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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Matrix Revolutions (Spoilers)

  
  

Page: 1(2)34567

 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
08:39 / 06.11.03
At the end, the Architect does state that anyone who wants to stop being a battery is going to be freed.
Freed? Never has Cypher's argument been stronger. "Oh yeah, does the Matrix ever suck. Come. Join us. Dance on the rotting corpse of Samoan Legend Tony Rockyhorror. There's, uh, literally nowhere to put the acres and acres of bodies down here. Also, we have this awesome religion that honors the sacrificial work of, well, basically, he was a Wet-Dry Vac. You'll love our local pastor. He's the most annoying Man-Child you'll ever hope to meet. He looks kind of like a cross between that guy from Smallville and Andy Dick. Oh, and also? You can never ever leave."

Honestly, if you want a movie about how meaningless life is, watch Hannah And Her Sisters.

God, no wonder that didn't play Rage's "Freedom" at the end. It fucking doesn't exist!

And, I personally didn't mind the machines not having any personality. I'm not that bright and thus I've never understood how 1's and 0's could ever replicate a shred of human emotive thought. Although, as Smith so irascibly states, all of that shit is just another kind of program.

Honestly, if I was in The Matrix, I'd find some way to change it from within and never set foot in that dreadful nightmare pit. Hm, maybe that's what they're saying, you know? Like, say, someone like Michael Moore has decided to take neither pill and just do his work inside The Matrix.

Uch. I'm gonna go watch Finding Nemo again.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
11:10 / 06.11.03
So going on what you are all saying about the plot, it seems as though they mean the word "Revolution" more in terms of going around in circles rather than anything political.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
11:47 / 06.11.03
That's exactly what I was thinking, Flux.
 
 
cusm
12:59 / 06.11.03
In brief, I though it was good enough of a conclusion to make up for Reloaded. Unlike Reloaded, there was sufficient drama to get me emotionally involved, and the fight scenes were not so overdone as to be numbing as in Reloaded. The Kung Fu still didn't hold a candle to the original, but it was passible. Though the superman fight was quite good, in portraying a slugfest at that power scale. Easily the best super-fight I've seen done, even if the dramatic lightning effects every time one of them paused to blink started to get old.

The Zion bits were visually cool, I loved the part with the mecha shooting the squids as they came out of the hole for the sheel metalness of it all. Bullets, shrapnal, and big metal men blasting away. It was wonderfully excessive in a Heavy Metal sort of way. But I was annoyed that there only seemed to be one infantry unit with a rocket launcher active that could ever hit the drill. The spotlight characters seemed to be the only people who did anything in the fight, which I didn't care for much. The Young Hero and the Grizzled Seargent was an annoying cliche as well.

For that matter, the constant use of cliche is one of the biggest problems with the 2nd and 3rd movies. All the love tripe, the Young Hero, the Christ Metaphore, I think they were going fot archetypical but in many ways it came off a bit more cliche.

I did enjoy the Sight Without Eyes bit, but I couldn't help thinking of Paul Atrides at the end of Dune Messiah. Cool gimick, but like everything else in there its been done before. I mean, Lucas pulled off the meta-myth hero saga with the original Star Wars already. Its hard to slip another one by the public. Though granted, if I hadn't seen or read anything in the past 20 years I would have though this movie was the most fantastic epic of all time.

But still, I enjoyed it. I thought it hung together well enough to give a good cosmic showdown and wrap up. Unlike Reloaded, I might actually go see it again. Though I don't feel the need to see it 6 times like I did the original. As for the escoteric stuff, this conversation with a friend of mine I saw it with after the film sums that up:

He: This movie was made to make people spend the next 40 years deconstructing the symbology and getting mad insights out of it.

Me: Yea, but it'll take me all of about 15 minutes to lay it all out into its basic mythological and escoteric elements.

He: It wasn't made for people like you.

I'm afraid I can't argue with that.

So to that end, I'm thinking of starting up a thread to bounce between here and the Magick to annotate the lot. It shouldn't be hard. There's a lot in there, but its pretty easy to pick out. I figure, get it over with in its own thread so this one can continue picking apart the shoddy scripting.
 
 
netbanshee
14:06 / 06.11.03
Got a chance to get a viewing of it as well...

