I'm not holding my breath; the Matrix Overkill is getting the better of me. Yes I'll still watch it - probably this weekend -but the overhype has certainly preceded the keen anticipation I had months ago.
Plenty of spoilers circulating on the internet, none of which I'll link here, anyone can find them easily. But I'm still psyched to see it. Hopefully on Wednesday. I wish they'd do a re-release of the other two on the big screen, but haven't seen any news of such.
That's surprising. I thought Revolutions hasn't had a fraction of the hype Reloaded received. Of course it's picked up signifigantly these past couple weeks, but it's been realitivley quiet being as big a movie as it's going to be.
I heard on the radio that some cinemas are selling tickets for all 3 shows. about 9 hours of the *#*#*#*#er!
I got to see a screening last night... UGH, it was not so good. Great special effects don't make up for a poor plot or acting. I'll file this in the "Sequels that never should have been made" category.
What a disappointment. I will probably see it this evening. I saw the first film again on TBS Sunday night. It still stands up exactly because of the plot and the characters. You do care about Morpheus, Trinity and Neo. Also the premonitions and the little things the first film did so well to capture a sense of inevitability. Reloaded fell flat on it's face and in many respects does not appear to be a continuation of the first film. I liken my disappointment with Reloaded with the feeling I had watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The first, Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the greatest action adventure films ever made and the other movies pale in comparison.
Revolutions is getting lukewarm to bad reviews from critics. Watched The Matrix last night. What a great movie. Too bad that the Wachowski Brothers seem to have caught a mutant strain of Lucas-itis after releasing the first movie. I don't expect too much from Revolutions, especially after Reloaded. But I'll still go to see it.
spoilers::::::: i just got back from seeing it. man i'm glad i got the matinee price. bad movie. Reloaded wasn't a great movie, but at least the action scenes were cool enough. not so in Revolutions. and Revolutions is waaaaaaaaay to preachy. i understood very clearly from the first Matrix that Neo was a christ figure. did anyone else get reminded of Star Wars and REturn of the Jedi when you were watching the scene were Naiobi is piloting the Hammer back to Zion??????? i mean, the guys manning the guns even had crappy heads up displays just like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo had in the millenium falcon when they escaped from the First Death star.
A little off topic, but I have to disagree with your comment there. Sure Temple of Doom was terrible, but The Last Crusade was a pretty good flick...maybe not as good as the original but fairly close....the one thing that annoyed me was when they were flying anywhere they movie showed a map with a colored line mimicking their flight path...I don't know, maybe that was just me. As for Revolutions...well hopefully they won't have another bizarre faux-orgy scene which seemed completely misplaced, or much more Neo-Trinity love action which has all the passion of a helicopter repair manual. If the movie starts where it left off it should be okay, if only because the last twenty minutes of Reloaded were the only decent ones in the whole movie (althought he fact that he has powers outside of the Matrix doesn't interest me all that much...).
I loved The Last Crusade. Great movie - Sean Connery was great there and it had some funny scenes in it. i didn't mind the Temple of Doom. Shorty was kind of funny. On topic - I can't wait to see Revolutions. I thought Reloaded was okay, not fantastic. But I didn't put a lot of stock into critiquing the movie too too much, just went in to really see the neat special effects and the creepy looking twin guys. Actually, I was hoping to see the creepy twins vs. Neo but that didn't happen. But I mean, I jus can't put too much into the acting and etc. because after all, it is Keanu Reeves and I think he's marginal at delivery. The dance seen in Reloaded did seem a bit misplaced, but I thought it was a little intriguiging. I guess the debate could be that it was a primitive sort of African theme to it, and it was a little interesting that many of the dancers seemed to have a darker complexion... I don't know how well that fits into basic human anatomy and sciences since there is, well, no sunlight. That leads me to this conclusion. What if the Matrix is nothing more than a dream of someone in the Matrix? As Keano Reeves/Joey Lawrence would say "woah".
