| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Wednesday 21 May 2003: |
| We recently saw The Matrix II: His Name Is Neo And He Dances In The Sand.
I think it was a Saturday night 9pm sci-fi channel showing, but I'm not sure, we might have gone to the cinema. Qualitatively, anyway, I'll be
assuming it was released direct to TV like a sci-fi channel extravaganza such as
Deathlands
or Virtual Nightmare.
I'm going to do this review starting at the end and working backwards, because it will make more sense that way, since the movie actually does open with a scene from the end. So, the last thing that happens is some very dramatic music and a close-up of the Matrix equivalent of the Riddler, then a voice-over intones "will Neo escape from his evil clutches? Tune in next movie, same Matrix-time, same Matrix-channel." Just before that, it's revealed that, just like in the Powerade advertisement, the real world is also the Matrix, and their ship's rastafarian pilot is iron like a lion in Zion. At this point someone tells us that Neo's name is Neo, in case we missed that from the title and from earlier in the movie. The reason the movie is playing out backwards is revealed at this point, with Neo flying really fast around the world so as to travel back in time to stop the Matrix before it was even built - just like in Superman 3 and Terminator. Except it wasn't Neo those times, it was Superman. Possibly in the Matrix, too, actually, since Neo is revealed to be Superman at the beginning, which I'll get to later. Trinity dies! Then she gets better. Then she dies again! Then she gets better again. Then we get to see her bottom naked. Though I'm not sure if that was while she was dead or not, so it might be a bit necrophiliac. Or it might have been Neo's bottom, it was somewhat confusing with Trinity being more masculine than Neo. We get introduced to The Great Architect, which is the Masonic God, who sees and knows all, but can't do anything about it because his beard is in the way. He compliments Neo on his coat. There's a sex scene, which is composed of a metaphor through tribal dance. A metaphor which is accentuated by accompanying it with actual sex, and porn music. Many people are dancing; mostly it's the horizontal hokey-pokey, but in magical Matrix world it's done in slow motion and vertically. What a twist that is. Trinity uses SSH, so the hacking is especially realistic. Most notably, the standard unix command "disable nodes 27 to 59" is demonstrated. For those not familiar with Unix, this command shuts down power grids, after you've logged in as root by guessing that the password is 'god'. Also, Neo's name is Neo, and during this scene he dances in the sand again. There are cars and motorbikes, which is great for the mechanics in the audience, who get to see extensive engine details and realistic car physics throughout. Some more rastafarians are involved with the cars; this time they are white, so as to avoid the movie's original racist connotation that white people can't be real rastafarians, and must have oozing pustulent sex while the rastafarians dance. Neo dances with Elrond! Lots of Elrond! "Hello, Mr Anderson. I am Elrond." "So am I." "Me too." "I'm not! Oh, wait, I am." The Oracle reveals herself to actually be Tron, from the movie Tron, though she does it in a sidelong manner that Neo doesn't recognise. He's too busy planning dance moves for his next elven dance festival. Trinity dies again! But this time it's just a dream. But it's real! But that's just a dream too. And it's not even a real dream, it's a Matrix dream. And it's not even a real Matrix dream, it's a Matrix dream in a movie about the Matrix - that wasn't even on TV at the time! And thus we reach the beginning of the movie, about seven minutes before the end (excepting slow motion). What a fantastic reverse thrill-ride that was. At this point the theatre staff check your ID to make sure you're old enough that your senses are sufficiently degraded, so that you won't realise how drab is the movie you're about to endure. I didn't think it was possible for a movie to have so many explosions, kickings and gunfights without being entertaining. Not that "The Matrix II: Digital Ejaculate" wasn't entertaining - it just entertained in a manner quite different from the intended. A manner reminiscent of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of The CGI Fruit. Unlike CGI Fruit, The Matrix II: More Green Flowing Text Than You Can Possibly Imagine wasn't painful enough to stop me from watching the third one when it comes out, for snide review purposes. So look forward to a future review of The Matrix III: Neo Discovers That He Is Flynn And Assimilates Elrond The Master Control Program. Oh yes, this post contained spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie, pretend you didn't read it. Or don't see the movie. [16:10] |
