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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.
Are you saying that it's not possible to innovate AND make money? It seems to me that in the first Matrix movie they were both innovative and money-making! In addition, this movie has been compared to the Empire Strikes Back by the Wychowski bros. (sp?), another movie that both innovated and made money...seems to me that Empire is still in the top 20 all time...and do you remember the scenes with the ships and the guns and the snow and the stormtroopers...cutting edge bluescreen technology, they did things that were unheard of in the movie inudstry at the time. I believe that Matrix Reloaded will be the same...right down to the romance scenes!
In order to be immortal you must be organize
Two catch-phrases stuck with me from the movie. The first one was, "There is no spoon," because it was quoted here on /., and on second thought it was kind of amusing.
But the one that really stuck was, "Guns, lots of guns." The lobby scene was one of the most poetic sequences of violent overkill I've ever seen, right up there with the Diva/Lulu music/fight scene near the end of Fifth Element.
I am purposely avoiding reviews until I see the movie, so I haven't read the link, and skipped the earlier quote. But the action is OK if it has the poetry in motion of the first one. Hopefully they've broken some new ground, if they want my money on the third movie before it gets to second-run cheap seats.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The first time I watched The Matrix I was impressed by the philosopical aspect of it, and wowed by the action. The second time I saw how thin the plot was and how shallow the characters were, but was still impressed by the action. The third time I used my Chapter button on the DVD to skip ahead to the action, because I grew tired of the one-line philosophy.
"Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real?" Please. Read fscking Decartes, he does a much better analysis of reality than Morpheus ever could. "Would you still have broken the vase if I hadn't said anything?" Christ, get that woman some Herodotus or St. Augustine. "Fate is not without a certain sense of irony." Give me a gun. I can't take it anymore.
It's pseudo-philosophy, just like Contact is pseudo-scientific. Fine for the mainstream audience, but if you've studied the subject they're touching on it's just plain insulting. So I'm glad to see that they've stopped trying to be philosophical and just stuck with what really made The Matrix successful - mind-blowing action.
I can hardly say that the first movie had a stunning, subtle philosophical theme. Our perception of reality is false, instead we are a battery for robot overlords. Very subtle.
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
Time magazine put a review on their website, that supposedly spoils the ending.
DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK IF YOU DO WANT THE ENDING SPOILED
Matrix spoiler
100% Insightful
Funny, I always thought the Matrix was more like Descartes' "Malicious Demon", who has conspired to decieve an individual from birth into believing in an utterly false conception of reality. Starting by assuming that the existence of said demon is possible, Descartes began to reason that only his own internal thoughts were not suspect (and even then, his thoughts must have been colored by perception. Who is to say that 2 + 2 = 4 is not itself a deception?). This led to his eventual famous formulation: I think, therefore I am.
I could go on at length about his "ghost in the machine" concept here, but I'll hold my tongue, as I don't feel like typing all that. Suffice to say, the Matrix has a good number of Cartesian themes.
Anyway, the Matrix isn't meant to introduce genuinely revolutionary concepts in Philosophy. It does, however, serve as an excellent vehicle for conveying Philosophical concepts in an entertaining, easily accesible way. Plato himself did this by writing dialogues: Sure, he expoused all sorts of interesting ideas in works like the Republic, but he related them much more fluidly in the dialogues (except for Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, which were really about his teacher Socrates). No, the Wachowskis aren't possessed of Socratic wisdom, but they are much like the great poets whom Socrates questioned: they have an intuitive knowledge of their art, and through their work they introduce the masses to ideas that they wouldn't ordinarily come across, and this is definately a *good thing*.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
I'm writing a movie about the psychology of VR worlds (applied to MMORPGs) and thought it would be a neat exercise to make a list of the ways the Matrix premise could been pushed. These are straight from my notes:
But then again... it's hard to sell tickets when you make movies out of musings like those.
My firends are all basically warez pirates in training so they managed to snag a copy of the preelase and have already seen it. They all liked it and said it was as good as the first one.
procrastination is a way of life aka i'll think up a sig later
Hmm...matrix with Ewan McGregor...I can see it, maybe...but not nearly as *cool* as the real one.