Not much more to be said at the moment, just a general improvement over the last film. But nonetheless it's uninspiring in most ways. The graphics were pretty intense and I give a lot of cred to the teams that did the effects. Also like the fetish wear... at least something interesting.

And too add to the fuel of previous scenes and concepts they bros burned from..

Niobi's ship getting back to Zion in it's rotating goodness couldn't stop me from thinking of the Millenium Falcon in the Death Star.

The Machina that Neo talks to... MCP from Tron.

In fact, go watch Tron... it nicely wraps the trilogy in a 20 year old bow and gives a better presentation.
 
 
Cheap. Easy. Cruel.
15:25 / 06.11.03
I haven't had a chance to see it yet, but here is a review I read. This guy doesn't seem all that impressed. Most of the people I have talked to who have seen the movie have said that this is a scathing, but relatively accurate review.
 
 
Hieronymus
15:35 / 06.11.03
Expect a series of comics, games and anime to continue the storyline soon. Nothing was really concluded.

This is no real surprise of course.
 
 
Mercury
15:40 / 06.11.03
Ok, I agree with the general tone of criticism. It was a letdown. I won't get into all the aspects, you all done it, and done it quite good in my opinion. So I'd just like to make some small comments on specific aspects.

1. I for one didn't like the superman fight. Why? Because it was a SUPERMAN fight. It's funny cause ever since I first saw the poster ads I asked myself "why the rain?" and the rain is there to make some wild effects during the fight. But that's all. What I liked about the fights in the first movie was that it was great to see those moves, those incredible comic like kicks and punches, that took Hong Kong style to a whole new dimension, only taking place inside a very normal scenario. Flats, rooms, enclosed spaces. Regular people, fighting like supernatural beings. But here, the whole city is transformed, no people around, it's a 100% computer game scenario and it's Clash of The Titans. Except they're so powerful it becomes too comic-like in my opinion. Nothing to do with the playground scenario in Reloaded. The rain is there to try and give some of that "enclosure", but that's it. And all the other Smithes are paralised. In conclusion, no wits, just biceps. Until, of course, the grand finale.

2. My girlfriend called my attention to a small detail: why would the machines talk to Neo morphing into a human face? Sure, we were expecting some kind of Big Brother character. But not that, not a human face. They despise humans, they communicate through ways far more advanced and complex. It looked like they were defering to Neo, accepting his form as the right one, or the higher one. And that simply doesn't make sense.

3. There was only one scene, one single novelty in this entire picture that I really appreciated, and reminded me of the first one: the subway station. I liked the idea (although it isn't original, I think) I liked the simplicity, the white, and the "Mobile Ave" that made me wonder. Could it be an anagram, or maybe there's some meaning if we take it as a Latin statement? And then of course there's the Trainman, whom I thought would become really important cause he looked like such a great character, but was suddenly dropped, no glory, no last line. That station makes such a contrast with the rest of it. And half way through the movie I thought that would be the secret formula to make this work: contrast, the calm and the stressed, the brawl and the philosophy, simplicity vs. complexity. But no, it was just...well, disappointing.

- Mercury
 
 
Imaginary Mongoose Solutions
15:55 / 06.11.03
The drive-by introduction of Charon/The Trainman. I know he was seen in Reloaded leaving the restaurant but goddamn, what a speedy little trope he was.

Yeah, he worked for me, but then I realized just why he worked for me and that's because I was introduced to the character by the goddamn videogame.

The initial CGI masturbation of the Matrix as the movie begins, replete with fractals because yeah, we haven't crammed this film with enough pseudo-intellectual/psychedelia bullshit yet, so how about some more?

As I pointed out to a friend of mine after our first viewing, the fractals at the begining are actually the overhead images of the Machine City that neo sees via his second sight.

