Matrix Reloaded - Surprise!

POSTED BY: merlindrea
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 22:57
VIEWED: 9124
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MELEE

Saturday, May 17, 2003 1:25 PM

Count me in with the people who sctually enjoyed it! I saw it at it's first showing on wednesday evening and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I agree that people went in with hopes too high. They were really hyped up, and I think a lot of people were expecting it to blow them away like the first one did, but the fact is, no matter how cool the movie is, the idea isn't novelty anymore, no matter how good it is or isn't, it's NOT going to blow you away like the first one did, it's just not possible. Not that this was the case with everybody, but I think it might have been witha lot of people. This second movie also had a bit of a tough time because it's more transitional than anything else, and I can say from experience that it's the same with books, screenplays, etc. The transitional bits are ALWAYS the hardest to deal with. I have a feeling REVOLUTIONS will probably be better than this one.

MSCKAREN

Saturday, May 17, 2003 2:46 PM

I saw the movie late Wed night with a group of "true believers". Through the first 20 minutes my disappointment was building as it looked to me that they had strung together a bunch of music videos - visually interesting but what happened to the story?!

Instead of the prolonged rave scene, I would have much preferred to see the messiah idea developed and how Neo dealt with this aspect of being "the One".

Oh well, once they got into the search for the key, the movie via narrative started to improve and I left feeling like the movie was good overall. I think I will enjoy it the second time more, knowing what is coming.

HOTFORKAYLEE

Saturday, May 17, 2003 4:09 PM

I agree that some people must have, I don't know, been expecting the first Star Wars when they went to see it. Copying other movies? Isn't that what other movies (and video games) have been doing to the Matrix? I went with no expectations and came away feeling it was a good movie, even want to see it again. Sorry if it wasn't 'sophisticated' enough for some people and the dialouge lacked (come on, it stars Keanu Reeves, you expected him to suddenly get good?) but I'd take it over some crappy french film anyday. The movie was supposed to be about special effects but it did have some twists that make you think if you were to stop complaining about little details long enough to just sit back and watch it.

The dance scene (it wasn't a rave per se) could have been trimmed down a little but it was conveying the emotions of the citizens. If this was such a bad movie, what, you could have done better? Then why aren't you in Hollywood making movies?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but it seems some are just being downright rude about. If you didn't like it thats fine, I did like it, don't try and make those of us who did sound like we are morons because if it. Maybe you'd rather see a new Ernest goes somewhere movie? Remember, it's supposed to be entertainment and personaly I think they did a pretty good job compared to what else is out there. I almost never go to the theater because I feel like I wasted my money on some of the crap they try to push off on us but I'm glad I went to this one.

Quote:
"No, she's always quiet. We think maybe there's something wrong with her."
"Yes .. or something very right. The quiet ones are the ones that change the universe, Luc Derardi. The loud ones only take the credit."

CHRISTHECYNIC

Saturday, May 17, 2003 4:21 PM

I think that the problem isn't that people went in with hopes too high, it's that they went in with hopes.

You guys seem to be acting like someone going to the Olympics and coming out and saying, "I can't believe that they did that with the story."

If what you expected to have happen happened then the story would be contrived and unrealistic. On the same level nothing in the movie should have come as forced, because it wasn’t. Just like in life everything made sense once you understood what happened. The idea of programs hiding in the matrix and a general disharmony among the A.I.s should have come as no surprise to anyone as it is the logical extension of the concept of the matrix.

The fact that the oracle was a computer program was known by me at least since the second time that I saw the original. So KYOBONITSUKI, that isn’t what where the story progressed. The sort progressed in the philosophy, the crushing of philosophy and legend under the cold hard truth, and the controls beyond those that they could feel. The story has been brought to the point where the second in a trilogy always brings it, hopelessness. I personally would have preferred a break from the standard trilogy format, but you can’t get mad at it for not doing the job of the second movie because it did.

I think you guys missed the point that this was art. The rave was the natural human impulse, you see the same concept before the coming storm Lord of the Flies. People let base emotions take over to avoid facing the possibility of death, lust and sadism (as show in this and Lord of the Flies respectively) are the most base of all emotions. Art holds a mirror to life, and like it or not that kind of rave is what happens in life, look at any historical instance, the Black Death and both World Wars are the best-recorded instances of this activity.

For those of you who didn’t get it the sentinel killing at the end was not an EMP, the EMP is shown to go outwards where that went sideways in an internal to external way emanating from multiple sources.

This has set us up for the break in the cycle, the first showed us the legend, the second the truth and the imminence of the break in the cycle. At first we see that he is not the godlike power we thought he was, through small things so subtle, some not so much. Then it all comes crashing down when we realize the truth, but because of smith, and the differences between Neo and his predecessors, as well as his new outside of the matrix abilities (likely due to the imperfections of a planed anomaly and a lingering connection to the network) all show that there is a flaw in the system of cycles that will bring an end.

TRAGICSTORY

Saturday, May 17, 2003 4:40 PM

Ok my 2 cents,

Reloaded was nothing but quickly rehashed special effects. PLOT>SFX. If I had to compare it to anything it would be the last Robert Jordon book. Nothing happens except for the last bit, whihc makes you want to go out and get the next book. It could have been done much better IMHO if there was some sort of FINAL CONFRONTATION. Killing Smith or the Albinos would have been good.

The whole rave scene was nothing but a sorry excuse to make up for the lack of TITS and SEX in the first movie.
Finally, the whole idea of programs gone bad and revolting is just about as lame as possible. The whole concept of the Matrix was the inability of humans and machines to live together. Sorry but that just seems like an easy and cheap way to advance the plot and allow Neo to win. The last film is Matrix: Revolution, I just hope that it is an actual revolution and not some tree-hugging hippie-machine tolerance "lets live together" shit. The only good thing in the movie was the last 5 minutes in which you realize that Zion is just another matrix and of course the Firefly cameo!

