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Review: Matrix: Reloaded
PsndCsrV writes:
Due to some fortunate circumstances, I was able to partake of the Matrix goodness ahead of the release. Overall, I thought the movie was excellent, but there were some issues (for me, at least) that kept it from being spectacular. It's definitely worth seeing, and if you're worried about it not being that good, go see a matinee screening and skip the popcorn. ;-) It is a blatant cliffhanger, though, so if that drives you nuts, you better just wait until November. Keep reading for a more in depth look, and I'll try not to let any spoilers slip.
The special effects were great. I personally didn't see anything totally revolutionary in them... it seems like most of it was simply "bullet time", but more refined, utilizing CG where cameras don't make it. Only a couple of times did I feel that the CG wasn't quite right, and even then it wasn't due to the impossibility of the action. It was mostly due to a character's arms/legs/hair/clothes that didn't move 100% naturally during a stunt, which is definitely difficult to get right. There was only a couple instances in 1 scene that come to mind immediately, so the effects people did an excellent job.
One of the main criticisms of the first Matrix was the lack of character development. Well, I won't lie to you... there's not a whole lot of character development in this one either. There was more, but not for any of the main characters really. A little more insight into Morpheus's life, a new take on the Oracle, the introduction of some new characters, and the whole thing going on with Agent Smith. But there are still a lot of gaps in the characters, but Reloaded does make you feel like you're starting to understand things better, and that the next movie will be very enlightening.
One of the best after-effects of the first Matrix was the way it made you question your own take on reality. It really made you wonder what's real, and what's not. What's important to me, and what's not. Or maybe I was just being overly philosophical about it. Reloaded really does a good job of leaving you questioning, but this time, you're speculating about the movie and where it will head... how things will be resolved. Reloaded ends with many loose ends, and many questions unanswered, but at the same time, it's an excellent opportunity to speculate. I definitely want to see Revolutions now, and it's a good thing I only have to wait 6 months.
The movie also flowed well. I didn't ever feel like a scene was put in "just because", except once. I personally felt that the love scene between Neo and Trinity was a little overboard, and that a lot more could have been said with a much more subtle approach. Intermixed with this, were shots of the people of Zion having a wild dance party/orgy. Ok, so the orgy was implied with the whole sexual nature of the dance scene. I couldn't help but relate it to Herbert's Fremen spice orgy in Dune, except without the spice. It struck me as the same type of situation.
To sum it up, I really enjoyed it. My only big complaint was the love scene, but I am a conservative person. Other people will undoubtedly love the movie just for that scene. The rest of the movies was great, and definitely sets up Revolutions as a must see.
Just saw MATRIX RELOADED on opening night. The theater was packed, despite multiple showings -- 10, 10:10, 10:30... The audience seemed to greatly enjoy the movie.
The action was as good as advertised. The actors acquited themselves well. As expected, CGI was greatly improved from the original, particularly for the "real world" shots.
BUT... the movie didn't make much sense -- it was kind of like USUAL SUSPECTS, but without the basis in reality on which to grab hold.
Go see it... but don't expect to understand it until you see the third one, too.
I personally felt that the love scene between Neo and Trinity was a little overboard
Overboard? How about totally fucking lame. The whole thing was shots of Keanu's arm-plugs spliced between shots of dirty hippies dancing. Gag me. The first hour of the movie was absolute rubbish.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
Just saw it, and loved it.
Reloaded definitely has a different purpose from the original (we're not realizing for the first time that our world is a simulation), but quality-wise it was just as good. Zion looks a lot larger and more organized than I would have guessed, and we get to see some bad-ass robocop-style exoskeletons that will probably feature in Matrix Revolutions.
The Wachowski bros. could easily have made a crappy movie, but they pulled this sequel off well.
Be sure to stay past the end of the credits for an awesome preview for Revolutions!!!
Here's some crappy screenshots from the sequence: temp site. apologies for the popup. no idea how long the free site will last.
Here are those same screenshots: non-temp site. No popup. The site will last indefinitely.
