10 Famous Movies That Screwed Up The Most Important Part
8. The Matrix Reload - Keep It Simple, Damn It!
What if a teacher told you everything you need to know for next week's quantum mechanics test will come out of her mouth for the next ten minutes, you don't get to take notes, and that she'll never say any of it again? You'd be pretty pissed off. And that, friends, is how The Matrix Reloaded makes you feel. You're enjoying a decent little action movie (despite the occasional over-long mass dance orgy scene), and as the film approaches its climax, a man in white appears and proceeds to explain pretty much everything you need to know and understand in order to 'get' what's going on. Then Neo gets special powers in the real world, Agent Smith somehow makes his way into the real world too, something about Neo maybe being jesus, and then we're out and ready for the sequel which...ends with Neo being Jesus. Huh? The reason The Matrix was so well regarded is that in addition to insane fight choreography and state-of-the-art visual effects, it took really heady concepts and made them easy to understand. Our world is a simulation, people are 'plugged in' to this world, and it's the job of Neo, Morpheus, and his friends to one day disconnect these people from this plugged in world. Those trying to stop them - the machines, use 'agents' to track them down inside said simulation. It gave you enough to understand what was going on, and if you wanted to pull more out of it sub-textually, that's fine. But then the movie drank its own Kool-Aid in the sequels and diverted into strange philosophical asides, there were books released about The Matrix and Religion, there was an entire DVD set of animated movies about The Matrix, and the whole thing just became far too big for its summer action movie britches. The Matrix wasn't a movie, it was a franchise that become wildly bloated just in time for its sequel and that damn Architect to show up, blow everyone's minds, vanish, and leave the audience with a look like they just smelled a fart. Or was it only the third simulation of a fart?
