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`Matrix2': Dumb, Dumber & Descartes
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 03:56:22 -0400
------ Forwarded Message From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com> [Note: This item comes from reader Janos Gereben. DLH] At 16:59 -0700 5/12/03, Janos G. wrote:
From: "Janos G." <janos451 () earthlink net> Subject: `Matrix2': Dumb, Dumber & Descartes Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:59:45 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 On May 15, 9,000 prints of "Matrix Reloaded" will be released to 3,750 theaters. On the same day (and into perpetuity), zillions of viewers will be staring dumbstruck at the scene near the end of this, the second chapter of a trilogy. This is when Keanu Reeves finds God. Wearing a simple white suit, the gentleman (called The Architect, perhaps to avoid a libel suit by The One True) looks a bit like Colonel Sanders, and he talks funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny weird. The epistemological interconnectedness of metaphysical recidivism is reciprocally inverse to predetermined existentialism, God tells Reeves, or something like that. Reeves - protected by those trademark sunglasses - doesn't react, so God continues in the same polysyllabic vein, for several minutes. Even though I understood most of the words the Wachowski brothers (writer-directors) put in God's mouth, I have no idea what that little speech was about. Nor did Reeves, judging by the way he rushed out of the room to save the girl. (Attention, spoiler: he succeeds.) But here's the strange thing: the scene, which tries to re-establish Matrix1's philosophical (albeit half-assed) bend, comes after two (2) hours of some of the most stupid video-game and car-chase sequences ever put on the big screen. If you look long enough on the Matrix Website, you will find a number of essays about metaphysics and Descartes (one of the Three Stooges, the Wachowskis being the other two?), but why would anyone get into questions about the purpose of life in-between unending fistfights on top of speeding trucks while Reeves is "doing his Superman thing," according to one of his buddies. He flies, you know, this Reeves does (is that behind the Superman reference?), and he has superhuman powers, although he represents humanity against the machines that took over the world. The machines can transform, teleport and clone themselves, which is very nice for a video game, but why would such creatures keep slugging it out with a superhuman human, why would they punch and kick each other endlessly... and call that a movie? The Wachowskis must ask themselves: would Decartes do this? It is the juxtaposition of incomprehensible intellectual pretensions and extreme, primitive juvenalia that makes "Matrix2" even more frustrating, even less worth of your time and money than the other wretched cartoons masquerading as movies, in the "X2" mode.
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- `Matrix2': Dumb, Dumber & Descartes Dave Farber (May 13)