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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Matrix Reloaded - SPOILERS

  
  

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grim reader
16:06 / 25.05.03
You may think it was a poor decision, in which case you can choose to avoid it in your own work, and I can understand if it didn't do it for you. Other audience members, who have spent their lives deriving meaningful experience from symbol flow on computer screens, having grown up with the internet and computer games, can really get into a film which uses that 'video game literacy' as a story-telling medium. Of course, it won't work for people who aren't as into computer games, or those who think this sort of device is somehow beneath them. It is also a good choice of technique given what the actual story is about, a flow of data on-screen.
 
 
Hieronymus
18:53 / 25.05.03
calvin, the hard part about that, and I think there's a thread tackling this very topic somewhere, is that the 'video game narrative' has been criticized as vapid and ultimately flat. Unless of course you're playing the game and thus personally involved in it. In a cinematic format, where the story must be told TO you and not WITH you, it doesn't hold up well at all.
 
 
Professor Silly
21:10 / 25.05.03
...and seriously, until each and every one of you can move in your dreams like Neo did in the Matrix Reloaded you should stop yer bitchin' and watch this film again and again.
...or Akira, which should have the same effect.

Seriously--the last time someone shot a gun at me in a dream I materialized my own gun and shot the oncoming bullet out of the air. I can also fly, and recently I've experimented with teleportation. Everything we can imagine we can do within our dreams, and any movie that shows us someone moving like we haven't seen before can only serve to destroy nightmares in the general public.

It doesn't matter whether everyone likes the film--it still serves to broaden the range of imagination within the population.
 
 
Rev. Orr
21:32 / 25.05.03
Have you tried decaffeinated coffee?
 
 
PatrickMM
21:46 / 25.05.03
I saw this scene as just establishing Neo's new Superman-status, in exactly that video game ballet style. And there was a lot more than just a fight going on; there's the whole interpenetration theme of Neo and Smith's relationship, mixed up with issues of authority and reaction to authority.

All true, and it's also establishing Smith's new powers, and showing the extent to which he can control people in the matrix. I'm not positive, but judging from the trailer, Smith's control of the matrix is going to be a major plot point in revolutions. What's the better way to show this cinematically, to have Smith copy a few people, or to do it in a dynamic fight scene?

And to accuse the scene the scene of being pointless and illogical within the plot is to ignore the major point of the scene, which is to be entertaining. I thought the entire scene was extremely entertaining, and one of the best parts of the film. It was fun to watch, and sometimes that's reason enough for a scene to exist.
 
 
PatrickMM
21:51 / 25.05.03
It's unfair to expect people to be able to have knowledge of any philosophy at all, especially considering the way working class kids are discouraged from learning in schools, and are constantly told that reading isn't for them, it is only the upper class kids who should consume knowledge - and thats exactly what they train the middle and upper class kids to do, consume knowledge, not use it or reflect on it.

It's not even about upper or lower class, I just finished high school in a fairly wealthy area, and no one there was encouraged to seek out higher learning, and only about five people out of twenty in the honors English class actually read the books we were assigned. Schools today are essentially about getting people into college, not about really learning, or discussing philosophical questions. That's why The Matrix is important, because it provides both entertainment, and some though provoking questions that aren't really thought about by your average person. Even the film itself says, "People aren't concerned about why something works, as long as it works," and that's how a lot of people view the world.

Not everyone thinks about philosophy because most people don't care, and if The Matrix makes them care enough to even do a little research, or have a good discussion about the nature of reality it's fulfilled its purpose. I know that after seeing Reloaded, my friends and I had a three hour discussion about both Reloaded and The Invisibles, so the film worked for me, and I'm sure it worked for many other people out there in the same way.
 
 
PatrickMM
21:56 / 25.05.03
No; so i can perhaps have an interesting conversation about good fiction, at the same time as finding out about new music, authors, whatever. Perhaps you're too hooked into the 'you have to fight someone before you can know them' mindset, chump, I'm trying to have a friendly conversation.

