more philosophical discussion than the Matrix has). I did notice that someone out there mentioned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, that's one of my favorite films. Go rent it. No, I don't think it's available on DVD. Nevermind.
Who was it that said "if you want to send a message, use a telegram." It's a film. A visual medium. It introduced some philosophical ideas to an audience that has never considered them before. They should be commended for releasing something more than your standard action/shooting movie. Let it be, and enjoy it for what it is.
I realize no one will read this (posting anonynously to a post buried deep in the article, but it's been cathartic. When the next film has made its first 200 million, I'll be eager to hear your original thoughts on Keanu Reaves' acting ability. Peace out.
What I liked about the first one.... (Score:2, Insightful)
So I for one won;t be worried until I see it. I don't trust critics enough to even come close to worrying about a review like this.
Re:Speaking of Pinket.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Its a sequel (Score:2, Insightful)
Was Matrix the first to use Bullet Time?
If we are talking about technical innovation, Matrix Reloaded is the first to use true, 3D cinematography and computer generated actors (that look real, not computer generated). The "Big Brawl" scene is the one that is some commonly refernced. I believe that whole fight scene occured within a computer.
If we are talking about conceptual innovation, or innovation as it applies to storylines, screenwriting, etc... then I don't think that there are many "new" and "innovative" ideas out there right now. My opinion, as to why this situation exists, is that Hollywood (collectively being the movie industry) are more interested in the "assembly-line" approach to movie making. The same plot, different story sort of approach. The "guaranteed" money maker. They only change the template when the viewers become desensitized to the model and cease to pay for movies at the theaters.
Re:640 Agent Smiths ought to be enough for anybody (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember that, in the story, that wasn't the first Matrix -- the one where people were all happy failed.