by Roger White, Copyright Nov 03
The Matrix Trilogy is a fine series of movies to watch. Number One is an acquired taste, Number Two is my favorite because I love the cable work martial arts in it, and Number Three is OK.
So... do I think this trilogy is entertaining? Yes, indeed.
Now the meat of this review....
From a technofiction standpoint the highest level of story in the trilogy is a complete bust. In Matrix One the explanation as to why there was a Matrix at all was, "human batteries". Human batteries?? Gaining power from humans?? Sorry, if you want an energy source, there are dozens and dozens of ways to get energy that are simpler and more efficient than maintaining humans... even those maintained in supposedly low-maintenance "machine wombs".
(Another basic presumption is that humans are in their vats because this is an easier way to maintain them and extract "energy" than letting them range free. I can just imagine a machine talking with another machine saying, "Personally, when I go to consume my human energy at a restaurant, I always check to see if the energy is coming from 'free-ranging humans'.")
Humans are hard to grow in vats. Harder than, say, bacterial slime or algae or even potatoes. So why grow humans in vats instead of bacteria, algae or potatoes? There two quick answers: either you are after human thinking power (which the Warshaski Brother deliberately avoided by talking about batteries rather than brains), or your after something supernatural such as a Western "soul", an Indian "karma", an East Asian "ki", or even a Star Wars "force". None of these are mentioned or implied in the movie.
So, at the highest storytelling level, Matrix One just flat-out doesn't work. Human batteries is a bust as a concept.
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A technofiction Alternative: Human Batteries I don't want to be just critcal, so here's an alternative to "human batteries". The Machines are after human brain power. But the part they need is not the concious level part. They are tapping subconcious human brain processes to do certain kinds of thinking that machines can't do well. For instance, real world humans are much better at pattern recongnition that current day real world machines are -- human auditory and visual systems can "hear" and "see" better than current day computer equivalents. In the Matrix movie world, The Machines highly value certain human thinking processes because they make Machineworld run more smoothly. Just as Humans value certain machine fabricating processes because they make Humanworld run more smoothly. To get what they want each society must maintain their equipment: Humans need to keep their machines well oiled, and Machines need to keep their humans happy in their vats, and this is what The Matrix is for. |
Related problem: what is it that humans did to the skies that the machines can't undo? If the process is irreversible, are humans going to really "suicide" Earth by doing this? Can we feel good about humans that would do this to our planet? Can we feel like we are on their side? If this process is reversible, who holds the key for undoing this? The keepers of Zion? This is never discussed.
The concept of the ships sneaking up and having people "jack in" works for me. As does the concept of "hard connections" to get them in and out.
The concept that Neo was going to learn how to manipulate the Matrix environment to a supernatural level by playing around in it -- as versus manipulating it from the outside as the "watchers" on the human ship did as they watched the code pass in front of them on their screens -- was credibility straining, but OK.
The concept that the Agent programs played by their own rules was OK, too.
So, other than at its highest level, Matrix One was internally self consistent, and a nice action movie, to boot. It works well as technofiction.
On to Matrix Two
The story in Matrix Two gets more complex. Mercifully, the "human batteries" are not mentioned again, and in their place at the highest level comes "The Architect" -- the program that made The Matrix.
At the climactic denouement, where Neo meets The Architect, The Architect blurts out a lot of technobabble, and then lets Neo get about saving Trinity. I saw the movie a couple of times to see if there was sense in the technobabble, and there was. It was.... almost.... really good sense! But only almost.
Instead of getting into some good technofiction, The Architect babbles on about Choice (but not Free Will), essentially repeating the theme Mervingian had introduced earlier in the movie. This reduced the denouement to a philosophic treatise, so, at the high level, movies two and three are a bust, too.
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The Technofiction Alternative: The Architect complains that he can build flawless matrixes, but when he does, they don't do their job [of keeping the humans in the vats contented enough to continue to be batteries]. So, he's experimenting and iterating. Neo is part of that iteration process. Had The Architect mentioned Goedel's Theorem, this high level story line would have snapped into place and been outstanding! Geodel, a turn of the last century mathematician, proved that a "formal system of theorems" (which is what a computer program is), can never prove whether all of the propositions (equations) built on its axioms (basic assumptions) are true or false. It can prove many true, and it can prove many false, but there will always be some that are in a "gray area." That concept by itself wouldn't be too interesting to the Matrix world. The interesting part is that an "outside observer" -- someone who is not part of the formal system -- can prove all the propositions true or false. This means that while The Architect can't fix all his own problems by himself, he can fix them if he has some "outside help", in this case, in the form of The One. Had The Architect explained this Geodel's Theorem to Neo -- and said that Neo was the outside observer that was helping him to design a better Matrix to replace the existing matrix that was about to be scrapped -- Matrix Two would have "snapped in place" for me. It would have been great technofiction. If The Architect had said that, then Neo's "meaning in life" becomes to thwart The Architect in the building of the next matrix, and The Architect is playing with "dangerous tools" -- The One -- in his effort to make his creation work better. Neo and The Architect both become striving entities. They are dueling over the destiny of mankind, and machinekind, and both are playing a risky game. This concept works! |
Mervingian's ("The Frenchman") sub-environment works for me. It is fairly consistent. The minor complaint I have with it is that doesn't seem to be isolated in any way from the normal Matrix, so what is to keep the Frenchman's refugee programs from going back into the regular Matrix whenever they wished to? The Oracle's "park" -- also full of refugee programs -- was at least isolated by the "corridor room", and that worked for me. Smith, somehow, gets around all these limitations. But since he turns out to be the "big problem" -- The Architect's "pathologic anomaly" -- the fact that he can wander freely is OK, too.
