The Matrix

People are frequently surprised to learn that I do not actually like The Matrix all that much. (If you are not frequently surprised to learn this, you are clearly not a person. You are obviously a sweeping generalisation.) Yea, verily, I like it not. Gosh, you say. And golly. And possibly gee whiz. 'Aren't you,' you say, 'a pretentiously-intellectual science fiction fan? Shouldn't you--' meaning I--'eat this up, eat it like so much tortellini stuffed with gorgonzola cheese and walnuts, sprinkled with oregano and a dusting of pure crack, served on a plate of solid LSD?'

Well, no. I shouldn't.

The Matrix is fundamentally a disappointment on just about every level but its special effects, which are insufficiently cool to justify the hours of my life I'd have to spend vegetating upon my ass to view them. You may take that to be my thesis. In defense of this, I intend to adumbrate several instances from separate epistopic interfaces of the spectrum, making frequent references to Doctor Who. Just because I can.

1. The Name

'The Matrix' does indeed sound like a hip and chic name for a virtual reality. It sounds so hip and chic, in fact, that it has been in use in science fiction since at least 1976, when its depths were plumbed by Tom Baker in the Doctor Who serial 'The Deadly Assassin'. While this Matrix featured significantly fewer instances of 'bullet time', it also cost approximately one hojillion dollars less to film, involves greater camp, can be viewed in easy half-hour installments, and has characters who are clever and surreal as opposed to those who fall back immediately on their infinite powers of ass-kicking. No contest, really. Anything that involves something called 'the Matrix' and is not a Doctor Who episode needs to be about representation theory.

This illustrates a general rule of life: 'mainstream' science fiction's ideas look much less cool when they've already appeared, with more character, on Doctor Who decades earlier. This is why the Borg are also not cool. Not at all.

2. Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves just can't act. It's true. He makes wood look subtle and dynamic. He was at his best in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure; since then, it's been all downhill. (Though his limited acting skills are put to excellent use in My Own Private Idaho.) The real Keanu Reeves is not half as entertaining as the Keanu Reeves lookalike James Duval frequently employed by Gregg Araki. He would've cost less, too, and possibly looks better naked.

3. Solipsism

Solipsism has to be the most self-indulgently masturbatory piece of philosophy ever devised. And you know how much philosophers love to masturbate. The idea that we could all be living in a dream-world or computer simulation or in a big glass jar in some buttock-headed alien's laboratory is neither new nor deep. Mentioning this possibility does not make The Matrix remotely deep or philosophical, because, fundamentally, it makes no difference whatsoever. What if, one night, while you were asleep, someone snuck into your home and replaced everything you own with an exact duplicate, only French? Well, nothing, that's what. It wouldn't make the slightest observable change in the world, except that your loins would be sheathed in undergarments of a more socialist bent. It doesn't matter if the world is an illusion or not so long as it's a convincing one, because none of us inside it could ever tell the difference by any means whatsoever. Fundamentally, it just doesn't matter. Which means...

4. The Computers

If you ask me, the computers are the good guys. So they're keeping the human race locked in a virtual reality. So what? No-one can tell the difference. No-one born in the Matrix even has the capacity to conceive of an existence outside of it until they're forcibly removed. Although...

5. Bad Science

Either Morpheus is a bald-faced liar, or much of the backstory is just stupid. Humans make terrible batteries. We are very inefficient ways of converting sunlight into chemical energy. Why not cut out the middle man, and use plants? Speaking of which, where do the nutrients to keep all those humans fed come from, anyhow? Given that the sun is shrouded, and so plants cannot be cultivated without some external energy source; and what's going to power that? (If you say 'That's what they use the heat from the humans for!' I will hit you with a salmon.) Compare this to an actually interesting and creepy use AIs might have for humans, used by Dan Simmons in his novels Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion. I won't tell you what this use is, because I don't want to spoil it. But it involves some very rude suggestions about Catholicism.

6. Hugo Weaving

Come on. He could kick Keanu Reeves's ass in like five seconds flat. You know it. I know it. We all know it. He is roughly eighteen million times cooler than Keanu. Agent Smith is the real hero of the film.

7. The Dialogue

How can Lawrence Fishburn stop himself laughing?

8. The Philosophising

If you want to experience genuinely philosophical science fiction, read Solaris, or White Light, or Daemonomania, or, for that matter, most anything of John Crowley's. He writes stories about characters who find they are part of Stories, and what is that if not the crux of this Matrix idea, only with much better writing?

9. Comic Book Logic

The Matrix is basically a comic book which tries to make itself seem dark and pretentious and philosophical. I prefer my comic bookery to be open and honest about itself. If you want to watch a movie about people with powers beyond those of mortal men, individuals with the power to change the world in ways ordinary little folk like us cannot, why not watch X-Men or Spider-Man? They are campier, more fun, and sexier, and involve a lot more of Michael Chabon. Fundamentally, what The Matrix lacks is a sense of fun; and without that, its conceits weigh it down and render it drab and unstimulating.

And that's my two sense.

Posted by aloysius at May 28, 2003 09:24 PM |