Will Smith, UGH! That would have been a disaster...He would have destroyed what is truely a classic movie!
Jainith
I can't care less about all these bs comments. I watch movies to have fun. As long as I enjoy movie, I don't care about what others think about. (And you know that those criticists don't know jack either like us or know as much as we do in other words :)
Wherther to make the Matrix team happy or not, just enjoy the movie folks. That's all.
Nobody thinks about the same movie the same way.
buffering...
This is off-topic and will probably be moderated as such, but can you point me to an example of a fiecely logical structured argument for the existence of God?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Oversimplified? Maybe. Muted? You bet. But:
Tweet, tweet.
Your own justification for humans as power sources is itself full of holes. The human body will always consume more energy than it produces; humans are losers in terms of energy production, and highly inefficient losers at that.
There are at least a dozen different power sources I could name that would've made more sense than what was described in the move. It would've been much more logical to assume that the Matrix was, in fact, an extension of the current internet - one that gained a life of its own, but in Futureland couldn't exist without the continued processor power of 6 billion human brains, connected. Now *this* I could've bought, even if it strained my credulity more than I normally allow.
Use this and you have a definite reason why the Matrix needs humans and can't give them up. Without all those human brains for processing power it becomes lobotomized and dies.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Those who could only find subtexts that any ten year old can find, shouldn't blame the source, rather their analytical skills. That the Matrix is merely a comment on Plato's "shadows on the cave wall" is oversimplifying (or dare I say it! too hard for you critics to see!). There's more to the Matrix than a first-year Introduction to Philosophy. The references to poststructuralism are explicit, and more importantly, intended. Look closely at the book that Neo keeps his mini-disc in--read the books and the theory surrounding THAT text (and understand it!), and then come back and criticise--just make sure you know what you're talking about first. Until then, maybe you should learn the first lesson that a first year philosophy student learns--just because you don't see something, it doesn't mean there's nothing there.
The only one of Descartes meditations that made sense was the first one. The rest rested on very large assumptions. Many people in philosophy think that he bunged up the first one as well, but I've never seen someone argue that successfully. It's usually because they assume that Descarte's "I" implies a "soul" with all of it's trappings. If you don't take it as that, I find that the Descarte's first meditation is one of the only self-evident truths, but sadly you can't get beyond that. Descarte tried but failed miserably.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I quite like the first film with Keanu, and I think it's his best role to date (which isn't saying much, but admit it - you didn't cringe at his acting in Matrix like you did in his other films). But I think a film with Ewan would have been a really interesting choice.
You're right, though. Will Smith has a lot going for him, but he might have ruined The Matrix.
Let's consider a simulated environment so good that we could not determine it was simulated. How then could we call it simulated? We would have no evidence of it being simulated, and so all of empiricism would have us call it "real"? But in this hypothetical example what is, by all available evidence, called "real" is not real. And our means of obtaining knowledge cannot allow us to answer this question. So is there even a distinction to be made between the simulation that is experienced "as real" and what "really" is?
The distinction is false, and leads us into the mysterious realm of anti-realism. You should read a few proponents of the subject, such as Hilary Putnam and Michael Dummett, before you disparage it. Not saying these philosophers would enthusiastically embrace the movie "The Matrix", but the type of hypotheticals considered in the movie are critical to, say, Hilary Putnam's anti-realism.
You've hit the nail on the head. The problem with most philosophical "proofs" of God's existence is that they proof a God wholly different from the one we "want." Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion goes over this pretty well, and Kant's moral argument for the existence of God is one of the few "proofs" that actually presents us with the God we "want."
I say "want" for the very reason that, of course, different people want different gods. Take it as you will, and forgive me for possibly being incoherent -- I need sleep.
I disagree.
e rall=1*1*1=1
o verall=0*10*10=0
Matrix:
philosophy=1
action=1
escapism=1
ov
Matrix reloaded:
philosophy=0
action=10
escapism=10
Ahh, and pray tell, what philosophy have you read in your life?
No western philosophy discusses in too great of detail whether this world is real or not. Western philosophy has realized for some time that the best way to control men's minds is to present to them a false reality. This is in fact one of the dominant themes in Nietzsche, that morality and tradition were created as tools of enslavement.
