Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 
Reloaded.

Well, I managed to see The Matrix Reloaded last night, and all I can say is that critics be damned, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I spent a bit of time last night after the movie contemplating why most people didn't seem altogether thrilled with this sequel, and I think I've been able to discern the two basic reasons:

1. "It had no real plot."
2. "It was too heavy-handed with all that fate/free-will talk."

To the first criticism of there being no real plot, I would argue that people take a moment to look at what the Watchowski brothers are aiming for with the two sequels. They wrote and filmed the two all at once, and are releasing them as close as back-to-back as possible. I believe Reloaded has plot, perhaps not as deeper as the original had (how can you, when all you can do is expand on that which you created?), but certainly deeper than most people are giving it credit for.

I liken the crafting the Matrix's story to the original Star Wars trilogy. Yes, there are places where this analogy will break down, but humour me. The first Star Wars movie was meant pretty much as a stand-alone, though a greater story following it had already developed in George Lucas' head. Now look at The Empire Strikes Back for a moment, and tell me how much plot it has. Not plot twists, but plot. Admit it: there's not a whole hell of a lot of it. "Empire chases rebels, Luke trains to be a Jedi." That's the story. Most of Empire is about the heroes being chased by the villains. How is that so different from Reloaded?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not deriding Empire at all; it remains my favourite of the original trilogy. Yet the overall story is not really advanced by Empire's presence--not until you take the finale, Return of the Jedi into account. All the new characters, all the loose threads that were seemingly left unravelled in Empire get tied back together. The chasing only makes sense when you see the final part of the story. Jedi is the end of Empire; it is the conclusion, where the story is completed. Ask any Star Wars fan, and they look at one movie in the trilogy only by putting it into context with the other two.

I'd argue that the same perspective should be used with the Matrix trilogy. Reloaded and Revolutions are in all likelihood a single, 4-5 hour long movie that was cut in half. Of course it's not going to seem perfectly neat and tidy; that's because what's started in Reloaded has not yet been finished. The answers that were deliberately set up with the second movie are with any luck going to be answered in the third. Reloaded is at its heart a chase movie, and primarily because it's raising the stakes by broadening the world of the Matrix.

I'm willing to bet money that if there was only Agent Smith as the primary antagonist for Reloaded, people would get bored. "Ho-hum, nothing new from the first one. Give us something new!" they would say. Well, they have been given just that (and now they're complaining about that, if I might be acerbic for a moment). Look at what the Matrix has to contend with now: rogue sentient programs (the Merovingian, the Twins); a rogue agent program (Agents Smith); rogue humans (Neo & co); obedient-to-a-fault Agents; and the core programs that keep the Matrix intact (the Keymaker, the Architect). Everybody's fighting with everyone else for control. It's natural that there's going to be a lot of fights and chases going on.

All I ask for is patience. Is there a deeper plot to Reloaded? I'll answer that when I see Revolutions, and have a better context for understanding the story. If it really is sorry and shallow, I'll be the first to publichly mourn so. In the meantime, ask yourselves: well, if you didn't like what you saw, then just what were you expecting to see? And in details? Specific details? Sometimes the viewer is the one who lets the movie down, not the movie that lets the movie down.

Now then, onto the second criticism: "It was too heavy-handed with all that fate/free-will talk." I'll state my opinion first by saying I thought Reloaded did an excellent job of looking at the paradox between having a free will, or being governed by fate. It all comes down to a matter of who controls your choice to do...well, anything. I will admit there were times where the characters seemed to just reiterate what had been eloquently spoken of earlier in the movie, but overall the Watchowski's tried to give people an overview of the conflict between having a free will, and having fate choose for you (even if you are unawares).

In a watered-down religious context, the question comes down to: if a God or Divine Being/Force is "totally omniscient", and that is to say this God knows what will happen (not what might happen, but what will definitively happen), then do we have our own free will? People like saying they have free will; they like being able to choose what they do and make of their own lives. Yet many of these same people are also the ones who, if they believe in a God, tend to also believe that God knows the future. If God knows what you're going to do, if what you choose has already been foreseen (and in effect, decided), then where's that freedom to choose? Has it not just been nullified?

Translate this question in a Matrix world, and you get: if the computer sentience behind the Matrix (God, in this sense) has already pre-programmed you (Neo) to jump through a series of hoops to accomplish a pre-planned result, are you (Neo) still doing whatever you want to do because you have that freedom to choose, or because it has been subconsciously decided for you already, and you just go through the motions, thinking you personally chose to do that?

Of all the people I've talked with thought this about Reloaded, they seem to fall into two camps. Either they don't believe in any sort of God or Divine Being/Force (which tends to render the free will/fate debate irrelevant, since any sort of "fate" has been removed from it), or alternately they do believe in a God...and have spent very little time thinking about whatever faith or religion revolves around their concept of that God. It's a sad thing to say, but the ones who fall into the latter camp irritate me a whole lot more than any in the former.

Faith is proactive, not reactive. It's meant to be felt, thought through and experienced before you simply leap into an argument and make an ass of yourself. I often find that the ones who are the first to jump into any sort of religious fray (verbal or otherwise) tend to be the ones who have spent near 0 hours sitting down and examining just what it is they believe in, good points and bad. As such, they are so subconsciously insecure about their faith that they fear they may be proven wrong, and so have to misguidedly jump down the throats of anyone who may even remotely disagree with whatever they were raised to believe. And so ends your daily sermonette.

Anyhoo, "Free Will vs. Fate/Destiny/Predestination" is a trickier subject than many give it credit for. Believe me, I spent 3-4 years trying to wrap my brain around it. Only now do I have what I think might (not is, but might) be a working answer to that with regards to my own faith. And even then there are other aspects I haven't answered, will never be able to answer, and in all odds be shown to have been wrong sooner or later. It's not necessary to go into all that here, as that's a whole other long and tricky rant, but the point is that I've taken the time to look at it hard. All I can say is that I have a working idea, and it's one I've considered for a while, and it's one I'm willing to change if someone comes along with a better version of it.

So there you have it: my long-winded, much-too-philosophical, overly-analytical, just-how-much-bloody-time-do-you-have-on-your-hands-anyways argument supporting The Matrix Reloaded. Feel free to disagree. Just ask yourself if you're disagreeing with me because you have the freedom to disagree, or if it was predestined/fated that you are to disagree with me.

Something to think about, at any rate.


Today's Lesson: lofty, personal expectations of a movie should never be allowed into the theatre. It takes all the fun out of watching the movie.


posted by Phillip at 8:34 AM