i’m definitely old and my take is that i loved The Matrix despite initially feeling like i might be annoyed at how much it copped from anime (turns out that no, it ruled), the Animatrix is phenomenal, i thought Reloaded was a lot of fun even though it was kind of more dumb, and Revolutions…made me not want to look at the series again.
i definitely think i’ll get around to rewatching them soon, though.
I love The Matrix. I watched Reloaded again last night for the first time in years. I still think the first one is the best primarily because it just works as a good standalone movie whereas the sequels only work if you’re familiar with the first one but darn the sequels are quite entertaining in their own right.
When I saw Reloaded in the theater with my buddy he wasn’t as blown away by it as I was because it wasn’t on the same level as the first movie and while I agree I can’t help but ask how could it ever be? They could have introduced new characters and literally remade the first movie and told a similar story but they were never going to recapture that mysteriousness from that first trailer where it was literally “What is the Matrix? Go to www.thematrixhasyou.com to find out”. The sequels were the “what happens next” that everyone wanted to know after seeing the first one end. They couldn’t be anything but what they ended up being.
I mean, they could have had a modicum of plotting or characterization or even engaged effectively in their own fiction or just all kinds of things
Pretty sure they came up with a bunch of cool action sequences like the freeway chase or fighting a thousand Smiths or any of the other Big Stuff Happening At Giant Scale scenes first and then were like okay what needs to happen with the story to connect all these scenes.
A lot of story stuff got offloaded into other media like The Animatrix, the video games, comic books and etc. The Wachowski’s had that moment where their long-shot action movie was hugely successful and the studio was like would you like to franchise the fuck out of this and finance the next decade of your careers and they were of course like hell yeah.
they’re called the matrix 1, the matrix 2, and the matrix 3 because that’s the order in which i rank them
i watched reloaded in the morning and revolutions at night and wow. WOW
reloaded owns. it’s got all these bonkers fight scenes. with the first movie it was like “woah this is a classic of my childhood!!!” but here, instead, it’s bringing to mind all the different newground flash animation matrix video game parodies i saw and also like, how immersed i got into the matrix in general. i love that reloaded ramped everything up, like everyone gets their moments and look hot as hell while doing it. the fightscenes are full of PS2 CGI but it’s still got wire-fu stuff going on. agent smith is even more of a comic book villain. there’s so many COOL setpieces. it’s such a cool movie and as a film with Characters I Love (the trio) surrounded by uhhhhhhhhh Very Obvious Archetypes and Interesting World-Building
unfortunately it just… doesn’t live up to the first one. i feel like the first one still had better action scenes and moments that got me pumped up, which was like, the whole movie??? while in reloaded i wasn’t too engaged with much of the plot because it tries to both explain away everything in the first one and also, like, tries to be a Big Budget Action Sci Fi Movie. it’s a cool setting and then it’s constantly like, used on these characters i don’t care about. and then revolutions was just all about that. revolutions totally sucks. like, nothing about it upset me, but, also, i didn’t care about anything that went on either??? it was like… okay. honestly i feel like reloaded would have been better if revolutions never existed and they just tried to make a Proper Sequel instead of both a sequel and a set up to a movie where someone does his agent smith imitation the whole time and they never catch on he’s agent smith until he tells them
also i wish trinity had like… more fight scenes. i love her. she’s fucking stone cold and does flips all over the place. she’s fucking ready to fuck shit up all the time. it sucks that she just ends up being the girlfriend in distress.
sometimes i wonder how roy jones jr felt that his weird fight scene was only in the video game
!!!
Enter the Matrix ruled.
we’ll never have the true matrix experience unless the matrix online is brought back
It was billed as a continuation of the storyline of The Matrix films, as The Wachowskis, the franchise’s creators, gave their blessing to the notion of gamers “inherit[ing] the storyline”.
it’s beautiful the extent to which that vision so completely exceeded what would have been possible with a 2000s MMORPG
also as much as I enjoy reloaded and speed racer and sense8 I have to respect what a bizarre and unimpeachable body of work they’d have left us with if they made bound and the matrix and then went straight to work in another medium
“we can do extremely spicy claustrophobic lesbians or wuxia cyberpunk with the point break guy but that’s it”
semi-relatedly I think lost in translation still holds up OK despite being way too in love with its own sense of alienation but one part that never felt right to me at the time was how they made giovanni ribisi’s actress friend do a Q&A for a dumb action movie she was supposed to be making with, of all people, keanu reeves?
like I guess the matrix was still fairly new and popular then but it’s so strange to stereotype him of all people so negatively like that by implication, it seemed more joylessly snobbish and out of touch than sofia coppola intended
also what of the bram stoker’s dracula connection
The Agent Smith fights that had such a clear arc in the first Matrix, so perfectly keyed to fear and overcoming and apotheosis, just become enervating as they try to raise the stakes but only end up throwing in ropey CG and making them longer and longer.
the matrix online had an unfinished story where neo was supposed to be reborn as a woman
Rebels of the Neon God is almost as good as its title. Youthful delinquency in '90s shopping malls and arcades and the mute loneliness of that new freedom. It reminds me of Wong Kar-Wai’s Fallen Angels if a bit less goofy. It’s probably the earliest accurate film representation of games; not as wacky fun zones but as jangling abnegation. Water is hateful in a way it can only be from humid rainy cities where it never leaves.
@anonymous this is right up your alley
@u_u I knew I had to watch this just from you mentioning the title, thank you
as had been pointed out by others, the thing rhat most stands out to me is how Johansson went on to become the other woman in that movie lol.
i have a soft spot for Lost in Translation, but understand why folks don’t like it.
i barely remember Revolutions, but i remember one of my main takeaways being that the movie suffered from hardly taking place in The Matrix ie where the cool shit happens.
Turning on subtitles for the Architect scene was the major revelation for me last time I watched these. So much easier to follow when you see what words are capitalized.
So, ama prime put Utøya, 22 July (or U 22 or what it may Internationally be called) up this week in my country, and i finally had the time to watch this by myself.
if you never heard of the movie before, there’s been a lot of debate whether it is any good making a movie about the whole drama that took place, and if the sheer existance of this movie doesn’t underline the point of the Terrorist, i.e. to gain widespread coverage for his motives.
As such, i wasn’t sure where i would end up on the ‘should/should not be made’ spectrum, and what i found out is that it doesn’t matter where you personally end up:
It’s out, and therefore it cannot be undone.
Regarding the movie, I am still processing what i saw, and right now, i would liken it to a nightmare that doesn’t seem to end.
It really is impossible to fathom what it must have been for the people that experienced it, and it is a wildly disturbing 90ish minutes you have to suffer through - there’s no way you can use words like “experiencing it”, or “recommending to watch it”, because those words would paint what you are seeing in a positive way, and that very thought is revolting to even consider for a second.
So, after all, all i can say is that it is a nightmare, and as in a nightmare, there’s nothing enjoyable about it. Don’t go watching this without being prepared to be unsettled, is what i want to convey.