The Philosophy (and Review) of The Matrix Resurrections

The Matrix Resurrections will certainly go down as the weakest entry in the franchise, probably, for several reasons: There isn’t much philosophy (no wtf mindbenders), too much time is spent on Neo’s life dealing with suppressed memories, too much nostalgia, action sequences that are lacking and when they aren’t it’s actually too much, some rather large plot holes, and Agent Smith’s ultimately trivial role in Neo, Trinity, and Smith’s, um, trinity.

 

To make a long story short, the story revolves around Neo regaining his memories after having them suppressed after the machines resurrect him and Trinity (following the events of The Matrix Revolutions) in order to harvest the unique energy the two have together. Once Neo is free of the Matrix, he must re-enter the program to save Trinity. Lots of kung fu and gunfire ensues.

 

What does the movie get right? Neil Patrick Harris’ role is a delight and the fight between Neo and Smith in the basement is actual pretty good once Smith starts spewing the details. What the movie also gets right is in casting cynicism on the modern age. Whereas the previous movies took it as a given that a good percentage of enslaved human beings would rather subject themselves to the truth than live a comfortable lie, Resurrections does an about face, acknowledging the comfort our digital distractions have provided to make our enslaved live more tolerable. Whereas the previous iteration of Morpheus championed freedom of choice (which was acknowledged as a problem by the Architect), the new Morpheus highlights time and again that choice is an illusion. Interestingly, no one seems to mind. The movie doesn’t run with this theme though and chooses (!) to focus on the power of love in overcoming the powers-that-be. Thus, the spirit of the original trilogy is found wanting.

 

The Matrix Resurrection still makes a good point here, one that can been seen quite readily in American culture, from politics to entertainment. As the Analyst says in the new movie, “[People] don’t want freedom or empowerment. They want to be controlled. They crave the comfort of certainty.” He also says to Neo, “Do you know that hope and despair are nearly identical is code?” implying that a little bit of hope mixed with a little bit of despair is perfect for controlling people’s illusions. This is exactly the state of the U.S. right now as the furthest Left fringes of American culture battle the furthest elements of the Right. This culture war in the U.S. is all or nothing, fully binary, ones and zeros just like in the Matrix.

 

Neither side will admit to being controlled, though, as both fringes operate solely on emotion and cannot be reasoned with. When this is the case it is easy – with tools such as the internet – to trap people in an echo chamber from which they don’t want to escape because to do otherwise would be psychologically uncomfortable. Confirmation bias is a tool of control.

 

Another point made be Resurrections which goes hand-in-hand with the other message: So what if the Matrix isn’t real? Our realities are fictions we’ve created out of (faulty) memories. It doesn’t matter if we’re trapped in a fiction because we’re trapped in a fiction no matter what. Our minds are not capable of capturing all of reality. Nor are memories reliable, which is troubling since our behaviors are as largely derived from our history as our biology. In fact, every time we recall a memory it becomes destabilized within our wet-work and becomes prone to error. It should be alarming that eyewitness testimony is allowed in court knowing what we know about how memories work and how prone they are to influence. Being that we can’t trust our memories, we’re forced to make up narratives that provide the illusion of mental stability, because to admit you’re insane typically gets you physically restrained in some manner or at least cast out of society. So, you might as well choose a fiction that is most comforting to you so long as your basic freedom and social needs are met.

 

Even knowing all this, too many people insist on championing ‘the truth.’ Anyone peddling ‘the truth’ is either an egomaniac or trying to get something from you. Why did Neo want to know the truth? To quench his desire for special knowledge. Why did Morpheus need to point out the truth to Neo? Because Morpheus thought Neo could save humanity. Why are religious zealots always trying to convert you? Because they seek power and control. No religious zealot knocks on your door or flies planes into buildings for the sake of the truth. People pay a great deal of lip service to the truth but this often seems to be another tool of manipulation. It has to be because unless we’re talking mathematics there is no truth. All we have are interpretations of perceptions. Seriously ask yourself why the truth matters. It might matter whereas our actual survival is at stake (man-eating lion = dangerous) but how often is our literal survival threatened on a daily basis?

