Matrix musings
Nov. 24th, 2003 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatThe voy boards are down again, which is a good thing since I was getting cranky reading some of the posts, maybe voy was too? Hmmm.
At any rate taking yet another break from the marketing plan, actually I hit a wall on it a few hours ago and distracted myself with watching the first half of Fiddler on The Roof on TCM as well as looking through job postings.
Saw Matrix Revolutions this weekend. While it was entertaining, it was not nearly as entertaining or innovative as the first one. The first hour the metaphors came fast and furious, the second hour we got the cliche ridden battle complete with nifty special effects and the Paul Atredies themed epiphany.
Don't understand why all the hoopla, the Matrix philosophy seems pretty straight forward to me. Lots of religious allegory. But nothing really new or reality bending.
Interesting sci-fi triology the Matrix. I've seen all three films now, plus the Animatrix, so I have a pretty good idea what the filmmakers were going for.
The story is basically about humanity coming to grips with it's own creation and the creation learning to deal with it's maker.
Years ago, as documented in the Animatrix - a series of short animated flicks giving us the back story to the triology - humanity created artifical life forms which over time became sentient. Instead of recognizing the sentience, humanity exiled the life forms, enslaved them, or tried to exterminate. The new life forms evolved and surpassed humanity, to the extent that they were able to defeat humanity in a huge war. Desperate humanity declared nuclear war and attempted to blast the sky - removing the source of the mechanical life forms energy which is solar energy or sunlight. It didn't work - the mechanical life forms figured out another means of energizing itself - the bioelectric energy of organic life. So the roles shifted and the machines enslaved humanity, creating a matrix type universe for the human mind to exist in, while the human bodies empowered the machines - a symbiotic existence. The humans who escaped the machines set up their own little city called Zion which they in turn used machines to provide them with electricity and the ability of flight, transportation, and tunneling. One of the council-members - Anthony Zerbe informs Neo that the machines and humanity need each other. Extermination doesn't work. They can't survive without each other.
That's the outside world. Then we have the inside world - known as the Matrix. (The inside world by the way, I found far more interesting.)
The philosophy is explored through a series of allegorical characters which the Wachowski brothers have uplifted from myth. These characters all inhabit the inside world of the Matrix, not the outside world of Zion and Machine City. (And have been explored before in film in better ways. Here they are bit too obvious and two-dimensional. But I'll get to that later.)
First is the oracle and the source which are echoed by neo and agent smith as bipolar opposites whose existence depends on the other one.
The source balances the equation - he represents order. Each equation has only one answer.
The oracle unbalances the equation - she represents chaos. The oracle believes an equation has numerous answers.
The source believes in control and fate. Destiny.
The oracle believes in choice and free will. We make our own destiny.
The source destroys errant programs, exiles or deletes them. The oracle keeps them, collects them, creates them.
Neo creates Agent Smith in the first movie, by infecting him with his own matter. Agent Smith is a program created by the source to keep order in the matrix, after Neo infects Smith and breaks him apart, Smith's program mutates becoming in effect the anti-Neo. As Neo can bend the reality within the matrix to his will, so can Smith - except Neo is attempting to free the minds of those inside, Smith is attempting to assimilate them into himself. (Star Trek Next Generation actually explored this theme much earlier in the series Star Trek with Lucious of Borg, and I Borg). Each time Agent Smith infects someone with his essence they become a copy of Agent Smith (sort of like Invasion of The Body Snatchers), he can now infect humans as well as programs. In fact he is able to enter the human world of Zion, by infecting a human. In Zion he sabotages the plans of the humans, and he blinds Neo, before Neo destroys his human shell - causing him to retreat to the Matrix again where he has become all powerful.
Matrix Revolutions starts with Neo caught between worlds - he is at a way station (which looks exactly like a subway station) waiting for a train which is his only means out of this place on the fringes of both his own consciousness and the Matrix. A limbo of sorts. In order to get back to his body, he must get back to the Matrix, to do this he has to take a train. But the train man works for his enemy, a French man who runs a cafe and who wants Neo to remain in Limbo.
