part 3
admittedly, it was better then Van Helsing
Matrix Revolutions
It’s hard to hate this movie, simply because of its lineage. I am not going to come right out and say it; I believe this movie is up to your eyes, to your standards. I did not hate this movie. It simply makes me sad that it did not live up to anywhere near my expectations.
I never saw the first Matrix when it came out in 1999 because at that point I wasn’t allowed to see R movies that had not been screened by my parents because they were evil harpies from another dimensions. I finally did see it three years later while fishing, however, and because of plot, dialogue...ah who am I kidding, because of the action sequences, it has rose to my third# favorite movie of all time. It is destined alongside Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings to become one of the cult classics of our time.
In that first installment, Neo was pulled out of his reality only to discover that it did not actually exist. The premise was that artificial Intelligence had taken over mankind, and through a fusion process it was using the human body to power their bodies. The Matrix that he lived in was a program used to engage the human’s mind.
Neo was ‘the one,’ which meant he could more or less do anything he sets his mind to, like fly, dodge bullets, etc. Naturally this means everybody wants to kill him (namely artificial program constructs), and wacky antics ensue! Whoa!
So 4 years later the Wachowski brothers decided to explore investment in money and try to answer all the questions the Matrix left open ended. IN that year alone they added 4 new installations to the Matrix enterprise. The first of these, Matrix Reloaded, received many decent reviews across the country, although barely any of them said it lived up to the original. My personal feelings are that the Matrix simply didn’t leave any questions unanswered, but did have several loose ends if you will, and the dialogue# in this movie left you wondering what the hell they were. Matrix reloaded effectively frayed the Matrix rope. Although the special effects were astounding, they somehow managed to make action sequences overdrawn and even to a point boring (except for the ingenious highway sequence).
On that same day they released a video only (it never hit theaters) animation set of the story as yet. 9 settings told the back-story to the rise of the machines, the retrieval of those inside the matrix, etc. One in particular that got national acclaim even though never in theaters, was a CGI Final Flight of the Osiris, which explains how they knew they were going to be attacked. It’s a fun little ditty.
Then they introduced the Video Game Enter the Matrix which, despite poor reviews from many gamers, I loved. In this game you play as either Niobe or Ghost in a storyline between the Final Flight of Osiris and the end of Matrix Reloaded. One of the great features in this game is that you can go into bullet-time, the matrix-original concept of slowing down time enough that you can see bullets in motion. It’s a very cool game.
Anyway, I digress from my point. In fact, I believe I have strayed so far from my point that I am going to completely disregard it and change the focus of my argument. My main qualm with it now is that no amount of special effects can make up for dialogue.
Wow. I had almost forgotten how horrible the dialogue for this movie was. Whenever somebody asked a simple question like “What do I need to do”, nobody ever responded with “you must take a ship, go through a series of tunnels and visit the machine city, blow up a wave of attacking sentinels in a manner that may or may not be directly stolen from Star Wars, get a brief view of the sky, watch your lover die in an elongated death sequence that serves to make the audience wish they had never been born, then walk blindly to talk to a host of sentinels who form a babies face and negotiate peace in Zion in exchange for the destruction of Agent Smith, which by the way will kill you.” Instead they will say something to the extent of “you know what you need to do.”
The audience did NOT know what he needed to do.
WARNING: the preceding paragraphs contain spoilers
Filmmakers today believe that they can make a movie by simply pouring money into it. What truly angers me however is that people buy into it. Movies like Van Helsing and Matrix Revolutions exploit the vast untapped potential of CGI and special effects, and yet don’t give their plot developers and scriptwriters enough to feed themselves.
Fortunately the Wachowski brothers had vision, and so even with its crappy dialogue, plot remained. Many people argue that The Matrix and its counterparts have a very vague plot or that it is not even there at all; these are the people who are simply too lazy to see it multiple times.
The thing of it is that these movies have depth. They need to be viewed multiple times to be understood. As I am too lazy to watch Revolutions once again, I cheated and went online for plot cliff notes.
So you may still be confused as to why this is on the bad movie list. I suppose the main point is that it was one of the biggest cinematic letdowns of my life.
It has always been a rule that sequels will more often then not be worse than their counterpart. Of course, this is not always true, but it has a high enough consistency for me to brand on my name on it.
Now a complete opposite of Sage’s rule of sequels is Sage’s rule of trilogies, which states that in a trilogy, the third movie will be the best (what counts as a trilogy is up to my discretion). Matrix Revolutions did not live up to my rule of trilogies, hence my extreme disappointment.
I would not recommend Revolutions to any but the most die-hard matrix fans, who have undoubtedly already seen it, and are already pissed. On the same note, however, I am not going to tell you not to see it. Think of it as a war movie rather than a Matrix movie, and you should survive the 127 minutes easily.
