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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.
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.
You can't just review it. You have to realize... there is no movie.
"The Wachowski brothers have delivered a dud so disappointing, they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion"
"So disappointing they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion."
Made me laugh.
This post cannot be rebroadcast without the express written constent of Major League Baseball.
Well i saw it yesterday (sneak preview) - tell you what? go with 0 expectations and it will be almost alright. Without spoiling anything, all i can tell you people is that don't be surprised or fall dead if you see Matrix 4 (Matrix: Ultimatum) or something come out in the next year.
...go rent Dark City to compensate.
Growing up to see Revolutions is like growing up to realize that your dad is an alcoholic instead of the superhero you once thought he was.
To all of you who haven't seen this movie... DON'T. Re-Watch Matrix and Reloaded and the Animatrix a thousand times. But stay clear of this one.
You may be thinking: "IT IS INEVITABLE". And you are probably right. You'll still see this movie.
But despite all the talk about fate, chance and karma, the moral of this story is that if you can't tell what is going on or why, the movie plain sucks. If you're thinking about how cold and wet the actors must have been while shooting a fight scene in a giant puddle, well... you see my point.
God, this movie was dissapointing. It is supposed to be about faith but it ended up destroying all my faith in Hollywood
I just saw the 6:30 Am screening in Glendale, CA. My take: the 2nd best of the series. Less phony Kung Fu, more Sci-fi-ish. Fewer overt religious overtones. Overall, the most fantastic CGI I have ever seen. Not all is wrapped up nicely, so don't expect to understand everything when the credits start rolling.
A movie at 6:30 AM, what's wrong with me?
I saw it Monday night, and I feel it was similar to Reloaded. Not quite the same as far as fight scenes go. But then again it was pretty clear that a simple fight was not going to settle things between Neo and Agent Smith. I was surprised about Trinity though.
Still, both were a let down from the Matrix. To much mysticism type stuff, where his powers extended beyond the matrix. Matrix stuff crossing over into the real world just didn't make a lot of sense.
...but I still like the original the best.
Some great action and effects, but like with Reloaded, they gave away a lot in trailers and on the late-night show "clips"... so not a lot of surprises IMO.
The theater I went to was pretty full (6 am here in San Diego). One loser watching Reloaded on his laptop got a lot of laughs from people. Two dudes came in dressed as Neo and Agent Smith, but they were pretty cool about the whole thing.
The best part - they were only charging matinee pricing of 6.50 to see it!
You forget, this is /. and waiting to see the movie before reviewing it would be like reading the article before commenting on it.
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska
If the world was ending the next day wouldn't you be making the best of the situation? At least thats what one of my friends pointed out when I said I didn't explain the overly long party/sex scene in reloaded, aptly titled "Celebrating Humanity" or something like that in the DVD.
In terms of the series degrading, I'm probably seeing Revolutions this weekend, but it's to be expected. The original was fresh, original and hadn't been done before. To try and top that along with the percieved expectations people have for the sequels is crazy.
To quote The Matrix "It's going to work, because no one's every done this before". 'nuff said. That's why the 1st rules, and everyone hasn't liked the rest.
Insert Sig Here
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.
Sci-Fi flicks with big budgets are rarely the best movies around. The Matrix (I) was an exception, and I was hoping that II was just more plot.
If critics don't like III then that could be a good things. Critics never like any of my favorite movies.
[FromTheMorning]
Too bad I didn't think of this, but I thought it deserved to be here on Slashdot in case you don't read everything: You mean it doesn't end with Keanu Reeves waking up, turning to Alex Winter and saying "Bill, I just had a most excellent dream!"? Shame.
Need I remind you folks that both Citizen Kane and It's a Wonderful Life were destroyed by the critics? (Citizen Kane's destruction had a wee bit to do with the fact that it was loosely based on William Randolph Hearst, who was a media magnate.)
But, eh, WTF, if it sucks it sucks, they're still getting at least $5 outta me.>br> -Doc
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
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.
> and Trinity is really a man.
And his name is Chad.
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!
Hitchcock would have loved the first one because of the clear cut way they told the story and used suspense to tell it.
'No officer, your men are allready dead' and after that you get the fight. It is a classic example of creating suspense like Hitchcock used it, but faster.
But Hitchcock would have hated the sequels. The story has no starting point, instead it follows the Hollywood formula of all sequels: just let the same events happen in roughly the same order (Trinity opens with a fight and someone dies and is resurected). It is like they forgot how to deliver a complex story to an audience. Instead it became a vehicle for stunning special effects. And that is something that continues in the third episode with for instance the use of rain. There is no better way to show your quality as a CG master than with the use of rain isn't there?
No. this one has 'hire me' signs all over it. Just like the second one. They did not start a new CG company for nothing. This is just a big trailer sponsored by those visiting the cinema and buying the DVD.
The should have started part two with an introduction on the use of keys and being a program. Just like they did in number one with the use of special forces.
The critics hated "Citizen Kane", "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Star Wars" at the time.
But the critics also hated "Gigli", "The Real Cancun" and "From Justin to Kelly".
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
with ted waking up,
"whoa, that was a most excellent dream"
*guitar solo*
all you are, is all you are, i'm so sorry for you.
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')
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
First of all, I must confess I'm a huge fan of Matrix (soo much to ask my boss if I could go see the movie - and I went) :)
:(
--- spoilers ahead ---
But the movie sucks. Very nice effects (as usual), but the plot is horrible... very predictive, full of fallacies. IMHO, most things that were kept open at the end of Reloaded are still open (who is the Merovingian? How can Neo control/destroy the machines in the real world? Why Persephony wanted a kiss?).
But nothing can be compared to the final fight, where Neo and Smith just look like two Dragon Ball-Z characteres... I could do nothing but laugh.
Anyway, I'll see the movie again and probably buy the DVD, but it was a great deception to me as a Matrix fan...
He said it sucked. Kinda spoils it I recon.
