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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."
I though Reloaded was a huge drop off from the orignal and this one may be a huge disappointment. Too bad, because the orignal was one of the best SciFi movies in Years.
The machines are attacking tomorrow, lets have a Rave.
...go rent Dark City to compensate.
One thing that's interesting about the Matrix movies is that they've become a LOT of different things to a lot of different people. Thanks to the Wachowskis rather brilliant blending of pop culture, Campbell, Jung, Christianity, and Buddhism, they're movies that can resonate with people on so many different levels. Just look at the various articles that've been written since 1999 interpreting the movies and you can see it. You could almost believe these people are seeing different films under the same name.
The problem though, is that a finale, by its nature, must be conclusive. It has to have at least some answers to the big questions. And if (SPECULATING) for example, you were wanting to see a Taoist "balance" ending, and it turns out to be a western-style Good-triumphs-over-Evil, then you're going to be disappointed. Or if you consider the philosophical questions about Causality and Fate more important than the skeleton plot, if the movie is too action-heavy you're going to be irritated that it doesn't solve the philosophical quandaries. (or vice-versa in either situation, obviously)
So, while I won't know for myself until about 4 this afternoon, I suspect the problem is not going to be one of Revolutions being a bad\disappointing movie, but that there is simply no way that the Wachowskis could wrap it up and provide a satisfactory conclusion to ALL the "movies" which the Matrix has become to its viewers.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Just got back from the 6:00am showing of the movie and I was pretty impressed. Nothing was overdone like the big fight scene in Reloaded. There were some great twists and turns. The back channel plots were great and the end came together beautifully. It was also very academic in some respects, which probably explains why general audiences (read "unwashed masses") won't "get" it. You don't necessarily have to be glued to every word to understand what's going on, but it helps having seen the other two movies along with the Animatrix a few times. You should definitely not go into the movie expecting it to be a self contained story.
In a lot ways, I understand the bad reviews. It's a lot like where Open Source was a few years ago. It was very hard at times to get people to understand the benefits of it. I am sure that in time people will see the message of this movie and that the trilogy will be a real classic.
I definitely give it two thumbs up.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
I am a real Matrix fan. I couldn't sleep at all last night, knowing I was going to watch Revolutions at 9AM today. However, I felt it was a disappointing failure for several reasons:
1. Trinity dies for no reason, as they don't use her death in any meaningful way.
2. The scene with the machines entering the outer hull of Zion was drawn out needlessly, as it contained no switching between the fight at Zion and Neo's plight (think: middle/end of ROTJ)
3. The fight scene with Smith/Baines and Neo in the Logos was completely extraneous.
4. Neo's death in the end leaves the humans without a powerful weapon against the machines if they were to decide to attack the humans again. Contrast this with Star Wars and LotR, where the playing field is leveled at the end, or slightly in favor of the protagonists.
5. Keanu Reeves performance was subpar, even for him. In the climactic battle with Smith at the end, he looked drugged and was not convincing as the leader of the free world. He had no fire, and it was the machines and the Oracle that actually spurred him on to defeat Smith (esp. the machines, as they revived him after being consumed by Smith).
6. In the beginning, he was trapped in the train station for no conceivable reason but to lengthen the movie. It served no purpose, benefitted the movie naught and did not lead to any great discoveries that were used later in the film. Likewise, how we could be jacked in without being jacked in was never satisfactorily addressed.
If you are a Matrix fan, I urge you to watch this movie with the blinders off and see for yourself what a bad job the Wachowski bros. did with this, what could have been the end of the best sci-fi movie trilogy in history.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl3739898990d &dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=200 31031024029.19112.00000032%40mb-m28.aol.com
Not really. I'm a fan of the 1968 series The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan. Some see it as surreal oddness, some a spy story that degnerated, some as a template for defiance against authority and some...well, some just like the series.
It has one of the most legendarily weird endings of all time - the episode Fall Out. People have been arguing over that one for over thirty years, as its symbolism is both overt (there's nothing literal in there) and yet entirely opaque. I have no idea what it means, and McGoohan once asked that if someone ever says they know what it all is, could they please let him know?
So no, I don't believe finales have to explain everything. You're right about the movies meaning different things to different people though. To add a tinge of flamebait to the post, to me the films pose the question "how can people comment so seriously on such obviously rehashed ideas?", but your opinion may differ.
Cheers,
Ian
It seems that Neo is a tool of the matrix to attempt to learn about "being human". In the end it seemed like Kadya (the little girl that is the child of the power subsystem and the creative interactive programmer) was the next evolution of matrix programs because she had no purpose (something no program in the past was allowed) and was able to chose, that choice being represented in her love for her parents and in her admiration of Neo.
