Re-Generating The Matrix Saga

One of these days I'll watch REVOLUTIONS again. I'm so full of shit.

I watched the first one about four months back. Even when I got the boxed set of 10 DVD's (one of my most prized DVD's) I watched all 3. I found that if you watch the movies now, without the weight of the hype that surrounded them, they hold up much better.

Yes, the sequels aren't as good as the original, but I think they get a lot of unfair criticism (and some perfectly fair criticism to be honest), and every time I watch them, I see something new or make a new discovery of a theme or something.

I find your theory about the club interesting and will pay attention next time.

I guess it could be Club Hel, but I don't really think it is. I'm not sure Morpheus' group would go to such an "exclusive" club that I assume is owned by the Merovingian.
I geeked a bit when I saw the monitors in the Architect's "office" in Reloaded were the same ones from when Neo is arrested in the first film.

*edit- To answer your other question, I've seen all three in the past year, and the first is still great. While I feel the sequels have their moments, and will be viewed more favorably with the passage of more time, they are in serious need of a "Phantom Edit" type cut. I think both sequels edited down to a single 2 1/2 hour film could be pretty amazing.
The first 5 minutes to go? Trinity's death scene.

I agree with Nexus. It was the artificial need to blow the thing up to a trilogy that killed the sequels. With the amount of story they had left to tell, it could have been a great single sequel. Instead, we got epic amounts of filler.

The first film had a perfect ending and it should have stopped there I reckon.

EDIT: Greg, your new avatar and sig are fantastic.

I'm an obsessed fan, but strangely enough I havent watched any of the films in about two years.

The first is a classic, but I think the second is more ambitious and epic and the third has some flaws but is still full of depth and ends unconventionally (except for the cheesy sunrise!)

For haters, you should watch the films with the snide critic commentary tracks, you'll be laughing and nodding along I'm sure! I dont think I can see any other director doing that for their DVDs, you can make sibling jokes all you want but the brothers have BALLS.

One of them doesn't have a set of BALLS.

I watched The Matrix Reloaded awhile back and while I still like the film I don't love it the way I did in its initial release (saw it 4 times at the theater) because Revolutions came along and made Reloaded completely pointless.

I can't think of a franchise that had so much going for it and utterly wasted it the way The Matrix films did.

I loved Clint Eastwood's comment around the time Mystic River came out " Oh I loved how those execs left me alone and were concerned with those Matrix sequels instead of my movie. ".

I'm moving the last of my stuff into my gf's house today and the first thing I was thinking of doing was dusting off my Matrix DVD's and seeing how I feel about them. I know that i'll always have a place in my heart for the first one and the car chase from the second, upto the point where Link screams "Yes!", completely ruining the moment.

And just as soon as I get my Powerbook, I'm gonna have a crack at the Matrix sequel re-edit cos I think that's a fantastic idea. It would still be extremely unbalanced though...

I just rewatched them about two months ago and I echo most of your sentiments. The first film is still pretty darn close to perfect. The sequels are flabby, but I enjoyed them much more this time around (I hadn't seen Revolutions since the theater), probably because I knew what to expect. They're still very flawed, but I find the pseudo-philosophical/intellectual concepts interesting, and of course there's plenty of eye candy.

Thing that's grown most on me: highway chase in Reloaded. The electronica score for this sequence really used to bug me...not so much anymore.

Thing that bugs me even more now: crappy CG. Burly brawl I'm looking at you.

Anyways, I prefer to think of the first film as a masterpiece...rather than think of the trilogy as a waste.

Interesting side note: I also recently scimmed through the first draft of The Matrix...a few side characters aside, it's pretty darn close to the film. For such a well-structured piece...I'm not surprised.

The first film although excellent is pretty generic and straight forward, what I love about Reloaded is how it turns everything on its head. For some people it became a contradiction, for others it just built the mythos more. Like I said in another thread around here, everything does stay consistent, Neo is not a 'god' at the end of Matrix 1, as we learn in Reloaded the machines have always controlled his fate, they just upped the strength of the agents once he began his journey as 'the one' (what they didnt expect is him jumping into one before they could do so, which ironically created the one thing that could actually destroy the matrix).

