The original film was idiotic, but done with such style that no one cared. The latter two films had half the style an twice the idiocy.
Four words: Keanu Reeves sex scene.
Plus that stuff AClockworkMelon mentioned.
Here’s the story I heard from bits and pieces here and there:
The Wachowski brothers came to Warner and said they wanted to make a trilogy which would have ended with the phone call as seen at the end of Matrix 1, and they could do it for about $200 million (or something like that.) Warner came back and said forget it, we’ll give you $40 million for one movie. So, the brothers sat down and chopped up the three scripts, taking the best parts, and then condensing it into the film as we know it today.
After the first Matrix film became a big hit, Warner came back and said here’s $300 million, make two more. So then, the Wachowski’s sat down in a pizza joint and hashed out a bunch of ideas, salvaging what they could from the crap that wasn’t good enough to make it into the first film (thus explaining the whole business with the Merovingian,) then piecing it together like a jigsaw puzzle into a semi-coherent story. When they realized they still didn’t have enough story to make 2 films, even the brainstorms that were written on the placemat in pizza sauce were shoved into the script (thus explaining the dumb scenes like the rain dance and the completely out of place fight with the Cherub.) And then, when they realized they still didn’t have enough, they decided to make some of the crappy parts even longer (which explains the incomprehensible subway sequence at the beginning of part 3 and the overly long Million Smiths fight.)
In a nutshell: the first Matrix was so good because the best ideas from three scripts were put into one film. Matrix 2 and 3 were so bad because the brothers never expected the story to continue after the phone call and Neo’s ascendancy.
I never understood the unabashed adoration for 1.
My feelings about the first one were, in some ways, similar to my feelings about Avatar. I enjoyed watching it in the cinema, but as soon as the closing credits rolled i lost all interest. Both were, for me, just eye candy. Nothing much to talk about or think about, really; just some visual stimulation.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve been to plenty of movies knowing that they would be nothing more than shallow excitement, and had a really good time while watching them. But, at the same time, i draw a distinction between those movies, on the one hand, and good movies, on the other. A movie need not be good for me to enjoy it, and for me The Matrix and Avatar both fell into that category.
I thought they tried to copy Star Wars too much, which is why Reloaded ends on a ‘ciffhanger’, and the third one starts with a rescue sequence which is largely irrelevant to the rest of the plot. Unfortunately, Neo is already a super-Jedi by the end of the first film, and no one worked out how to defeat the bad guys. You can’t just blow up the Matrix because all of humanity are inside it.
You know why the Oracle was replaced, right? The actress who played her in the first two movies died.
They started to believe their own press. They thought they had made an important movie, and decided to make the sequals even more important.
I thought it was a fun movie, though it did have the flaws mentioned above, as well as more. It wasn’t terrible to me, though.
I couldn’t disagree more, and for me this was why the third movie was such a bitter disappointment.
The Matrix took ideas from Gnosticism and put a stylish sci-fi gloss on them. It worked well, because the they had a pool of really bizarre, far-out ideas to draw from. The second movie continued in this vein and introduced more stuff from this mythology - it provided plenty to think about, and if you had any prior knowledge of gnostic concepts like the demiurge or the pistis sophia, it was fun to seem them transliterated into sci-fi (which they practically are, anyway.)
The third movie completely abandoned the original source, and seemed to me like just a bunch of pointless explosions leading up to a banal denouement, with nothing remotely interesting behind it.
Yeah, I know, but they tried to ‘replace’ her. You can’t. She was made of cool. They should have brought her back as totally different…an old man or a little girl or something, I don’t know. Anything other than trying to make me accept that abomination of an oracle as the original article.
Hmm. A little girl might have been a nice thought.
With a cigarette habit!
And then she was replaced by a woman who looked a lot like her. That’s just a slap in the face.
Also, from a story standpoint, they could have used the change to show that The Oracle can remake The Matrix (which was a huge part of the ending) by having her remade completely different.
I always thought they should have made the kid that said, “There is no spoon” the new Oracle.
A big problem is that it’s easy to ask metaphysical questions and sound profound. That’ll carry you through the first movie.
But in a trilogy, you have to try to answer the questions you asked. And metaphysical answers are a lot more difficult than questions.
WOOT! I’ve been waiting for an excuse to show people this article on annoying movie trends!
Lucas is shifting the blame, saying that M. Night Shyamalan is somehow at fault.
Too much of the movie was completely pointless, with scenes that by design accomplished nothing.
Neo vs three agents, ends when Neo flies away.
Neo vs hundred Smiths, ends when Neo flies away.
Neo vs Seraph, ends when Seraph says “Yeah, I guess you’re that Neo guy.”
Neo vs Merovingian’s goons, involves a lot of kung-fu when the previous movie suggested Neo was now above the need for such vulgar displays.
Neo vs Sentinels in the real world, ends with audience going “What the fuck?”
Everybody vs Everybody on the freeway, ends with big explosion, Neo rescue… not really a lot of character development, just one eye-candy smash’n’crash after another, check your brain at the door.
Neo vs Architect, ends with audience baffled. It’s a bad sign when a character begins a speech with “Some of this you will understand and some of it this you won’t.” It’s a license for bullshitting.
Just about the only conflict I personally found interesting was Monica Bellucci’s breasts vs her latex dress.
Well, that and the Keymaker, who “knows because he is supposed to know.” That’s convenient.
My guess is they took an option on 2 and 3 when they delivered the first one, not expecting it to actually be picked up. When Matrix was such a runaway hit, they were left with no idea how to proceed and just threw stuff at the wall to see what stuck. That kind of paid off in 2, since the events were close to 1, but by the time 3 rolled around they were just flailing in the dark.
That’s how it felt to me at least.
Shyamalan’s denying responsibility. He says he does twist endings not fucked up endings. And then he pointed out the over-the-top special effects battles - that’s all Michael Bey.
It would have been a better movie if this battle had gone the other way.