Oh Swell...Now I Have To See It

James Lileks bleats about THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS

The invasion of Zion was one of the most impressive visual achievements I’ve ever seen on the screen – and this was one of the set-pieces the critics sniffed at. The scenes en route to the Machine City: whoa, to quote the poet. And the final fight between Neo and Smith is every comic book I read as a kid come to life and amped up beyond anything I dreamed. I never thought I would see things like that. Having seen them, I’m grateful. Five bucks for that? Hell, I would have paid eight.

We still see the limits of technology, though. Computer graphics can make a thousand flying squid flow through a hole in a vast concrete dome; they can bring to live tanks the size of mountains, animate robot oracles whose face is made up of a million pieces of metal swarming in frantic concert.

But they can’t take 27 pounds of Laurence Fishburn.