More Bytes Wasted on the Matrix Reloaded

No, I haven't seen it. I don't know if I will; I mean, it would take a month's worth of tax cuts to buy a ticket! One thing that I am pleased to see, however, is that the sequel is getting slammed for being shallow, gratuitously flamboyant with the special effects, etc. (I'm not opposed to these things in a movie per se, mind you. Sometimes you just want the mindless eye candy.)

The reason why this pleases me is that the heart of the criticism lies in the reviewers' sense of betrayal that the film is not as "deep" as the first one. This amuses me greatly. Deep? Oh, please. Original? Hah. It's not like science-fiction novelists haven't been writing about virtual worlds, robot take overs, etc. for decades, even before the web was invented, is it? Drop in a few literary allusions, it seems, and you have produced something "deep" and maybe even "scholarly."

But, to get to the point, it does suggest that viewers, even of sci-fi (so commonly believed to be the zone of cool effects and stupid plots -- remember "Zardoz," anyone?) want something more taxing than eye candy, and this is promising.

Postscript: For those of you who want to see a true "scholar's movie," I recommend The Mummy. Yeah, it's cheesy and features silly special effects and has an ancient, revived mummy wandering around sucking people dry. But it also features a scene in which two of the characters, as the heroes are trying to fight off an army of the undead, argue about how to pronounce hiroglyphic writing on an ancient scroll. Scholars, indeed!

Post-postscript: If you want a good laugh, go to Lilek's review of the Matrix Reloaded. Very funny!