Matrix sequels are better. Somehow, Lucas found the only actor in the world who is worse than Keanu Reeves.
The scene where R2 suddenly remembers he can fly, despite having been flummoxed by stairs and swamps in the rest of the films, was very memorable, due to its immense stupidity. You didn’t say it had to be ‘good’ memorable
No contest. The Matrix sequels were much worse.
While the first two Star Wars prequels were sub-par, Revenge of the Sith was quite good. (7.8 stars on IMDb, 80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.)
Matrix sequels are better by miles and miles and miles…
I contend that a lot of people who saw the Matrix sequels didn’t really understand what was going on which is why they thought it was disappointing. That might sound like a really arrogant thing to say on my part but I do hear lots of complaints to the effect of “oh yeah the film was really boring, it brought down all the fight sequences and car chases”. Well the “boring” bits were what really grabbed me, they were asking questions that I found really interesting.
The bit that really hit me was the reveal during Reloaded that Neo was simply another in a long line of Ones who were just following a larger program and that there was an entire system set up to contain those who had rejected the Matrix, that what governed the system was choice and how fundamental this was to humanity and how this was explored. Also there was the element of the machines - they weren’t just dispassionate, unfeeling automotons, they were sentient beings who thought and felt. When Neo confronts the machines in the form of the Deux ex Machina it yells “We don’t need you - we don’t need anything from you!”. The machines are still hurt and angry even after centuries of keeping the human race in a prison that they don’t even know is there, they’re still nursing a massive grudge against humanity for what it did to them (if you’ve seen the Animatrix which contains the history of the first man/machine conflict you’ll probably understand it too).
I agree the writers got a bit confused about what they wanted to happen. This made the situation all incredibly interesting to me, and seeing how this iteration of the Matrix was different to the previous ones, how the Oracle had essentially engineered for Neo to make a choice other than the one he was supposed to make and undermined the whole system. Very clever.
Okay, I accept the writers seemed to forget a few times what story they wanted to tell, and that whole bit about Agent Smith getting into the real world and Neo’s powers manifesting there were definitely part of that.
So ultimately I think that the Matrix contained within it an original set of ideas and an engaging story, one that you could actually have told without the CGI if you really had to (although it would definitely have made it a lesser set of movies). If you tried to tell the SW prequels without the CGI all you’d be left with is a story and dialogue that no 16 year old fanfic writer would own up to producing.
Matrix sequels are better, by far. Keanu may not be the best actor but honestly that was the perfect role for him. Also though the romance between him and Trinity was far from convincing, it wasn’t the dreck-fest that Anakin and Padme was. OMG I still want to puke when I think of their ‘love’ scenes. Oh god - how did a smart girl like her ever fall for his shit?
This is sort of like the choice given to condemned prisoners in Utah: shooting or hanging. No matter what you choose, it’s not good for you.
I suppose I’d go with Star Wars. Both Episode One and Reloaded were terrible movies, no doubt, but at least I was willing to see Episode Two, probably because the original Star Wars was better than the original Matrix.
Neither film was particularly original (The concept behind The Matrix had already been explored in Dark City, for example – whose sets were even reused by the Wachowskis – and the “original ideas” dated back to Plato). But Star Wars wasn’t pretending to be deep and philosophical; it was an old fashioned 30s movie serial. But where** Episode One **plodded along, Reloaded was just a flashy mess, with a deus ex machina every two minutes.
SW prequels! Worse by a parsec!
The Matrix sequels were your typical “let’s churn out some crap while we can.” money makers while with the Star Wars prequels you knew that there was a well-developed story begging to be told. And when I saw who has signed on to do it? How could it go wrong?
Problems with the SWP:
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Acting. Only decent two were Ewan McGregor (who patterned himself after Alec Guiness’ portrayal) and Ian McDiarmid. Normally good actors like Portman, Neeson, Jackson and Lee were apparently too tired from cashing their checks to do any real acting. Oh and remember the youngling? “Master Anakin. What are we going to do?” ZZZZING!!! and the kid backs up with WTF?! on his face. Unless it’s Haley Joel Osment, if your leads are being out-acted by a 7 year old there’s something wrong. Oh and Jake Lloyd? I saw him on “Jingle All the Way” (before TPM). He is a HORRIBLE actor - even by kid standards. Whoever picked him for any movie after JATW should be castrated and then killed and then all decendents and close relatives killed in an effort to chlorinate the world’s gene pool.
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Darth Maul. Really? He’s scary? A guy with a bad sunburn and Mike Tyson tats that glares at everyone is intimidating? Do you remember the first time you saw Vader? That was intimidating!
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The light saber fight. Pretty good but the ending was idiotic. Qui-Gon gets hit in the face and is stunned and can’t defend himself? No offence, but even the pussies who were terrified of Maul wouldn’t be stunned by that hit. And when Obi-Wan flies out of the pit? Please let me just watch you fly over me then get cut in half. At least Lucas got the right in #3 when Ani tries the same move and Obi has him looking like Toulouse Lautrec.
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The story telling. The basic plot is good. Palpatine sets up a “phantom menace” against his own planet to eventually become Chancellor then Emperor and we find out he’s a Sith (OK no surprise) but he’d been planning this for years with the help of a dark Jedi. So let’s throw in that whole Naboo sea people thing. And the Ani/Padme thing just seemed a little off. Maybe it was the acting or the dialog. I don’t know but by the end, it wasn’t tragic.
I found the Matrix sequels almost unbearable. The final one, I rented a videotape of it, which didn’t work in the living room VCR, so my daughter and I had to watch it, uncomfortably, on the VCR on the kitchen TV. We watched it, like two dummies, uncomfortable in every way - I mean, we HAD to watch it, we had to have some kind of closure. Very disappointing, but I guess that sex change operation one of the makers was pondering took a lot away from the production…
Now, the Star Wars sequel? I love them, precisely because they are so bad, they’re laughable. (If I’m alone in the house reading or working on a project, there is no better background noise when I turn on the TV so it isn’t so quiet.) I can look up every now and then, admire the pictures on the screen, and laugh all over again at the ridiculous dialogue.
Sex change operation?
Worse, it’s something the characters should have figured out immediately once the “superpowers in the real world” manifested. When that didn’t happen, it led to the reaction “Why should I give a damn about the troubles these dumbasses are getting into because of their own stupidity?”
Wavering a bit, but ultimately I vote for the Matrix sequels as being worse because they squandered so much more potential – the Star Wars prequels were never supposed to be anything but modern reworkings of the classic movie-serial genre, and doing that poorly rather than well just isn’t as far a fall as taking some potentially interesting SF concepts and making hash of them.
“She’s dying of a broken heart.”
By far the dumbest movie in the trilogy–the fact that it scored 80% on RT is very concerning.
Absolutely agree. The Phantom Menace was bad, The Attack of the Clones was awful and The Revenge of the Sith was the epitome of suck.
Yeah, but remember, it was AOTC that produced this gem: “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and irritating and it gets everywhere.”
But at least that’s a true statement. 
“Are you an angel?”
Don’t forget this gem:
:eek:
And then he falls off a giant, galloping bosc pear.
Ah, the prequels!
Star Wars prequels are so awful they taint the originals. You can’t watch the originals without thinking of all the retarded background information which makes the entire enterprise feel ruined.
In stark contrast to the original? :dubious:
The Matrix was solid because of the atmosphere, cool action scenes, and for the style points. The sequels more or less kept this. Agent Smith becoming a free floating virus trying to take down the system was out of left field, but he was too cool to let go. Who else would a Super Neo fight anyway?