Eccentric Flower:199905/the phantom backlash
From Eccentric Flower
 |
may second the phantom backlash Verily, I think the only reason I will be going to see The Phantom Menace is that Nonelvis will kill me if I don't see it with her. I have gone into full-blown Hype Backlash. It is a truism with me that the more people get enthused over something, the more I want to avoid it. I'm not sure what causes this, but it's helped me as often as it's hindered me, so I don't really have a reason to root the instinct out and eliminate it. Add to this the fact that the more rabid elements of Fandom are coming out of the woodwork - and you know how I feel about the real full-blown triple-distilled Fans - and you can see that it is going to take a serious effort of will to coerce myself into the theatre. Of course, once I'm there, I'll love it. I always do. Molly asked me to pick my favorite movie of all time. I couldn't do it. I can pick my favorite book of all time in a trice, but with movies, once you get me in the door, I'm likely to enjoy it. I'm an easy sell. Funny that I should adore them moving pictures so much and yet go to so few of them, right? Not really. With books I spend my seven bucks, but if I don't like it, I feel free to toss it against the wall and not finish it. With movies, for some reason, I feel obligated to stay. I have never walked out on a film. For this reason, I tend to gamble more willingly, if you will, on books than on movies. Speaking of films, I have now seen The Matrix and I agree with Michael: Lisa Schwarzbaum must have had an axe to grind or something when she rated this movie. OK, there are a few minor plot holes - actually only two that bothered me, and I'll cover them in a moment. On the whole, I felt that the technology and the handwaving was better done than in, say, your average Star Trek movie. Only during those two moments was I "yanked out" of the film universe. As for Keanu, well, we all know he can't act, but in this case I thought that was kind of like a judo thing, using his weaknesses as advantages: At the beginning, he can look stunned because the character is supposed to be stunned, it's basically a reactive role at that point ... and at the end, the character can be blank and emotionless because he's at peace with his universe. It's a Zen thing, man. OK, so have you guessed what two times I had to stop and say, "Wait, something's wrong there?" (Spoilers follow.) The big problem - and Nonelvis and Marc noticed this too - is the sequence where Keanu is firing that huge belt-fed machine gun from the helicopter and he's sending bullets all over the room ... and not a single one of them hits Lawrence Fishburne, who isn't even trying to dodge them - he's only semi-conscious, and he's handcuffed to a chair for heaven's sake! The other is when the Agent is talking to Fishburne on how much he hates the place and he wants to go home. Now, if the agents are basically semi-autonomous programs inside a rampant AI network, what does "home" mean to them? They are home. I suppose it was never made clear to me what the "opponents" of the humans were exactly - sometimes it sounded like an AI gone wild, sometimes it sounded like aliens, sometimes both. At any rate, once Zion was taken and the human threat was ended, sure, you could argue that there wouldn't be any need for the Agents anymore ... but they wouldn't leave ... more like they'd cease to exist, stop executing. There is no place for them to go to. Or my understanding of the system is wrong. I liked the movie. I'm not sure whether I liked this or Virtuosity (an underappreciated film with better actors) better, or several others with the same sorts of themes. (Remember, I'm an easy sell - I like Tron.) For that matter, if you want a truly creepy take on the what-is-reality idea that was done before the term "virtual reality" even existed, go to your rental place and dust off their copy of Videodrome. But be careful. Never watch David Cronenberg when you're by yourself.
© columbine |