Man, did I love the "they only look evvvillleee because they are Other" bits with the Machines. One of the best things about the movie to me was Neo seeing the Machines as they probably see themselves.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
16:48 / 06.11.03
Apparently "the brothers" want to do a videogame based on Seraph, while Shiny have a contractualy obliged game in the works too. And so it begins...
 
 
diz
17:04 / 06.11.03
[b]Why can Neo use his powers outside the matrix?[/b]

possibly because there may be no "outside the Matrix." the Oracle tells him that the One's power transcends both worlds because it comes from the Source. the Source isn't just the Source of the Matrix, it's also the Source of the "real" world.

that's how he can be stuck "between" the two worlds and how he can be there without jacking in. what "between" could there be if the Matrix is inside the computer network and Zion is outside? the train station is clearly outside the Matrix if the Matrix is on one end of the train line, but it's also just as obviously a computer simulation, so where is it?

that also explains how Sati can leave the world where she comes from and go to another world and still end up in the Matrix. she's a program, born to programs, but she can't stay in her world, and so has to go live in the Matrix, but if she's a program, and the Matrix is not her homeworld, where the hell is she from?

keep in mind also that, arguably, the first person to use miraculous powers in the real world is Trinity, giving Neo the breath of life and causing his rebirth as the One.

they're all programs in a multilevel, interlocking world, not a binary real/simulated one.

i disagree with Benjamin Birdie that Neo got played by the Machines. Neo, Smith, the Machines, and the Zionistas all got played by the Oracle and the Architect as part of the ongoing cycle of chaos and order.

my girlfriend and i were talking about this last night, and we both came out of the movie thinking that it implied that a different character "caused" Smith. she thought it was heavily implied in the Oracle's conversation with Neo that the Architect caused Smith to deviate from his original purpose, because she said that the Architect's function is to balance things out and that Smith is Neo's opposite. i thought it was implied that the Oracle caused the Smith because of the Architect's admonition that she had played a very dangerous game. we concluded that the Oracle created Neo to unbalance things, knowing that the Architect would then have to counter with Smith to bring it back into balance, though she didn't know how that would turn out.

i went through it further in my head today and i think that i figured it out a bit more. Neo's not the first One, we know that. we are told that every previous One chose returning to the Source (Nirvana/union with the godhead) over returning to the mortal world (the bodhisattva path). Neo deviates from this, motivated by love of Trinity. we know also that the whole One phenomenon is created by the Oracle.

we also know that the Oracle initially old Neo that he wasn't the One because he was waiting for something, and that "something" was his death and rebirth through the love of Trinity, and that she also told Trinity that the man she fell in love with would be the One.

what if the previous Ones were not dependent on the love of another in order to become the One? what if the Oracle's "dangerous game" was to throw the Trinity kink into the equation of the One, and that altered who Neo would become, which altered his decision-making, which extended the time-frame of the One's existence beyond the point of the decision in the Architect's office, and thus forced his counterpart, Smith, to similarly exceed his normal boundaries and actually take over the Matrix where he would have been cut off sonner, which forced the Neo/Smith conflict to supersede the Machines/Zion conflict, which allowed Neo to die and conquer Death (Smith) and thereby to save all parties from the cycle of self-destruction?

hmm.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
17:31 / 06.11.03
I took it that Neo touching the source gave him a "wireless" connection to the Machines, allowing him to activate Sentinel self-desturcts in the same way an authorised program jacked into the matrix can order a sentinel strike on a ship/target. If the "real world" was just another level of lies/simulation he'd have been able to blow up Bane's head as easily as a squiddy.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
17:32 / 06.11.03
Diz,

It was internal arguments such as these that made me at least appreciate the movie a bit more. I mean, you know, at least you walk away thinking about something. And, yeah, it wasn't the machines that reduced Neo to a vacuum cleaner bag, it was The Oracle and The Architect. Still just as sad and distressing though.

I'm feeling your thought process at the end of your post very much. It's a nice summation of all the things that the Architect confrontation brought up in my mind, the difference that Trinity's presence makes in this 6th Matrix, et al.

