Hear Me Out: The Matrix Reloaded
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Photos via Warner Bros. Pictures
Hear Me Out is a column dedicated to earnest reevaluations of those cast-off bits of pop-cultural ephemera that deserve a second look. Whether they’re films, TV series, albums, comedy specials, videogames or even cocktails, Hear Me Out is ready to go to bat for any underappreciated subject.
It’s a curious thing when a major blockbuster has an extremely short window of primary relevance. Take The Matrix, Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s iconic sci-fi action spectacle, which tapped into William Gibson-style cyberpunk ideology and Hong Kong wuxia mysticism to deliver one of the seminal moments in late 1990s pop culture. That film arrived into a setting that had never seen anything like it (because no one saw Dark City, sadly), and immediately transformed pretty much all action cinema released in its wake. You really can’t stress enough how much aping of The Matrix happened in the next five years, as anyone who suffered through Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever would surely attest. But what of The Matrix Reloaded?
The first sequel to the Wachowskis’ film was shot concurrently with “trilogy” capper The Matrix Revolutions, hit theaters in May of 2003, and was then chased by the supposedly climactic Revolutions less than six months later. Unlike the original film, which had roughly four years to build its lasting pop-cultural cache, Reloaded’s reputation as an individual work of art could really only be properly said to have existed from May to November, 2003. After that, what was it? A middle child, a bridge between the beloved original and a third film that quickly leapt from the rails and finally surrendered to the same nonsensical pretension that would infect The Matrix Resurrections two decades later. Just half a year after its release, it had already become practically impossible for rank-and-file theatergoers to judge The Matrix Reloaded on its own merits, ideologically chained as it was to the sinking ship of Revolutions. The suction of that third entry’s failings has subsequently dragged The Matrix Reloaded down into the pop-cultural abyss.
And that’s a shame, because The Matrix Reloaded is not only a brilliantly executed bit of sci-fi/action filmmaking, but also a worthy follow-up to so many of the ideas broached by the Wachowskis in 1999, from the battle between predestination and free will, to the placating nature of the heroic myth itself. It’s a sequel in the classic sense: Bigger, bolder, more ambitious and less restrained by good taste. It’s less ominously theatrical, more unabashedly action-packed. And for the length of its runtime, this works, deepening the mythos of The Matrix and the diabolical intelligence of its machine overlords, even as it delivers pulse-raising action spectacle. It’s only because the hand-off to the portentous Matrix Revolutions was bungled so thoroughly that it’s now become difficult for viewers to appreciate that Reloaded does a fine job of raising the stakes and setting up a climactic struggle for Neo to engage in. We simply, well … we never received the payoff that Reloaded promises. But that’s the fault of Revolutions, not this movie.
It all starts with Neo, whose character at the triumphant climax of The Matrix seems like a newborn god ready to effortlessly dismantle the shared illusion of this virtual reality system. The audience’s conception of The One’s true nature is limited, but we naturally assume that Neo’s ability to control this place will allow him to quickly unlock its mysteries as he peers behind the curtain. The Matrix Reloaded immediately puts that notion in its place, and Neo himself often seems surprised by the ambiguity. Perhaps he thought that being The One would come with a sudden rush of insight, some cosmic understanding of what exactly it is he’s supposed to do in order to usher in humanity’s next golden age. Instead, he finds that although he can easily pummel Agents in The Matrix, the mere ability to triumph over them doesn’t represent a lasting victory for those rebel humans living in Zion, threatened now by an army of machines digging ever closer to humankind’s last city. As it turns out, the systems of control at work here are a little bit more byzantine than something that can be solved with a solid punch. This undermining of the seeming confidence and triumph present in the close of The Matrix becomes one of Reloaded’s primary themes.
Consider how the film handles Morpheus, who instead of an all-knowing sage now suddenly feels like more of an audience proxy. In The Matrix, Morpheus arrives with the aura of a supernatural figure, a prophet who understands with absolute certainty that the vision of the future he’s been gifted–of The One’s return to throw off the shackles of machine oppression–is absolutely, unquestionably true. Morpheus is not a man who can be rattled; not someone who can be conquered, even by the mind-hacking of the agents when he is captured. And it’s because his will (powered by faith) is just too strong for that, wrapping him in a curtain of idealistic invincibility. The Matrix Reloaded shatters that invincibility by showing him that his precious One remains just another fallible human, in the process making the audience doubt the soundness of Morpheus’ mind, seeing as we now do that his main driver is something that is more or less akin to religious mania, a crutch he needs to motivate himself in the face of the end times. The Oracle whose predictions he trusted? She’s part of the system, and even if benevolent, she’s clearly playing her own game. His messiah? He’s just a man, one whose attachment to a single woman threatens his ability to even begin grasping the bigger picture. The Matrix Reloaded does a number on the previously unshakeable Morpheus, leaving him unsure of everything he previously held dear. As he puts it, paraphrasing the book of Daniel, “I have dreamed a dream, and now that dream has gone from me.”
