Matrix Reloaded Trailer Online

cheinonen writes "Trying to steal away the thunder from the opening of Star Wars, the trailer for The Matrix Reloaded is online now in Quicktime format. Must say I'm looking forward to this far more than I'm looking forward to Episode 3."

Comments

Streaming Video + Slashdot

[saveth]

A site with streaming geek-type video getting Slashdotted and still being able to hold its own, as far as bandwidth is concerned, is rather impressive. In about ten minutes, I'm sure it won't be doing as well, though. :)

Anyway, trailer is pretty neat. I don't particularly like the fact that it features a song from the previous The Matrix soundtrack, but the rest is good stuff.

Comparing it to the old The Matrix trailers, I'd have to say I'm not so thrilled with The Matrix: Reloaded. I may be jumping the gun when assuming things about it, but it looks like it's less "matrix theory" and more cultish action. I hope the movie doesn't turn out like that.

At any rate, I'll probably get suckered into standing in line for an hour, opening night, and loving the entire movie, so you'd probably be better off just ignoring me. :P

Re:Streaming Video + Slashdot

[foobar104]

And still, to this day, many action movie ads use the sound track from Aliens (during the part where the Terraforming Plant is exploding); and that song is nearly 16 years old!

Ah, yes. The infamous "Bishop's Countdown." Not only has this snippet (about 1:20 into the track, if you care) been used in tons of movie trailers and commercials, but Horner has even plagarized it himself. You'll find it woven through several of his scores.

Of course, that's Horner for you. He writes some great ones-- the Star Trek II and III scores are great, and I've been listening to A Beautiful Mind a lot lately, but the degree to which he "borrows" from himself is pretty startling. Listen to "A Kaleidoscope of Mathematics" from A Beautiful Mind and "The Machine Age" from Bicentennial Man to hear what I'm talking about.

Re:Star Wars ~ The Matrix

[ender81b]

Very true. The matrix has huge plot holes throughout.. if the goddam AI's have 'some type of fusion' they would have utterly no NEED for the human's as 'batteries.' Fusion, even in the simple form we are devolping today, gives them all the power they could ever need. Since they are obviously a technically advanced race giant solar mirrors in orbit beaming power to the surface would work alss. The power used to keep the humans alive, and maintain the matrix, would exceed what the humans would generate (Young Lady, in this house we OBEY THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS!) It also never quite made sense to me why they even created "the matrix", simply putting russian sleep sets on the people (3 electrodes passing an electric current through your brain - puts you to sleep until it is shut off) would have worked.

The only thing I could think of, and maybe they will address it in these next 2 movies, is that the AI's still have some sort of vestigal programming to the sort of 'never harm humans' or like Asimov's 3 laws of robots and are literally unable to just swear off the human race. Or, they could feel some sort of obligation to their creators, and feel a need to 'take care of them.' Worse crimes in history have been justified by a need to 'protect the race.'

I still love the movie to death though... =)

Car / overpass shots

[fahrvergnugen]

Many of the shots in the trailer are clearly identifiable as having been shot at the former airbase in Alameda, CA., an island off the coast of Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco. The view of San Francisco is breathtaking from the airbase end of the island.

• 
  The shots are:
  
• Trinity stopping the shot up car at the 47-48 second time marker
  
• flipping car at 51 seconds
  
• Morpheus with sword at 52-53 seconds
  
• jump stunt followed by rolling SUV at 55 seconds (quick flashes)
  
• Morpheus with gun and explosion at 56 seconds
  

There's some large soundstages there, built from old airplane hangars, all owned by EON Productions, the Wachowski's company. During the Matrix 2 shoot they had the logo for Burlyman, the Matrix films' working title, emblazoned on them, and signs sprang up around town that simply said "BURLY" on them, followed by an arrow.

Near the hangar soundstages, a set was built on a vacant paved area next to the coast of the island. A mock freeway, sturdy enough to drive many cars on, pointed towards downtown San Francisco but ended hanging in space at an incline. (you can see the Bay Bridge in the background of some of the aforementioned shots) When standing on the freeway set, it would appear to lead straight into downtown San Francisco. To add the appearance of "realism," there was a highway sign proclaiming, "Palo Alto 7 miles." Palo Alto's about 30 miles from San Francisco. Whatever.

Anyway, the set was really amazing to see, and since it was right next to public property (the local skate park) you could walk out and take pictures of the set, and the various prop cars (including most of the ones in the trailer) parked in the lot around it. There were always a few guys out firing off cameras when I went by. The set was taken down very quickly, shortly after filming completed and all the "Burly" signs came down.

Also interesting to note is that some of the car chases were filmed in downtown Oakland and in the tunnel between Alameda & Oakland (causing a nasty traffic snarl one Saturday morning). The tunnel is notorious for being covered in grime, and is in fact so filthy that grafitti artists will come in with squeegies and start cleaning their tags into the walls. Even after the truck comes through and washes the walls off once every quarter, the tags are always just a little cleaner than the rest of the walls.

The most prolific of these taggers is apparently known as "wetso," and on Friday night before filming he had his name writ large toward one end of the (fairly recently cleaned) tunnel. I'm very curious to see if it survives into any of the final shots in the finished film. Go Wetso.