Overview: The Matrix is one of my all-time favorite movies, so I’m just not going to attempt to come off as unbiased about it. Additionally, I’m guessing that pretty much everyone who’s coming to this site has seen it - probably numerous times, so I’m guessing a plot description isn’t of much value here. In short, my conundrum with the review is this - what should I say about this movie that will in any way add value to the reader? Answer: Not much. Instead I have decided to keep the bulk of my comments for various essays on the Matrix Trilogy.

Matrix Influences: The Matrix influenced movies in general and society as a whole. With respect to movies, we see numerous influences, including:

• Special Effects: Bullet time and a myriad of other FX are now standard practice in movies and commercials
• Synonymous with “Cool”: Movies that have a “matrix-like” feel are advertised all the time. We know what this means - it means they aspire to be ultra-sleek, ultra-cool and the “in” thing.
• Fight Sequences: By hiring Hong Kong Martial Arts master Yuen Wo-Ping to coordinate the fights, the Matrix raised the bar on mainstream American movie fight sequences
• Matrix Source Code: The Matrix source code, taken in part from Ghost in the Shell, is everywhere now, and is instantly recognized, as is its meaning
• Hot Chicks in Black Shiny Stuff Kicking Butt: Trinity’s influence has massively upped the anty on action chicks in movies. While Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in Batman Returns re-initiated this trend, Carrie Anne Moss’ Trinity has made this outfit almost mandatory for female action heroines.
• The use of philosophy in movies: The Matrix seems to have broken the barrier to discussing philosphy in movies. Lets hope this idea lives on.
• Fashion: From Sunglasses, to overcoats to cyberpunkwear, the Matrix has changed the way people dress.

 



 

The Bottom Line: The Matrix is already one of the most influential in science fiction, and is truly one of the cornerstone cyberpunk movies in existence. We get it all here: terrific action, awesome cyberpunk concepts, incredible cyberpunk visuals, cool philosophical discussions, an absolutely awesome soundtrack (although DoomAng3l disagrees with this - see his comment below) and innovative FX. On top of this, all the leads were terrific. Reeves makes a perfect Neo, and Moss, Fishburne and Weaving give career-defining performances. Look below for move screencaps on page 2, and additional essays on the Matrix.

 



 

Matrix Essays

• The Matrix Trilogy: A Man-Machine Interface Perspective: This essay explores the Matrix Trilogy specifically from a scifi perspective - the purpose of which is to show how Neo’s journey is really a sequel to Motoko’s transformation at the end of Ghost in the Shell. Developed throughout the trilogy, Neo becomes a fully merged entity comprised of a sentient program with a human.

 

Page 2: More Screencaps–>>

Overview: Battle Angel is based off a very well done Manga series called Battle Angel Alita. The movie covers the first two volumes of the Manga: Rusty Angel, which documents Alita’s “rebirth” and Tears of an Angel, which portrays a tragic love story. This anime from 1993 is one of the best man-machine interface animes out. The story is solid, and the drawing for that time period is terrific. While you might hear some gripe that the Manga is better, I think Fukutomi did a terrific job in taking Kishiro’s story to anime. I can only hope that James Cameron does a similarly wonderful job with the upcoming live action version of this. Just a warning - this is not a kids story - it contains lots of blood, head removals and minor amounts of nudity.

The Setting: Battle Angel takes place far into the future, after a societal collapse has occurred. Advanced human society has been relegated to a floating city called Zalem, that sits above a refuse heap called Scrap Iron City, which is inhabited by denizens living off the scraps and waste products Zalem expels. A corporation called the “Factory,” the primary employer for Scrap Iron City, sends products back up to Zalem through a series of huge metal tubes. Cyborg technology has become a way of life, with many “humans” having only their brain remaining from their original human body host. Scavenging and theft has become a way of life for many. Backbones are a particularly sought after commodity by thieves, who sometimes will violently take them from their living hosts. As social services no longer exist, the Factory posts “bounties” for the heads of the most egregious villians, which bounty hunters, called Hunter-Warriors pursue for money.

