I’ll be watching this tonight now that it is finally out. Reviews are all over the place on this movie, from scathingly negative all the way up to “really good”.
I thought we should probably have a discussion thread dedicated to this movie.
Perspective: This movie comes out 22 years after the original. That is the same time between Star Wars and the Phantom Menace.
I doubt if I’ll be paying to see this until it is on free TV in a couple of years, but since I’m on the fence, how about spoiling the plot, which seems fairly confused and difficult. Did it fall within your suspension of disbelief (for the Matrix universe) or was it too contrived for that?
I haven’t seen it and probably won’t any time in the next month or so. The big question I have is how big a role does NPH have, and is his character a villain?
Reasonably big, and yes villain.
He’s the main bad guy. Was that like 5 seconds of Christina Ricci? seemed really random and kinda took me out of the movie.
After a few hours to digest this movie I feel a bit disappointed by the whole thing. There is barely any story, the CGI and fight choreography was not even as good as the originals, and it was way too…meta. There are good scenes and it is not a terrible movie, but it just did not deliver on what it promised. For example, how can you have that super meta conversation about how what made the original Matrix was the bullet time and how you need a new bullet time for the sequel and then… not deliver? I did like them straight up saying “our bosses WARNER BROTHERS said they were going to make sequel with or without us”.
I’m just over half-way and honestly…this is kind of great.
I love the idea of not making a sequel for about the first 45 minutes or so…then kind of giving in and making one.
I liked it quite a bit. The action is the biggest letdown. It’s not that they didn’t try to put some action scenes in this, it’s that they did not choreograph or film them in an interesting ways.
However, the overall story was really great and I kind of loved the whole thing. I would recommend this movie, though you really do need to see the first 3 Matrix movies first.
I loved the first 45 minutes or so, because I had no idea what the fuck was going on or where they were going. “Is this actually a sequel? Is this a meta commentary on Warner Bros forcing them to do a sequel? “The Matrix” as a movie/game exists in this world? Wtf!?” (I cracked up when they panned over Neo’s desk in the Deus Machina office because I have those same exact figurines of the many-tentacled sentinel and Trinity on display on my shelf!)
And I loved all the references back to the first film, it was a really interesting way to do a sequel with it not really feeling like a regular old sequel. Unfortunately, once they unplugged Neo and we were back in the real world in Io and the plot made itself known, then it did pretty much become just a regular sequel. It was missing the wow factor that was such a huge part of the first film. I could tell they were trying to do some kind of physical in-camera effect when Neil Patrick Harris was making them move in slow motion, but it wasn’t nearly as impressive as the original bullet time.
There is an after-credits stinger, in case anyone was wondering.
I would agree that the opening 45 minutes were awesome. A truly gutsy move to make, though I would have been FURIOUS if it did not turn out to be a “Matrix holding cell” as I kind of called it.
I saw the first showing, on the first day yesterday, and had a great time. Still processing some of the movie, though, and had two questions:
What happened to Morpheus? Why wasn’t Lawrence Fishburne playing the role? Am I to understand Morpheus is/always was a program from the Matrix that just happened to inhabit a human body (Lawrence)?
How did Agent Smith survive? I thought he was purged code after he assimilated Neo in Revolutions. Was he exiled along with the Merovingian?
How and when did Trinity learn to fly? Looks like Neo’s still grounded. He’s been awake longer than she has, but she’s now flight capable while he stops bullets.
I agree the first 45 minutes of the movie poking fun at itself was kind of refreshing.
When I watch TV/movies, I can usually seperate cinematography from plot, and I tend to focus on a good plot at the expense of poor cinemetography or low-budget special effects (I’m looking at you ST:TOS). But the above are three plot holes I can’t get my noodle around.
Tripler
NPH as a villain? Brilliant!
I said “open spoilers” so I am going full open. I apologize for removing spoiler-code in the questions. I did leave the quoted text unchanged.
No, Morpheus was real. I do NOT understand why there was not a Lawrence Fishburne version of him in the real world. He says he was not asked. The computer program is separate.
I don’t get the Smith part of the movie either. This is just the Smith that Neo thinks he created in his video game? This isn’t actually Smith, right? Neo did beat him in Matrix 3, right? The Oracle-body was the final form I think.
It seems that Neo + Trinity is kind of “the One” now. I don’t get it entirely. It’s a reboot, which as the movie pointed out…is all the rage now.
It’s been over 60 years in world since the originals, there wouldn’t be a Morpheus anyways. Plus I believe they heavily implied he died when Zion fell.
Oh, that is right. Hey, I didn’t catch any mention of “real Morpheus”. Did they really suggest he died when Zion fell? I know he is dead in the video game. I wonder if they tried to maintain that the game was canon.
So why didn’t Smith look like Hugo Weaving? Again, Weaving was not asked I think.
Probably so they could have a surprise reveal. They didn’t really say anything about how Morpheus died, other that he ignored the threat of the new power rising and Zion is no more I guess. I forgot he died in the game.
The game was canon at the time, but I have not yet heard if the movie has in any way contradicted it.
So they did say Morpheus ignored the new power? What was the new power? The machines fighting other machines?
I did watch the movie, I swear. I think some of the…well…the extensive exposition flew over my head as it was just too much at times.
Pretty sure the implication was that the new power was the Analyst. They said Morpheus thought the peace Neo brought was forever so he ignored the new threat.
No need to apologize, @Mahaloth. I missed the ‘open window’ note when I was downloading thoughts from my consciousness to the keyboard. I’m a little slow. . . working at 3600 baud.
ETA: I assume the ‘Analyst’ fully replaced the ‘Architect’, correct?
@DigitalC, I never played the game. Maybe this is something I missed. I did assume the new character would have had more chops in mimicking Hugo Weaving, though. Sorta like “Bane” tried to reasonably do.
Tripler
I was HOPing for some eNUNciAtion, Mister ANderson.
Me neither, but I distinctly remember that they explicitly said everything that happened was canon and that they killed Morpheus.
Here is the Morpheus death scene from the game.