> Revolutions is getting lukewarm to bad reviews from critics. Our local reviewer gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 4, and he hates everything that doesn't have subtitles.
Sad, in that it ends up being...typical. Just got back from seeing it... You remember seeing the SW trilogy for the first time...remember how, after Empire Strikes Back, there was such hope for the final episode? And, setting a precedent for final eps, Revenge/Return of the Jedi absolutely delivered on some things, but not enough...and Empire, the middle film, is remembered as the cornerstone of the franchise... After seeing the final installment of the Matrix trilogy, I sort of feel the same way. The story was the most poorly constructed of the three; it almost seemed like, in both RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS, script-wise, they actually had a movie and a third... They seemed to stretch that third into a full film, and the ommissions are - relatively speaking - fairly glaring. After all that effort to free the humans from the Matrix, we don't get that payoff (except for the Architect telling the Oracle he will free those who want to be freed)? I get the philosophical spin by the Bros. there, but I was looking forward to how the masses of humans, severed from their bonds, would react to freedom...it would have even been interesting to actually SEE those who couldn't handle freedom physically DIVE back into their pods...what sybolism that would have made, IMHO... In addition, I can't shake the feeling, with this installment more than the others, that this trilogy reduced down to nothing more than "White man Saves the Day, Part 427." The inclusion of so many more "persons of color" (how is that accurate anyway? As if those we label "white" are in fact colorless...sigh) in the films makes that fact all the more, well, galling. That, at the end, the empowered "persons of color" all sat in the Temple waiting (praying?) for the white Christ-figure (Neo) and his white Muse/Mary Magdalene (Trinity) to save them was, to put it mildly, rather disappointing, not because it was...how do I put this...not because it was necessarily unfair in any way, but rather because it was...typical. That is, I submit "White man Saves the Day, Part 427" because this is the context, the lens, through which, it seems, almost all film content manifests itself. Its almost like someone at the studio says, "Now, at the end of the day, we need white folks making the biggest sacrifices, white folks making the key decisions, and white folks exemplifying the ultimate Hero/Heroine. The others can tag along, but they cannot be ultimately decisive." I struggle with that analysis, because, to me, it smacks of a bit of racism on my part. I must cede (the appearance of) that. But it is so overwhelmingly my film-watching experience that I can say nothing else; anything else would be a lie. That's why REVOLUTIONS is doubly disappointing to me. I was hoping for a layered sense of "Revolution," starting with turning that white guy/white hat motif on its ear, in the final analysis. Sadly, in the final analysis, a third of a film, stretched into a full-length feature, recycled old plot models...I felt like Neo in front of the Architect, the plans within plans laid bare at last... I was, after what to that point had been, IMHO, the best film cycle of all time, looking for so much more...REVOLUTIONS really falls flat. Maybe I'll feel differently after more viewings, and if so I'll say so...but that's not too likely. Sad. The effects were nice, though. Man; after this falling on it face, and my wholesale abandonment of Jackson's Fantasy Debacle, my holiday season will be spent seeking out little gems, I guess...the big fish have let me down big time.
He must be in the minority, then, because I haven't read one review that is gung ho about the flick. I bet there are a lot of people wishing they'd taken the blue pill right now (sorry -- couldn't resist).
What exactly did you say in Reloaded? Did you predict after all those pretentious pseudo-philosophical musings and biblical implications for 4+ hours, Neo’s pretty much just a virus cleaner program?
I bet a lot of these critics who slammed Revolutions only viewed it as a stand alone movie. If you watch Reloaded and Revolutions right after that, both movies are much better. BTW, I thought Revolutions was great. The ending was perfect, IMO. 3 and half stars (It would've been 4 if it the super brawl and siege of Zion were longer).
