No--TNZ is a forum for pointless bickering--not gloating.
Matrix Revolutions--Holy CRAP
- Thread starter Professor Zoom
- Start date
No--TNZ is a forum for pointless bickering--not gloating.
The problem with the Matrix sequels is that all the mystery from the first film is gone.
Morpheus is not as mysterious, we get too much of Mr. Smith...the philosophy is not so philosophical...Trinity is not as hot as she was in the first film...the fight scenes aren't as cool...
Although, the only redeeming factor, that I recall, is Persephone (i.e. the voluptuous, delicious Monica Bellucci)...
Morpheus is not as mysterious, we get too much of Mr. Smith...the philosophy is not so philosophical...Trinity is not as hot as she was in the first film...the fight scenes aren't as cool...
Although, the only redeeming factor, that I recall, is Persephone (i.e. the voluptuous, delicious Monica Bellucci)...
The reason the Matrix sequels suck is because...no matter what the Wachowski's say...there's no way it was ever conceived as a trilogy. The Matrix is an open and shut plot. They even had to backtrack on their own internal logic just to try and make a sequel make sense. Which, of course, they failed miserably at.
My custom when reading stuff I don't understand is to check for typographical errors, but I can't quite see one that covers all the bases the way this does. The first movie focuses intensely on Neo. If Reeves is horrible, the movie doesn't work.
I don't think The Matrix was very good. The plot didn't make sense, killing people by the carload isn't heroic, and coming back to life while corny music blares still doesn't remind me of any hero's journey. It doesn't actually have an ending, it just stops. Literally talking to the audience is not exactly structuring your theme into the story. The only thing that saves the first movie is Reeves' performance. And Carrie-Anne Moss may be pretty but she's just a so-so actress.
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doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
You're not thinking 4th dimensionally, Marty!
Don't exaggerate the point. I think it's a bit unfair to get all high and mighty about whether or not Rose's husband and kids were important to her. A case could be made that yes, duh, of course they were important to her or the case could be made that no, we don't know what her life post-Titanic was like.
The point I'm trying to make is simply that the first person she wanted to see, to be with, the first most important thing on her mind when she died was to be reunited with Leo/Jack because he was the gateway to her first sense of freedom and the synthesis of their union brought about the person Rose eventually became.
There are plenty of people in my life I've lost, plenty of people I no longer see who I hold very dear in my heart and who I hope someday I'll get to see again. Before LOST, I'd never considered the possibility of it happening in that way, and whether or not it actually does is irrelevant; the concept of it all though brings me comfort, and sure maybe I won't... but may I will get to see Katydid again someday. That doesn't mean that whoever I end up marrying and having kids and a family with aren't/won't be important, it just means that I'll get to see the people who were most important to me in my life.
Your black-and-white indignation at both the ending of Titanic as some sort of justification about why the LOST finale didn't work is obtuse and not really fair.
Maybe because I've had several friends die in the last few years and have lost others who were important to me in other ways as well, the pseudo-Buddhist take on these characters, their lives and what ultimately happened to them makes it much more meaningful to me. I don't know. Whatever the case, I'll just paraphrase John Locke and say that "I hope someone does for you what that finale did for me."
I'm sorry for the losses you've suffered in the past, 00. I've yet to suffer any real, deep, and meaningful loss so maybe I'm just blissfully ignorant in that regard. But, again, while the Lost finale was touching in all the ways you said I was still disappointed in them shrugging off the several seasons worth of intrigue and questions they built up. I felt ripped off and asked myself why I've been so involved with the show for so long. Good ending on the character end but it still pissed me off.
Well, if it pissed you off so much I'd say they did a pretty good job with the show. We're still talking about it; and while we're obviously on opposite ends of the spectrum regarding the final outcome, I just feel like it was a brilliant writing choice to go the way they did. If they'd attempted to answer everything we'd all be bored by now, criticizing the lame attempts at trying to justify everything... but if you paid attention they really already did answer all of it.
Who was the smoke monster?
Why did the island travel through time?
Who shot at Sawyer and the others in the outrigger?
Who was making those radio broadcasts?
It's all there. You just have to pay close attention.
