The Matrix: Reloaded — Gothic Production Values

The sec­ond entry, and then I must needs say no more about matri­ces till Novem­ber.

As a film, The Matrix [orig­i­nal] was authen­tic in its raw­ness of mise-en-scene, tight plot, char­ac­ter con­struc­tion and phi­los­o­phy. The Matrix: Reloaded, has the mangy paw of Hol­ly­wood over­pro­duc­tion and overengi­neer­ing all over it.

Now that the goth look is main­streamed [hoo­dathunkit?] it is at the same time extremed in the Matrix, Hol­ly­wood knows who its demo­graph­ics are and plays to them, even putting in vam­pires and ghosts. Every good guy is goth­ic while in the Matrix. Zion even has that retard­ed rave/orgy/infernal mass­es sequence, where every­one porks to heavy bass beats. All of the guns from the last flik have been replaced by a vari­ety of weapons [katana, longsword, tri­dent, sai, mace, etc.] that don’t do much good except look cool. Then, of course, you’ve got the goth­ic chateau in the moun­tains, the goth­ic retro tech­nol­o­gy [old TVs etc, still cool] and the rust­ed out ships of Zion.

Costuming

The cos­tumes in the orig­i­nal Matrix were indeed quite cool, but their cool­ness was sec­ondary and the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the mind that wears them. In TM:R the clothes were cool because Hol­ly­wood decid­ed it must be so, and they fail at it. Keanu in a cas­sock, is a bit pre­pos­ter­ous, Trin­i­ty main­tains skintight pleather, and the only notice­able dif­fer­ence in the agents and Mor­pheus is that they’ve got spiffy new shoes. The Zion­ists can’t man­age to clothe them­selves decent­ly [except for the elders] despite their abil­i­ty to hew an exis­tence near the earth­’s core. The bad­dies just wear white or black vari­a­tions in suit themes. Who real­ly cares.

Plot

Schiz­o­phreni­cal­ly pol­y­se­mous. Dragged a bit, then had some uber-cheesy part, fol­lowed by an uber-philo­soph­i­cal part. Rinse, repeat. This is where I found the con­flict between a smart film, and a Hol­ly­wood film to be most preva­lent. The cheese parts [the n Smith fight, rave, the Ser­aph fight, sex scene, uber­car chase, the oth­er n Smith fight, the you saved me dia­logue at the end] are Hol­ly­wood. The smart parts [Ora­cle, Merovin­gian, Archi­tect, back doors, Key­mak­er] remind­ed me most of the orig­i­nal film, despite the fact that the Merovin­gian and the Archi­tect still had some obvi­ous dis­trac­tions to them [yes­ter­day’s post]. Although, the Key­mak­er, when describ­ing how to get into the main­frame, remind­ed me much of the Old Man From Scene 24 in Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail. There is also the whole Key­mas­ter of Goz­er thing from Ghost Busters as well.

CG/Special Effects

They were cut­ting edge last time, but main­stream this time. Bul­let time/slomo adn the spin­ning cam­era moves were the same stuff from the last movie. The CGs were pret­ty obvi­ous too, sup­port­ing my the­o­ry that dig­i­tal still has a long way to go before it can ren­der as well as film stock can pick up the minute details of a per­son­’s face. Thus, some­times Neo and Smith look quite CG, because the sub­tle shad­ows and facial expres­sions are not there. Ren­der­ing fab­rics is pret­ty damn hard as well. Thus, Neo’s idi­ot­ic cas­sock goes from being nice and tex­tured to smooth as silk when he is CG. The wire-work legit­i­mate­ly seemed ripped off from Crouch­ing Tiger, Hid­den Drag­on.

Sound

Sound effects and Foley work was impres­sive, though the music was most def­i­nite­ly cre­at­ed with the sound­track in mind, and of course con­tained tracks from the most goth­ic sell­out — Rob Zom­bie. Hell, it even had a track by Dave Math­ews. [*pukes*] I did like what Juno Reac­tor did with many of the songs though — mix­ing stan­dard techno/trance with the score in many instances.

Other

The shot selec­tion was also a bit schizoid. The OTS shots were so repet­i­tive i could pre­dict what was going to hap­pen next [MS1a, MS2a, MS1b, MS2b, MCU1a, MCU2a, etc.]. At the same time, the dig­i­tal stuff with Mor­pheus fight on the trail­er, and the motor­cy­cle shots — were pret­ty damn amaz­ing. The washed-out hot­ness of the whites, and the sub­tle lows of the blacks seemed appro­pri­ate­ly goth­ic and also helped the CGs fit into the the film bet­ter, since so much data was lost by inten­tion­al over­ex­po­sure.

Mor­pheus says the prophe­cy should have come true if Neo reached the source, but Neo did not reach the souce, he went after Trin­i­ty, some­thing that I only real­ized post fac­to the movie. There is no men­tion of it in the flik itself.

Wrap

I liked TM:R, don’t get me wrong, I just did­n’t like it as well as the first one. I give the 1st an 8 and this one a 6. Most­ly because, it is obvi­ous Hol­ly­wood tried too hard as usu­al, only approx­i­mat­ed what it feels is authen­tic — rather than going for the real thing. Ergo, all the peo­ple are goth­ical­ly seri­ous except for Link who is more a fam­i­ly man thug than any­thing else — and the won­der­ful Merovin­gian ass­hole. The bad guys are much more inter­est­ing than the good guys. It leaves no room for any type of those once plugged in than the goth­ic. Some­one should crack a joke or play a prank or per­haps wear com­fort­able clothes that are non­de­script. Right? I think it is too shal­low because it is too pre­ten­tious.

Prob­a­bly much like this review.