I'm leaning towards the Oracle being the grand maestress behind everything, as it seems she can think around a few more corners than old Wonder Bread. She suckered Smith into bringing her directly into the conflict between him and Neo, etc. It was the kind of outcome that, had it been just a bit more fleshed out, could have had a Sozean impact at the end of the film, but, sadly, there's only hearsay and speculation at this point. I did like the fact that she echoed Smith directly in the kitchen when she told Neo, "I want the same thing you do..." While Smith said "Everything" in Reloaded, she says "Peace" in Revolutions. Interesting.
 
 
Hieronymus
17:58 / 06.11.03
i thought it was implied that the Oracle caused the Smith because of the Architect's admonition that she had played a very dangerous game. we concluded that the Oracle created Neo to unbalance things, knowing that the Architect would then have to counter with Smith to bring it back into balance, though she didn't know how that would turn out.

i went through it further in my head today and i think that i figured it out a bit more. Neo's not the first One, we know that. we are told that every previous One chose returning to the Source (Nirvana/union with the godhead) over returning to the mortal world (the bodhisattva path). Neo deviates from this

Thanks diz. This at least helped me to feel better about paying for a movie that wasn't a sci-fi version of the Left Behind series.*shudder*
 
 
cusm
18:27 / 06.11.03
Neo in the real world:

I sort of figured the machines were using some form if Tesla-esque broadcast power soruce. I mean, that's how I would do it if I were a machine superintelligence and wanted to build a city where little crawly things can scuttle about at liberty. The Source then would be the broadcast power source. The constant arcing of electricity across anything pointy supports the broadcast power idea as well. Extrapolating from this, it is clear that access to the matrix is available through a wireless uplink, and that one has to be close enough to the system to access it. It then follows that the access to the matrix is granted through a wireless network run over the Tesla power field. Again, its just efficient that way.

Now normally, the matrix is accessed through a machine interface. But people can learn to access it more directly, hacking the system with their own minds. Neo becomes The One because he gains direct access to the martix network protocol with his brain. And if he can do that, then he can affect the power grid, too.

So there's a psudo-science explaination for it that automaticly has merit because Tesla fields are cool.
 
 
diz
19:15 / 06.11.03
that's possible too, cusm, and Radiator's point about Neo only affecting squiddies and not Bane/Smith is also well taken. however, when Neo was in a coma, they were scanning his brain pretty thoroughly - they had the image of it up on the screens, etc. i think they certainly would have noticed if he had had some kind of physical implant, and if his brain were configured differently in such a way that it could transmit Tesla fields it seems unlikely no one would have noticed...

i think that it's interesting and possibly worth noting in relation to all this that it's interesting that in a trilogy in which the relationship between perception and reality is such an issue, the main character spends so much time in this movie in his a perceptual bubble, so to speak, after he's blinded. he seems to spend a lot of time in liminal spaces in this movie, as befits a messianic figure: in the train station, in the real world but only able to perceive the machine world, and in the Matrix but transcending it as the One.

i also think that it's interesting that, out of all the Smith bodies to fight in the Superbrawl, he's fighting the Oracle's body.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
19:26 / 06.11.03
But, isn't all of the technology in these films running off the bioelectricity found in humans and that wouldn't show up as an abnormality in a brain scan?
 
 
Imaginary Mongoose Solutions
20:01 / 06.11.03
she's a program, born to programs, but she can't stay in her world, and so has to go live in the Matrix, but if she's a program, and the Matrix is not her homeworld, where the hell is she from?

She's from the machine world. Her parents were programs (in the greater machine world) who created an offspring that unlike her parents had no purpose in the machine world and thusly could not exist. Her parents then were attempting to smuggle her into the matrix where she could live as an exile amongst the humans. The Matrix is a Prison for humans but a Haven for machines.
 
 
diz
20:36 / 06.11.03
But, isn't all of the technology in these films running off the bioelectricity found in humans and that wouldn't show up as an abnormality in a brain scan?

do you mean that the modifications in Neo's brain which he has from growing up in the pods could work for those purposes? i suppose... hmm.

She's from the machine world.

