Wednesday, May 28, 2003 :::
The profunidty of the sequel, to the sequel of the Wachowski Brothers' Matrix, should not be a barrier to the appreciation of the second masterpiece which blends artfully directed action sequences with subtle and eloquent bites of philosphy espoused by the elder brother, Larry.
While the first movie was about the importance of choice, as the decisions Thomas Anderson aka Neo has to make in order to experience rebirth from the system of artificial simulation of the Matrix and literal physical encapsulation by the mechanicl overlords, Reloaded offers the posit that choice in itself is an illusion. The theme of choice courses deeply and widely across the wirings of Reloaded. Apropos to Morpheus offering to Neo to take the blue pill which would return him back to innocent stupour in a wonderland, whiel the red pill will bring with it the veracity of the situation - naked and bare. It was Morpheus who notably acknowledges in the training of the One that 'I can only show you the door, but you must walk through it', exemplifies the theme of self-determination where one's choices brought along with it real consequences. It is the espousal of liberty and self-determination that the first movie revolves around. The battle against the Matrix shares roots with the anti-erstablishment view that seeks to extend personal freedom, with the rejection of the authoratative control of the system which tells each and everyone to believe what he is pre-designated to believe in.
However, in Reloaded, the concept of choice is dissected against another school of philosphical thought where choice is a mere illusion. The beauty of Reloaded is that it deliberates and discourses over the various thought towards the concept of choice while making all these pertinent to the main plot while inter-weaving stylish skirmishes.
The concept of choice is first introduced into Reloaded by the Oracle, an intuitive programme created by the Architect to foresee and comprehend the psyche of the 1% of people whose decisions and behavioural patterns are not governed by a set of mathematical logarithms on which the operation of the Matrix is fundamental. She rebukes Neo maternally for not comprehending the concept that choices have already been made, but we are here to understand these choices. The consultations Neo makes with her is solely for that purpose. Neo as she says has the ability to see things without time, but not around the choices which he does not understand. THe philosophy running through her speech is that of pre-designation, whereby fate holds a strong governing hand over what is to come. And to those who are under the hand of fate, little more is to be done than to understand and come to turns with the choices that will be made. As such, there is no such thing as choice to her, as everything is presided over by fate. The authority of fate is seen by her to be much greater than the authority of the Matrix over the choice decisions by the inhabitants of the Matrix. It is the emulation of human psyche that the Architect chooses to emulate but he fails for fate is an over-riding force.
It is based upon this fate that she says "we are here to do what we were meant to do", underscores the idea that inthe stage of life we are each given a role to act out, and by acting out that role given to us subsconscioulsy or unconsciously, we would never deviate from the script as the script is already pre-determined by a higher authority like the director, while in this case this higher authority might be that the intangible and intuitive nature of fate, which defies the logic of the mathematical calcultions that the Matrix is fundamentally based upon. This same though is shared by the Keymaker, who sees himself as playing out his role in the sequence of events.
An opposing strand of thought is overed by the guradian of the keymaker, The profunidty of the sequel, to the sequel of the Wachowski Brothers' Matrix, should not be a barrier to the appreciation of the second masterpiece which blends artfully directed action sequences with subtle and eloquent bites of philosphy espoused by the elder brother, Larry.
While the first movie was about the importance of choice, as the decisions Thomas Anderson aka Neo has to make in order to experience rebirth from the system of artificial simulation of the Matrix and literal physical encapsulation by the mechanicl overlords, Reloaded offers the posit that choice in itself is an illusion. The theme of choice courses deeply and widely across the wirings of Reloaded. Apropos to Morpheus offering to Neo to take the blue pill which would return him back to innocent stupour in a wonderland, whiel the red pill will bring with it the veracity of the situation - naked and bare. It was Morpheus who notably acknowledges in the training of the One that 'I can only show you the door, but you must walk through it', exemplifies the theme of self-determination where one's choices brought along with it real consequences. It is the espousal of liberty and self-determination that the first movie revolves around. The battle against the Matrix shares roots with the anti-erstablishment view that seeks to extend personal freedom, with the rejection of the authoratative control of the system which tells each and everyone to believe what he is pre-designated to believe in.
However, in Reloaded, the concept of choice is dissected against another school of philosphical thought where choice is a mere illusion. The beauty of Reloaded is that it deliberates and discourses over the various thought towards the concept of choice while making all these pertinent to the main plot while inter-weaving stylish skirmishes.
The concept of choice is first introduced into Reloaded by the Oracle, an intuitive programme created by the Architect to foresee and comprehend the psyche of the 1% of people whose decisions and behavioural patterns are not governed by a set of mathematical logarithms on which the operation of the Matrix is fundamental. She rebukes Neo maternally for not comprehending the concept that choices have already been made, but we are here to understand these choices. The consultations Neo makes with her is solely for that purpose. Neo as she says has the ability to see things without time, but not around the choices which he does not understand. THe philosophy running through her speech is that of pre-designation, whereby fate holds a strong governing hand over what is to come. And to those who are under the hand of fate, little more is to be done than to understand and come to turns with the choices that will be made. As such, there is no such thing as choice to her, as everything is presided over by fate. The authority of fate is seen by her to be much greater than the authority of the Matrix over the choice decisions by the inhabitants of the Matrix. It is the emulation of human psyche that the Architect chooses to emulate but he fails for fate is an over-riding force.