 

It appears large swaths of human civilization don’t want freedom and don’t want reality. If they wanted freedom, they wouldn’t suffer the constant and often successful attempts to control them. Even couples wouldn’t marry if they wanted freedom as long-term marriages (in the modern world) require compromise to be successful. People don’t want reality either, as evidenced by the acceptance of outright lies and love of fantastical stories. There are so many ways in which we are not free and so many ways in which we ignore reality. Question yourself as to why you’ve accepted this and only then can you begin to grasp the fundamentals, they only truths to be had.

 

The Matrix Resurrections won’t go down in cinematic history as one of the greatest movies ever, or maybe it will. It depends on what we want to believe.  If it is what we want to believe, it doesn’t really matter if its actually true or not. No one’s survival depends on it. In the case of the Matrix, the people enslaved in it are arguably better off staying where they are.

I Watched It So You Don't Have to: Jupiter Ascending

When you find yourself thinking that a dastardly one-dimension, 7-foot tall lizard who wears a trench coat is the best thing about a movie, you start thinking you’ve just seen one of the worst movies ever made.

If you were to take your time trying to explain everything wrong with the Wachowski Brother’s 2015 movie Jupiter Ascending, you would likely miss out on some of life’s equally torturous experiences, such as having your perfectly healthy teeth yanked out with rusty pliers. Jupiter Ascending’s basic plot revolves around a destitute young woman who doesn’t know she is royalty (thanks to the configuration of her DNA) and her scheming space-family who all want her inheritance, the Earth, for themselves. With a huge budget, the movie attempts everything including the kitchen sink; nothing is spared in an effort to cram everything into a movie: In short, if you were to take Cinderella and Star Wars, Star Trek, The Matrix, Guardian of the Galaxy, Gravity – basically every other sci-fi movie ever – and put it in a blender, Jupiter Ascending would come out. Unsuprisingly, everything gets lost in the mix. The casting is questionable, the acting is terrible, the plot barely coherent, the visuals (generally agreed by critics to be stunning are in fact) too far over the top and OH my GOD THE sound EDITING! Fire that guy!!

I’ll begin with the plot holes simply because I have to start somewhere and they are something that for me is incredibly distracting. Most notably, Channing Tatum’s character’s past reveals that he was alleviated of his (literal) wings for attacking a member of the royal family, but we never find out why he did it. If you’re Kunis’ Jupiter, who is royalty, you might want to know what exactly happened instead of falling for this alien who is essentially a wolf-like space stripper with Spock ears. In another instance, Mila Kunis’ character is attacked in her apartment by silly little aliens looking to kill her, yet they don’t actually do it and instead opt to ‘wipe’ her memory. Wtf? Worse, the same aliens erase her memory of them being in her apartment but are so incompetent that they leave her with a picture of them on her smart phone. Then there’s half of Chicago getting blown up when the villains are chasing down Channing and Kunis, but this is explained away as Channing says the aliens will ‘wipe’ everyone’s memory and although some people will remember what happened, no one will believe those people. Meanwhile, everyone else in the city has no memory as to why half the city is blown up! And if you add in the assumption that some people would have videoed the battle and the aliens don’t have the sense to erase data on smart phone, well, you see why this is a plot hole. (I would also like to add that the 8-minute long battle over the skies of Chicago feels much like watching your friend play a first-person shooter game while you eagerly wait your turn. Of course, you never get to play.)