The first movie was good, or the first half. The premise was quite interesting and innovative, and then it slowed down and turned into a Kung Fu movie. I still never understood why the tech community was so quick to embrace this series as an icon. It is not worthy. Have we stooped so low as to think the Matrix' goofy "which reality is real" premise as something worth using brain cells to contemplate? This is only a notch away from the other, equally-cerebral dilemma: "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"
And thus began the "Matrix Revolution" of an endless array of technical FX as a substitute for a decent plot and character development.
Not that things haven't been this way since the dawn of cinema, but most movies nowadays are just big-budget, formulaic, television-level dramas designed less to make you think, less to entertain than they are to distract and take your money and serve as a vehicle for a plethora of merchandising efforts.
With few exceptions, most of the great classic movies of the last 20-30 years have been neutered in a progressive attempt to capitalize on the originals' success via a string of contrived sequels.
The same thing has happened to the music industry. Instead of great lyrics and creative musicianship, we're bombarded with cute-faces, dance moves and regurgitated hooks that are over-produced and heavily compressed. There should be a new category for this crap music, like there should be a new category for these new movies which do little more than feed our ever-increasing ADD.
Went and saw Matrix III on monday. Special effects are still awesome, fights scenes were not bad. Battle tactics of the squids was pretty cool, but in my opinion this was the weakest of the matrix movies.
Was rather disappointed with the ending.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
Why does the Matrix inspire this type of snobishness?
"It was also very academic in some respects, which probably explains why general audiences (read "unwashed masses") won't "get" it."
Basically, if you don't like these movies you are not intellectual enough. This was the same defense offered by many Matrix "fans" to people who didn't like Reloaded. By the way, Reloaded was a dreadful movie, just because somebody doesn't like it doesn't mean their dumb or unsophisticated.
I've already seen a lot of negative reaction to this movie in the reviews and from the net. And already the apologists are saying that the "unwashed" masses are not smart enough to appreciate this "wonderful" piece of art. This type of spinning of the movie is not encouraging.
- sigs are for wimps.
Hmm... Ewoks don't sound that bad, especially if there could be a scene where Agent Smith takes on Jar Jar Binks!
Although it read like an anime.
I should hope so, as it is literally live action anime, nothing more nothing less.
Agent Smith is Neos Father... enough said...
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
Well I have to say, that Larry and Andy's attempts at intellect and metaphorical representation might have gone too far in a lot of viewers minds.
Production: Stunning, and you would expect so with a budget like that. The continuity from 2nd to 3rd movie movie make it feel like a sequel broken into 2 parts. Which it is some would think anyway. If only the average movie goer wasn't getting accustomed to seeing fantastic visual effects, as many won't appreciate the quality of the CGI, editing, and general visual representation.
Plot: Lost it? Perhaps. One either expects the Wachowski brothers to be doing one of two things. Setting it up for 4, or, depending on the financial results of 3, leaving it closed with a scenario the requires the user to have to "imagine too much" to get closure from the story line. It would appear they have lost touch with their audience, and gambled the wrong ending for the trilogy, in an attempt to be different yet again. I am guessing that 3/5 viewers would be annoyed or unimpressed at how the movie was ended.
What strikes me as most odd is that there appears to be no commercially logical reason for the script to have been written as it was. Is it possible that if a final, 4th movie is released, many will now have lost interest like the X files? Who knows, but the next few days will reveal the true reactions of the general viewing public.
But I didn't see Matrix Reloaded and won't go see Matrix Revolutions. I still have only the unspoiled, pristine, beautiful memory of The Matrix.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
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
The big secret is that itturns out that there IS a spoon!
Sounds like the highlander effect, first film challenges your imagination to dream of a world beyond your comprehension.
Then the sequels quickly demonstrate that some things are better left unsaid
Where does that leave movies with subtitles? :-)
Saw the 9:00 in Roanoake (Virginia). The actual ending WAS what I was expecting, but the way that the story got there wasn't.
Awesome CG . . . much better than in Reloaded IMHO. Worth the ticket price just to see the CG.
I actually think I like it almost as much as the original (ask me again in a week once I've sorted it out more). I didn't like Reloaded near as well.
I liked the way all the philosophy from Reloaded and the original came together in Revolutions. I like both previous movies better because of Revolutions . . . exact opposite of Reloaded, which made me like the original less since I was confuesd.
Go see Revolutions! It's a lot more fun than work or classes!
Now that Neo has been sacrificed to save the balance of power between humans and machines, there are still some who will not accept the interdependence. Led by Morpheus, who now believes Neo was led astray by an infection from the Architect, a small band of humans attempt Wrenching the newest incarnation of the Matrix.
Energy is more expensive than ever as humans begin suffering from a disease that reduces their capacity to feed the machines. Because of this, the sources of EMPs built by the Matrix machines are reduced and become more important. Morpheus hatches a plot to spoil the explosives of EMPs by inserting a new program into their factories : he can arm and fire them remotely, before they are carried to their destination.
As the setups in the factories are completed, the rebels suffer from fracturing as Morpheus begins to doubt the plan. In losing his fight to an even-stronger charasmatic rebel leader, the EMPs are set off in timed sequence. The machines nearby are shut-down, and chos begins to ensue across the surface of the planet. For the moment, there is celebration. End chapter one.
The machines deploy a geothermic well to begin removing the energy from core of the earth, planning for a hibernation phase. They begin to again bore into ground, but while readying themselves for a fight, the humans are surprised to learn they are relatively ignored. Once close to the core, the earth quickly begins to cool as cold water is steamed throughout Zion. End chapter two.
Inside the matrix, there is a population blight, as new births become rare, and people begin scrambling for survival. Quite a few renegade programs conspire to resurrect Neo for guidance. With the help of a brash (an incredible fighting) infiltration into The Architect's domain, the programs murder him when he refuses to give them Neo. Fortunately, they achieve their goal and Neo stand among them. End chapter three.
