SPOILER ALERT!! DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE AND WANT TO!!

I've never posted a poll, so here goes.


I really, really wanted to like this movie. I loved the first two. I wanted something that would tie all of the loose ends together, the way that Return of the King will next month. And I didn't get that with Revolutions. It didn't really answer any questions, and the only real winners were the programs who wanted to leave the machine world for the Matrix. I'm left with an even bigger question than before: what was the point?

What was the point of the whole Bane/Smith thing? What was the point of the train station? What was the point of the whole scene with the Merovingian? Why did we spend half an hour watching Niobe pilot a ship? It seemed like a lot of filler scenes glued together to pad out the movie.

Very little of it was actually in the Matrix, which is what made the first two movies unique. Even the fight at the end was kind of limp.

And nothing says "Heroic Death" quite like crashing a hovercraft into a building. Woohoo, what a way to go!! Sheesh.

The battle at the dock was seriously awesome. Apart from that...I'd give this a C at best.

EDIT - Fixed poll options

I really liked it - even though it didn't really answer many questions. I thought it was much better than the second movie, and the fact that 80% of it took place in the "real world" didn't bug me at all.

The theme was all about choice - understanding a choice, making the choice, and living with the choice. While the Merovingian bit in EITHER movie felt a bit like filler, I think he was in there as a counterpoint - according to him, there IS no such thing as choice. It's all stimulus and response. This is what Neo inadvertantly proves (demonstrates?) wrong at the end of the Revolutions.


The program(s) formerly known as Agent Smith were modified by Neo - became Neo's dark half, as it were. Smith's motivation in the first movie was to return to the machine world. When he was destroyed by Neo, he could not return to the machine world without being destroyed. And he chose not to do so. But this choice was alien to him - because he now lacked any sense of purpose. He needed to understand his own choice - as the oracle said, until you understand your choice, you can't see past it. Neo, on the other hand, seemed to have purpose AND freedom. And as Seraph said, you can't really know someone until you fight him. Smith did so - again and again - effectively becoming Neo's dark half even as he tried to turn Neo into himself.

In the end, he's stripped Neo of all of his motivations - all external stimuli on which to base his responses. Smith is nearly desperate when he asks why Neo does what he does... and Neo responds, "because I choose to." It's that self-awareness, self-motivation.

I dug it. And the dock fight was pretty dang incredible :)

I have found the entire Matrix revolutions phenomenon quite interesting to observe. By far the most commensts about the film I have encountered on the net have been negative. The interesting thing for me is the analysis of why everybody says it sucked. It seems everybody has different and contradicting reasons for disliking the movie.

Some people have said the battle of the Dock was too long and boring. Yet for some it is their favorite part. Some have said the death scene was too long while others were complaining about the lack of actual acting in the rest of the movie. For each thing that someone disliked the most it seems you'll find another person who thinks that was the films sole redeeming feature.

There was also a lot of people having problems with some events in the film which reminded me of the Gary Larsen cartoon of A polar bear wearing a fake beak hiding amongst a bunch of penguins. He got so many complaints about the fact that Polar bears are North pole and Penguins are south and none about the fact that penguins were speaking english and how did a polar bear manage to make a fake beak anyway.

As for me. I went to the film and enjoyed it. I don't particularly care why I enjoyed it because that isn't the important part. Never analyse a film on the first viewing.

Now Jar-Jar. He didn't require analysis to be annoying.

Let me reiterate the SPOILER alert before I say anything...

For the most part, I agree with Coyote. I liked it much better than the second one, though 2 & 3 were both a far cry from the greatness of The Matrix (the original).

Some specific thoughts: The lack of protection around the pilot in those APVs (is that right? APV?) was ridiculous. Trinity's death scene was very cheesy. I liked Link's wife and her badass friend with the rocket launcher. That one guy's Agent Smith impersonation (the real world guy posessed by Smith) was pretty cool. The Smith-Neo fight at the end reminded me of Superman 2 - superheros throwing each other around in midair.

