I was watching this again last night when I noticed something odd. When Persephone takes Neo and company into the Chateau to find the Keymaker, they go through a room with two henchmen in it. They’re watching a Hammer vampire film when Persephone interrupts them. She says that the two guards are left over from an old version of the Matrix, and are difficult to kill, because you need silver bullets, then proceeds to kill one, and sends the other back to the Merovingian.*
When the Merovingian shows up, with a cadre of henchmen, this other silverf bullet guy is there. He’s immediately to the left of the Merovingian in this clip:
He’s one of only two henchmen without dark glasses. You see him shoot at Neo, ineffectively with the others. Then everyone charges Neo and we get the stylized fight scene.
Since he can only be killed with Silver Bullets, and Neo hasn’t got any, you’d think that he would be a special threat. But, in fact, Neo kills all his opponents. The Silver Bullet Guy isn’t obviously among his antagonists – it’s as if he disappears on his way to engaging Neo. All the henchmen he fights seem to be wearing dark glasses.
I can see why they did this, sorta – it’s severely uncool if Neo got hung up in his showpiece martial-arts fight because his opponent stubbornly won’t die. But in that case, why have him there at all? The Merovingian didn’t have to bring him there. I suppose the point of having Silver Bullet Guys there at all was to introduce the idea of Programs with special talents and properties, like the Twin Ghost Boys, and they had two of them so Persephone could send one back for the Merovingian.
But it does raise the issue of why Neo never faces off against any of these Special Talents. It would’ve been different if he had to face the Twin Ghost Boys. He’d have to come up with some clever way of getting rid of them.
*It’s not actually stated that they’re vampires, but you kinda suspect that they’re supposed to be. Or werewolves, maybe.
Well, there’s one strategy Neo could do besides flying away like he does most of the movie. At the end of the first movie Neo demonstrates the ability to jump into a program (Smith) and blow him into a million flaming green giblets. This ability is never shown again or elucidated upon. It’s hinted that it somehow caused Smith to go “free” and gave him the ability to replicate (?). So maybe we came that close to Matrix Revolutions being about killing a million werewolf dudes.
The Tooth, I agree that the fight with all the smiths looks bad. But one way I’ve heard it fanwanked is that creating all those Smiths maxed out the processing power of the Matrix and graphic quality started to suffer in terms of Matrix “reality.”
The Merovingian uses a door in the Chateau to make his escape, and when Neo opens it, he see’s he’s in the mountains. (I guess he has a key made by the keymaker.) Neo simply reenters the chateau to chase the ghost guys chasing Morpheus.
The keymaker uses his key in the chateau, and a door opens into a parking garage. Trinity, Morpheus, and the two Euro-trash ghost brothers go through it. One of the ghosts shuts the door in Neo’s face, and Neo ends up on a mountain top 500 miles away from the city, and Neo has to fly back to the city (saving Morpheus and the keymaker in the nick of time on the freeway).
When Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity first go to the chateau, didn’t they enter it from the city? Was the Merovingian’s estranged girl friend using a keymaker key to get to the chateau?
At the time when it came out, I seem to remember the Smith fight being said to look really good–that it was the best work of its kind up until that point. I remember thinking it looked much better than I expected, at least.
As for the question asked by the OP, I wasn’t paying as much attention, but I just assumed one of the weapons had silver in it.
I watched this moive. I know I did. I have seen the entire trilogy. I don’t remember any of what this thread is describing, except the twins. Can the movie really have left so little an impression on me that it is literally “a forgettable film?” I’ve seen that phrase in reviews, but never appreciated it until now. I should re-watch it to see if it jogs my memory at all.
I could see forgetting the first half, with its intolerably long and slow “Zion” section. But how can you forget the intense action sequence that starts with their visit to the Merovingian and goes on through at least 20 minutes of martial-arts and chases, culminating in the collision between two trucks and a massive explosion? That’s like sleeping through The Guns of Navarone!*
*How many of you are old enough top pick up that reference?
Maybe the intense action sequence is why I don’t remember it. I remembe the Zion bits because they were long and drawn out. I rememer Neo going to visit the Oracle, I remember Neo using his powers in the real world and falling into a coma… and that’s all. I remember how some things LOOK, like I remember what the Twins look like, and I remember what the visit to the Merovingian looked like, but I don’t remember them doing anything.
I tend to have really vivid recall of movies that I like and movies that I hate. “Revolutions” I remember more vividly because I thought it was the weakest of the three. I guess this one just didn’t leave much of an impression. Reading the plot synopsis on Wiki jogged my memory enough that I remember Neo meeting the Architect too. “Collision with trucks and explosion” I’ve seen plenty before and since: Road Warrior, T2, The Island, Transformers, so very many movies smashing trucks and blowing things up, I guess this one is clumped in with it.
I am surprised that I don’t really remember it though.
I pulled this off the shelf and just watched it. Maybe it’s because the room is too light for the movie, but the graphics didn’t look as bad as I remember.
I watched this moive. I know I did. I have seen the entire trilogy. I don’t remember any of what this thread is describing, except the twins. Can the movie really have left so little an impression on me that it is literally “a forgettable film?” I’ve seen that phrase in reviews, but never appreciated it until now. I should re-watch it to see if it jogs my memory at all.