The Matrix Re-Viled
Nov. 17th, 2003 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyIn between demonstrating my remarkable culinary skills this weekend, I found time to make it to see The Matrix Revolutions.
You can imagine the creative process that started out the whole Matrix phenomenon
"Hey, how about a film where Keanu travels through time and space in a telephone box, and has to save humanity?
"Nah, been done."
"Okay, how about one with an actor called Reeve who flies about with superpowers?
"Been done."
"Okay, how about BOTH."
"...geeeeeee...."
It's a real curates egg of a film; visually remarkable and at times plain jawdropping, but with such a hokey, bloated script it is difficult to believe that the authors of the original taut sci-fi thriller wrote this as well. I suppose the problem is that every second film I see these days is a jawdropping technical achievement, and so I've got jaded to the fact that we can now create anything on screen. The thing that filmmakers now have to do is concentrate on the story and the dialogue because, darling, the script for the Matrix Revolutions sucks.
To paraphrase the old song:
Clang Clang Clang went the writing
Thus Thud Thud went the prose.
Who the hell wrote this nonsense?
The humourless Warshawski bro's
Surrounded by the SFX on offer, having such risible dialogue (I can only assume they cut the sequence between the grizzled general and the 16-year-old recruit with a cheese knife) just shows up that whilst you can raise the technical bar with a computer, you still need talented writers who know that they want to achieve; and my feeling is that the Warshawski brothers are no wiser about what the Matrix is than we are at the end of all of this. Frankly, I think they were winging it. Scenes that added nothing (the subway platform sequence) with characters who didn't know what they were talking about (but trying to sound portentous) tried and failed to distract me from the hamfisted religious subtext. As a bit of a Godbotherer on the quiet myself I've no problem with the occasional religious subtext, but start to object when the writers feel the need to knock it home with a mallet. Couple that with scenes lifted wholesale from better films ('Let's fly the ship down this narrow passageway!' "What, you mean like the Millennium Falcon inside the Death Star in Return of the Jedi, but with more budget?" "Hush!") and poorly paced plotting and you've got a film that i really wanted to like and get excited by, but ultimately spent my time watching it thinking of snide put-downs for the review.
It's a shame; the Matrix series started out so well, but the authors seem to have got so caught up in the possibilities of CGI and wire-fu that they haven't bothered to think through many of the ramifications of their ideas and the script suffers for it. When a Psychologist and a Physicist between them are left going 'that bit made no sense at all', then the author really has to concede that either their script perhaps is a little too highbrow for mainstream multiplex entertainment, or alternatively that it does, indeed, make no sense at all.
In the light of that, I'd like to suggest how the Matrix should have ended.
NEO arrives in his telephone box and steps out into the rain. Thousands of Agent Smiths line the streets. One steps forward.
SMITH: Welcome back, Mr. Anderson! Mr. Ted 'Theodore' Anderson!
NEO: Whoa. Strange things are afoot in the Matrix.
Stepping from another phone box comes Alex Winter.
BILL: Dude!
NEO: Dude!
BILL: We've got to totally save the world. Again.
NEO: But dude - we don't even know how to play our instruments!
NEO shakes and goes glassy-eyed for a moment before returning to normal. He looks at his fingers.
NEO: Whoa. I know guitar.
The film closes with Bill & Neo playing 'God Gave Rock & Roll to You', whilst millions of Agent Smiths wave cigarette lighters in the air. It stops raining and the sun comes out.
That's how it should have ended - it would have made just as much sense, and pleased the geek audience much more than the Jesus allegory that we got.
You can imagine the creative process that started out the whole Matrix phenomenon
"Hey, how about a film where Keanu travels through time and space in a telephone box, and has to save humanity?
"Nah, been done."
"Okay, how about one with an actor called Reeve who flies about with superpowers?
"Been done."
"Okay, how about BOTH."
"...geeeeeee...."
