Matrix Revolutions - just watched it again

[Frostmarrow]

I saw it for the first time last night. I just felt really old. The brother's can't teach me anything new.

 

[milotha]

I disagree. This scene showed that there were programs within the Matrix that weren't under the controll of it and that they wanted to continue to exist just as the humans did. It changed the nature of the entire conflict.

Hadn't we really established this in the second film. How did any of this really come into play in the third movie? It was really just filler. Yeah, there were lots of cool places they could have taken it. But really it didn't further the overall plot of movie three at all. It's like the whole second and third movies. A bunch of great ideas that weren't woven together into a cohesive story- bad writing. I contend that the first movie was a great stand alone. It didn't need the sequels, and was in fact hurt by them.

Agent Smith was no longer the same program that he was in the first movie. When faced with destruction at the end of the first movie he had found a way to become something far more powerful than his original programming. He had transformed into a virus that was competing with the powers within for control of the Matrix. They could have used a different bad guy for his, but why bother when Agent Smith was a villain that was well-respected by the audience?

Once again, wasn't this established in the second movie? Did I need another contrived fight scene. It was so over the top and had about as much dramatic tension as a bad soap opera. Yeah, the CGI was great. Yeah, the audience liked Agent Smith. The fight scene between Smith and Neo in the first movie had tension because no one had stood up to an agent. The third movie was just more of the same. Let's use some hackneyed excuse as to why Neo can use his powers again on Smith.

Morpheus' role in this story is to act as the prophet. His job was to find Neo and train Neo. The only way that he is different than other teachers is that he didn't die. His importance was over once the hero he discovered came into his own.

I disagree. We could have shown Morpheus's growth as a character. In the second movie he battled an agent, which he said was impossible in the first. Why could Morpheus have been driving the ship? Why couldn't he have helped lead the defense of Zion? Why did we need so many extraneuous chracters introduced. I think people were more emotionally attached to the characters from the first movie, than any of the characters introduced in the second or third movies.

Does every death in a war have to be at the hands of the enemy? She died in an accident. It sucks, but it also put Neo in a position where he had nothing left to lose and nothing left to come back to.

NO, not every character's death has to have a purpose. But I think the story would have been even better if Neo had had to choose between saving humanity and his love of Trinity. The reverse of the second movie. As it was, I just didn't care who won. I wanted the movie to end. The brothers destroyed all emotional attachement I had to the characters and their plight.

Why bother waking everybody up when the world outside would not be able to support them? Why destroy the Matrix when there are living programs within it that have just as much of a right to exist (remember the girl at the trin station?). What Neo does is first inform people of the truth and then gives them a choice of living in it or outside of it. If you chose to live within it then you help to provide power for the Matrix and you get to live in the world you have always known. If you chose to live outside of it you get to help rebuild the world. It makes sense.

This was not conveyed at all in the thrid film. How were the humans in the matrix given a choice? Couldn't they have negotiated a rebuilding of the human cities with the machines, if Neo had "taken over the matrix"? Couldn't there have been some ending that made the whole Neo story have a purpose, or some point. Nope. Just ruined the ending of the first movie.

 

[EricNoah]

I've found that, for me, each movie has fewer moments I want to watch again and again.

Matrix I -- there are several scenes I just like to watch repeatedly.

Matrix II -- there are about two scenes.

Matrix III -- there's not really one scene that I need to see several times.

My theory -- the "metaplot" for the series was a little too simplistic. The big reveal just wasn't that great. If there had been a bigger, more "special" reason for the "why" behind the whole thing (for example -- the machines aren't just using humans for power, but they are actually using human minds as part of a giant computer or something) I think the payoff would have been huge. Sci fi movies need a really good sci fi mystery/secret that kind of ties everything together. Matrix I had it to some extent, but the others didn't really expand on it much.

Also, I never bought Neo as a "messiah".

 

[Victim]

I see all three as a trilogy that tells a complete story. Saying you don't think that the second or third film should have been made is like saying that its a good idea to start telling a story but never finish it. My bias is that I liked it better than 1 or 2 because more of tha action took place in the real world. It delivered on the promise of a butt kicking war that was made in the first movie.

No one wants to get on a train and then have it derail. If the passengers know the train will jump the rails, then they should probably get off at a stop before the accident.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Note that if she hadn't been there, the blinded Neo would not have been able to get to the machine city. So her presence was necessary for Neo to fulfill his destiny.