And on a similar note, to everyone who's been criticizing the fight scenes, can you reccomend me some films with better action sequences, because just in terms of fights, I think it would be pretty tough to top Reloaded.
 
 
grim reader
22:48 / 25.05.03
Derivative Mass said to me: calvin, the hard part about that, and I think there's a thread tackling this very topic somewhere, is that the 'video game narrative' has been criticized as vapid and ultimately flat. Unless of course you're playing the game and thus personally involved in it. In a cinematic format, where the story must be told TO you and not WITH you, it doesn't hold up well at all.

You're entitled to hold that view, however I disagree. Feel free to outline some of the arguments for me, or to provide a link to the thread (i'll have a look around for it myself and post a link if i find it).

I find your tone somewhat arrogant. The conclusions of previous topic threads, or whoever your mysterious source of criticism happens to be, are not definitive, and do not make my judgements right or wrong or true or false. They're valid opinions in their own right, and should be used to contribute to the discussion, rather than to try and cut it dead because only your opinion is right.
 
 
grim reader
23:06 / 25.05.03
Hi PatrickMM: While I agree that neither the upper or lower classes are getting a decent education, i think that they are kept stupid in two very different ways. Middle and upper class kids tend to be encouraged more, and have their interests and hobbies pandered to, as long as they steer clear of anything truly liberatory or challenging. If they're suitably vacant, they might get a job on the Guardian and be the next Naomi Klein, or become some sort of artist who shows their wank in places like The Baltic. Working class kids tend to be put into lower sets, and have it drummed into them that they are somehow inferior to the kids with better accents from the better part of town. From the beginning, it is always obvious which kids will breeze into university and be chummy with the teachers, and which ones will be dumped into the local unemployment pool. I observed this in a school taking in students from the two extremes of Jesmond and Byker in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the segregation was fairly obvious. It is quite painful to see how on one hand people are given no life chances, while on the other there are people who have the money and time to do anything they could imagine, but they've been so mentally castrated they've been rendered impotent. Just to return this to a matrix theme, it was people like this that i saw inhabiting Zion in the 'real' world, the ones who can buy into the Rebellion Chic without really understanding why we need the revolution in the first place.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
00:59 / 26.05.03
And on a similar note, to everyone who's been criticizing the fight scenes, can you reccomend me some films with better action sequences, because just in terms of fights, I think it would be pretty tough to top Reloaded.

Dude! Just in terms of recent mega-blockbusters of the same genre, both X-Men 2 and Spider-Man kick the shit out of the Matrix Reloaded. Much more exciting, much more real, and the heroes are actual underdogs. You feel their pain a bit when they get slapped around. I saw the end of Spider-Man on HBO the other day, and that final fight with the Green Goblin is perfect - it starts off with a clear moral dilemma for the hero, then the hero really gets knocked around pretty badly, then has to deal with his daddy issues, and then comes back and wins the day. It's so simple, so perfect, so classic.

Any action scene when it seems like real risk and danger is involved is going to be a more visceral and exciting experience. Watching Neo fight is like watching my brother play video games, no fun at all.
 
 
Simplist
01:12 / 26.05.03
Anyone catch the numbers of how many men and women it was who were to repopulate the world? I missed that.

23 men, 17 women, an apparent RAW reference for anyone who's counting (pardon me if this has been pointed out already--I'm only just reading the thread, having gotten around to seeing the film this afternoon).
 
 
CameronStewart
07:47 / 26.05.03
>>>And on a similar note, to everyone who's been criticizing the fight scenes, can you reccomend me some films with better action sequences, because just in terms of fights, I think it would be pretty tough to top Reloaded.<<<

I think you're confusing technical complexity with actual emotional impact. Yes, fine, the fights in Reloaded are impressively intricate and well-constructed, but there's nothing beyond that to engage the viewer - the characters are uninteresting, there's nothing at stake in the narrative, and the cumulative effect is (for me and Flux and many others) total detachment. During the "burly brawl" I found myself studying the composite effects, idly wondering how many times Hugo Weaving had to act out the scene in different positions, trying to spot the stunt doubles in Hugo masks....and I SHOULDN'T BE DOING THAT. The film should have me involved, make me forget that it's just actors and computer effects - I should be holding my breath, hoping Neo will triumph, worried that he won't, cheering when he does, etc etc. But because I simply didn't care at all, the fight, for all its fancy choreography and elaborate CGI trickery, is colossal goddamn snooze.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
09:01 / 26.05.03
Putting on my moderator hat:
No; so i can perhaps have an interesting conversation about good fiction, at the same time as finding out about new music, authors, whatever.
In which case I would humbly suggest that a thread critiquing a particular movie, in this case, The Matrix Reloaded, is not the place for this. Dig around for one of the many threads that crowd the fora here.