Today, the method is through education and corporatism. Enslave the mind and you have no need for shackles.
I would estimate that less than 1% of Americans are familiar with this concept as outlined by Nietzsche, you among them. The matrix presents this in a fantanstic way, and has the means to convey this important lesson to the viewer.
Would I rather have people read Beyond Good and Evil and The Geneology of Morals? Certainly, but that won't happen. Perhaps your inability to see any wisdom in the movie speaks of your own ignorance. What you believe to be philosophy is nothing more than jibberish... Modern philosophy seeks to answer more than simple and ultimately irrelevant metaphysical questions. That is for the buddhists and new age folks.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
The real world is a nightmarish wasteland under a ruined sky. The crew of the Nebuchadnezzar wear dirty, torn rags and eat a substance succintly characterized as tasting like "a bowl of snot." They have to pilot their decrepit old ship through old sewers, hiding from terrifying robotic killers, defended only by a desperation weapon. They don't even know what year it is.
Keeping that in mind, the Matrix must seem even more alluring to the crew of the Neb. Not only have they actually seen the real world, and been made aware of its hellish condition, but also when they do enter the Matrix, they get to be effectively demigods on earth. The crew jacks in, and is transformed into a team of badasses. Dressed to kill, and heavily, heavily armed to help them accomplish that task, they are the epitome of millennial cool. Food tastes as it should, they roll a sweet ride complete with suicide doors (judging from the trailers for "Reloaded," though, it would appear that the construct program recently had the "Cadillac" patch installed), they in fact know kung fu. (I realize that they would know martial arts in reality as well, but they would be of limited use against giant metal squid machines with plasma drills.) What's more, the laws of physics apply to them only in a very limited sense (and in the case of Neo now, almost not at all). The illusion of the Matrix presents a land of nearly infinite possibility; it is a remarkable form of reality that does not have the constraint of needing to be realistic. Were it not for those pesky Agents and turncoats like Cypher trying to kill them, the Matrix could well be like a paradise. To paraphrase a fantastic line from another great recent movie, they would be as gods among insects. It's not quite what Baudrillard had in mind when he wrote about the hyperreal (in fact, I'm not entirely sure exactly what he meant, given the wording, but I'll get to that in a sec), but the idea is definitely transmitted in the exchange between Cypher and Trinity (as Cypher is unplugging the crew one by one), where Cypher argues that the Matrix could be far more real than the real world.
It's an interesting idea, that a simulation could be more real than reality itself. If such a thing were arranged, would you ever want to leave? The crew of the Neb are obviously helped out in their decision, as the vast majority of the Matrix can at any time be taken over and transformed into a relentless killing machine that can dodge bullets and punch through walls. But if there were no Agents, it's hard to say whether I'd take the bombed out desert of the real over a perfect computer universe that I could bend to my will. It's hard enough sometimes to pull away from a computer game, which is often a very limited simulation of some part of reality; how on earth could you decide to leave a computer game that could be far better than life in reality could possibly ever be.
You might argue, like Trinity, that "it isn't real." You're right. It's better than reality, more than reality. As even Morpheus, the zealot trying to free all humanity from its "prison," admits, "reality" is defined by "electrical signals intrepreted by your brain." In the desert of the real, these electrical signals transmit that the world involves ugly clothes, disgusting food, plugs in your body, and hiding in sewers from killer robots.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Just like The Lord of the Ring, the matrix IS a trilogy.. it wasnt really ever supposed to be 3 movies but given its success.. it now is.. I think its a bit wrong to judge no 2 as an all out action movie.. even if it is because just as with LOTR.. it really needs to be seen as a whole..when its done.. so.. its an important chapter in the book.. Didnt anyone notice how actionbased The Two Towers is?...lets not play old senile men with big beards sitting on a chair in the sky and casting used condoms on people until they're done with all 3. ixxo
What I mean by "logical" proof is just that that can be derived from logic. God does not follow from logic itself. But as someone else pointed out, God might follow from something else, such as morality, as Kant thought.