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Neo may be the one, but
this one smells more like number two than
number three.
The
Best 45 Minute Movies Ever Made:
Matrix Revolutions
By
Andy Vetromile
Good vs. Evil.
Light vs. Dark. Virtue vs. Vice. Ebert vs.
Roeper.
Well, okay, not
all of these would make for great cinema. I
mean, virtue vs. vice? Who wants to see the
embodiment of patience take on an avatar of
smoking? Maybe throw temperance in on the
virtue side and let prostitution team up
with vice, make it a no-holds-barred
steel-cage tag-team deathmatch fight to the
finish, and you can probably sell it to
pay-per-view TV for $29.95, Sunday, SUNDAY,
SUNDAY!
But Ebert vs.
Roeper, now there’s a contest. Sure,
Roeper’s young, he’s hungry, he’s got the
eye of the tiger. But Ebert’s been around
the block a time or two. He took on
hawk-nosed Siskel for years, and with all
the weight he’s lost you just know he’s
aching for a fight. He’s waiting for someone
to underestimate his physique so he can lure
them close, then use those ballerina-like
movements to drop his opponent like a Friday
the 13th sequel.
Alas, such a
fantasy pairing is not meant to be. Roeper
isn’t about to sabotage his career, so he’s
going to keep nodding agreeably at
everything Ebert says and smiling that
puppy-dog smile even as Ebert savages
Spider-Man and gives the thumbs-up to
Breakin’ All the Rules. And I think we all
see where a full-scale, unsanctioned
donnybrook between two over-priced movie
critics is just like a hobbit winning an
Oscar.
Hollywood has some
amazing blind spots. Everyone complains
about genre films. They’re crass, they’re
vulgar, they’re all sizzle and no steak.
Yeah, and we flock
to them like pigeons after a Nutter-Butter.
Filmmakers hate to
admit what everyone already knows: that the
big blockbusters, the special-effects laden,
monster-budgeted, monument-destroying,
space-faring, action-packed behemoths that
occupy the middle three months of the year
like a high-school senior sitting on your
chest dangling phlegm in your face are what
pay for everything else at the theatre.
Without your Star Treks and Terminators and
Harry Potters, you won’t have your Merchant
Ivories and Kenneth Branaghs and Emma
Thompsons (they’re all going to be busy
doing your Harry Potters).
Even when it comes
to movies whose subject matter, whose
honesty and depth and commitment to the
material is unquestioned, makes them forces
with which to be reckoned, you still have to
wait your turn. Never mind that The Lord of
the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is the
best of the three, they’re gonna make Peter
Jackson wait until the third film is out
before they give him the little gold statue.
Why? Because they’re really awarding the
trilogy, not the third movie. They’re going
to hold back on saying “Amen” to a sci-fi,
fantasy, or horror flick as long as they can
do it without Tolkien fans storming the
castle walls (honestly, these people have
been watching too many movies).
But at the very
least, the floodgates have opened. Okay,
something of an exaggeration – maybe we
won’t be seeing Oscars for the Fantastic
Four flick next year, but someone has
managed to make the first real chip at the
dam, an occurrence that is pretty rare. You
got your Titanic, your LotR (I’m not
counting nods like The Sixth Sense), aaand…what?
Frederic March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
That was 1931, for cryin’ out loud? So we’ve
got our foot in the door, and that means if
we’re going to be good neighbors we have to
reciprocate. That means not putting out
Matrix sequels.
Not again, anyway.
Horse, barn, open door, introductions all
around.
Matrix Revolutions
is like a strange photo-negative of the sort
of film we ought to be putting out. Few
people are as wowed as I am that a movie so
effects-heavy as The Matrix could have a
good, real story, but I’m not all that
surprised that sequels came out, and even
less surprised that they aren’t very good. I
mean, I’m not in the Brothers’ heads, but I
find it hard to believe they had any kind of
real story after the first.
Mind you, I’m not
one of those people who go on about the
science. Clearly the science they’re using
is whacked (or maybe that’s what they want
you to believe, and you fell for it…sucker).
So they’re using us for batteries. Is it
really that hard to say “Okay” and move on
with your life? Did you show up for a
lecture or to see Carrie-Anne Moss in
skintight latex beat the living stew out of
Stark from Farscape? That guy had it coming.
No, the lecture
they saved for the next two movies, wherein
they try to shoehorn some sort of philosophy
into the data stream, and they do a fairly
unconvincing job of it. All right, I’m
getting tired of qualifying what I say every
few sentences, but here we are again. Maybe
the whole idea is there, on the screen,
waiting for someone to accept and understand
it and rejoice. But we’re not going to be
able to keep all that information in our
heads and still be able to enjoy the film,
so one or the other has to go, and
Carrie-Anne Moss looks good even when she’s
wearing that torn and beaten sweater, so
philosophy be damned.
Perhaps the
Wachowskis have something to say, something
they wanted to say in the first film and
they just can’t get it all out at once.
That’s fine. But they tried a little too
hard, and the movies suffer. It looks to me
like they didn’t know the first film would
take off, so they didn’t prepare for
following their ideas up in the next two
installments. Would that they hadn’t tried
so hard.
So we have two
parts to this film…one good and one bad,
which is not the good vs. evil match-up I
was hoping for. How can you not sit in awe
of the Battle for Zion? Hell, why isn’t that
part a video game? Or maybe it is. Hate to
show more of my ignorance than is absolutely
necessary, but every screenshot I see is
someone in an FPS moving in bullet-time in a
subway.
I’d pay to save
Zion. I’d front the money to get into one of
those sweet walkers (teased in the second
film, but not used until the third – that’s
marketing). I’d love to cross the walkways,
firing on hordes of squid and slagging them
by the dozens as I and my team try to hold
out for the backup ships and their EMPs.
You’ll notice there aren’t a lot of cuts
away from that fight during the movie. They
know that’s their set-piece, the moment
around which the rest of the film revolves.
Neo’s still gotta save everything, but
everything not involved in saving Zion is
so…not interesting. The fight with the
Merovingian is anemic, warmed-over Reloaded
at best (after the endless Merv-fight in #2,
was there really any fighting left to do?
Who the hell still works for that guy?), and
Neo and Smith seem to be the only ones who
understand a word they say to each other,
but in the middle? Zounds. That’s cinematic
history, at least as far as epic spectacle
goes.
There needs to be
more. I don’t want these films dumbed down
for a mass audience, but I also don’t want
to watch two-plus hours of what’s only
pleasing to the filmmaker. If you want to
share your vision, what you see on the
insides of your eyelids when you sleep at
night, I’m game, but make sure it’s
accessible, for heaven’s sake. Flash and eye
candy is great, and probably what puts butts
in the seats when we see it on the TV at
home (“Honey, get your coat…this movie
starts in a month and we’re going to be
first in line”). But if we want to keep
gaining respect in this industry on more
than a winking level, where we all know
who’s filling the coffers but none of us is
waiting by the mailbox for our Academy
invite, we need to remember that The Matrix,
almost literally, defined style…and we
should reciprocate with even a little
substance. |
Review: Matrix
Revolutions (c) 2006 - Andy Vetromile |
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