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'Matrix Revolutions' Opens Today
shelleymonster writes "The Matrix Revolutions was released worldwide at 9 AM EST today. With a running time of 2 hr. 9 min., I'm expecting the /. reviews to start pouring in around 11:30. Since critics are saying things like, "Matrix finale could put you back in a coma," and, "The final episode is a slam-bang, dreary mess," I'm curious to hear some real fans' reactions." Many readers have pointed to the BBC's review; they were not amused. Were you? Update: 11/05 17:17 GMT by T : Read on for one reader's (spoiler-free) first impression.
wickedweasel writes "Just came from one of the first showings of Matrix: Revolutions (Germany, don't know why, but it started 2:30 pm here) and came by to drop some comments (no spoilers). To cut it short: not even close to the first one, and honestly spoken way worse than the second one (which wasn't _that_ bad). The ones looking for cool action will hardly find any, neither will the ones who came for the story (like me) be satisfied. Only a few good scenes in and around Zion, some quite big plot holes and unfinished threads and, most important, an unsatisfying end, to say the least. I guess I'll be flamed for my opinion by the die-hard-fans, but hear this: I once considered myself one too until I saw this."
Here, in Colorado Springs, Revolutions started showing at 7:20AM. Caught the first showing for $3.75(Early Bird Price).
The ending certainly was not what was expected. Decent none the less. Certainly better than the second one. But once again, nothing in comparison to the original.
The dialog at the end with Agent Smith was great. Best part of the movie, IMHO.
Keep in mind that Rotten Tomatoes just takes the average. As more reviews are added, you'll have a better idea of the score.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I've just been to the premier. The movie is not bad, at least not the first hour of it, but please for your own sake leave the cinema before the last half hour. There were several times during the end of movie, when I was thinking: "Now it can't get any worse", but I was proven wrong.
At a supposedly really tragic scene by the end of the movie, the scene dragged on for so long that the hardcore fans present started to laugh, and when it dragged on even further, to shout: "Just die for crist sake!". I am not sure if is supposed to look like that, the scene seemed to loop 3 or 4 times.
I end it self doesnt make any real sense, or rather it makes less sense than making electricity from humans.
Wow. I saw the 7:00 AM show in Salt Lake City, UT. I have to say I was pretty disappointed. I mean, the CGI/effects were incredible, and the battle in Zion was really well done. But the philosophical mumbo-jumbo did not really come together very well. I think they should have wrapped it up better. They really did not answer any of the questions, or explain how anything could have happened. They relied on the idea of choice. So I have a choice to watch it, enjoy it, or watch it and be disappointed. For now, I chose to be disappointed. But go see it for the effects, those are incredible!
Jeez, and I thought #2 stunk! The review from the Washington Post was caustic: "Neo, schmeo! In "The Matrix Revolutions," directors Andy and Larry Wachowski give up on character; instead, they try havoc and let slurp the dogs of war. The film is a soggy mess, essentially a loud, wild 100-minute battle movie bookended by an incomprehensible beginning and a laughable ending." I'll sit this out.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
But that's Hollywood for you - you can't just make one great movie and leave it alone. You have to squeeze every dollar out of the franchise while you can!
Yeah, they're really "squeezing every dollar out of the franchise" by making the third movie in a story designed to be a trilogy.
OK, i saw it with a colleague. We disagree - he liked it better than Reloaded. But anyway, my gripes:
:) philosophy.
:)
;-)
CGI was too much sometimes. The scenes went from nothing to kamikaze, with no clear focal point on the screen.
The bit from the trailer with the head honcho machine. WTF was that? So it's a machine - does it mean it can't hold a conversation?
Agent Smith explodes at the end WTWTWTF? If Neo was corrupting him, then why all the crap with the fight scene before hand?
No key scene to define the film (think Burly Brawl/Freeway).
Oh, and the plot seemed extremely shallow compared to the last one - I was looking forward to some more in depth (or at least pop
Why was Smith such a threat? The machines didn't look that bothered. Why was it left to Neo to fix?
Ack, I could go on, but I think I should go see it sober first
Matrix - 10/10, Reloaded 8/10, Revolutions 4/10
cLive
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
just saw it at an IMAX screen in Singapore, can only say that you would need that backup plan of dinner and drinks..
Though on the IMAX vs normal 35mm angle, I am wondering if its really worth it to see it on IMAX. What differnce does it make in the viewing experience? This sequel is definitely not worth watching again for comparisons between IMAX and the normal screens, but anybody seen some movie in both formats and liked one over the other?