Revolutions gets way too much flak, I mean it turns back to Matrix 1 level generics so you'd think people would like it more than Reloaded. But then it doesnt end with humans winning, so maybe people just felt cheated. I think the man V machine story is still interesting, Neo seeing the machines in yellow light and able to communicate/blow them up is an underrated concept that also annoyed the hell out of many. The only thing I dont like is Trinity's long ramble before she dies. I also would have liked to have seen more of machine city but am fine seeing only a glimpse, my imagination can take over I guess. People also take issue with the sidelining of Morpheus but I'm fine with it, his entire world crumbled at the end of Reloaded and his character arc comes to its logical end in Revolutions.

The boxset is amazing though, there's so much info its mind boggling.

Don Davis and Juno Reactor! Love the score for the films. Also my favourite car chase, but at this point I'm coming across as a fanboy so nothing I say will be taken seriously.

Funny because that's actually not in the first draft. Neo comes back from the dead after Smith shoots him and escapes. First draft Neo is way more a passive observer. Hell, it's Trinity who spearheads the Morpheus rescue, Neo just goes along. Talk about changes for the better.

Her death has always bugged me. It never seemed to serve any purpose (ironic, no?). Like Obi-Wan, she was killed because there was nothing else for her to do.

Yeah, I've read the re-drafts and they got better each time, less random swear words for one thing. Its like watching the Wachowskis grow up. Maybe they should have had more time to re-draft the sequels?

Neo is pretty passive, he's basically doing what people tell him to do, or what he's fated to do, throughout the first half of the trilogy, its kind of aggravating but thats the way the character is built, but at the end of Reloaded and into Revolutions he finally makes a stand and does his own thing, which inevitabely settles the war. (although you could say even his latter actions were influenced by the Oracle)

I didnt mind her death, but she just goes on and on, I mean come on! I think her death is very important though, there's a heavy Buddhist vibe in the films and once Neo loses all desire he's free to basically become an enlightened being. Its like at the end of the first film he sees the illusion of maya, but at the end of the third he transcends it.

They were very much controlled by the Oracle. The whole trilogy is about the Oracle going behind the Architect's back to help humanity, and using his pawn, Neo, against him.

I think Revolutions is rather underrated. It has a fair bit of unnecessary to it early on (gunfight with the upside-down people), but the later parts work fairly well.

Yep. The movie was about a guy finding out he was "The One". As soon as that happened, the movie was over.

Do they all end with Rage Against the Machine songs, or just the first two?

Just the first two. The last one ends with techno FA SA LA MIIIII YO!!!- something choir music.

Oh, and the Burly Brawl made me laugh pretty hard in the theater.

Matrix 1 is a perfect cross-genre blend and it blew my mind in the theater (from the visuals, to the philosophy and twists).

Reloaded was like a WTF gut-punch. Turned alot of the 1st one upside down and left me (and my friends and family) with plenty to hypothesize, discuss, speculate, mull over. Ramped up on the philosophy.

Revolutions abandoned the saturation of philosophy that 1 & 2 were building up to and gave us epic action. Lots of great stuff to look at, but part of me will never forgive it for leaving so much of Reloaded (#2) open to interpretation. Too many unanswered questions and a wasted Morpheus.

It's a flawed trilogy, but an amazing testimony that not all action movies need to be dumb. I think it's pretty revolutionary (especially # 1) and it's legacy will be pretty obvious in hindsight.

On the whole Matrix 2/3 edit.

I actually did one! Yeah, search the forums, call The Matrix ReEdited. Heres the funny thing, I really didn't like the sequels too much, but when I seriously started to watch them for the reedit, I ended up falling for them in terms of philosophy, concepts and action. Pacing sucks, god it does, but when I started to chomp stuff out and bring it to roughly 3 hours, the films really felt too hollow. I mean minor plot points were lost, and I started to see how everything in the movies were tied together.

I did make one minor change, where I make it look like Neo isn't sleeping with Trinity. The Rave sequence was shortened, but the sex scene was kept in. Everything after the car chaise was as is. The war of zion was cut a little here and there (you don't meet the kid till Revolutions part) and pretty much Revolutions ended with Neo being dragged away, although I jump cutted fast to the sun (which is meant to cleanse you). After the credits I inserted the Oracle and Circuit City guy talking (anyone get that reference?).

