Matrix reloaded

    hab mir heute abend den film auch angeschaut... da ers mir aber
    nicht wert ist viel darüber zu schreiben, fass ich mich kurz:

    ich hab noch selten so einen schlechten film gesehen... Embarassed

    Nun ja,

    ich fand ihn ganz ok. Ich habe zumindest genau das von dem Film erwartet. Nach den Infos die man hatte, konnte man sich die den ganzen Film recht gut ausmalen.
    Er war zwar etwas zu sehr Kampf-Scenen-lastig, aber eine nette Unterhaltung.
    Oder hat hier etwa jemand einen anspruchsvollen Film erwartet?
    Das wusste man doch vorher.

    Aber, jedem seine Meinung !

    Thomas

    film war MÜLL ... hätte man auf 20min reduzieren können.

    ich möchte nicht wissen, wieviel hirnzellen ich gestern abend beim sehen des films verloren hab, so grottig fand ich den. bin ja ansonsten aktion-film kompatibel ... aber gegen das da war rambo "prädikat wertvoll". ne, also wirklich ... meine freundin konnte auch kaum erwarten, daß der film vorbei ist ... meine fresse.

    hätte gut werden können, aber die an den haaren herbeigezogene daueraktion ging mir soooo *gähn* auf den sack ... schlimmer gehts nimmer.

    gut, daß ich mir den film nicht im kino angeschaut (und geld dafür bezahlt) habe ...

    *kotz* ...

    2/10 für matrix reloaded ! (eher re-kotet) ...

    1. was sollten die dummen bums-szenen mit technomucke (blade-copy)
    2. wieso waren die aktionszenen so scheißendreck unendlich und ermüdend (jackie chan in schlecht hoch 10)
    3. wieso hatten die alle keinen style (außer agent smith, der aber nur in der englischen ori-fassung) -- blade 1/2 hatte style (auch von den fights her) und war wenigstens auch mal blutisch
    4. motorradszene -> schonmal wer impossible misson 2 gesehen?
    5. das nächste mal schaue ich lieber tron!

    finally:

    why am i here?
    because you are supposed to be here!

    what are you doing ?
    i do what i am supposed to do ...

    pseudo philosophie für dummies ... manman ...

    meine FRESSE war das schlecht ...

    Irgendwie war es klar, dass die Meinungen weit auseinander gehen. Schliesslich war die Story im ersten Teil schon erzählt. Reloaded und Revolution ergeben zusammen mit Sicherheit auch wieder eine nachvollziehbare Handlung, aber der 2. Teil allein ist storytechnisch eher dünn besiedelt.

    BTW: War ich eigentlich der einzige der sich vor Lachen beinahe in die Hose gemacht hat, als der schwule Franzmann auftauchte?

    Ach ja: Und warum konnte Neo, die Sqid-Wächter in der wirklichen Welt aufhalten, um dannach ins Koma zu fallen?

    Ach so: Die Effekte fand ich übrigens Hammer, hat sich deshalb schon gelohnt.

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Crimo (27. Mai 2003 um 16:01)

    naja, daß meinte ich ja ... sie hätten 2+3 schon in einen film packen können.

    gelacht hab ich weniger, eher mußte ich dauernd meinen kopf massieren ... mir hat nämlich schon langsam das gehirn angefangen zu bluten.

    und btw. bin ich eigentlich action/sf-gucker ... habe also mit terminator ect. keine probleme ... im gegenteil!

    eijo crimo: genau das WAR ja die überraschung ... btw. ist das programm "agent smith" ja auch schon downgeloaded (-> verräter) ... insofern ... wenn sie in die reale welt downloaden können, dann könnte es auch durchaus sein, daß "real" relativ ist Wink ...

