Hmm, I don’t recall anyone other than Neo and Morpheus squaring off with Agents in this movie and even Trinity got her ass kicked. They established in the first movie that everyone who tried this died (thus, Morpheus attacking Smith becomes extra heroic becuase he has no chance and is only giving the others a chance to slide down the wall and escape). Morpheus vs. the Agent on top of the 18-wheeler was more like two kids playing “King of the Mountain” than a death-struggle.
The promos implied the Rastas were agents (Neo’s “Upgrades” comment always went with footage of the Rastas) which I find kind of annoying in retrospect. Even the Rastas seemed helpless against the Agents.
Apparantly no-one else can fly the way Neo does, which makes the skepticism of the other humans odd (i.e. they don’t believe as Morpheus does in “The One”). Surely Neo could have staged demonstrations of his abilities.
This would be why he usually won, in the movies and real life. Only in Hollywood can somebody get punched 100 times (like in Rocky) and still be alive, much less standing.
The fighting was more over the top in this one, but I can imagine the folks working on the fight scenes asking themselves how the hell they were going to top the first movie, which really appeared fresh at the time.
If you’re looking for interesting fight scenes, you might want to check out Equilibrium. Excellent choreography.
Back in the days of bare-knuckle boxing, matches typically ended very quickly… often with one guy on the floor with a broken jaw, and the other on the ropes with a broken hand.
The boxing glove was invented by the promoters to make the matches longer, and thus better entertainment.
the logic “I hate fight scenes, lets go watch matrix” boggles my mind. why… why would you see such a movie if you knew you didn’t like watching fighting?
Vlad … Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. The vast majority of bare-knuckles fighter John L. Sullivan’s bouts did last fewer than four rounds. But then there were the epic fights that lasted 21 or 35 or 79 (!) rounds:
(Browse around the site for other bare-knuckles boxers and 2 hour + fights.)
So were marathon bare knuckle fights rare? Yes. Impossible? Far from it.
Mind you, this discussion of real fighting has nothing to do with why Bruce Lee never got hit in the movies. The answer to that is simply, “the storyteller said so!” Movie fights have their own conventions that are only tangentally related to reality.
Well, the fight against the Smiths´agents (is spelled that way?) was quite boring for me due to the time it took, too much if you ask me.
I enjoy Bruce Lee movies and Jackie Chan too (the old ones, over all, back in Hong Kong), I´m a real fan of those two, but still I think Bruce Lee cuold have benn hitted a couple of times more in his movies (to make them more interesting) or fight to an opponent who were a really trheat. you see, in Lee´s movies he never seems to be in real danger, his opponents seem always to be much less skilled to be a real macht.
In chan´s movies happens, more or less, the same, apart form some exceptions.
Also if you ever watched Buffy, in most fights they block hits before they´re thorwn, quite annoying.
By the way, Matrix Reloaded fights seemed more a dance than real fights, like those chinese traditional shows.
Bruce Lee did get slashed up pretty good in the hall-of-mirrors fight at the end of Enter the Dragon.
But the parody film Fistful of Yen was still more entertaining.
Jackie Chan’s fights at least have more of an air of desperation around them, as if he’s defeating these guys not because he’s super-mega-untouchable-cool (like Lee) but because he’s constantly on the verge of panic, grabbing a mop and swinging it wildly. The fact that it hits four guys in the head is just lucky timing.
Regarding why everyone uses martial arts techniques:
Fighting with other weapons is pointless, because those weapons have well-defined properties. Enlightened individuals can alter the workings of the program, but it’s a whole lot easier to change your “personal” representation within the Matrix than that of other things. If you’ll notice, there are very few times in either of the movies where Neo directly alters the properties of external objects – when he stops bullets in flight and when he performs psychic surgery.
Okay, here’s my take as someone who’s studied martial arts for years now.
The first Matrix fired me up in the combat scenes, something that is really rare. Most hand to hand combat in movies looks silly to me because: if the fighters were equals, we would see nothing fancy; if one of the fighters were inferior, the fight would last a handful of seconds.
Something that would make martial arts fight scenes interesting again, to me, is to toss out the same choreographers time after time and find someone who can pull together realism and techniques previously unseen on screen. The best example I can think of is that many arts (Filipino arts, Muay Thai, some styles of Kung Fu) have destructive blocks. I have never seen these in a flick, let alone utilized in a breathtaking manner. I think it’s about time. And there total worlds of fighting techniques that the average person has never seen, but are less cartoonish than the same, sorry back-and-forth exchanges we see right now. These exchanges are beautifully choreographed ballets and at one time were pretty cool, but nothing new is happening with them.
Actually, it’s implied that they were agents, but older ones, not newer ones. I think all the Merovingian’s guards were obsolete agents from older versions of the Matrix.
It’s one long piece of exposition, regularly interrupted by inconsequential and less-than-exhilirating fight scenes. And in the end, the whole movie doesn’t progress anything in the story apart from introduction of new characters.
I stand aghast at it’s popularity. It doesn’t deserve it.
I got bored. The main reason is that we already know that no-one is going to kick Neo’s ass, because the story more or less hinges on him being able to beat anyone up, including agents, and that Morpheus isn’t going to kick an agent’s ass, 'cause that would also screw up the story. So there’s never any suspense.
Also, as has been said before: why didn’t Neo just fly away from the 100 Smiths? If I could fly, I’d be flying right now, just in case an agent were to show up, but Neo stays grounded until he’s been fighting for ten boring minutes.
It may be implied in the movie that the Rastas are obsolete Agents (though I didn’t pick up on that myself and the character roles were so ill-defined that anything can imply anything) but I was referring to the trailer, one of which had the following sequence, cobbled together from various moments in the movie:
White Rastas appear, “ghost” out.
Trinity saying “That’s a nice trick”
Rasta whipping a knife around
Neo saying “Upgrades.” It’s a momentary shot, but this is from the early scene where he tries to punch a conventional black-suited Agent and the Agent catches Neo’s fist.
Rasta phasing out of a car, lunging at camera
Rasta phases into another car, attacking Trinity and Morpheus.
-The next shot is of Smith, and is a clear break from the previous action.
To me, the use of the word “upgrades” in the middle of a showcase of Rasta scenes suggested the Rastas were, in fact, upgraded Agents. That they turn out to be mildly interesting but otherwise generic henchmen/thugs is somewhat annoying.
Besides, how could you quote me and spell my name wrong? This has always mystified me.
