Re: Revolutions

Abbie wrote:

Just LOOK at these things, guys. Remember when sci-fi tentpoles had honest-to-god setpieces that were painstakingly conceived and executed?


To this point specifically, I just remembered this tweet that floated around a while back. And it's 100% true, this entire scene is an amazing set piece.

https://twitter.com/headfallsoff/status … 9334837250

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Revolutions

Somehow I missed Abbie's big post last time around. (Thanks for the quote, BDA.)

Off that:

Hm.

Now that you mention it, I am super curious to see if my read of these movies has evolved. (Maybe it hasn't! But, I doubt it.) Lord knows if I'll end up actually watching 'em any time soon, but... y'know. Hm. Might do, might do.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Revolutions

Just watched the whole trilogy over the past week, and though I'm pretty intimately familiar with the first movie, it's been well over a decade since I'd seen the sequels, so I'd thoroughly forgotten everything apart from the general pop-culture awareness things. My general takeaway is that the sequels weren't as bad as people made them out to be, but they definitely don't follow on in the same direction that seems to be set up at the end of the first movie, and they seem to be actively trying to prevent you from understanding the cool ideas within them.

The primary example for this is the scene with the Architect, in which Neo learns that the prophecy of The One was made up by the machines as a way to corral the freed humans and make them easier to control. This is a really interesting concept, and could totally be explored in greater depth, but the actual on-screen explanation of this is a dude in a chair speaking in deliberately difficult to understand phrasing (concordantly, vis-a-vis, ergo), and no follow up. Compare this to the scene in The Matrix where Morpheus takes Neo through his 3D slideshow presentation of what the matrix is, the history of the machines, how the world got how it is, and it's clear that there's a real lack of 'show, don't tell' in the sequels. There's no visual interest to aid the exposition, and there's no time dedicated to exploring the concepts presented. It's as if the movie doesn't want you to know that it has cool ideas.

To make matters worse, what Reloaded does decide to spend time on is an extensive and unnecessary rave in a cave scene, an extensive and unnecessary orgasm-inducing cake, and several extensive and unnecessary fight scenes in which one or more those involved is trying to just leave, and could do so at any moment, but instead decides to hang about so the scene can be more spectacular. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for action spectacle, but without justified motivation, the action scenes feel overly indulgent.

You may have noticed that this criticism has so far been centered on Reloaded and not Revolutions, and that's because I think that any of the problems that Revolutions has are all inherited from Reloaded, and the new content it introduces is all executed about as well as could be hoped for. All the effects of the Zion battle sequence hold up surprisingly well despite the age of the film, and after the first act (up until Neo gets back into the real world, all of which feels like story beats that really should have been part of Reloaded but were moved over into Revolutions so as to make the movies more sensible lengths), all the plot beats are well paced and keep escalating towards the conclusion.

In summary: The Matrix sequels have a lot more going for them than people give them credit for, the reason behind the negative reception isn't due to the movies not having an interesting story to tell, but due to them hiding this interesting story behind layers of unnecessary self-indulgent scenes and a lack of effort to communicate or explore the cool ideas when presented.

Then again, maybe I'm just bringing too much of my own concrete

Thumbs up +2 Thumbs down

Re: Revolutions

HenryChM wrote:

In summary: The Matrix sequels have a lot more going for them than people give them credit for, the reason behind the negative reception isn't due to the movies not having an interesting story to tell, but due to them hiding this interesting story behind layers of unnecessary self-indulgent scenes and a lack of effort to communicate or explore the cool ideas when presented.

As a self professed sequel defender, I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head.

One of the other primary issues I have with the sequels is that they completely abandoned one of (to me) the coolest ideas about the interior world of the Matrix from the first movie. The idea that people on the Nebuchadnezzar (and on other ships presumably) seem to have an established existence in the Matrix furthering the goals of the humans on the outside. Morpheous is a world famous terrorist at the center of a global manhunt, and Trinity is a known hacker. I would have loved to have seen that thread carried through the sequels where they use that network and skills to fight the Matrix itself. Even if it just wound up being a subplot that assisted in the final battle, it would have been cool to see some element of a portion of the population helping to establish a resistance from within the Matrix itself, rather than a small team of superheroes doing crazy fights.