Neo stands before the rebels in an attempt to explain their mistake and ask for their help in fueling a cooporative effort invented by him. The Humans will re-enter the pods to power the machines again, if only temporarily. Then, a massive tower will be built to reach beyond the dark cloud of the sky to tap back into the sun, again bringing power to the earth. Then, the machine will no longer require humans to power themselves, and a truce will be brokered.
After quite a bit of kung-fu fighting and several backstabs among the different groups, Morpheus returns to lead the people back into the pods. We are are given a scene of a long machine arm, opening in flower-like fashion in high atmosphere, silloetted by the bright sun. Not all questions are answered. Fade out.
This is a good movie, but it's not the ending -- and the movie -- we wanted or were waiting for.
We have all been elaborating Matrix Revolutions plot in our heads (and websites) ever since we saw Reloaded. The real movie is not based on our personal plot, and this is the main source of disappointment, no matter how good or bad is the movie itself.
theefer
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,"
Ebert and Roeper's review sounds pretty well-balanced. They were both fans of the original, and see Revolutions as a good action flick, but not much in the way of a big-idea movie. (minor spoilers about what you knew was coming anyway). Ebert remarks, "by the end, I was satiated."
.mp3 gets them some geek points anyhow.
I didn't know what to make of Ebert until I watched Dark City with his commentary, then Citizen Kane. The guy knows what he's talking about. At least his opinions are largely compatible with mine, and probably the artsy-geek set at large.
Posting their reviews in
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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?
Rent it, but fast-forward through the intro until you see a guy wake up in a bathtub. The intro of Keifer Sutherland's character explaining the setup was obviously a Hollywood edit to dumb-down the movie for people who just wouldn't "get" what was going on from watching the story develop. Everything will eventually be explained later for the sake of the main character anyway, and it's much more absorbing if you know nothing about what's going on going into it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"Yeah, I think they are going to take it alot farther than another movie. In other media this story will continue for as many years as we are willing to spend money on it."
Gee, you mean like some kind of MMORPG? Considering they've been talking about The Matrix: Online for awhile now, but haven't said what it is, it's actually not surprising there's no "conclusion" to the film. Any real fan isn't expecting one.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
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."
I mean, check out this collection of references from The Matrix and Reloaded (i'd imagine it'll be updated with Revolutions soon enough) here.
look at how many references and such in the list are from The Matrix, and how few are from Reloaded.
You see, when the Wachowski's hadn't had a break-out hit, they had to be careful, subtle, clever.
They surely wrote, edited and rewrote The Matrix several times. The philosophy was there, but it wasn't as prominent or cumbersome. The bold allusions made the ideas accessible, and the density of the subtle references provided something to think about. The devil was in the details.
The Matrix had good editing that kept exposition down to what mattered, and had decent character development. The romance wasn't a centerpiece throughout, it was strung along more like Han and Leia's romance in Star Wars. It was there - it played its part, but it didn't hit you over the head or command unnecessary screentime.
The forced romance in Reloaded (and likely revolutions) is more reminiscent of Lucas' prequels, where the audience is beat over the head with it, and the lack of chemistry between the actors is made center stage.
but once The Matrix made it big, the Wachowskis had a free ticket. No-one was going to tell them to trim the fat anymore. To put the heavier philosophy in more subtle references and keep the blatant topics accessible. But who's going to say that when they can make that much green?
The sequels were both churned out together in a mere 24 months. Their near complete loss of depth was nearly guaranteed.
The Wachowskis had total freedom with Reloaded and Revolutions, and apparently they decided they'd rather be broad in their blatant coverage of religious and philosphical ideas than tell a good story.
The first thing aspiring fiction writers are supposed to learn is that the Idea-focused story is hard as hell to write well (even though it is almost uniformly where scifi writers begin).
It is very difficult to write a good story where its entirety is leading your audience from problem exposition to problem exposition until you finally foist your supreme solution-Idea on them.
It is much better to wrap your solution Idea into a stand-apart traditional story. Expose the great solution-idea a bit earlier, and develop the characters involved and the conflicts to show the different angles and attributes of your idea as the solution to the various problems. The key is to make the thing interesting, or your Idea won't matter.
Methinks the Wachowskis forgot that with their carte blanche control over the sequels.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I just watched it, thank goodness for time difference and living in the far east. Ok, here are the spoilers.
1. Neo and Agent Smith beat the shit out of each other.
2. Neo and Trinity kiss. Many times.
3. Locke thinks Morpheus is a lunatic
4. The sentinels lay waste to Zion's defense.
5. Persephone was really cute.
6. The Oracle bakes more cookies
7. There is no spoon.
* 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.
MUST NOT READ THREAD...
Must not...
<struggles with mouse>
Aw, crap!
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
In the Matrix, all three of the Matrix movies would have rocked.
I think the poster meant that if you are
going to waste several years of your life
being tortured in operant conditioning until
you are forced to master encoding and
decoding ideas scratched onto mashed tree
pulp with a soft rock using an incredibly
redundant and perversely obscure encoding
mechanism, then you've got a lot of
subjective motivation to claim that others
who haven't endured the same pointless agony
are somehow inferior to yourself.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
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.
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 saw it in Westwood (a trendy part of Los Angeles) and there was a video crew filming fan reactions outside the theater.
"Give us your opinion of the movie," they asked.
I replied, "How about this, I give you the finger, and you give me my $9.75 back."
I suspect I won't make the final edit for the commercial.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
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
The problem is, you've already seen 2/3rd of the triology. Would you really put down a book after 2/3rds, or stop watching a show after 2/3rds of the season? I wouldn't, either I'd stop rather quickly or follow it through. At least not a show with development that is, like e.g. 24. A show where you can miss 10 eps and it'll still be the same basic gag, like Friends, Seinfeld or Frasier is different.
In a triology, the second film is usually the worst. The first is "new", and the last has all the big "final/ultimate" scenes. The second is well.. it's usually just more of the same. Maybe Matrix: Revolution is an exception to the rule, but it's not really all that stupid to find out.
