I'm a fan of The Matrix trilogy. I mean, a big fan. I'm the kind of guy who decided to skip his last day of elementary school to see the worldwide release of Matrix Revolutions. The kind of guy who was always wearing a Matrix Reloaded shirt and could recite pretty much any line from the first movie by heart. The kind of guy who liked and enjoyed Enter the Matrix, and tolerated Path of Neo enough to reach the final boss (that game was terrible though). It's no surprise then that when I found a new copy of the Ultimate Collection in blu-ray for a reasonable price the other day, I proceeded to buy it immediately. Having all three movies, plus Animatrix (which I've never seen) and a whole lot of extra content in a single package? How could I resist?
Seriously, how could I?
So last Friday I got together with a couple of friends and we spent the whole night watching the trilogy. It's been a long time since I last saw them, and by that I mean years. No, I'm actually lying a bit: I did see the original movie the day after I bought the collection, but that's it. Reloaded and Revolutions had been staying out of my life for over two years, I think. The time was right to go back to them, to a disappointing yet fun sequel and to what I once considered my favorite movie of all time, respectively. Yes, I never cared that much for Reloaded, despite agreeing that it had some cool action sequences, and I loved the hell out of Revolutions, even to the point where I would call it better than the first one. Guess I'm that kind of guy.
All four of us had seen the trilogy before, so we weren't new to it. We were coming back to a series we liked, and the first movie suffered the consequences of that. As it's the one we'd seen the most, we spent most of the time talking over it, sometimes criticizing a particular scene or whatever. It's not without shame that I'll admit to also doing it myself, particularly during the climax of the movie, where Trinity confesses his love to a recently deceased Neo. That scene always felt out of place to me, what with the sentinels about to kill the Nebuchadnezzar crew and all. I'm also not a fan of the part where our heroes, after successfully rescuing Morpheus and extracting him from the Matrix, stay in the subway station talking casually instead of picking up the phone and getting out of there alive, especially when they knew the agents were looking for them. But those two are probably the only complaints I have about that masterpiece. That, and having to suffer through an almost unbearable number of needles in several scenes (for me, one single needle is a needle too much). I cringe every time I see Neo pulling out the needle when he wakes up in the ship for the first time, or Morpheus having some truth serum injected into his neck. Still, this one's a true classic, and I consider it one of the best movies ever made. Everything here makes sense, every single line of dialog has a purpose and actual meaning (even if it didn't seem so during the first time watching it). The action scenes are incredible; the lobby shootout is as impressive as it was the first time, and the kung fu training is still really fun to watch. The subway scene and subsequent chase near the end are also highlights. Everything looks so good, it's hard to believe this came out in 1999. The soundtrack kicks ass too and suits it perfectly.
This is such an amazing film that words can't begin to describe it. If you have seen it, you probably know what I mean. If you haven't, then I don't know what you've been doing all these years, but you need to fix that as soon as possible. You owe it to yourself.
Which one will you choose?
A couple of hours later we got to The Matrix Reloaded. I was looking forward to this one, because I always felt it was the worst and the most annoying one, so I was hoping to change my opinion of it now. I always remembered it as a movie with a few nice action scenes and a whole lot of boring dialogue with no real meaning, or at least none I could understand. Not to mention the party/sex scene, which I always hated. It ruins the mood of the movie, it has absolutely nothing to do with what I consider Matrix material, and it goes on for way too long. Well, turns out I was right about this scene: it was bad this time too. It was boring, it was annoying, and I wanted it to end so the movie could continue.
All through this movie we were trying to understand every single detail, every unique line of dialogue and every particular action the characters did. Take, as an example, the scene where Neo receives the spoon from the first movie as a gift. Why does that happen? What does it mean in the context of the events going on? That whenever something weird happens, it's just Neo who's changing or bending himself? I have no idea. Likewise, how could Neo free agent Smith by simply entering his body and making him explode in the previous movie? How does that give him the ability to not abide by the Matrix's rules anymore, and clone himself as he pleases? Isn't he still a program inside a computer world? Turns out I was left with more doubts and questions than ever before, even though I had read about these movies on the internet and here on GAF before. I had seen discussions and explanations of different things, and I thought I understood. I thought it all made sense. And I believed I would understand everything when I saw the movies myself, but I felt more confused than the previous times.