In Matrix Reloaded the French man owns a cafe where the exiled programs are hidden. The exiled programs are those programs who stopped performing their purpose and started acting outside the boundaries of the program - they are the vampires, werewolves, ghosts, basically the denziens of the French man's province, a red and black cafe. In case you can't figure out who the French man is, his wife's name is Persephone, she sits at his right hand and cannot feel love and desperately desires it. In the first movie, Persephone leads Neo to the clockmaker who helps him find the source, when he shows her what love is like - similar to Orpheus' playing a hymn.
In Matrix Reloaded - Trinity, Neo's lover, comes to the cafe and convinces the french man to bring Neo out of limbo with the point of a gun - sort of the reverse of Orpheus, Eurydice goes to rescue him. The French Man is Hades. The train man - Cereburus - the river guide to and from hell. To reach the world of light and illumination - the hero must first pass through hell, and to get out of hell, he must find an emotional connection which a man at the limbo station tells him is love. While in Limbo - Neo meets three people - a man, his wife and their child - satey. The man who speaks to him is knowledge - he tells Neo two things: 1)karma means our purpose, what we are meant to do, 2) love is the connection - how we connect.
Satey - his daughter - represents hope or illumination. The child at the end of the rainbow so to speak. Satey goes to the oracle who has Satey help her make cookies with her hands (which brought up a nostalgic childhood memory by the way - when I was a child, a close friend taught me to mix chocolat chip cookies with my hands, for some reason they tasted better that way, haven't done that in years).
Before Trinity and Morpheus rescue Neo, they visit the oracle who looks different than before (b/c the actress who originally played her died), she tells them she lost a piece of herself but is just in a different shell. When Agent Smith comes to assimilate her, she doesn't fight, partly because she knows a part of herself will remain just inside a new shell.
The next bit of imagery is Neo's trip to the machine city, where he goes to set up a truce with the machines intent on annihilating the humans. Before he reaches the city he is blinded by Agent Smith - blind he is able to see Agent Smith's true form and the true form behind the machines - which is pure red light. No longer does he see the ugly shells. Like Paul Atredies from Dune, Neo is empowered with a second sight when he becomes blind. Trinity can only take him so far, before she dies in his arms. Neo must go on alone. The machines jack him into the Matrix and he fights the negative representation of himself and his fears - the anti-matter. The only way he can win this battle though is by surrendering, allowing Agent Smith to assmiliate him, because the assimilation allows the machines to annihilate Agent Smith, by becoming one, Smith and Neo counter-act one another - allowing the equation to finally balance without conflict. Neo's selfless sacrifice, pushes him beyond concepts of good and evil. His arms are spread in a cruxifixion pose similar to the Christian allegory - of the sacrifice that redeems others.
Nice. But not overly innovative and somewhat clunky in the way it was arrived at. I could have done without all the cliche battle scenes, especially between the world-weary veteran and young kid. Most of the characters were undeveloped. I did not care when Trinity died, since outside of being Neo's love interest, I had no idea who she was. Morpheus receded almost entirely in the background. Niobe seemed to be a Han Solo type character we never really got to know.
Same with the other characters I can't even recall the names of, they were that inconsequential and underdeveloped. The directors/writers seemed more interested in religious allegory and special effects than in character - a mistake George Lucas made in his more recent movies. Which makes the last two Matrix movies somewhat lacking in real emotional impact not to mention a bit flat.
The metaphors? Well if you are into the whole Hades/Persephone mythos - you might want to check out some of Luis Bunenal's films, the film Black Orpheus,
and Orphee. This movie didn't do it very well.
While Hades/Persephone were very attractive, they lacked impact and we saw them very briefly. The whole oracle/source metaphor was a bit clunky and most viewers seemed confused by it. I'm sure it's been done before and better - but my mind can't remember where at the moment. Just as the whole Neo/Smith duel has been done before and while interesting at times, Hugo Weaving really steals the show, it falls a little flat. It's basically the fight between the man and his shadow.
The stunts? Run of the mill. See Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix for good stunts. This one didn't do anything that spectacular. The effects? Disappointing.
In one scene - I could almost see the blue screen - it's when the veteran is being hammered by mechanical squids.
What was entertaining about the Matrix was deciphering the metaphors, and the time I spent with Neo inside the matrix world. But the lack of character development for the characters including Neo, made it difficult for me to care whether they won or loss. Overall? I'd give it a B. Took my mind off things. In retrospect?? I liked the first two films better.