The problem is, I want to know what happens to Neo and Trinity. Good, bad story, I still want to
"know". Of course you might say that is silly and that it's just a movie and it doesn't matter. But if you don't care about what you're watching, why do it at all? And I want to see the last of the LotR films too, even if all the critics say it's a complete and utter turkey (which I don't think they will, but anyway). Just human nature, I think...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
His review is here.
It's very rare to have something as extraordinary as the first Matrix movie. It was a great movie and will no doubt be a classic.
But to two or more classics in one series? It's not going to happen... ever. The only exception is Star Wars (Episodes 4-6). They are no doubt sci-fi classics. It was also one big story split up into 3 parts (or was it 6 parts but he only made the last 3?)
People went into the Phantom Menace expecting to be utterly wowed as they were when they were kids (okay, and some adults) seeing the original Star Wars movies. Here's a tip: it's never going to be as good as the original. It's nothing but an extension of the original story for die-hard fans. That and good marketing.
Just because a movie doesn't live up to the hype of the original doesn't make it a "bad" movie. Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones weren't nearly as good as the original Star Wars movies, but they weren't HORRIBLE movies.
I highly doubt that the original Matrix was created with two sequels in mind. Perhaps the Matrix could've done what Star Wars did if they elaborated more with the first movie and made it longer to split into 3 parts.
But really, it's just a sequel. Hype (caused by fans) is what "ruins" a movie. No, it won't be as good as the original Matrix, but it's not a BAD movie. Reloaded wasn't a BAD movie. It was simply over-hyped.
It happens with everything. Movies, music, video games, tv... something good and original comes out and if the second installment doesn't make you crap your pants like the original did, it's merely "okay" or "old".
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
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!
:-(
I agree. Last time I was at a bookstore, I even noticed that Lord of the Rings, this masterpiece of an epic, is already out in book form.
Pathetic what lengths commercialization will go to these days. There's just no leaving good movies alone anymore.
You don't bang a dominatrix. If you're lucky, you get banged by her. :-)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Much like the original cut of Bladerunner with the narration by Harrison Ford dubbed on and that horrible, horrible ending - both forced on Ridley Scott by the studo because they thought audiences wpuldn't "get" the story, and that they wouldn't like it if it didn't have a happy ending.
Scott's director's cut, released later, is the film as he intended it and it's much better.
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'm absolutely flabbergasted by the huge holes that are left at the end of Revolutions.
One of the biggest complaints is, of course, the end. At the end of the movie, we see that everyone is still plugged into the Matrix, so nearly 99% of humanity is still trapped, we don't get to see released people really enjoying what they've won, instead we see the programs enjoying the end! What is this? At the end of the film, we have the Oracle, Architect, Seraph and that little kid enjoying this new 'peace', but that's not who we wanted to enjoy peace in the first place!
The holes that are left are not meant to be pondered, they're simply completely missing entirely.
The Twins? Nope, they just kinda went away.
The spoon he was given? No reason. Maybe it helped Neo psychologically, we don't know.
The 15 minute rave scene? Yeah, we're under attack, so lets party. MTV totally said it right on their parody. "There's a million machines coming to kill us, so we're going to party." Was there any significance to this scene in the end? Nope.
Neo and Trinity's sex scene? Perhaps used to make us feel like these two were in love, but otherwise no significance.
Near the end of the movie we're left with this huge Architect speech. Looking back, it doesn't even play a role in Revolutions. Does it really matter he's the sixth? Nope.
So how does Neo have powers in the real world? We're told it just kinda happened, a quick 2 liner by the Oracle.
That train station, did it even matter? It was just like this really stupid delay. There was indeed one cool part to that scene, where Neo tried to run out of it, and I felt like I was back in the Matrix world again, because the rules are being broken, but alas, that was it.
Interestingly, several points in the film we see Neo getting thrown up against a wall and you can see that its his stunt double. With such a significant CGI budget, please just mask the bloody face!
Does Persephone play a role? She states Trin is in love in Revolutions. Thanks. I needed that reminder because it wasn't already shoved down my throat.
Who is the mother of the matrix? Unless I'm not seeing something, no one. No one makes a clear indication who the heck the mother is! That entire ramble and revelation spoken to us was utterly pointless.
So in the end, lets take a look at what has been gained. Originally we had everyone trapped in the matrix. We have this place called Zion where the people who escaped live. At the end of Revolutions, everyone is still in the Matrix, and Zion, apparently, would still be the only place where the people who escaped live. The machines aren't going to attack Zion anymore, whoopee.
Being a big Matrix fan, I knew the producers had to close off several entire blocks of downtown Sydney for a day or so. Apparently it was the most expensive and elaborate piece of cinematography ever. Sooo...I honestly don't know where that scene was in Revolutions. I suspect it was the big fight between Neo and Smith at the end, but those are just buildings, really easy to make CGI out of them and look great. I was hoping to see some kind of amazing shot after everyone was freed and showing the world again in its beauty. All for naught. I heard there was a bus station bench in the set with the words "In memory of Thomas Anderson", I thought it would be really cool if the people of the Matrix learnt that it was Thomas that freed them, and thus the world after sorta regards him as this hero and his sacrifice to humanity could live on in the hearts of all people. But what are we left with? Nadda.
Why is there such a racial leaning in Zion? No reason given.
This entire thing about its a good thing Neo is still human? No reason, at no point does he ever even come close to being a machine.
Is the Counsel the 23 freed? Nope. That doesn't even play a role.
Counselor Hammods speech to Neo about machines helping us? Control? No reason.
Is there any reason for the burley brawl in
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
The biggest problem with the movie was change.
Ultimately, did Neo win? Regardless of if he lived or died in the end, the computers still control the matrix, and there are humans living under ground in Zion.
We go through three movies, and end up with no change.
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The more special effects, the more gee-whiz, super-blockbuster, 5.1 stereo rumbling, render-farm-rendered pixels are thrown on to the screen, the more bored and more impatient audiences get?
Wouldn't it be ironic if special effects increased boredom? $200 million later, it's really not all that much better than the book? Could that actually be what audiences are thinking?
