The Matrix Trailers, Reloaded and Re-Encoded

dark_lotus writes "The fine folks at The Matrix website, have re-encoded all 9 trailers from the original Matrix, bumped up the resolution and uploaded them for us to enjoy, including a never before released trailer. Also included, all the missing Reloaded and Revolutions Trailers and TV Spots - all now available to download."

Comments

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you download all of the trailers, when you can simply purchase the movies, barring the latest? Is this a recent fad, hoarding "previews"?

Re:Little late...

[big_groo]

Seems to me that a box set is on the way...

Re:Little late...

[gustgr]

A lot of people like to collect good encoded videos on their PC [I am one of them]. It is nice to collect and it is cheaper than buying DVDs, at least in contries under development like mine [Brazil] where DVDs [Region 4] takes several months to get on retail and are very expensives.

Just makes me think

[OgreChow]

After watching the trailers for the original, having not seen the first movie for a couple of years now, it set me to thinking. Imagine how much cooler the final two movies would have been if Neo had started the revolution of the Matrix from the inside, instead of from the outside.

Converting people on the inside, gaining an army of followers battling the system.

Re:Just makes me think

[the Man in Black]

had started the revolution of the Matrix from the inside, instead of from the outside.

Converting people on the inside, gaining an army of followers battling the system.

Which is exactly what Smith did. Makes you think about the convo between Neo and the Oracle:

Neo: What is he?
Oracle: He's you.

I think once all three are out, and can be watched back to back, there will be a better appreciation for the series. I recently re-watched Revolutions (in IMAX! Woo hoo!) and picked up on a lot of things that I missed the first time. Same goes with repeat viewings of Reloaded.

I think people just wanted a slam-bang action movie with guns and martial arts and cool effects (like the first). Though, knowing the /. crowd, had it been that all we'd be talking about is how 'trite' it was and how they 'basically remade the first movie' and blah blah blah.

Torrents?

[Seek_1]

If anyone is able to grab them and start a Torrent, I'd be more than happy to join up..

Doesn't work

[TrekkieGod]

You can't "convert" people on the inside. Until they are freed, agents are able to take over their body. It's why, in the first movie, Switch holds a gun to Neo during the entire time they're driving to see Morpheus. It's the reason for the "lady in red" training. It's the reason why, when Neo was running from Smith at the end of the first movie, and he ran into this really crowded place, he uttered "shit".

Now, sure...you can free a whole bunch of people (which Neo did...Morpheus mentions in reloaded more people had been freed in the past 6 months then had been in the past 6 years). Then you could send them all into the matrix to fight...what? The rest of the humans still plugged in? The very people you're trying to save? Heck, you'd need way too many hovercrafts to get these people up to broadcast depth, all to do something Neo can do on his own. Inside the matrix, he rules. If he can't handle something, no amount of "normal" people can. The only thing Neo was incapable of handling on a pure fight was Smith, and Smith has shown his ability to copy himself even into people that have been freed from the matrix (ie, Bane).

But yeah...I know what you mean. It would be much cooler to have a whole bunch of really good fight scenes inside the matrix than the whole boring Zion fight. Then again, I know a whole bunch of other people who think the exact opposite, were really tired of the wire-fu, and really liked the Zion battle.

I could live either way. All I needed was an explanation of what the heck happened. In an all-fantasy story like Lord of the Rings, anything goes...it's fantasy. With the matrix, the first matrix set the boundaries--the reason Neo can do all those things is because he's inside a computer program, and he can change the program somehow. Then, with Revolutions they pulled the whole "the power of the one extends beyond this world" thing. Why? The power of the one was changing the code of the matrix, what other power does he have that allows him to do things outside the matrix? Really, I wouldn't care how they approached the revolution, I just wanted a coherent storyline.

Re:Are you kidding?

[Lord_Dweomer]

"they're in CYA mode trying to 'reload' any interest in their franchise while they try to cobble together the Revolutions dvd. the interest in their films fell way off, and so they're trying to generate some positive press and keep the core fanbase interested. This is anything but selfless. They still have a dvd to sell that, judging by the attendance, not so many people care to buy at the moment."