If anyone wants me to discuss anything on it, I'll gladly bring up some cuts I did, and I had some pretty interesting ones too. The thing is, I felt after doing it, I realized these are not my movies, and I should just like them or leave them, and I ended up liking them. Sadly I did have interest into philosphy, so thats the only reason I like the sequels. Doesn't hurt being Indian that you know what they were singing in the 3rd one actually had relevance.

I think the trilogy holds up very well, and people are just pissed because the movies that were made were not the movies they wanted to be made. If you take them for what they are, they work and work well.

Reloaded was and still is my favorite of the three, although I recognize that the first film is a better film. And save for a few Trinity moments in Revolutions, the third film isn't as bad as people make it out to be.

Please, tell me more about why I choose to like or dislike certain movies. These glimpses into my own psyche, which clearly was closed to me until you came along, are fascinating.

I used the general term "people" to describe the complaints I've heard about the films in gerneral, but since your ego is so massive and therefore you must be the only person in the world who I was referring to, I guess I hit a nerve for you to get so upset about a pretty innocuous message board post. Your post shows pretty good insight into your psych more than anything I could say.

It doesn't matter how general your post was. Deciding that people must have some selfish, self-deluded reason for not liking a movie that you like is pretty arrogant in and of itself, isn't it? It insinuates that your view of the movies is fact, and anybody who doesn't agree with it is fooling themselves with misplaced expectations. That's arrogance.

Hold up a minute, Greg. It doesn't matter how right you are, this argument involves Diva and the Matrix(ces). You gotta pick your battles better than that.

I didn't "decide" anything. Based on the complaints I've heard (which I'm not gonna list because this debate has long been discussed in past threads), what most people gripe about isn't necessarily the quality of production (although yes, some folks complain about burly brawl CG, bad dialouge, etc.), but the direction the story took -- i.e., the sequels upsetting what they've come to expect from the original. At no point did I say my view of the movie was the right one, nor the only one. But if it boosts your self esteem to chastise me for something I never said, go for it. It's sad and pathetic, but do what you need to do man.

I've liked Reloaded for a very long time (I wasn't a fan in theaters, but it grew on me quite a bit). Revolutions, though, is still boring as hell to me. There's no real drive to it. The Siege of Zion is pointless because I don't care about anybody there, and it takes up a half hour of screentime.

And it's not a case of "the films weren't what I wanted them to be" -- I'm not nearly as huge on the first film as most are. I've always judged the sequels for what they are.

Another Matrix Sequel thread fulfills its destiny. Let us close it, friends, and go outside where the sun shines.

I basically agree with everything you said. Alot has stemmed from this trilogy, mostly bad, but some good, even Aronofsky said he was inspired to make The Fountain.

I agree with you too. Seriously, every Matrix thread is identical in this place, 90% of Chewers think they suck and 10% linger on trying to convert minds but it just turns into pointless flaming.

You're right. I need to stay in shape for the next Star Wars prequels thread.

I can't think of a saga that I want to see re-generated less.

I watched the trilogy recently, and still think the first one is great. The second offers so much potential that flushes itslef with the pretentious nonsense of the Architect character, and the wasted subplot involving Trinity's death (given the choice between humanity and Trinity, and given that Neo chooses Trinity, she SHOULD have died, thus setting up a cliffhanger where he appears to have lost on both fronts -- sort of like an Empire Strikes Back where Luke chooses to take Vader's offer). The third one took me no less than six attempts to get through. Utterly unwatchable.

Just my opinion.

I think "The Matrix" is one of those perfect films. By perfect I don't necessarily mean one of the all-time greats, but that it does everything it wants to do exceptionally well, has no real weak links, and holds up extremely well.

"Reloaded" is my favorite sequel, but has major issues. It sets up so many new tangents and subplots, so many questions, and until you get "Revolutions", I think its a very effective movie. I actually really enjoyed it at first because, similar to "The Empir Strikes Back", it massively expanded this universe and raised the stakes. I was defending the oddball elements because, as was my initial thinking, the Wachowskis would make it all pay off in the finale.

