Saw it this afternoon. Since last Wednesday I tried to not hear or read anything about it but of course everyone was talking about it so I caught some tidbits of comments and was under the impression that everyone hated it. I went anyway and liked it a lot, almost loved it actually. Came home, read a few reviews on various blogs and was surprised that all of them liked it, not as much as the first, but liked it.
First, the things I didn’t like. Wayyyyyy too much dramatic church music. It’s annoying in any movie, when added to the whole messiah thing it makes me want to retch. Some very cheesy dialogue, maybe you guys could bring in someone for those parts? You’re good with the tech and philosophy stuff but love? Eeeesshh.
Second, a couple of other reviews that cover a lot of what I think; Jeremy and Dale (fr.). I was especially pleased to read Dale’s comment about the next Superman movie, that’s all I was thinking for 6-7 minutes “god I hope the next Superman gets those effects, god I hope the next Superman gets those effects, god I hope the next Superman gets those effects” or any superhero film for that matter, X2 fights and fx sucked compared to this. Can you say Avengers or Ironman? Oh yeah. I also agree with Jeremy about the Imax experience, it’s unbelievable, see it on the huge screen if you can. It does justice to the fantastic visuals and may I say that Monica Bellucci in tight latex on a six story screen is… eye opening.
A lot of people seem to be disappointed because the last 2 movies didn’t bring anything new after the original. First, a lot of those same people say they don’t get Reloaded and the mythology and philosophy behind it, don’t say it didn’t bring anything if you don’t even understand what’s there. Second, the first movie had to stand on it’s own so of course they detailed the whole universe, don’t expect that world to be twisted around and new again just so the sequel is more interesting, those movies were the conclusion to a story already well established, if they hadn’t done that first you wouldn’t have liked The Matrix as much and Reloaded and Revolutions wouldn’t have happened. Content could have been better organized and more evenly spaced if all three were made at the same time as a whole but they weren’t. Live with it.
Also, I think just from the visual standpoint it’s enough to make it an above average movie, some seem to expect a visual feast + oscar level performances + pulitzer prize like scripting + transcendant life altering message. Gimme a break. The first one was a fantastic achievement in world creating, the second was a decent transition and took the plot forward, the third is a visual masterpiece that brings a great trilogy to a close.
Everyone has been copying the Matrix moves for the last few years, this one takes the whole thing way further, the fight scenes are seamless and even better than the second just 6 months ago, no video game cape swirling in this one. The complexity of the dock fight is staggering and superbly done, and the last fight scene with the slow motion, the way the water drips and reacts to the impacts? come on, it’s masterful. From beginning to end it’s perfectly shot and has a style all it’s own with sharpness and digital detailing previously unachieved.
The script is decent and closes the series properly, the action gets the job done and you don’t have time to be bored. But even regardless of those points, if you can’t say this movie is at least more than good just on the strength of it’s eye popping visuals, maybe you shouldn’t go see sci-fi flicks.
[Later] Michael also has a great rant about the trilogy and a comment thread still going strong 4 days after his original post.
5 Comments
To my opinion, the first was great, the second even better… and the third one? Holy fucking crap! What an amazing let down…
i think the Wharshawserswizky Brothers must have been drunk when finishing the story… here’s my beef with it:
1. Amazingly predictable and lame dialogs…. does it mean something when you can guess, word for word, a characters reply even before he opens his mouth…. over 20 times during the movie.
2. Another tidious shell-spitting orgy. the whole “mecha borrowed from Alien and repainted” was a more than a little cheesy.
3. Avery single character is given its 5 minutes to be insainly heroic. I was surprised they didnt give the janitor of the 7th floor a chance to kill a sentinel with his mop.
4. The fight with the sentinnels was ridiculous… why the hell were they moving around in such an easy-to-shoot way and never “really” attacked theire targets…. c’mon a 5 year old could see that!
5. The 20 minutes dying-in-my-arms speach that trinity gave felt so amazingly bogus. I was actually watching her eyes to see if she was reading from a teleprompter!
6. After the train-station and merovingian scene, there was almost no story left. My theory is that they actually had a great end to that story, but WordXP crashed, they lost their document and they said to themselves: “the heck with it… we can just add 30 minutes of shell-shooting to cover for the lost script”.
Dont get me wrong, there was some really amazing sequences… but it was like trying to eat a Gateau Foret Noir with three layers of shit between the cake!
Dont you feel like the guys in holywood are trying to pull an award for the “Biggest sales with the most botched sequel” ?
Anyways… from now on I’ll call “Revolution” the “Matrix: the turd episode”.
I liked the cape-swirling in Reloaded!
Oh, and P: you should put a spoiler warning about your comments. Mathieu just gave away something rather big. :)
“the second even better” See, that right there, I almost stopped reading. You must be the only person in the world to think that! Items 1, 3 and 5 fit with what I was saying in the second paragraph. For the others, all decent points but they didn’t ruin the movie for me, I was too impressed with the world we were “in” to care that the machines had lousy tactical sense.
lsc: I liked the cape too but it didn’t fit in well with the quality of the rest of the effects, didn’t look finished. As for spoilers, if people read this far they damn well expect spoilers ;)
As you will know if you followed the link to my site (thanks for the link :)), I LOVED Revolutions. I don’t know what people were expecting from it, but obviously they didn’t pay attention the first time around: http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~unny/breviary/neolines.html
Ach, no automatic link conversion. Try this.