Just watched “The Matrix - Revolutions” final installment in the “Matrix” series for the first time. I had heard it was a pretty lame ending to the Matrix series but…Wow… that was some pretty awful writing & acting. What an artistic elephant dump!
Interesting how those directors went from geniuses to hacks in 3 films.
You know what the one detail was that bugged me the most? I mean, out of the hundreds of details that bugged me?
Why the hell didn’t they weld some armor on those battlesuits?
Strangely, there were parts of the movie I actually liked.
They started believing their own press.
With the first film they had set out to make a nifty cyberpunk-action movie, and succeeded admirably. The subsequent explosion of admiration and awe convinced them that their movie was Important and Original, instead of a successful rehash of ideas William Gibson and Bruce Sterling had explored much more thoroughly 15 years earlier. They forgot that the first film worked because it was cool and fun, not because it was in any way profound.
Indeed, the second and third films are god awful. However, their next film, V for Vendetta was fantastic (though they didn’t direct it, they did write and produce it–maybe that’s key).
Loved the first Matrix. Hated both sequels. The first one won four Oscars; the sequels weren’t even nominated for any Oscars, but they were nominated for Razzies. Complete tripe the sequels were.
I’ve never seen Matrix:Revolutions shown on cable while the first two run quite frequently. Is there any particular reason why?
I saw it in an IMAX theater and the most intriguing aspect was seeing Keanu’s individual pores under the makeup.
I’m one of the minority here. I thought that Revolutions was pretty neat and I liked Revolutions a lot too. It wasn’t as strong as the first movie by any means but it was a pretty solid B or B+ movie, IMO.
I loved the first one. Absolutely loved it. Was panting with anticipation when the sequel was coming out. Tried to watch it and fell asleep part way through it twice. Never even tried to watch the third one…
Yeah I agree. I think Reloaded was the worst of the three, but Revolutions wasn’t nearly as bad as people said. Of course neither can hold a candle to the first one, which is one of the best films of the 1990s. They should have kept it as just the one film, but I really didn’t think the sequels were that terrible.
Well, if they had gone in the direction promised by the last lines of the first movie:
*I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you. *
That sounded like an interesting movie. Instead, we got a bunch of stuff set in an underground world that we didn’t really care about. A world filled with people so dumb that they never thought of putting armor on their front-line weapons.
I think I must be the only person on the planet who thought the third one was the necessary and inevitable conclusion to the series. Of course, it would have made a lot more sense for Neo to win the war at the end of the second one, but he got talked out of it by Colonel Sanders (the guy claiming to be the Architect) and wussed out.
This was a problem for me. I thought the underground world was dope. I loved the whole way it was done, I loved the sex scene, the party scened, the whole vibe. But I just didn’t care about the new faces introduced at all. I was beginning not to care about anyone at all.
It is like when The Golden Girls would have an episode with Rose’s daughter who falls in love with Blanch’s son. I’m like, I love Golden Girls, but who are these people?
I loved the original Matrix with the wide eyed wonder of a child. That means that I totally swallowed all of the big, sweeping, pretentious philosophy 101 bullshit, and I ate it up with a spoon (ha.) and blinked confusedly when people pointed out to me that the movie was completely overrated and that the messages were childish and amatuer in their philosophy. Just loved the movie to death.
I thought the battle for Zion was pretty cool. I look at movies like that the same way I look at dreams. I thought it was a cool surreal battle and I was excited by it, not bored like I was with the transformers movies. The parts that don’t make sense didn’t bother me at all. I do think that both sequels had way too much talk around their action scenes.
The only cool things about the second movie were Trinity’s fall from the window in the opening scene, rescuing the Keymaker, and the fight on the highway. The only cool things about the third movie were… well, nothing. It totally sucked.
And yes, V for Vendetta was a very cool movie. Even better in some ways (blasphemy!) than the graphic novel, IMHO.
Reloaded was the single most disappointing sequel in the history of sequels. I never even gave Revolutions a try.
To partially echo another poster in this thread, the trilogy went from being a fun cyberpunk thriller wound up in a massive conspiracy theory to a campy superhero film with a God complex that badly jumped the shark. Neo was so much more a fun character when he was inconfident, confused, and didn’t know his potential.
I might get strung up for this, but perhaps the first movie should have been divided up into three, where the third one ends with him stopping the bullets and kicking Mr. Smith’s ass. From there, the viewer is left to wonder how everything turns out.
One point people haven’t touched on yet:
The original Matrix movie follows Campbell’s heroic cycle very well. In fact, I consider it the most literal use of the “call to adventure” step: Neo opens the (product-placement brand) delivery package, a phone falls out, and immediately rings with the Call to Adventure.
The second one is my favorite of the series. The first one was ok, but looking back on it it was boring. The third one sucked.
Yeah, I liked that one too. It kinda opened things up a little and took things in some new directions, with those new characters that were “monsters” or whatever, and of course the Architect. Not to mention that one guy getting taken over by Smith in the real world. Then three came along and just shat all over everything.
Maybe the third one would’ve been better if they hadn’t done them back to back (to back with the video game) and took their time with it.
I never saw the second one and got dragged to the third one on a blind date. Like you, I saw it in IMAX. It was like reading a horrible book in LARGE PRINT. Truly lousy, but everyone in it seemed to think that there were in The Bestest Most Importantest Movie Ever and they’d better Act Really Serious. I was ready to gnaw my arm off to get out of it.
Afterwards my date was gushing about how cool it was and asked me what I thought. Rather than kill her buzz I said “Well I didn’t see the second part so I guess I couldn’t really appreciate it”.
The Matrix, like Highlander, is best viewed sequel free. I mentally keep the Matrix sequels, the Highlander sequels and Alien III/IV/V in a Never Happened Box.