Ten-disc 'Matrix' DVD Box Set Planned

squishey writes "The Matrix trilogy is to be released as part of a special ten-disc DVD boxset in time for Christmas, according to the DVD Times. Out on December 12 and with an RRP of 44.99." Includes a lot of stuff you probably already own, and a few things you might want... like a version of Reloaded with the Enter the Matrix footage included.

Comments

For those wondering this isnt Region 1....

[arock99]

A box set hasnt been annouced for region 1 yet (US & Canada).

Re:For those wondering this isnt Region 1....

[IWantMyNickBack]

So? Make it work.

There's a trilogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I'm concerned, there is only The Matrix. I refuse to acknowledge the existence of any followup films.

Re:There's a trilogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is how I feel about 'Highlander'. Truly, there can be only one... movie.

Re:There's a trilogy?

[no reason to be here]

For a mindless summer blockbuster, there was a good dose of philosophy and symbolism in The Matrix. Add to that the fact that, in 1999, those really were some freakin' cool special effects. I was, however, let down that the first movie devolved into a blow 'em up, shoot 'em up gun fest. There was a lot of potential there halfway through that was lost the instant Neo says they need "Guns. Lots of guns."

Re:There's a trilogy?

[General Wesc]

I must have missed the part with the interesting philosophy. I saw Socrates repeated for the ten thousandth time. Socrates, Descartes, myself, and everyone else who has every though about what they know.

I like philosophy. I'm doubling in philosophy. But when someone says a film has a lot of good philosophy in it, I generally expect to see some ideas that haven't been mainstream for 2,000 years and haven't been rehashed in half the science fiction previously written.

The other two made decent action films. I actually prefered them. They weren't great, but at least they didn't waste all their time rehashing trite scifi storylined. Well, they didn't seem as trite.

My brother (not an action fan, but certainly a scifi fan) summed up The Matrix fairly well, I though: they discover that this is all a big illusion and nothing in the simulation is real. So they get a bunch of not-real guns and shoot all the not-real stuff. WTF?

(Probably is better on the big screen. Oh well. Too late now, I suppose.)

Re:There's a trilogy?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

But when someone says a film has a lot of good philosophy in it, I generally expect to see some ideas that haven't been mainstream for 2,000 years and haven't been rehashed in half the science fiction previously written.

Why would you expect that? Has there ever been a movie that met your philosophy quotas? Would even Waking Life make the cut? None of the ideas in that moving are something you wouldn't hear a philosophy 101 undergrad say. Pure ideas simply don't render well into visual medium.

The Matrix is great, possibly even artistically great, for two reasons--how well it translates those fairly simple ideas into the visual (Waking Life rules for the same reason), and the suggested isomorphism between the machines hallucinogenic domination of humanity and the forms of social control that exist in our present day world (or at least a anarchist's punk caricature thereof). The sci-fi aspects are secondary to the social parable aspects--which is why things like the obviously second law of thermodynamic violations like "human batteries" are allowed.

Sure, you can read about a brain in a vat in your textbook, but that doesn't capture the creepy absurdity of the idea--you wake up, go to work, work hard all day--but it's just an illusion--you're actually sleeping suspended in nutritive fluid, with tubes sticking out of your servo-mechanical orifices, while sadistic machines are poking and proding you on a doomed Earth under an eternal nighttime sky. You never knew it, but the entire planet is dedicated to making sure you never wake up.

There's nothing new about the idea, it's the visual translationg that's noteable.

But the truly interesting ideas aren't in the philosophy or science of it, but in the politics. The people of the Matrix are required to go to school even though learning can take place in an instant, and go to work even though the "food" they purchase and consume has no effect on their metabolism--their jobs don't exist to serve any purpose, they exist merely as a distraction, to prevent an uprising by the masses.

Consider our present day world--a very miniscule population is required to grow the food we eat in America, and an ever dwindling population is required to produce the products we use Check the numbers--we aren't losing manufacturing jobs to China and India, the World is losing jobs to robots and automation. The government subsidizes both agriculture and manufacturing to keep those populations artificially high. Capitalism, like the Matrix, exists not to meet our material needs, but merely to keep the masses occupied. I'm not saying I believe this, but I believe it is the hidden message of the Matrix--that whether or not we live in an actual "Matrix" of physical hallucination, we still live our day to day lives in a "social" hallucination.

Indeed, perhaps the Second Law ignorance of the Matrix is in fact a parody of the Second Law ignorance of capitalism--why am I paid to work, when work merely uses up the only thing that's TRULY scarce in our world, useable energy.

Okay, I'm reaching on that last one.

