Monday, April 14, 2003

 
Pulp Fiction. God, I do love this movie.
posted by Miles 3:39 PM

 
The Matrix. The first time I watched this, I was too bothered by what seemed like gaping plausibility/sensibility holes in the plot to really enjoy it. This time, I (a) "got" more of the rational, and (b) was a little more able to just let go and both enjoy the movie and think about what it had to say, leaving the holes aside. It's a good flick.

Gaping plausibility hole one: that AI would ever use human beings for power production. There's a basic thermodynamic problem here: yes, you can get energy OUT of humans, but not without putting energy IN, and just like every closed system you get increased entropy, which is to say a dissipation of usable energy, which is to say you don't get as much out as you put in. Now, it's true that Morpheus says "Along with a form of fusion" in his description of how the AIs use humans to generate power, but this doesn't get you anywhere unless the energy produced in the fusion reaction were in a form that needed to be transformed by human "batteries" before it could be used, and this wouldn't be the case unless your fusion reactor somehow was only capable of spitting out Wheaties. Essentially.

Gaping sensibility hole one: that phone-lines, in the matrix-world, would provide jack-in/jack-out access points. This just doesn't make any sense, to me. So, they're hacking into the Matrix; they need to send info in (from the real-world brain of a human) and get info out (matrix-world sensory info); they have a constantly open connection that lets this happen. For whatever reason, the person dies if this connection isn't closed nicely. How the heck does the phone-booth thing fit in?

But. Here's what Jess pointed out to me: it makes total sense that you're required to suspend your disbelief to grok the movie; the whole point of the film is that maybe you have to suspend your belief to gain enlightenment. If it's essentially all about post-modernism, shouldn't it have po-mo twists like this in its structure, not just in its content?

In conclusion, I still think Philip K. Dick did it all, and did it best, in his novels, back when the Wachowski brothers were only babies.

posted by Miles 3:37 PM