This is a very valid point, but realize that this kind of stuff would normally end up as Extras on the upcoming DVD. I never doubted that this is advertising and a blatant attempt to build up some hype, but I credit them with the fact that they are giving it away for free as opposed to having the balls to try to charge for it like everybody else has been doing.

Re:cool

[daquake]

Never before released? The Mirage Trailer was the ONLY trailer I saw for the original MAtrix and I have a copy of it in my movies folder, what are the Wachowski's smoking now.. sheesh.

Re:The Oracle's last line in Matrix Revolutions

[wrt2]

Although I've got strong opinions of these movies -- I love them, and am happy for the temporary corporate insanity which allowed them to be produced -- I've not said much about them online. At the end of Revolutions, the Oracle is responding to Seraph's question, "Did you always know?" Spelling that question out fully, what Seraph is asking is did you know that Neo, rather than Smith, would end the war? The answer to that question is no. The Oracle made the choice to help Neo, but it was a choice she did not understand -- she couldn't see past it. She told Neo that "one way or another, this war is going to end," but she did not know which way. When the Architect tells the Oracle that "you've played a dangerous game," it is to acknowledge the fact that had her belief in Neo been misplaced, the Oracle's choice would have ended all sentient life on Earth.

I believe that Reloaded and Revolutions would probably work best shown back-to-back with a 15-minute intermission between. They tell a complex story involving a large cast of characters, all of whom are involved in a fight for survival and many of whom have to deal with one or more invalidations of their worldview, most significantly Morpheus and Neo. That this story is told in a hair over four hours screen time is amazing. Since there is no preexisting text to draw on (LoTR), and no novelization either (2001), the understanding of what it is you're seeing -- what's real and not real -- has to come from you "making up your own damn mind." I love that.

"You've played a dangerous game."
"Change always is."

Re:That's nothing

[fbg111]

people who don't normally read these kinds of things get sucked in, and the leave having discovered an entire new world. Unfortunately, they think that because the world is new to them, it must be new to everybody.

If it achieved exactly that and nothing more, then it accomplished a worthy mission. Do you have any idea how many Americans (at least) there are that read and have an understanding of philosophy, even as presented in the Matrix? That's right, about a relative handful. If this movie did anything to improve that number, then I say bravo!

On a side note, it seems a lot of people criticize these movies for being redundant in their investigation of our perception of reality. Yes, perhaps it has been done before, but I think the Wachowski's deserve credit for their chosen method of doing so. The concept of the Matrix turned out to be a perfect way of showing (not telling, as my high-school lit teacher admonished us) that our "interface" with reality consists of a nervous system based on electrical impulses, and can conceivably be manipulated, or hacked if you will.

Further, what was more interesting to me was the conflict of determinism vs. choice, or materialism vs. idealism. That also happened to be the underlying conflict of the Cold War, for anyone who knows anything about Marxism, Soviet Communism, and the Enlightenment ideals of America and the West. I found it most enjoyable to see that conflict played out in the setting of the Matrix: man vs. machine; absolute determinism vs. absolute free will. Since Reloaded and Revolutions dealt more with that conflict, while The Matrix dealt mostly with the nature of reality, I enjoyed the second two movies just as much, and more in Reloaded's case, than the first.

Re:That's nothing

[Slarty]

That's kinda funny, I thought had become pretty accepted now that the original rocked and the sequels sucked. Although you're right, Revolutions was (aside from a few cool sequences) much more of a let-down than Reloaded was. And Reloaded was... well, it wasn't a bad movie, but it was so vastly far outside the scope of the original movie that I think people were a bit shocked. It's kind of like comparing LOTR to The Hobbit... same world, waaaaaaay larger scope. Although LOTR worked, Revolutions mostly didn't.

Anyway... is anyone else noticing that the newly re-encoded trailers are a bit disappointing in terms of quality? I've watched a couple of the quicktime ones, and the quality is more like decently captured NTSC than anything else. When I saw "bumped up resolution" I was hoping for the 1000x540 pixels that the Reloaded trailer was released in, with the same frickin' amazing quality. Now THAT was a trailer. Anyone got that lying around? (trailer_final_1000_dl.zip) I don't anymore, and I'd love to have a copy!