This is what bothers me. I don't know if the Merovingian speaks in an obfuscated way or what, but nothing he said made sense to me. He spoke of causality and consequence, he gave a woman an orgasm by making her eat a piece of cake, he even cursed a little in French. But what did he say that made the plot advance, or explained anything? Either I'm missing something big here, or this scene is complete filler with nothing (either important or not) happening. Same deal with the Oracle and her complicated explanations, which confuse more than they explain. But the main prize goes to... Morpheus. He changed completely in regards to the first movie, turning from a cool and smart mysterious character into a crazy religious dude who goes against what logic dictates. Zion is about to be destroyed, and yet he wants to take a ship for some weird prophecy he believes in, which may or may not be real. It's also funny how most people seem to play along with him. In the next movie, after several ships have been destroyed due to Morpheus' beliefs, Neo is given yet another one to travel to the heart of the machines' city -the same machines that they need the ships to protect Zion from.
You used to be cool, Morpheus. What did the Oracle do to you?
That's not to say the movie is lacking in the action department. Oh no, it doesn't. On the contrary! From the freeway chase to the fight between Neo and Seraph, along with the fight at the Merovingian's place (which I never paid much attention to, but it's actually pretty fun), these 2 hours are packed with breathtaking events. The freeway chase in particular stands out for me thanks to the amount of stuff going on, with crashing cars, fistfights on top of trucks, impossible jumps between cars and tons of bullets. And, of course, Reloaded also has the burly brawl. I always loved it and considered it the best part of the movie, and I still think it is. Neo fighting dozens, if not hundreds, of Smiths? Nothing could ever be cooler than that, CGI or not. And to the movie's credit, I found out that the Architect scene, which I always thought was blatant nonsense, was in fact the most informative moment of all. Talking about the different Matrix iterations (like Smith did in the previous movie, when trying to break into Morpheus' mind), about Neo's existence being due to a glitch in the Matrix ("The sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation", in his own words), about those who reject the system (which must be dealt with at some point) and about the cyclical nature of the whole thing. It was pretty clear, and made me wonder how could I fail to understand it before. It felt refreshing to find the method to that madness at last. The Architect stands redeemed in my book.
He may be a little hard to get, but he speaks wise words.
Just like our heroes moved closer to the end of their journey, so we reached the next and final movie. The Matrix Revolutions blew my mind back when it came out. The whole world was watching it for the first time, and I was there too. We were seeing Neo's finest hour together, which was an impressive way to end the trilogy. This is a direct sequel of Reloaded, starting right where the previous one ended. It doesn't have a "Previously on The Matrix" intro, so if you don't remember what happened before you'll feel completely lost (we did a marathon in a single night, so we had no trouble with this). The beginning is pretty complicated, as you'll struggle trying to find out what happened to Neo, where is he and how on earth did he manage to launch an EMP from the tip of his fingers in the final minutes of Reloaded. As should have been expected, the following conversation involved topics such as love, obsolescence and karma, and not much of it made sense to me. I wanted answers, and instead all I got was more questions and the feeling that I was becoming more stupid by the minute, because here was even more stuff I couldn't comprehend. The scene with the Merovingian was entertaining, with a nice shootout leading to it. The talks with the Oracle are complicated, once again, and prophecy beats logic when Neo is given a ship so he can do what he thinks he must: a suicide flight to the machines' city.
The fight between humans and machines in Zion is impressive as usual, though I can't help feeling it drags on a bit too long. But it's amazing to watch, so I can't honestly complain when it provides so much eye candy and adrenaline. We get to hear captain Mifune's last words as he is killed by the machines, which is a bit corny in my opinion, but other than that the whole sequence is pretty solid. Going back to the Logos, what's still strange to me is how Neo can see Bane after getting his eyes burned in the real world. Did he get the power to sense digital/electronic/technological stuff or what? Anyway, I like how flaming Bane looks and I enjoy watching him losing his head and shattering into fiery pieces, so I'm glad they did that. Another thing I never got is that when they reach the machines' domain, a sentinel seems to fly through Neo with everything looking digital or something (kinda like Matrix code, but outside the Matrix). What's that supposed to mean? And when Trinity and him finally reach their destination and she gets impaled, there's another one of those dying scenes where the good guy (or gal, in this case) has enough time to tell the other person their final words, like how much they loved him and how they regret their previous actions. Seriously, these scenes never made much sense to me. If I were dying from such a horrible thing, you can bet that I'd be less concerned about letting my friends/family/lover know how much I enjoyed their company and way more about shouting at the top of my lungs in agony and desperation. Reminds me of that part of the original Matrix I complained about before, but this time with Trinity being the one about to die.
It may not make much sense, but you can't deny it looks fantastic.
