That "overly long" part about cause and effect WAS the part where our heads are messed with.
No it wasn't.
You obviously didn't understand it.
I understood it perfectly. It was just long and boring and kept going on and on. That dialogue could have been shortened to be more concise yet convey the same amount of dialogue.
I know all about the philosophical exposition being attempted in these movies. It doesn't make them any less boring. The movie slows to a crawl during these scenes. And Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity just sit there silently as he rambles on and on about cause and effect.
I've taken several philosophy classes, and I can tell you that entire scene about causality is extremely deep and well though out.
I don't care if you've taken philosophy classes. And those who have taken such classes seem to be disagreeing with you, that the philosophy in these movies is cookie cutter and superficial at best.
When it comes out on DVD, go over that part a few times and you will realize the entire point of the movie and perhaps the entire point of life is hidden in that discussion.
You missed that the entire point of all of it was that Neo has fallen in love, which has changed things. The Architect stated the other Ones were designed with a propensity to feel compassion for fellow humans, but Neo is different in that his desires have become specific to falling in love with Trinity. Love has altered Neo's "cause-and-effect" logic and reasoning, so he risks the extinction of mankind just to save Trinity from falling.
Remember when Morpheus had his head smashed into the toilet in the first movie? I still grimace at that. Or when the agents are punching through walls and people are spitting up blood after fighting them.
In this one, I never felt anybody was in danger. People seemed overly confident when fighting agents, who were supposed to be so menacing in the first one to the point that people just ran like hell.
Many got that point. That point would have been more clear if the scene was shorter. However, it kept going and going, and titties kept showing up. It went from conveying the message you described to simply being an excuse to show skin.
That, and the matrix vision cum shot, were the two most bizarre things. I could never imagine either of them being in the first movie. Heck, throw in Morpheus' speech. I squirmed when the camera zoomed around as he talked about "shaking this cave of earth and steel." Cheesy.
I think the problem is that the first hour of the movie has none of the questioning. Neo isn't really challenged on that level. In the first movie, almost every single scene presented some new piece of information. In this one, there's a lot of running around and fighting, and in between those scenes, it's people talking about doing it. Either that, or we're treated to overly long rave scenes and overly long exposition about "cause and effect."
The last half is when things got cool and felt like a sequel to the first one.
Granted, much of these structure problems may make more sense when Revolutions is released, since they were treated as one big movie split in two. The movie was good, but I missed the goth-noir feel of the first one, and I missed the real sense of danger. Only near the end did I feel that.
I just find it frighteningly sad and pathetic that you're not even going to see the film because you have already judged it. You won't see the scene in context or even to find out if the other 98% of the movie makes up for it.
And now you've initiated others into your groupthink. All because there's some little scene you don't like.
Incredible. You are a sheep. You will let yourself be guided by what others tell you instead of finding out for yourself.
People bad-mouth X because their PC happens not to use its power.
I think it's more that X doesn't use their PC's power.
They complain about its "bloat", because they see it taking 10MB of their 256-MB machine's precious RAM, most of which is idle.
Bloat is bloat. I bet you complain about Windows bloat.
They complain about it being "slow", which tells me that they have nothing better to do than play video games.
If that is your only retort, than it is a reflection on you. If X is so slow it can't handle videogames, what does that tell you? You have no rebuttal, so you instead attack people's game-playing habits. Nice.
You must be referring to that memory management scenario that doesn't affect everybody and therefore isn't listed as a Critical Update, requiring you to actually ask Microsoft for the patch because it is so uncommon.
But to you, it suddenly becomes "XP SP1 hogged memory."
Funny how some people will repeatedly read and nearly commit to memory Lord Of The Rings (or devote so much thought into The Matrix storyline) but never even consider reading The Bible.
Give me a bullet-time parting of the seas, and I'll take a crack at it.
It is possible the French man is the first One and simply refused assimilation. He says he has survived Neo's predecessors.
I presume the Oracle (or rather, her new form) in Revolutions will explain all that we saw in Reloaded. Joel Silver warned that people would be "confused as hell."
Windows sucks. Period. We all know it. We're the smart ones, but the other 90% of the user base is either too frightened/lazy to change to something that works, or too cynical to even consider change.