OK, that makes sense. i forgot the distinction between the Machine City (01?) and the Matrix in that case, and also the fact that all the Exiles hung out in the Matrix to avoid deletion. OK, good point.

so how did Neo's mind end up in a train station between the Machine City and the Matrix?
 
 
cusm
22:35 / 06.11.03
Input buffer on an unused port?
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
23:24 / 06.11.03
By merging with the Oracle, a Super Smith is created, with all the powers inherent to the Oracle. And all the other Smiths are shit scared of it. That was a great moment. I'm assuming Seraph-Smith would have been a total Kung-Fu badass.

And in the first film, Smith talks about how much he hates viruses. That's a neat touch.

Starting to like this film the more you guys pick it apart.
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
00:39 / 07.11.03
This was rubbish. Stop explaining it away to yourselves. It was crap.

I didn't mind reloaded - I thought it was fun enough. Fair enough. But this? This was supposed to be the next part of that movie, and instead it tried to ignore it. Thse aren't complete films in any way. They just shanble along and in their vagueness hope they achieve some kind of deeper meaning.

It is very bad.

It just doesn't end, it feels like they want this to keep going.

It doesn't deal with anything. Trinity dies. Why? Because they don't know what to do with her after she goes with Neo. Because she can't go and sacrifice herself to the machines as well. Lazy.

Smith in the real world? Yeah, that might be interesting. But nothing happens. It's just time wasting. oh, they could have showed him mess up the whole attack strategy alluded to in reloaded. But they don't. Silly. Or is the whole point of him neo losing his eyes? Fuck that.

Neo? Is he dead? What? All this to see him get beat up by Smith? That fight was shit. I'd actually seen it all before I even went to see the movie. Great, really made it exciting. And then he just loses. To me, it seems like the machine ssaved everyone. Why? Who cares? It's a cop out.

The end. Balls. It didn't feel like an end. We see Morpheus and Niobe hug. Great. That's it? Fuck off! That annoying kid tells everyone the wars over. I didn't believe him, why should they?! It's stupid. It doesn't feel like an end.

And to top that, we get a bunch of characters we don't care about/know about/understand what they're supposed (in that vagueness does not = clarity) to be talking about at the end. Great.

So everything's the same. It's a cop out, we don't know what really happened to anyone we're supposed to care about. It's clear the Wachowski's think that vagueness = meaning.

Balls to that, I say.

I expect the first film will remain the best thing they have ever done. Maybe someone shold tell them that if you make something that is structured and complete it is better... oh, and also to leave your shit ideas in the background where they won't get in the way too much.
 
 
Mouth and Pockets
04:00 / 07.11.03
I was wondering what people thought about Smith's moment of doubt. It is the only time in the movies where we see his program in conflict with itself.

My friend asked me about it after the movie and my immediate thought was that Smith was about to lose his 'purpose,' his purpose being to destroy Neo. But then, as some of you have pointed out, it was also the Oracle Smith; what would Smith having the Oracle's sight do to his programming to cause this moment of doubt?
 
 
Professor Silly
04:18 / 07.11.03
Bottom line: most people will not like this film.

Me? I loved it...maybe even more than the first. When the first film came out I told myself that unless Neo could figure out a way to affect machines outside the matrix I would be pissed off. So at the end of Reloaded I felt delighted. After that I told myself that unless Neo figured out a way to end the war peacefully I would feel let down.

And that's exactly what he did. He ended the war with his life. Now maybe the humans and machines can work together to get rid of the black sky and develop a true symbiotic relationship.

But again, most people obviously don't really want peaceful endings. They want murder and the death of one race or the other. Win-win situations are apparently beyond the scope of most people.

Smith's purpose: the destruction of everything, where noone wins.
Neo's purpose: everyone wins...doesn't that seem very "Dane-ish?"

I for one was very moved by Trinity's death. Not for her, because she seemed fine with it. I felt bad for Neo's loss. Considering we can't see his eyes I think he did a great job acting in this scene...I really felt very bad for him, and imagined losing my wife in such a way. Poor guy....