Still, one interesting thing I remember from the second movie, when Zion's leader is comparing the machines that dominate humans to keep themselves energized to the machines humans dominate in order to keep Zion running. There's a point made about civil disobediance--what we have power over we grow to depend upon, and therefore has power over us. Zion's machines are model of the humans in the Matrix--which itself is a parable of modern social control. I thought that was kind of clever.

If only...

[ites]

...the successors to the Matrix were not some of the most disappointing films I've ever seen, I'd run out and buy tomorrow.

Re:If only...

[emorphien]

Amen. The second was bad, the third was unthinkable. They totally destroyed what was and could have been a really cool series and a lot of fun.

After a while it became really painful to watch those CGI'd smith and neo fights that would just drag on forever and had action similar to what a 10 yr old might daydream during english class. It went beyond the "matrix" physics and just became absurd. Everyone was so powerful there was no suspense.

Re:If only...

[teslatug]

Anyone else reminded of the DBZ fight scenes while watching those fights?

Re:If only...

[kahei]

But the fight down there was breathtaking. It was expertly conceived and executed. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen if I wanted to.


Yes, it was good the way the squids all poured in through this one hole, and the humans all stood stock still and shot at them... and more squids came... and the humans kept shooting... and more squids came and the humans shifted position veeeery slightly, and kept on shooting, just shooting and shooting and shooting until you wonder whether the budget simply didn't stretch to any other sound effect, and then they shoot some more...

Gripping stuff!

Enter the Matrix footage...

[rokzy]

...contains IMO Seraph's coolest moment - "first I must apologise" to one of the Captains with a gun, then backwards somersaults and knocks the gun out of his hand. Then quite a good fight to "get to know him" like he does to Neo.

Re:44.99 != $

[katorga]

The first Matrix was great and I own it on DVD. The second was so bad that I never got the DVD and never even bother to see the 3rd installment in the theater.

Extra footage

[singleantler]

"Matrix Reloaded Extended Version (190 minutes)

New cut incorporating 55 minutes of footage shot for the 'Enter The Matrix' game"

But is it enough to make it a good film?

I like this product, it shows they really want to suck as much money from the fans as possible while the second and third film still have some residual hype going. Having the mass of extra material will set a level that many other production companies will try to match in the future, just for bulk. It's just a shame it isn't for a better set of films.

Re:10 discs?

[Tassach]

In other words:

• Two versions of one cool movie
• Eight disks of self-aggrandizing ego balm wherein the W. bros try and reassure themselves about how cool and talented they are.

Re:That's sweet...

[dafz1]

Let's call it "George Lucas Syndrome".

The Wachowskis/Peter Jackson will release the version "they really wanted to make", after the royalties start drying up(though Jackson will be able to beat this horse for a while with the release of The Hobbit). I could see a redo of the battle of Pelennor Fields, or maybe the attack of the Ents at Isengard(that sequence bothered me).

Unlike Lucas and the original triogy, the Wachowskis can't make the new versions any worse than the original release.

useless matrix

[laurentc]

go Read Neuromancer by Gibson

It's much better value and probably will last you a lifetime copared to this inept excuse for a movie.

Re:DVD/CCA?

[Anonymous Coward]

use xine, ogle or mplayer to play any region dvds.

Re:Does anyone care?

[squiggleslash]

It wasn't disappointing because it followed Matrix 2 which was so awful that, frankly, if Spiderman 2 had been called "Matrix 3" it would have seemed like a quality sequel.

That said, my opinion of Matrix 3 has lowered since I watched it originally. I don't think it was the piece of crap most people claimed it was, but it certainly wasn't a worthy sequel to the original.

Re:Basic ROM Features?

[Winterblink]

Automatically installs crummy DVD player software that totally takes control away from the good one you alread had. That's just my guess though :)

Re:Does it bother anyone else...

[Migrant Programmer]

All movies go through a process called "editing" where the film is cut to fit the director's vision and the studio's time constraints. There have always been "extra" or "deleted scenes." With DVD, we get to see them. Before, we did not.

Admit it - the sequels are actually really cool

[LightStruk]

I'm probably going to get modded down for expressing a dissenting opinion, but I feel that this communal Matrix sequel bashing is unwarranted.

Admit it - you loved the ghost twins and the car chase extravaganza. You watched with mouth agape as Neo held his own against waves of Agent Smiths. You feasted your eyes on the gunfight in the club at the beginning of Revolutions. You delighted in the apocalyptic, desparate battle between the defenders of Zion and the machines.

And finally, you still found the philosophy intriguing. Do humans have free will, or are we as predictable and predestined as the Oracle and the Architect believe? Had you ever really thought about how much we depend on machines before the councilman's conversation with Neo? What would the offspring of software be like, and what happens to beings without "purpose?"