Said final words give way to what's perhaps the most impressive scene in the whole trilogy. I'm talking of none other than the fight under the rain, Neo vs Smith. There's no lack of special effects here, with the characters flying and some awesome water explosions. My favorite part is probably Neo punching Smith in the face, in ultra slow motion. It's so slow that the former's fist can be seen destroying individual rain drops, and it also shows the subsequent mark of his fingers on Smith's cheek after a powerful punch. There are also a couple of great speeches delivered by the former agent, which eventually lead to the following exchange that I love:
Smith: "Why, Mr. Anderson? Why, why? Why do you do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting... for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although... only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?"
Neo: "Because I choose to."
That's gotta hurt!
All in all, this is a great movie, even though some scenes could have been a bit shorter. It spends too much time outside the Matrix, either in Zion or in a ship flying through the remains of the civilized world. In fact, each sequel had less and less time in the Matrix and more in the real world, which for me is a more uninteresting setting (not saying I don't like it though). A couple of conversations are needlessly hard to understand, but as I already said, this was also true of Reloaded.
Everything that has a beginning has an end. And just like that, we've reached the end of this RTTP thread. My impressions after watching the trilogy again, for the first time in years, are extremely positive when it comes to action sequences, but not so much regarding dialogues and explanations (or lack thereof) in the sequels. I didn't remember them being so confusing, to be honest. I used to think the Architect part was the only one I had trouble with, but turns out that was one of the few I could understand this time. The only one that didn't involve abstract concepts or reaching out for metaphysical explanations, or weird arguments about choice and consequence. And I felt silly because of this, because of my lack of understanding. I had seen these movies many times; how come I failed to comprehend these concepts after that, even though I had read my fair share of online articles and forum discussions about them?
At least one thing is pretty clear to me now. As I always thought, the sequels are definitely good, maybe even great. They are very different from the first one and, despite what my 12 years old self used to believe, not as good, but they serve their purpose well. They entertain a lot, and if anything, they provide a lot of material to think and talk about. I get it now: Revolutions is not the masterpiece I once thought, much less the best movie ever, but damn it's good. And Reloaded earned a lot of points with me, as a result of all those fights I overlooked before and the Architect conversation finally making sense. After this marathon I can honestly say I'm still a fan of the Wachowskis' work.
But enough about my opinions! I want to hear what you guys think. I know there have been a lot of threads about these movies on GAF, but it won't hurt to have another one, right? What do you think of them? Did you like the sequels? Were you satisfied with the explanations that were given? Could you understand everything? What's your favorite moment? Should Neo have taken the blue pill?
Seriously, how could I?
So last Friday I got together with a couple of friends and we spent the whole night watching the trilogy. It's been a long time since I last saw them, and by that I mean years. No, I'm actually lying a bit: I did see the original movie the day after I bought the collection, but that's it. Reloaded and Revolutions had been staying out of my life for over two years, I think. The time was right to go back to them, to a disappointing yet fun sequel and to what I once considered my favorite movie of all time, respectively. Yes, I never cared that much for Reloaded, despite agreeing that it had some cool action sequences, and I loved the hell out of Revolutions, even to the point where I would call it better than the first one. Guess I'm that kind of guy.
All four of us had seen the trilogy before, so we weren't new to it. We were coming back to a series we liked, and the first movie suffered the consequences of that. As it's the one we'd seen the most, we spent most of the time talking over it, sometimes criticizing a particular scene or whatever. It's not without shame that I'll admit to also doing it myself, particularly during the climax of the movie, where Trinity confesses his love to a recently deceased Neo. That scene always felt out of place to me, what with the sentinels about to kill the Nebuchadnezzar crew and all. I'm also not a fan of the part where our heroes, after successfully rescuing Morpheus and extracting him from the Matrix, stay in the subway station talking casually instead of picking up the phone and getting out of there alive, especially when they knew the agents were looking for them. But those two are probably the only complaints I have about that masterpiece. That, and having to suffer through an almost unbearable number of needles in several scenes (for me, one single needle is a needle too much). I cringe every time I see Neo pulling out the needle when he wakes up in the ship for the first time, or Morpheus having some truth serum injected into his neck. Still, this one's a true classic, and I consider it one of the best movies ever made. Everything here makes sense, every single line of dialog has a purpose and actual meaning (even if it didn't seem so during the first time watching it). The action scenes are incredible; the lobby shootout is as impressive as it was the first time, and the kung fu training is still really fun to watch. The subway scene and subsequent chase near the end are also highlights. Everything looks so good, it's hard to believe this came out in 1999. The soundtrack kicks ass too and suits it perfectly.