Taking off my moderator hat:
Perhaps you're too hooked into the 'you have to fight someone before you can know them' mindset, chump, I'm trying to have a friendly conversation.
And perhaps you're revealing your inner arsehole. Friendly? Hardly.

Right, now back to the topic.

because the shit crowds out the market. It isn't always 'willing acceptance', either; a lot of the time, this shit is all that is available, because people aren't even aware that there's anything better than 'Sweet Home Alabama'
This again is something better addressed in another thread. The production of media corporations is, regardless of what you say, still driven by the concept of giving the audience what they want. Profits are not made by releasing five hundred esoteric Bad Boy Bubbys per year. It's a simple argument to rail against media megaliths, but the consumer plays a bigger role than they think; if you don't put arses on seats - and people don't buy tickets to things they don't want to see - you go broke. Catering for the desires of the public is a key part of making objects of entertainment. Just because I think Jim Carrey films are vapid shite doesn't mean that there's not a fuckload of people out there who think he's a genius. They're the ones that're ensuring his star continues to shine.

But again, this has risen before, and as such is outside the locus of a discussion on a particular film, and would be better addressed elsewhere.

Finally, threadrotting again:
I want to know which fiction you consider good, not because I want to rip on you,
Really? Your text wouldn't seem to indicate that.

but because we owe it to those artists that we enjoy to spread the word, because they're the one's giving out the signals that let us know there's still intelligent and meaningful life out there.
Actually, they're the ones giving out signals to you, a specific audience that there's intelligent life out there. That's not the same as categorically being proof of intelligent life. If you're looking for something that indicates to like-minded people that there's some alternative, then you should look around this site to find them. That doesn't mean that they're some kind of universal touchstone, however.

To bring it back to the subject at hand, I'm with Cameron. I paid attention to where cars had had the guts removed to render them safer to flip over. I looked for bad flame rendering and for mistakes where they'd mapped faces onto stuntmen. And why? Because the film didn't grip, it didn't involve, and it didn't even especially interest me. Snooze, as has been said.
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
12:43 / 26.05.03
"I think you're confusing technical complexity with emotional impact."

Dude(s), if TV has taught me anything it's that there are a lot of ways to position the audience when making a film, and therefore just as many ways to present whatever action is taking place on screen. With regard action scenes specifically there are indeed endless instances of presenting punch ups in a relatively realistic good/versus evil framework as in The Spiderman model - and many of them are fucking great. But there are also lots of examples of violent scenes where what's visceral is not derived from the element of supposed risk that the characters are exposed but the fact of the violence itself. The first big shoot out in Pulp Fiction isn't about Jules and Vincent vs A Flock of Seagulls, it's about about Jules casually nailing a flock of seagulls because he's, as is a matter of record, a bad mother fucker. Same with the accidental shooting at the end, Butch hitting Marcellus with his car, the rape scene and it's aftermath and so on. It's played for laughs - it's played to pleasure the audience. The same principle is at work in The Matrix, which isn't about characters so much as it is about experiencing the matrix as an idea. The notion that the lack of risk to Neo spoils the fights misses the point of the action, which as far as I could see was to pile spectacle upon spectacle, Agent Smith upon Agent Smith. Whether, in those terms, people think it was done well or not is obviously kind of subjective - personally I thought certain sequences were absolutely stunning. (In terms of structure, was it just me that started to think of the Marquis de Sade? Dodgy philosophy, porn, more dodgy philosophy, bigger porn.)
 
 
grim reader
13:42 / 26.05.03
Kiss me Hecate
The notion that the lack of risk to Neo spoils the fights misses the point of the action, which as far as I could see was to pile spectacle upon spectacle, Agent Smith upon Agent Smith. Whether, in those terms, people think it was done well or not is obviously kind of subjective - personally I thought certain sequences were absolutely stunning. (In terms of structure, was it just me that started to think of the Marquis de Sade? Dodgy philosophy, porn, more dodgy philosophy, bigger porn.)

