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The Matrix Reloaded

By Paul Byrnes
May 15 2003

Keanu looks cool and Carrie-Anne Moss gets her kicks.

Written and directed by the Wachowski brothers, Rated M, Cinemas everywhere

If you enjoyed the philosophical ruminations of the first film, then you'll love the second. The Matrix Reloaded is full of it.

Never have so many wan and wacky epithets been flung so indiscriminately into this illusion we call reality. Even George Lucas would find some of the Wachowski brothers' dialogue turgid, and he invented the pox that now afflicts most current high-budget futurism: people who talk in Hallmark Zen aphorisms. "You do not truly know someone until you fight them," is one of the better ones, uttered by a kung-fu master (Collin Chou) after he and Keanu Reeves have waved fists of fury at each other as a sort of howdy. "I am here not because of the path before me, but because of the path behind me," booms Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, addressing the thronged masses in the cavernous underworld city of Zion, where 250,00 rebels live after 100 years of war with the machines that control the Earth's surface. At this point, I was aching for a Pythonesque "Huh - whad 'e say?" from the thousands below, but no. There are jokes in TMR, but not when it comes to philosophy. At least not intentionally.

The burning philosophical questions buried within the first movie struck me as the usual Descartes Lite that movies have often muddled into ("What is real?" quoth Morpheus), but others found nourishment. Someone edited a book of essays called The Matrix and Philosophy. This must have delighted the Wachowski brothers, Andrew and Larry, who peppered the film with classical and modern references and jokes, presumably to attract just such scrutiny (Reeves has a copy of Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation on his shelf, but it's hollowed out to hide his hacking discs - a simulation, I guess.)

The Matrix Reloaded goes much further. Boy, do these people talk. Morpheus was always a blowhard, but now everyone else blathers on about the terms of their own existence as well. They're all preoccupied with choice, or free will. If the Matrix is a computer illusion designed to simulate reality, then what choices does a human, even a superhuman like Neo (Reeves), have?

"Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without," is a typical line in the film's anti-globalisation pop rhetoric. This is then contradicted by the plot, which seems to allow Neo a million choices as he progresses on his mission - a journey to The Source, the heart of The Matrix, where he will find The Answer.

Much more of the sequel takes place in the underworld, in Zion.

This is a major metropolis (and deeply indebted to the 1927 film Metropolis, which is in revival from next week), where people of all races coexist, in primitive but attractive knitwear. Their response to Morpheus's news of an impending invasion from the machines is to hold a monster dance party (as you would).

Neo and his bodacious love Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) slip away to bed, where she tries to pop his rivets (he has them down his spine, as does anyone who has been inducted to travel in the Matrix). Neo may still be The One ("neo" equals "one" scrambled) prophesied by The Oracle to deliver the people of Zion, and he may dress like a priest in a long designer cassock, but he ain't no celibate. The film's demographics (young, game-playing males, largely) demand a bit of flesh, like The Machines up top.

Following the laws of sequels, everything is bigger, louder and longer than the original. There are some brilliant pieces of action, particularly a 15-minute sequence on a murderous freeway, and some fun new characters, such as the twin albino assassins with white dreadlocks and white suits, played by Neil and Adrian Rayment (they look like rockers Johnny and Edgar Winter, only more pissed off).

The excess is somewhat satirical, though, because the Wachowskis want us to know that they know that we know what they know. So the film's most spectacular fight is between Neo and 100 identical versions of his old adversary, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). At one point as Neo is kicking Weaving's butts, No. 1 of the 70 or so Smiths in play picks himself up and just says "More . . .", and 30 more IBM-like Agents Smith charge in.

This sums up the film for me. Agent Smith does this because he can: he has the technology. The filmmakers are doing the same thing. They're the puppet-masters, but replication isn't interesting in itself. The 100 Smiths are funny, but the movie suffers from the same problems George Lucas has encountered since returning to Star Wars. If I may wax philosophical myself, spectacle has become meaningless in the age of digital replication, because it requires no effort of belief on our part. Digital millions die in movies a lot now, but who gives a rat's? They're all just zeros and ones. Unless there's some visibly human traits, it's hard to care.

Humans dent and bleed under physical attack. Neo and his pals rarely do, even though they're supposed to be human, so there's absolutely no tension, no drama. There is only "more . . .".




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