This is such an amazing film that words can't begin to describe it. If you have seen it, you probably know what I mean. If you haven't, then I don't know what you've been doing all these years, but you need to fix that as soon as possible. You owe it to yourself.
Which one will you choose?
A couple of hours later we got to The Matrix Reloaded. I was looking forward to this one, because I always felt it was the worst and the most annoying one, so I was hoping to change my opinion of it now. I always remembered it as a movie with a few nice action scenes and a whole lot of boring dialogue with no real meaning, or at least none I could understand. Not to mention the party/sex scene, which I always hated. It ruins the mood of the movie, it has absolutely nothing to do with what I consider Matrix material, and it goes on for way too long. Well, turns out I was right about this scene: it was bad this time too. It was boring, it was annoying, and I wanted it to end so the movie could continue.
All through this movie we were trying to understand every single detail, every unique line of dialogue and every particular action the characters did. Take, as an example, the scene where Neo receives the spoon from the first movie as a gift. Why does that happen? What does it mean in the context of the events going on? That whenever something weird happens, it's just Neo who's changing or bending himself? I have no idea. Likewise, how could Neo free agent Smith by simply entering his body and making him explode in the previous movie? How does that give him the ability to not abide by the Matrix's rules anymore, and clone himself as he pleases? Isn't he still a program inside a computer world? Turns out I was left with more doubts and questions than ever before, even though I had read about these movies on the internet and here on GAF before. I had seen discussions and explanations of different things, and I thought I understood. I thought it all made sense. And I believed I would understand everything when I saw the movies myself, but I felt more confused than the previous times.
This is what bothers me. I don't know if the Merovingian speaks in an obfuscated way or what, but nothing he said made sense to me. He spoke of causality and consequence, he gave a woman an orgasm by making her eat a piece of cake, he even cursed a little in French. But what did he say that made the plot advance, or explained anything? Either I'm missing something big here, or this scene is complete filler with nothing (either important or not) happening. Same deal with the Oracle and her complicated explanations, which confuse more than they explain. But the main prize goes to... Morpheus. He changed completely in regards to the first movie, turning from a cool and smart mysterious character into a crazy religious dude who goes against what logic dictates. Zion is about to be destroyed, and yet he wants to take a ship for some weird prophecy he believes in, which may or may not be real. It's also funny how most people seem to play along with him. In the next movie, after several ships have been destroyed due to Morpheus' beliefs, Neo is given yet another one to travel to the heart of the machines' city -the same machines that they need the ships to protect Zion from.
You used to be cool, Morpheus. What did the Oracle do to you?
That's not to say the movie is lacking in the action department. Oh no, it doesn't. On the contrary! From the freeway chase to the fight between Neo and Seraph, along with the fight at the Merovingian's place (which I never paid much attention to, but it's actually pretty fun), these 2 hours are packed with breathtaking events. The freeway chase in particular stands out for me thanks to the amount of stuff going on, with crashing cars, fistfights on top of trucks, impossible jumps between cars and tons of bullets. And, of course, Reloaded also has the burly brawl. I always loved it and considered it the best part of the movie, and I still think it is. Neo fighting dozens, if not hundreds, of Smiths? Nothing could ever be cooler than that, CGI or not. And to the movie's credit, I found out that the Architect scene, which I always thought was blatant nonsense, was in fact the most informative moment of all. Talking about the different Matrix iterations (like Smith did in the previous movie, when trying to break into Morpheus' mind), about Neo's existence being due to a glitch in the Matrix ("The sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation", in his own words), about those who reject the system (which must be dealt with at some point) and about the cyclical nature of the whole thing. It was pretty clear, and made me wonder how could I fail to understand it before. It felt refreshing to find the method to that madness at last. The Architect stands redeemed in my book.
He may be a little hard to get, but he speaks wise words.
Just like our heroes moved closer to the end of their journey, so we reached the next and final movie. The Matrix Revolutions blew my mind back when it came out. The whole world was watching it for the first time, and I was there too. We were seeing Neo's finest hour together, which was an impressive way to end the trilogy. This is a direct sequel of Reloaded, starting right where the previous one ended. It doesn't have a "Previously on The Matrix" intro, so if you don't remember what happened before you'll feel completely lost (we did a marathon in a single night, so we had no trouble with this). The beginning is pretty complicated, as you'll struggle trying to find out what happened to Neo, where is he and how on earth did he manage to launch an EMP from the tip of his fingers in the final minutes of Reloaded. As should have been expected, the following conversation involved topics such as love, obsolescence and karma, and not much of it made sense to me. I wanted answers, and instead all I got was more questions and the feeling that I was becoming more stupid by the minute, because here was even more stuff I couldn't comprehend. The scene with the Merovingian was entertaining, with a nice shootout leading to it. The talks with the Oracle are complicated, once again, and prophecy beats logic when Neo is given a ship so he can do what he thinks he must: a suicide flight to the machines' city.