Rusty Angel: Daisuke Ido, an cyborg doctor extraordinaire, former citizen of Zalem, scavenges through the refuse heap to find spare cyborg parts to repair the citizens of Scrap Iron City. One day he comes across a female cyborg head that has a still-living human brain in it. He sets out to repair this head and gives her a wonderful body off of parts he has collected. He names her Gally (she is called Alita in the Manga), and she seems totally restored, except for the loss of memory from her earlier life. Ido becomes attached to Gally and they quickly develop a father-daughter type relationship.

Gally learns that Ido moonlights also a Hunter-Warrior both for moral reasons and to support his medical practice. Gally saves Ido from certain death, and thus, reveals that she, in her former life, was also a very talented warrior. Under protest from Ido, Gally asserts her individuality and desire to become a Hunter-Warrior like Ido, so that she too can have purpose to her life.

Chiren, also a cyborg doctor and Ido’s former partner, has also been ousted from Zalem, and is consumed with finding a way to return. Deciding that she will do anything to make this happen, Chiren hooks up with Vector, a shady character who has connections with the “Factory,” who agrees to eventually take her to Zalem in return for sexual favors and for her assistance in building a supra-cyborg gladiator named Greweicia for the fighting ring. This cyborg warrior also has a penchant for eating brains, and ends up on the bounty list. Chiren, wanting to be seen as superior to Ido, gets Greweicia to fight Gally in the hopes of destroying her, and thus, destroying Ido.

Tears of an Angel: Gally, in exploring the city has become infatuated with a hard working body named Yugo, who dreams of going to Zalem. Although it’s common knowledge that nobody born in Scrap Iron City can ever go to Zalem, Yogo is also consumed with finding a way, and has gotten an agreement from Vector, who promises Yugo if he can make 10,000,000 credits, than he will take Yugo to Zalem. Yugo has taken him up on his offer and has started stealing cyborg spinal cords as a way to augment his day job of fixing machinery. He is discovered, and is put on the Bounty list. Gally, who has fallen deeply in love with him, tries to rescue him from a rival bounty hunter. Unfortunately she is too late, but is able to save his head, and asks Ido to turn him into a cyborg. Even after becoming a cyborg, Yugo’s dreams of reaching Zalem cannot be abated, as he sees his life a struggle against the worthlessness that is the Scap Iron City.

The Artwork: In Battle Angel, we see strong influences of Akira in most every aspect of the production. From the facial expressions to the darkly textured backgrounds to the fighting style approach, Battle Angel clearly has used Akira as a template for modern animation techniques. Like many OAVs of this time period, some of the backgrounds are bland while others are lavishly penned and inked with multi-layered designs. They “pick their battles” with the designs, but for the most part, the decisions are solid. The simple designs are in backgrounds such as the sky and in Ido’s house. The more complex ones are in the underground, Yugo’s hang out, and in the refuse heap scenes – this is where most of the action and plot take place.

Changes from the Manga: While I think Battle Angel is a terrific anime, there are some changes from the Manga that some find annoying. Most bizarre is the renaming of Alita to Gally, and the city Tiphares to Zalem. However, unlike some, I don’t find the changes in the plot to be that problematic. The anime wonderfully captures the essence of the Manga. Perhaps the biggest change is the rationale for Alita’s powers. In the anime, we really don’t get an explanation, but in the Manga, Alita is first given a normal body by Ido, and ends up destroying it in her first fight. Realizing that Alita is a warrior at heart, Ido gives her the body he has saved for a long time – that of a berserker warrior. The primary villain in Rusty Angel is also different – he is a being who has grown up in the sewers, and after losing his body in fighting Alita, he takes over the Gladiator’s body. And Chiren, a central character in the anime is not in the first to novels of the Manga. Again, for the most part, I have no problems with the changes, and actually love the dimension that Chiren adds.

The Bottom Line: Battle Angel (Alita) just works for me as an anime. It is intelligent enough and well enough executed to get you to imagine a world where cyborgs are a reality. The world from the underground perspective is well done and Alita (I call her Alita, not Gally) as a character is terrific. Along with Armitage III and Ghost in the Shell (obviously), Alita is one of the best animes of this kind. Just a caution for those who have only seen the VHS, like most Japanese animes, Battle Angel comes off FAR FAR better with the Japanese dubbing cast than it does the English cast.

