I'm officially giving up. I don't feel it. Sorry, but PVC pants and slow-mo bullets just don't butter my bread. Lord knows I tried.
I have a few final thoughts on The Matrix that I'm going to share, then I'm taking the DVD to the nearest second-hand store and trading it for, shucks, anything. I'll take Ernest Gets a Bypass, whatever.
Thoughts on The Matrix:
- Total ripoff of Stanislav Lem's novel The Futurological Congress. The Warschowskis know their premise isn't original, but I've never heard them admit that they just about filmed Lem's book (he's still alive, by the way).
- Besides The Futurological Congress, The Matrix seems to be a green-tinted blend of War of the Worlds, Alphaville, Kung-fu movies, The Bible, and Star Wars.
- What the hell is in that red pill?!
- Why do the members of Morpheus's crew dress like the orphans in Annie? Why don't they bathe? Morpheus's ship makes Das Boot look like a freakin' spa. And why does his "office" look like a cross between 221 Baker Street and a crack den?
- In both Johny Mnemonic and The Matrix, Keanu Reeves plays a guy with a plug-in at the back of his neck. Hmmm. Perhaps this explains his stale acting: Directors just feed scripts directly into his brain.
- You think you're walking the streets of Manhattan, an upright professional, but you're actually a butt-naked human battery living your entire life in a vat of strawberry Jell-O. Machine-entities have taken over Earth and wrecked it. Even the weather becomes perpetually shitty. But they didn't want humanity to know that the world already ended and we're all just battery packs, so they re-created life on the planet in the form of a computer-generated reality known as The Matrix. Every person-battery is jacked into it. Virtual reality becomes reality. A guy named Morpheus has somehow realized that the world isn't what it seems and escapes his Jell-O cell to live in filth and squalor in the real world. Through weird retooled gizmos (copped off the set of Brazil, I suspect) and chemognosis, the real-world dwellers can pop in and out of the Matrix, bending spoons and learning world-class martial arts moves without moving a muscle. They battle Men in Black with receding hairlines who are apparently indestructible and single-mindedly devoted to their jobs. (Imagine immortal Secret Service guys.) In reality, the Matrix warriors are just sitting in old dentist chairs on some grungy ship. Hand me a blue pill, please.
- Hokey lines. "Buckle your seat belt, 'cause Kansas is going bye-bye." Sigh.
- Computer geeks as enlightened, revolutionary savior/warriors. Uh huh.
- The only way to permanently down the Matrix is to draw people out of it, educate them, train them in flying, Kung Fu, etc., and send 'em back in to save more humans. They could just create their own Matrix and live blissfully ignorant lives inside it, but Morpheus is a hero. He wants to end the reign of the machine-entities and restore our authentic world, even though it's identical to the Matrix. Then maybe he can change his shirt.
1 comment:
I think you've written about this before and I commented at that time. I never got this film either, and the trilogy was ridiculous overall. I have not read the book you mentioned. Re. the red pill though, my friend Elaine claims the choice between the red pill and the blue pill is a Buddist metaphor. One pill (the blue one, I think, it's been a while) is to take the known path, stay with the familiar and comfortable, and to not take risks. Taking the red pill is to choose the unknown, take the risk, and experience the unfamiliar and uncomfortable. So by taking the red pill (if I remember correctly) Keanu is choosing those things. Elaine thought this was obvious, but she knows a lot about Buddism and I do not, despite what that quiz on my blog says. There is a book out there called The Matrix and Philosophy or some such, but I couldn't be bothered.
Yeah, we saw these in the theatre and I regret spending the money. I don''t mind being challenged by a movie at all, but when you absolutely cannot get it or see anything in it to get, it's not worth the brainpower in the end.
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