I ment to type "saw". Spoilers ahead. I certainly did. It was clear in the second movie that the normal Agents were reduced to a secondary role, and the main threat was Smith. That Neo would make the choice to save Zion was one of the implications of the philosophical discussion with the Architect. The nature of Neo's actions were based on the early confrontation with the Merovingian - that negotiation is based on each side giving the other something they want. The one thing Neo - or, in fact, any human - could offer the civilization of machine AIs is the destruction of the Smith virus. Don't forget that in the other movies, even with their heavier emphasis on talking about philosophy, the means used (by all sides) was always direct action (ie violence). Also, of all the different philisophical ideas in the movies, the comments made by Smith in the final confrontation were, to me, the most cogent and meaningful.
I think that’s one of reasons that Matrix Revolutions, despite some fans like you, is generally trashed by critics and viewers alike. Wachowski brothers acted as if they intended to expand the premise of the matrix in Matrix Reloaded, but judging from Revolutions lots of those non-action stuffs are really just smoke screens and padding. Moreover, even the action scenes started to lose freshness and stimulation. Many film makers try to “trick” viewers, but only some of them can do it masterfully. However, if you take a step back and think about what had taken place in those 4+ hours, Wachowski brothers did it in such a pretentious and heavily padded way, the whole effort stinks. No wonder the final installment gets only 38% freshness rating on RT.
This guy comes close to articulating my feelings (upon seeing it again, just to make sure): Tired Matrix goes around and around by GEOFF PEVERE MOVIE CRITIC - TORONTO STAR ...The Matrix Revolutions, like The Matrix Reloaded, is quite simply nothing special. In those four years, one of the most original concepts in recent fantasy movie history has devolved into something perfectly ordinary. As the buffed, multi-coloured and almost uniformly self-important denizens of the besieged underworld city of Zion madly prepare themselves for the assault by the machines whose power they have threatened, you half expect bazooka packing Jar Jar Binks to run by. ...the Wachowski brothers' third Matrix instalment not only entirely forgoes the parallel reality scenario that gave the first movie its irresistible Alice in cyberspace drive — you never really knew if what you were watching was actual or simulated — it reduces its characters to dull, pontificating neo-Christian archetypes who bravely embark on suicidal spaceship missions into the heart of enemy territory because their "belief" compels them to. In the first movie, only Hugo Weaving's dour killer bureaucrat Agent Smith spoke in a grave monotone. In Revolutions everyone does. If there's another Matrix movie — and the end of Revolutions doesn't rule it out — I hope it will be about the virus that infiltrated and corrupted this one.
I've seen one or two reviews mention this but it's an absolutely stupid criticism, not even silly, just stupid. Yes, the above makes the first movie cool. But it's gone by the end of the first movie. It ain't coming back. The next two movies don't have the mystery of what is real and what isn't anymore. Of course, this makes it difficult to make the sequels just as cool because even if the ideas are really good, they're different, and inevitably some people aren't going to like that.
But they did, except in ways people weren't expecting. They delt with the motivations of the creators and non-human inhabitants of the Matrix. It was never the humans doing the unexpected, the thoughtful, the calculating - it was Smith and the Oracle and the Merovingian. They figured out more about what it is to live than humans do. I totally agree that this is what they did, except that I am not upset by it in the least. Style is way more important than substance. It isn't like the first two movies had a great deal of substance, either. The philosophy was simplistic or immaterial, the plot had gaping holes, the psudo-science wasn't logical, and the dialog was unnatural. Agents that dodge bullets but get hit by a punch? Using humans as power sources? Fortelling the future? Needing a phone in the Matrix world to get back to the real world? The more you think about it the more it falls apart. But when you see Morpheus in the air with arms spread like wings, or a guy in a white room using $2 words until you don't know what's what, and you are just hit by the incredible style of it. Of course it is pretentious - that's what style is. I think the whole trilogy was kick-ass.
I just saw it. Since I had almost no expectations, I was entertained. That said, the ultimate test of a movie is would you pay to see it again (in the theatre or rented)? For the last two Matrix movies, the answer is no.