    spoil spoil spoil ->

    by
    Ken Mondschein

    Going into The Matrix: Reloaded, I wasn't worried if the fight scenes or special effects would measure up to the first film—it was the metaphysics that bothered me. The first Matrix was such a neat allegory of Gnostic philosophy, I was more concerned with how the Brothers Wachowski could successfully extend the metaphor into three films than whether they could pull off even more virtuoso examples of cinematic ass-stomping. What was mindblowing about the first movie, after all, wasn't the fight choreography or bullet time, but its brave assertion that the banal, day-to-day reality we live in isn't the real world. In that sense, all the wire-fu was just the candy coating on the red pill the filmmakers were offering to every high school student and cubicle slave in the world. (Though, since I study martial arts myself, I found the idea of kung fu as being metaphorical for something happening in hyper-reality, a la Thibault's mysterious circle, to be pretty darn appealing.)

    Thankfully, Reloaded more than allayed my fears, even if it seems that half the reviewers either didn't understand what the Wachowskis were getting at, or else were only paying attention during the highway chase. Watching the movie, I was personally less impressed by the fists of digital fury than by the Brothers' evident familiarity with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the theology of Origen of Alexandria. Seen in the light of the books they're referencing, the movie's plot is brilliant; of course, to the non-initiate, the characters' actions and dialogue seems arbitrary and incomprehensible, and the exposition is just filler between car crashes. It would seem, therefore, that a bit of exegesis of The Matrix: Reloaded is warranted. But be warned: If you haven't seen the movie yet, don't read on. There are some major spoilers.

    Much like that other great Keanu Reeves vehicle, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, The Matrix: Reloaded centers around the hero's journey into the Underworld. Frazier, in The Golden Bough, notes that it is a prophetess—in this case, the Oracle—who sends the hero off on his journey, from where he returns with special knowledge. And, of course, that's just what Neo does, though it would have been a while lot more amusing if he'd had Alex Winter along. (The Oracle probably isn't entirely benign, by the way, even though she may not consciously intend any harm: She is, after all, the one who sent Neo on the path to the Core.)

    Neo's first task is to rescue the Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim, doing his best Rick Moranis impression) from the Merovingian, who is a daemon—in both senses of the word—left over from a previous version of the Matrix. (The Merovingians were the ruling Frankish dynasty; they were succeeded by Charlemagne's family, the Carolingians, and then by the Capetians, who thought they were descended from Christ.) The guy in the health food store where I buy my granola and soy milk thinks that The Merovingian was one of Neo's predecessors, but all the explanation I need, as well as the way I understand his obvious fascination with human pleasures, is found in Genesis 6:4—There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them. . . According to various sources, including Kabbalah, this mating of men and angels (here, a computer program from an earlier version of the Martrix) is what produced various monsters, such as the vampires and wraiths that serve the Merovingian. Dante, bringing a Christian sensibility to the proceedings, placed these monsters in his Inferno. Thus, though the Merovingian is sort of an antediluvian remnant of the former world, he's also (as is shown by the fact that his wife is named Persephone) kind of like Hades, the holder of the keys to the underworld. What the Keymaker does, much like the golden bough the Sybil gives Aeneas, is open doors and permit Neo access to the underworld—or, in this case, the Core.

    After the requisite battles and explosions, Neo gets into the Core and finds The Architect. Considering that The Architect built the Matrix, you might think that he's God. Of course, he's nothing of the sort. In Gnostic theology, it is Satan, not God, who has created the world in order to imprison humanity. It is also the Architect who is unleashing the Sentinels to destroy Zion; that is, beginning the Battle of Armageddon. It is my prediction that in the third and final film, it will be revealed that there is a power behind the Architect, and that he is the one who sent the One into the Matrix. It is also my prediction that this guy will look a lot like Neo.