So, suck it up. Sure, there are major problems with the sequels. Nevertheless, I am GLAD I paid money to see them, and so are you.

Re:Admit it - the sequels are actually really cool

[somoney]

I agree ... I like them all very much. Any Slashdot reader who likes Anime should have liked the 3rd one since it had all the taste of Anime during the final fight. Too many people, IMO, just didn't get it all in the end. Oh well...

Re:Admit it - the sequels are actually really cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Something I once used as a nickname, the phrase "Each line of the program creating a new effect, much like poetry", which compares poetry to the art of coding and programming, made a friend of mine particularly happy, he liked the phrase a lot, being a programmer himself. Of course then I told him it's not my phrase, it's from the Bros.

The Merovingian, the French guy, says it while he's analyzing what is cause and effect in the restaurant. My friend did see the movie, it's just that at that time everyone was checking out Monica's big and large "assets", and failed to listen to this, may I say, quite interesting and beautiful comparison.

Now when one says "the philosophy" of the movies, I guess most people just hear that, "the philosophy", which they'll probably think it's the whole "humans vs machines", and should we create or not create machines, because one day they may turn against us.
But that's not all "the philosophy", specially since the sequels introduced many more themes, themes which for the majority of the viewers seem to be pretty much inexistent, themes like cause and effect, what makes us tick, why we do the things we do, also choice, explored in the first movie, is grandly expanded in the sequels.
There's also exploration on the themes of ressurection, the whole science aspect of the Matrix, how it works, the reaching of the Nirvana state, the choice to sacrifice oneself as so many did in the movies, like Trinity, the Oracle, Neo, the parents of the girl Sati, Captain Mifune (the captain of the mechs).
Now most of these themes make sense to think about in the world today, we see in the movies people who are capable of giving themselves up for others, something badly needed in our world, a sense of sacrifice for another. I can't see how that is meaningless.

I mean, the whole point of view on love by the program Rama Kandra, father of the little girl, isnt that just great, how these AI's that have been living amongst a human community seem to better understand concepts that we thought belong only to us!

Also I fail to grasp how the majority of the geek community doesn't appreciate the many nods to programming and to guys like us, for instance with the introduction of the grand white hallway in the matrix, like a backdoor way, a programmer's maintenance corridor, or the Architect, who sees himself as the master programmer, or the usage of an appropriate hacking tool when Trinity hacks the powerplant power rerouting, or even the whole deification of Neo, who started out this journey as a simple cubicle worker, maybe even checking out slashdot.org now and then!

Then there's the whole symbolism bit, which I do believe many of you wouldn't like exploring, because it's based on free association, there aren't rules, basically you just see something in the movie that could be similar to something else, and you make a connection, it becomes a symbolism, it means something, there's a point to be made there.
The symbolism may mean zip to you, but for me and my essay on the movies, it was a very important way of making and stating my points, basing myself on metaphors introduced in the movies.
And also another thing, the music, these movies have some of the best musical scores ever, specially Revolutions, with Neodammerung topping everything, I mean it's like a Wagnerian Opera with hindu lyrical chorus, that were taken straight from the Upanishads, sort of the Bible for Hinduism, and each and every line makes a point, it means something, like the first three who speak about each of the movies, and then the lyrics evolve into describing the One, the unification of all, and this exploration, this dissertation in hindu helps the viewer who is interested make sense on the choices and the why of Neo letting himself go in the final battle, accepting his destiny like a regular program would.
Basically, while Thomas Anderson took the red pill, to get out, Neo took the blue pill in the end, he sees the good in the virtual world, sees how they can change it and change the

Re:Does it bother anyone else...

[stienman]

You've got it all wrong.

The movies theaters are for showing the "film as it was meant to be shown to the masses" not the "film as intended by the director".

Movie theaters exist because home theaters are very expensive and it's more cost effective to see the movie in the theater than to invest in a good home setup.

Just as the movie industry had to change with the introduction of videotapes, they will again have to change when home theaters are less costly and more common.

But the upshot is that a movie theater is set up to have a fixed ticket price per movie. Some movies will never go longer than 1.5 hours, and others will require 3 hours or more. Theaters are not set up for graduated pricing, and they make significantly less money showing a longer film than showing a shorter one unless it also runs for several weeks longer and attracts a steady audience.

Theaters will not show long films that are not guranteed to draw huge audiences. Producers know this and force directors to cut films to a reasonable length. Directors, knowing that they will "always have the DVD", do so reluctantly and then polish the film for the extended DVD release. Did you notice how LoTR 1 played in theaters for weeks longer than LoTR 3? There's a cost/benefit ratio here. If you want to see the movie as the director intended (given the budget they had) then you buy the extended edition. Consumers are happy, fans are happy, studios make millions, and the smurfs escape from gargomel once again.

