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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.
Isn't that, like, a little extreme? They could get nearly 40 hours worth of video on that. I wouldn't have thought that much footage would have been shot during the making of 3 films.
This isn't a troll; I just have a warped, slashdot view of the world.
As far as all the geeks I know here say, the last movie SUCKED (or WAS TEH SUCK).
Are there enough remaining fan boys who loved the series the justify a purchase like this?
I know that for Lord of The Rings a 40 disc box set (including a full disk of Viggo Mortensen clearing his throat in the morning) would be snapped up in a jiffy by everyone here (*well, everyone but the Tolkein die hards).
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I've never played this so may get this for that (footage interleaved as Extended Reloaded). Dispite its faults, the Matrices are slick and impressive action films, the first being a finely balanced roller-coaster (with amusing product tie-ins etc.) and the other two being poorly balanced but still exciting to watch (IMHO).
Posters recognized by their sig,
As and American living in the UK, I would guess that when the set is released in the US it will be $44.99. Most new release DVDs sell for 19.99 here as they sell for $19.99 in the US.
I hope they include the Animatrix short, "Last Flight of the Osiris." It's the only track of the Animatrix disc which I think is worth anything, and was pretty well done. I think Squaresoft (Final Fantasy: Spirits Within) did the animation for this, and aside from the state-of-the-art-but-still-weak lip synch job, it matched the Matrix look pretty well.
It would be neat if the W Brothers beatify/canonize this track as official Matrix lore.
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I only acknowledge one Matrix movie. I know they did make 9 DVDs worth of advertising/money gouging however..
I'd bet dollars to donuts that next year, there'll be another special edition, a widescreen edition, a directors cut... how many times can you get the same people to buy the same movie with just a few tweaks? I don't know but George Lucas must have a pretty good idea by now, and the Wachowskis are his best students.
I had the same reaction. I stopped caring about these films after seeing the second one in the theater. I've never seen the third one either.
What does "Basic ROM Features" mean on disk 10?
I've always wondered why no one ever made a "phantom edit" of Matrix Reloaded with that extra footage...
...that movie studios are filming scenes specifically to cash in on the DVD aftermarket? It used to be that I would go the movie theater to see a movie on "the big screen" to see the film "the way it was meant to be seen." Now, when I go to see a movie in the theater, I feel like I am being cheated because they simply aren't showing the "entire" movie. It's now become a given that DVD's will contain "extra" or "deleted" scenes. At sometimes over $9.00 for tickets, I feel cheated by this.
A colleague of mine said "Well, you're paying the extra money for the extra DVD content." Hmmmm. Shouldn't movies now be marketed as "Movie Theater Edition" or something?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
You mean like they did with The Matrix? Oh wait, they didn't. The collector's edition was released at the same time.
You mean like they did with Revolutions and Reloaded? Oh wait, they didn't. There are no collector's editions.
And of course, this is exactly like LOTR where the producers told everyone straight up that there would be a standard edition and an extended edition for each movie.
Not to mention that it wasn't exactly difficult to predict that box sets would become available for The Matrix trilogy and the LOTR trilogy..
Sorry, I forgot. Ha ha ha, the standard DVD joke! OMFG ROFL etc.
Bitchslapped. Neat.
You know, I bet a lot of people bashing reloaded and revolutions actually enjoyed them - it's just the cool thing to hate on the two sequels. Admit it, you just didn't understand what was going on after Neo's chat with the 'father' of the matrix. Yes, the neo/trinity sex scene/rave was stupid. Don't let a lame 10 minute trip ruin the subsequent 3 hours.
"As far as I'm concerned, there is only The Matrix. I refuse to acknowledge the existence of any followup films."
Why even go that far? What was it about the first one that was underwear-tent-popping good?
I'm serious about this. What I saw was a flash in the pan that hardly survived a second viewing. What'd everybody else take out of it?
"Derp de derp."
Revolutions was far, far worse.
Morpheous should have died on the roof of the truck in reloaded. He does nothing the rest of the film(s). This would have supprised us and given the film some dramatic impact.
Yeah. I've never seen that face before.
Unfortunately, I doubt it'll be sold seperately, but the version of the Matrix in this box set is a brand-new transfer. Should be much cleaner. Also, the Wachowskis were never happy with the originaly DVD transfer, as it was too bright. The new transfer will be more accurate to the original theatrical release as well as more consistent with the color scheme of the sequels.
Personally, the dark green and blue of the two sequels gave me headaches, but hey, hopefully the first one won't look bad, and it'll be a much cleaner transfer and probably include a new audio mix.
Nope, thought they were respectively dull and way unbelievable. Funny how all the overpasses in the Matrix are 10 feet taller than in the real world.
You watched with mouth agape as Neo held his own against waves of Agent Smiths.
Only in the Burly Brawl. After that, I was just bored by it.
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.
Nope. Couldn't get past the stupid stupid design of the mechs and ammo loading.