The fight between humans and machines in Zion is impressive as usual, though I can't help feeling it drags on a bit too long. But it's amazing to watch, so I can't honestly complain when it provides so much eye candy and adrenaline. We get to hear captain Mifune's last words as he is killed by the machines, which is a bit corny in my opinion, but other than that the whole sequence is pretty solid. Going back to the Logos, what's still strange to me is how Neo can see Bane after getting his eyes burned in the real world. Did he get the power to sense digital/electronic/technological stuff or what? Anyway, I like how flaming Bane looks and I enjoy watching him losing his head and shattering into fiery pieces, so I'm glad they did that. Another thing I never got is that when they reach the machines' domain, a sentinel seems to fly through Neo with everything looking digital or something (kinda like Matrix code, but outside the Matrix). What's that supposed to mean? And when Trinity and him finally reach their destination and she gets impaled, there's another one of those dying scenes where the good guy (or gal, in this case) has enough time to tell the other person their final words, like how much they loved him and how they regret their previous actions. Seriously, these scenes never made much sense to me. If I were dying from such a horrible thing, you can bet that I'd be less concerned about letting my friends/family/lover know how much I enjoyed their company and way more about shouting at the top of my lungs in agony and desperation. Reminds me of that part of the original Matrix I complained about before, but this time with Trinity being the one about to die.
It may not make much sense, but you can't deny it looks fantastic.
Said final words give way to what's perhaps the most impressive scene in the whole trilogy. I'm talking of none other than the fight under the rain, Neo vs Smith. There's no lack of special effects here, with the characters flying and some awesome water explosions. My favorite part is probably Neo punching Smith in the face, in ultra slow motion. It's so slow that the former's fist can be seen destroying individual rain drops, and it also shows the subsequent mark of his fingers on Smith's cheek after a powerful punch. There are also a couple of great speeches delivered by the former agent, which eventually lead to the following exchange that I love:
Smith: "Why, Mr. Anderson? Why, why? Why do you do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting... for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although... only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?"
Neo: "Because I choose to."
That's gotta hurt!
All in all, this is a great movie, even though some scenes could have been a bit shorter. It spends too much time outside the Matrix, either in Zion or in a ship flying through the remains of the civilized world. In fact, each sequel had less and less time in the Matrix and more in the real world, which for me is a more uninteresting setting (not saying I don't like it though). A couple of conversations are needlessly hard to understand, but as I already said, this was also true of Reloaded.
Everything that has a beginning has an end. And just like that, we've reached the end of this RTTP thread. My impressions after watching the trilogy again, for the first time in years, are extremely positive when it comes to action sequences, but not so much regarding dialogues and explanations (or lack thereof) in the sequels. I didn't remember them being so confusing, to be honest. I used to think the Architect part was the only one I had trouble with, but turns out that was one of the few I could understand this time. The only one that didn't involve abstract concepts or reaching out for metaphysical explanations, or weird arguments about choice and consequence. And I felt silly because of this, because of my lack of understanding. I had seen these movies many times; how come I failed to comprehend these concepts after that, even though I had read my fair share of online articles and forum discussions about them?
At least one thing is pretty clear to me now. As I always thought, the sequels are definitely good, maybe even great. They are very different from the first one and, despite what my 12 years old self used to believe, not as good, but they serve their purpose well. They entertain a lot, and if anything, they provide a lot of material to think and talk about. I get it now: Revolutions is not the masterpiece I once thought, much less the best movie ever, but damn it's good. And Reloaded earned a lot of points with me, as a result of all those fights I overlooked before and the Architect conversation finally making sense. After this marathon I can honestly say I'm still a fan of the Wachowskis' work.
But enough about my opinions! I want to hear what you guys think. I know there have been a lot of threads about these movies on GAF, but it won't hurt to have another one, right? What do you think of them? Did you like the sequels? Were you satisfied with the explanations that were given? Could you understand everything? What's your favorite moment? Should Neo have taken the blue pill?