I was also amazed by the actor that played Bane (the guy Smith hijacked)--the further into the film the more he seemed to talk like Smith. Eventually he seemed so "Smithish" that I'm not terribly sure it wasn't Hugo Weaving in some incredible make-up.

But something tells me that mostly I'm talking up a blank wall, and that most of you didn't really want to like this film in the first place...that there was simply no way this film could deliver what most people really want. Oh well.

Again, I realize most people will probably hate this film...but maybe this only goes to show that I am the type of people the film was made for. I look forward to getting all three films on DVD and watching them again and again.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:24 / 07.11.03
Soooooooo not seeing this. The desire to ride this out to the end is strong, but then I think about how vindicated I felt after NOT going to see Attack of the Clones, and how else I could spend that 2 and a half hours/£8... I should have figured out ages ago that my interest in this entire franchise died around the time Switch and Cypher did.

But as much as it pains me that this thread will probably spread to 8 times the size of discussions on infinitely superior films released this year, there are already some really classic moments of comedy.

1) Some people are actually citing the Smith/Neo fight and even the Zion battlesuits/Sentinels fight as highlights of the film. Are you kidding? These have bored me even in the trailer.

2) Whoever suggested that maybe the problem is that Barbelith-type people are too clever for the Matrix movies, because they 'get it' immediately, whereas the humble ignorant masses will have to analyse them for years before they understand it all. Yeah. Y'know, maybe the majority of people will just instinctively twig that 'annotating' something this tedious just isn't worth the bother, y'know?

3) dAb's suggestion above that people who don't like the end of this film want to see "murder and death of one race or another". A self-evident classic which should be noted down in the Big Barbelith Book of Fatuous Claims. Yes, yes, that's what to blame for the dodgy critical reception to the Matrix sequels: the blood-thirsty critics like mindless violence more than the peaceful Wachowski brothers do! Er...
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
09:21 / 07.11.03
Flyboy (paraphrasing): "I haven't seen this film, but I've seen tiny certain scenes in the trailers, and they were shit! How can you people who have seen the film seriously like those scenes?"

The actual amount of either scene they show in the trailers is tiny, dude. Perhaps if you saw the film, before attemping to review it?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:50 / 07.11.03
Yeah, see I did that with Reloaded 'cos even though it seemed like it could only be utter shite - I thought "musn't slag it off without seeing it" and dutifully trundled along... Oh, how I regret that decision.
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
10:37 / 07.11.03
You have to like this film because Neo saves us like JESUS. And then it goes all vague and we are meant to assume everything is ok. Bollocks? Yes.

This. is. a .bad. film. I can't believe the excuses that people are willing to make for it. And you know, I must be pretty bad, because I thought reloaded was alright. Yet this film manages to negate everything - if there'd been a decent ending that actually resolved something - fair enough! But no.

Seriously - "peace" with the same supposedly soul destroying, life-stealing machines? Sure. It's not like they've gone to lengths to show everyone how bad they are... wow. It's just so lame, this is less a thrilling conclusion and more a damp squib that should be ignored.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
10:49 / 07.11.03
You and me both, man.

DAb: - you talk bollocks, little fella. Go crack an egg.

Even the stuff you lot claim is good about the movie sounds BAD. Really BAD.

Oh, and by the way: bathos does not a satisfactory ending make. That is the point of bathos. It works in Chekhov, in Pinter, in Dostoevsky - but not in a film that sells itself as spectacle, as the Matrix movies do. If a movie sells itself as spectacle, and delivers bathos, it has either deliberately mis-sold itself, or it has failed. As the second film was so badly written, poorly constructed, hideously bloated, and a total waste of my fucking time, I choose to believe the latter - and if you think I'm wasting close to a tenner and another evening of my life, AGAIN, just to have a reasonable suspicion proven right, then you're a bigger sucker than you take me for.
 
 
Quantum
10:54 / 07.11.03
It is an insult to the memory of the first movie (AnnadeL's brother)
I had so much to say, then this chap's words of wisdom 'It's not worth writing about' spoke to me.
Flyboy, JtB, don't go and see it, it's Attack of the Clones writ large. You will be angry with yourself if you do. I went to the wednesday showing and it's taken me two days to decide it's bad. Bad like Alien Resurrection was bad.
 
