Series Minded: The Matrix Trilogy

The Matrix /The Matrix Reloaded/The Matrix Revolutions - 1999/2003, d. the Wachowskis  (Netflix)

I was, as many (but not all) were, quite enamored with The Matrix when it debuted in '99. I was so ignorant of the genres and filmmakers it was aping: anime, Shaw Bros. kung fu, John Woo gun noir. Having since gained a lot more experience with these films, The Matrix sparks less awe and more doubt...is this homage, or appropriation?

As well, the big rescue sequence, where a black trench-coated Neo and Trinity, armed to the teeth just unload on waves of security guards... it's just not cool anymore. That kind of excessive, aggro gunplay makes my stomach roil these days, as if it's the template for every mass shooting in America in the past 20 years. It's a lot to put on the film, which is supposed to be escapist action movie set in a virtual reality landscape where people aren't really people...there is no spoon afterall, and yet it's the swagger of presentation that makes it so disturbing.

On the other side there's an additional potency to seeing Morpheus being swarmed and beaten by cops. The late 90's absurdly liked to think of itself a "post-racial" time, and there's not a trace of racial discussion in this film (it's the far future, humanity is on the brink of extinction, so you'd hope that society has moved past racial constructs in that situation) but seeing police beat down a Black man certain brings it all back up whether intended or not.  (There's still prejudice though, as we see in Revolutions, some of the natural-born humans don't look so kindly upon the tank people, though any kind of divide is never explored)

The story of The Matrix, another "chosen one" adventure, has moments (and ideas) of brilliance, a lot of conventional moments, and few bits eliciting an eyeroll (the late 90's hard-techno-edgelord aesthetic is more a laughable cliche than cool now...we're already past-due in the retro-fashion cycles for the style to return, so I think The Matrix sequels maybe burnt it out for good), but overall it's a pretty solid piece of entertainment. 

The thing for me is, The Matrix's major "cool" moments have been spotlighted so many times, so many places that they've lost much of their excitement. The small moment aren't enough to keep me fully invested in the film without the big moments to dazzle me...and then there's the sequels which kind of drag the whole enterprise down.

The last time I watched The Matrix Reloaded was shortly after it was released on DVD. I had seen it in the theatre and convinced myself I enjoyed it enough to buy it on DVD. Watching my new purchase I once again convinced myself it was a worthwhile acquisition, yet I never watched it again. My distaste for Revolutions after seeing it in theatre it kind of cured me of wanting to rewatch the series.

With a new Matrix movie on the way, I thought I would poison my memories and /or give the series fresh eyes. The Matrix has its flaws but also its charms, but it is completely dated. Reloaded is, at least for the first hour, a real slog. 

Reloaded feels like it took inspiration from The Phantom Menace, deciding to dive deep into the politics and society of the world outside of the titular Matrix. Foregoing action for bureaucracy....

The things The Matrix became known for become sillier, more laughable in the sequel. An early Reloaded scene features a whole gaggle of black leather and trenchcoat-clad people gathering around a telephone in a brick room within the Matrix, it's like a punchline to a joke that hasn't been told yet. The kung-fu, even more than in the first, is just choreographed ballet, and has no visceral aspect to it at all. Though bodies fly across the room, the actual appearance of the fighting seems completely toothless (it's only when non-gun weapons become involved that there feels like there's any stakes to the fighting).  It is poetic but the actual physical contact and the subsequent reaction frequently are incongruous. The techno music, well, it wasn't even good at the time (and I'm a fan of techno) and it's punctuation in any scene elicits a chuckle.

I remember thinking Morpheus' speech to Zion was awful, and it's just a weird choice, but it's actually not as bad as I remembered. The following techo sex rave inter-cut with Trinity and Neo's lovemaking was uncomfortably goofy in the theatre, but having since watched 2 seasons and a movie of the Wachowski's Sens8 it feels very much Wachowski's wheelhouse.

The "burly brawl" now looks like a videogame cut sequence. It's just rubbery and devoid of life. It's not unwatchable but the effects are like modern CW DC superhero show level (which was really good for its time), there's no sense of reality to it... but then again, it's all within The Matrix so it's kind of excusable if it looks like a video game, right?

Where The Matrix was drawing from Asian cinematic influence, Reloaded is more American comic-book and fantasy inspired.  Supposedly there's vampires and werewolves, and we see the ghost twins in action in the highway fight (which wasn't nearly as scintillating as I remembered it, but still preferable to another gun battle).  Neo "doing his Superman thing" at the time of its release annoyed me because we hadn't had a decent Superman movie and now Keanu Reeves was doing Superman. We still haven't had a decent Superman movie and it seems Snyder ripped off much of Neo's launching and flying act for Man of Steel. (There is a good Superman in Superman and Lois, again a CW DC superhero show, that kind of does the hero with comparable effects to Reloaded, just not on the same scale.) 

I think the problem I have with Reloaded is that it's all story, no character building despite introducing a large number of new cast members. Neo spends the whole movie worrying about Trinity dying but not telling her. Trinity spends her time worrying about what Neo's not telling her. Morpheus gives speeches. New characters have very little personality to speak of (Tank, Dozer and Mouse all had brief exposure in the first movie but they felt more endearing somehow). The only character growth is in Agent Smith, but even his return seems kind of perfunctory. He's evolved into a rogue element in the Matrix, but there's no sense that the Matrix is at all concerned about it (at least not until the finale of Revolutions).