In Matrix One I imagined Zion as a secret place -- a small place, hidden from The Machines. The "access codes" that Agent Smith was after would let The Machines find Zion.
When the Wachowski Brothers chose to portray Zion in Matrix Two, huge problems came up in my mind.
First off: It's big, not small, and it's permanent -- protected by mighty fortress walls.
Second off: It's big, not small, and it's permanent -- protected by mighty fortress walls.
Sorry, I repeat myself, but the number of changes this makes to the Zion -- Machine world relation are huge.
First, if The Machines know where Zion is, why don't they just wall it off? The Nebachanezzar was not a boring machine. It was designed to cruise preexisting tunnels. The existence of those tunnels presumes that either Mankind made them and found them useful before the Machine Uprising, and they are now abandoned, or that Machinekind still finds them useful, and they are currently inhabited. If they are abandoned, it would be no skin off Machinekind's back to wall off Zion by destroying all the tunnel approaches to Zion. If they are inhabited, Machinekind can put up big protecting doors on the tunnels, just like Zion has done.
In sum, if Machinekind knows where Zion is, there's no easy way to explain how Zion hover ships can get into the tunnel system to sneak around -- they should be stopped at "the border", just the way cars and trucks are using roads in our real world are.
In fact, the very existence of the elaborate "Dock" in Matrix Two and Three implies ship commerce. You don't bother with the expense and maintenance of elaborate ship traffic control systems unless there is so much traffic that you need them. Why spend the money and time on an elaborate ship traffic control system when a simple garage door opener would suffice?
So, the existence of the elaborate dock, and the ability of the Zion ships to get unimpeded into the deep tunnel system implies both lots of traffic, and that Machinekind can't control the Zion -- Machinekind border with it's own gates and guards. This is a big problem: why can't Machinekind do this? And who is Zion "trafficing" with?
Both these problems go away if Zion is small and hidden, or small and nomadic -- if Machinekind can't find Zion, then they can't establish border guards.
Morpheus gives a speech in Matrix Two saying Zion has been at this location some long time -- at least a hundred years. If this is so, why haven't the people of Zion made Zion "comfortable"? It's OK that the Nebachanezzar looks "submarineish" and grim. It's a fighting vessel. It's not OK, that Zion looks submarineish and grim. This is a home. This also applies to clothing and food. The crew should come home to a place that's dazzling by comparison to their ship environment. After a hundred years in the same place underground, the corridors of Zion should be clean, bright, and "homey". There should be reminiscing scenes from "the old days" of sunshine and surface dwelling. The city dwellers should be doing their best to lose the grungy "submarine look", not glorifying it. There may be dirty, grimy parts of Zion. These would be parts where "real work" is still being done, such as the Machine level, or areas where Zion is expanding. But there should also be large parts where people can temporarily forget their "underground exile", and much of the in-Zion action should take place in those parts.
Related problem: what energy source is Zion using? What can it be using for energy that Machinekind can't? This is another problem that goes away if Zion is small and nomadic -- Zion inhabitants simply parasite off the machinekind energy grid.
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The Technofiction Alternative: Fixing Zion As envisioned in Matrix One, Zion needs to remain a small and elusive place. It should not be able to muster the force to even begin to think of standing up to Machinekind. It is a guerilla camp. If Zion remains small and elusive, Machinekind's goal remains simply to find it. If Zion remains small and nomadic, then the "grunge look" of the costuming remains appropriate, even when the crew comes home, and a whole slew of other problems relating to Zion lifestyle go away. What is lost cinematographiclly is the hoaky battle scene (which should get lost!), which can be replaced with more about the matrix people. Or, it can be replaced with a hasty evacuation/battle scene when Zion's location gets unexpectedly discovered. |
Having Smith infiltrate into a real-world persona, and having Neo be able to block Sentinels in the real world are both bad ideas to insert into the Matrix movies. They blur the line between Matrix and Real World, and imply a "Thirteenth Floor" scenario. In the movie the Thirteenth Floor (which came out the same time as the first Matrix), there is a Matrix equivalent, but it turns out that the "real world" this Matrix is in is also a Matrix for a higher level "real world". This was the heart of the Thirteenth Floor movie, but this is not a place the Wachowski Brothers chose to go in the Matrix Trilogy, and, I think, it's well that they didn't.