So here are some questions:

Select to view spoiler:

Do you think Neo is a program?
Do you think the counciler (who kept talking about how they were still plugged in) is a program?
What does Smith want with Neo? (perhaps to free him from his programming?)
What special effects would you have rather seen?
Why did they have "rebel" programs Why would things be upgraded?

"Societies are supported by human activity, therefore they are constantly threatened by the human facts of self-intrest and stupidity." --Peter Berger

CHRISTHECYNIC

Saturday, May 17, 2003 5:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TragicStory:
Ok my 2 cents,
Select to view spoiler:

Why did they have "rebel" programs Why would things be upgraded?

Why is anything upgraded? Does history record a single instance in which the obsolete did not rebel and try to survive by whatever means possible? Didn't you notice the self-preservation inherent in the programming?

EICHENLAUB

Saturday, May 17, 2003 6:51 PM

The story isn't good, it is just rehashed cyber punk, and there was an episode of Star Trek DS9 that had almost the exact same plot too. And using humans for energy makes no damn sense, yet it is what the movies are based on. That makes it impossible to make anysense out of these movies and their plots. Even the title of the movies are stolen from William Gibson. If anyone ever tried to make another Gibson book into a movie people would think it was a rip off of the Matrix. Which is a shame, because Gibson is creative. Too bad these fools ripped him off and did it poorly. Just think of how people would have felt if The Wheel of Time had been made into a movie before Lord of The Rings.

Now I admit, if it turns out that Zion exists within an Matrix within a Matrix, I will like that. That would explain why the story is nonsensical.

But I doubt the screen writers have that much talent.
Besides, the producers were already sure to make their money back no matter how crapy a movie they made, so why bother make a good one? Hell you could make a movie for a few million dollars, spend most of it on promotion, and you would then be sure to make a profit. They don't want to make good movies, so why even pretend to try?

TRAGICSTORY

Saturday, May 17, 2003 7:38 PM

But they are machines, they are not supposed to have the same "human" qualities... Notice how they had not problems accepting that this is what has to happen a la the keymaker dieing, yet they fear being shut down? I think not. The machines should have a communal psyche. What is good for all should be done mentality.

Secondly, the matrix itself is not upgraded. There is no reason for it to be upgraded. Unexplained changes cause panic and fear, People don't accept it. Whole crops are lost,etc...

"Societies are supported by human activity, therefore they are constantly threatened by the human facts of self-intrest and stupidity." --Peter Berger

CHRISTHECYNIC

Saturday, May 17, 2003 7:48 PM

If you really want to get into it Gibson just ripped it off from other people who in turn ripped it off from other people. But the fact is that few would call Gibson unoriginal, so why is it that if someone does something that is just as original as what he did it's a rip off?

It's like west side story, that was stolen from Shakespeare, Shakespeare stole it from an Italian, the Italian copied it from real life, and the people who did it in real life likely got the idea for what they did (when it was in their control) from something that had come before. All that changed was setting and language.

I personally like Neromancer, but to call the tile a rip off of the matrix from that is like calling the title A Beautiful Mind a rip off of your dad because he once used the expression "a beautiful mind." The term “matrix” predates Gibson by centuries, and was used with reference to computer networks back when a computer was a person who could do math in their head because no one had ever even heard of silicone chips.

As for the use of humans as energy, it is in fact a very simplistic idea, which is entirely possible. It is a bit shortsighted for a machine, because without the external power of the sun biological power is on a time limit, but heat and electricity are two very useable sources of power, however biological materials, full of potential power, must be converted. If the heat of a person is totally conserved, add to that the lack of frictional loss, then a person exists with negligible power loss, that means that every material that you put into that person (once they have reached physical maturity) comes out as excess power. When the world lost the sun it would have been covered with resources that machines would have quickly harvested, all of which could sustain the human race, ant thus their power plant for at least a millennia and a half, assuming that the conservation of heat was started almost immediately.

Without the sun the temperature would drop, as was stated in the movie and should be obvious, thus it would be possible to have outside temperature superconductors, this combined with heat conservation would mean that the only significant loss of energy would be frictional.

If you don’t understand this Eichenlaub, let me spell it out Human beings would make an excellent way to convert the resources that would be at hand to usable power. This is not somewhere where you can say that it doesn’t make sense, because it does. The truth is that any animal life on this planet, if it did not have to move, and had near 100% heat conservation would be an excellent power plant, instead of coal it would burn food. If you can not deal with the fact that this makes sense then perhaps that is why you do not like the movie. Either the idea of using people for power was well thought out, or they just got lucky. But rest assured it does make sense.

What doesn’t make sense is why they would keep with it rather than simply switch to geothermal. Although we know that they have no problem with their current system (it has been working for at least 1200 years) it would still make more sense to part it out in exchange for geothermal. This is where you get to say that the movie makes “no damn sense” because this is where you must suspend you disbelief. The reason that they didn’t swap to geothermal after the first time they got a drill that close to the core is because then there would be no people. It is very difficult to get people to watch a movie with just machines. Although the possibility for an impressive movie with a good plot and nice effects would still be there, most people just don’t relate with things that aren’t people.

JAKE7

Saturday, May 17, 2003 8:04 PM

Geez! Does anyone go out to watch a movie to just have a good time anymore?

I saw Reloaded last night and loved every single minute!

I went expecting to see fantastic special effects and to be entertained and I got just that -- more, really, because I felt the fight scenes were just incredible! The choreography it took to get them to flow like they did was absolutely amazing to me.

I'm looking forward to see Revolutions in November.

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MAL: Everyone's makin' a fuss.

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