Neo also seemed to be a tool of the matrix to make choices that they could not make themselves. At the end of the 2nd movie Neo made the choice for the machines on whether or not to end the war, he chose to end the war by not returning to the source and repopulating Zion. At the end of the 3rd movie you see Neo making the choice on how to end the war, to ahnnialate all machines and humans, or to let both live in peace.
They totally don't explain how Neo is able to interact with the matrix when outside of it or how he was able to destroy machines. My personal feeling is that he wasn't, he was only able to communicate with the Oracle, she did all the dirty work. Why didn't she choose to do that on her own and instead rely on the choices of Neo? Programs were (until kadya I think) unable to make free choices, especially (or maybe only) ones that made no sense or served no preconcieved purpose, so a human was necessary to make those choices. Once made the Oracle carried them out.
I honestly have no idea who the Merovingian is, though it seems that he has something to do with bugs in the system, keeping around old code that is no longer necessary, working withing the bounds of the programming but outside of what was desired (by who? I don't know). The reason Persephony wanted a kiss in my opinion is that she wanted some way to feel some humanness, she wanted to feel love, which again is something foreign to the machines.
The final battle went on way too long, and didn't really help the movie any, though a battle of wills (which is what the story asked for) wouldn't look good on the screen. I wouldn't have minded some cut into the "computer world view" where they battle with thier minds and then a bit of dialog where smith tries to win by overcoming neo, and then neo realizing that in order to win he needs to make the less obvious choice, to lose.
Unlike most of the posts I've read, I really enjoyed the battle scene in the dock. It gripped me, had me jumping, cheering, and nearly crying. Maybe I'm odd but I haven't seen a battle scene that compelling since the trench run in StarWars 1.
Can someone explain to me why a robot would need to manually reload its guns from a backpack on its back though? Seemed kind of silly, about as silly as the people running ammo out to the APU's with a wheelbarrow when electric bolts seemed to be far more effective in destroying the sentinals. Also why the heck didn't the digging machine detect that it had broken through a pocket and do something to lower itself gently to the next level?
Anyways I enjoyed the movie, I was on the edge of my seat in anticipation and suspense even though it was always obvious what would happen next. I must agree that they could have taken the movie to whole new philosophical levels but left it at a pretty low and obvious level.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Interesting to see all the posts now. Question is: how will it be viewed in five years?
Remember when Phantom Menace came out and everyone was still saying that it was up to par with the Original Trilogy? And then AotC came out and it supposedly saved the franchise from the disaster that was PM?
I think there's a lot of that immediacy here with these movies. There is so much expectation and fandamonium involved that "not being horrible" means that the movie must be good. Only over time do the weaknesses and strengths balance out so people can judge them. I'm always reminded of Jim Carey's The Grinch which was the top grossing movie of that year and now no one remembers that it even came out.
Personally? The repetition of the acting, pop philosophy and CG had gotten old by the first 5 minutes of Reloaded. There has to be something in this movie that "sells" it to me. Something unique where you can't just say "it's very similar to this scene in the previous movie but-" or "it's just like the part in Aliens where-"
Frankly the last one of the movies to do that was the original Matrix. Things now seem to be so bad that I actually get sick feelings when thinking/hearing about the first. It's been tainted by its progeny.
Yet I still got my ticket for an 8pm showing. Like Ebert said (giving it 3 stars while strangely blasting it for the whole length of his review) I'm going to take my graduation after earning my credits on the first two. Maybe my low expectations are the way to go?
What is music when you despise all sound?
The tech community is being systemmatically infected with the same virus the mainstream has, whereas the mainstream has been programmed into ADHD via television commercials, the tech community is being infected with shallow gaming experiences that revolve around first-person shooters, virtual crime, and magic mushrooms.
I do lament the new breed of techies, who think any movie that has the wherewithall to incorporate 10 seconds of a computer screen showing a shell prompt as worthy of respect.
I'd like to still think there are core groups of tech people who are motivated by solving problems (that don't involve remotely finding out how many Mountain Dews are in the vending machine down the hall). But you're right, the tech community has changed. And entertainment has changed as well.
