Just back from The Matrix Reloaded.
Good stuff. Very very good.
There are a number of elements in the story which will no doubt be compared to Star Wars Episode 2, anyone who says The Matrix is the poorer of the two is grossly mistaken — still entitled to his opinion, as even people that are wrong can share. Thing is, I don’t know anyone who would actually say that, I’m wasting my breath. (do you think that’s air you’re breathing?)
The cave rave love scene… Felt strange, didn’t expect anything quite like that. But it did fit. Thse people have their own culture, they live with one another, they have things they do. One of them is dance in slow motion, frequently jumping up in the air.
In some ways it feels similar (vaguely) to the ‘rolling around in the meadows after riding appalling unrealistic alien cow things’ Episode 2 love scene.
I believe seeing the Animatrix beforehand gives a big advantage, you can see certain things, I feel, which might not tied together so cohesively…
I did think, though, (select paragraph to view slight spoilers) that ‘Beyond’ dealt with the Matrix’s explaination for ghosts and grouls and such much better than ‘the twins’ and the vampire guys in Reloaded.
I also felt that the Wachowskis made some scenes very long, some people may say overlong, I think they were just making a point. The Burly Brawl, which everyone knows is coming, is an excellent example. I thought ‘man, this is cool, and it’s *still* going’, much the same way I felt the first time I saw ‘Heat’, the running through the streets shooting at cops sequence felt almost like a little story in itself it was so long, but…
… I liked it all, it was saying ‘these guys are doing this thing, and this is all of it’. Anyway, Heat is not Reloaded.
Some people have said that Reloaded breaks some of the rules it set in the first movie, I don’t see that. Nothing that happens in the Matrix is real, anyway, the rules *can* change.
One thing that might not make a lot of sense to people is (select for spoilers) the fact that rogue or obsolete programs aren’t deleted, this doesn’t make sense, obviously if you have a program that doesn’t work right, you get rid of it, you might just uninstall it, or you might even reformat and reinstall your OS, well, these programs aren’t like Photoshop, these programs are self-aware, The Second Renaissance parts 1 & 2 go into detail about the fact that the machines value their own existance, the whole war between man & machine is started when one robot doesn’t want to be disabled and rebels against it’s masters. Anyway, the point is this: deletion isn’t deletion, deletion is murder.
I believe that once we seen Revolutions, we will come to realise that each of the Matrix movies come together to form one big movie. Each part must be seen in context with the others before understanding of the whole can be achieved.
The Matrix : re-Voltron-ated.