The Wachowskis: A Return To Matrix Brilliance?
Following the poor sequels and Speed Racer, will Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending get them back on track?
Few young film makers as insanely promising as the Wachowskis have failed to live up to their potential, apart from perhaps M. Night Shyamalan. The Wachowskis blasted on to the scene with their dazzlingly stylish lesbian heist noir Bound in 1997, the coolly competent direction and wry visual humour of the film making a big impact in Hollywood.
They then went on to make the gun-toting metaphysical sci-fi epic The Matrix, a film that you may have heard of. Visually stunning and beautifully structured, the film had just the right mix of Baudrillard cliff-notes and explosively directed action scenes, and was excellently paced. The pop-philosophical musings on the nature of reality and oppression, combined with the way the film cleverly appropriated some of its visual language from video games, meant that The Matrix resonated with modern audiences the way only a great zeitgeist film can, and the film boldly claimed its place in the popular psyche.
After delivering the sucker punch of Bound and The Matrix, however, it all started to unravel for the Wachowskis. First came the second and third instalments of the Matrix trilogy, which took the world they had so elegantly constructed in the first film, and kicked it into a ravine. Between the gratuitously absurd action sequences (to dispel any doubt, yes I am talking about the Neo vs. One Hundred Smiths sidescrolling beat-em-up travesty) and the fact that Neo was constantly flying in the save the day like a caped deus ex machina, you couldn’t shake the sense that the pair had maybe lost the plot a bit. When you have a philosophy dissertation delivered as an uninterrupted ten-minute monologue by Colonel Sanders swallowing a Latin dictionary in your film, then maybe you have to admit that you’ve lost some of the magic.
But not to worry, because in spite of their many flaws, the Matrix sequels made about thirty billion dollars and solidified the Wachowskis as a box office powerhouse. That is, until they made Speed Racer, and it all went the proverbial Pete Tong. If anyone has had the displeasure of being subjected to the 135 minute Skittle disco that is Speed Racer, then you’ll agree that the visual and narrative mess of that film is not befitting of two filmmakers who have shown such skill in craft and story previously.
Perhaps prompted by the unilateral hiding that Speed Racer received from critics and audiences, the Wachowskis have been rather quiet of late. There have been the occasional mumblings about various pet projects, like the staggeringly ambitious Iraq war gay romance thriller Cobalt Neural 9, or their rumoured Robin Hood modernisation. At current they are hard at work co-directing and co-writing Cloud Atlas with Tom Twyker, which should be a welcome change of pace for them, and could hopefully help them rediscover their skill for strong characters and tight writing.
Because if the recent news that Andy and Lana (formerly Larry) are planning to bring a new sci-fi franchise to cinemas is to be believed, then we may be allowed to get excited about the Wachowskis again. As is usual for the notoriously-secretive duo, details are being pretty closely guarded, but it’s an original idea called Jupiter Ascending, and a collection of A-Listers are being approached to star. Maybe this could be the Wachowskis' return to form that some of us have been waiting for. With The Matrix they proved that they can craft intelligent science fiction about big ideas, while at the same time keeping the story engaging and the action exciting enough to make it blockbuster entertainment. A return to sci-fi with Jupiter Ascending puts the Wachowskis back on home turf to a certain extent, and this could be no bad thing. Hopefully it’ll give the duo a chance to realise some of the potential they’ve so prodigiously displayed in the past.
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