First off, I thought the first Matrix movie was great. The most flawless action movie I have ever seen. It blew me away when I first saw it. Every scene was executed well. I enjoy the many levels it can be viewed on--philosophy, religious, or just plain fun--but I don't geek out about it and dress up in a trench coat and sunglasses like one guy did tonight at my theater. The pacing of the movie was perfect and kept driving you to the ultimate realization at the end, which left you waiting to see what happens in the sequel. Many people, including myself, have been waiting since 1999 for this.
To summarize: it was worth the wait. Read on...
Now, I'll start with a pure, non-spoiler review...a review everyone can read with no fear of ruining the story. Unfortunately, it's difficult not to go into details, so I must be vague. The spoiler commentary will be great for you people who have seen the movie and are craving dissection of it as I am and need a catalyst.
The Matrix Reloaded is not entirely what you expect it to be. I read many of the reviews you all have read before I saw the movie tonight. I had my expectations severely lowered because of them, hoping for at least some incredible action sequences. What I realized upon watching is that the tone of this movie is different and aiming for something quite unexpected. It's as though it knows what it did in the first movie and has decided to run with that to fuck with your head. It's a mindjob. It will challenge the assumptions you walked away with from the first movie, and not in the ways you probably have guessed with your friends in an attempt to figure out what twists might be laying ahead in these sequels. There is always the impression something is being kept in store, some big secret twist that will suddenly explain everything.
NON-NEGATIVE STUFF: The action was good. Neo behaves like the One, in that fighting seems incredibly simple to him, almost effortless and second nature, which is good in that we get some incredible choreography. This does seem to render Neo's fight scenes a bit more hollow as there is no character outcome to them as there was in the previous movie (i.e., realization of one's powers, kicking Agent Smith's pompous ass, etc.), but that is made up for in the sheer over-the-top choreography. Also, the CG of the "burly brawl" is in no way as bad as it is being made out to be. Remember when Neo was dodging bullets in the first movie, and you knew it was him, but there was something a bit "off" about the way it looked? That is the effect of these parts. I imagine anyone performing these feats would look unreal to your eyes. The freeway chase scene is as exciting as you're hearing.
This is the kind of movie that leaves you wanting to immediately watch the rest of the story in Revolutions. It is abundantly clear that it is simply part one and does not stand on its own as efficiently (more on that in the spoiler section...a lot is purposely unloaded on you in the last part of the movie and you are left flabbergasted). But because you can't have that until November, you simply want to watch Reloaded again to properly digest it all. This is the kind of movie you spend the rest of the week discussing with your fellow geeks to figure out. Let me tell you, there is much to figure out.
The fight scene music was surprisingly good. Not as pulse-pounding as the first movie's, but more of a techno-epic quality that was refreshing, especially Neo's fight scenes.
This movie is clearly not a rehash of the first one, tone-wise or story-wise. It builds and changes and isn't afraid to veer off somewhere way different. That's a good way to describe it--there are clearly things that are being led up to. A conclusion you don't yet get to see. That is why you get these reviews with people saying the movie was much better on a second viewing, because you're given a taste of what's to come and of what everything else might have meant in retrospect. Dare I call it a puzzle movie?
It's a well-documented fact, so yes, I do know it to be true. Even in interviews, Bill has laughed it off as a misquote.
You'd be surprised at the amount of pop culture misquotes out there, from "There's a sucker born every minute" to "I invented the Internet." But I know you need to make things up and propogate them because Bill Gates represents the epitome of evil to you and that is your only ammunition.
I beleive M$ is big enough to survive frustrated geeks ranting against it's monopoly abuse.
By your use of the idiotic dollar sign, I can already tell that the rest of your post will be moronic drivel that has no valid basis. But I will humor you for a time.
You're most certainly right describing IE6 as an indesputable innovation: finally the masses are bestowed the privilege of cookie monitoring!
The question was when Microsoft last updated IE. I answered it.
Next.
Windows XP hmm, W2K used to freeze when waking up the hard disks...
Upgrade your drivers.
only one would, mouse froze, reboot; oh and a laptop in standby would wake up (lid closed) randomly... very cool when carrying in a case in the boot of a car.