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The Technofiction Alternative: There is no fix for this. It just doesn't need to be in the movie at all. |
The Dock Battle had a lot of technofiction problems. The first was the APU's, more commonly known as "battlemechs." Battlemechs are a weapons platform, just like a tank. The basic difference is that the tank moves on tracks and the battlemech moves on legs. Unfortunately for technofiction, this is a big difference, and the tracks "win" in almost every circumstance. Tanks are more compact, present a smaller target area, are more robust and easier to maintain.
In fact, there is only one way to make the battlemech profile work better than a tank profile, and that is to make it "power armor", ala Hienlien's Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie). In Starship Troopers, the key characteristic of power armor users was they were always "on the bounce" -- moving. It is motion that makes up for the inherent weakness and low stability of legs compared to the tracks of a tank platform. If the Wachowski Brothers wanted to use battlemech-style weapons to defend the docks, they should have treated it as power armor, and there should have been as much APU bounce during the battle as Neo, Morpheus and Trinity had bounce when they were battling in the first Matrix movie.
Two other problems with the APU's: no armor for the pilot, and having people with wheelbarrows run out to reload them. Why didn't the APU's simply walk back to the reloading door? It would have been a lot safer for the reloaders.
Related problem: having the wife mixing gun powder hours before the battle is to take place. Come on, folks! Munitions making is not that simple!
Second problem with the battle: no area of effect weapons being used by either side. What happened to bombs and gas as weapons?
Third problem with the battle: no auto targeting on the weapons? The scenes of having Captain What'shisname, sitting exposed in his APU, waving his arms around and yelling at the Sentinels as he blasted with manual-targeting machine guns on the ends of "arms", were painful to watch.
From Star Wars in the seventies to Matrix in the aughts, Hollywood science fiction film makers maintain their fascination with the "ergonomics" of World War Two projectile weapons. And from a technofiction point of view, that makes all these battle scenes painful to watch.
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The technofiction alternative: Battle of the Docks The job of the APU's is to distract the Sentinels and lead them away from critical locations, such as Zion. The Battle for Zion becomes one of: 1) Zion is unexpectedly discovered, and evacuation begins 2) The APU's charge out into the tunnels around Zion to meet the oncoming Sentinel Rush. The APU's meet this rush "on the bounce" and distact the Sentinels with ambushes and then fleeing down meaningless corridors so the Sentinels are distracted. 3) The crisis is: can the people of Zion get on the boats and get out before the Sentinals close on the camp? |
The hovercraft can not only hover, it can fly! Not only can it fly, it can fly into the stratosphere! Not only can it fly into the stratosphere, the Machine City defenses are surprised that it can! <sigh> And I've already talked about the inconsistency of Neo's real world abilities. In addition, if his real world abilities were that supernaturally hot, he should never have even partly lost the fight to the traitor -- he should not have been blinded.
The final confrontation with Smith is a battle of high-level wizards. Those who have witnessed real world martial arts contests, or played 70-80's-style Dungeons and Dragons (the story telling version that came before the card game version), are familiar with the phenomenon that battles between high performance opponents are over in an eye blink. In real life, only beginners-battling-beginners (or "coalition wars" of many high level opponents) are long, drawn-out affairs. For the confrontation between Neo and Smith to run as long as it did, one side or the other must have been expecting something to change between the beginning of the battle and the end. Either: 1) one would run out of fighting energy before the other, 2) there was "cavalry coming to the rescue" so the battle was a delaying action, or 3) some "trick" was to be pulled. None of the above showed up, so it was pointless, except as a way of showing off more special effects.
In Matrix Two and Matrix Three, the people are gone! The people in the vats, the average inhabitants of The Matrix, the people this whole trilogy is about, are never seen. If this whole effort is about them, where are they in the last two movies?
That's the technofiction point of view on The Matrix Trilogy. It's a fun series of movies to watch, and it aspires to be good technofiction. The first movie has a bad high-level flaw, but beneath that it's delightfully self-consistent. The second movie has this same characteristic -- the highest level is flawed, but underneath it's pretty self consistent and definitely fun to watch, except for the Zion parts. The third movie loses it. It's decent action/adventure, but the internal consistency is only BTB -- Better Than Bruckhiemer (of Armageddon and Con Air fame).