Slashdot Mirror
First Matrix Reloaded Review
EpsCylonB writes "The IMDB is reporting that the London Daily mirror has the first review of the Matrix Reloaded. Sounds like the Wachowski borthers have gone for an all out action movie which is a shame if true. What I liked most about the original was the way it blended stunning action with a subtle philosphical theme about how we percieve reality." I'll hold judgement until the closing credits myself.
Your impression that the first Matrix had any philosophical content was just a glitch in the program.
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
but that question was simply there to set up the action, not enlighten or challenge you. I loved the first one, but it was pure escapism, nothing more. if this movie is 10 times the action and 10 times the SFX, as the mirror reviewer states, then it will be 10 times the movie (ideally speaking of course). Hell, I want people to be passing out in the theater due to the action!
What I liked most about the original was the way it blended stunning action with a subtle philosphical theme about how we percieve reality.
Subtle "philosphical" theme? I'd say more of a junior philosophical theme. The "philosophy" in The Matrix was rather primitive.
It always seems ironic that people say they like Sci-Fi because it makes them think, yet when something with a low-level philosophy like The Matrix comes along, everyone goes ape over the "questions" it poses and how it makes them think, yet The Matrix was about as advanced philosophically as BASIC is an advanced language.
No. I correct myself. BASIC is a more advanced language than The Matrix is advanced philosophy.
where Neo is finds the buffer overflow error in the Matrix and installs Linux over the existing OS, forcing Mr. Smith to live inside VMWare session?
Or maybe that's just my arrogant elitist opinion. Mod down if you really want to, I suppose.
Is that your sig?
And reading Slashdot stories about reviews counts as seeing it cold release how?
The Matrix had the subtlety of a Gwar concert!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
NO NO NO! That's wrong! He's not the Keymaker, he's the Keymaster. And he gets it on with the Gatekeeper before turning into a giant dog - pet of Gozer! Jeeze!
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
Of course it has Cartesian themes. It's a Matrix, after all.
I apologize for the prior lame math joke in response to my own post and hereby hang my head in shame.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
At least he gets a sex scene with Moss before he heads off to the city of Zion. It's one of the few breaks from the relentless action
I don't consider a sex scene a break from action, well, not exactly...
The coolest voice ever.
I'm talking about old dead Greek and European guys here
Last time I checked, Greeks were Europeans too...
The Matrix is has philosophical overtones in the same way Philip K Dick has philosophical overtones. Admittedly, I am a HUGE PKD fan but in sheer entertainment/fictional value the pulp-sensibilities of reality and perception (aka practically any pkd novel or movies like the matrix/existenz etc etc) still win me over, over say plowing through "kierkegaard/descartes/sartre etc etc" or pynchon/delillo and their ilk :)
-bloosqr
"What matters is which fiction you believe."
Imagine Will Smith getting Neo's role then doing the soundtrack to Matrix. That would have been a disaster of Battlefield Earth meets Wild Wild West proportions.
Can you imagine the famous Hallway Shootout sequence and Will Smith rapping in the background?
You mean subtle, like holding a Duracell(tm) battery to explain an energy cell to the audience?
Or subtle like Oracle(tm) pointing the audience to a chicken/egg circumstance that will "bake our noodle"?
Someone please save the parent post. It's the only known post to indicate a preference for Keanu Reeves' acting ability.
I'm sure someone from the Smithsonian will want to archive it.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Leather and boobs.
In one of the key scenes, Neo battles it out with first just one Smith, then eight, then 24 and finally 100.
1, 8, 24, 100? That's not a very apropos way for a computer-generated anything to replicate.
Yes, please shoot me already.
Okay, so it isn't 'subtle', but I think that the philosophical content of the Matrix resembles a late twentieth-century Marxist retort to postmodern/anarchist ethics, rather than a disembodied echo of Plato or Descartes. (In reply to apologists for the former reading: The 'real world' is far too dirty, and requires a revolution of consciousness in order to attain, rather than death, a la Plato. Plato suggests that the best we can hope for as mortals is _knowledge_ of forms, which is quite different from perception. And as for Descartes --- well, if you're painting with strokes that thick, we might as well say that any ontology which clearly distinguishes between perception and reality is Cartesian; ie, almost all philosophy ever written.) Consider the indicators: The antagonist is a 'Mr Smith' (get it? As in 'Adam'?). The object of Neo is to 'awaken' the citizens from the fripperies and consolations of decadence to the reality of tje exploitation of their energies (labour). Sure, the task will require complete subordination to those leading the revolution, but, as ugsome as such a prospect might be to senses of personal dignity and liberty, it is certainly to be favoured over the false liberty of cosmopolitan capitalism.
Or maybe it's just a movie.
- undoware.ca
Yeah, but you used standard multiplication...with "Matrix" multiplication a single zero doesn't zero out the entire result...
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
I don't think that it would be appropriate to include, say, explicit close-ups of anal sex, which is what it would take to shock hollywood at this point.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But Rene DesCarte was a drunken fart who was very rarely stable.
Score:-1, Uppity masturbation.
If you think you've got the opportunity to teach people something, learn to do it gracefully.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
Imagine that, misinformation on Slashdot!
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired. - Robert Anson Heinlein
As many fellow British Slashdotters will know, The Daily MIrror is not exactly a bastion of news intellect.
It is much better than the virtual soft pornography of the Sport but not quite up there with the broadsheets. I am not surprised that the review focuses on the violence and sex scenes rather than whether it is actually a good movie.
Ill not got off my middle class socialist soapbox and go back to my copy of the Grauniad (sic).
It's My Tea and I'll Drink it if I Want To!
Its supposed to make money, not innovate all over again.
Do you mean innovate in the dictionary sense, or innovate in the Microsoft sense?
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist
Cute, but yeah it does.
Random is the New Order.
And the second shows a geek getting laid by a hot chick... Yeah.