Fix your laptop. Nobody else has these problems. You should have seen the "fun" I had with Red Hat 9 on this laptop I'm typing on. Puts your anecdotal FUD to shame.
XP certainly did solve the problem... just a couple of BSODs though, and the SP1 slowdown-crawl detail.
I have never seen a Windows XP BSOD, and the slowdown-crawl has to do with SP1's new memory management scheme and doesn't affect everybody, hence the lack of a critical update available for download. One had to request it specifically from Microsoft.
When was the last time Microsoft released a new version of Internet Explorer?
6.0; came with Windows XP. A new version will ship with Longhorn.
When was the last time that Microsoft significantly improved their desktop OS? That would be Windows 95.
No, it would be Windows XP, where they finally replaced the aging DOS kernel in the desktop line with the new incarnation of the NT kernel. Many people I talk to don't know what a "blue screen of death" even is. That was a significant improvement.
When was the last time that Microsoft significantly improved their server OS? Well, you can debate that one, but it's obvious that Microsoft even today faces stiff competition from Linux, BSD, and other Unix variants.
Your argument before was that Microsoft maintains a chokehold monopoly, but now you're saying there is stiff competition.
Microsoft's monopoly will not last forever, even if the US government refuses to do anything about it.
Let's do a preemptive strike and declare all the impending idiotic Slashbot porn jokes to be ineffective, unclever, and the most obvious route to take.
You're not funny! Don't do it; hold yourself back!
Slashdot Mirror
That "overly long" part about cause and effect WAS the part where our heads are messed with.
No it wasn't.
You obviously didn't understand it.
I understood it perfectly. It was just long and boring and kept going on and on. That dialogue could have been shortened to be more concise yet convey the same amount of dialogue.
I know all about the philosophical exposition being attempted in these movies. It doesn't make them any less boring. The movie slows to a crawl during these scenes. And Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity just sit there silently as he rambles on and on about cause and effect.
I've taken several philosophy classes, and I can tell you that entire scene about causality is extremely deep and well though out.
I don't care if you've taken philosophy classes. And those who have taken such classes seem to be disagreeing with you, that the philosophy in these movies is cookie cutter and superficial at best.
When it comes out on DVD, go over that part a few times and you will realize the entire point of the movie and perhaps the entire point of life is hidden in that discussion.
You missed that the entire point of all of it was that Neo has fallen in love, which has changed things. The Architect stated the other Ones were designed with a propensity to feel compassion for fellow humans, but Neo is different in that his desires have become specific to falling in love with Trinity. Love has altered Neo's "cause-and-effect" logic and reasoning, so he risks the extinction of mankind just to save Trinity from falling.
Remember when Morpheus had his head smashed into the toilet in the first movie? I still grimace at that. Or when the agents are punching through walls and people are spitting up blood after fighting them.
In this one, I never felt anybody was in danger. People seemed overly confident when fighting agents, who were supposed to be so menacing in the first one to the point that people just ran like hell.
Many got that point. That point would have been more clear if the scene was shorter. However, it kept going and going, and titties kept showing up. It went from conveying the message you described to simply being an excuse to show skin.
That, and the matrix vision cum shot, were the two most bizarre things. I could never imagine either of them being in the first movie. Heck, throw in Morpheus' speech. I squirmed when the camera zoomed around as he talked about "shaking this cave of earth and steel." Cheesy.
I think the problem is that the first hour of the movie has none of the questioning. Neo isn't really challenged on that level. In the first movie, almost every single scene presented some new piece of information. In this one, there's a lot of running around and fighting, and in between those scenes, it's people talking about doing it. Either that, or we're treated to overly long rave scenes and overly long exposition about "cause and effect."
The last half is when things got cool and felt like a sequel to the first one.
Granted, much of these structure problems may make more sense when Revolutions is released, since they were treated as one big movie split in two. The movie was good, but I missed the goth-noir feel of the first one, and I missed the real sense of danger. Only near the end did I feel that.
I didn't say Windows was bloated. I was pointing out the double standards. I bet he complains about so-called "Windows bloat."
I just find it frighteningly sad and pathetic that you're not even going to see the film because you have already judged it. You won't see the scene in context or even to find out if the other 98% of the movie makes up for it.