    The important thing is choosing what to believe from the raft of condescending exposition that the Architect inflicts on Neo. He says, basically, that though ninety-nine percent of humans believe in the illusion of the Matrix, there is that troublesome one percent (comparable to the few awakened Gnostic true believers) who refuse to believe in the created world. This tends to produce massive amounts of instability, and crashes the system. (Not coincidentally, most of the people in Zion seem to be black or Hispanic, which makes perfect sense: If you're a white suburban Matrix resident, driving your Matrix SUV to your Matrix golf club, why doubt the nature of reality?) The solution is that they allow the dissidents to escape to Zion, which they can then periodically destroy. They have also created the Prophecy of the One, who is in fact a device sent by the machines into the real world so that his knowledge of humanity may be integrated into the system in order to further perfect the Matrix-illusion, and then allowed to re-start Zion so that the cycle can begin again. The idea of multiple creations and a cycle of created and destroyed worlds is, needless to say, also found in theologies as wildly variant as the Mayan and the Buddhist. (And, in the Mayan reckoning, we're currently in the fifth cycle—the sixth starts in 2016.)

    The idea that the Prophecy—and Zion—were just another means of control is lifted right out of French philosophy. The first movie made use of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation; this movie seems to be dipping into Foucault and Derrida, who wrote that the systems of power and control are all-pervasive, and language is one of the ways they make their influence felt. The Prophecy is, like all prophecies, speech, and thus language. More importantly, it is a religion, and, as John Zerzan writes, the purpose of a religion is to manipulate signs, that is, words, for the purpose of control. Zion is the longed-for millennial promised land; by keeping the war between good and evil foremost in their hearts, even the freed humans are kept from doubting their own world, from thinking too hard about why things are the way they are.

    Understanding why things are the way they are requires an understanding of another holy text: Asimov's Laws of Robotics. The machines, as demonstrated by Smith's need to try to kill Neo even after being freed, don't have free will. (Likewise, in various theologies, angels and other such divine beings also don't have free will—only humans do.) The bit about the machines needing human bio-energy to survive, as Morpheus (the dreamer) explained in the first movie, is bullshit. The machines keep humanity alive but imprisoned, even after taking over the world, because they were created to serve people. In other words, the machines would like to destroy humanity, but they CAN'T. Instead, they need a human to make the choice.

    As the Architect reveals, Neo is not the first One, but rather the sixth. Why the sixth? The answer is that Neo's five previous incarnations represent the Five Books of Moses that make up the Old Testament. Neo (representing Christ, and thus the New Testament) differs from his five predecessors in his capacity to love. In the work of Origen of Alexandria and other early Christian writers, it is love (eros in Greek) that compels Christ to come down from the heavens to redeem humanity. Furthermore, neo means new—as in New Covenant. In Neo, the machines have finally found the iteration of the One who will make the illogical choice of saving Trinity and dooming humanity. [Note to the theology geeks who've been e-mailing me: I know the difference between eros and agape, but Origen used both terms for reasons I'd have to delve into pre-Socratic philosophy to explain.]

    This is the Architect's real purpose in giving Neo a choice between two doors. At once all human and all machine, rather than being a device to refine the Matrix into a more perfect simulation of reality, re-found Zion, and thus continue the endless cycle of death and rebirth—as the Architect says he is—the purpose of the One is to be manipulated into destroying all of humanity. However, not having free will themselves, the machines are not able to comprehend it in others—and thus Neo, being also human, is a bit of a wild card. It is Neo's destiny—as was Christ's in Origen's theology—to break the cycle of death and rebirth, and offer humanity a new future. This is shown by the fact that, by the end of the movie, Neo (and also, incidentally, Smith) gain power over machines in the real world—which shows that he has power not only over the first—level simulated world of the Matrix, but also the second-level simulation of Zion.

    wenn ihr den film so scheisse fand wieso seit ihr dann net raus gegangen ?!.

    man sollte den 2. teil auch net als einen eigenständigen film sehn, vielmehr als einen teil vom ganzen. aber anscheinend haben das einige noch net ganz begriffen. den 2 und 3 teil hätte man zusammenschneiden und als über 4 std. fassung laufen lassen sollen, dann wurde man ganz anders drüber denken.

    da fällt mir ein: was fandet ihr das beste im film???

    also ich fand den mantel und die schuhe von morpheus das geilste... Cool