Matrix Revolutions - just watched it again

[RangerWickett]

And I still hate it.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Way to provide an in-depth analysis of the movie's flaws, Rangerman.

(By the way - I just re-read your review, and I still hate it.)

 

[kolvar]

I just watched Revolutions again and think it gets better with every watching. I especially liked the moment, when they get above the clouds and trinity adores the sun. How lovely and sad at the same time.

On another topic: At last, I know, how I can get a realy high post count: I open a topic and just say, that I hate it. Maybe I should do that, too. Lets see: I realy hate Himmel und Erde, a meal my mother allways made. And I hate people, who say, that they are not angry about what was said but every word they say drips with anger. I hate stupidity.
Matrix-Bashing is barely annoying, therefore, I will not open a thread for that.

 

[John Crichton]

I'm looking foward to watching all 3 films on DVD when the boxed set comes out. While I enjoyed the first one I didn't love it. I felt like it was 2/3s of a film. But, it actually got a little better after the initial viewing. I've never seen either of the sequels more than once and they probably deserve another look. I look forward to giving them a second chance. Especially since they both left me pretty cold in the theater.

All 3 films had flaws. I'm hoping the second 2 will prove more enjoyable after watching them with zero expectations. And being a trilogy, I'm hoping that watching them in close proximity to each other will add to the enjoyment. Either that or wipe any desire for my seeing them again completely away.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I bought the DVD the day it came out...and I found I enjoyed it more this time. Though I DID enjoy it in the theater, I found that I coud just enjoy it as an action movie more now. Of course...its no where near as good as the first, but that's near impossible.

 

[TracerBullet42]

On another topic: At last, I know, how I can get a realy high post count: I open a topic and just say, that I hate it. Maybe I should do that, too. Lets see: I realy hate Himmel und Erde, a meal my mother allways made. And I hate people, who say, that they are not angry about what was said but every word they say drips with anger. I hate stupidity.

It doesn't work if you include it all in the same post....

As another Matrix sequel hater, I agree. The second and third parts of the movie bored me. Too much double-talk, and action for the sake of action. I found myself saying, "Just get to the end so I can go home!" when I saw the second two movies in the theater...

Although that guy who yells and shoots for about twenty minutes in Revolutions...that was riveting. For years we've seen people yell like that, or shoot like that...but to yell AND shoot at the same time for an extended period of time like that...brilliant. (/sarcasm)

I'm with you RangerWickett. Although I'm not fond of the Ewoks either, but I can look past that this time...

 

[KenM]

The thing that really bugged me about revolutions was the APU's or whatever those giant robot things were called. The driver of them had NO PROTECTION WHATSOEVER. How dumb is that? Lets have our main defenders not have anything between them and the outside. How hard would it be for them to put up clear plexiglass or something? A modern tank driver does have his head and upper body exposed, but nothing like that, totally wrong and it ruined the movie for me.

 

[Villano]

It doesn't work if you include it all in the same post....

As another Matrix sequel hater, I agree. The second and third parts of the movie bored me. Too much double-talk, and action for the sake of action. I found myself saying, "Just get to the end so I can go home!" when I saw the second two movies in the theater...

Although that guy who yells and shoots for about twenty minutes in Revolutions...that was riveting. For years we've seen people yell like that, or shoot like that...but to yell AND shoot at the same time for an extended period of time like that...brilliant. (/sarcasm)

I'm with you RangerWickett. Although I'm not fond of the Ewoks either, but I can look past that this time...

I just saw Revolutions last week. I actually found myself liking it better than Reloaded. That said, I still hated it.

Reloaded and Revolutions are two examples of sequels that should never have been made. It's what happens when the studio pulls up with a dump truck full of money and says, "The first one did great business, do two more!"

Reloaded is the perfect example of a middle chapter and everything that can be wrong with it. You need to have seen The Matrix to know what's going on and there's no ending. On top of that, there were only 3 facts that were established:

Spoiler

Smith can replicate, that both Neo and Smith could affect the real world, and the Architect revealed the "true story" behind being the One.

After Revolutions came out, I read a review that stated that everything in Reloaded could have been summed up in the first 5 minutes of this film. I would go quite that far, but it could have been condensed into the first 1/2 hour, especially when you consider the 3rd of the 3 things I mentioned above could be completely ignored since they aren't brought up again (unless you count the 2 second cameo at the end).

And it certainly wouldn't be much of a chore to cut 1/2 hour out of Revolutions. As TracerBullet42 pointed out, there's no shortage of endless shooting and characters we've never seen before getting killed that could be trimmed. Add to that the train station scenes and anything involving the Frenchman (the only readon he existed was to get Neo out of the station), and you have half the film gone.

