Matrix Reloaded - Surprise!
POSTED BY: merlindrea
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 22:57
VIEWED: 9124
PAGE 4 of 4
I'll just say that it's one thing to suspend your disbelief and quite another to hang it by the neck until dead.
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The story is nothing original, which is typical with big-budget science fiction efforts. Science fiction fans are a distinct minority, and the general public is largely oblivious to the depth of issues examined in the genre. For example: As longtime science fiction fans, my friends and family were rather amused at the massive amount of hyperbole and discussion about the prospects of human cloning.
"No kidding. We've been talking about this since the forties."
Well.
I haven't been talking about it since the forties, before anybody starts asking me about my dentures, thanks.
Likewise, the worlds-within-worlds nature of the Matrix movies is fairly old hat, and not exactly the best examination of the inherent issues. But then I didn't go to the movie expecting Neo to break out into a lengthy and verbose discourse on the nature of reality.
In the end, I wasn't disappointed because it was exactly what I expected. A decent, if not cerebral, storyline, and some majorly cool action scenes.
If I want REAL science fiction, compelling and gripping, I'll watch OoG for the fifty-seventh time.
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This is quite long, you guys give a lot to respond to.
I think that it's one thing to say that a movie isn't good, and another to say that you didn't like it. You guys didn't like it, that you've made clear, but to take it another step to say that is wasn't good is too far. If you want to call Gibson original, then you have to give this the same credit, to compare this to Blade Runner is like comparing an orange to The Beetles, they are both organic, and are both named after things out side what they are but to compare them is for the most part not a good idea. Blade Runner takes it’s plot almost directly from slave hunter and fugitive movies. The matrix comes from an entirely different vein.
Bullet time is in fact totally original, utilizing both still and motion cameras in a way never done before, if it looks like something else that doesn’t make it less original.
I guess what I want you guys to understand is that the matrix is far more original that Romeo and Juliet, but that didn’t stop Shakespeare from getting praise. And that if you don’t understand it then you shouldn’t simply assume it is bad, if the special effects were meant to look real then you would be in the right saying that that is a downfall of the movie. Truth is that every single scene that takes place in the matrix (lowercase because this is the thing, not the movie) is doctored so that it will not look real. If the fights didn’t look real then they did their job, if the scenes that you didn’t even count as effects scenes didn’t look real, even if it was only something you barely noticed in the back of your mind that made it harder for you to suspend your disbelief, then they did their job. If you can’t get your mind around the fact that you should disbelieve some parts and believe others then it doesn’t matter how good of a job they did with the movie, it would have been lost on you.
That’s ok, it’s not as if any movie is for everyone, but to say it’s bad for that reason is like saying the bell tower of Pisa is messed up because it’s tall, it’s quite simply not. It’s messed up because it’s tilted and shaped like a banana so that it is impossible for it to ever be straight up and down. If you want to talk story then you have to understand story, and the story is the next step, the sensical next step, and one that definitely has some quite large philosophical under- and overtones.
As KYOBONITSUKI said the story was unremarkable, but not bad. I tend to agree, the story wasn’t anything that hasn’t been told before, if it was it wouldn’t have fit. I disagree with the rave scene though, that is a quite visible detail, and like it or not it’s true. Every time any significant population has been faced with death there has been a very large party, the only major difference here than most recorded instances is that in this case almost everyone participated. Form a cultural standpoint that is one of the most realistic things they could have done.
TRAGICSTORY I can’t and wont argue with you, if you think that the only part of the movie that extended the plot was the last few minutes than I’m sorry for you. Maybe it’s because I’m an author (admittedly unpublished and for the most part not even good) but I could see plot progression for the captions meeting in the beginning on. Lots of it, it was subtle, as it should be, if you can look at a book or movie and say this is where the plot progresses, and be right that it happens only here, here and here than that is a bad book or movie, if it progresses most visibly there then that’s another thing.
As for people wanting to see black and white and not gray, I think you’re wrong there have been very successful movies about only gray, Schindler's List was a whole movie built on gray. There was a great movie called the gray zone, and I’ll let you guess about the gray in that. Gone with the Wind, a movie that I hate, didn’t have one bit of black and white morals in it. Much to my distaste Gone with the Wind is regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time, as is Citizen Kane.
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"The Matrix Reloaded" was a good movie, exactly on the same quality level as the first film (3 out of four stars, IMO). Sure, some elements were better, and others were worse, but it was no better or worse than the original. The fight scene in the middle wher Neo fights all the Smiths has got to be one of the most boring and pointless fight scenes of all time, but the freeway chase scene is definitely one of the most thrilling. And the part where Neo talks to the Oracle is another pointless scene: he goes there, and all that happens plotwise is he has a piece of candy. Sure, the audience gets a lot of side information, but nothing relevant.
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