It's a real curates egg of a film; visually remarkable and at times plain jawdropping, but with such a hokey, bloated script it is difficult to believe that the authors of the original taut sci-fi thriller wrote this as well. I suppose the problem is that every second film I see these days is a jawdropping technical achievement, and so I've got jaded to the fact that we can now create anything on screen. The thing that filmmakers now have to do is concentrate on the story and the dialogue because, darling, the script for the Matrix Revolutions sucks.
To paraphrase the old song:
Clang Clang Clang went the writing
Thus Thud Thud went the prose.
Who the hell wrote this nonsense?
The humourless Warshawski bro's
Surrounded by the SFX on offer, having such risible dialogue (I can only assume they cut the sequence between the grizzled general and the 16-year-old recruit with a cheese knife) just shows up that whilst you can raise the technical bar with a computer, you still need talented writers who know that they want to achieve; and my feeling is that the Warshawski brothers are no wiser about what the Matrix is than we are at the end of all of this. Frankly, I think they were winging it. Scenes that added nothing (the subway platform sequence) with characters who didn't know what they were talking about (but trying to sound portentous) tried and failed to distract me from the hamfisted religious subtext. As a bit of a Godbotherer on the quiet myself I've no problem with the occasional religious subtext, but start to object when the writers feel the need to knock it home with a mallet. Couple that with scenes lifted wholesale from better films ('Let's fly the ship down this narrow passageway!' "What, you mean like the Millennium Falcon inside the Death Star in Return of the Jedi, but with more budget?" "Hush!") and poorly paced plotting and you've got a film that i really wanted to like and get excited by, but ultimately spent my time watching it thinking of snide put-downs for the review.
It's a shame; the Matrix series started out so well, but the authors seem to have got so caught up in the possibilities of CGI and wire-fu that they haven't bothered to think through many of the ramifications of their ideas and the script suffers for it. When a Psychologist and a Physicist between them are left going 'that bit made no sense at all', then the author really has to concede that either their script perhaps is a little too highbrow for mainstream multiplex entertainment, or alternatively that it does, indeed, make no sense at all.
In the light of that, I'd like to suggest how the Matrix should have ended.
NEO arrives in his telephone box and steps out into the rain. Thousands of Agent Smiths line the streets. One steps forward.
SMITH: Welcome back, Mr. Anderson! Mr. Ted 'Theodore' Anderson!
NEO: Whoa. Strange things are afoot in the Matrix.
Stepping from another phone box comes Alex Winter.
BILL: Dude!
NEO: Dude!
BILL: We've got to totally save the world. Again.
NEO: But dude - we don't even know how to play our instruments!
NEO shakes and goes glassy-eyed for a moment before returning to normal. He looks at his fingers.
NEO: Whoa. I know guitar.
The film closes with Bill & Neo playing 'God Gave Rock & Roll to You', whilst millions of Agent Smiths wave cigarette lighters in the air. It stops raining and the sun comes out.
That's how it should have ended - it would have made just as much sense, and pleased the geek audience much more than the Jesus allegory that we got.
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-17 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-17 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-17 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-17 07:35 am (UTC)religeon
Date: 2003-11-17 07:22 am (UTC)It made the whole thing a lot more watchable. That and playing 'spot the prophesy I have already used to upset an rpg group' which was also good entertainment for 2 and 3!
no subject
Date: 2003-11-17 08:50 am (UTC)Love the new ending!
no subject
Date: 2003-11-17 10:39 am (UTC)At least I don't mind so much as
That ending would have been cool indeed.
Strangely, my religious radar didn't go off, must have missed the references. Yes, it bombastic and messiahish but that was about it. I don't mind that I missed it, though. ;o)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-18 09:33 am (UTC)I suspect that one or both of the miscreants who hashed them together either had a lot of classical gnostic exposure at some point, or they just got lucky and made stuff up.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 10:02 am (UTC)Tragic.
Shakespeare would be proud.
Trinitys *Kiss me* speech nearly killed me...