And now you've initiated others into your groupthink. All because there's some little scene you don't like.
Incredible. You are a sheep. You will let yourself be guided by what others tell you instead of finding out for yourself.
Next.
What are you talking about? "Sad state of affairs for humanity?"
It's a movie. You chose to hate it before you saw it, for self-righteous, idealistic reasons. I'll gladly fill your seat because I'm not as uptight.
Incidentally, the Wachowskis specifically intended not to edit out that scene or cut it short, according to interviews. It has its purpose.
Wow, what a load of festering crap.
People bad-mouth X because their PC happens not to use its power.
I think it's more that X doesn't use their PC's power.
They complain about its "bloat", because they see it taking 10MB of their 256-MB machine's precious RAM, most of which is idle.
Bloat is bloat. I bet you complain about Windows bloat.
They complain about it being "slow", which tells me that they have nothing better to do than play video games.
If that is your only retort, than it is a reflection on you. If X is so slow it can't handle videogames, what does that tell you? You have no rebuttal, so you instead attack people's game-playing habits. Nice.
You must be referring to that memory management scenario that doesn't affect everybody and therefore isn't listed as a Critical Update, requiring you to actually ask Microsoft for the patch because it is so uncommon.
But to you, it suddenly becomes "XP SP1 hogged memory."
Next.
My point was that he displayed the precise attitude that is keeping Linux under Windows.
Next.
Funny how some people will repeatedly read and nearly commit to memory Lord Of The Rings (or devote so much thought into The Matrix storyline) but never even consider reading The Bible.
Give me a bullet-time parting of the seas, and I'll take a crack at it.
I have no plans to see it
Wow, let's completely prejudge and close our minds to anything, shall we?
Just one more empty seat for me.
It is possible the French man is the first One and simply refused assimilation. He says he has survived Neo's predecessors.
I presume the Oracle (or rather, her new form) in Revolutions will explain all that we saw in Reloaded. Joel Silver warned that people would be "confused as hell."
Windows sucks. Period. We all know it. We're the smart ones, but the other 90% of the user base is either too frightened/lazy to change to something that works, or too cynical to even consider change.
Welcome to the reason Linux sucks even worse.
First off, I thought the first Matrix movie was great. The most flawless action movie I have ever seen. It blew me away when I first saw it. Every scene was executed well. I enjoy the many levels it can be viewed on--philosophy, religious, or just plain fun--but I don't geek out about it and dress up in a trench coat and sunglasses like one guy did tonight at my theater. The pacing of the movie was perfect and kept driving you to the ultimate realization at the end, which left you waiting to see what happens in the sequel. Many people, including myself, have been waiting since 1999 for this.
To summarize: it was worth the wait. Read on...
Now, I'll start with a pure, non-spoiler review...a review everyone can read with no fear of ruining the story. Unfortunately, it's difficult not to go into details, so I must be vague. The spoiler commentary will be great for you people who have seen the movie and are craving dissection of it as I am and need a catalyst.
The Matrix Reloaded is not entirely what you expect it to be. I read many of the reviews you all have read before I saw the movie tonight. I had my expectations severely lowered because of them, hoping for at least some incredible action sequences. What I realized upon watching is that the tone of this movie is different and aiming for something quite unexpected. It's as though it knows what it did in the first movie and has decided to run with that to fuck with your head. It's a mindjob. It will challenge the assumptions you walked away with from the first movie, and not in the ways you probably have guessed with your friends in an attempt to figure out what twists might be laying ahead in these sequels. There is always the impression something is being kept in store, some big secret twist that will suddenly explain everything.
NON-NEGATIVE STUFF: The action was good. Neo behaves like the One, in that fighting seems incredibly simple to him, almost effortless and second nature, which is good in that we get some incredible choreography. This does seem to render Neo's fight scenes a bit more hollow as there is no character outcome to them as there was in the previous movie (i.e., realization of one's powers, kicking Agent Smith's pompous ass, etc.), but that is made up for in the sheer over-the-top choreography. Also, the CG of the "burly brawl" is in no way as bad as it is being made out to be. Remember when Neo was dodging bullets in the first movie, and you knew it was him, but there was something a bit "off" about the way it looked? That is the effect of these parts. I imagine anyone performing these feats would look unreal to your eyes. The freeway chase scene is as exciting as you're hearing.