It makes you wonder if a movie like 2001:A Space Odyssey would even get made now? Hollywood would have to spruce it up with a naked shower scene, a slo-mo CGI battle between apes and evil aliens, and an epic space chase through a mythical gothic future city. HAL's voice would be dubbed by Angelina Jolie and she wouldn't be cold and logical, but bitter and evil-toned. There's be a Coca-Cola emblem on the Monolith. And of course the movie would start off with "Episode 8".
the architect, like the oracle, spoke in amphibolies. that is what he said had an obvious, false, meaning, and a hidden, true, meaning.
the architect was seemingly saying what you so neatly summed up - but what he was actually saying was:
humans have free will but they don't realize it. they make impulsive decisions but don't know why. they are slaves to the ideas they use to justify their impulsive decisions -after- they've made them. they don't actually think freely, and they certainly don't act freely.
he was reinforcing what the oracle already said when she told neo he had already made his decision, but didn't yet understand why.
the key was that he wasn't -actually- choosing right then. he had previously decided he loved trinity (perhaps solely through suggestion), and love means selfless sacrifice. he also hated the machines and didn't want to be connected to them, even if the two are codependent. so he justifies his gut reaction with the ideas, and then can 'understand' why he does what he does.
Were Neo making his decisions by free will he'd know 'why' -before- his actions, and according to the Oracle he would be able to see past them, seeing the entirety of the world without time.
Neo does pretty much only what he is expected and told to do throughout Reloaded. What makes it so painful to watch, was trying to convey -why- it was painful. The Merovingian likewise had an amphiboly laden sililoquoy that covered -roughly- the same ground.
The problems with Reloaded were pacing, editing, and tension. The Architect and the Merovingian pretty much covered the same topics, so one of them was wholly redundant. Leaving both of them in turned much of the movie into a drag.
Note how few times someone gets a 5 minute dialogue in a sterile sequence in The Matrix. It doesn't happen. Good editing and tight writing kept the exposition to a marriage of dialogue, example, and visuals. Morpheus -showed- at least as much about what 'reality' and 'the matrix' were to Neo in the load and sparring programs as he conveyed through dialogue. The Architect and Merovingian did not.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I'm a Matrix fan. I've loved every Matrix movie that's come out. Highly entertaining, wildly energetic, and beautifully played out. The Agent Smith fight scene had amazing visuals that stood independent of the special effects. The story continues the Reloaded twist, without throwing any unsuspected curve balls into the mix.
If you're a Matrix fan, of course you'll see it, and I recommend you do.
Neo wakes up inside a section between the Machine word and the "Real" world, called the train station. His body is still lying in sick bay and he shows brain activity like someone jacked in, but they search the Matrix and can't find him. He meets a "family" of AI who were making sacrifices to save their "daughter".
They are doing it because they love, and Neo learns that programs can have the same connection as humans do that they call love.
There's some real connecting done in the train station that provides the basis for the hope of peace between the machines and the humans.
Morpheus and Trinity are summoned by the Oracle, who has a new body, it's later implied that frenchie (the Marovingian? sp?) forced her to.
They meet with her, she tells them where Neo is, and take her body gaurd kung foo guy with them to find the train driver, to rescue Neo.
They find him and give a short chase, but he gets away. He goes and picks up the family at the train station, and tells Neo he doesn't get to go.
Neo acts like he doesn't want to throw the guy a beatin, but the train guy tells Neo how he built this place and he's god there, and apparantly he is, and Neo gets a good stomach punch into the wall from him. Neo's stuck, and Morpheus, Trinity and kung foo body guard guy dont know what to do. Kungo foo joe recommends going back to the Oracle, and Trinity says why, we konw what to do. They go beat their way into the techno S&M club where the Marovingian hangs, and negotiate a trade. He wants the Oracles eyes for Neo's release.
Trinity gets impatient and they crack some skulls, and she ends pulling off an awesome catch of a mid air Berretta and putting it firmly in the Marovingian's forehead.
She negotiates a new deal, and it cuts to them rescueing Neo from train station. Meanwhile the physical world agent smith has woken up, and "doesn't remember anything".
Commander tough recommends the doctor give him something to help, and it's back inside the Matrix where they're rushing to get out, when Neo says he has to see the Oracle. He meets her, they talk. He asks some good questions, the gist is she chose to help them out, and is taking some big risks because she wants what Neo wants, peace. Then on to Neo getting unjacked from the Matrix. Quick note, when did they jack him in?
He was in the Matrix from the train station, where he arrived when he used his powers outside the Matrix. They ask Neo some questions but he says he needs some time, and retires to his crappy little room to think. Occaisonally there are flashes of him thinking and crazy electrical lines all over, and then the recurring theme of the 3 power lines running off into the mountains.
After they question human agent smith, they meet and decide to head back to Zion.