The Architect scene is a massive exposition dump revealing that everything that's happened has happened before, and will happen again, and is all orchestrated by the machines for a reason.  If you're not invested or prepared for it, it can be overwhelming, but it's probably the best scene in the trilogy. It sets up the endgame, but my memory of disliking Revolutions still yielded no excitement for revisiting it.

Revolutions isn't boring like I remembered it, but it is pretty exhausting.  I've never watched it back-to-back with Reloaded before.  While The Matrix stands on its own, Reloaded and Revolutions are a whole piece, a 4 1/2 story. If these Matrix sequels were to debut today instead of 18 years ago, they would likely show up in the form of a 4 or 5-part mini-series on HBO Max instead, and in a way it seems like that would be a better presentation, compartmentalizing the story beats, of which there are many.

At the end of Reloaded Neo has displayed having control over the machines outside of the Matrix, though in doing so he's touched the source code and nearly died.  The opening of Revolutions finds Neo trapped in a sub-program, Trinity and Morpheus searching for him, and Agent Smith loose in the real world causing the Zionists plans against the machines to falter (with most of their ships destroyed due to Smith's sabotage).  The next step is for the machines to infiltrate Zion and destroy the civilization, again, leaving a few survivors to repeat through the next cycle as it has done five or six times before.

Real-world Neo and Trinity take off to the surface, to the Machine City, where Neo plans to...not have any plan.  Meanwhile Morpheus and the crew of The Hammer need to find their way back to Zion to help fight in the war.  Zion comes under attack.

For the better part of a half hour we cut between the Zionists in their battle against the machines and The Hammer's journey back to Zion.  The Zionists have these big sit-in mech suits that don't have built in weaponry so much as big guns that are holstered to start.  I wonder if they're other-purpose suits (like Aliens power loader) but they seemed designed to carry and hold ammunition so who knows, but they're the goofiest looking things, animated with a Harryhousen herky-jerky-ness.  And it's just waves of drones and guns blazing ammo for nearly 30 minutes.  There's no cutting to Neo and Trinity until it's all over, and Morpheus isn't spotlighted in any meaningful way (Jada Pinkett-Smith's Niobe gets to show off her badass driving skills, but she never amounts to much as a character beyond being in a meaningless love triangle with Morpheus and Harry Lennix's Commander Lock).  You get the point two or three minutes in, but it just keeps going.  

Speaking of "just keeps going", Trinity's death scene (spoiler) is absurdly long.  For a woman with countless bits of things skewering her, she's being awfully chatty.  Opening weekend at the theatre someone in my screened yelled "JUST DIE ALREADY" to laughter and applause from the crowd.  

Neo calls for a truce between humans and the machines, promising to cleanse the systems of a rampantly replicating Agent Smith.  He called humanity a virus in The Matrix, now he is the virus.  I'm not sure if the irony was intentional.  Anyway, Neo goes back into the Matrix and he has a big one-on-one brawl that (once again) seems like Snyder stole for the end of Man of Steel.  It's a pretty cool fight, but also completely nonsensical.  Why are they physically fighting, shouldn't they be beyond this somehow?  Shouldn't the reality of the Matrix itself be toyed with by these two gods? And how Neo inevitably beats Smith isn't entirely clear to me (Wikipedia basically says that Neo, allowing himself to be taken over by Smith, but being connected to the Source, allows the source to delete Smith, and reboot the system).   It certainly culminates in the typical "chosen one" style.

Peace is achieved, though how long it will last is of course called into question.  Anyone who wants out of the Matrix can leave, and the Architect and the Oracle both seem content, for now.

Sadly Gloria Foster who played the Oracle in the first two films passed away before she could complete filming the third, and she had to be replaced with another actor.  Mary Alice has a good presence but the closure the Oracle was intended to give is lessened by Foster's passing.  Foster's scenes are some of the greatest in the series.

Also sadly, Keanu remains the weakest link in the series.  His characterization of Neo never inspires any sense of awe from him, or in him.  Throughout he's supposed to display a level of bravado and competency, a sense that "he's got this" but he never seems like he's "got this".  He never displays that John Wick level of "I know what I'm doing", and his perpetual poker face is such a void that you're never sure if the lack of intention is intentional.  He always seems a little...confused.  I've gotten used to Keanu over the years, I can can watch him in these, but the meme-worthy charisma he's presented in the past decade can't really be found in this series.

As much as I want to slam Revolutions and Reloaded, they work well together as a whole.  Not great films individually, but together they present a compelling story.  They do, however, feel somewhat disconnected from The Matrix if only because the first film is so contained and also Morpheus is pretty muchsidelined in both of these (apparently Fishburne was also not brought back for the new film).   I certainly got a much greater sense of fulfillment out of back-to-back rewatching than from the original theatrical presentations.

 One of many disappointing things about Revolutions  is it uses "revolution" in the sense of a sudden change in control or power rather than using "revolution" in the sense of something going around and around.  The architect reveals in Reloaded that events have transpired in a fairly similar way both in the Matrix and real world five or six times already, and that they will happen again.  Neo stops it this time, but it would have been intriguing for Revolutions to play with that idea more heavily.  Perhaps the new film explores this idea more.

In terms of enjoyment, it was all over the map with this.  I enjoyed The Matrix quite a bit less than I once did, and my modest enjoyment of Reloaded also has waned, but I'm not as upset with Revolutions as I once was.  The reality is I doubt I'll ever watch these three films again. I feel ready for the return to the Matrix, though, and maybe be inspired by it anew.