The Matrix

The Matrix is one fucking awesome sci fi movie. I love Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus. He’s one tough motherfucker. It also stars Keanu Reeves, from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, as Neo. That’s an anagram for the One. Carrie Moss is the ugly dyke Trinity. Joe Pantoliano, one of the Fratelli boys in the Goonies, is the traitor Cypher. And the man behind Elrond the elf is Agent Smith.

As I said, I loved the movie but it’s funnier to make fun of a movie rather than praise it. After all it’s easy to be a critic. I assume you have already watched it. If you haven’t then go rent, buy or download it right now. And don’t read this until after you have seen it or I will spoil it for you. Normally when I blog about movies I take you on a journey scene by scene. But that would take forever and I don’t feel like doing it. So I here are some qualms of mine.

Neo is some programmer for some company. It’s ironic that he is a programmer in a program. At night he searches for the Matrix or the one person known as Morpheus. Just like how I’ve been searching for my real parents. Now Morpheus can be a total dick at times. When Neo asks about the Matrix he says he can’t tell you, or some shit, and that you have to see it for yourself. Fuck you Morpheus; it is pretty fucking easy to tell him.

I’ll try my best to explain it. Robots have taken over the world and because man has scorched the skies the robots have to find another source of energy. Because humans generate heat and electricity the robots harvest humans for energy in endless fields. So the robots programmed an alternate reality, the Matrix, for people in our peak of our civilization. In fact we could be in our own Matrix and not even know it. By the way I wrote an awesome essay about appearance verses reality using the Matrix in philosophy. My T.A. loved it.

Morpheus tells Neo that if you take the red pill, it will free your mind. And by doing so you will live on a shitty spaceship, eat shitty food, fly around aimlessly and fight off robots that try to hunt you down. I hope Morpheus doesn’t get them mixed up. “Or was it the blue pill? Whoops.”

Like Cypher I think I would go with the blue pill. I couldn’t give a shit if I was in the Matrix and everything wasn’t real. As Cypher puts it; ignorance is bliss. He decides to make a deal with one of the Smiths to get them Morpheus in exchange for putting him back into the Matrix, and make him rich. He kills half the crew but Tank lives and takes Cypher down.

So back up a bit. Neo swallows the red pill and boom he wakes up in this pod with all of this gross slime and shit. He unplugs these tubes attached to him. Then he sees all of these pods in the middle of these massive crops. He falls down what looks like an awesome water slide. The gang rescues him. He wakes up with no hair. And a day later it has grown in. It reminds me when we cut off one of our friend’s eyebrows just a week before grad pictures.

They remove all but one of the plugs. With the one left on the back of his neck he can plug into a machine much like the holodeck from Star Trek. Because Tank and Dozer were born in the real world they don’t have these plugs. Which sucks because I would rather just live in the simulated program than live on a shitty ship with no Nintendo. I mean you could have any girl you’d want or a giant trampoline.

Another program can teach anyone, anything in a matter of seconds. That would be so much easier than going to school. For example after five seconds in the learning program Neo says “I know Jujitsu.” That would be awesome. I’d be there in ten seconds and I’d say “I know Latin.” Or “I know how to quilt.” Or “I learn to make my own webpage.” He learns to fight and demonstrates super speed, but he couldn’t catch a lamp he knocked over at the Oracle’s place.

Speaking of which, the Oracle was very ambiguous when Neo visited her. First off, she was wrong about a couple of things such as Morpheus’s death. Second she could just tell them exactly when and where something crucial would occur. And she could have warned them about Cypher killing half the crew. But she bakes some good muffins. But are the muffins real? Hun, think about that.

The crew often enter the Matrix for whatever reasons. And once inside they have access to millions weapons or one Hell of a walk-in closet. They decide to go with the leather look. “Dammit Neo we all said we were going to wear Gothic clothes.” “But these jeans are Tommy Hilfiger. And this sweater cost $200.” And in the Matrix if you get killed you die in real life.

The Smith agents are robots designed to hunt the resistance fighters. They like to wear nice suits and some sweet shades. I think they are Oakley’s. The cool part is that they can take over the body of anyone in the Matrix. I noticed they hardly take over many women, if at all.

So it bothers me that the gang has total disregard for human life. They have to kill innocent people that get in the way or because anyone could potentially become a Smith. This really bugs me because this is peoples’ lives we are talking about. I mean would they shoot a little girl? “Why did you have to shoot her in her face?” “She could have been a Smith. And I’m not taking any chances.”

In order get teleported back to the ship you need to use a telephone for whatever stupid reason. But it doesn’t work with a cell phone; you need a regular phone or phone booth. Which sucks because everyone but me has a cell phone now.  Now there are hardly any phone booths left. And if there were someone on the phone you’d have to kill him. In fact Superman is facing the same dilemma. He now uses the John.

Near the end Morpheus is captured and guarded by the Smiths in a building. They are trying to break him so he will give up information and the location of the last surviving city Zion. Neo and Trinity try to save him. My favorite part is when Neo and Trinity go through the metal detector with a shit load of guns and then they kill all of the guards. Some of which have families. Neo gets killed by the Smiths. But he’s the chosen one. So Trinity kisses him and Neo magically gets back to life. That’s nice. But when I kissed my dead dog, nothing happened.

Anyway Neo and Agent Smith have a final showdown and Neo finally begins to believe. And he kills Smith. Um I don’t know if I missed a part but I thought Smith could take control of someone else and not be killed. And I thought he wanted to be killed or “get out of this place.” The movie ends with the awesome Rage Against Machine song Wake Up as Neo pulls a Superman and flies around. Then there is also the good movie Matrix Reloaded. And the not so good Matrix Revolutions.