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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.
Why use humans at all? If all you need is a powersource, stick in sheep? Less troublesome by half
a) There're no sheep left after the war between humans and machines, presumably;
and 2) Your brain produces enough electricity to power a microwave. I'm not sure how other mammals compare in this regard, but I doubt they fare much better.
The caloric efficiency of using bodies as massive networked energy sources is a concept I don't buy. Cripes. Burning wood has to be more efficient.
Yeah, the efficiency thing bugged me too. You can't just keep feeding dead people to new people without losing at least the body heat of the living in the process. Perhaps there's another unexplained food source, maybe algae or something. As for trees, the sky has been 'burnt', so no solar energy gets through (which would've been the optimal solution anyway, at least until the machines develop some other source of energy based of fusion or something).
Moreover, who cares what people in the matrix think? If they revolt, so what?
Actually, I think the preceding two points you made answer this one nicely, if we consider the Matrix a stop-gap measure used by the machines to perpetuate themselves until such a time as they no longer need humans. They may even be using human scientists within the Matrix to provide solutions to problems which they, as machines, haven't the creative insight to solve for themselves. Approached from this point of view, the eventual extermination of the human race by the machines becomes an inevitablility if the humans to not wake up and overthrow them.
Lastly, this is a nitpick I know, but bullets travel at well over the speed of sound. I don't care how fast you pull the trigger, with the action of a semi-automatic, the bullets will likely be 100 feet apart between shots.
That's true if you or I are firing the gun. If an Agent inside the Matrix is firing the gun, however, the results may be somewhat different.
Of course, you still have to jump through a lot of suspension-of-disbelief hoops to buy the premise of the movie, so if you don't appreciate crazy scifi kung-fu stoner philosophy flicks with Carrie-Anne Moss in skin-tight leather outfits, you're more than welcome to spend your movie dollar seeing The Lizzie McGuire Movie
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
Or maybe that's just my arrogant elitist opinion. Mod down if you really want to, I suppose.
It is. "The Truman Show" is Plato's allegory of the cave. "The Matrix" is a different concept.
But if by philosophy you mean anything vaguely legitimate on an academic level (I'm talking about old dead Greek and European guys here), then you're sorely mistaken.
Wow. I wasn't aware that you had to be a dead greek or european to have "legitimate" ideas about philosophy. Holy ethnocentrism batman! I suppose you're willing to just ignore any sort of eastern philosophy? Or is it just that you have to be dead before your ideas are worth anything?
While "The Matrix" wasn't an old, dusty book, it sure was a legitimate discussion of certain philosophical ideas. Maybe you're just too easily distracted by action sequences.
It didn't contain any truly revolutionay ideas, but I don't think Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" did either. Both were a good story, that people can actually grasp. Who do you think they're both so popular?
I suppose you're so eager to belittle "The Matrix" since it means people can get access to certain ideas that you had to learn in a more painful manner. No one could ever learn anything worthwhile except from a book that was written by a dead white guy. Geez. Who educated you?
Life is too short to proofread.
If you thought that theme was subtle, you don't get out much.
I've seen numerous movies with more subtle themes. The Matrix is about kicking ass and wearing leather.
The philosophical musings of the first one weren't any deeper than you'd find in the ramblings of a wet-behind-the-ears freshman taking a required first-year course in the subject.
Really, the 'philosophy' of the Matrix was just a set up for the theme of the movie. There was nothing at all 'deep' to it, unless your normal fare of this stuff consists of the questions Seinfeld asks during his stand-up routine at the end of his horrid show.
What's depressing is that so many people seem to think the crap that was in The Matrix consisted of Important Questions About Existence(TM). That says more about the educational system than anything else.
But I wouldn't sweat it. The Matrix was great, brainless fun, and that's exactly as it should be.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The message must be appropriate to the medium.
Movies affect the senses in order to affect the mind. Books turn that around.
Therefore, for a movie to be a "philosophical" movie, it is more important that it show the results of its motivation in a sensual manner (sensuous is acceptable as well, depending on your motivation ;-) and allow the audience to create its own framework for analysis than to spell it out for them.
The point of the questioning in The Matrix was to provide an easily-graspable starting point for anyone to start thinking about what he had seen and felt from the movie. The action sequences were there --- at least in part --- for us to entertain ourselves with the construct so created.
Fiction lies within the realm of "what if." It is the responsibility of the fiction writer to produce an entertaining read for his audience (even if that audience is just himself). We ask a bit more of science fiction, in that the what if must also consider philosophical ramifications, but we often balk if said philosophy bits are presented in the raw and not worked into the story.
The point is that exposition and essay such as Descart and Herodotus wrote is completely inappropriate to a science fiction movie, and more suited to the medium in which they wrote. Otherwise they would have been writing plays or poems and songs such as their artistic bretheren were doing.
The dialogues of Plato also are ill-suited to the movie medium. The closest good (by which I mean literary or otherwise of artistic merit) movie to the dialogues would be Waking Life --- and even that is half-baked if considered as a philosophical essay.
The mistake is not in the creation, it is in the analysis of the critic: we do not analyse poems as we do philosophical journal articles, so why insist that movies serve as such?
Another thing that bugs me about the above post: the author is only considering what is actually said in the movie. In a visual and auditory medium, that is insipid: would Apocalypse Now play so well as a radio show?
Also, it is considered of higher intellectual integrity to kindly consider a piece's arguments and fill them out as you would if you were the person proposing them in opposition to your own arguments. Knocking a work because it does not address what you are arguing is of very low class. Perhaps you should read Aquinas, or talk to any Ancient Philosophy 101 teacher.
The point of philosophy is not to bash another's views, but to discover Truth and the constructs towards Truth. That's why we call it philosophy.
All the same, I thank you for your post because it was one of the first in its vein cogent enough to respond to.
PS: Yes, I feel the same way towards people who consider The Matrix to be the be-all-end-all of solipsistic philosophy. Then again, it's not the worst introduction to it, and I've been shocked by how few people are familiar with solipsistic arguments.