As far as casting is concerned, the movie might as well have been cast by a deaf and blind mute. Mila Kunis plays Jupiter (“Just call me Jupe,” she says to her subjects upon discovering she’s royalty. REALLY?), a down on her luck 20-something who wishes she was royalty and then discovers she’s royalty. Naturally, upon discovering she owns the entire friggin’ Earth, doesn’t want the responsibility and really just wants to go back to her family of poor Russian immigrant stereo-types. Unfortunately, Kunis cannot act worth a lick, making the far-fetched Cinderella plot device all the worse. Meanwhile, Channing Tatum reluctantly plays Caine, a half-wolf ex-space marine bad-ass hoping to redeem himself and get his feathery Victoria’s Secret angel wings back despite wearing a pair of gravity-defying roller skates that would seem to be more handy. There is no denying Channing was simply picking up a paycheck with this movie as he waited for the Magic Mike sequel to go into production. Then there’s Sean Bean cast as Caine’s mumbling father figure while Eddie Redmayne plays the evil Balem Abrasax, a character even more mumbly than Sean Bean who occasionally musters enough strength to scream, “Kill her!” The rest of the cast is ancillary, whose careers are probably over after appearing in this movie.

Then there’s the visuals. Are they good? Frankly, they’re too good in that there is often so much going on on the screen at times that you can possibly process it all. The visuals then were perhaps a means of distracting viewers from the movie’s attempt to critique capitalism but for which it offers no solution. Cue the scene of Kunis navigating the space-DMV in order to claim her inheritance with help of a roboticly gay assistant. Groan.

“Ambitious failure is at least worth talking about,” says critic Martin Roberts. He is right; Jupiter Ascending qualifies as a movie so bad that it is good, insofar as one can enjoy the movie on a comical level, mocking the movie’s poor execution despite the honorable intentions of the movie’s producers. You clearly get the sense that the Wachowski Brother’s thought they had a good story on their hands but once the movie went into production, it seems as though they saw how bad it was going to turn out but had already crossed the point-of-no-return and therefore had to finish production. This ‘fact’ is no more evident than in the dialogue, which seems at times written by complete strangers who didn’t bother to communicate with each other about what the characters in the movie were saying to each other, much less how they were saying it.

All of this is a shame as the underlying premise, the very reason Earth is at risk, is actually somewhat interesting: The planet is just one among thousands in which its inhabitants are ‘harvested’ to produce a life-extending drug for the alien royalty. It’s a good enough premise to construct a story around, so perhaps the remake in five or so years will be better. But that movie would have to be because when your expectations are low, you have nowhere to go but up. And that is how anyone with the guts to sit through this movie should approach this cinematic Titanic.

I Watched It So You Don't Have To: 50 Shades of Grey

Okay, I lied. I haven’t seen the movie. But do I really need to in order to review it? If you’ve read the book, you know that this movie will be the one single movie in all of cinematic history to be better than its source material. That said, I think it a timely matter to revisit my original assessment of the book…

I once heard someone say of this book, "Either you love it or hate it." But the fact is that such a statement requires clarification. You either love it or hate it based upon two things: If you've never read anything BDSM-related before, you might find it entertaining or perhaps provocative. However, if you've ever read any great work of literature, you may want to find the nearest fireplace. The sex scenes – which is the real reason anyone would pick this book up – aren’t particularly tantalizing, much less erotic, if you're at all familiar with Jackie Collins. The real crime in this book comes not from adults consenting to BDSM or even the female wish-fulfillment of changing a man, but the manner in which the book is written, stylistically speaking. Though we may be reading 50 Shades of Grey for the sex, it is very difficult not to laugh or even want to cry at the author's sophomoric writing skills. The word count for the word 'murmur' alone is astronomical: 5 times on one page even! Furthermore, besides protagonist Anastasia's character, there isn't a single remotely interesting, much less believable, character. Christian Grey's character, for example, is so unbelievable – a handsome billionaire with a huge penis yet psychologically damaged enough that he requires changing – that no suspension of disbelief is possible. It is also clear that the author did no research whatsoever beyond the sex, and I’m not even talking about the finer points of bondage. Perfectly clear Seattle skylines in May? LOL! There is no plot either unless you consider scenes of sex-breaking up-make up sex-breaking up-make up sex etc. a plot. But wait, there’s a second book! And it’s worse than the first. In the second book 50 Shades Darker you'd think by this point in a trilogy in which the first book was slammed for its incompetent writing style and witless dialogue, EL James would care to rectify the many criticisms she received of her freshman effort. But, I guess when you're laughing all the way to the bank and given that most Americans do not read above a sixth-grade level, why bother? EL James somehow manages to take her ineptitude to the next level by not only dispensing with the BDSM for most of the sex scenes this go-round, but by fumbling an attempt at a plot, and ultimately switching between first and second person points of view with a level of incompetence that hasn't been seen since the Titanic was built. All the while people are still murmuring, muttering, putting his hand in his hair, wowing, and pressing their lips into a hard line. And EL James has the nerve to say her editor rocks in the Acknowledgements? What editor?? If you don't wish to read the books but still want to know what happens, here's the entire series in a nutshell: Boy meets girl. They fall in lust. They quickly get back together after being apart for an eternity, that is, five days. They're happy. Information is revealed. They fight, make-up, and have sex. Repeat ad nauseum. Near the end of the second book, switch to another character's point of view for no reason what-so-ever, or, laziness. After finishing the second book, consider that your life will flash before your eyes before you die – do you really want to read the final book? Well, I suppose there are those instances when one need to kill time in the restroom.