Man, the Matrix series could've been the basis for an amazing game (maybe more than one), too bad Enter the Matrix was what we got.

Don't be too sure that's it! Monolith is apparently working on The Matrix MMORPG, and the website hints that you may be playing both inside the Matrix and "outside" in ships.

My biggest complaint really comes down to this: what changed?

The Matrix still exists, and everyone in it are still in their pods. No one has been freed. The machines are still in charge.

Zion still exists. They are still renegades, and after the whoopin' they already got, the machines can wipe them out any time they please.

Neo's sacrifice bought peace, but for how long? Did it just skip one Zion reboot cycle? Has the anomoly been corrected?

When the Architect and Oracle are speaking at the end, I sort of got the feeling that she had engineered the whole thing. The Architect told her that she had played a very dangerous game. To what end? My impression was that programs (like the little Indian girl) could now freely go into the Matrix and avoid deletion. Had that been the Oracle's goal all along?

Although, since I've been thinking about it...

In Reloaded, the Architect talks about Neo's choice causing a system wide cascade failure that would kill everyone in the Matrix, which coupled with Zion's destruction, would mean the end of every human. Was Smith replicating out of control the system wide failure? It was, in effect, destroying the Matrix. That would make sense, except that he was replicating before Neo made his choice. Neo's choice at the end of Revolutions corrected the failure (by removing Smith) and engendered the good will of the machines, thereby saving Zion.

That makes sense, which means it's probably wrong. :)

Originally posted by Siebharinn
The battle at the dock was seriously awesome. Apart from that...I'd give this a C at best.



I think that if it went on any longer my heart would have exploded. haha it was so intense!

Hmm, I haven't seen the film and neither read this thread, but I am very excited about the whole matrix-thinggy.

I will go to cimena tonight with my friends who are also as cheap as myself. Today the tickets will be a little cheaper and hopefuly there will be less crowd. :)

Here's my opinion,

I thought for sure the Revolutions was going to end as:

1) Machines kill all the humans
2) Humans kill all the machines
3) Machines and Humans are both destroyed in some huge explosion


But no, no no no no, we end up with an ending

4) Humans and Machines cooperate to live.

This is what Neo wanted to do originally at the end of "The Matrix", but come on, I wanted an ending that wasn't hollywood style. This ending was too happy, and I wanted something different. Oh well, I think the best part about the trilogy is that it got people talking because of all the questions unanswered. I think that is a sign of a good movie. Neo is a machine by the way :)

the ending wasn't happy it was just pointless.

The battle at the dock was cool. What was the point of Smith wanting the "codes" to the zion mainframe in the first movie? They've never explained it (and don't give me some crap like they wanted to get into zion the location because they had intended something bigger when they started out)

The fight between neo and smith although pretty fun to watch was anti-climatic, been there done that. People in the "real" world should have been freed.

Also my first thought was really the fact that both the real world and the matrix is actually inside the matrix. The second thought I had was that the real world Neo was like half and half, the perfect merging of man and machine. With this second explaination would have explained why he was able to stop the squid robots, because he is actually half-human half AI.

but this is all here-say (not herasy). The main point is that they left it open and very unsatisfying. I don't think i'll be buying matrix 2 or 3, but I did buy the first one.

Really horrible. It's easier to point out the things I liked about this movie than tell you what I didn't like. Here's a list...



- Steve

I liked the first.
the second was bad, really bad so i decided not to see the third.

untill now, i heard that dozens of people rantin on how matrix 3 was lame. can't say i didn't warn them.

and then, there was the fact that matrix wasn't even original, its a complete rip off from Dark City. take a look yourself (http://galeon.hispavista.com/cinerama/actu2/matrixdarkcity.htm). The entire concept was taken, some scenes were completely identical.

I dont think ill even rent it on video/dvd

Very interesting. I have to rent Dark City now.

I think anyone that says 2 and 3 were horrible, are dumb. They weren't horrible, they just didn't live up to the expectations anyone had.