--Dan
If anyone didnt stay till the end to see it, i give you the revolutions trialer. http://www.empiremovies.com/movies/matrix/revoluti ons.shtml
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
However, the number of fatal or severe defects in genes in the population is very low & when 2 copies of a gene that causes severe noticable deformities do match up, that new individual simply doesn't find a mate -- thus, helping to remove the defective gene from the population. Humans are over 99.9% identical genetically, so the idea that mixing the "same genes" would cause defects is really a myth... it's only mixing those with the same current defects (or future if there are further mutations) that will randomly create problems, but it would take thousands of years for the slight increase in likelyhood to create a mutant population unless people were stupid enough to mate with someone with a severe mutation.
I've heard of a few tribes in africa where people have 4 fingers and 4 toes that are shaped oddly -- but in those tribes, they were forbidden to marry outside the tribe & they were basically forced to marry people within the tribe they didn't like, so... mutation or no mutation, you were gonna mate w/ that person. In a situation like this, people were given no choice but to mate w/ someone with defective genes, so... that doesn't really count.
I believe there are a few diseases which affect the Amish and a few other people, but they are mostly non-lethal and show no outward physical deformity.
Most people don't realize that mutations such as red hair, blond hair, blue eyes, green eyes, white skin, etc. are all recessive mutations caused by inbreeding (with the same population -- nomatter how large the population is, eventually the same genes mix)
The only reason mating with someone who isn't related makes sense is that they may have a different recessive gene than the one you are carrying -- that way neither will be expressed in your offspring b/c there aren't 2 copies of either one. But, the mutations are still there & gives rise to the possibility that your children might be twice as likely to give a mutation to their children -- one of each of the mutations you and your mate gave it. This means that your child will have to mate w/ someone that is neither related to you or our mate in order to avoid mating with someone with the same recessive mutations -- and so on , and so forth, but what this really does is increase the likelyhood that they will have a "bad copy" of a lot of genes, thus increasing the likelyhood that somewhere along the way, they'll mate w/ someone w/ the same mutation and have a mutant offspring.
So, what you have is mating with others which increases genetic errors, yet allows an individual to survive... and mating with relatives which may cause errors that already exist to express themselves more often (I think mating with one's brother or sister gives a 1% higher risk of mutant offspring than with a random stranger), yet are quickly removed from the gene pool (hopefully b/c noone wants to marry a mutant.. lol). Who is to say which is better? At some point, the mutations within a population will reach a saturation point, and all people will have the same likelyhood of having the same mutation... yet, with inbreeding, you can successfully prevent new mutations while attempting to remove the ones you have in your family.
I believe that there's a species of animal that's protected right now... hmm... I think it's the Leopard... maybe the Jaguar... I forget. Seems like it is the Leopard or a specific type of Leopard that's gene pool is over 99.999% identical. They say that they are all healthy and may as well be clones of each other as far as genetic testing goes, but the problem is tha
Well, only some from people I have met. One of my good friends is graduating as a philosophy major, and he really enjoyed the movie. But he is not a typical philosophy major from what I understand.
On a somewhat related note, a good book to pickup is Philosophy and the Matrix, which goes into depth about some of the philosophical ideas touched on in the movie (Descartes mad scientist / brain in a jar sceneriao, etc.).
Why does everyone think Zion is destroyed? I would have never thought that this many geeks were afflicted with ADD.
Recall please: The viewer is specifically told that a counter-offensive was launched at one of the key lines, to surprise attack the first wave of sentinels BEFORE THEY REACHED THE CITY. The counter-offensive seemed as though it was viable at first, but then one of the ships fired an EMP too early and disabled all the ships in the fleet; recall the line "it was a massacre" (paraphrase). Now, the one ship which Neo et al are found on in the end of the movie is the ship which was sent, BY ZION, to search for survivors. The crew of that ship hint that there may have been sabotage, and one reason we are given to support that conclusion is the discovery of only one survivor: A. Smith's real-word counterpart.
After these events, the viewer is again shown that scene with the thousands of sentinels, probably because the makers predicted that some of you would believe that Zion was destroyed and they needed to show you that, in fact, the horde of sentinels are still waiting to get to Zion. Those of you who believe Zion was destroyed probably thought that these were sentinels who had reached Zion already, and had also had enough time to utterly destroy every marking, every indication that Zion had ever existed, and left only bare rock walls in its place.
Another thing to think about: Morpheus says displays surprise after talking with Neo, because he expected the war to be over. If Zion is destroyed, the war is over, yet he isn't surprised because he found that Zion is destroyed (because it isn't) but rather that there are still machines lining up to get to Zion. Do you think there would be one, well-ordered, perfectly operating hovercraft left in the Earth's core to rescue them if there had been a battle for survival in Zion? Stop telling people that Zion is destroyed.
WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR.
--SLIGHT SPOILER--
One funny thing I noticed:
In the scene where the Architect is talking to Neo (with all of the TV screens), when the Architect is talking about all of the atrocities (I think that's the word he used) that the humans have committed, as soon as he says the word "atrocity," a picture of George W. appears on the screens behind him. Coincidence? I think not.
Ok, but I think that your problems are an artifact of your place of education, not the actual works you studied. Personally, philosophy study has taught me quite a bit about historical philosophical thought in a variety of realms and also modern controversies and the recovery from the now-widely-criticized Cartesian split. You can write all you want about how worthless your education was, but that is just it: it was your education. Philosophy is great, and I have learned more from philosophy (that I can apply to my actual life) than I have in any of my other studies, though I am a triple major (philosophy, German, psychology), as well as a professional technical writer, and contracting network administrator/web designer.
I can't reasonably hope to disprove your non-coginitivist claims about your personal experience, but if you want to talk about _facts_, you mentioned a few that seemed ludicrous to me:
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is a behemoth, Marx's Das Capital[sic] has still never been completely read by any man alive today.
There is no disputing that the Critique is huge, and most scholars have noted that Kant's writing style is so convoluted that understanding it is a task far beyond simply reading it. However, the reason you did not learn about the Critique in you undergraduate program is because you would need to spend an extremely intense period of time studying it -- usually in a course during graduate school. Most undergraduate programs just have you read the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, a simpler version of the same ideas, most notably the second Cartesian revolution and the Theoretical Unity of Apperception. So, just go to graduate school, or read the prolegomena.
Second, to say that Das Kapital has never been completely read by any man alive today is ridiculous, unless you mean only that it has never been fully understood by any man alive today, which is a question that is impossible to resolve. I would argue that it has been understood to its fullest logical extent in most general and particular contents by a great number of Marx scholars. Oh, and one more thing about Marx: I have never been forced to read Marx for an actual class, but have instead taken him on personally. This seems strange in one of the most thorough philosophy programs in the country, but as one of my professors said: we leave Marx for the less intelligent political science theorists.
Both books are bigger than all of Plato's writings combined. Das Capital[sic] is easily longer than all of Nietzsche's writings combined.
Ok -- this is just wrong. First, we don't have a lot of Plato's writings. Second, the Critique is NOT longer than all of Plato's KNOWN works combined for sure. The Critique is around 700 pages in a hardcover medium-type small-size edition. It really isn't that LONG, it is just amazingly thick.
And you must not be the Nietzsche scholar you would wish to be, or you would know that he wrote a TON -- cretainly more than Das Kapital. Here is a short list from the web: The Birth of Tragedy (1872) Untimely Meditations (1873-1876) Human, All Too Human (1878) The Dawn (1880) The Gay Science (1882-1886) Zarathustra (1883-1885) Beyond Good and Evil (1886) The Genealogy of Morals (1887) The Wagner Case (1888) Twilight of the Idols (1888) The Antichrist (1888), and Ecce Homo (1888). This doesn't even consider works like The Will to Power, one of the greatest works of postmodern philosophy. Anyway, you were obviously mistaken on a variety of levels for the facts, and I think this reflects well on your general views about philosophy as well. About some of the great works being "loads of crap," you cannot imagine the massive tomes of philosophy that took years to read, that have been summarily dismissed by the philosophical community. Of note is the history of pre-modern philosophy, in which bishops and cardinals spent their entire lives writing one philosophical work, almost none of which are studied in contemporary philosophy.
Anyway, that is the end of the lesson today =)...
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We are not amused.
> And I notice they have beautiful high-tech air-traffic control centers, but apparently no one in Zion's ever heard of a freakin' washing machine.
:)
You missed a point - the air-traffic control centers were in a simulation (like the kung fu room in the original, etc). That's why they showed the controllers laying down plugged in to the chairs right before they showed them allowing the ship to enter Zion.
A second viewing tends to make these minor points visible...
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There is no try at jedinite.com
[quote]But I guess that is like pointing out that there is a lot of corn in Nebraska.[/quote] Don't forget, we also have cows!
Shoot Pixels, Not People!