Exactly; I can't say I particularly felt that Spiderman or the X-Men were particularly at risk in either of the movies. Just like with Neo, it is a foregone conclusion they will survive. (Except with Neo it isn't because it turns out that he may not even be 'The One' anyway), whereas Peter Parker IS 'the one' in the Spidey movie; we already know well in advance that he's not going to die, so the pleasure of viewing such a film has to be derived from other elements.

And, no, I didn't make the de Sade link, but i have now
 
 
The Strobe
13:48 / 26.05.03
Cameron is right.

I can't get into a big topic of Eastern Action Movies because I know very few. But for instance: the swordfights in Crouching Tiger really wowed me, not just because they were flashy and there was neat wirework, but they fitted the story and mythos perfectly, and really drove it. There's bags of emotional energy in the fight between the two women - it's not just about "knowing each other" or wowing the audience, it has a real purpose in the film.

Similarly, I saw The Killer two weeks before I saw the first Matrix and whilst I still think the Matrix had great action sequences, my socks were not as blown as my friends because I'd seen John Woo at his finest.

Recent action sequences I've enjoyed? X2: Nightcrawler, Wolverine x 2. Dramatic, outstanding, confusing - I'm watching the Nightcrawler sequence wondering where he's going, what happened to his momentum, not "how did they do that?" It uses CGI but uses it where it's suited - John Gaeta still can't convince me with his closeups. Bits of the Burly Brawl looked BAD. They looked awesome for CGI, but I didn't go to watch CGI, I went to watch a movie. They looked bad for movie.

One final example: Equilbrium. It's not the greatest movie ever, but it does have some cool-action scenes that were made more cool just because the director thought cool was good. It was also made for a grand total of $20mil, a snip under a third of the cost of the first Matrix, and 1/16 of the second. And yet the fight sequences really connected - they were violent, emotive, effective. There's one particular bit of martial arts where the central character, in an attack on a guard, grabs his hand and performs some action with sound effect (presumably breaking it), then kicks his shin (sound effect, presumably breaking) - both these times, the sound effect convinces me of the pain, whether I saw it or not. And then, in the same fluid movement (this all takes about two seconds), grabs the guy's forearm and hammers down on his palm. Snap. And the forearm bends like it shouldn't, with a spray of blood, a nasty sound effect, and a convincing yelp. In that sequence I realised this: what Preston does really does hurt, and he doesn't take prisoners. It's not just shooting people in the head. Killing people is nasty. (He then proceeds to kill a further seven guards with the butts of his guns and his fists whilst they're all shooting at him. At point blank range. Effective.)

And that's the thing. The fights in Reloaded were just too fast to see what was going - cf Neo and Seraph, Neo and the Agents; only in the Chateau did I see a fight I could follow, and I thought that one was fab. It was all slightly... too choreographed. Neo was just "doing", he wasn't "adapting" (which Morpheus called his strength in the first movie).

I, incidentally, hated the film - it reminded me probably of how my friends who hate sci-fi movies (and yet loved Matrix 1) feel sitting through films like First Contact and Phantom Menace with me. It reminded me a lot of the Phantom Menace.

Other better action sequences? The ones in The Matrix. Hong-Kong John Woo. Cross of Iron. The Getaway. Not necessarily as flashy, but by fuck I'm involved with them.
 
 
cusm
14:13 / 26.05.03
Thinking about this again after some digestion, I realized something. The kung fu wasn't nearly as exciting as in the first movie. As a martial arts geek, I really got into the styles and fighting in the first matrix. You could tell what people were fighting with, and their styles were an intrinsic part of the character's personality. In Reloaded, the only style I could pick out was CGI badass. It was so fast and frenzied that this entire level of fighting detail was lost, save for briefly with the fight against the Oracle's pet dragon (or whatever he was), which showed some style. Basicly, the stunts were constantly mindblowing, but the basic technique was lacking.