That comparison between the matrix and dark city is hilarious, however, unless someone can prove to me that these images are shot-for-shot duplicates, i'm not going to believe either copied each other. But whoever made that connection and found out which scenes looked similiar is a genius ;-)

Originally posted by Uhfgood
I think anyone that says 2 and 3 were horrible, are dumb. They weren't horrible, they just didn't live up to the expectations anyone had.

That comparison between the matrix and dark city is hilarious, however, unless someone can prove to me that these images are shot-for-shot duplicates, i'm not going to believe either copied each other. But whoever made that connection and found out which scenes looked similiar is a genius ;-)

i knew it was a rip off even before, and not because of the photography. Go see it and tell me its not the same movie.

Originally posted by gilzu
i knew it was a rip off even before, and not because of the photography. Go see it and tell me its not the same movie.

Simpsons' did it!!

You might be surprised to know that surprisingly few movies these days are truly original. Most of their stories are inspired by another similar movie's story. There are only so many original ideas out there. The novelty comes not in telling a brand new story, but in telling a similar story in a new way.

On that note, I must admin a few of those images look oddly similar, but a lot of them are pretty stupid comparisons (oh my god...2 movies that both showed a car from behind...the horror). I've been hearing about this movie all week now (this is probably about the 20th mention of it I've seen). I wonder, if the two are so similar, why did it take 4 years and 2 sequels for people to suddenly start talking about the "original" movie. None the less, a few of those images have piqued my curiosity, so I'm gonna have to go find a copy of the movie and rent it.

However, without having seen it myself, back to my original point. No, not that the Simpsons' did it. :) If the two were so similar, why was one so wildly successful while the other (as far as I know) didn't do quite so well? I would guess the difference would be not in what the key idea was, but in how they told the story. But I guess I'll just have to see for myself and find out.

P.S. I just went and looked up this movie and noticed that Dark City was released 2/27/1998, while Matrix was released 3/31/1999. Somehow, I really doubt that was enough time to see Dark City, write a script around it, get a studio to sign on, film, produce, and release the movie as The Matrix.

I never saw anything else except the original, and to be honest, didn't even liked it, but anyways, I don't remember Dark City very well (the ending which unveils the story, for some reason it was whiped out of memory), but from what I remember, it does ALOT of similarities to Matrix, and I do remember watching the matrix for the first time and remembering some of resembleses (sp?).

Dark City is a very good movie and i recommend anyone to see it, just one note, if you rent it on VHS, make sure you have a good TV that can brighten the image without destroying it. the video IS VERY dark and on old tvs/videos its crap to watch (I know!)

Originally posted by Akura
Dark City is a very good movie and i recommend anyone to see it, just one note, if you rent it on VHS, make sure you have a good TV that can brighten the image without destroying it. the video IS VERY dark and on old tvs/videos its crap to watch (I know!)

the movie certainly has a nice photography that reminds me of smashing's video clip "tonight tonight"

Ya, Dark City kicked ass. And there was actually a third movie called The Thirteenth Floor that came out at about the same time with the same basic concept. Parallel devlopment happens all the time.

- Deep Six, Leviathon and The Abyss
- Rob Roy and Braveheart
- Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line
- Armageddon and Deep Impact

Scripts get passed around and studio weasels are more likely to greenlight a script with a concept that they've seen before.

And I kinda liked the ending of Revolutions. The machines won't destroy Zion as long as the humans don't try any more of that terrorist crap. Actually, I was just glad it finally ended when it did.

I have watched Dark City and Matrix in the last 3 weeks.

They both deal with 'What is reality' but so do a lot of movies (Bladerunner, Total recall etc). Messiah issues are dealt with by a lot of movies as well.

As for the similarities in some shots shown in form the link posted. Some are quite similar. Some are rediculous to consider derivative works.

Things like Beautiful women, cops, taxis, phone booths as depicted in those links are staples of Film Noir. Which was an element that both films were going for. Dark City can hardly lay claim to subway shot, or using a blue filter to represent darkness.

