FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - With the second installment of "The Matrix" trilogy hitting theaters this week, University of Arkansas experts on communication and film caution that the stunning special effects in these movies represent more than mere spectacle. They place the audience in the very world the films warn against - a world where reality becomes indistinguishable from simulated experience.

"Virtual cinematography allows filmmakers to generate and manipulate images to the point where they essentially create virtual actors, environments and scenarios," said Janice Rushing, professor of communication. "That creates a paradox within a movie that so chillingly warns against the consequences of technological dominance."

In crafting "The Matrix," the filmmakers spliced more than 400 computer-simulated shots into the real action. It’s estimated that the forthcoming sequels will feature more than 1,000 and 1,500 such shots respectively. The result is a barrage of realistic special effects that have been widely acclaimed and imitated - but also an escalating dependence on technology to create the films, a dependence the UA researchers find ironic in light of the movies’ cautionary message.

Rushing and her colleague, professor of communication Thomas Frentz, go on to say that this paradox of method and message generates an interesting parallel to the audience in the theater and the characters in the film.

"The Wachowski Brothers have said they want the special effects to blend with the real action so seamlessly that audiences can’t distinguish when they’re watching real actors or when they’re watching digital reproductions of those actors," Frentz said. In other words, a passive audience becomes ensnared in a world where the artificial cannot be separated from the real.

That ability to place an audience, mentally if not physically, inside a movie’s central concept could serve as a powerful means of communicating the film’s themes, say Rushing and Frentz, but for two problems. First, so few Matrix fans seem to recognize the similarities between the characters’ situation and their own. Second, the movies’ special effects are so spectacular, they actually distract the audience from important messages and myths woven into the story.

As researchers and critics, Rushing and Frentz have spent the past two decades examining the relationship between humans and technology in movies. Their 1995 book "Projecting the Shadow: the Cyborg Hero in American Film" discussed how ever more sophisticated technology causes filmmakers and audiences to revisit and revise classic, heroic myths.

In a 2002 article, published in the National Communication Association journal Critical Studies in Media Communication, Frentz and Rushing assert that a similar revision takes place in "The Matrix." Throughout the article, they show how Neo’s uncertain quest to become "the One" extends the formula of the hero’s journey as defined by Joseph Campbell and thus represents a classic, mythical story.

According to Frentz and Rushing, the movie taps into numerous, familiar Western myths - from religious prophesy to Peter Pan, from the Three Fates to Frankenstein’s monster. Such myths and stories have persisted through history because they teach timeless lessons about human nature and the search for wisdom.

By placing those classical elements in a future world - a dystopia run rampant by technology - the Matrix films seem to offer viewers an opportunity to think critically about the modern world and its consequences and to facilitate that thought through a well-known narrative framework.

"Tapping into myths can help give a story context. There’s an important historical trajectory that we need to place the contemporary technological world into if we’re going to understand it," Frentz said. "Technology has become so commonplace, so necessary, that we use it without thinking about its effects on our lives or where it’s leading. 'The Matrix’ supplies a narrative history that doesn’t necessarily give us the truth but gives us a trigger to think about consequences and meaning."

For example, just as the enslaved humans lead disembodied, artificial lives in "The Matrix," modern culture is becoming more and more enmeshed with virtual reality. Whether visiting online chat rooms or watching TV, we focus on forms of communication, entertainment and interaction that disengage us from our physical selves.

It’s one example of how the Matrix movies could deliver thought-provoking and important messages that reflect our current lives while portraying our possible futures. Unfortunately, the rapid-fire special effects interfere with the delivery of those messages, Frentz and Rushing say.

"Whenever 'The Matrix’ reached a mythically important moment in its story, rather than letting that moment develop through the narrative, it was as if the filmmakers said, 'Time for something that’ll really blow their minds,’" Frentz said. "Then some amazing special effect filled the screen and eclipsed the deeper meaning - the emotional or philosophical point the story had been building toward."

As such, Rushing and Frentz feel that the special effects obscure the story as much as they enhance it.

"Just in terms of credibility, a film that portrays a technologically advanced future has to look technologically advanced," Rushing said. "But you shouldn’t have to undermine an important story simply for the sake of spectacle."