And finally, you still found the philosophy intriguing.
More like pretentious and, as Robert Plant once put it, "deep and meaningless."
Nevertheless, I am GLAD I paid money to see them, and so are you.
That sounds like the thinking of a machine to me.
Gotta chime in an alternate opinion. I thought the third film, while not as good as the first, was quite fun.
First, I will not apologize for any of the crappy Zion dialogue. The best I can say for that is that dialogue was in thankfully short supply down there. 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.
And the interplay between Neo and Smith was great. The fight was classic unstoppable force impenetrable barrier in the style of a lot of anime and American comic books. The resolution was both classic and unexpected; the only way to win was to give up.
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.
TW
Existenz, which was released simultaneously to The Matrix, is also a good alternative if you want to watch a movie with more depth. Cronenberg has really grasped a strong sense of the 'what is reality' themes from Philip K Dick, along with the technology/biological fusion themes of Gibson. It was more of a thinking movie than an action shoot-em-up. The Matrix was fun to watch (unlike the sequels), but Existenz is a movie that I thought about when leaving the theatre.
PS Side note... While writing this post I just realised that Dick and Gibson are/were essentially emmigre Americans who live(d) in Vancouver, BC. I wonder if its the rain that alters their perceptions of reality in such creative ways?...
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Actually, "The Burly Man" was the name the Reloaded+Revolutions production had while they were filming it. The reasons for this fact are beyond me, since the sequels had already been announced and everyone [who cared about it] knew where it was going on. And it's not as if you could keep a secret on a movie with 10 mins of credits anyway.
Want proof? It's mentioned in this article from Wired, appears on this crew-exclusive T-shirt and you can see it in a surprising amount of footage on all those behind-the-stages documentaries this boxset seems to be so prolific on.
Ew, I feel like a geek. In the bad sense of the word.
Sailors. Oh man!
Do not forget the dock battle. APUs were neat and the battle intense.
Trinity getting to see the sun and cloud tops drove home the idea of having always lived underground and never seeing daylight.
Granted, it could be said subjectively that the first Matrix movie was the best of the trilogy, but quite frankly, it makes me very annoyed that people would have the gall to badmouth the series the way they do. Is the Matrix Trilogy a cinematic classic that will be taught and lauded for decades to come? Short answer, no. But the way most of you geeks blab on and on about the piss-poor quality of the movies, you'd think that given the helm, and a word-processor that whatever "film," you produced would rise above the level of tripe.
Before I am flamed, I undertsand that everyone does have their own opinion, and is entitled to that opinion, but because a movies didn't follow the path you thought they would, doesn't make it utter shit. They (the Wachoski *siblings*) were able to make something very philosophical, even if it wasn't Pantheon worthy, while at the same tiem incorporating enough so that the mundanes would actually enjoy it. Add to that decent characterization, and a sustained theme throughout all three movies.
Personally, I found the second movie, sans dance sequence, to be the best of the bunch. Even though the computer graphics were a bit over the top, it did give much to think about. Did everyone forget the discussion with the Architect was in there? And that he essentially gave the whole philosophical underpinnings to the movies in the tirade? I could understand how many people would not understand the philosophy, but to you computer nerds, its rooted in math!!!
To those who say the ending sucked at the end of the third, I have no comment. Yes, it was something of a flaccid penis instead of the money shot, but look at it in relation the rest of it. Neo is the 1. Not the ONE, or One, but the 1. The Matrix is an equation, or rather supposed to be a balanced equation. The Architect spells out that because of a flaw, a 1 results in the equation, and manifests itself in the Matrix. Neo. I know everyone may already know this, but keep with me. When Neo talks with the Oracle, she says that Smith is his opposite, due to the Matrix trying to balance itself. Hmmm, Neo, is one...Smith is...? -1. Period. Therefore, neither of them can really *win* they can only beat themselves into battered pulps. Neo realizes this, and stops fighting. Yea, even dumbass Neo realizes it. Now, to all you advanced theoretical math types that prowl these forums, 1+(-1)=?
Ahh, the balancing of the Matrix.
Weak? Maybe. Deus ex Machina? Certainly not. They cement reasons that everything happened, even though it may not have happened as you would have fantasized. So I reiterate what I said again, this time as a challenge. To those mouthing off, make something, or even just conceptualize something that you think is better than the Matrix concept. Add to that, how you would execute it. Until then, just shut your mouths and read a book.
For one thing, it will be remembered as the last movie that had actual, cool special effects besides simple 3d-rendered models. The fights in Matrix were 1/10th as spectacular as those in the sequels, but were so much more enjoyable and enthralling to watch because the actors were real humans and not models.