The only shot that stikes me as interestingly similar is the stairwell shot. It wouldn't surprice me if that was because both movies were duplicating a hitchcock shot or somehing similar. It is quite common for films to replicate shots of other films that they like as a form of homage. I dowbt it was done with Dark City though. The release dates were too close together.

(I'm not positive but I think both films were made in Australia, so it is possible that they had some intercommunication).

Having said that. Dark City is one of my all time favorite movies. I think it is significantly better than The Matrix and I quite liked The Matrix. I wouldn't class them as hugely similar.

The Wachowski Brothers do seem to give credit where it is due. They may just have not seen any real need to tell the creator of that website. They did say that the Fight sequence from Revolutions was based upon Injeong sajeong bol geot eobtda.

Gee, freaking cool film! To be honest I think it is a little shining pearl in the massive crap pouring out of Hollywood.

Of course Dark city is similar and so are Open your eyes, 13th floor, Truman show etc. This whole human-machine based conflict and fake reality remind me to the anime and manga cartoons and games.

Anyway, Wachowskies rule!

[Just in case anyone still cares - BIG SPOILERS!]

Just saw it (Revolutions), and it bored me (and everyone I was with) to bits.

Apart from the laugh-out-loud stupid moments, like Neo not recognizing Bane ("Mr. Anderson!", "Yes?", "Don't you know who I am, Mr. Anderson?", "Hmmm... Batman?") and Trinity repeating herself over and over again while dying ("I want to tell you, but I didn't, cause I died, but you brought me back, so I could tell you, which I will now, cause I'm dying, and you can't bring me back, so I will tell you now, ...."), nothing actually mattered in this movie.

Fine, they wanted to hide the fact that they didn't really know what to do with the story behind a bunch of mumbo-jumbo talk that adds up to zilch. But I couldn't even enjoy it as a basic action movie. It broke two cardinal rules of making action movies engaging, namely

1) You gotta know what's at stake. Why should I care about Smith and Neo punching each other (yet) again... I don't know what impact any of it has in the story. Are they going to kill each other if they punch really, really hard? Like being driven 10 metres into the floor won't do it?

2) You gotta be able to follow what's going on. More is not better! Seeing hundreds of robots blasting into millions of sentinels might make for a cool 5 sec shot, but it does not make a good 20 minute action sequence. This is a recent trend in action/sci-fi movies which I really dislike. Same with the ending of Attack of the Clones: 20 minutes of a bunch of cr*p shooting the cr*p outta another bunch of cr*p. To which I say: "Who gives a cr*p?"

Let me stop there before I get into full ranting mode! :)

Just two more things:

The review at www.pvponline.com (in the news archive) is quite funny, he summed up the ending of the movie perfectly:

Oracle: It's you.
Architect: Yeah. It's me. Happy?
Oracle: Sure.
Architect: How long do you think peace will last between us and the humans.
Oracle: I dunno.
Architect: Well, either way. If they get uppity again, we'll just stomp them out of existance.
Oracle: What about the humans that are still plugged into the Matrix.
Architect: Meh. They can go home.
Oracle: Really?
Architect: Yeah. We're switching over to Hydroelectric power. The whole thing was just a big misunderstanding.
Oracle: Sweet.

And second, there is a nice discussion at the shmups board (www.shmups.com) about how the big battle sequence was basically a classic arcade shoot-em-up, complete with snake-like enemy patterns and a super-smart-bomb! (the EMP)

I did turn to my wife at one point and said "Lousy Movie, but Great Video Game!"... maybe there's even a lesson to be learned from it for games - how much more fun could a video game be if you didn't make it "just" a video game. Wait, this is sounding like Matrix dialogue. There is no video game! I have forseen it! It was meant to happen!

Ok, I promise, I'm done. Guess I had to get that off my chest.

:D

Went to see it last night as we had some free tickets. I am sooo glad I didn't pay for it.