It is based upon this fate that she says "we are here to do what we were meant to do", underscores the idea that inthe stage of life we are each given a role to act out, and by acting out that role given to us subsconscioulsy or unconsciously, we would never deviate from the script as the script is already pre-determined by a higher authority like the director, while in this case this higher authority might be that the intangible and intuitive nature of fate, which defies the logic of the mathematical calcultions that the Matrix is fundamentally based upon. This same though is shared by the Keymaker, who sees himself as playing out his role in the sequence of events.
An opposing strand of thought is overed by the guradian of the keymaker, Merovingian, who observes that choice is an illusion created by those in power to differentiate themselves from those who lack authority. To those without this power to decide, there is only the matter of choice and effect. He illustrates this by feeding a cake "which he persoanlly wrote" to an unwary damsel, whose every bite into the cake arouses her heart and her senses till she is out of control (at this moment there is an explosion between the legs of the lady in the green Matrix encryption). He shows his power by his ability to exert a cause on another person who has to expereience the effect - she excuses herself for the toilet, where in a state of arousal she is implied to have copulated with the Merovingian who himself excuses himself from his company to atten to urgent business. It is through his wealth, pretiege, finesees which belie his unctuous tone and his womanizing ways that this programme exerts his own authority, but alas he is befelled by a choice his wife, Persiphone, makes and left to suffer the consequence of losing the Keymaker and not to forget, several fine marble statues.
The concept of choice - or the problem of it is last seen in the encounter with the Architect who brings with him more questions than he answers. The Architect reveals that this is the sixth system of the Matrix, and along the way the creation of a utopic world never fit the unsatisfactory and the nature of men to bear the proclivity to do bad. He realises that in whichever script there lies an intrinsic error which irrevocably cannot be removed from the system. His inability to formulate a mathematical notation to govern the last 1% of the choices of people within the Matrix has led to the necessary creation of a 'Zion' or a last human encalve in the real world in which these 1% would populate. This failure to write a script that could determine the choices made by this 1% has meant the exponential increase in system disruptions which will culminate when the One reaches the source (ie the Architect who eloquently puts his whole system into words). Upon reaching the source, the One chooses to walk through the door (Neo's right) which would lead to the re-creation of Zion with 7 males and 16 females while the left door would bring Neo (or his predecessors) back into the system where there will be a catalysmic system crash due to the scripting error leading to the extinction of the human race and the Dark Ages of survival for the machine overlords. Unlike Neo, his predecessors all have been bound by a strong affinity to the human race, perhaps owing to a heavy social responsiblity placed upon their shoulders to be the One which will deliver the human race and ensure its continuity. Yet this affinity for his fellow mankind for the case of Neo is overrided by his uncompromising love for Trinity. It is Neo who makes the choice that no one has envisaged (perhaps even the Architect himself for there probably would not be an apocalypse or there would not be any Revolution). Though his predecessors were all the One's of their time and in their own right, they were faced with the Hudson choice between the two laid down by the Architect. (the Architect probably has Zion at his mercy, and is able to annhilate the city at a whim - through his implication that it gets more efficient each time, and uses Zion as a bargainning chip to entice the One towards choosing the door which would restart the system. Each time he is visited by the One he has to concede defeat that the chaos caused by the 1% of the people whose actions are not determined by the system has rised exponentially to alevel that the system cannot tolerate). It seems that only Neo who is unbounded by this choice, makes the "right" choice which will break the cycle.
Hence the movie ends with the cliff-hanger where Zion is supposedly destroyed, a choice that has never been made before, the failure of the prophesy which predicted the end of the war when the One returns to the Source, the presence of a free agent (which is probably unprecedented) and a manifestation of this Many Me Smith within the midst of the hover craft bearing Neo, and Neo having a high level of psycho-kinetic powers that he is able to sense and emit electric pulses that will stun the mechnical robots that inhabit the earth.
Unlike the first movie, whom many would cite to be a trigger to the Columbine High School shooting, the second one lacks the extensive arsenal of weaponry Neo had at his disposa, but this is complemented by the deft action scenes.
As in the Star Wars Trilogy where Darth Vader is revealed to be Luke's father in the Return of the Jedi, Revolution would drop a bombshell, perhaps something like Neo was a 'mechanical' being created by robots (perhaps as an alternative energy source or a means to increase current energy output) that bore the exact characteristics as a human that he in turn became, the One that the Matrix was never written for. It would also explain his sharp psyho-kinetic reflexes and his ability to sense robtic squds and send each an electric pulse.
::: posted by deslucent at 8:19 AM