Neo comes in and tells them he knows what he has to do. He has to take a ship and go to the machine city, commander tough thinks he's crazy, and tells him no way he's gettin his ship. Naiobi lets Neo have her ship, which just needed a jump start after they found her and her crew. Back to sick bay, the medic chick goes to give
the agent smith guy a shot, he asks what its for, she says to help him remember, he says what if he don't wanna remember, what if he did the EMP blast, he'd be scared, which means he doesn't want the shot, so she should be scared, then he stabs her with a scalple, and she promptly dies. He takes off. Captain tough guys ship is going to be piloted by Naiobi through some really tight holes so they can sneak past the sentinals to get back to Zion, and Neo and Trinity, who insisted on going with Neo, are going to the machine
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
I'm sorry but I had no trouble understanding all the parts you say have no explaination: *Neo stopped the sentinels because, apparently, his powers are not limited to just the matrix, but are actually in the real world too. Smith entered Bane by somehow hijacking the hardline or something I guess, I just kind of look at it as he found a way to the subway station (what the hell was with making the portal between worlds a subway station anyway?) and then entered the real world. I'll agree that these two points are rather hard to accept, but it is a movie. *The people of the matrix are freed. The Architect said the machines agreed to free all humans who wish to be freed now that the humans and machines are going to coexist peacefully. This was kind of what the entire movie was about. *I thought the ending Smith battle was perhaps the coolest part of any of the movies as far as the 'lets enjoy breaking the laws of physics' goes, but this is all up to personal opinion. *As I said, everyone is freed. Neo didn't die... At least I don't think he did. The Oracle says they will see him again, although nothing is expanded on there. In my own opinion I enjoyed this movie much more than Reloaded, which was so much damn talking I thought it was a soap opera. And yes, I can't wait for Return of the King too!
"If you read, you'll judge." --Kurt Cobain
science fiction fans are generally unreceptive to fantastical powers in the 'real' world. hence they are looking for the explanation.
Similarly the Wachowskis know that the implication (Zion isn't in -reality-, but is instead another layer of simulation) isn't a popular theme amongst the broad audience - who coincidentally don't mind science fantasy (case in point: Star Wars).
And if science fantasy was their goal with the matrix (which one would doubt given their attention to detail) they would clearly realize how poorly scientific explanations of fantastical elements work out (case in point: Midichlorians)
In the end, it really was an ability best left undiscussed.
smith copied himself onto bane, an unplugged character -then- uploaded himself through the hardline. putting himself in bane's shoes initially is the actual leap in science for scifi fans. how could Smith do that when in M1 it was established that agents could only jump into plugged-in people?
the ending fight was just more kung fu. it was all style with only slight implication. I thought it was a bit excessive, but other than that i didn't have a particular problem with it.
coexistence is indeed the point of the movie, i don't quite understand the people who complain about it. it's as if they didn't hear Neo's speech at the end of The Matrix. (where it was quite clear that he wasn't out to destroy all machines).
However i agree with the poster that the sequels lost all attachment to the people -in- the matrix. of course, this is only a complaint because a bad introduction to Zion left most audience members not caring at all about it.
I mean, it's not like people were really attached the plugged-in masses in M1 - what with nary a complaint about the innocent cops and soldiers killed in droves when subdual was entirely possible. (they had their own load program and they couldn't think to bring tear gas, microwave weapons, or rubber bullets?).
Now i'm not saying that M1 should have been a buddhist exercise in peaceful application of force - most people probably wouldn't have liked that nearly as much. I'm just pointing out that critics are complaining 'what about the plugged in people' precisely because we care even -less- about Zion.
It's more a complaint that Reloaded introduced us to Zion as a whole poorly, and then didn't follow up with even any decently developed characters in Zion to give the audience an attachment. For comparison: no one really cared about the mass of rebels on Hoth, but the audience was drawn in because they wanted to see the main characters get away. But most of the fight for Zion happens away from the characters who got decent development.
And while we're drawing SW parallels - the Wachowskis should've killed off Morpheus if all he was going to do is sit there for the whole movie. It was only in later script revisions that Lucas killed off Obi Wan on the death star in A New Hope - after he realized that Kenobi didn't -do- anything to propel the movie once Leia was rescued.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Ever play 'Alternate Reality' on the Atari 8 bit computers? This epic game was to end with a realization that you're in a matrix-like cocoon. The creator of the game, Phil Price, evidently met the W. brothers, and (quote)
I did talk to two guys while at a restaurant in Westwood [In LA , near UCLA, it's the core of Hollywood]. I explained to them AR and it storyline, ideas and the Hollywood movie Dark City simularities to some of it and it's differences [i.e. things I think they did wrong in that movie that made it a bomb in the box office]. They listened intently, and one of them remarked to me (as they smiled to each other) was that "ideas can't be copyrighted". Matrix came out a few years later, I very much doubt they were the two brothers who came up with Matrix, but it made me wonder after Matrix came out.
see this for many more comparisons between the two.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
I agree wholeheartedly that the predominant problem with the matrix sequels was too much money, and too little critical opposition in the development stage.
