Matrix Reloaded, A Scanner Darkly and Mars Attacks! released on Blu-ray

18 September 2010

Gerard Wood

This September Warner Home Video has released an impressive swag of SF movies on Blu-ray. Spanning a wide range of themes and filmic styles, they also span some fifty years of SF cinema from the 1956 classic Forbidden Planet, through to George Lucas' Thx 1138 (1971), Mars Attacks! (1996), Lost In Space (1998), Matrix Reloaded (2003) and last, but by no means least, A Scanner Darkly in 2006. While it's unlikely that anyone, even with the most eclectic of tastes, will find all of these movies to their liking, there's surely something for everyone in this bunch. And no matter what you think of the merits of any of these films, one thing is certain: on Blu-ray they look and sound better than they have since appearing on the big screen, and in the case of a movie like Matrix Reloaded for instance, the visual and aural overload goes a long way to compensating for the movie's narrative flaws.

Here I'm taking a quick look at Matrix Reloaded, Mars Attacks! and A Scanner Darkly and in a separate review John is tackling THX, Forbidden Planet and Lost in Space.

Though not my favourite Tim Burton movie (which would have to be Sweeney Todd or perhaps Sleepy Hollow), Mars Attacks! (1996) is a wonderful riot of a black comedy and priceless parody of the SF B-movies many of us grew up watching (and still watch when the mood takes us!). Burton's unique and bizarre vision is so thoroughly stamped on every scene that it may come as a surprise that the movie has its origin as a series of trading cards. As far as the plot is concerned, all you need to know can be learned from the title: Mars Attacks! (the exclamation mark sets the tone). As we've come to expect from Burton comedies, the movie is often very silly, at times remarkably surreal and laced with political and social satire. If I have a favourite feature (apart from seeing Sarah Jessica Parker’s head attached to her dog’s body and vice versa), it’s the parody of the universal translator. After a few hiccups Earth's scientists get the device to work and Humans are able to understand Martians: unfortunately the Martians tell lies…

Last but not least, Mars Attacks! features an ensemble cast that includes every man and his dog (with the notable exception of Johnny Depp, Burton's most frequent collaborator). The cast includes Jack Nicholson (in two roles), Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short, Danny De Vito, Natalie Portman, Jim Brown, Lukas Haas, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Pam Grier, Paul Winfield, Annette Bening, Lisa Marie, Christina Applegate, Joe Don Baker, and Jack Black, amongst others. It says much for Burton's reputation  as a filmmaker and the delightful  premise of Mars Attacks! that he was able to attract such a cast.

Favourite lines: President Dale (Jack Nicholson) after the Martians wipe out Congress: “I want the people to know that they still have two out of three branches of the government working for them, and that ain't bad.”

Martians (via the universal translator): Don't run! We are your friends!

Extras: Sadly, nothing, nada, nichts, rein, niente… Cast interviews could have been hilarious.

Matrix Reloaded is the second chapter in The Matrixtrilogy and like many second chapters it suffers from being that notoriously difficult middle passage between explosive opening and thrilling conclusion (unfortunately this trilogy didn't even have a thrilling conclusion). More than that however, it suffers from being the sequel to an outstanding movie that frankly should have been the end of the story.

It’s not the worst sequel ever made (that dishonour surely goes to Highlander 2: The Quickening), and to be fair it was always going to be a tall order to follow on from a movie as remarkable as The Matrix. The solution that the Wachowski brothers hit upon was to ramp up every positive aspect  in the original movie by a factor of ten. On the one hand this makes for an outstanding action extravaganza. Although the fight scenes now seem a little dated as the Matrix style of fighting has been done better since, we shouldn’t forget that the Wachowski brothers raised the bar for this style of combat and except for some too obviously CGI moments it still looks great. Where the action excels however is when man gives way to machine, whether it's Sentinels in the “real” world or cars and trucks in the artificial world of the Matrix: the freeway chase scene in particular is an  unforgettable action sequence. For the action and visuals alone this movie is worth seeing on Blu-ray: it really hasn’t looked this good since it was seen on the big screen.

Where the movie fails to impress is the plot and dialogue. The ideas which move the plot forward (as far as it’s possible to tell) seem reasonable but the language used to express them is too often little more than pretentious babble ("We are all here to do what we are all here to do..."). For The Matrix the Wachowski brothers drew heavily on the ideas and methods of fictionalising philosopher Philip K. Dick, in particular his ideas about the nature of reality and method of breaking it down to reveal another reality hidden behind it (apparently they were also taken by the ideas of Jean Baudrillard, a French post-structuralist and notorious babbler). In the first movie they handled these ideas with great skill, achieving a perfect balance between the ideas and their expression through the story. With Matrix Reloaded the balance between high concepts and story-telling is completely lost and too often the philosophising is excessive sermonising cum gobbledegook.

Nonetheless the movie is far from being a lost cause and the narrative does achieve its goal (getting us to the concluding chapter) in a pivotal scene in which Neo finally confronts the Architect (the Matrix’s creator) and learns that he, the One, is in fact essential to the operation of the Matrix. Bring on the existential crisis!

In conclusion: looks great on Blu-ray, but best of all includes a host of extras that I found more interesting than the movie.

A Scanner Darkly is by far my favourite movie of this bunch; not only is it an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's harrowing anti-drugs novel of the same name, but it's actually a fairly reasonable adaptation that does justice to the story (which is rarely the case). Directed by Richard Linklater and starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson, the movie was filmed as live-action and then the footage was animated using interpolated rotoscope, a technique that Linklater had previously used on Waking Life. In telling this story, there’s something appropriate  in using a filmmaking technique that makes the real look unreal: the crucial piece of technology in A Scanner Darkly is the Scramble Suit worn by undercover cops to conceal their identity from the criminals inside and outside of the police force: the suit is a super-thin membrane upon which are projected the characteristics of a million different people.

Set in 1994 (the near future when the novel was published in 1977), and located in Orange County, California, the story follows the downward spiral of undercover cop Fred who lives as Bob Arctor amongst a household of drug-users. To keep his cover, Fred uses and abuses Substance D, a powerful psychoactive drug. Over time he becomes addicted and suffers a split between the two hemispheres of his brain, suffering a breakdown in identity which is exacerbated by the real split between Fred / Bob: Fred becomes obsessed with taking down Bob, a notorious drug dealer by all appearances,  whom he records in action and files reports on.

But Fred is a pawn in a ruthless game and he too is used and abused by his superiors to get closer to the source of the drug. Just one more victim in the war on drugs.

Not a lot in the way of extras, although there is a commentary with Keanu Reeves, Richard Linklater and P.K. Dick’s daughter Isa Dick Hackett.

This is one of my favourite scenes in which the cognitively dysfunctional druggies wonder who stole nine gears from the 18 speed bike:

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