So don't feel cheated. You're paying $9 for a $9 experience. This is the edition the director expected you to spend $9 for. Remember that the directors and the theaters are at the mercy of the movie studios/producers. If you don't like it, then spend time writing letters and faxes to the studios - both when they do good and when they do bad. But don't blame the theater owners when they start raising prices across the board to accomodate the one or two movies a year that are 4 hours long.

Remember that we American Consumers like our flat rates.

-Adam

Re:44.99 != $

[ArcticCelt]

I remember that after the deception of seeing "Star Wars Episode one" I was thinking well at least there is the two next matrix that will kick ass... I was so wrong. Like you I love the first one but the two other have nothing to do with the original.

Now I have switched my trust to Star Wars again and I am crossing my fingers and hoping that the name won't be something like: "Star Wars III - Jar Jar Binks Chronicles."

George, you are our only hope... (so basically where toast)

Re:If only...Amen!

[gosand]

Speaking of giving up, I think a lot of the bad feelings over the third film were because people gave up after the underwhelming second film. Perhaps the third doesn't "make up" for the second, but how could it? Watch it again and you just may find you actually like it on it's own merits.

Agreed. Here is a tip - don't stand in line for these things at the theater. I saw the first one and frickin loved it. Saw the second one, and left kind of scratching my head. I had to hope that the third one would tie it all up. But I waited, and didn't go see it in the theater. I read all the bad reviews. Then I rented it - and thought it was better than the 2nd one. It wasn't THAT bad. Not great, but better than a lot of the reviews I read.

Everyone talks about the "movie theater experience", but I just don't get it. Other than bigger and louder, the theater experience just is not as good to me. No, I am not one of those people with the 5.1 surround and a 60" TV. I have basic surround and a 27" TV, and I still enjoy movies more at home than at the theater. Cheaper food, more comfortable, I can go pee without missing any of the movie, etc. I don't need to share the experience with a hundred other people.

6 disks too many.

[ScottGant]

I mean, come on...one disk for each movie (don't give me extended versions unless you actually filmed extra footage to include later on special DVDs ala "Lord of the Rings"...seeing footage that was cut because it SHOULD have been cut is not my cup-of-tea. See the extended version of "Dune" and "Superman: The Movie" for stuff that should have stayed out...."Otis, feed the babies"...nuff said....

Ok, we have 3 disks there with plenty of room for commentary tracks. Then we can have an extra disk for the Animatrix shorts AND all the "Making Of" docs you want. There...saved ya 6 other disks. Something tells me that they're not filling up to full capacity the DVD's.

Re:6 disks too many.

[Kelerain]

(don't give me extended versions unless you actually filmed extra footage to include later on special DVDs ala "Lord of the Rings"...seeing footage that was cut because it SHOULD have been cut is not my cup-of-tea.)

The new footage was filmed specially for the 'Enter the Matrix' video game, which takes place in parallel to the film, following the story of Niobe and Ghost. You see/help them do things such as playing catchup on the freeway chase, and going to the power plant to destroy it. The parallel game idea was nice, but it didn't work out so well. I'm glad they are releasing a version that includes the footage because it helps with the subplot quite a bit.

Re:Does it bother anyone else...

[jbarr]

While I definitely agree with your explanation, I still feel like there's an underlying "falseness" to the whole process.

Take, for example, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" which I saw the week it was released back in the late 70's. As many know, the "theater edition" was very different from the "special edition" now available on DVD. OK, I'll concede that my liking the theater edition MAY be due to seeing it first, but the tone and mood of the "theater edition" is very different from the "special edition"--I personally prefer the "theater edition".

Additionally, the "theater edition" is/was the edition that the critics and viewers reviewed and talked about. It was the edition that made the press. It was the edition that won the awards. It was the edition that made the studio its money. Do we now have to have Oscars for after-market releases? (Maybe they do--I rarely watch awards shows anyway.)

And the kicker is that the theater edition (and not just of "Close Encounters") of movies is often not available on DVD, only the "director's cut". These "special" or "director's" editions continue to be available, but the editions that launched it all disappears. While I certainly embrace the ability to see what the director "really wanted" and the extra content is typically worth the price of the DVD, I feel like it's a form of re-writing history.

So what're they gonna call the box set?

[Not_Wiggins]

"The Matrix Trilogy Re-Marketed?"

Seems more like a ploy to recoup costs on the third movie. Anybody else notice when the third movie came out on DVD they weren't pushing the movie for movie sake, but trying to capitalize on the "own the trilogy" angle?

Some people will collect anything.
Personally, I like to collect bad habits.