This is the kind of movie that leaves you wanting to immediately watch the rest of the story in Revolutions. It is abundantly clear that it is simply part one and does not stand on its own as efficiently (more on that in the spoiler section...a lot is purposely unloaded on you in the last part of the movie and you are left flabbergasted). But because you can't have that until November, you simply want to watch Reloaded again to properly digest it all. This is the kind of movie you spend the rest of the week discussing with your fellow geeks to figure out. Let me tell you, there is much to figure out.
The fight scene music was surprisingly good. Not as pulse-pounding as the first movie's, but more of a techno-epic quality that was refreshing, especially Neo's fight scenes.
This movie is clearly not a rehash of the first one, tone-wise or story-wise. It builds and changes and isn't afraid to veer off somewhere way different. That's a good way to describe it--there are clearly things that are being led up to. A conclusion you don't yet get to see. That is why you get these reviews with people saying the movie was much better on a second viewing, because you're given a taste of what's to come and of what everything else might have meant in retrospect. Dare I call it a puzzle movie?
It's a well-documented fact, so yes, I do know it to be true. Even in interviews, Bill has laughed it off as a misquote.
You'd be surprised at the amount of pop culture misquotes out there, from "There's a sucker born every minute" to "I invented the Internet." But I know you need to make things up and propogate them because Bill Gates represents the epitome of evil to you and that is your only ammunition.
Next.
So don't watch those WMVs.
Next.
You're aware Bill Gates never said that, right? Seriously, he didn't.
What "DRM crud?"
People constantly mention DRM, but I never run across any, except when activating Windows which is as simple as a mouse click.
CmdrTaco, could you hire this guy? He actually recognizes and corrects typos. Thanks in advance.
I was forced after Mandrake, Slackware, and LFS didn't work correctly.
I beleive M$ is big enough to survive frustrated geeks ranting against it's monopoly abuse.
By your use of the idiotic dollar sign, I can already tell that the rest of your post will be moronic drivel that has no valid basis. But I will humor you for a time.
You're most certainly right describing IE6 as an indesputable innovation: finally the masses are bestowed the privilege of cookie monitoring!
The question was when Microsoft last updated IE. I answered it.
Next.
Windows XP hmm, W2K used to freeze when waking up the hard disks...
Upgrade your drivers.
only one would, mouse froze, reboot; oh and a laptop in standby would wake up (lid closed) randomly... very cool when carrying in a case in the boot of a car.
Fix your laptop. Nobody else has these problems. You should have seen the "fun" I had with Red Hat 9 on this laptop I'm typing on. Puts your anecdotal FUD to shame.
XP certainly did solve the problem... just a couple of BSODs though, and the SP1 slowdown-crawl detail.
I have never seen a Windows XP BSOD, and the slowdown-crawl has to do with SP1's new memory management scheme and doesn't affect everybody, hence the lack of a critical update available for download. One had to request it specifically from Microsoft.
Next.
When was the last time Microsoft released a new version of Internet Explorer?
6.0; came with Windows XP. A new version will ship with Longhorn.
When was the last time that Microsoft significantly improved their desktop OS? That would be Windows 95.
No, it would be Windows XP, where they finally replaced the aging DOS kernel in the desktop line with the new incarnation of the NT kernel. Many people I talk to don't know what a "blue screen of death" even is. That was a significant improvement.
When was the last time that Microsoft significantly improved their server OS? Well, you can debate that one, but it's obvious that Microsoft even today faces stiff competition from Linux, BSD, and other Unix variants.
Your argument before was that Microsoft maintains a chokehold monopoly, but now you're saying there is stiff competition.
Microsoft's monopoly will not last forever, even if the US government refuses to do anything about it.
Monopolies aren't illegal.
Yeah. Let's blame everything on Microsoft.
Next.
You're right; that was "+5 Funny."
Let's do a preemptive strike and declare all the impending idiotic Slashbot porn jokes to be ineffective, unclever, and the most obvious route to take.
You're not funny! Don't do it; hold yourself back!