Yup, it would have been a much better flick had her breasts escaped from the Matrix that was her dress.
Totally agree. It felt like they thought they were making something on par with the Illiad and the Odyssey, instead of, say, Terminator 2.
They also seemed to take whatever was praised in the original and repeat it ad nauseam. The worst offender? Lots of people praised the fist-to-fist kung fu fights in the first. By the time they got to the third and had the antagonist and protagonist flying around, instead of creating a fight based off of that, they just had them do kung fu… in the air.
While it’s easy to be cynical now, years after the fact, you need to remember that the original Matrix had people leaving the theatre and telling their friends. “OMFG this movie is AWESOME”! A lot of people (at the time) were reading all sorts of deeper philosophical meanings into it (the first movie) "What is reality?"and the special effects and leaping, wall climbing kung fu fighting stylised action were kind of new to mainstream western audiences watching a western movie. As Nzinga, Seated notes -
It was interesting and a bit different, and Reeves understated, blank slate somewhat wooden style acting worked perfectly for the hero protagonist role as it was written. Sure, there were plot holes you could drive a dump truck through (human batteries?), but the original was visually interesting and full of ideas.
The sequels were a disappointing mess that did not deliver to people’s expectations, and I believe this disappointment made people somewhat sour on all three films even if they kind of liked the original Matrix movie.
I thing that’s pretty much it right there.
It’s been a long time since I saw that movie, but wasn’t there some kind of generic “jungle dance” that the zionites did towards the end? Reminded me of those 1950s movies that took place in Africa, and the natives would do their “jungle dance” after they caught the white guys and had them tied up inside the village/fort.
Really? You don’t understand it? I can see not SHARING in it; if it’s not your cup of tea that’s one thing. But how could you not understand why it’s so beloved?
Aside from being just a well produced movie, the success and appeal of the Matrix is that is tapped directly into the most fundamental fantasies of nerds. The Matrix is every basement geek’s wet dream, a total laundry list of every geek fantasy:
1. The hero is a basement nerd. The hero is a nerd with no friends and no girlfriend. He’s unappreciated, beset upon by his boss, even though he’s a computer wizard.
2. The world that doesn’t like him turns out to be fake. He finds out that the shitty world he inhabits is totally fake… In fact, it’s a COMPUTER PROGRAM, something he, a computer geek, can understand! Ppreviously an anonymous nerd, he is specially selected by an elite troop of warriors to join them.
3. His computer geekery is what makes him powerful. Then, when he gets into the real world, it turns out his calling is not to deal with the real world at all, but to re-enter the computer program, and become a martial arts superstar who also gets to fire guns.
4. Jocks need not apply! And the beautiful thing about it is that to become a martial arts superstar and master of firearms requires no physical exertion whatsoever. In this world it doesn’t matter if you suck in gym class. You can learn kung fu just by having it uploaded into your brain.
5. Profit! As a result of just being who he is, the underappreciated hero turns out to be an invincible super-avatar. He saves the day, gets to wear clothes WAY, WAY cooler than anything he’d ever be able to buy himself, kisses a girl (ZOMG!!!) and just generally does everything geeks dream of doing.
It was the first movie that was directed right towards the computer-loving, basement-dwelling male who if old enough still has his D&D Monster Manual and if not is spamming Barrens chat right now. I don’t think this is a subtle thing, either; it’s absolutely blatant. They hit everything on the nerd-boner list.
Thank you! I loved that article. I don’t watch a lot of current movies and I don’t know anything about film-making, so it takes an article like that to show me what the problem is. I see that stuff, and I sort of know what they’re doing, just not very clearly.
Ah, that’s what you think. But at the end…
…there’s a twist.
I am going to recommend another Confused Matthew review. I like the guy, for some reason, but I understand some of you are put off on the yelling (though he’s gotten better since his Lion King reviews). But he’s probably the most logical video reviewer I’ve seen on YouTube.
You really have to start with his Reloaded review, since he treats them as two parts of the same movie. He starts by reviewing the philosophy, but jumps into his recap of each scene, followed by commentary. I wish there was a way to only hear the commentary, but I do think it interesting to hear a scene by scene review.
He really gets going on the third film, though. He caught things I don’t know of anyone else catching. I find myself mostly unable to “fanwank” anything, and that’s saying something.
I gave up on it when I realised that I agreed with Joe Pantoliano, and would have chosen to live in the Matrix world. Whoever would rather live in the “real world” where it’s a miserable dystopian trainwreck is fooling themselves.
While he makes some good points, he’s also an incredible idiot. First he complains that the cataclysmic system crash the Architect was talking about doesn’t happen, and then he complains about the Matrix being filled with Smiths. Yeah, gee, I wonder what’s going to cause the cataclysmic system crash, this is some really difficult to comprehend shit right here.
He does that a lot throughout the reviews, makes a big deal about something he didn’t understand that even my fucking cat was able to figure out. When you can’t tear apart movies as bad as the Matrix sequels without making it seem like you have the raw intellectual capacity of an average duck, there’s something wrong with you.
I will give him props for speaking clearly and having a decent microphone, though.
He was complaining about the lack of a cataclysmic system crash from a storytelling and not a technical perspective. The Architect said something to the effect of, “Return to the source, or everyone dies.” If he was referring to the Smith-induced cataclysm, waiting until the end of the next movie six months later for it to resolve makes the dilemma less effective.
To be fair, the human batteries idea were at the insistence of the studio.
I disliked 2 but thought 3 was decent enough. The last hour or so provided a raw visual spectacle on the big screen which was worth the ticket price. Especially the machine attack on Zion and the journey to Machine City. And in truth the faults of the sequels: an increasingly convoluted and boring plot and overlong fight scenes began to surface towards the end of 1 itself. I really enjoyed the first half of 1 but thought it began to drag towards the end with too much pointless blather about the oracle and the prophecy.
Ultimately I don’t think there was enough decent material for a trilogy and they should kept it down to two films. Of course that would have made less money so they probably knew what they were doing.
You know what bugged me the most about the movie?
The fact that they didn’t have any armor on those damn battlesuits. The could put a minigun at the end of each arm, but they couldn’t slap a couple of plates on the driver’s chest?
It’s weird, I can ignore the portentious, incomprehensible plot, the poor plotting and pacing, the mediocre acting and the general misguidedness of the films, but I can’t ignore the fact that they didn’t bother to think 30 seconds about their technology. Those battlesuits literally bothered me more than everything else put together.
You know what bugged me the most about the movie?
The fact that they didn’t have any armor on those damn battlesuits. The could put a minigun at the end of each arm, but they couldn’t slap a couple of plates on the driver’s chest?
It’s weird, I can ignore the portentious, incomprehensible plot, the poor plotting and pacing, the mediocre acting and the general misguidedness of the films, but I can’t ignore the fact that they didn’t bother to think 30 seconds about their technology. Those battlesuits literally bothered me more than everything else put together.
I think the machinery in Zion was there when they came.
We know they have some form of metal-joining technique (since they fixed up the Nebuchadnezzar after it was peeled open at the end of the first movie). So why not at least weld together a carapace that protects the pilot from the kind of slashes that would glance off armour but dismember a human?
Hey, you try writing a coherent script while wearing nipple clamps…
Probably for the same reason they have all those interior lights inside a diver’s helmet. It’s so you can see the actor.