Rewatching films you once loved after a gap is the equivalent of revisiting an old crush. You bring with you a sense of perspective while harbouring acute anxieties about the abilities of your erstwhile object of affection to trigger those same frenzied responses in you.
Such were my thoughts, coming to the Matrix trilogy, a good 8 years after the release of the original and 4 years after its back to back sequels.
I remember watching the trailer for The Matrix on TV, slack jawed with wonder at my first exposure to "bullet time" effects: Accosted by armed policemen, Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) leaps into the air, the shot freezes, while a camera pans around her.
That single image was sufficient enough for me to hunt down the nearest cinema showing the film, as it turns out, a poor one housed in Subang Parade (shut down now), watching it, coming back home in a daze, and spending the next few days hunting down a decent VCD copy of the flick, managing to obtain one, then racing back home to watch it 3 more times.
Fast forward 4 years later, I'm at the office on a Friday, but managed to get through the entire day without getting a lick of work done. How could I, when nestling comfortably in my wallet, were tickets for The Matrix Reloaded for the night show? The day was spent, quite productively, I might add, by scanning sites to catch the latest reviews of the movie (still a weakness on my part I'm afraid).
Then, spending the next month trying to decipher it's convoluted plot vis a vis The Architect's cryptic musings, even as I surfed Internet Chat rooms, where greater (or idle) minds than myself had postulated dozens of theories unravelling the mysteries of The Matrix.
Later that year, I returned to the cinemas to catch the first midnight screening of The Matrix Revolutions. Feeling an exhilarated sense of closure as order was restored, chaos vanquished and peace established between Man and Machine.
Such was my Matrix Mania. So the chance to revisit all 3 movies on DVD during my time off was an irresistible prospect.
The good news is, what made it work, still does. Mainly, the Brothers' Wachowski's ability to throw science fiction, cyber punk, John Woo actioners and Kung Fu showdowns in a smelting pot, adding spirituality, religion and philosophy into the mixture, interfacing it's hardware of cutting edge (for its time) digital effects to the software of its audacious concept of computer code analogies to forge pure high octane entertainment of the first order.
But absorbed and filtered through slightly more matured tastes, my Sweetheart is far from flawless.
Dialogues that once rang with profundity now seem ponderous and, dare I say it, pretentious?
A sonorously voiced Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) now seems like a walking bag of super heated air most of the time, the characters' gravity and dignity only salvaged in the final installment as he watches his once cherished dream of a Messianic rescue of the Human race dashed.
It's quite a pity that the trilogies' ground breaking visual effects and multi layered plot is countered by dialogues notable for the complete absence of anything even remotely resembling wit or originality. While not quite approaching the laugh out loud hilariousness of the Star Wars movies (Episodes 1-3), it nevertheless boasts clunkers of almost equal magnitude, its faux-philosophising, answering questions with another question exchanges between its characters threatening at times to undue some genuinely gutsy writing that dared to make it's final episode the darkest, the slick, tricked up uber-chic of episodes 1 and 2 making way for a grubbier and grungier part 3, as the series left behind its virtual reality simulated pyrotechnics of Reloaded to actually spend substantially more time in the real world in Revolutions. And all this, without the benefits of previously filmed sequels that tied up loose ends (unlike a tale that takes place in a galaxy far, far away...).
Some notable (ahem!) samples....
"It's my way or the highway" says a character in The Matrix.
Patrick Swayze used that line in Road House almost 18 years ago, and it still sounds better coming from him.
Some scintillating examples from The Matrix Reloaded:
Neo: So we need machines and machines need us. Is that your point?
Councillor Hamann : No, no point.Men my age don't make points. What's the point?
Neo: Is that why there're no young men on the council?
Councillor Hamann: Good point.
Profound stuff, this.
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Neo: I have to make a choice?
The Oracle: No, you've already made it. You need to understand why you made it.
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Morpheus: How do you know this?
The Keymaker : I know because I must know. It is my purpose.
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From The Matrix Revolutions:
The Oracle: The Architects job is to balance the equation.
Neo: What's yours?
The Oracle : To unbalance it.
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The Matrix may have been a brilliantly self contained nugget and there will always be the nagging thought that Andy and Larry Wachowski should have quit while they were ahead, but they dared over reach themselves in The Matrix Reloaded and even blinded and sacrificed their Chosen One in The Matrix Revolutions , ultimately giving us a franchise that tickled the cerebrum even as it made the heart thump. Bangs for bucks that lodged in the mind even as it ruminated over a plot that plumbed depths few high voltage sci fi actioners were even aware of, what more can a geek ask for?
Thank sweetheart, it was great catching up.
I'll be sure to jack in again.....but not too soon.