Yeah, I'm fearing the same thing. I know how the show ends, but I've yet to see seasons five or six. Still... I'll give it a chance, despite what I already know and the reactions most people had to how the show ended.
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Yeah, I remember them saying they could do either a prequel and a sequel or two sequels.
I think another problem is, and I think other movie trilogies have suffered by doing this too, is by instead of doing a sequel and then a couple years later doing a third movie (as most movie series work) they decided to go All-In with the "make both movies at once/make a long movie and break it into two" route.
So instead of spending all of their time to make one movie that was coherent and made sense they made two movies (or one long movie depending on how you want to look at it) spread themselves thin and ended up fucking things up.
As much as I love the Back to the Future movies I think 2 and 3 suffer from this same problem. I think both movies could've been stronger but some of post-production time of one overlapped with the pre-production/filming time of the other meaning both movies didn't get 100% attention.
I think the PotC sequels suffered from this I could even argue Superman 1 and 2 suffers from this. (Though not quite as badly in the last one's case.)
(This, of course, doesn't apply to movie series based on books (LOTR, Twilight, Harry Potter) as they've got a head-start in at least having a plot-line to follow. For BttF, POTC, The Matrix everything had to be done from scratch.)
So instead of spending all of their time to make one movie that was coherent and made sense they made two movies (or one long movie depending on how you want to look at it) spread themselves thin and ended up fucking things up.
As much as I love the Back to the Future movies I think 2 and 3 suffer from this same problem. I think both movies could've been stronger but some of post-production time of one overlapped with the pre-production/filming time of the other meaning both movies didn't get 100% attention.
I think the PotC sequels suffered from this I could even argue Superman 1 and 2 suffers from this. (Though not quite as badly in the last one's case.)
(This, of course, doesn't apply to movie series based on books (LOTR, Twilight, Harry Potter) as they've got a head-start in at least having a plot-line to follow. For BttF, POTC, The Matrix everything had to be done from scratch.)
I can accept that. I carved it several years ago, but I thought it was appropriate for the season.I'm still calling it "Col. Tigh".About RoJoHen's avatar... Love the Col. Tigh pumpkin.
That's not Tigh. If you check out the name of the avatar, it says Pirate.
That's what I think of whenever I see it.
But some of us were not obsessing about those details AT ALL! They may have been intriguing, but I certainly didn't give a shit about what the symbols on the timer meant, and I didn't care much about the blacklight on the wall. The characters didn't seem to care, so why should I? When I look at that stuff now, I just think that the Island is really fucking old and has had a long history that has nothing to do with the Losties. I have no idea where the four-toed statue came from, but neither do the characters. It happened long before they came to the Island and is irrelevant to their story.
You got that right...
Maybe Rose's children were all adopted and she raised them alone?
As for Matrix - I actually liked the sequels better than the original. I hated the implication in the original that Morpheus and his crew were working alone. I liked it much better when we got to meet the leadership of Zion and found that there was an entire fleet of ships at their disposal. Hell, I was happy just to see that Zion *had* leaders.
I definitely got tired of Morpheus' constant babbling of "what is real?" and all that crap. And even though Cypher was a murderer and a traitor, he had a perfectly valid point about being tired of the war. I know I would be. I would have taken the damn blue pill and be done with it; assuming I would have had that choice, of course. I'd choose the Matrix every time.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
Brave words from someone who refuses to post there.
You would betray your friends and kill them? I mean I know you're big in to ducking your head into the sand, but jeez... that's cold. It'd be one thing if you were saying that from the perspective of not knowing what life outside the Matrix was like, as Keanu did in the first film... but you and I and everyone else who have seen the films are unable to make the same kind of choice you are postulating because you know what the "real" world was like and what the Matrix world was like. Essentially, you're saying you'd take the easy way out now that you know the "real world" sucks donkey balls. Convenient.
