Kudos to the Wachowski Brothers for making the best live-action anime ever. The concluding chapter of the "Matrix" series features a Starship Troopers-quality battle sequence with men in giant Mecha battle suits blasting away at boiling chains of furious robot Squids, and the climactic duke-out between Neo and Agent Smith recalls the never-ending, crater-blasting combat of Goku and Lord Frieza in Dragonball Z. Gluing the whole thing together is a mystical or theological investigation a la Final Fantasy. It's too bad the first episode created expectations the series could never live up to, owing to the late dot com cultural context and what was at the time a cogent social critique of a fake, media created world. As recently as Bush's staged aircraft carrier landing, the Simulacrum still seemed firmly in place. However, since then, news has slipped past our own Machine filters of the hundreds of US dead and wounded in a bloody, ongoing war with the people of Iraq, making a more serious, non-ironic drama about matters worth dying for suddenly relevant. As it turns out, Zion's battle against the Empire of Machines is won or lost depending on what the Empire wants for itself--its own interior conversation. How long will it take the U.S. to realize, as did the Machine City, that its own Agent Smiths (i.e. unelected leaders), growing in power, threaten the stability of the system far more than any struggling band of separatist humans?
I was on the L train and I heard the following:
cute boy: Yeah, so did you like see matrix?
cute girl: Naw, I don't care about that.
cute boy: Naw, me either, but I'm gonna see it anyway.
me ( thinking): Shit man, how many of us out here feel like this? are we all gonna pay $$ at box office out of a sense of cultural duty?
upshot: is anyone else gonna skip it? And if not, will I be left behind y'all in the dust? And just how much worth-it _is_ this battle sequence, anyhow?
shit! that (above) was me again. (I will get with the programme, I promise)
Actually, I know I'm in the minority liking it. Just a few notes (caution: mild spoilers):
1. In Reloaded, Neo mentions the Oracle and the Architect disdainfully says, "Please..." In Revolutions Neo asks the Oracle about the Architect and she says "Please..." exactly the same way. That's funny!
2. In Reloaded the Architect explains the different versions of the Matrix. Once humans were given the element of choice, the earliest iterations of the Matrix resulted in activity that was, he says, "unspeakably grotesque." A montage of violence and chaos appears on the big video wall right when he says that phrase, and the face of George Bush appears on several screens directly over his shoulder. Go, Wachowskis! (Eventually I'll get a screen shot.)
3. Connections between the battle scenes in Revolutions and Starship Troopers. In Troopers you had 4 main kinds of bugs: (a) humvee-sized hand to hand combat bugs (b) giant tank sized bugs (c) bugs that shoot orbital missiles out of their asses and (d) the Brain Bug. In Revolutions you have (i) squids (ii) giant, bullet shaped tunneling robots that drill through the domed roof of Zion's "dock," fall heavily to the floor, sprout legs, right themselves, and start drilling to the next level (iii) in the Machine City, huge, missile firing, insect-robots and (iv) a twenty-foot tall Oz-like face made out of swirling iron filings that speaks to Neo and negotiates on behalf of the city. All of the above is cool and worth paying money to see.
4. Another anime connection: at the end of the movie the stricken Neo is touched by dozens of black snakelike cables controlled by the Machine City. They connect to his bioports and bear him aloft like a crowd carrying a fallen hero. The image is a more or less direct cop of the climactic moment of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds, (due out on DVD soon) when the bug-like Ohmu lift the Princess into the sky with their feeler-tentacles.
"All of the above is cool and worth paying money to see."
geeez...that's pretty convincing. Maybe I'll go by myself and take a book for the bits with dialogue.
The spoken part has its own charms. Here's Jim Hoberman in the Voice: A minor mystery is the Hollywood patois that creeps into the dialogue. "It's the big bupkes—nada," one Zionian says to another by way of expressing "nothing." A related mystery is the continuing presence of Cornel West, delivering lines like "But what hope can a single vessel have against the entire defense system?"
Before I dig myself too deep here:
Anomalous presence of Cornel West notwithstanding, the "Council Chamber" scenes are just Star Trek TNG with cornrows and natural fabrics. Also, the Neo/Trinity love interest is ludicrous. I'm working on a post that explains the real inspiration for the series, a half-forgotten 1958 book called...
Okay well I saw the Council Chambers last time and if they are similar you are definitely being generous. Not just ST/TNG with natural fabrics, but also a trip to the friendship bead section of the dollar store. And perhaps a clique of 8 year-old girls on costume detail.