#include
>The Star Wars "episodes" is all a con, brought about after the success of the first Star Wars film.
That's why the opening screen in the first one reads "Episode IV."
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
The reason Revolutions blows is because of the following:
* None of the questions in Reloaded are answered. How does Neo really stop the Sentinels? How did Smith enter Bane? How did he get so powerful? It's all explained away with one or two sentences. We're just supposed to accept it because it's "symbolic" of something. Reloaded seemed to treat itself like a bridge to some sort of great explanation for everything in the third movie. Guess what? It never comes! What the fuck?
* The focus is Zion. Instead of freeing the people of the Matrix, as the first one suggested, the sequels have been all about saving this dirty underground city we don't care about. What the hell happened to the people of the Matrix? It's like the movies don't even care.
* No humanity in the characters and dialogue. The movies just don't enjoy themselves. The first one had a mixture of humor and joy and was just having fun with what it could do. That's why things like the lobby scene kicked so much ass. It was like, "We've smashed the barriers of physics, now lets see what we can do with it!" And you had the fun human moments like the discussion during breakfast, the Cipher character, and so on. Neo was just a normal computer programmer who discovered the world around him wasn't real. More importantly, the movie was FUN.
Now, the sequels tried to change that story into a post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic about an iconic Christ figure who lives and dies. Which leads me to the next point...
* Nobody is freed, Trinity and Neo die, and we're left with the same situation we had at the beginning of the first movie. We've invested our attention to these three movies all for nothing. It was pointless. Why even have Trinity live in Reloaded? She should have stayed dead. It would have been more interesting to see how Neo copes with being unable to save her last time.
I'm completely disenchanted with the Wachowskis. These two guys were considered genius filmmakers after the first movie. The second one was tolerated because we assumed everything that was put in it was for a reason, but it turns out they just dropped the ball on what could have been the most groundbreaking science-fiction trilogy since Star Wars.
At least there's Return of the King this December.
"Sufferin' succotash."
* Pacing is good, you don't feel like the movie gets bogged down (which I felt during the extended Zion scene of Reloaded, even though I liked most of its parts individually)
* The ending is disappointing. I don't mean it's just lame, per se, but it isn't what you're really expecting, and it feels bad at first. If you stop and think things through, I think it actually makes good sense. In a way, it ends how it HAD to end.
* Many things are never explained, and you expect them to be. Don't expect much in the way of logical explanation for a number of discrepancies. After Reloaded, you end up postulating a lot, "Well, it must be true that XXX, but how?" Well, Revolutions has characters saying, "XXX is how it is" plainly, but they don't explain why.
Sadly, I don't think the vision was complete. The Wachowski's probably DON'T have the answers to the tough questions to make the Matrix picture 'fit', and so they fail to achieve the true suspension of disbelief that allows immersion, and that hurts them. It doesn't really matter how absurd your premises are when it is clear they are premises; you need internal consistency. Reloaded and Revolutions, as a unit, fail to delivery that.
Put one way, this is a good movie. It is worth seeing, it has its moments, but it is not the mind-blowing, zen-moment conclusion that fans would have wanted. It does not sate the lust for action OR explanation, and so it comes up short.
In a way, it feels like a rush or a march to the conclusion. The actual true ending DOES make sense, even despite being vaguely disappointing, but it also leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
The original Matrix movie, while designed to be the first part in a trilogy, was specifically made so it could be a standalone movie if it needed to. The idea was that if the movie did shittily, they wouldn't feel pressured put out the sequels, and if it did well, they'd release the other two and finish the storyline.
It is thematically and philosophically the strongest of the entire trilogy, and accomplishes as much more subtly than its predecessors. Viewers were confronted with great ethical dilemmas and metaphysical conundrums in the form of 'in-your-face' one liners and headache-inducing dialogues in the first two Matrix films, but Revolutions takes a different approach. Its depth and philosophical richness comes in the strength of its visual metaphors and an intriguing storyline pulling on everything from the Bible to The Wizard of Oz, grounding the story in cultural identification and modern mythmaking.
Sounds good to me. I don't like professional critics, anyway.
==========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
His review is here.