And they didn't. "Revolutions" is where the train jumps the tracks. It's about 5% of essential plot, and 95% filler, which becomes all the more maddening when all of the fascinating subplots and questions they fielded are ignored. It's like Lucas and the midichlorians suddenly disappearing, only far far worse. It actually hurts "Reloaded" on subsequent viewings as well. And their inability to write compelling secondary characters bites them in the ass hard; the entire Zion battle is utter, non-compelling filler. I don't give a shit about a single character or their big CGI battle.

So I don't usually disparage "The Matrix sequels", I disparage "Revolutions". But even then, the story behind it is still so potentially fascinating I can't hate it. I loved the way they ended the trilogy, but like a few others here, this could have quite easily been a single sequel.

Wasn't Reloaded and Revolutions originally supposed to be one movie and the third would be a prequel, only to be changed by studio meddling?

I still love the original and refuse to acknowledge the sequels... sorry, but I just can't stand them although I did like Revolutions better than Reloaded. Neo getting his eyes burned out was an awesome idea.

Just watching Reloaded, with no particular investment (it was on TV, in the afternoon, and I was cleaning) . . . i enjoyed it quite a bit. I think I changed the channel to sportscenter or something inane when the Architect shows up. I still have no fucking clue what he is talking about. [they destroy Zion every time? really? and the One is supposed go along with that? I understand the philosophical intent, but I still don't think it's that coherent] Maybe you could edit that somehow to make it awesome. I'm not sure how, but I would watch it. No doubt.

I saw the first film back in '99 and loved it...

...but for whatever reasons I've never got round to seeing the sequels...

...i was actually thinking about these the other day and if I should bother renting them. Be honest, am I missing anything???

You're missing a couple of great action sequences. Not much else, really.

My dislike of the sequels has nothing to do with my expectations coming out of the original. I greatly enjoyed THE MATRIX, but I wasn't emotionally attached to it going into RELOADED. I found both sequels to be bloated, pretentious, and poorly-paced, with dubious SFX dotted throughout. In addition, REVOLUTIONS has some of the cheesiest attempts at comic-book dialogue. That whole "do it for the gipper" battlefield exchange between the kid and the general is almost as bad as Trinity's death scene. I don't dislike R&R for what they attempted; I dislike them for executing it all so shoddily.

I don't know about that. I've always maintained that the reason the kids don't like the Matrix sequels is that they finally got everything they wanted. The Matrix sequels had more kung-fu, more explosions and more *shudder* philosophy. The sequels were filled with so much "cool" stuff the Brothers forgot to put in a compelling story and the movies turned into piles of shit.

I find Smith a fantastic villain and his final smackdown with Neo is one of cinema's great superpowered fights.

The film's still pretty much shit, though.

The story is puffed up, self important, and frequently obnoxious. The characters get lost in the shuffle.

Does anyone know how much film was actually shot? Were they pretty tight in regards to the shooting script? I honestly don't know, but if they cut out a lot of character exposition in favour of plot lines that go no where and bullshit philosophy, I really think something could be salvaged if you lashed it all together into a single film. I've never been a very big defender of the movies, but whenever I see the sequels I find myself thinking 'you know, this is almost really good.' And then the story will veer off to some extended scene about freewill or that fuckin kid shows up and i start thinking 'yeah, but it's also pretty bad.'

I remember reading that original footage of Ghost and Niobe was shot for some video game. Anyone ever see that?

Nice summary. This is pretty much attitude as well.

As for my comments about expectations of the sequels, again I want to stress that I'm not saying this is why EVERYONE hates them, just the arguments I've heard. The first film was wildly popular and I personally know a lot of people who were upset that Neo and Morpheous -- the cool heros in M1-- were turned almost into non-entities in the sequels. The films shifted from focusing on the human protagonists to focusing on the computer protagonists (and more specifically, the battle between the Oracle and the Architect). I find that a lot people can't connect with that. Maybe its the fault of the filmmakers for not making their story a compelling one, but there are just as many people who find it quite compelling so I think it's really a matter of taste.