:p
The Matrix worked as a standalone film because it was hard pressed to convey its ideas in an accessible manner with a tight storyline that didn't dwell or indulge its philsophical excess. Blatant references to philosophy and religion stuck to concepts familiar to nearly any audience: christianity, buddhism, alice in wonderland. Many deeper metaphors exist, (baudrillard, bohm, gibson, ploughman, gnostic christianity) but the key there is they were -subtle-.
(a neat matrix reference... reference here)
Aside: Most people who find the Matrix to be merely philosophy 101 have clearly only a 100-level familiarity with philosophy themselves. The rest are simply arrogant
The deeper questions, concepts, and correlations to mathetmatics and religion are unequivocably there.
I digress: The average film audience member does not associate with causality, nor with the concept of conscious free will and unconscious impulse. Hence, those deeper blantant dialogues in the sequels aren't well received. They exemplify the cardinal sin of those sequences: too much high level exposition, not enough subtle metaphor, bad pacing.
Morpheus explained the concept of virtual reality to Neo at high level, implying the low level, while taking him on a visually impressive whirlwind ride through postapocalyptic earth. He explained the rules of the matrix and hinted at the implications during a fight. He explained the prophecy and hinted at the undertones in bits and pieces across several scenes.
The merovingian covered causality for 3 straight minutes over dessert, with only a thin layer of metaphor. It's no wonder people didn't like it.
Well that, and we are never meant to believe any character is -actually- in danger in reloaded except trinity when she is falling. How Morpheus and trinity survived so long against upgrades when they fell so quickly against the old versions killed a bit of drama as well.
Thirteenth floor and Existenz were both movies that dealt in recursive or nested realities, and neither received the large audience success of the matrix. though 13th floor was fairly well done, the ending seemed cinematically cheap (though i didn't mind the implication, i thought it trivialized the first 90 minutes, and resting on a gimmick like that kills rewatchability). Existenz was just sloppy.
That said, the clear trend is that a more accessible movie leads to more box office success. The wachowskis are, after all, trying to reach the largest possible audience. By leaving the interpretation of reality being a Blue Matrix open they both engage those of us who want to look deeper, and hold onto the larger audience who has no interest.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I must add my $0.02 though. Here goes...
The first time I saw MR, I was very dissappointed. The reason I was dissappointed was because there was so much action going on outside the matrix. I missed the M1 feeling of a Noire Detective story with myriads of mysteries... But I soon realized that was the key to enjoying the Matrix trilogy... M1 *was* a Noire Detective story, just like M2 was more of an action movie, a movie where the matrix itself was being exploited... an answer to everyone's internal desire to kick ass inside the matrix, now that we had disspelled that our world was just virtual.
The MRevs was yet another genre, it was about the fight for Zion... it was an Epic. Just like The Return of the King. And the scenes in it are great as far as an epic goes if you ask me.
The plot holes are annoying at best, but really they aren't so much bigger then the questions left pending at the end of M1.
Also, without digressing, I would like to mention that it is my firm belief M1 wasn't made with the intent of being the first of part of a trilogy... I believe the trilogy idea came later (when money started pouring in).
Despite that though, I would like to say MRevs was much better than M2 in the sense that it managed to return somewhat to the M1 mentality of "we aren't here to answer your questions... to tell you exactly why everything is the way it is. We're here to show you another story, put some unbelievable facts out in the open and leave you wondering."
I personally really liked the idea of there being sentient programs who basically come to live in the matrix as if it were a vacation resort of some sort. And the ideas raised in this one are just as valid - and arguably (by some, not me) - just as shallow (or deep) as the ones in the matrix.
All in all, it's very ironic to watch everyone practically spit on the screen because they came here expecting a movie like the M1... that story's already been told. If you wanted to see the Matrix again, go watch it again. How very typical of western culture to feel a great emotion for something, and then demand feeling that same emotion again... it's simply impossible: and that is why the M2|3 will never live up to some people's expectations.
In fact when Agent Smith has Neo down and then, against his will, makes the exact same statement that the Oracle had made earlier, Neo gets it. He understands that he is to merge with Agent Smith/Oracle thus bringing an end to her fight with the Architect. The problem most people are having is assuming an anthrocentric take on the movie. The humans are lost, they are batteries, Zion cannot prevail and will never do so. The people who make up Zion (pod escapees) are only useful as a consequence of the imperfection necessary in the Matrix program to keep the pod people happy. As the Arhitect said it was a dangerous game the Oracle had played.
Fucking brilliant.