At any rate taking yet another break from the marketing plan, actually I hit a wall on it a few hours ago and distracted myself with watching the first half of Fiddler on The Roof on TCM as well as looking through job postings.
Saw Matrix Revolutions this weekend. While it was entertaining, it was not nearly as entertaining or innovative as the first one. The first hour the metaphors came fast and furious, the second hour we got the cliche ridden battle complete with nifty special effects and the Paul Atredies themed epiphany.
Don't understand why all the hoopla, the Matrix philosophy seems pretty straight forward to me. Lots of religious allegory. But nothing really new or reality bending.
Interesting sci-fi triology the Matrix. I've seen all three films now, plus the Animatrix, so I have a pretty good idea what the filmmakers were going for.
The story is basically about humanity coming to grips with it's own creation and the creation learning to deal with it's maker.
Years ago, as documented in the Animatrix - a series of short animated flicks giving us the back story to the triology - humanity created artifical life forms which over time became sentient. Instead of recognizing the sentience, humanity exiled the life forms, enslaved them, or tried to exterminate. The new life forms evolved and surpassed humanity, to the extent that they were able to defeat humanity in a huge war. Desperate humanity declared nuclear war and attempted to blast the sky - removing the source of the mechanical life forms energy which is solar energy or sunlight. It didn't work - the mechanical life forms figured out another means of energizing itself - the bioelectric energy of organic life. So the roles shifted and the machines enslaved humanity, creating a matrix type universe for the human mind to exist in, while the human bodies empowered the machines - a symbiotic existence. The humans who escaped the machines set up their own little city called Zion which they in turn used machines to provide them with electricity and the ability of flight, transportation, and tunneling. One of the council-members - Anthony Zerbe informs Neo that the machines and humanity need each other. Extermination doesn't work. They can't survive without each other.
That's the outside world. Then we have the inside world - known as the Matrix. (The inside world by the way, I found far more interesting.)
The philosophy is explored through a series of allegorical characters which the Wachowski brothers have uplifted from myth. These characters all inhabit the inside world of the Matrix, not the outside world of Zion and Machine City. (And have been explored before in film in better ways. Here they are bit too obvious and two-dimensional. But I'll get to that later.)
First is the oracle and the source which are echoed by neo and agent smith as bipolar opposites whose existence depends on the other one.
The source balances the equation - he represents order. Each equation has only one answer.
The oracle unbalances the equation - she represents chaos. The oracle believes an equation has numerous answers.
The source believes in control and fate. Destiny.
The oracle believes in choice and free will. We make our own destiny.
The source destroys errant programs, exiles or deletes them. The oracle keeps them, collects them, creates them.
Neo creates Agent Smith in the first movie, by infecting him with his own matter. Agent Smith is a program created by the source to keep order in the matrix, after Neo infects Smith and breaks him apart, Smith's program mutates becoming in effect the anti-Neo. As Neo can bend the reality within the matrix to his will, so can Smith - except Neo is attempting to free the minds of those inside, Smith is attempting to assimilate them into himself. (Star Trek Next Generation actually explored this theme much earlier in the series Star Trek with Lucious of Borg, and I Borg). Each time Agent Smith infects someone with his essence they become a copy of Agent Smith (sort of like Invasion of The Body Snatchers), he can now infect humans as well as programs. In fact he is able to enter the human world of Zion, by infecting a human. In Zion he sabotages the plans of the humans, and he blinds Neo, before Neo destroys his human shell - causing him to retreat to the Matrix again where he has become all powerful.
Matrix Revolutions starts with Neo caught between worlds - he is at a way station (which looks exactly like a subway station) waiting for a train which is his only means out of this place on the fringes of both his own consciousness and the Matrix. A limbo of sorts. In order to get back to his body, he must get back to the Matrix, to do this he has to take a train. But the train man works for his enemy, a French man who runs a cafe and who wants Neo to remain in Limbo.
In Matrix Reloaded the French man owns a cafe where the exiled programs are hidden. The exiled programs are those programs who stopped performing their purpose and started acting outside the boundaries of the program - they are the vampires, werewolves, ghosts, basically the denziens of the French man's province, a red and black cafe. In case you can't figure out who the French man is, his wife's name is Persephone, she sits at his right hand and cannot feel love and desperately desires it. In the first movie, Persephone leads Neo to the clockmaker who helps him find the source, when he shows her what love is like - similar to Orpheus' playing a hymn.
