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| Unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.
I'd add another disclaimer - no one can tell you how the Matrix Reloaded film is, you have to see it for yourself. I'll start this with a few assumptions. That first, you've seen the film, or at least have read enough of the commentary on other sites that you won't be too upset at finding out certain plot points. Secondly, you are not the type to arbitrarily dismiss other points of view on a subject. I'd highly recommend that you get the "Animatrix" DVD. While not all of the stories on the disc pertain to the movie, there are a few nicely tied-in shorts that flesh out the minor plot points in the film. My opinion of the movie is that overall, it was good. I think that claims of CG (Computer Graphics) scenes being "too CG" or "fake" are just a byproduct of our evolutionary tendency to seek out and classify patterns. In this case, to home in on the fact that the animation used in some scenes doesn't "feel right". I submit that up to now, no one has done a life-like CG character that is up to the standards of reality. (Excluding pure motion capture, of course, but that is cheating a bit.) So it is easy to point our fingers and declare that it "looks" wrong or "feels" fake. Part of that sentiment is because we already KNOW the scene couldn't be done any other way. I'm sure there are other effects in the movie that are seamless, but we don't care about those, just the stuff we can discern being "artificial". I like to give people their due. When the Final Fantasy movie came out, I was impressed. Did I think it was the "real" thing? No. But the ground covered in that movie for character animation was fantastic. Most people were fixated on the hair, but for me it was the accurate clothes modeling and the gestures and gait. They got that down really well. Faces....well, faces are the hardest thing to do. Fooling someone into thinking that they are staring at the real thing is probably going to be the toughest hurdle. They are very close, but the subtle nuances of facial expression don't lend themselves to being cleanly digitized. It is as if we need to not only learn how the face reacts when we speak, but also the noverbal "vocabulary" of facial muscles and movement. The small incidental exchange going on as we communicate. Very tough problem, but not impossible. It reminds me of a part from "Snowcrash" (I highly recommend you read this, yes YOU.) by Neal Stephenson where Juanita is working on avatar faces, because the geeks are too busy doing other things, and she nails the most important facet of virtual communication by doing so. "Condense fact from the vapor of nuance" she says. I always liked that phrase. Anyway, you'll find people getting agitated over the cloth modeling in the CG scenes, or exclaiming loudly how they know EXACTLY when they started using CG characters in the "Burly Brawl" scene. That's great, really. But it doesn't acknowledge that it was a very difficult scene to do, the integration of live action and a digitized set, not to mention handling the dynamics of a choreographed fight scene. (And no, a fight scene being pre-planned doesn't make it easier, just merely makes it possible to be filmed.) Another point of contention is the Zion dancing-rave-"orgy" scene. (Huh? I didn't get that, but I guess people rubbing up on each other gets imaginations started.) Hmm. Lets examine this. Was it a bit too long? Yeah, but I think the message was lost behind sheer tops with nipples poking through. (Interesting commentary on our western culture - losing its mind when someone shows a breast.) My take on this is - if you are on a "patrol" ship, you are surrounded by machines that would dearly love to rip your heart out of your ribcage, go home, and suck up some human-produced electricity snug in their launch bay. Oh, and lets not forget the matrix, where any random citizen can become a specialized agent intent on shooting you full of holes. The ships are like submarines, with many spaces barely able to fit more than two people. You couldn't let your guard down until you got home. I don't know about you, but in that environment, the first chance I get I'll be drinking my ass off and scoring with the cute chick back in the temple cave. I think the scene was there to emphasize the human element. And oh, shock-of-shocks, it just might involve some contact of flesh instead of the virtual. Call it a protest of sorts, a "shore leave" or whatever. My only real complaint about that scene is it did tend to go long. Of course, that could only be a result of micro-cut-video techniques that permeate music channels and broadcast news. We're used to it, so when we get a longer segment of something, we complain about its length. There is also the "Chocolate Cake" scene, or as some have dubbed it, the "Moneyshot" scene. (Oh let us all giggle over that one....*rolls eyes*). Okay, this really didn't need to be there, but the point was -- we're slaves to our impulses, and by extension causality is the driving force of the multiverse. Could it have been illustrated any other way? Sure. But the "program" that was pontificating about the subject was a complete prick, so just think what a ego-centric person would have done. Show you a definition? No, he'd do what was in that scene - manipulate someone, and then go score later. Yes, it did the job, but somehow I have to wonder if the message was lost in the execution. I think that covers most of the gripes that I've read. A few characters that I really wish they had gone into detail about (and may in the Revolutions part of the trilogy) were the "Keymaker" and the "Ghost Twins". Of course, the "Architect" was just superb. I really liked that part of the movie, dense and full of hints about Neo's future. (And all of mankind, at that point.) I like the fact that the Wachowski brothers declined interviews to the mainstream entertainment shows and magazines. It allowed us to see the movie without the interpretation of the directors, or the bubble-head extrapolations that inevitably follow when a entertainment reporter tries to milk a story. The whole net is abuzz about the meaning of the Architect conversation, when he told Neo about the choices he had to make, or when Neo stopped the Sentinels in the surface scene. I'm looking forward to the conclusion of the trilogy, and I hope it ties up some of the loose ends that were touched upon by the two prior films. The one thing that I like about the net, and at the same time detest, is the fact that opinions are offered in extremes, often without any effort made to put a rationale behind it. I can proclaim something "sucks" and then dash off to another message board, without giving any reason for my opinion. It isn't so much a complaint about opinions that differ from my personal ones, than it is about the lack of thought behind them. Time to jack out of this matrix, and go get a drink... Until next time... desiato_hotblack @ hotmail.com |
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