I think another problem lies in the power scale. I agree with everything dizfactor said about the previous fight scenes, for starters. This time, there's no dramatic tension of fighting against impossible odds. Neo is already God, its a completely different game. Like running an RPG with 25th level characters. Sure, you can fight Tiamat and mow through millions of orcs as a challenge, but that's just not fun anymore. The challenges have to be more abstract, and that's what we're seeing here. Unfortunately, the tension from abstract chalenges didn't appear until almost the very end of the film. So maybe this will work in the finale.

But for Reloaded, I think much of this film was a giveaway. It was porn. It was realy good porn, but still porn in that it was gratuitous. Neo not only trounces Smith, he trounces thousands of him at once, orcslaying at its best. You already know Neo can do anything, so ability can't be the challenge factor. The one redeeming factor of it being that all the power and presence the characters show in Reloaded does nothing to help them in the larger plot.

So in retrospect, you really can't watch Reloaded with the same expectations as the first Matrix. They're not even comparible. You're not cheering for the good guy to overcome impossible odds, you're cheering at the impossibly powerful stuff he can do now. Totally different dramatic tension. You know he'll win the fight. The question now is more, which fight should he be winning?
 
 
PatrickMM
14:59 / 26.05.03
Dude! Just in terms of recent mega-blockbusters of the same genre, both X-Men 2 and Spider-Man kick the shit out of the Matrix Reloaded. Much more exciting, much more real, and the heroes are actual underdogs. You feel their pain a bit when they get slapped around.

I see your point, my favorite fights of all time are from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi because there was so much at stake, and a lot of emotion in the fighting. That was fighting as communicating more than anything in The Matrix.

But Spider-Man? The cheesy lines alone ruined that fight scene for m.e Some things are worse than a bad effect and "The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout. Down came the Goblin and took the spider out" is one of them. And if you want to talk about bad CG, the effects in Spider-Man are infinitely worse than The Matrix.
 
 
Hieronymus
16:01 / 26.05.03
I find your tone somewhat arrogant. The conclusions of previous topic threads, or whoever your mysterious source of criticism happens to be, are not definitive, and do not make my judgements right or wrong or true or false. They're valid opinions in their own right, and should be used to contribute to the discussion, rather than to try and cut it dead because only your opinion is right

I never said they were conclusive, calvin, only that it had been knocked around before in a previous thread. Feel free to resuscitate it as I'm sure the argument is far from final.

But you're attempting to prop up what was a poorly executed movie with some strawman about how people who have grown up on video games and the internet 'can really get into a film which uses "video game literacy" as a story-telling medium'. Which I fail to understand.

I devour my video games and the internet. I'm a PS2 fiend (love my little black box). I understand and love the narrative, neonate as it is. But they're two different worlds. Video game narrative has always suffered, with some exceptions, with poor storytelling in a static, stiff and staged form. And the reason that sort of thing is fine, is because vid game narrative sustains itself with player involvement. A person can let the graphics or the visuals slide just a little as long as the gameplay is fun, no? But where have you seen that kind of allowance in a movie audience? Can you honestly tell me you've never seen a film where the CGI was so obvious that it ruined your suspension of disbelief?

For the very reasons Reloaded doesn't seem entertaining to me is for the very reason I find movies like Final Fantasy, Phantom Menace, et al, bothersome. There's not enough good exposition and too much focus on how much we're supposed to be dazzled by the tech. Just plug them both in. I really wanted Reloaded to be one of those that did.

Geez, this was the very reason I loved the first Matrix. They combined the two and did so pretty fluidly. The story was well paced and solid and the tech wasn't overwhelming and gratuitous. But the CGI in Reloaded was so rampant, past the point of necessity, and so obvious that it all but underminded parts of the film. It was silly even in parts (the 18 wheeler smash up and Neo's Superman rescue immediately comes to mind).

Ultimately, it is a matter of preference, calvin. And I can concede that. But you cannot possibly tell me that shooting a virtual orgasm from a woman's digital vagina is in any way philosophical or mind-blowing or challenging or above the status quo. Porky's meets Tron was not what I had in mind when I bought my ticket.

It lost all credibility with me from there on in.
 
 
yawn - thing's buddy
21:15 / 26.05.03
seismographic pedantry kills thrills.

why not walk out after the overly stylized arse n' quim shot with explosions in the background, established in the first five seconds, if yer tolerance trigger is so itchy.