This was the scene where the movie lost me. Not because I didn't care about Trinity dying (because, after all, why should I anyway?), but because it brought the action to a complete and utter halt.

"Wow, machines are overrunning Zion...of course, they're toying with the humans, but hey, that's still kind of cool. Infantry using RPGs, APUs doing their 'Mech action, and...now we switch to Neo and Trinity talking? For five minutes before Neo notices Trinity's been impaled on re-bar?"

Yeesh.

Brad

 

[RangerWickett]

At BASF, we don't make a lot of the movies you watch. We make a lot of the movies you watch, better.

Philosophy
We adhere to the original movie's overall premise, keeping heroes and villains the same, but we remove extraneous pieces and enhance weak parts. Thus, Agent Smith still is a virus, the Architect still forces Neo to make a decision to reboot the Matrix, the Merovingian is still French.

The Matrix
Keep as is. It's iconic, and any flaws it has, we're fine with.

The Matrix Reloaded
Things that need to change or be updated include:
1) That general guy needs to stop talking. He's boring. We're going to get rid of the council too. In an action film, we don't need a big group of talking people. To provide this necessary information, and to improve the emotional pay-off in movie 3, the characters of General Locke and of Capt. Mafune will be consolidated into one person.

2) We will have only one scene with the whole council, and that will involve Morpheus addressing them and trying to convince them of Neo's messiah-hood. In the current version, most everyone except Locke believes in Neo, which removes most of the tension. In the revision, few people really believe in him, and most of those who do are people who have been freed by him. This way, when Morpheus takes the Nebuchadnezzar to go contact the Oracle, it's in violation of Zion, and we might start to worry that it really is foolish.

3) Because this movie needs more punching, we have a Neo-filled training program, where Neo and Trinity train with Kid, who really ought to have a different name. Kid has a hard time training here because his mind rejects the Matrix. Make mention that a lot of plugged-in people have been dying recently in the Matrix because their will rebels, and they kill themselves. Something strange is going on in the Matrix. And then we cut to Bane getting possessed by Smith.

4) The Rave is gone. The only thing the Rave suggested in the original version was that Zion was in the real world, contrasting the stark antiseptic nature of the Matrix with the dirt-grinding feet and hips and sweat of the humans. Unfortunately, it also made Zion look like a stand-in for Hell, where all the damned of the world live deep underground, filled with sinful urges. Really, this scene was only here to appease the Wachowski brothers' sexual fetishism.

5) After the Nebuchadnezzar leaves Zion, Zee (Link's girlfriend) and Kid meet up and join the infantry, with Kid trying to act as a bit of a prophet of Neo, and we have a bit more action with some people we care about. Introduce the robots in this movie, and show that Locke will be in charge. We need to make the audience care more about what's going on in Zion. If we can't accomplish that, we're better off having very little action in Zion, and instead focus on the heroes in the Matrix. But I want to keep some Zion action in. We have Niobe and Locke argue a bit, and Niobe is swayed to believe in Neo, and she leaves.

6) Cut the 'Burly Brawl' with the dozens of Smiths a little short. Neo should have a hard time once there are ten Smiths, and he realizes he can't kill them.

7) We like that the Merovingian has creepy monster allies. His wife is a vampire. His henchmen are ghosts, werewolves, and, let's add a ghoul of some sort. Maybe put a little more effort in to help describe why they're around -- the Merovingian smuggled them out before the previous Matrices were rebooted. This of course raises questions, since the group will want to know about these older versions of the Matrix.

8) Why the hell does Monica Belucci kiss Neo? She's a psychic vampire, of course, and she weakens Neo a bit by doing this. We're going to have to kill her and the Merovingian in Revolutions, and they'll be powerful because they siphoned off the power of the One, as they've been siphoning off power from the One in the past six Matrices.

9) Keep the end much the same, including the fun car chase, the need to get into the Source, the three paths, and the Architect. However, we learn that the Merovingian has played a role too. Even though Merv thinks he's rebelling, his repetitive attempts to drain power from the One is what weakened the previous One's enough that they didn't have the willpower to resist the offer by the Architect. But Neo has been strengthened by his love for Trinity. . . . Oh yeah, let's make sure we actually see love between Neo and Trinity. Y'know, smiles, concern, and so on.