Interesting question. It should be pointed out that just about every major blockbuster special-effects-genre movie in the last 3-5 years has been often reviewed as "boring," with the possible exception of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy which, ironically enough, is based on the books.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
... is if Trinity or Persephone get NEKKID in this one?
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
If you really wanna read this whole thread, go ahead but, here it is in a nutshell.
1. 98% of the posts say, "The new flick isn't as good as the first one (no shit?, one asks).
2. You could say the readership of slashdot is split almost evenly as to whether or not it's better than the second.
3. Bunch of posts saying hollywood sux.
4. Will there be another Matrix movie and money making media releases?
5. Some asswipe who wasn't modded down to hell for saying Glendale CA rocks in response to a post by a user who says they saw the new flick in Glendale.
6. If you're reading this much Matrix material on slashdot, you should burn pictures of 'Trinity' under your mattress and take a shower.
7. If you're writing this list, jesus go away bitter old man thoughts...
8. A Star Wars / Matrix / Lord of the Rings is better flamewar/circlejerk.
9. Someone probably suggesting they do an edit to the Matrix trilogy removing Neo like they did with Jar-Jar Binks.
10. People bitching that they should do an apt-get/emerge/beowulf parallel compile on their freebsd based G5 cluster with --Matrix-Flags=disable-neo-fuck-scenes.
In Soviet Slashdot, sigs are posts and non-sigs are sigs.
I must say I whole-heartidly disagree with you on many of the points that you complained about.
... take this objection how you will :)
... lower the bar :)
1) Trinity's death served a purpose, it was a humanizing factor. This story should be viewed as an allegory to human existence. We succede, we fail, we live, we die yet the struggle is always occuring. Furthermore she touches on the fact that ultimately love is the most important thing.
2. Ok I would agree here, it was a bit drawn out.
3. Neo losing his sight was incredibly important furthermore you have to close the bane plot loop up. Neo's lack of visual sight opens his eyes to another visual world. I haven't fully wrapped my mind around this one but I none-the-less feel its important
4. That's the whole point of the the human drama. We struggle and we fail but we get back up and try again. If you view it from a good-evil win-lose framework it's very disappointing but if you're willing to step back and view it from the framework of what makes us human it's a perfect ending.
5. Eh, what'd you expect an Oscar winning performance? It's Keanu
6. Willful suspension of disbelief, although that might be a bit much to ask. I would say his whole jacking in is a little odd but maybe he's got some WIFI going on or something.
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 really liked the thirteenth floor, a film that had another layer of reality. A few other films have done the same thing, and in some cases done it well.
The original Matrix really worked as a movie. It is probably the ultimate Hollywood production, in formula and coolness. The Thirteenth Floor was not as cool, but it was really well written and had some great scenes and lines (why would he try to tell ME about the limits of the simulation?).
The Wachowskis could probably have come up with a better ending if they had had more time, more opposition (especially critical opposition), less access to effects, and less money. Too much money kills way faster than too little.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Dodge this.
Seastead this.
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.
That's great....but it still has to have a plot and character development that means something...
I can say my pile of crap in the toilet is named Machiovelli, and you should fear my pile of crap, but in the end...its still a pile of crap...
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
First I'd like to say how good it feels to know that I got to see this movie at 1230 CST Wed. morning and that I can go see it again for free whenever I feel the urge. (I work in a movie theater) Secondly, They tried to explain about how the programs have personalities. I came up with an idea, perhaps programs in the matrix are really another level of existence. Think Hindu reincarnation here, perhaps in the grand scheme of things you could be reincarnated as a program. It would explain why they have personalities and love and hate. Reincarnation would certainly cause them to forget they were human in a past life. It might be a stretch but it's always a possibilty. Personally, I like the movie and enjoyed the way it is set up for another sequel, or fanfic, or games, or anything.
sig?
I think you got hooked on the last scene in the first movie and can't se past it-- as if the next 2 movies were somehow supposed to be focused around it. The plot evolves to become what it is.. More depth is unravelled as you go.
Neo doesn't die.
He is carried off into the machine world after he completes his quest. He is motionless after a battle, just like the second movie. Granted, Trinity is dead as dead can be. The Orcale and the last refugee give an homage to Neo with the sunset at the end, but that doesn't mean he's dead. The Oracle answers he guardian's question quite accurately: "no, I didn't see any of this... I had hope."
Overall, this was a great movie. I have some questions that I want answered, but it did a good job answering most of them. For example, the Oracle and the Architect are cordial adversaries, and Agent Smith and Neo a ying/yang brothers, whose mother is the Oracle. The reason why the movie changes focus from the people in the Matrix to the peopel in Zion is clear to me. More insight as to WHY Neo was found is unravelled and you realize this is a fight between the architect and the oracle, which are representations of order and chaos as created by the machines.
The movie is deep. Just because it changes direction does not mean that was not intended in the first place. It may take a turn or two that I disagree with, but overall it leaves me wanting one more movie... the one where the people are freed from the Matrix and Neo leads them to the promised land. Judging by the end of this
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
the 13th floor was much more well done than existenz, but still lacked commercial success due in large part to the inaccessibility of its execution of nested realities.
it's worth noting that both existenz and 13th floor were much more straightforward than the matrix and less densely packed with metaphors. they seemed to be merely a cursory exploration of the subject for the purpose of telling that particular story, rather than a piece on the philosophy of reality itself.
that aside, if you build up a story around certain characters, revealing at the end that they weren't 'real' robs the entire sequence of cinematic weight for most people. This is very similar to the 'it was all just a dream sequence' movies, which are similarly, uniformly reviled. Excepting the case where it is established early on that the movie is about people exploring the reality of the dream sequence, such as Flatliners.
All three movies (13th floor, existenz, the matrix) establish early on that they take place primarily in a virtual world for a reason. Cinematically you must establish that what matters in the alternate world -matters-. there is a -real- person at the end of the line being affected by what happens in the fake reality.
you can't lie to your audience and change the rules halfway through. The audience will naturally try to sympathize with the characters that are most like themselves in the story. If you reveal your main characters are just dreams or simulations of -actual- real people at the very end - the audience will feel cheated that they cared about pointless conflicts and characters.