Overview: Unlike the tagline (should not be missed…), I think its quite OK to miss Tetsuo II, especially if you’ve already seen the real thing. In Tetsuo II, Tsukamoto substitutes a larger budget in lieu of the unique and innovative narrative we find in Tetsuo - the Iron Man. The compromise is bad all around. For starters, this style of merging man and machine works FAR better in B&W than it does in color. The surreal believability factor of the FX drops significantly in color. As for the story, the whole idea of centering the conflict around a family setting significantly lessens the power of his earlier story, as does Tsukamoto’s attempt to add a more coherent narrative. While his point still seems to be the same one, its told with lots less force, in a far less interesting way, and also in a far less shocking way.

The Bottom Line: I can take screencaps of this if anyone is dying to see the visuals (I understand it’s out of print), but it’s just not a great movie. Tetsuo: Bodyhammer is OK to see this as long as you understand you’re getting a Japanese Cyberpunk movies that’s far less than Tetsuo - Iron Man, or even less than Rubber’s Lover, for that matter. I’ve heard people comment that Bodyhammer sucks so they aren’t interested in seeing the first one - don’t buy this reasoning. While the first screams uniqueness, Body Hammer whimpers “cash in on my earlier success by cutting back the edginess and going more mainstream.” It even stars Tomorowo Taguchi again, who attempts to reprise the same role and crazed scream faces - only this time it comes across more as the last show in a long day of staged repeat performances, similar to what you might find in a theater act at an amusement park late on a Sunday evening. In that sense, Body Hammer comes off as a sequel in true hollywood style.

Overview: Even of Destruction, one of the myriad of “B” terminator imitator movies, is about a military project gone bad (Gee, that’s original!). In this case, they’ve developed an incredibly realistic android who can mimic humans. In addition to some very sophisticated fake cyborg exoskeleton stuff (similar to Terminator), they’ve embedded the android called “Eve” with memories from its creator, Dr. Eve Simmons (Renée Soutendijk). Eve can blend in, but also has incredible strength, terrific armor, great fighting skills, and also has a thermonuclear warhead embedded inside her body. Unfortunately, during “trial runs” while walking around the bay area, she accidentally gets shot during a bank heist.

The shooting ends up messing up her memory and programming, and after killing the bank robber, she takes his guns and leaves. To stop her, the military brings in its top man, Gregory Hines, a special forces cop type. Hines has to work with Eve’s creator, Dr. Simmons to stop this android before it blows up a bunch of city blocks.

The Bottom Line: While Gregory Hines puts in his usual decent performance, and Renée Soutendijk as the scientist. babe (and crazed android) puts in a pretty good performance as well, there are enough story issues to take away full enjoyment of this flick. This is even more problematic considering there is very little original here - you think they’d be able to get this right! Extra star added for acting well above the quality of the script, but not enough to make this good.

Overview: Total Recall is one of the better known cyberpunk movies from the late 80s to early 90s. This is cyberpunk all the way with intense memory modification, a dystopic future, and malformed humans of all styles. The visuals are sometimes cheesy, but always pretty fun, and include various shots like a 3-breasted woman, exploding heads, bulging eyes, and this guy below. This is one of Arnold’s better roles, although the story does tend to rely on a continual stream of head-jerking mind fucks.

Taken from Philip K. Dick’s story, “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale,” Total Recall stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as an everyday man, Douglas Quaid, who craves something different in his life. He keeps on having realistic dreams about Mars and decides to visit Mars virtually. He goes to “the Recall Corporation” to get some memories manufactured and installed - ones that are exciting, and speak of Mars, espionage and slutty, athletic women!

Unfortunately, things go very wrong. In the process of getting his new memories installed, he wakes up to find that things are not as they seem – in fact he doesn’t know if he woke up at all, or if whether he’s still experiencing a memory impact at the Total Recall Corporation. Things get weirder and weirder, and involve a trip to Mars, and sleazy corporate plots.

Total Recall gets Arnold to truly stretch his emotion capabilities, as we get to see him act in ways he really hasn’t done elsewhere. The rest of the cast isn’t exceptional, but puts in serviceable performances. Rachel Ticotin (the slutty athletic chick), Sharon Stone (Douglas’s wife, or maybe not), Ronny Cox (the evil corporate dude) and Michael Ironside (The evil right hand guy) all provide us with memorable characters.