--Sage Bilderback (of course)
Matrix Revolutions
It’s hard to hate this movie, simply because of its lineage. I am not going to come right out and say it; I believe this movie is up to your eyes, to your standards. I did not hate this movie. It simply makes me sad that it did not live up to anywhere near my expectations.
I never saw the first Matrix when it came out in 1999 because at that point I wasn’t allowed to see R movies that had not been screened by my parents because they were evil harpies from another dimensions. I finally did see it three years later while fishing, however, and because of plot, dialogue...ah who am I kidding, because of the action sequences, it has rose to my third# favorite movie of all time. It is destined alongside Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings to become one of the cult classics of our time.
In that first installment, Neo was pulled out of his reality only to discover that it did not actually exist. The premise was that artificial Intelligence had taken over mankind, and through a fusion process it was using the human body to power their bodies. The Matrix that he lived in was a program used to engage the human’s mind.
Neo was ‘the one,’ which meant he could more or less do anything he sets his mind to, like fly, dodge bullets, etc. Naturally this means everybody wants to kill him (namely artificial program constructs), and wacky antics ensue! Whoa!
So 4 years later the Wachowski brothers decided to explore investment in money and try to answer all the questions the Matrix left open ended. IN that year alone they added 4 new installations to the Matrix enterprise. The first of these, Matrix Reloaded, received many decent reviews across the country, although barely any of them said it lived up to the original. My personal feelings are that the Matrix simply didn’t leave any questions unanswered, but did have several loose ends if you will, and the dialogue# in this movie left you wondering what the hell they were. Matrix reloaded effectively frayed the Matrix rope. Although the special effects were astounding, they somehow managed to make action sequences overdrawn and even to a point boring (except for the ingenious highway sequence).
On that same day they released a video only (it never hit theaters) animation set of the story as yet. 9 settings told the back-story to the rise of the machines, the retrieval of those inside the matrix, etc. One in particular that got national acclaim even though never in theaters, was a CGI Final Flight of the Osiris, which explains how they knew they were going to be attacked. It’s a fun little ditty.
Then they introduced the Video Game Enter the Matrix which, despite poor reviews from many gamers, I loved. In this game you play as either Niobe or Ghost in a storyline between the Final Flight of Osiris and the end of Matrix Reloaded. One of the great features in this game is that you can go into bullet-time, the matrix-original concept of slowing down time enough that you can see bullets in motion. It’s a very cool game.
Anyway, I digress from my point. In fact, I believe I have strayed so far from my point that I am going to completely disregard it and change the focus of my argument. My main qualm with it now is that no amount of special effects can make up for dialogue.
Wow. I had almost forgotten how horrible the dialogue for this movie was. Whenever somebody asked a simple question like “What do I need to do”, nobody ever responded with “you must take a ship, go through a series of tunnels and visit the machine city, blow up a wave of attacking sentinels in a manner that may or may not be directly stolen from Star Wars, get a brief view of the sky, watch your lover die in an elongated death sequence that serves to make the audience wish they had never been born, then walk blindly to talk to a host of sentinels who form a babies face and negotiate peace in Zion in exchange for the destruction of Agent Smith, which by the way will kill you.” Instead they will say something to the extent of “you know what you need to do.”
The audience did NOT know what he needed to do.
WARNING: the preceding paragraphs contain spoilers
Filmmakers today believe that they can make a movie by simply pouring money into it. What truly angers me however is that people buy into it. Movies like Van Helsing and Matrix Revolutions exploit the vast untapped potential of CGI and special effects, and yet don’t give their plot developers and scriptwriters enough to feed themselves.
Fortunately the Wachowski brothers had vision, and so even with its crappy dialogue, plot remained. Many people argue that The Matrix and its counterparts have a very vague plot or that it is not even there at all; these are the people who are simply too lazy to see it multiple times.
The thing of it is that these movies have depth. They need to be viewed multiple times to be understood. As I am too lazy to watch Revolutions once again, I cheated and went online for plot cliff notes.
So you may still be confused as to why this is on the bad movie list. I suppose the main point is that it was one of the biggest cinematic letdowns of my life.
It has always been a rule that sequels will more often then not be worse than their counterpart. Of course, this is not always true, but it has a high enough consistency for me to brand on my name on it.
Now a complete opposite of Sage’s rule of sequels is Sage’s rule of trilogies, which states that in a trilogy, the third movie will be the best (what counts as a trilogy is up to my discretion). Matrix Revolutions did not live up to my rule of trilogies, hence my extreme disappointment.
I would not recommend Revolutions to any but the most die-hard matrix fans, who have undoubtedly already seen it, and are already pissed. On the same note, however, I am not going to tell you not to see it. Think of it as a war movie rather than a Matrix movie, and you should survive the 127 minutes easily.
--Sage Bilderback (of course)