I think some there's been some well argued responses regarding the nature of the fight scenes in the Matrix on this thread. But the naysayers might simply have to accept that some of us enjoyed the videogame homage/feedback spectacle of Neo doing a 'Cybertron'.

And if yer mind is engaged with technical questions when you're exposed to this shit, then that's the way yer brain works. (you must be naturally inquisitive. This is a bonus in life)

It certainly shouldn't be too tough for an average human to still enjoy the film's story, while also be curious as to where they used mental ray or not.

Ah, mental ray.

gottaluvvit.
 
 
cusm
16:58 / 27.05.03
I wouldn't know. I never leave home without my tinfoil hat. Those bastards won't control MY shopping habits!
 
 
Jackie Susann
22:48 / 27.05.03
I just thought it was disappointing they didn't think of some kinky way to fuck each other through those plastic port things all over their bodies during the notoriously bad sex scene.
 
 
videodrome
03:50 / 28.05.03
DPC, you just don't get it. That wasn't bad sex - Neo and Trinity were making love, videogame-stylee. I'm so disappointed that you've brought those dodgy old ways of looking at human relations to this thread, maaaan.
 
 
Jackie Susann
04:00 / 28.05.03
I remain unconvinced the phrase "making love, video-game-style" isn't an oxymoron.
 
 
Lurid Archive
12:28 / 28.05.03
Not sure why I am bothering but...

I loved it. I even preferred it to X2. Having said that, anyone who tries to put X2 and reloaded on extreme ends of the quality spectrum really needs to get out more.

Sure, it wasn't as good as the first film but it was good fun with pretty clothes and lovely effects. Trinity stole the film for me, but Neo was cool in his clerical garb (I need a coat like that) as was Morpheus who made me want to sign up to his cult.

I think what people are saying about the fight scenes not being engaging is true in some respects. They aren't nearly as good as in the original, but then the backdrop is completely different. Neo starts out a god in this one and you are supposed to enjoy that in a way - I loved the way the fights were so over the top. The tension comes from a different quarter though. For instance, when Neo fights all the Smiths, the point is not that he can't lose, but rather that he can't win. He runs away, after all, and your confidence in his invulnerability is eroded.

Undermining Neo in this way should have had more of an impact, but it didn't quite work. It almost did, like when it was suggested that the Merovingian was previously a "one", but I did sometimes wonder if they were concentrating too much on the thing as part of a trilogy rather than as a standalone. Anyway, when it is revealed that he is a rather tainted messiah it should have been a complete shock - actually, I thought it made perfect sense, like much else that was revealed. Freeing your mind, wearing cool clothes and freely killing people in uniform isn't enough to ensure that you aren't working for The Man - a rather welcome message when you think about how some people refer to the original.
 
 
The Natural Way
12:56 / 28.05.03
I'm persuaded in equal measure by the nayandyesaying.

I think, in hindsight, I definitely dug X-Men a lot more, but still feel the need to shout 'Shut up, stupid head!' when people go on about the effects being bad/not waaaay exciting/bollocks. In fact, the next person to utter this drivel gets a shout at their stupid head.
 
 
The Strobe
13:22 / 28.05.03
Change of tack: if you're not going to play the videogame...

Important plot points from Enter the Matrix that elaborate on Reloaded. Like, VERY important.

Like, the game explains why Neo has powers in the Real. And it explains a tad more about the Oracle. And it's rather handy, and has saved me from playing the game.
 
 
Old brown-eye is back
13:27 / 28.05.03
The game, I'll grant you, is a big pile of shit.
 
 
diz
15:43 / 28.05.03
You may think it was a poor decision, in which case you can choose to avoid it in your own work, and I can understand if it didn't do it for you. Other audience members, who have spent their lives deriving meaningful experience from symbol flow on computer screens, having grown up with the internet and computer games, can really get into a film which uses that 'video game literacy' as a story-telling medium.

i liked the movie, but you're really reaching here. you're giving the filmmakers waaaaay too much credit. the fight scenes weren't intentionally made to look like crap as part of some sort of sexy postmodern intertextual videogame reference. they just looked like crap.

if you'd read any of the many interviews with the special effects gurus, then you would know that they take pains to explain that they were trying as hard as possible for versimilitude. that was their top priority.

honestly, though i like video games as much as the next guy, i'd much rather believe they were trying for realism and failed than think that they were trying to make it look like a video game and succeeding, because, quite frankly, that is, possibly, the lamest thing that i can possibly imagine them doing.