The Bottom Line: All in all, Total Recall is not the greatest movie ever, and has some significant science issues and plot holes, but it’s a truly fun ride with lots of replay potential. It does the memory modification thing very well, and while you get your head jerked around a bit, overall, the plot works.

Overview: This has to qualify as one of the most misleading promotional photos ever. This movie has NONE of those cool cyborg stuff in it. Heatseeker is a low budget martial arts tournament fight movie wrapped in a cocoon of cheesy dialogue that calls the fighters cyborgs - but there is pretty much NO visuals to that effect. In this movie which takes place in the near-future, where cyber-corporations, emeshed in a global competition to be the leader in cyber technology have devised a martial arts tournament to see who has the best cyber-equipment. Chance O’Brian (played by Keith Cooke) is the martial arts champion of the world, and is going to marry his trainer, Jo (played by Tina Cote). Some evil, nasty, mean, rotten (did I get the point across) cyber corporation types abduct his wife and force him to fight in a tournament of cyborg fighters to give the fight legitimacy. Also, Jo has to have sex and train the evil, nasty, powerful, mean and rotten cyber-corporation’s champion, who just happens to be Chance’s chief rival. The tournament goes on, but I think you can pretty much guess how this goes.

The Bottom Line: From a story perspective, Heatseeker doesn’t even make an attempt to be anything but a low-priced piece of crap. The acting is downright horrid in places and the characters are the epitome of one dimensional. The only redeeming value in this are the fight sequences, which are usually decent. For this reason, I give it an extra star for the fight sequences, but I take one away for the misleading promotional picture, and another away from the completely non-believable ending sequence.

Overview: Rubber’s Lover is one of the truly bizarre Japanese cyberpunk films. Rubber’s Lover is an extreme cyberpunk movie that includes a number of truly outlandish violence and sex scenes. Fukui’s entire message here is summed up well on his interview on the DVD, “Dominant power comes when mental anguish exceeds physical tolerance.” Truly, this is what this movie is about. Chances are, for most of you, this movie will be pretty much completely different from anything you’ve ever seen - which is reason enough to watch it.

The story concerns three scientists who are attempting to create psychic powers in their test subjects. They use a combination of customized psychotropic drugs and extreme sound wave patterns engineered to torture their test subjects into unimagined mental states in the hopes of surpassing their normal mental abilities. Unfortunately, their test subjects have a tendency to die gruesome deaths by exploding blood everywhere. The corporation funding the research has decided to pull the plug, and have sent Kiku, a low ranking finance employee (who is about to quit to marry the head manager) to relay the news. Two of the scientists go mad and decide to administer the torture treatment to the third scientist, Shimika, as their last hope for developing psychic powers. When Kiku she discovers their torture chamber, one of the scientists abducts and rapes her, and then includes her as a test subject. Shimika and Kiku join forces and try to escape but are captured again and are then subjected to extreme torture in hopes of increasing the speed of success.

Unfortunately for the scientists, they are successful. During the infamous “rubber suit” treatment, Shimika exhibits massive psychic abilities – so much so that he no longer needs the equipment to mentally attack his captors. There are various side characters in this including Kiki’s corporate slimebag fiancé, and an assistant chick who has a penchant for slapping test subjects.

The Visuals: The entire movie takes place in a few rooms, and from this perspective, its pretty amazing how realistic and unique a film can be made on such a small budget. The shots seem very well designed to make maximal use out of very meager special effects. Massive quantities of dry ice, blood and screaming make up the bulk of the visuals, but this ends up working in black and white. But what Rubber’s Lover gives you is an ever increasingly insane set of scenes. Whether or not you follow the meager plot, you’ll see some truly bizarre scenes. The weirdest has to be the sex scene near the end where the guy orgasms while ripping the screaming woman’s chest open while he’s watched by the laughing corporate slimebag.

The Bottom Line: If you’re looking for a Japanese Cyberpunk flick that gives you something different then Tetsuo, Rubber’s Lover is a decent choice. It doesn’t have the deep philosophical message that Tetsuo does, but the cinematography and crafting is done well enough that you will get the sense you are watching an art film versus a purely bizarre sequence of violent images. Truly, Fukui put out a far better film than one would expect given an almost non-existant budget. I had taken a point away for the constant screaming, which began to detract from the film after a while, but I finally decided this is sort of necessary screaming (mostly). All in all, Rubber’s Lover is well worth watching if you’re interested in understanding Japanese Cyberpunk as a sub-genre. Check out page 2 if you want to see more visuals - WARNING - some are explicit.