 
Quantum
10:59 / 07.11.03
Oh, I meant to add;
..go and see Kill Bill instead which blows Devolutions out of the fucking water in every single way. The action is the only good part of devolutions, and compared to Tarantino it sucks shitty ass. Nuff said.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:05 / 07.11.03
I think we should all get together, dress up in faux-leather and go see the film. I think it sounds fucking hilarious. See, the first one I hate because it's full of pseudo-philosophical claptrap and takes itself extremely seriously. I want to go and see this so that 1)my original opinion of the Wachowski's, formed oh so long ago, is proved undeniably correct and 2)so I can disrupt everyone else's cinema going experience. Screw you, rip off bastards, everyone knows the how-shit-you-are truth now. I'm not alone anymore!!!!
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
12:15 / 07.11.03
Hey, hey, hey! Lets leave Attack Of The Clones the fuck out of this. I mean, it's bad enough having to watch the rampant transformation of a personal idea stating "I Do Not Want To See This Movie, I Was Screwed Last Time" metamorphise into "This Movie Is Bad" without even giving it a fucking shot, but hey, Yoda used a fucking lightsaber. Respect.

Semantically, many of you haters are on very thin ice. I agree with the claims of bloated conversation on a film that's hundreds of times less effective (or affective) than other films this year, but, hey, what's there to say about Finding Nemo? It's sterling practically flawless entertainment. Not a very fun conversation.

Oh, and Anna. I've got you beat. It seems that Nissan, at least in my theater, is now PAYING DINKY ACTORS to INTERACT with their ghetto-ass CAR COMMERCIALS in the THEATER before the movie. They're even in coordinated seats. It's a hundred times more distracting and a thousand times more indicative of how pathetic and sad the movie-going experience overall has become. Cross your fingers and hope you get to see it in your town.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
12:17 / 07.11.03
But again, most people obviously don't really want peaceful endings. They want murder and the death of one race or the other. Win-win situations are apparently beyond the scope of most people.

Wow. It's always jaw-dropping when condescension and idiocy dovetail like this.

Listen man, a big part of the reason why so many people are let down by this film is because it's supposed to be an ending to this big story, and the ending isn't at all satisfying. I don't think the audience should be blamed for expecting this big dumb action epic which seems to promise a happy ending from the very beginning to have the ending which gives them what they want. There's no shame in giving the audience exactly what they want - really, that's why the first Matrix movie works so well.

It seems like the Wachowskis got very full of themselves and decided to give the audience what they thought they needed rather than what they want, which isn't the best road to travel when you are making escapist video game action movies. They completely lost sight of what they were really doing and bought into their own pseudointellectual hype. The problem is, they just aren't very smart writers, so they can't make that stuff exciting or satisfying for the audience. They have no one telling them no, they have no one reminding them that their story lacks shape and focus. They have no one to say "hey, this makes no sense" because it all makes a lot of money, and they have a lot of apologist fans who will do their best to try to connect the dots.

It's amateur writing with a massive budget. It's just sad. All the audience ends up with at the end is all of the boring parts of religion and philosophy but with none of the uplift, spirituality, or ideas. "No God, Only Religion," as it were.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
12:26 / 07.11.03
Yeah, that's a 10/4, Flux. "Uplift" was exactly what I was looking for. I mean, I was stoked at the end of Reloaded, because there was this rocket of momentum propelling the whole movie into this explosion of quietude and weirdness (The Architect). This movie was, literally, a propulsion downhill. And I think it's why the only good scene was the one with the sky, because it, all-too briefly, followed that other, fulfilling momentum. Crazy escape from thousands of chomping machines and then BAM, explosion of quietude and weirdness. Aaaaand then a swift return to the great downward trajectory that was the rest of the movie.

If you think about most of Reloaded, everything was this horizontally aimed rocket going through the film and ending up at the high rise. In this film, practically everything pointed downwards, digging, sinking further into a narrative mire of darkness. Much less fun and the direct opposite of "uplift".
 
  

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