Matrix Revolutions

Finally saw this last night. I liked the 2nd one though toward the end it got confusing as I don't think I was invested enough in the storyline. This was just boring, like the dull space battles from the new Star Wars but stretched out to an hour and inter-cut with stuff that was in the other movies. Perhaps the plot of this movie isn't as confusing as it seems to me, but it felt like every time a major character was going to drop a plot bomb they went into cliche Matrix-talk. "What do I need to do?" "You know, you've always known." This isn't philosophical, it's bad writing.

Also, yeah, the guy with the attitude that likes to cuts himself, let's leave him in the same room with a disabled Neo, and have him watched over by one doctor lady. Also let's get the Master Control Program from Tron except make him look like a baby. How come Neo can't bring Trinity back from the dead again, if Neo got taken over by Smith in the first movie would the world have ended like it does here, and what were all the mechs doing in that inter-dimensional vortex from the end of Howard the Duck?

Only reason to see this film are those amazing breasts.

ugh, this movie. you know what sucked about this too is that the "real world" which is masked by the matrix is boring and ugly. i would rather have had a couple more movies completely within the matrix program, with neo and the rest kind of working undercover like a viral program, instead of this leather fetish rave fighting bullshit. and considering how "smart" this movies were supposed to be, the last two are so, so stupid.

i did see v for vendetta in the end, it was good, i suppose.

speed racer was better than revolutions, btw.

ugh, this movie. you know what sucked about this too is that the "real world" which is masked by the matrix is boring and ugly.

seriously! being plugged into the matrix seems like a pretty sweet deal.

Omar OTM, "Speed Racer" was MUCH better than both sequels.

ugh, this movie. you know what sucked about this too is that the "real world" which is masked by the matrix is boring and ugly. i would rather have had a couple more movies completely within the matrix program, with neo and the rest kind of working undercover like a viral program, instead of this leather fetish rave fighting bullshit. and considering how "smart" this movies were supposed to be, the last two are so, so stupid.

i did see v for vendetta in the end, it was good, i suppose.

speed racer was better than revolutions, btw.

― omar little, Monday, December 8, 2008 8:01 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's true tho, the whole hook of the first one is that once you know the truth you can learn kung fu instantly and become superman... and travel thru phones and shit. why would you want to set your movie outside of that??

Because you want to have a crazy rave sequence mayhaps.

A boring crazy rave sequence, at that.

i think the first matrix was clearly made with no sequel in mind. this wasn't some kind of lord of the rings all-of-one-piece thing.

i think also neo turning into an incredibly uninteresting cipher with no personality in the last two films was also a bad move. yeah lol keanu joeks but in the first he was a really great character and we empathized with his situation. but once he was "the one" there was nothing left for him to discover except...i dunno, greater powers? who gives a shit.

"i think the first matrix was clearly made with no sequel in mind."

Would have been nice if they hadn't allowed for the possibility of one then.

yeah i know but if no sequel came about it could have existed as a single standalone film with no trouble whatsoever. i think they painted themselves into a corner with all the interesting character arcs completely front-loaded into the first film.

i think it was obviously made with a sequel in mind, esp with that last shot, but with no clear idea of what would be in that sequel.

Star Wars (and arguably Empire Strikes Back) are better than any of their sequels because the universe in which the story takes place is being unveiled/explored by the film as much as by the audience. The film is aware that a curtain is being drawn back, that the audience is being taken on a voyage of discovery, and paces itself accordingly. Think how much time both Star Wars and The Matrix spend gathering characters, doling out info in small bites, and ramping things up before all is revealed and the "epic battle" plots kick in -- and how much care they devote to textural variety outside the big action sequences. I'm thinking especially of the scene in The Matrix where Neo first visits the Oracle in her faux Chicago tenement. It's so rich and surprising and realistically detailed. The Wachowskis take time with it, and don't seem primarily concerned with kicking your eyeballs in with wicked awesome shit. There's nothing like it in either of the sequels, which lack any sense of wonder or exploration. Therefore, tedious, boxed-in, unsurprising.

I don't know, the second one pretty much holds up until Neo finds out the "secret" of the Matrix, at which point it gets kind of retarded.

Yeah I'll basically watch the entire second one and enjoy it up until the trucks hit each other and blow up. The rest is inconsequential

well i think they weren't planning a sequel to complete this story, is what i meant. they were hedging their bets in both directions. obviously the door was left open. kind of like the first star wars, which could have made sense as a single film too. but i think that particular universe allowed for more possibilities than the matrix series.

give me the car chase from reloaded and that's it imo

That car chase is one of the greatest things ever filmed, is the thing.

exploding digital vagina scene > car chase

I don't know if they clearly meant for a sequel, but I think the first one ends well, similar to Terminator 2's ominous ending where the heroes have won, but the future remains uncertain. Agree with Omar that it could have been a standalone film, and probably should have remained that way.