Sure the films are bloated and could be trimmed in parts. No one's saying they are perfect. But I could say the same about the Kill Bill films, another example of a director being given too much rope to play with. I think the films would have fared better if the Wachowski's weren't given so much leeway to do whatever they wanted. But I also find these constitute minor flaws and I still find myself engrossed in the movies whenever they are on TV despite having seen them dozens of times. The story holds up well and aside from some pacing problems, thay are quite entertaining movies. And just as the cheesy dialouge in the Star Wars films haven't diminished my love for them, the cheesy dialouge here doesn't hurt the films for me either. In fact, I find most of it -- such as Smith's speech at the end of Revolutions -- to be enhanced by the cartoony feel of it all.

The sequels polarized viewers from the get go and I don't think that's bound to change anytime soon. You either like them or you don't. The fact that people still talk about them with such passion, either positively or negatively, attests to the influence of these films.

I would by no means claim to be passionate about the films, but the Animatrix is something else entirely. Some of the most bizarre, horrifying, truly excellent animation I have ever seen. The Second Renaissance does post apocalyptic Armageddon better than pretty much anything else I have seen from from a purely visual standpoint. Actually, from a very visceral standpoint: the soldiers injecting drugs and then fighting machines, the shots of people praying to their various gods as things spiral out of control, tactical nukes being used indiscriminately, and the truly sinister shot of the robotic horseman of death. That ain't playing around.

And now I have become effortlessly e-rage-eated because I cannot locate my Animatrix DVD. Whyyyyyyyyyyyy?!?!?!? Mendoooooooooozaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

No, seriously, my roommate is Mendoza. I wonder if he moved my shit.

Watched the entire trilogy again yesterday.

For me, Second Renaissance 1 and 2 are required viewing before going into the sequels. Besides The Animatrix as a whole being pretty damn cool in its own right, those two shorts add one particular element to the sequels that I never realized made the the entire series click for me until yesterday: sympathy for the machines. The irony in all three films is watching the machines/programs cope with their growing humanity while the humans in Zion grow ever more mechanical and cold trying to win the war. You have computer programs who appreciate the nuances of language, food, art, sex, love, even concepts of spirituality, even if it is simply virtual, while the humans are going on blind faith and lots of guns, scrambling to hold on to what's left of what makes them human.

What makes Revolutions great, at least thematically, is that it takes the savior away, and leaves humanity to its own devices, to fend for itself. By the end, the faith is put in the right place, on humanity itself, where it belongs, effectively turning Neo's Christ-figure into what it really should be: A divine example, not a divine truth. It's something the machines needed to see in order to once again trust that humanity is worthwhile, and the humans needed to see in order to appreciate the peace.

That is, of course, just what I get out of it.

You're totally right, Crow. I found that after showing my friends the Animatrix DVD the sequels took on a whole new significance. They still complained that they shouldn't have to watch something outside of the movie to have it work and they are right that the films should be able to stand on their own. But I also think the Wachowski's wanted the Matrix trilogy to be a multi-media experience and I feel people who embraced it as such find the films to be much more satisfactory.

Parts of Reloaded and Revolutions are brilliant. Over time, I've come to the conclusion that the 2 of them mashed together into one gigantic spectacle, with the terrible speeches and 'drama' reduced to a bare minimum, would've been great.

The scripts just needed a LOT more work. Imagine what the first one would've been like if they hadn't been asked to rewrite it?

Keanu and Weaving's performances just about carried the movies. The focus should have been on them.

I really can't stand any of the Matrix films, but the shot in Second Renaissance of the soldier being ripped from his mech suit, his arms and legs left behind, is an image which just really stayed with me. I just found it oddly unsettling, the only thing I didn't like was that apparently Nuclear Bombs had no impact on the machines, and yet the human's main weapons in the proper films are EMP pulses.

I worked.

I fucked your girlfriend. What's your point?

Ho ho ho! High-larious, indeed!

But seriously pal, if you're going to announce that you have enough free time on a weekday afternoon to sit down and watch six-plus hours of movies in one fell swoop, you're going to have to expect such comments. I simply consider myself the first one through the door.