Topic: The Matrix: Reloaded

Hey everybody, Teague here. The Matrix: Reloaded is more than a movie, it’s a study of what not to do with your sequel. You may have paid fifty grand for film school, Larry and Andy paid $150,000,000. Jake Lloyd takes the place of Trey, who curiously refuses to watch this movie even for your entertainment.

Also, you may know that Dorkman spends an awful lot of his time just knowing stuff about what went wrong with famous trilogies. “Oh yeah?,” you always say, “so how would you do it, hot shot?” This week, we present a very special sidebar: his answer.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

I haven't listened to this one, but I just listened to Mike's rewriting of it on the blog (which I can't submit a comment to because the Captcha entry field and Submit button don't get displayed), so I'm putting my comment here.

10m 8s. Drunken rambling suddenly becomes fucking brilliant. Only problem: Jerry would inevitably have been cast with Shia LaBeouf.

18m 45s. You just had Keanu Reeves say, 'If I can out-think this, then I can [win]." Whoa.

Overall: genius. And you're not alone in doing this. I rewrote Jumanji and The Ring, among others, immediately after seeing them.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

Had this been the version that went into production post-Matrix, Shia would not yet have been on the map as a franchise hook, and would have been too young anyway.

(And I like Shia!)

I've occasionally had vague notions of how I might do one-off versions of movies (like Super Mario Bros.), but mostly I'm big on getting the sequel right once you've got the first one out there.

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Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

Didn't Jake call dibs for Jerry anyways? tongue

Oh, and yeah, Bloody brilliant.

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Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

Jet Li didn't turn down the movie, he wanted his leading man pay for what was a supporting role and Warner said, "Er, no."

The reason why Neo is able to disable the machines at the end is because he is now connected to the source, which also gives him an affinity to the machines which is why he pursues peace in REVOLUTIONS.

Also I loved the twist that the Oracle was a machine. It was suprising but totally logical.  I think one of you guys complained about how it was explained or demystied in RELOADED during THE MATRIX commentary.  But this is THE MATRIX, it's  awesome that they tied such an overused element into some to do with computers.  It makes sense that she's a program that analyses the matrix and her "predictions" come from this rather than her being some body with unexplained supernatural powers.

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Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

Just some correction on Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem was considered to be punishment by God for the people's idolatry. He was also driven insane by God after boasting of his achievements (there is a great Blake painting of this) and he later praised God once he was healed.

Daniel was an interpreter of his dreams after the other Magi failed and he received a high position as Chief of the Magi.

The "I dreamed a dream" of Morpheus is a partial quotation from Daniel chapter 2. He is quoting Neb. after he had a dream of a statue made of various metals. The statue represented the kingdom of Babylon and the four kingdoms that would come after it. After which God would set up His unending Kingdom with the Messiah.
There is a license plate in the movie DAN23 that is a reference to this passage. Many of the license plates have biblical references. Agent Smith drives a car, or there is one near him, that has a reference talking about a metal "smith". There was a documentary on the 10 disc set that enplanes some of them.

Morpheus probably named his ship the Neb. because he was searching for the fulfillment of his dream of the One. 

Loved the commentaries by the way.

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Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

Wow, welcome to the forum and thanks for dropping insane knowledge. Very interesting.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

Thank you, Teague. I am full of this stuff. I have come close to writing notes while listening to some of the commentaries for comments like this, but I don't want to come off as a know-it-all. That, and I am extremely lazy wink

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Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

fardawg wrote:

Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem was considered to be punishment by God for the people's idolatry. He was also driven insane by God after boasting of his achievements (there is a great Blake painting of this)...

Very interesting; is this the right painting?

Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

Yep, that is the painting.

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Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

Just listened to this one. It shows that it's an early one, but it's good fun and good analysis. Thanks!

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

Thanks Zarbara Walters.*



*Gonna see how long I can do this.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Matrix: Reloaded

"They guard all the doors, they hold all the keys - which means sooner or later, someone will have to face them."
"Someone."


People always talk about how "at the end of M1, Neo becomes God, and then the sequel nerfs that again" - but what's rarely brought up is the way the M1 ending itself kinda goes against what the above exchange had set up.

Where did that whole "go out there and show people impossible things" come from, all of a sudden? The previous One didn't do that, did he - and earlier, Morpheus was talking about Neo having to fight through the Agents to get access somewhere, to presumably put a dent in the system or something.


All Reloaded really did, was retcon that odd and sudden ending that didn't match the preceding movie anyway, and instead pick up that earlier "keys and doors" concept again - albeit in an altered form, because now it's something the rebels apparently hadn't been aware of and is revealed to them by the Oracle and all the newly introduced rogue programs.

A good way to bridge the two, would have been Neo failing to get anything useful out of the agents the way Morpheus had thought (maybe the system reacted and stripped them of their access codes or something - or it turned out to be false info in the first place etc.); and then, as they learn the robot army is coming to kill them, Seraph, the Keymaker etc. start appearing and reveal all those additional hidden areas, the Merovingian's underworld network etc.


So yea, Reloaded isn't "the wrong sequel" anywhere to the extent it's often claimed - in fact, ignoring the original's problematic ending scene is the "wrongest" thing it does, in a way.

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