Matrix: Revolutions
Nov. 7th, 2003 01:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmMatrix: Revolutions is a remarkably unelegant film. I don't mean this in a stylistic sense (as it has reasons to be less elegant stylisticly, because so much of this film happens in the meat world), but in the sense that the script felt not even like a rough draft, but like something that revealed all the obsessions and quirks of its writers, without having been passed through anyone to smooth it over into a graceful story with meaning to other people.
It also suffers from what the final film of any series almost unavoidably suffers from (although I'd posit this is a particularly American problem because of our need for closure) -- it ceases to be interesting because it's too bloody neat.
Trinity's death scene is very moving. Mainly because Carrie-Ann Moss does so much with the slightest facial ticks.
Let's talk about this film's obsessions for a moment, shall we? One of them is apparently love. This is deeply problematic (despite making the running joke amongst my friends about the Strictly Ballroom/Oz/Matrix crossover fic appallingly more relevant), mainly because of how violently unpolished the script is. Also, with all the Christian stuff, there's the problem that in English we have the word love, and some of the notions that should probably have gotten explored somewhere in the film's tirades about it included agape, which we don't have word for.
Speaking of the Christian stuff -- the film is still very gnostic, very savilly gnostic, but murky. This combined with the Indian dude talking about karma (although in a way I found intelligent) and of course the old wise black woman as the Oracle -- well it was more silly than offensive, but it did stick out to me.
The Merovingian is still the coolest thing ever (and his costume in this is the hottest thing I have _ever_ seen).
I thought the train guy was an interesting concept, but I could fathom no reason whatsoever why he was visually so not in sync with the world.
Can we talk about the Wackowski brothers' visual obsessions for a moment? Please? Now, when the Matrix was first released, its look, and the fetishy aspect of the costumes was big news, and part of the reason it was big news was because it looked hot and sleek and powerful without addressing the fetish stuff directly, without distracting us with the fetish stuff, and I thought it was fucking brilliant. Because while for me the materials and the cuts were familiar, because I have been such a club person at various points, it was contextually really new, and hence, still exciting. The second film remained consistent with this. The third film? No... we have this fucking club scene, and it looks entirely fucking ordinary, not despite all the latext, corsetry and spikes, but because of it. Not only does it look ordinary, it's so "hey, it's our last movie in the triliogy, we don't have to stylize this, we're perverts" -- you know what... I am all for that, and with the Merovingian, it works, but make it not of our world, twist it, ice it, just a little. Don't fucking take-self important people from clubs and turn them into self-important extras I can't believe are part of this world. Grrrrrrr. (Granted, no one will be as worked up about this as me, but it totally threw me -- also, absurdly, I spotted someone I know in it -- but that's a long stupid story too).
Things that were good:
- Jada Pinckett Smith and her character finally stepped up and were compelling
- The assault on Zion was fascinating, especially in the patterns of the machines
- The machine city
- The ulimate conceptual conclusion of the film (in which we essentially learn that the human resistance is necessary, because it makes The One necessary/possible and The One is the only thing that can do anything about the reoccuring problem of whatever happened to Agent Smith -- gnostic gnostic gnostic! I win!)
- The murky thing where both the Oracle and Neo essentially make themselves viruses to trap and destroy Agent Smith respectively
So awful I hesistate to mention it:
- The fucking last shot
Ultimate verdict:
- Weak as a film
- Conceptually compelling
- Desperately in need of someone beating the creative team with a stick until they understood that while yeah, it's their creation so it is about them, we're not supposed to actually know that unless we're really really observant. Let me tell you, a fourteen-year-old of sub par intelligence couldn't have missed the disregard for the audience in this.
It also suffers from what the final film of any series almost unavoidably suffers from (although I'd posit this is a particularly American problem because of our need for closure) -- it ceases to be interesting because it's too bloody neat.
Trinity's death scene is very moving. Mainly because Carrie-Ann Moss does so much with the slightest facial ticks.
Let's talk about this film's obsessions for a moment, shall we? One of them is apparently love. This is deeply problematic (despite making the running joke amongst my friends about the Strictly Ballroom/Oz/Matrix crossover fic appallingly more relevant), mainly because of how violently unpolished the script is. Also, with all the Christian stuff, there's the problem that in English we have the word love, and some of the notions that should probably have gotten explored somewhere in the film's tirades about it included agape, which we don't have word for.
Speaking of the Christian stuff -- the film is still very gnostic, very savilly gnostic, but murky. This combined with the Indian dude talking about karma (although in a way I found intelligent) and of course the old wise black woman as the Oracle -- well it was more silly than offensive, but it did stick out to me.
The Merovingian is still the coolest thing ever (and his costume in this is the hottest thing I have _ever_ seen).
I thought the train guy was an interesting concept, but I could fathom no reason whatsoever why he was visually so not in sync with the world.
Can we talk about the Wackowski brothers' visual obsessions for a moment? Please? Now, when the Matrix was first released, its look, and the fetishy aspect of the costumes was big news, and part of the reason it was big news was because it looked hot and sleek and powerful without addressing the fetish stuff directly, without distracting us with the fetish stuff, and I thought it was fucking brilliant. Because while for me the materials and the cuts were familiar, because I have been such a club person at various points, it was contextually really new, and hence, still exciting. The second film remained consistent with this. The third film? No... we have this fucking club scene, and it looks entirely fucking ordinary, not despite all the latext, corsetry and spikes, but because of it. Not only does it look ordinary, it's so "hey, it's our last movie in the triliogy, we don't have to stylize this, we're perverts" -- you know what... I am all for that, and with the Merovingian, it works, but make it not of our world, twist it, ice it, just a little. Don't fucking take-self important people from clubs and turn them into self-important extras I can't believe are part of this world. Grrrrrrr. (Granted, no one will be as worked up about this as me, but it totally threw me -- also, absurdly, I spotted someone I know in it -- but that's a long stupid story too).
Things that were good:
- Jada Pinckett Smith and her character finally stepped up and were compelling
- The assault on Zion was fascinating, especially in the patterns of the machines
- The machine city
- The ulimate conceptual conclusion of the film (in which we essentially learn that the human resistance is necessary, because it makes The One necessary/possible and The One is the only thing that can do anything about the reoccuring problem of whatever happened to Agent Smith -- gnostic gnostic gnostic! I win!)
- The murky thing where both the Oracle and Neo essentially make themselves viruses to trap and destroy Agent Smith respectively
So awful I hesistate to mention it:
- The fucking last shot
Ultimate verdict:
- Weak as a film
- Conceptually compelling
- Desperately in need of someone beating the creative team with a stick until they understood that while yeah, it's their creation so it is about them, we're not supposed to actually know that unless we're really really observant. Let me tell you, a fourteen-year-old of sub par intelligence couldn't have missed the disregard for the audience in this.
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Date: 2003-11-07 11:35 am (UTC)I still have no idea how they got away this this without making me want to throw things at the screen. If Peter Jackson had made LotR the way the Wachowskis have made the Matrix films? I'd have his head mounted on a pike outside my apartment right now.
Re the Trainman, I think he's another ex-One, and his distinctly un-Matrix-like look is a kind of pathetic rebellion against the sleekness of the machine world he's trapped in.