May 4, 2004
The Matrix, Regurgitated
Sweet Jesus how I hate these movies. Plots as thin as my aortic wall, costumes that make Edith Head look like a Bike Week doyenne, alternate universe hockum thick as a Tiger Ridger's skull.
Find one of the 12 steps, people, any step, and cleave unto it. Help is on the way.
Action sequences: Well, we've all seen this shit before. Crouching Tiger, of course, but Big Trouble in Little China popped this cherry. And I'll take Jack Burton any day over the effeminate, doltish Neo. Keanu Reeves is a total prison bitch. Carrie Moss looks eerily like Madonna after a hellish night with the Chili Peppers and an eggbeater. And Fishburne? Hell, he's just cashing the check. Clipping the coupons.
The Keymaker: I kept looking for Rick Moranis, but never saw him. Never saw the Gatekeeper, either.
Alternate Universes: Give me Evil Sulu anyday, or Savage Spock. Easy to tell what the REAL universe is here: if you're dressed like a vampire in a USA channel series, and wearing midget polarized eyewear, chances are you're in the "real" world. If cheap cinematography ploys leave you suspended in mid-air, you are surely in the "real" world. If everything is normal, you're fucked.
The only thing I can truly compare these movies to is a bitch slap fight I saw in the bathroom in a gay bar once (don't ask. I was truly pissing).
I hate these movies for the same reason I hated the Hellraiser films, and even the Poltergeist films. Don't deny me my logic, and intuition, and ability to unravel a thread, or a mystery. Don't foist an impossible concept on me without first giving me the opportunity to reach that conclusion on my own. If you have to explain it to me at the end, you've failed me, and you.
You see, when you take your audience out of the process, you've committed the ultimate cinematic sin. You have become a pedant.
Let it go. Don't let your children throw this shit up you face in 10 or 15 years. Rent Rabbit Proof Fence, eschew this spoot, and feel good about yourselves.