In Matrix Reloaded - Trinity, Neo's lover, comes to the cafe and convinces the french man to bring Neo out of limbo with the point of a gun - sort of the reverse of Orpheus, Eurydice goes to rescue him. The French Man is Hades. The train man - Cereburus - the river guide to and from hell. To reach the world of light and illumination - the hero must first pass through hell, and to get out of hell, he must find an emotional connection which a man at the limbo station tells him is love. While in Limbo - Neo meets three people - a man, his wife and their child - satey. The man who speaks to him is knowledge - he tells Neo two things: 1)karma means our purpose, what we are meant to do, 2) love is the connection - how we connect.
Satey - his daughter - represents hope or illumination. The child at the end of the rainbow so to speak. Satey goes to the oracle who has Satey help her make cookies with her hands (which brought up a nostalgic childhood memory by the way - when I was a child, a close friend taught me to mix chocolat chip cookies with my hands, for some reason they tasted better that way, haven't done that in years).
Before Trinity and Morpheus rescue Neo, they visit the oracle who looks different than before (b/c the actress who originally played her died), she tells them she lost a piece of herself but is just in a different shell. When Agent Smith comes to assimilate her, she doesn't fight, partly because she knows a part of herself will remain just inside a new shell.
The next bit of imagery is Neo's trip to the machine city, where he goes to set up a truce with the machines intent on annihilating the humans. Before he reaches the city he is blinded by Agent Smith - blind he is able to see Agent Smith's true form and the true form behind the machines - which is pure red light. No longer does he see the ugly shells. Like Paul Atredies from Dune, Neo is empowered with a second sight when he becomes blind. Trinity can only take him so far, before she dies in his arms. Neo must go on alone. The machines jack him into the Matrix and he fights the negative representation of himself and his fears - the anti-matter. The only way he can win this battle though is by surrendering, allowing Agent Smith to assmiliate him, because the assimilation allows the machines to annihilate Agent Smith, by becoming one, Smith and Neo counter-act one another - allowing the equation to finally balance without conflict. Neo's selfless sacrifice, pushes him beyond concepts of good and evil. His arms are spread in a cruxifixion pose similar to the Christian allegory - of the sacrifice that redeems others.
Nice. But not overly innovative and somewhat clunky in the way it was arrived at. I could have done without all the cliche battle scenes, especially between the world-weary veteran and young kid. Most of the characters were undeveloped. I did not care when Trinity died, since outside of being Neo's love interest, I had no idea who she was. Morpheus receded almost entirely in the background. Niobe seemed to be a Han Solo type character we never really got to know.
Same with the other characters I can't even recall the names of, they were that inconsequential and underdeveloped. The directors/writers seemed more interested in religious allegory and special effects than in character - a mistake George Lucas made in his more recent movies. Which makes the last two Matrix movies somewhat lacking in real emotional impact not to mention a bit flat.
The metaphors? Well if you are into the whole Hades/Persephone mythos - you might want to check out some of Luis Bunenal's films, the film Black Orpheus,
and Orphee. This movie didn't do it very well.
While Hades/Persephone were very attractive, they lacked impact and we saw them very briefly. The whole oracle/source metaphor was a bit clunky and most viewers seemed confused by it. I'm sure it's been done before and better - but my mind can't remember where at the moment. Just as the whole Neo/Smith duel has been done before and while interesting at times, Hugo Weaving really steals the show, it falls a little flat. It's basically the fight between the man and his shadow.
The stunts? Run of the mill. See Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix for good stunts. This one didn't do anything that spectacular. The effects? Disappointing.
In one scene - I could almost see the blue screen - it's when the veteran is being hammered by mechanical squids.
What was entertaining about the Matrix was deciphering the metaphors, and the time I spent with Neo inside the matrix world. But the lack of character development for the characters including Neo, made it difficult for me to care whether they won or loss. Overall? I'd give it a B. Took my mind off things. In retrospect?? I liked the first two films better.
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Date: 2003-11-25 12:54 am (UTC)Rufus