13th floor and existenz are robbed of rewatchability for most because the whole movie is a gotcha. the ending implies that everything that happens was pointless, as the most human characters, the ones the audience will relate to, are not affected whatsoever by the previous sequences. They have their own tangential motives and are wholly removed from what just happened.
the 'real' characters aren't the ones struggling and exploring reality. So there's no point in watching it again, beyond study, because nothing that happens matters to the 'real' characters.
Note how audiences didn't care when normal people were killed by the dozens in the original Matrix? Simulated people aren't seen as 'real', and receive no broad audience emotional attachment.
Philosophically that's an incorrect analysis, but it is still the emotional reaction of the mass audience at this point in human history.
(Any form of life capable of higher order thought and memory experiences its reality as being just as 'real' as you or I experience our own reality. thusly they should be considered just as 'real' as you or I.)
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
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
"And since when has there been c/c++ libraries for controlling living flesh? "
Since Agent Smith wrote one. Agent Smith learned, baby. A program which learned how to hack itself, and the human brain as well.
Almost as good as the first one? Not sure yet.
With that said, I can say that Revolution will go down as one of the best, it not the best sci-fi finale ever for a trilogy. (LOTR doesn't count, as it's fantasy). Much better than episode 6 of Star Wars, and probably better than what the finale of the prequels will be.
Contrary to what other people say, I don't believe there are any holes at the end of the movie.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
First of all, for all of those that said that the machine didn't care that their food could go bye-bye, well, that's not a plot hole, it was EXPLAINED why they accept so in the architect rant at the end of the 2nd one.
Second, why should we know what happens with Zion? Do you really need to see them have another rave of something? They'll rebuild what they can, and that's it. No need to do some cheesy crossfades of clips of people rebuilding the city. Those who want to be unplugged from the Matrix will be, and will live with the humans, as the Architect and the Oracle say at the end. What Neo, and Trinity and Morpheus and everyone wanted most of all to give is CHOICE. CHOICE to be part of the Matrix or not. It's not as if people were badly treaten inside the Matrix. They were happy and everything. The difference between what will go on after the end of the 3rd movie and what was going on before is that humans were hunted and killed when they rejected the Matrix, as they serve no purpose to the machines anymore. Now they will be allowed to be free. It's not as if everyone is going to disconnect from the Matrix all at once.
Anyway, having everyone disconnect would be a really bad idea because after all, the earth is destroyed, there's no hope to get it cleaned up and livable. If they want to live in that mess, FINE, now it's THEIR CHOICE TO DO so. They're not forced to be in the Matrix anymore.
Also, face it Neo is dead. For once, the hero dies in a movie. And I'm glad he did, because seeing him back with the rest of the people Zion would just feel so cheesy. Anyway, for those who doubt he's dead, I'm pretty sure there's gonna be an entry on IMDB soon about how this film as a connection with King Arthur's story. Notice how when his body was carried at the end on a machine ship it looked oddly like when Arthur is laying on a ship and going to the sea when he dies?
why,oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?!
Yesterday I liked matrix A LOT.
I came from the showing and after waiting two hours for sunny morningdrawi... rendering by some kid-AI, who has never "seen" the sun I asked again:
What did I expect? Why was I SOOOOOO disappointed?
My answer: previous two movies build on something, urge you to think. They use, pretty loosely, you must admit, symbols, which are existing, many believe are existing or some of us think, that it would be kind of logical, if they existed. Those symbols are redefined using sci-fi terminology and re-associated somehow and more or less it makes kind of sense in techno-fairytale way.
I expected that the last movie would define some fundamental unification to show us some vision of working "whole" thing, but it just broke everything. It didn't tell us (at least to me) ANYTHING I didn't already know (didn't give me anything to dig out, think of). Even the things that somehow supported some imaginary plotline were something, that were already drawn out in past episodes or you have heard your grandma telling them, when you were 10 and just didn't care that much, to listen. By now (I'm way past 20) I have already discovered those things by myself, as would any thinking person at some point. This talk about equations? someone unbalancing them, and then waiting with sadistic joy, how they would rebalance themselves?! This is so fucking common sense, who they think they are surprising with that(just another sci-fi example: 5th element, breaking the glass) AGAIN?!?! But that's all the fun that's left after those events: just tweaking some variables and recalculating equations. Not your "deep grand point", is it?
They actually destroyed everything "FUN" and left us with the same boredom!! No Neo no superman-thing!
"Let anyone who wants, out" ?! are they going to run TV-ads, like "want to see what all you bodybuilders really look like?"; "want to make your pointless existence more pointless? join us!"..
How are they imagining to trick anybody to join the matrix online game after that? if everything continues to develop as one grand plot, I would have to code there again to earn my boring buck. I don't expect to get my own "construct program" to load "anything I need".
Love? As they said: just another definition, a word, a rule in "game". Not your all defining point either.
Ok, maybe Love is "fun", while it clouds your analytical mind. Works for someone with un-modifiable instincts, but for machines, with backups and interchangeable parts?! That again does not define really anything except some context-dependent purpose... Again nothing new...
But purpose? Cause and effect? It's good to know, there is a reason why I have to go and pee every now and then, but again: probably I'm old enough to figure that one out myself...
I didn't expect, that they would tell me "how can I get out of here" :)) but I expected some great story, some entertainment, instead of sci-fi retelling of things every grandma can tell you.
And why I liked X-men 2? Not considering the deepness of the story, characters did "what they seemingly wanted" and you didn't have to shout: "stupid, why didn't you do this, instead of that stupid stunt?!?!?!?!?!"... It felt just right what they did in this fairytale.
In this last matrix, while I was waiting for the movie to go on... it just felt plain wrong!!