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Kudos to the Wachowski Brothers for making the best live-action anime ever. The concluding chapter of the "Matrix" series features a Starship Troopers-quality battle sequence with men in giant Mecha battle suits blasting away at boiling chains of furious robot Squids, and the climactic duke-out between Neo and Agent Smith recalls the never-ending, crater-blasting combat of Goku and Lord Frieza in Dragonball Z. Gluing the whole thing together is a mystical or theological investigation a la Final Fantasy. It's too bad the first episode created expectations the series could never live up to, owing to the late dot com cultural context and what was at the time a cogent social critique of a fake, media created world. As recently as Bush's staged aircraft carrier landing, the Simulacrum still seemed firmly in place. However, since then, news has slipped past our own Machine filters of the hundreds of US dead and wounded in a bloody, ongoing war with the people of Iraq, making a more serious, non-ironic drama about matters worth dying for suddenly relevant. As it turns out, Zion's battle against the Empire of Machines is won or lost depending on what the Empire wants for itself--its own interior conversation. How long will it take the U.S. to realize, as did the Machine City, that its own Agent Smiths (i.e. unelected leaders), growing in power, threaten the stability of the system far more than any struggling band of separatist humans?
- tom moody 11-14-2003 9:13 pm
I was on the L train and I heard the following:
cute boy: Yeah, so did you like see matrix?
cute girl: Naw, I don't care about that.
cute boy: Naw, me either, but I'm gonna see it anyway.
me ( thinking): Shit man, how many of us out here feel like this? are we all gonna pay $$ at box office out of a sense of cultural duty?
upshot: is anyone else gonna skip it? And if not, will I be left behind y'all in the dust? And just how much worth-it _is_ this battle sequence, anyhow?
- anonymous (guest) 11-16-2003 10:43 am
shit! that (above) was me again. (I will get with the programme, I promise)
- sally (guest) 11-16-2003 10:44 am
Actually, I know I'm in the minority liking it. Just a few notes (caution: mild spoilers):
1. In Reloaded, Neo mentions the Oracle and the Architect disdainfully says, "Please..." In Revolutions Neo asks the Oracle about the Architect and she says "Please..." exactly the same way. That's funny!
2. In Reloaded the Architect explains the different versions of the Matrix. Once humans were given the element of choice, the earliest iterations of the Matrix resulted in activity that was, he says, "unspeakably grotesque." A montage of violence and chaos appears on the big video wall right when he says that phrase, and the face of George Bush appears on several screens directly over his shoulder. Go, Wachowskis! (Eventually I'll get a screen shot.)
3. Connections between the battle scenes in Revolutions and Starship Troopers. In Troopers you had 4 main kinds of bugs: (a) humvee-sized hand to hand combat bugs (b) giant tank sized bugs (c) bugs that shoot orbital missiles out of their asses and (d) the Brain Bug. In Revolutions you have (i) squids (ii) giant, bullet shaped tunneling robots that drill through the domed roof of Zion's "dock," fall heavily to the floor, sprout legs, right themselves, and start drilling to the next level (iii) in the Machine City, huge, missile firing, insect-robots and (iv) a twenty-foot tall Oz-like face made out of swirling iron filings that speaks to Neo and negotiates on behalf of the city. All of the above is cool and worth paying money to see.
4. Another anime connection: at the end of the movie the stricken Neo is touched by dozens of black snakelike cables controlled by the Machine City. They connect to his bioports and bear him aloft like a crowd carrying a fallen hero. The image is a more or less direct cop of the climactic moment of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds, (due out on DVD soon) when the bug-like Ohmu lift the Princess into the sky with their feeler-tentacles.
- tom moody 11-17-2003 8:57 am
"All of the above is cool and worth paying money to see."
geeez...that's pretty convincing. Maybe I'll go by myself and take a book for the bits with dialogue.
- sally mckay 11-17-2003 8:38 pm
The spoken part has its own charms. Here's Jim Hoberman in the Voice:
- tom moody 11-17-2003 9:07 pm
Before I dig myself too deep here: Anomalous presence of Cornel West notwithstanding, the "Council Chamber" scenes are just Star Trek TNG with cornrows and natural fabrics. Also, the Neo/Trinity love interest is ludicrous. I'm working on a post that explains the real inspiration for the series, a half-forgotten 1958 book called...
- tom moody 11-19-2003 4:05 am
Okay well I saw the Council Chambers last time and if they are similar you are definitely being generous. Not just ST/TNG with natural fabrics, but also a trip to the friendship bead section of the dollar store. And perhaps a clique of 8 year-old girls on costume detail.
- sally mckay 11-19-2003 7:13 am