10) At the end of the movie, we can't have Neo destroy the sentinels with his mind. It gives the hint that there are two levels to the Matrix, which isn't true. Instead, Neo is unable to revive Trinity. By the time he catches Trinity, he's exhausted, his body in the Matrix horribly wounded from the strain. He tries to heal her heart, but he doesn't have the power, and he realizes that Monica Belucci stole it. He will not be able to save her life, but he can give her one last gift. He embraces her, then tells Morpheus to unplug her. When he does, Trinity's body in the Matrix vanishes, but her body comes back to life in the real world. Neo returns to the real world, and finds Trinity in a coma, with no higher brain functions. They then have to flee the Nebuchadnezzar, Neo carrying Trinity's body, as the ship is destroyed. As the sentinels fly in, Neo feels something, and he looks down at Trinity, just as the sentinels spasm and collapse. Trinity, in this version, is the one who has the strange control over the real world, not Neo. This provides some extra special mystery, because it might be a sign that others are gaining strange powers, not just Neo.

We end much as the original version ends, but with Trinity and Bane in the coma, not Neo.

Coming soon, The Matrix Revolutions - BASF.

 

[WizarDru]

Yes they can cut though, but while they are busy cutting though the metal or whatever you have between it and you, you have time to react and try to do something to survive.

In the animatrix, it's pretty clear that massive amounts of armor equals maybe 1-2 extra seconds of protection, if that. That's simply not cost effective for a resource poor defense force. People are easier to make than non-recreatable APUs.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Ah, but there is the problem: there is another level to the Matrix. There is always another level. "Real" is just a word.

The ideas about how to change the movies are interesting, but I think some of them are based in misunderstandings of the point.

 

[mmu1]

In the animatrix, it's pretty clear that massive amounts of armor equals maybe 1-2 extra seconds of protection, if that. That's simply not cost effective for a resource poor defense force. People are easier to make than non-recreatable APUs.

Uh-huh. And making huge two-legged mechs is somehow more cost-effective than making wheeled or tracked vehicles, then? You go to all that trouble to make something requiring tons of SOTA electronics to control the balance and the aiming of the guns, but you run out of cash when it comes to some steel plate?

Besides, the Animatrix is complete rubbish as far as background for rationalizing anything goes... According to it, the machines are pretty much immune to nuclear weapons, but in the films go down like flies when someone sets off a piddly little EMP generator. I guess they must have been using those special non-EMP generating nukes in the Animatrix.

 

[demiurge1138]

I enjoyed the Matrix sequels to a certain extent. Not as much as the first movie, but they were entertaining. The primary problem with them, however, is that the Brothers didn't do enough to make them two good movies- we end up with two OK movies that could have been one that was as good as the first.

My biggest problem with Matrix: Revolutions is the battle between the Sentinels and the defenders of Zion. Sure, it looks cool. But we don't really care about these characters. The only one we've seen in a human situation is the kid, and even then most of his character development is in the Animatrix. OK, there is the Link and Zee romance thing, but that's so briefly glossed over in Reloaded that we've half forgotten it by the time Revolutions came out. If we cared about Mifune, if we really got more of Link and Zee's love, and if we knew why, exactly, Niobe and Morpheus were racing the squiddies (I've only seen the movie once, so I might have missed that), the same scenes would have been more powerful.

The best parts of Revolutions are the bits taking place in the Matrix itself. Hugo Weaving is still a god among character actors, and the multi-Smith it nice and atmospheric, even if they don't use the swarm tactics from Reloaded. The Oracle's pronouncements actually have some clear meaning this time around, but overall Revolutions suffers from the same problem Reloaded did: pop philosophy.

The first Matrix brought up, in Hollywood style, the age-old questions about the nature of reality. The philosophy was fairly clear, and the exposition was necessary; after all, Neo just escaped from his pod. But now Neo's the Messiah (even though he acts more like Norton Antivirus). Why hasn't this been explained to him? Why does it need to be explained to him? Just so the Brothers can feel hip and eat up screentime with dialouge in order to compensate for expensive fight sequences.

But why not spend that screentime on character development? Harder to write. The Brother's laziness in scripting sabotages the films, making them empty excercises in pretention and wire-fu instead of truly fulfilling movies.

OK, maybe that was a little harsher than I intended. There were a lot of bits in the Matrix sequels I liked. But there were a lot of bits I didn't. And my final verdict is eh. They're OK. Nothing too special.

Demiurge out.