This train station-thing was REAAAAALLLYYYY artificial for my analytical mind... (well, some "old ugly hacker-program" supposedly built this Neo-ghost-compatible transfer-plug-in accidentally resembling a "limbo" from countless fairytales ( bible? ) and computer games, daaaah?! )
And specially while this mystical machine-attack, where sentinels acted EXTREAMLY stupid?! everybody who has ever played some starcraft or C&C knows, that only way to destroy a force many times more powerful is to know exactly from where it's coming and expecting, that after a savegame those things come and act stupid exactl
Not to be too offtopic, but I think "The Second Renaissance" (Parts 1 & 2) from the Animatrix are the best parts of the whole friggin 'Matrix Universe'
These two mini-movies contain more truth and brutal reality than all other Matrix movies combined.
Just my 2cents...
So how could any of the sequels have the same kind of suspense? We already know a lot of the story, so there isn't nearly as much room for surprise.
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
Anyone who does not like a movie that someone else liked did not "get" it.
This can be taken a number of ways. From the "you aren't smart enough to understand it" to "you aren't cool enough to understand the references" down to "you aren't uneducated enough to think that this material hasn't been done to death already".
How many people want to watch 12 hours of "Barney"? Dude, you just don't "get" Barney.
But there are lots of 3 year olds that would love that.
And they'll watch it over and over and over.
The Matrix was a decent movie. A little bit off on the science bit (human batteries) with some light philosophy thrown in and lots of guns and explosions and a hot chick in leather.
The sequels aren't as good. There's the "Matrix" world which is a computer simulation but the computers have real locations in the real world.
Now there is a "world between"?
They aren't keep up with their philosophy. There is the real world, there is the fantasy world that you have to wake up from, but now there is a third reality?
The way the fantasy world affects the real world is with the squids. They don't need the Smith character in the real world. He doesn't provide any clarification of the plot.
Neo should not be affecting the squids in the real world. Fantasy powers should stay in the fantasy world. I can accept that you die in the real world if you're killed in the fantasy world because that injects an element of danger. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any real threat to people operating in the Matrix.
The biggest problem I see with this trilogy is that it wasn't planned to be a trilogy. The second movie invalidated parts of the first movie and the third movie invalidated parts of the first and second movies.
Return of the Matrix -- The Sequel, Episode $$$
... Neo! Yousa da one!
... are a disease. And I -- we -- are the cure.
Scene I
Setting: In the swamps of Zion.
Morpheus: [ with much spit and slobber ]
B-b-b-b-b
Neo: [ questioningly ]
Dude?
Morpheus:
Yousa gonna teach Z-z-z-zion howza fight! B-b-b-b-b-b!
Neo: [ righteously ]
Dude.
Trinity:
Help us, Johnny Mnemonic! You're our only hope!
Neo: [ emphatically ]
Dude!
Scene II
Setting: In the Matrix world, which looks suspiciously like Rivendell placed on the Forest Moon of Endor.
Agent Smith:
Hobbits
Neo: [ puzzled ]
Dude?
[ Agent SMITH divides like an amoeba, but unsuccessfully. The second Agent MINI-SMITH is only 1/4 the size of the original. ]
Mini-Smith:
Ki-yii!
[ Uses martial arts to punch and kick NEO, along with the larger SMITH. ]
Neo: [ startled ]
Dudes!
[ Fighting ensues. At each punch at a SMITH, the SMITH divides into more MINI-SMITHS. The MINI-SMITHS mainly try to bite NEO's crotch. ]
Neo: [ pleading ]
Dudes!!??!!
[ All the population of ZION appears. Most of them look like Ewoks. Most of the Ewoks of ZION are wearing pink.]
Ewoks of Zion: [ caringly ]
Ooooo! They're so cute!!!
[ ZION swarms MINI-SMITHS ]
Mini-Smiths:
Nooooo!!
[ MINI-SMITHS run away; as they are beaten they are dividing into more MICRO-MINI-SMITHS on the way. ]
Neo: [ victoriously ]
Dudes!!!
SCENE III
Setting: A parade field in the landing bay of an Imperial Star Destroyer.
Trinity:
For bravery in the face of danger, and the best played game of 3D Tic-Tac-Toe Hogwarts has seen in many a year, I award you this diploma. No, wait, you get the medal.
[ TRINITY kisses NEO ]
Neo: [ lustily ]
Dudette!
Ewoks:
Awwww!
[ EWOKS break into joyous song of celebration. Roll credits. ]
SCENE IV
Setting: Theatre lobbies around the nation.
Audience: [ waving pitchforks and brandishing torches ]
We want our money back!
Wachowskis: [ laughing, on the way to bank ]
Ka-ching, suckers! Did you really think it would end any other way?
John
I have to disagree (with most of what you said, but let's just focus on this one, because I think I can make a convincing point on this one).
...which forces Neo to make the final connections. Blinded, he makes the final connection to his 'powers' -- he 'sees' Bane, and it is apparent that this is as suprising to him at it is to Bane. He achieves the final control he needs not only to penetrate the machine world's defenses physically, but to achieve the control he needs to defeat Smith in the Matrix, and to reprogram the Matrix at the end (what, you think that the 'Neo-Matrix' looking nicer is just a coincidence?)
In the fight scene we get:
- Bane/Smith making some good exposition about how much he, the machine, still hates humans and "living in the flesh". It is clear that Smith really is Neo's antithesis -- he will never want "peace", neither with the humans nor with the other machines.
- Bane/Smith blinds Neo physically...
-
The fight takes Neo's physical sight. That is the final link to his gnosis -- he is now totally cut off from 'seeing' the world of illusion, he sees the world as energy and knows how to manipulate that energy.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Besides stealing from many other sci fi films, does anyone see the BLATANT similarities between NEO's "condition" and that of the ONE major charater in Dune?
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.
What is the significance of MOBIL AVE ?
This was written all over the walls at the the train station... any ideas?