[On a side, side-note, I find it interesting that while today’s women want to be accepted for who they are and what they look like, none of the women who are fans of this trilogy admit to reveling in the fantasy that is Christian Grey. Admit it, ladies, if you met someone like Christian Grey and he wasn’t a billionaire or at least very handsome, you would never allow yourselves to be coerced into BDSM. Just sayin’.]

I Watched It So You Don't Have To: The Congress

Movie Synopsis: An aging actress (Robin Wright, playing a version of herself) decides to take her final job: preserving her digital likeness for a future Hollywood. In return, she receives healthy compensation so she can care for her ailing son while her digitized character will stay forever young. Twenty years later, under the creative vision of the studio's head animator, Wright's digital double rises to immortal stardom. With her contract expiring, she is invited to take part in "The Congress" convention as she makes her comeback straight into the world of future fantasy cinema.

If there is any truth to the phrase, “Misery loves company,” then this is a movie best watched with friends. The Congress is an unfocused attempt to address what transpires on a personal level for those engaged in being movie celebrities as they try to create art AND THEN parlay that into a meditation on identity. The result winds up being the cinematic equivalent of diarrhea; you want to analyze it but what you’ve got it so muddied there’s no hope of making clear sense of it. You’re going to try anyway, though, since you’ve invested two hours in this movie having been suckered in by the false promise of the first 45 minutes. During that time, the movie does give us an interesting set-up, but as soon as we’re cast 20 years into the future (allegedly; the movie is quite clear that where we are in time is not clear) the movie swerves wildly into Being John Malcovich-Meets-Pink Floyd’s The Wall-Meets-Inception-Meets-The Matrix territory. (This abrupt swerve in the movie is barely hinted at in the movie’s trailer, probably for a good reason.) Beyond the 45 minute mark, the movie is mostly animated which would have been fine except that the movie begins to focus on how bizarre it’s trying to be without doing much to advance the plot. Like so many movies, we’re teased by some very deep and intriguing questions but are not given any input on what the writer or director think about those questions, leading to a superficial resolution for our lead character. Moreover, at the movie’s end there is a plot hole too large to ignore: What happened to the world over the course of 20 years Robin is “on vacation” is not explained in the least, a detail that could have been used to provide us with some context for the protagonist’s inner conflicts. While many artsy-fartsy viewers will find this movie delightfully eccentric, being eccentric should not be confused with being clever. Being clever requires knowing exactly what you’re doing. [Interesting fact: The movie was made on a budget of about $11 million and grossed less than a million at the box office. But maybe that was meant to be given that Robin Wright plays a version of herself that makes bad decisions. In real life, she is one of the movie’s producers.]