The thing with Poi is, it's not meant to be eaten as an entree. Use it as kind of a dip for pork, fish or whatever.. it's good! :)
Smith's taking over of people was different than the taking over of people by real Agents. When an Agent takes someone in the Matrix over, they're essentially just hijacking their connection in the system (and presumably this requires a direct connection to the Matrix, rather than a piggybacked pirate signal). They're not overwriting that person, they're just temporarily superimposing themself onto that person. That's why, when the Agent leaves someone (apart from getting 'killed', as seen in the first movie), the person taken over is restored without any ill effect apart from having a hole in their memory from when they weren't there (this was seen in Enter the Matrix, where an Agent jumped out of a SWAT agent).
Smith didn't take people over that way. Smith copied himself onto others, apparently overwriting them (at least part of them) with his code. The Agents were 'moving' from connection to connection. Smith was copying himself onto anything currently inside the Matrix. Two different methods of 'taking over'.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I'm not sure if you guys realize it, but the movie wasn't made to encompass the entire story, ever. The Wachowski brothers planned on having the Animatrix, the games, the comics, the books, and everything else also tell a part of the story.
That's why you have to watch the Animatrix to get the backstory of how the Matrix originally came to be, or play the games to get some more intra-movie events down.
I found the following cronology of the Matrix, interesting indeed:
r ix 05q.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/146831_mat
WHEN IS THE MATRIX?
What is the Matrix? That's an old question. The real head-scratcher is:
Using background culled from the three movies and Animatrix shorts, The Associated Press compiled an estimated timeline of the war between men and machines:
2010-60 -- Humans create humanoid drone robots with artificial intelligence to fill jobs as construction laborers and servants.
2069 -- The hovercraft transport ship Nebuchadnezzar, later to be captained by Morpheus, is constructed in the United States.
2075 -- AI programs evolve and some robots began to resent their human overlords.
2077 -- In the first case of a machine rising up against its owners, the butler robot B166ER slaughters two humans, leading to B166ERs eradication and a backlash against robots and artificial intelligence.
2080-85 -- Rioting and violence against machines prompts robots to flee major cities and establish their own community -- known as Zero One -- in a remote part of the Middle East.
2085-2095-- Zero One thrives, creating superior vehicles, computers and weaponry and decimating the economies of many human nations, which now lack the machine-based labor that made them strong.
2096-- United Nations officials refuse to accept the robot civilization of Zero One as a sovereign nation. A trade blockade of robot goods leads to war.
2097 -- Zero One survives a nuclear attack -- its inhabitants are impervious to the heat and radiation and casualties are quickly replaced. Counterstrikes launched against humans.
2098 -- As cities fall beneath the might of mechanized forces, desperate military leaders attempt to block the main source of energy for the robot city: the sun. The plan destroys the atmosphere and fills the sky with choking black smoke -- but does not stop the machines.
2099-- Machine forces overtake human armies and capture survivors and civilians for experimentation, determining that human bio-electricity can be harnessed to replace the sun's energy.
2100 -- Machines create the Matrix, a dreamlike world set in 1999, to extend the lives of the comatose human batteries.
2105 -- The first human known as The One, locked in bondage inside the Matrix, learns he can manipulate the world through thought and manages to break free. Seeks sanctuary in the underground human stronghold of Zion.
2105-2150 -- Zion resistance movement created, although The One later dies under unexplained circumstances.
2161 -- Morpheus born in a Matrix womb; freed in childhood.
2167 -- Trinity born in a Matrix womb; freed in early childhood.
2175 -- The Oracle prophesizes that Morpheus will discover the second coming of The One.
2199 -- Trinity and Morpheus discover Neo, a hacker in the Matrix. They free him and do battle with Agent Smith, a program designed to rid the Matrix of humans who detect its flaws.
2201 -- The Osiris, another human rebellion ship, discovers machines drilling through the Earth above Zion. Crew members send a message through the Matrix to their compatriots shortly before being destroyed.
2201 -- Now living in Zion and working with the rebellion against the machines, Neo encounters The Architect, the artificial intelligence program that created the Matrix.
2201 --The Architect reveals that the Matrix places rebellious humans in Zion, which it then targets for destruction, thus eradicating bugs in its system. He states that Zion has been destroyed five previous times -- suggesting the Matrix may be much older than he thinks.
Jose Vicente Nunez Zuleta RHCE, SJCD, SJCP
I think I've read somewhere that the Wachovsky brothers said that they wanted people to just forget about the last scene with Neo in the first movie as it would break continuity. Maybe that's it...