Honestly, if they had just made a single sequel, the results, while nowhere near the level of the original, wouldn't have been half bad.

As it stand, you have two films composed of 90% filler material. It's almost like watching those old B-movies that were padded with stock footage.

Anyway, there's a good review here http://www.fakes.net/matrixrevolutions.htm putting the films in perspective at the box office.

The following chart says it all:


Matrix - % positive reviews: 87% - gross: $171 - ratio *: 7.4
Matrix Reloaded - % positive reviews: 73% - gross: $281 - ratio *:3.1
Matrix Revolutions - % positive reviews:37% - gross: $139 - ratio *: 2.9

* ratio is the total gross divided by the opening weekend gross. Great word of mouth results in a high ratio.



To follow a $281 million dollar film with a $139 million dollar film is improbable under any circumstances, but seems downright impossible when the high-grossing middle chapter includes cliffhangers to be resolved in the third one. Didn't people care how it came out?

There are some explanations for that:

The $281 million gross for #2 was misleading. That really represents four years of anticipation and a sense that it was a must-see follow-up to one of the greatest films ever made. (The Matrix is rated #32 of all time at IMDb.) The actual advance demand for #3 wasn't as great as might be indicated by the big box office for #2. The Matrix Reloaded, number 2 in the series, was already the focus of a lot of disrespect. Indicating a lower level of interest than expected, the third one only grossed $48 million in its opening weekend, about half of what the second one grossed.

The word of mouth on #3 itself couldn't have been much worse, so the disappointment at the starting block was reinforced by an even more disappointing distance run. You saw the comments from Rolling Stone and Need Coffee above. Those are the kinds of comments people were making at their water coolers at work. To use an old saw, "people stayed away in droves".

To answer my original question, most people didn't care how it all came out, and if they did care enough to see number three, they still don't know how it all came out ...

... and they told their friends to stay away.

EDIT: Chart didn't paste correctly. Tried to make it (slightly) more readable.

 

[RangerWickett]

Ach, people are getting on my case. I knew I was being snippy, but I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

. . . .

Anyway, I watched this movie at 4 in the morning, and I posted at 6 in the morning. I often stay up doing things I find cool, but I was just weary of the Matrix by the end of the movie.

There were three different times in the movie someone said something to the effect of "There's no easy way to say this, and you already know this, but I'm going to say it again anyway."

What the hell is with the line "Some things never change, and some things do"? It is in no way profound or witty, but it's used 3 or 4 times between Reloaded and Revolutions. True, I didn't expect any great dialogue from the movie series that gave us Keanu Reeves saying, "You can't die. . . . I love you too damn much." But this movie's dialogue was very stiff, and drawn out. And I know you already know my opinion, but I'll tell you anyway: the dialogue was bad.

Now, there were good parts. The cloud flythrough is a nice moment. The fight with Smith in Bane is phenomenal. The moments of Niobe flying through the bowels of the Death Star/ I mean the mechanical line were nice, but they were sadly interspersed with Morpheus being useless and us having to watch people defending a city of second-string cast members. The beginning had some nice moments, and Smith in general was fun to watch (though at the end I really wanted him to spout some really good, Biblical-quality evil rants, like, "I am Legion, I am the Beast, I killed your master, and now I'm going to kill you, with your own sword no less."

The fight with Smith at the end was boring. Do something inovative, please! Invent aerial kung fu that looks cool. Grab buildings and use them as clubs. Rip off Neo's arm and make him regrow it with his willpower. Hell, create a kamehameha energy blast and tear through the city. But at this point, bouncing off each other 8 times isn't fun to watch.

I admit, repeat viewings of Reloaded made me appreciate how great that chase scene on the freeway is, and how fun punching is. And how silly CGI people look while fighting. And how much better I like the first oracle than the second one. But the only really good parts of Reloaded were the ones in the Matrix.

And you know what Matrix 3 didn't have in it? THE MATRIX!









I thought maybe I was being too critical of it the first time, when, y'know, I had to pay money for it. But I got to watch it for free last night, and my time was wasted. It's sad when a movie series that's all about being cool and looking cooler forgets about the first part.

 

[takyris]

Remember, the studios will never learn unless you vote with your dollar. I saw "The Matrix", went, "Wow, sort of okay fights, but for all the originality I'd heard it had, it's the kind of thing that's been done in the Science Fiction field since the 50's, with a Prophecy Lad Fantasy Trope tacked onto it," and decided not to give them positive reinforcement for making sequels.