I just had a Matrix marathon a couple weekend's ago and agree that "Matrix Revolutions" is the better movie out of the two sequels. The second movie is just a pointless chase and fight movie that attempts to out do it's self with amazing special effects and complex fight sequences that simply duplicate what we've seen before. The most interesting part of "Matrix Reloaded" is the Architects speech which incited several groans and mockery from the audience which didn't understand the big words he was using or the purpose of the scene and ruined it for those who were attempting to hear what he was saying. I also liked the Merovingian. There was speculation on the 'net during the time of the films that Mero and Perespone (Monica Belucci) were previous incarnations of Neo and Trinity and had forgotten their purpose or become content (thus the reason why Perespone is so interested in kissing characters).
"Matrix Revolutions" is a typical war movie but instead of a traditional decisive victory for either side it "concludes" with a peace treaty between the Zion humans and the machines when Neo removes the virus (Smith) from the program (Matrix).
My problem with both these movies is that the Brothers didn't expand on their original concept (and I agree that there was never any trilogy planned, they were unprepared for the success of the first film) and went bolder with it, pushed more like they did with the first film.
"Matrix Revolutions" is a typical war movie but instead of a traditional decisive victory for either side it "concludes" with a peace treaty between the Zion humans and the machines when Neo removes the virus (Smith) from the program (Matrix).
My problem with both these movies is that the Brothers didn't expand on their original concept (and I agree that there was never any trilogy planned, they were unprepared for the success of the first film) and went bolder with it, pushed more like they did with the first film.
Really?! I thought Revolutions was the worst of the three (Revolutions was the third one, right?) it's the one that had the non-ending, the stupid overly CGI'd scene with the battle between Neo and the Agent Smiths (god the slow motion punches in that scene were laaaaammmmme), Neo in "Matrix Purgatory" and so much other dumbness.
Reloaded is re-watchable for some of the action scenes in it alone, but Revolutions was just dumb. The stuff with the mechs? Ugh.
Reloaded is re-watchable for some of the action scenes in it alone, but Revolutions was just dumb. The stuff with the mechs? Ugh.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
Someone here, years ago --GabeHimself I think -- explained the whole "philosophy" the films were supposed to be advocating and how they did so "behind the scenes" of the action in the film ... and it made some sense, even though it was all executed terribly. It'd be worth tracking down that post or getting him to come in here again, because until I'd read that post I pretty much assessed both sequels as crap. And they mostly still are, but taking in to account this recollection of the "philosophical" perspective on the films, it made them less so.
No, I would not have done any of those things. Remember, I did admit that Cypher was a killer and a traitor. (If you think I'm that evil, then you fucking well got a lot to learn about me.
) I'm guessing Cypher got the same choice - red or blue pill - and chose the red one. I would have just taken the blue pill so I would never have been part of that crew in the first place.Either one of those situations would have been equally likely, come to think of it. I'm definitely not a risk taker by nature, so that's one reason I'd take the blue pill (if I didn't know what the real world was like). But if I *did* know, I'd *definitely* choose the Matrix. Perhaps it is lazy, perhaps it is taking the easy way out. I accept that. But not everyone is a fighter or a revolutionary. I don't have the guts to be those things. All I want is to be left alone with a reasonably normal life. I don't care if that makes me a coward.
I mean, Morpheus kept yammering about how the Matrix was "slavery". Exactly how was this? Who exactly are the people slaves to? The machines? It's not like the Agents were the absolute fascist dictators of the entire world or anything like that. They probably interfered very little, unless forced to. Most people in the Matrix probably never even met them. And in a sense it would be in the machines' best interest to keep as many people alive as possible (with everyone who dies, the machines lose the energy that could have been gained from them). So it's not like people's lives were constantly in danger or anything like that. All the machines cared about was getting the energy from the living bodies of the people. Once that's assured, the people themselves were free to live their lives as they wished. So it's in the Matrix and not in reality. BFD.
The first movie doesn't rise or fall on Keanu Reeves' acting.
It was a relatively fresh story with interesting developments and twists. The problem is, when they developed the universe more, it didn't make it more interesting and the story itself didn't progress well either (partly because it was a complete story in the first movie and a sprawling mess full of exposition in the second and third).
You've not. I'd argue that the sequels retroactively make the first one suck.
The Animatrix was a better set of stories than the entirety of the sequels.
There are some really good essays that attempt to reconcile and explain the sequels and fit them with the context of the first film. They've been posted on here before and I highly recommend googling them and reading them.