Page 2: More Screencaps –>>

Overview: Based on Metatron’s thread in the Meatspace, I decided to review this. Some movies are so bad they’re actually good in a funny kind of way. Others are just truly bad with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and are painful to get through. American Cyborg: Steel Warrior is one of those kinds of movies. This film is the epitome of horrid, cheap derivative. There isn’t an original idea anywhere in sight, nor is there even a whiff of good craftsmanship, decent acting, decent cinematography, set designs, etc.

American Cyborg: Steel Warrior takes place in a shabby dystopic future where evil assassin cyborgs reign supreme. Humanity’s hopes rest with a genetically engineered Fetus that supposedly has what it takes to beat the evil cyborgs, and now, for unstated reasons, its mother (played horribly by Nicole Hansen) is carrying it around in a bag to get it to Europe, which is apparently the safe place. She is protected by a mysterious dude (horribly portrayed by Joe Lara) who, SHOCKINGLY turns out to be a good cyborg. All the while, they are pursued by a truly bad Terminator knock-off shabbily played by John Ryan. Terminator gets the bulk of the rip-offs here, but there’s a good bit of Robocop and Cyborg thrown in as well (you KNOW it’s a bad movie if its imitating Cyborg!).

The Bottom Line: Truly, there’s nothing redeeming here. Perhaps the only amusing thing is that American Cyborg is so predictable that you can literally guess pretty much every scene before it occurs. In short: This is not the cyberpunk movie you’re looking for…move along…

Overview: This is one of those shows that TOTALLY addicted me to it when it came out. This was the first 3D animation I ever saw, and I must say, I completely fell in love with it. Reboot is a wonderfully intelligent kids show, that for techies, seemed to have all the inside-tech jokes just right. All the characters are inside a computer world - the mainframe, and the good guys are trying to stop the evil virus, Megabyte from infecting the rest of the mainframe.

The Bottom Line: Reboot provided us a terrific fantasy view inside a virtual computer. While the first two seasons were fun, season 3 was just terrific! After ABC dropped this Canadian production, they were able to go adult-like, with much darker themes and a really cool sword and sorcery bent. The follow-on movies captured the fun of the first two seasons while keeping the darkness of the third. And while the CG has definitely been surpassed, for some reason, the look still works.

Overview: Written by James Cameron, Strange Days is a near-future (now in the past as it takes place the day before Y2K) film noir written that puts the “punk” in cyberpunk. This is truly a great underground ride. Strange days is about a down and out former vice-cop named Lenny (Ralph Fiennes), who’s life has long since seen its better days - he now makes his living, such as it is, by selling illegal VR experiences (sexual and high tension experiences) that can damage the brain if played too often. In this “near future,” people can capture VR “experiences” by placing a “Jack Thursby-like” thing on their heads (called a Squid) to capture their emotional experience. Ralph wants more than anything else to have his former girlfriend back (played by Juliette Lewis) - who is now in the clutches of a sadistic music producer. During the course of his “practice, Ralph comes upon a data disc that has recorded a murder of a prostitute. Ralph follows the trail, which leads him into the pit of humanity, with seedy scenes, blackmail, murder and rape. Ralph’s friend (played by a very hot Angella Bassett) is the voice of reason in this, not to mention an awesome ass-kicker!

The Bottom Line: This movie is really more “punk” than cyber, but it does have enough to matter. Besides the rather simplistic recording of memories, Strange Days gives us a potential view of humanity in decline as technology becomes more and more invasive in our lives. On top of this, the seedy near-future settings are great, and all the lead actors in this are terrific, including Tom Sizemore (Lenny’s best friend) and Michael Wincott (the psychopath).

However, I do have to knock one point away due to a 4 year predictive window - in 1995, I cannot imagine anyone thinking that the year 1999 would have resembled anything like this. Yes, Snow Crash had kicked the 3D Virtual Worlds movement into high overdrive, but no, 4 years was way too quick for a prediction such as this.