15 May 2003
Inver Grove Showplace 16

Keanu did not completely disappoint me, though I could have done without all the lovey dovey BS. The cave rave scene, for example, was about twice as naive as your average Disney brainwashing. And even the Kung Fu could have been better. I watched this movie again and I was very annoyed by the way the W brothers used slow motion. It seemed really boring, like they had an egg timer and every time it ran out they'd press the slo-mo button and reset the clock. They need to take some lessons from Jackie Chan and learn that "suspense" is a metaphor. (Part of the problem is that they made Keanu omnipotent in the last movie and so any of his fights are pretty one-sided.) But as my grandmother used to say, annoying Kung Fu is better than no Kung Fu, and given the tendency for great young directors who are given unlimited resources to make crappy movies (I mean you, Wes Anderson), I give this one good marks. "Well done!" I say, "its not unwatchable."

None the less, I was perplexed leaving the theater. For example, I was thinking: At the end of the movie, how can Keanu stop the machines with his will if he is in the Real World?

You see, throughout the first one-and-nine-tenths Matrix movies, we are led to believe that we are seeing two different worlds on the screen. There is the Matrix World, i.e. the computer-generated consciousness slash collective prison, and there is the Real World, i.e. the dystopic sci-fi vision. And we are led to believe that Keanu is "the One" because he is acutely aware of this distinction, and it gives him total mastery of the Matrix World, allowing him to bend the CGI rules to the very edge of ludicriousness. But, in the (anti-climactic) climactic scene of this second Matrix movie, Keanu has returned to the Real World and is again a normal person. He is normally there on the screen, fleeing for his Real World life, when suddenly he stops and declares in his affectless way, "I can feel them." He then turns around, holds out his Real World hand and stops the Real World evil machines with his Real World essence/superpower/indefatigable will. And at this point, everyone who is paying attention to the film saga should give a start and collectively ask: what gives?

The only way to explain what's going on here is that the Matrix's Real World is another meta-layer of collective dreaming. In other words, the Real World is Matrix World 2, and thus the first two movies have all been some little fantasy in Keanu's head to which we've been cruelly subjected. This would mean that the W Brothers have just been jerking us around for four hours, and that (if there is any justice) the next Matrix movie will be very, very short. Ideally, it would be a short scene of Keanu suddenly leaping out of bed and saying, "Woah. Dude, that was some dream." Then he would shake his head, go back to sleep and the credits would roll. For the record, I seriously doubt this is going to happen, but its a possibility. Be prepared.

But after explaning this theory to a friend, I was informed of another possibility, even less likely but even more exciting. What if Keanu is one of them . . . by which I mean, the robots? What if, at the end of the movie, Keanu finally realizes his robot-ness and uses his newfound robot powers to to crush the evil robots? At the very least, this would explain his acting.

Nutritional Equivalent: a Peanut Toffee Buzz Clif Bar and Red Bull