In which a ramble turns into a rant.

Hola my lovelies!

Tonight, the mood swings UP, for a number of reasons. My amigo Jose swung by, a man I do not see often enough. I saw a kitten packed to the kitteny gills with pure adorability. I watched 'V for Vendetta', which I would nominate as the best movie to come out in whichever year it was that it came out, or at the very least a terrific piece of cinema and an amazing performance by a faceless Hugo Weaving (who has never let me down, I think. Even in the otherwise embarrassing 'Matrix' sequels, Agent Smith was fantastic... it's a damn shame they spread his awesome viral activities out over two movies so there'd be more time for the sort of pseudophilisophical and totally senseless bullcrap the Watchowskis felt needed be added).

...actually, I'm going to expand on that last point, so if you didn't bother to read the parenthetical, go back to it. Also, spoilers ahead for a movie that's been out several years so... statute of limitations, bitches. With the Matrix sequels, the Watchowskis tried to do something rather innovative and, really, brilliant. They tried to weave a single story through several different media (movies, comics, cartoons, video games), while still letting each piece stand on its own. As it stands, they sucked at this task, and their worldbuilding was also, really, terrible. Furthermore, they tried to turn what was essentially the story of one man into a great big ensemble piece, which meant throwing in a lot of characters that they WANTED us to care about. That's hard enough to do, but when the audience is desperately keeping notes and nothing's making sense ANYWAY, there will be no sympathy thrown at the screen.

But the bits with Agent Smith certainly were cool. And do you know why? Because he's a fantastic villain, taken straight from the first movie, and not pulled out of nowhere. Sure, the ultimate villain was the Matrix itself, but vilifying an abstract is difficult, and no fun! Meanwhile, throwing in the programmer, the merovingian, and the keymaster as other pawns of the Matrix gives us more concrete villains, but they're operating my rules that are seemingly being made up on the spot. We already know the Agents and what they can do... Smith has hold of exactly one new trick. He can make a copy of himself. And this new trick is both easily understood, and it fits with what people know about computers. "Of course, he copied himself and pasted it over the other dude, I get it!" No confusion there.

A movie with just the Agent Smith part of the arc would be infinitely more understandable, wouldn't it? Perhaps the other programs of interest could be touched on, but only slightly, to be fleshed out later (note, I'm not going to get into the problems I had with them deeply. I will give the writers the benefit of the doubt that they could have been effective and yes, understandable, had they been introduced better). Thematically, it's even more of a big deal... the first movie was Neo's story, with everyone else supporting him. The next two, he was the lead, but the stories told were MUCH bigger. Agent Smith, though, he starts off plotting revenge on Neo, and ends up being a threat to the stability of the Matrix as a whole. Had the second movie been all about him, the end would leave us with the Matrix in shambles, and the people needing to deal with that problem. Hell, they could even have kept Smith's real world doppleganger as the 'he's not dead yet' moment at the end of the second. Regardless, it's a smooth progression, and not a sudden jump.

So why didn't they do this? I have two theories. The first is that they got overcome with the money and didn't think for a second about what they were doing, assuming they could do no wrong. The second, less-cynical theory, is that they wanted Neo's battle against Smith to be the climax of the series... I can appreciate this, but since doing it led to the two biggest disappointments in recent movie history, it seems clear to me that they made the wrong choice.