The bits I could understand were cheesy in the extreme and the rest was just people talking nonsense.

I mean, I didn't learn a thing from the Oracle at all. In fact she always just seemed to say "you have a choice". Gee. Thanks for that. She reminded me of The Sphinx from Mystery Men ("To learn my teachings, I must first teach you how to learn.").

The sunrise at the end and "The Last Exile". What was that all about?

I wished Trinity would have just hurried up and died. How long did she natter on for!?

Trinity getting off the train, running along the platform and having a moment with Neo.

Trinity holding hands in the sunlight. "It's beautiful". Per-lease.

The 16 year old who saves the day.

The only woman who can pilot the craft down the tunnely bit.

Why didn't the machines use the tunnel and just drill through a little door rather than tunneling for days.

Those AVP things were a bit clumsy yet the 16 year old could make them run, get up off their back and all without finishing his training.

And why did they position them all on thin balconys and look surprised when they're being knocked off.

What's with the pilot guy getting back to his wife. They had no impact on the film at all.

Why was everything made out of a WWII submarine. I mean, surely they could have made there chunks of metal a little thinner or decorated a bit.

The Agent Smith in the real world could have just been removed from the film. Didn't make any difference at all. He caused some ships to be blown up - which was only mentioned in passing in the 2nd film. Killed some woman who I'd never seen before and couldn't care less about. Gouged out Neo's eyes which didn't really seem to make a difference apart from add a nice special effect.

I'm going to stop there. Trust me there's plenty more.

Personnaly, i was bored.

For reasons most ppl already mentionned: Stupid AI robots cant understand that flying in circle while not shooting nmes doesnt much help, shoot em up style.

Why didnt they just fill the damn city with those robots, or water, or mud, or whatever they could pour in.

Wouldnt robots that guard a city be smart enough to know that things can fly high and go over ground cannons?

bane = useless.

french guy = useless.

oracle = useless.

niobe = useless

morpheus = loon.

neo= jesus.

trinity = comic releif.

the only cool characters were the two tough chicks blowing up the drilling machines.

anyways, i expected more, maybe something along these lines:

http://www.netalive.org/stuff/matrix-revolutions_mother-of-all-spoilers.txt

it seem to be as a much more clever ending, and kinda makes sens. (for those who want to skip the story, basicly, his idea is that neo and trin and morph are machines, faked to beleive they were humans. the matrix is full of programs and machines are plugged into it, to make them beleive they won the war when in fact they didn't and the humans are well in control)

anywyas, i found it was so bad, it could have ended in these ways and i would have appreciated it more:

neo wakes up in that scene in the first movie when he falls asleep infront of computer and is wakened by trinity's hack on his computer.

as neo beats smith, the camera zooms out to show you we're in a snowflake and this is just some story on a snowflake. or a motherboard on some kid's computer while he plays pong. or even just the life of a pixel on a screen.

neo pulls off smith's mask to find out its the old man from the amusement park

after neo lets smith take him, and the machine kill neo's body, machine just says "welp, he didnt hold his bargain, we had to kill smith ourselves, lets party in Zion tonight boyz"

rambling... i'm happy i didnt pay mroe than 5$ canadian (thats like 25 cents US) to see this movie.

smurf

- Smurftra -
neo pulls off smith's mask to find out its the old man from the amusement park

LOL!!!!! "I would have gotten away with too, if it wasn't for you kids!"

meddling kids !!! not just any kids.... geesh

I finally got out to see the movie (wasn't in a rush after the discouraging remarks), and I too am disappointed in the overall movie. Conceptually it wasn't bad, but it just didn't do it for me.
The first one pumped me up, the second one left me hanging and the third one left me shaking my head. The dock scene was cool, but way too drawn out. The hand-to-hand fight scene(s) were mediocre. In reloaded, they made the architect seem like a pivotal role, then in revolutions they basically said he just talks bullsh*t and not to pay too much attention to him. Like I said, it just didn't do it for me.