- Slew -
I believe the Matrix is largely incomprehensible unless one has at least a reasonable familiarity with S0ren Kierkegaard ("SK") and crisis theology. In fact, I'd argue that the series narrows down from its expansive view of philosophy in the first two movies to, in both the EtM video game and M:Rv, a tight focus on Kierkegaard's conception of freedom as radical choice. By contrast, M:Rld went all over the philosophical map, my favorite example being that the Zion council seems to be populated entirely by Jamesian Pragmatists (including Cornel West, whose most interesting work was a sustained discussion of American Pragmatism).
Just a few Kierkegaardian references in the Matrix:
- In EtM (which crystallized my understanding of TM as Kierkegaardian), Ghost quotes SK on faith and absurdity. In the game, the tripartite crew of Sparks, Niobe, and Ghost are almost certainly representative of SK's view of human life as aesthetic, ethical and religious, respectively. (The three Demiurges -- the Merovingian, Architect, and Oracle -- seem to recapitulate this schematic.)
- The Christ parallel in Neo is so blatant as to hardly be worth mentioning, but his death deserves some observations: he died to redeem Man (and Machine), since Trinity's death precluded his doing it out of love for any one individual; his death redeemed M&M from Smith (who seems, amongst many other things, to represent Original Sin, being the ultimate descendent from the war between M&M); his death also freed the condemned from hell (when the Architect agrees to release programs and persons who wish to leave the Matrix).
- When Neo dies, the machine-ruler says, "It is done." This is the same thing Christ says in John 19:30 (and is also used two more times in the Bible -- after the world is created in Genesis, and after it is destroyed in the Revelation). Smith is then rescinded from the world, the Matrix is created anew, and peace descends upon Zion. Apart from begging the infralapsarian question, this reinforces the idea of Neo as propitiation (as many Christians see Christ dying to expiate the sins of Man). I'm a bit uneasy with this part because Neo is shown as bargaining for salvation -- something that is completely incoherent in most versions of Christianity, and more importantly, within Kierkegaard. At the same time, I have to wonder what happens to Neo at this point. In John, Christ says, "It is done," then commends his soul to God. Does this imply that Neo has joined with the machine-ruler? Is one of the reasons peace descends because Neo has joined the machine-consciousness and broken the old covenant of slavery? Is he a mediator between man and machine (viz 1 Tim. 2:5-6)?
- The Trainman is deeply concerned with time: when we meet him in EtM, he tells Niobe how many hours Zion can be expected to last against the machine onslaught. ("72 hours. That's exactly how long Zion lasted last time.") In M:Rv, he is obsessed with punctuality, and has an intimate connection with time, shown by the many watches he wears on his wrist and his intimate knowledge of train schedules. This emphasis on time seems designed to evoke SK's discussion of time in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, in which he directly discusses the entrance of eternity into time. (The Oracle's line in EtM, "The path of the One is made by the many," echoes SK's assertion that the many discrete points of temporality create the possibility of eternity.)
- Kierkegaard's doctrine of radical choice permeates the script, culminating in the Smith v. Neo showdown. I suspect that Smith is meant to represent (amongst many things!) existentialism, just as the Age
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
The answers to the big questions that you're left with after the 2nd movie are glossed over in literally one or two sentences. "oh ummm there's some magic mumbo jumbo 802.11b wireless brain chip or something, and the French guy has some magic subway train. There's your explanation, on to the hour-long action sequence!!"
/. you aren't very smart.
Oh, and the hour-long action sequence we got!
That had to be the absolute worst battle sequence I've seen in those movies my brain has allowed me to remember.
And if you don't want more spoilers than that, don't read on. But if you don't want spoilers and are reading this on
The entire horrible problem with that insipid scene can be summed up thusly: There were too fucking many squids and the humans didn't die.
Of course I'm long winded and irritated at the recent pain.
The scene should have been at most a minute long. Drill drops through. Squids come through, and are temporarily held back by the concentrated gunfire of the defenses. Some eventually break through forcing the humans to spread their fire, allowing more to come through. Eventually there's a massive swarm, an opaque cloud streaming from the hole and gathering around the ceiling. This all takes about 50 seconds.
Now, in the good version of the movie -- this titanic swarm in which you can barely distinguish individual squids -- spreads out, swoops down, and fucking envelopes the human army. Within moments, every last defender in the docks has been disemboweled. Giving the humans the benefit of the doubt, this takes about ten seconds.
Geek note: You can see the squids fighting this way in Second Renaissance in the Animatrix, and it looks viciously effective against infantry. It takes them a bit longer to cut through actual armor like the humans had in the short, but is still deadly. So in the good version of the movie, give the humans thirty seconds.
But instead the squids start flying around in tightly packed tubules of squids, like gigantic robotic recreations of The Abyss. And I mean flying around not attacking. I just feel I should emphasize that. Because they're flying in huge thick clouds, they're impossible to miss. So they're taking gigantic losses while just flitting around, and this is what they spend most of the godly interminable scene doing. Eventually the squid in the front of this tremendous mass will see a human looking at him funny, and will attack head-on bringing all ten thousand of his buddies behind him. The human will fire at the front of the squid-stream with their high-velocity high-rpm weaponry that goes right through the squids killing masses until one chickens out and pulls off. Repeat for way too god damn long.
Sometimes a squid will break off and flit about on its own. These are the only ones that manage to kill anyone, mostly from surprise. But even they mostly just fly around. Even when the big drill got a leg blown up, only a squid or two decides to notice that someone is firing rockets at it.
Which reminds me: Before the battle, the commander guy keeps talking about how important it is to target the bores so they can't dig through into the city. So when the tip of the drill emerges through the roof of the dock, I'm loudly thinking That's the bore's bit! That's what you want to destroy! Shoot it! But the humans just sit there until squids start pouring out.
So at least partially due to their own stupidity, the humans lose anyway. There's just too many squids. Which is the problem. Whether for rendering reasons or because it was the only way to make the scene longer than two seconds the result is the same: The squids end up with AI that is a cross between Galaga and Centipede, only not as smart.
Cut down the squids a lot. They said two hundred thousand or whatever, but it's okay to lie when you only bother to put in twenty humans. Make them (sq
The enemies of Democracy are