| RavenBlack |
| Tsk, I missed something - the Morpheus school of acting. This teaches that, in order to make your dialogue appear dramatic, or possibly in order to extend the film to 7 minutes rather than 5 (before slow motion is applied), you should simply enunciate every phoneme with as much clarity as humanly possible, or, if that's not quite enough, actually spell out the words. "The prophecy says..." "What was that, Morpheus?" "Th-ee pro-f-ess-ee ssss-ay-z" "Sorry?" "T.H.E. Space P.R.O.P.H.E.C.Y. Space S.A.Y.S." "Could you speak a bit faster please, we're being attacked." |
| Solistus |
| heh.... *ACTUAL spoiler, not that it matters* I almost groaned aloud when they started literally applying programming terms.... the 'back doors' come to mind. |
| RavenBlack |
| Are you implying that my spoilers aren't? Tsk. Just because they're mixed in with nonsense and exaggerations doesn't make them any less spoilery. Okay, so it does. They're not really spoilers, they're *enhancers*. |
| Tom |
| Mmm, that nonsense about Trinity using SSH. She uses Nmap to discover a vulnerable SSH server. http://www.insecure.org/ Completely different thing. |
| RavenBlack |
| Ah yes, and another amusing moment that escaped the original posting - the Great Architect saying to Keanu, "it's interesting to read your reactions". I assume that character would also find it compelling to watch paint dry or grass grow. Or entertaining to watch Brotherhood of the Wolf. |
| wyndenai |
| Hey, I found Brotherhood of the Wolf quite entertaining to watch. Mostly because I saw it subtitled and I was entertained by observing my own mental processes handling the French and butchered English in parallel. That and by the sheer ugliness of the French actors. |
| Solistus |
| Ahh, good old French.... a strange language. I still can't comprehend how the slang term for a certain part of the male anatomy is feminine.... At any rate, if you expect The Matrix "2" to be as good as the first you'll be let down, but it's entertaining between bad lines, nice special effects, 'deep' themes that made me want to groan, and some decent scenes. It lacked the greatness of the first- the film effects are no longer so mind-blowing, the plot a bit more stale, and it doesn't seem as urgent / relevant since the entire movie is about fulfilling a prophecy that turns out to be false... at least according to a tool of the enemy that Neo believes for some strange reason... Ah well, I'm too tired to say anything relevant, so I'll stop saying anything, period. A bientot! |
| Eps |
| It looks like raven is in that state of mind of having no idea of what the hell he just watched. Then wondering if it was worth the $10 to get in, for the over extended sex scene where all you really get to see is neos' "bottom" which could in fact be anyone's. Of course the fact that an eight year old could do better on the coat in the agent fight scene in ms-paint is no real help either. Then you get into the whole "The real world is in fact part of the matrix" and neo is so dumb he doesn't pick it's the most obvious thing about the whole movie. It's the reason the movie is there, I don't know why they just didn't put up a big "ZION IS PART OF THE MATR|X" poster and save people the two hours just to find it out. And for the lucky door prize did you notice the nice sell of the animartix hidden in there? Anyway, after all that I didn't mind the movie. I'd also like to note for the people who think it sucked, that was how the people who first saw the first matrix felt. I think it's the type of movie that grows on you, but then again you might need some disinfectant to get rid of it? Also the spoiler to tell people that haven’t seen it yet is to say “Morpheus dies right at the end.” It works very well. :P Eps - It's all good. |
| RavenBlack |
| Au contraire, I know exactly what I just watched, and also knew exactly what I would be watching, plot and all. Not from spoilers or anything - it was just all so very predictable. It was watched solely to acquire the ability to write an amusing snide review of it. |
| SpasmodicMonk |