Both the second and third movies suffer from the same general short-commings. The most stand-out "feature" of the movies as I noticed it, being a long-time anime watcher, is that they were really trying hard to borrow a lot from anime. Intentionally or unintentionally, both movies fell into a similar rut as most modern anime films: way too much talking in the middle of what should be intense action scenes, and way too few cerebral solutions to problems. In modern anime people rarely think their way through anything and instead the whole plotline becomes a senseless power struggle, usually resulting in some form of self-sacrifice to bring about a conclusion. Clearly, the Matrix Revolutions upheld this mentality to a tee.

This wasn't the case in the first Matrix, which was a much more innovative film in terms of dialog and plot progression. The first has very little in common with the other two and, in fact, it seems to me as though they might as well have completely overhauled much of the screenplay and script writing staff (which apparently isn't the case).

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Uhfgood
[B]I think anyone that says 2 and 3 were horrible, are dumb. They weren't horrible, they just didn't live up to the expectations anyone had.

You have got to be kidding me...you're not really so inane as to believe such a ridiculous assertion, are you? Either people agree with you that the Matrix sequels were not horrible, or they're dumb?

What did I think of them? Well, I buy almost every DVD with any redeeming qualities, and I just passed up Reloaded for $6.67 yesterday. I just knew that there was no way I would ever waste a couple more hours on those craptacular stinkquels.

Oh, Trinity's dead...no, I fixed her...no she's dead again...dammit. Oh, great, another awesome porn scene like in the original! Wait a minute...the original didn't have any gyrating nipple porn...come to think of it, if this is what society is like in the future, I'm siding with the machines. Hello, I'm the Trainman, the most sophomorically named character of all time. I don't really have a purpose, but I'm sure plenty of people will invent one for me since buckets of the basic plot aren't really explained. That's the beauty of this drivel, really...if it doesn't make sense, rest assured that by leaving numerous points in the story unanswered your audience will be able to figure out a solution for you! Hey, WTF, I thought I was watching a sequel to the Matrix, not Superman 2! So Neo is super-powerful and has a bunch of simplistic similarities displayed between himself and Christ, but when he's trying to take out Agent Smith the best he can come up with is to fly around the sky really fast and punch him in the head? Great...that's incredible...what an imagination.

I bought the first one...it remains one of my favorite movies of all time. The sequels, though...there was little of redeeming value...some nice CG (wheee), a few interesting points to think about, some good action scenes...but that's about it. All in all, a very poor couple of sequels to such a good original. Henceforth I propose referring to the Wachowskis as the Stinkowskis.

- Roulette

Yes they're dumb, because they're the kind of people that let a few little things ruin their whole movie going experience.

I do think the dance scene and the sex scene in reloaded was stupid... and yes i bought the first one, and no, i'm not going to buy the second and third ones... Because of the sex crap, and the fact that they were somewhat of a let down.

I do however, still think that people go to extremes. Like saying reloaded totally sucked because they left a few plot threads open. If I were to say Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers sucked because you didn't know what the heck was going on, what's that ring all about, who are these little people, what is that big eye, "cool battle sequence at helm's deep, but that was too long and drawn out"... People would be raising a stink, and trying to defend why it was such a great movie blah blah blah...

But then you realize you weren't meant to watch it on it's own (actually I think on it's own it's great too, but i was just giving an example)... that there was a beginning and an end movie, and that, this was the middle part of the one single story of Lord or the Rings, then it all makes sense. Or I should say makes MORE sense when viewed in context.

Just to make sure we understand each other, i'm not comparing the two towers to reloaded, since for one they're different genres and two, TTT really is that much better than reloaded. In any case it's just to prove a point, the fact that there were plot threads untied in Reloaded, doesn't make it a horrible movie to me. Revolutions did let me down though.

I won't be buying matrix 2 and 3, but I may rent it someday, after watching the first.

Also finally i'd like to say I love the Lord of the Rings movies, just so people don't misunderstand me