But that would veer the tone of the sequels away from high octane action movie, into something more philosophical and slower paced ala the first movie. Which I would have preferred, but clearly wasn't what they wanted to do. So *shrug*.

(It's not fully formed in mah brain-box, but I know there's something really cool you could with cutting between the high-action fight scene in the real world of the sentinels attacking Zion, while there's almost an espionage style resistance happening inside the Matrix.)

EDIT: To add cause I think I missed the mark i wanted to hit a touch... one of my biggest, I don't want to say disappointments, because I enjoy the movies and to make this work would require a pretty significant tone shift away from what anyone working on the movies probably had in mind, but in my little universe where I'm the one making them, this is what I'd like to have seen... was more of a focus on the everyday people aspect of the Matrix. In the first movie, it feels like Earth, there are normal people going about their normal business completely unaware of the Matrix and the superhuman shenanigans that pop up occasionally. But in the sequels the Earth inside the Matrix feels more like levels designed for a video game where it's not really real, and any damage or casualties don't really matter because it's just a game. NOW, there's probably a really interesting dark version of this story where our heroes become so disillusioned and swallowed by the illusion that they are superheroes that they forget that these are still real people, that will and do die... but that's a whole other movie.

What I think would have been cool is doubling down on that vision of the Matrix as both very very real and very very fake at the same time. Where our heroes are superheroes fighting epic battles, but also having to remember that there are real humans on the ground that they are trying to save. But then, through the process of that as more and more people go "Wait... why was that dude flying... and why are there 3 million clones of this one dude?" the Matrix starts to break down because the primary computing network that makes it operate starts to not believe in itself, and that erodes the machines ability to control the Matrix and it starts to error out and shut down. The bones are already there, Neo has spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the Matrix is before he ever meets Morpheus, just keep carrying the conspiracy theory through until it's an underground resistance led by the One spreading the truth to weaken the system. IDK, just something to make the human element of the Matrix matter and not just be the background for the crazy superhero fights.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Revolutions

HenryChM wrote:

The primary example for this is the scene with the Architect, in which Neo learns that the prophecy of The One was made up by the machines as a way to corral the freed humans and make them easier to control. This is a really interesting concept, and could totally be explored in greater depth, but the actual on-screen explanation of this is a dude in a chair speaking in deliberately difficult to understand phrasing (concordantly, vis-a-vis, ergo), and no follow up. Compare this to the scene in The Matrix where Morpheus takes Neo through his 3D slideshow presentation of what the matrix is, the history of the machines, how the world got how it is, and it's clear that there's a real lack of 'show, don't tell' in the sequels. There's no visual interest to aid the exposition, and there's no time dedicated to exploring the concepts presented. It's as if the movie doesn't want you to know that it has cool ideas.

Just to reply to this bit specifically—I think the Architect's exposition being obtuse is definitely intentional and rooted in character. When Morpheus is walking Neo through the history of the Matrix, he's a teacher, a mentor, an empathetic human being trying to help another human being acclimate to this new world he's been shoved into in the most intuitive way possible. The Architect is under no such restraint because he views Neo as a near-literal cog in the machine—what he delivers isn't an attempt at teaching, it's gloating toward an inferior combined with the weariness/contempt of familiarity (he has, after all, delivered this speech to Neo some half-dozen times). Beyond that level, I think it works much better for the feelings the movie is trying to elicit for this revelation to be a coldly delivered speech in front of a bunch of screens than it would be to have a whiz-bang presentation. God is a soulless program, you're not special the way you thought you were, every emotion you've felt and choice you've thought was your own comes down to the whims of an old man sitting in a room full of screens—pretty crushing if you ask me.

(All that said, the original really is a wonder of exposition. Basically two thirds of the whole thing is a giant continuous infodump and it's so engaging that it just flies by. A feat that, its other problems aside, Inception also managed with flair.)

As for the rave, I don't know, I think it's certainly a bit indulgent but also crucial in establishing just what the human race stands to lose if Zion is destroyed. And I think it's largely redeemed by the intercutting between the rave itself—love on a vast, communal scale—and Neo and Trinity having sex—love on a relational, individual level. Like I said in my earlier post, the tenderness of their relationship is one of my favorite aspects of the sequels, and the juxtaposition of them with the rave works really well for me.

Last edited by Abbie (2019-10-18 03:29:35)

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down