| I didn't think the first Matrix movie 'sucked'. I happened to find it very enjoyable, mostly due to the <a href="www.white-wolf.com">White Wolf mageyness</a> of it (a roleplaying game based around the idea that belief shapes reality). Funnily enough, having not seen the second movie, I was thinking last night, 'I bet they'll make the real world part of the Matrix in order to add something <i>new</i> and <i>exciting</i>'. I can't believe I guessed right. Why, oh why, did they have to make a sequel? |
| Nameless |
| Ah. I'd not realised the blog didn't accept HTML tags. Sorry about that. |
| SpasmodicMonk |
| Tsk. I forgot to type a name. Sorry, again. |
| Tom |
| Of course, the best thing about watching Matrixes is living in Sydney. I can walk through the city and recognise locations from the movies. Then shoot people and claim that they were Neo and about to destroy capitalism so the police won't cause any trouble. This has only worked twice. What happens in the end is that Neo is revealed as a MMORPG addict who's got a little too involved in the game, plugged himself in, and coded the whole thing in LPC with DirectX extensions. The real world continues happily, has always continued happily. The moral being that the modern world is far too plugged in, as is hinted in the first movie by that guy who says 'I think you've just got to unplug, stop playing EverQuest, get some R&R'. Goes well with the Alice theme, waking up from a dream. |
| Tom |
| And why doesn't Neo own up to his real first name? I have a personal interest in this. |
| bv728 |
| There's a lot of odd stuff buried in the movie that can be applied to the first one; in this, it is a perfect geek film. On the other hand, a movie that only really makes sense if you A) Play the Video Game, B) Watch all the Animated Shorts, and C) Apply Gnostic Theology isn't exactly the kind of movie that I'd expect to get made. Doesn't make it better, just... unexpected. |
| RavenBlack |
| I'm really just bitter because they're following the same lines of speculation that I do in my book (http://books.ravenblack.net/), but they're doing it horribly. And people who read my book are sure to say "gosh, it's just like the Matrix". Not that they weren't doing that already. Bastards. |
| Eps |
| /me watches Raven shamelessly plug his book. Eps |
| RavenBlack |
| Meanwhile, I watch Eps shamelessly state the obvious nearly as badly as The Matrix II: Electric Boogaloo did. |
| Tom |
| I'd actually not thought of 'Revelations' as Matrixish until you said people had done so. Obviously such people are very stupid. It's investigating a completely different banana. In the meantime, everybody should read my book http://www.geocities.com/tom_massey/novel2/ which has extremely limited potential for Matrixising, but includes 37% more fluffy Garfield dolls and is going cheap. This is because it is a chicken. |
| James |
| Yeah, but your book doesn't have Neo saying "Woah", and that right there elevates it to a higher plane of existence. Or possibly just a different version. |
| Eps |
| I think I found the reason that it doesn't have Neo saying "Woah", mainly its lack of a character named Neo. All I can say is I can't wait for Computer Boy 2... Eps |
| RavenBlack |
| You've only read the first few chapters, though, haven't you? There are *fifty* characters named Neo, later. |
| Solistus |
| Speaking of which, I need to get around to ordering Revelations one of these days; school's about to end, so I'll actually have time to read it, which will be nice. Of course, I found time to post about not having time to read about it just now... I'm starting to think that not doing my work may be having an adverse effect on my grades. Ah well. |
| Digi |
| BRUCE WILLIS IS DEAD! KEVIN SPACEY IS KEYSER SOZE! IT'S GWYNETH PALTROW'S HEAD IN THE BOX! Why do films feel they need a twist? Remember when films could just tell a decent story and finish, and then everyone was happy? No fireworks, or twisty snake tails or any of that crap. "Let's make a terrible film, and then bolt a bloody obvious twist at the end, and then tell everyone, then they'll HAVE to watch it!" I was particularly pleased with 8 Miles' twist (recent Eminem movie, in which he did quite well for a first attempt), which was that there was no twist at all. Some stuff happened, some people sung some songs, and luckily enough for my £5.99 and me someone had the decency to sneak around with a camera while it was all going down. Hey, Hollywood script writers, how about you surprise me with clever dialogue and imaginative story lines, rather the usual 2 minutes of "Ah so all along my uncle was my brother's left nut". |