> I'll probably end up replying to this post.

At least I'm honest. wintermute is probably upset that I'm making another post he can't read yet that has a reference to an '80s movie in the title. If, when they find the Keymaker in Matrix II, you and your friend both look at each other and say "Are you the Gatekeeper?" then congratulations, you are a geek.

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So I've been reading some reviews and stuff online, and I'm really confused about the way some people are reacting to the movie. Roger Ebert's reaction (in his usual spoilerific review) is almost identical to mine: all the talking is nonsense, but it's stylized kinda cool nonsense and the action is fun so who cares?

Other people are having much stronger reactions. David Poland seems convinced that It All Means Something and is psychoanalyzing the film's psychobabble and mythological references trying to work it out. Hey, David, why don't you try figuring out the blue box in "Mulholland Drive," first?

I'm convinced that the alleged philosophy in Matrix boils down to this recipe:

* 1 part watered-down existentialism
* 1 part watered-down Christian/Buddhist philosophy (all jumbled up)
* 1 part crash course in epistomology
* 7 parts style
* 1 million parts hand-waving because the Wachowskis really don't understand how or why the Matrix works, or really anything about the idea of artificial worlds than what they got out of watching Tron.

I don't do this to slam the movie, but simply to say that so much of it is technobabble in the grandest tradition of pop science fiction. It just gets covered up in all the glossed over philosophy that people who apparently don't know much about philosophy think is deep.

That's what I really don't get about some of these reviews from the fanboys online, who invariably say that it's not the same mind-blowing experience of the first movie. Look, if the original movie blew your mind, it was because your mind was being held together by some twine and an old piece of duct tape. There is nothing particularly insightful or profound said in the first Matrix. It's EVERY PHILIP K. DICK STORY EVER WRITTEN with Kung Fu. "Dark City" addressed the philosophy about what defines humanity with a similar premise the year before, and was far more truthful in its aims.

The people who thought the first Matrix had something deep to say should take an introductory course to world philosophies. They'll probably come out sollipsists, but it'll definitely blow their minds.

Not being overly impressed with the threadbare philosophy in the first movie, I was fine when Matrix II launched into its poorly conceived and confusingly executed diatribes. They're kind of fun in a way if you don't take it seriously. Honestly, I'm starting to think the Wachowskis have their tongues in their cheeks with all of this, and they're probably getting a huge kick out of people like David Poland searching for the meaning of life in their film.

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Come on, other people post. I'm bored.

Stephen