As inferior as the sequels are, at least there are some fun fight scenes and chases, I guess, especially in the second one. One problem I had was that compared to the first one, all the fights seemed really too "soft". Like in the first one, that scene where Morpheus is getting his ass whooped by Smith before they capture him, there is this wonderfully crunchy moment where his head gets put through a toilet seat. I can't really think of any moments in the second two movies that had that kind of impact, despite all the bullets, flying and zipping around and cascading building collapses - the CG had just gotten far overused.

^Wait, what?

I've said this elsewhere but it was really disappointing to me that after adding all this other fairly interesting and exotic stuff to the universe they proceeded to do nothing with it in Revolutions. Hey there's this whole other underworld of rogue apps in the matrix that do weird things outside the bounds of the agents or the humans, but nevermind, we're setting the finale in the boring wasteland where magic doesn't exist.

Getting Leigh Brackett to write Empire is the big plus for that film (although this depends on whether you believe she wrote it, I guess.)

Basically there was a possiblity of doing something interesting with a Matrix sequel, but these guys were probably not the ones to write it.

Also its funny how the movie franchise that re-made Keanu's career features him traveling between realities through a telephone, just like the far more superior Bill & Ted series.

As I was watching this last night I asked me friend "Why are they all wearing sunglasses?" Then I remembered this...

i think you know your well has run dry when your idea of taking it to another level is just adding an extra couple hundred cgi hugo weavings

Yeah they really lost the plot on the fight stuff sadly which was my favorite part of the first film.

Btw the future is totally going to be the Matrix but without any clear distinction between human and robots due to nanotechnology and genetic programming.

At first I thought that said garlic programming, which would be cool.

yes we know exactly how the future is going to be

I think the first movie is pretty much perfect. The story as continued in the second and third films makes sense and is not hermetic if you watch with a close eye, but it's a terribly boring story.

Such a terrible idea to write a you-must-watch-closely supersubtle plot to accompany a noisy bludgeoning actioner.

decided early on that i wasn't gonna see pts 2+3, has been easiest ever resolution to keep

Matrix Resolutions

Just read this website and the story is finally making some sense to me.

http://www.thematrix101.com/reloaded/meaning.php
http://www.thematrix101.com/revolutions/meaning.php

But if I had to take a test on the the plot of the Matrix trilogy I would fail.

it's not that the over-arcing story didn't make sense, it's that it was, as Hoos said, boring.

I liked the planet o' Agent Smiths OK, but this was pretty much donkey balls all around.

Even having enjoyed Reloaded more than most, to my mind this is the most anticlimactic series of films ever, amirite? By "series," I do not mean standalone features that have unnecessary cash-in sequels tacked on, but films which were intended as serials from the outset.

What's good about the first film is the Agent Smith / Cypher dynamic. One wants in, the other wants out.

Cypher may well be a villain but he also appears to be the only one who has grasped *the basic reality of the situation*, indeed, and

Smith's "humanisation" by the matrix is an entertaining reversal of the usual Terminator / Star Trek-style "what does it mean ... to be HUMAN?" business. Smith's answer: it SUCKS, it makes me BAD AT MY JOB.

Also the 1st film has considerable (surely intentional!) comedy value which is very much helped along by the utter humourlessness of Morpheus at al. As of Reloaded, the humourlessness takes over.

As of Reloaded, the humourlessness takes over.

oh this is some bullshit

reloaded is chockablock with all manner of gags

in fact the abandonment of haw-haws in the third act is probably another one of the main reasons I have no use for it after the trucks

apocalypse haw

Smith's "humanisation" by the matrix is an entertaining reversal of the usual Terminator / Star Trek-style "what does it mean ... to be HUMAN?" business. Smith's answer: it SUCKS, it makes me BAD AT MY JOB

This is a good point, the more I think about it now the more it seems like it was supposed to be the humans and machines reaching a compromise, what with the program Rama talking about love and the "human" Morpheus talking about machines and people needing each other. I wish there was more of this dialog than mechs-blasting-zillions of squid-bots but what the hey...

To me the whole "Neo is the One, no Neo is not the One, wait Neo IS the One but he can't change anything, wait Neo is controlling the real world with his mind" was the most confusing bit. Hopefully seeing these Animatrix things will clear up some of the timeline for me..

in fact the abandonment of haw-haws in the third act is probably another one of the main reasons I have no use for it after the trucks

― TOMBOT, Tuesday, December 9, 2008 1:53 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest

Come on, you'd miss out on Persephone's perfect tits! I'm glad she's in all the scenes with the silly French dude so I can just tune him out cos otherwise he'd be pretty annoying.

I thought the trucks happened after Persephone's tits...?

he thinks I'm referring to the thread title instead of the third act of Reloaded

Wow, I am watching the Second Renaissance right now and it is amazing, shocking, and mind-bending. Much much much better than those sequels. I'm tempted to say I like it better than the Matrix but it's too short!