Comic for Monday November 10th, 2003

"You say you wanna Revolutions" Sunday - November 8th, 2003

Before I get started on anything I need to point out that a lot of the links and pics on the website might not be active or available. I know half the archive is down and it's simply because the place where I host my site is totally f'ed. It's been like this since Saturday and so as a temporary stop gap solution, I have moved the page to an aol account. Unfortunately space and linkage is a problem and hence the problems of non working images and links. I apologize any weirdness this may cause you and hopefully the problem will be cleared up soon. We now return you to your regularly scheduled post...

I guess after the flurry of activity in the message board last week in the wake of the release of Matrix: Revolutions, I should now talk about it now that I have actually seen the movie. If you haven't seen the movie yet then I suggest you skip to the bottom of this post cause I'm about to mention a few spoilers.

Honestly, when I heard the ending was not going to be too good, I imagined the worst. It was either going to be Neo making out with Trinity with Yoda, Anakin, and Obi wan looking down at them as Ewoks danced and sang in a circle around them. Or the whole thing would try to explain itself in a cheesy it was all a dream really as Mr. Anderson realizes the whole thing was a dream... Or was it? Da da dan!!

Instead, we get a little too much Judeo-Christian references and an ending that probably won't make anyone too happy.

I think the only thing that truly bothered me as I exited the theater was why the hell the Oracle changed. I mean the reason they gave was super vague and didn't make sense in accordance to what was being done so far. Joe told me earlier tonight that the original Oracle had died. I was like she's a program blah, blah, blah, blah. And he was like no, she died in real life. Oh. So my biggest complaint? Instead of trying to explain why she looks different, they should've have just not mentioned it at all.

It's funny to me because different people think the movie was good and not good for exactly the opposite reasons. Joe disliked it for concentrating too much on the action and not enough explaining the entire spirituality of the Matrix. The Kelly found the spirituality to be distracting from the real life war between man and machine going on in Zion. So therein lies the paradoxical problem of the Matrix trilogy. It is neither the philosophical treaty on mankind or the super action sci fi that it could've been had it just dumped one for the other.

The majority of people who I talked to agree that the first Matrix was the best. The special effects being cutting edge helped the first movie's case, but I think it boils more down to the fact that the harmony between the spirituality and the reality of the Matrix were in perfect harmony throughout the movie. It just scratched the surface of the world we would later see in Reloaded and pretty much wrapped up everything in a nice tidy package. Could the Matrix have ended there? Yes.

Do I think it should have? No. Simply because in the end, the main theme in my mind is not that we all have a choice or that just one person can change the world. It simply boils down to the tagline of the third movie. "Everything that has a beginning must have an end". To me, everything boils down to the forces of Order and the forces of Chaos. The interesting twist in all of it, is that Order is seen as the bad guy in the Matrix. In real life Order is given a more good connotation while it's counterpart of Chaos is given the bad rap.

Throughout the trilogy you see beginning and endings. The emergence of Neo. The end of Agent Smith. The beginning of love. The end of love. The beginning of the war. The end of the war. The last battle wasn't about choice. Neo went into the machine city to save everyone, but ultimately I think he was pushed into that decision. Gee Neo you can either choose to stay safe here in the city where you'll probably get killed by the machines or you can try and head to the machine city, plead our case and destroy this Smith guy who's outta control and will not only kill us, but the machines!! What kinda choice is that?!

And just who created the whole Smith fiasco to begin with? Who gave vague references to guide Neo and told him "just what he needed to hear?" The force of Chaos and she did what she was supposed to do. She created chaos in order to end the stagnant order that had been allowed to prevail.

Other interesting things if you buy into my whole theory are things are never as good or as bad as you perceive them to be. If you, like me saw the thinly veiled similarities between Neo and Jesus Christ, then you might not like what I have to say. In the first Matrix, Neo was seen as an all powerful savior. By the end of Revolutions, Neo was reduced to being someone who did what anyone would've had to in order to save the world. You can just imagine that years after Revolutions ended Neo being martyred and everyone singing his praises. In reality, Neo and Jesus were shafted into sacrificing themselves by the manipulations of the higher ups. It doesn't make them heroes, just regular guys forced into a situation where like anyone else they did the right thing. The lesson, society needs its heroes, but in reality they are merely illusions to hide that life is nothing but order telling us maintain the status quo and chaos making us change to bring about new beginnings.

Was it cheesy having Smith absorb Neo only to be blown up because neo just happened to be plugged in at the machine city power plant? I think to have it any other way would've been to confirm Neo's status as the archetypical savior hero. By Smith being killed the way he was, it deemphasized Neo and instead placed the responsibility of the win on the person who Neo had just really vanquished, The Oracle. 

Anyway I'm getting way off base. The Matrix movies really aren't that deep. Simple coincidences that I saw because that was how my mind worked to see the movie. Like I said before the Matrix movies suffer from an identity crisis of trying to please too many people in too many ways. However should the planets line up for you, then you can find something that works. This doesn't mean that the movies were crap or bad. It just means that while it looks like the movies should be everyone's cup of tea, that would simply an illusion. People are only going to like it they just happened to like the ratio of action to story that Matrix provided. If you simply wanted a little more explaining or a little more action, well you're screwed.

Could Reloaded and Revolutions been turned into one movie? Sure, but then one group of people would've been pissed and we would have either been short a ton of action scenes or a lot of philosophical meanderings. What does that mean? Different people from who like the movie now would've liked it and those that liked them now would've disliked it had they been combined. In the end the Matrix movies were simply good movies. Not as great as some people think nor as bad as some people claim. Hey like the movie tries to make you think, "the choice is up to you"!!

I'm sure my theories will change as time goes on, but as of the moment, that's what I got out the movies.

Well now that I spent all this time waxing ecstatic about the Matrix, I've lost time on talking about my comic. Jeez... Anyway I have to say I love how much action the forums were getting because of our discussions on the Matrix movies. It's a lot of fun to be able to talk with people and carry on intelligent conversations. yeah, they get heated sometimes, but I think it's all in fun.

As for the comic, I have to say that I really liked P1 and P4. I thought they came out better then what I had imagined in my mind. It's nice getting to draw Tenko and Vase, because they are so different from the other characters. I mean Tenko is a fox and Vase is a fair bit older. They'll be back for the Chapter One wrap up on Thursday so be prepared!!

Speaking of such things as the last strip in Chapter One, it's not going to be anything super special nor will it be an explain all for the things you might have noticed never got explained from earlier. As this strip shows, Vase was not just in Joe's head and Joe really was in the "afterlife". If that is the case then how did he get brought back to life? This is just one of those things that will be explained in future strips. Very observant readers might be able to figure it out before I reveal it, but I'm hoping that while I leave hints, they aren't too obvious.

Thanks for reading and putting up with the technical difficulties!!

Vote for Ninja Spirit!!

River ponders the Matrix.