Maybe its just me, but I can still tell very, very easily when they switch over from meatspace people to 3d models in most movies, and somehow my eyes gloss over at the 3d human substitutes. Spiderman 2 was the only movie where I had difficulty telling, and that was because his costume is so inhuman looking already. In Harry Potter, LoTR, Van Helsing, and Matrix 2,3, all the CG scenes somehow just don't grip me the way the real meatspace scenes do. Its different in older movies where the CG was only used for wholly inhuman things, or in all-CG movies where the CG version _is_ the character, but in new movies where CG is just used for impossible stunts - it just becomes ignorable.
Of course, the funny thing is that the fights in the first movie were already absurd, at least from the perspective of someone not already exposed to lots of kung-fu movies.
Come to think of it, the fight scenes in almost all movies are absurd; we just take them for granted because they fit into a language of fight moves we've seen in previous movies. The sound and visuals associated with a given punch may be completely unrealistic, but we understand what it's all supposed to mean for the characters involved so we accept it.
In each Matrix sequel they built up an increasingly bizarre and abstract vocabulary of fight moves, coming to a sort of logical conclusion with those enormous waves of distorted space in the final scenes. It was that development that was one of the few things that kept the movies interesting for me, exactly because it was so weird.
--Bruce Fields
Actually, I'll take it a bit farther. I thought the second one was the best of the lot. It had more kung fu and less dialog.
Except she would have seen the sun in the Matrix, so it wouldn't have been THAT fascinating.
Hell, she wore sunglasses almost the entire time. What were they for?
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
spoiler warning ... ah hell, who cares, you've seen it or you won't.
I have the first DVD as well, and only that thanks to the dreary and disgusting mess of the second two Matrix movies, in the same fashion that George Lucas succeeded in turning me off to Star Wars (I own zero Star Wars DVD's). The first Matrix was great, but never for the acting. It was a perfect fusion of sci-fi and kung fu, complete with the philosophical reflections on reality (think of the treatment of chi in kung fu here).
The second one unfortunately had dialog that was as wooden and juvenile as the first, but it failed to bring anything original except more fight scenes and (rolling my eyes) a big car chase scene. And Keanu flying around like Superman. Dreadful. Stupid. Come to think of it, calling it juvenile insults juveniles.
It did have one saving grace: the architect. His little soliloquy on free will was masterful in writing and acting. Neo must have felt like Winston Smith in 1984 when O'Brien tells him the real story about Emmanuel Goldstein, but even more trapped by the inevitability of his fate.
But no, he just blasts out of there, becomes some sort of cyber-messiah, and gee wiz, turns out by the third movie the architect just lied about Zion's purpose and state of existence. Or if he was a construct (might explain some of his superpowers) then it sure as hell didn't get adequate exposition. I don't ask to be led by the hand, I do ask for the various premises of a film to feel like they weren't just made up on the spot, like so much improvised roleplaying gaming.
I think the Farrelly Brothers would have put more consistency and thought into this wretched trilogy than the Wachowski Brothers did.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Alice in Wonderland (okay; bad book, crap analogy)
Bad book? Thems fightin' words, pardner.
Bit harsh, I'll admit. I never read the book itself as a kid, perhaps because I perceived it as a girls' book. I read it recently, wanting to like it, but it did absolutely nothing for me.
Possibly because of its influence on 1960s culture, it seemed a bit tired, although I appreciate its invention and so on. Bit like I never 'got' Jimi Hendrix because I'd been too exposed to the people who were influenced by him, I guess.
Anyway; the book seemed nonsensical, but didn't really have a coherent feel I was hoping for. I was going to say that I was looking for "dream-logic" (you know, "logical" thinking that seems to make perfect sense when you dream, then you wake up and realise it was nonsensical), and didn't find it. However, I think the book *does* contain this.
I also think my dislike is part reaction to its "childrens' book that adults think that children should read" reputation.
Really, I feel that it's ultimately a children's nonsense book and not *that* much more, despite the inventive imagery; coupled with the above, this might explain why I didn't particularly like it.
It ain't the Matrix.
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In fact, the overwhelming negative response to the second movie was entirely predictable well before it was even made. Expectations are a HUGE part of people's ejoyment of entertainment, so it was utterly impossible that the sequal to The Matrix could be widely enjoyed. After the nearly religeous zeal (need I say "cult") surrounding the first movie, everyone's expectations were unacheivably high. But after that dissapointment had been experienced, expectations for the third movie were more reasonable... and lo and behold, many more people liked it (many still hated it, but I think that was still residual expectations from the first one).
Anyway, despite a few painful scenes, and after I convinced myself not to dwell on comparisons with the original, I really enjoyed both Reloaded and Revolutions. Besides being entertaining, they had some interesting stuff to think about... and I like thinking about things.
I got my copies of The Matrix and The Animatrix used at Blockbuster; two for twenty dollars. Why would I want the other two films, both of which were abyssmal?
"You never really know someone until you fight with them"
That line is actually a popular Chinese saying. Not sure it's a proverb or just a saying made popular by Kung-Fu flicks. In any case... nothing orginal here, move along.