And on a similar note, to everyone who's been criticizing the fight scenes, can you reccomend me some films with better action sequences, because just in terms of fights, I think it would be pretty tough to top Reloaded.

how about the original Matrix, for one?

or the aforementioned X2 and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? or just about any old John Woo movie? or even Desperado?

even The Phantom Menace, for all it's many faults, has the lightsaber duel with Darth Maul, which is better than any fight scene in this movie except maybe the freeway fight.

i saw Cradle 2 the Grave (because i'm stupid) and the split scene with Jet Li fucking up everybody in the underground fight club while DMX gets into an ATV chase in the streets of LA beats Neo vs 100 Agent Smiths any day of the week. Christ, i had to watch The Musketeer when i was stuck on a long flight, and it was a steaming pile of horseshit, but the last fight scene with the ladders was better than most of the fights in Reloaded.

One final example: Equilbrium.

oh, Lord, you're one of the two or three people who actually saw Equilibrium?. wow. i'm sorry.

i got sucked into seeing it because a friend of a friend worked on the fucking thing. that was, without doubt, one of the worst movies i've ever seen, and i disagree completely about the fights: the fights, in general, were way too goofy, despite the fact that every so often one of the Clerics would bust out with a cool move or two. it was just way too far over the top with the "he's surrounded by people pointing guns at him at point blank range, but he does some snazzy move and kills them all with a pair of toothpicks!" no one i was with could stop laughing whenever the fight scenes started.
 
 
diz
16:06 / 28.05.03
speaking of lightsaber duels and fight scenes to recommend, at risk of sounding stupid, there's a Star Wars fan film out there that's basically a really nice piece of amateur lightsaber fight choreography.
 
 
The Strobe
17:10 / 28.05.03
Seconded. Very nice piece of choreography, even if amateur, but it's well realised and slow enough to follow. And yet has some nice "woah" moments. Go the Ho brothers.
 
 
The Natural Way
18:14 / 28.05.03
Spectacle wise, give me Helm's Deep anyday. I nearly shat.
 
 
cusm
18:23 / 28.05.03
Thank you Paleface! I was hoping to get the goods on the game somewhere. That does help fill in the story quite a bit.
 
 
diz
18:56 / 28.05.03
Spectacle wise, give me Helm's Deep anyday. I nearly shat.

yeah, i'll give that to you, and i don't even like LotR...
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
12:30 / 30.05.03
movie aside, the architect scene as had me thinking ever since. i recently had a chance to read the entire speech and go through line by line. as near as i can make out, this is my grand theory about what happened in the Architect's room (I know some of this has been posted in one way or another, but...):

-What the architect is telling Neo is that the Matrix is inherently flawed in some way. The Architect's fix is to inject back into the Matrix a "prime program," which Neo is carrying. That is Neo's (The One) purpose: to "re-insert" the prime program into the Matrix. In this way, Neo is something between a program like Agents/the Oracle and his natural human state.

-Zion is a safety valve. This is how they deal with the inherent flaw, by shoving the people who feel something is wrong into this box called Zion. In that way, they (the Matrix/Architect) can control what happens.

-He gives Neo a choice between 2 very vague things: 1) save trinity and destruction of Zion and 2) return to the source and the salvation of Zion.

-Neo chose 1) The architect said that he if chose this option it would completely destroy the human race to extinction.

-The others chose 2) It's a given in the Architect's scheme that most of Zion will be destroyed (has happened 5 times before), and The One will pick 23 people to rebuild it. This is what they refer to in the first movie about a man waking the first of them up. This person said that he would return at a later time. He was the last One, the fifth (Neo is the sixth). He knew that the same events would happen again, and that there would be another One to rebuild humanity. So that's how that fits into this structure.

-the interesting thing to note from this is that Neo seemingly chose the option that no One prior to him chose, evidenced by the lack of an extinct human race. That signals to me that he is different.
 
  

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