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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

So now the Matrix fans have their Phantom Menace?

Discussion in 'Archive: The Phantom Menace' started by sdj, May 18, 2003.

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  1. TadjiStation

    TadjiStation Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 8, 2001
    To my recollection, however, there's no shot of Dooku actually doing anything that would support this. No quick cut to show a change on Dooku's face (as if he's focusing on Anakin's arm), no movement by Anakin which suggests he's being controlled. For a film to suggest this, it has to be shown, and it isn't in this case.

    This was covered rather nicely in TPM between Maul and Qui-Gon, and the suggestion that Qui-Gon was defeated through Maul's abilities and speed is clear through effective fight choreography.
     
  2. DrEvazan

    DrEvazan Jedi Youngling star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 19, 2002
    The fact that he tells an interesting and compelling narrative, using special effects techniques to enhance the story without becoming a distraction.

    hahaha!

    too funny. this is from Durwood? Mr. "dont state your opinions as facts"?

    :D

    beyond that, you havent even answered the question, as usual.


    All he talks about is story, plot, charater's motivations and dvelopment. All the technical stuff is handled by the other commentators.

    yep. he's all talk when it comes to character motivations and development. he can talk about it for the next 100 years, but it still wont make the way he has handled these CRUCIAL elements in the films any better.

     
  3. JohnWilliams00

    JohnWilliams00 Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 29, 2002
    Irvin Kershner on ESB:

    "Instead of showing Luke's ship overhead, I just showed the light on Yoda's face. I felt it was more powerful than having another special effects shot of the spaceship."

    I love that statement and it shows how different the times have changed. If that shot of the X-Wing flying out of Dagobah were done today, Lucas would HAVE TO put in a CG SHOT with CG VEGETATION and CG CREATURES all over the scene, with a final shot of CG YODA to cap it off. Kershner goes for the heart of that scene and eschews all of the fancy effects and trappings. One of the many reasons ESB is one of the best.

    Lucas these days has more than he ever had, but I really want him to cut back! When Lucas makes those scribbles on his storyboards deciding what will be "real" and what will be "not so real", I think someone should knock the "not so real" marker from his hand.




     
  4. Durwood

    Durwood Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 18, 2002
    ^^^
    Or Lucas may have recognized the importance of the moment and concentrated on Yoda's face instead of showing another special effects shot of the X-Wing. There are countless examples of him making similiar decisions in the prequels.

    Honestly, why do you guys assume that Lucas will always make the "wrong" choices? Did he kick your dog or something? Sheesh.
     
  5. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    "why do you guys assume that Lucas will always make the "wrong" choices?"

    He's two for two so far. :p

    (Sorry...)
     
  6. AdamBertocci

    AdamBertocci Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 3, 2002
    Actually, the shot that JW00 is talking about always kinda bugged me, BECAUSE it stays on Yoda's face. And we don't get to see ghost Obi-Wan say his line. It seems odd.

    (NOTE: I have the evil fullscreen version. For all I know he is there in the widescreen.)

    I don't think a shot of the X-wing taking off woulda been neccesary, but I think a cutaway of it flying away from the swamp would have been nice. But more importantly I would have liked to see Obi-Wan's face when he said "That boy is our last hope."

    That said, I like when the light over Yoda goes red. It's a very similar light to one they use on Vader in his TIE in ANH, an effect I wish got more play in SW.



    Rick McCallum loves you!
     
  7. DrEvazan

    DrEvazan Jedi Youngling star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 19, 2002
    Or Lucas may have recognized the importance of the moment and concentrated on Yoda's face instead of showing another special effects shot of the X-Wing. There are countless examples of him making similiar decisions in the prequels.

    examples?? feel free to cite them.

     
  8. JohnWilliams00

    JohnWilliams00 Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 29, 2002
    Honestly, why do you guys assume that Lucas will always make the "wrong" choices? Did he kick your dog or something? Sheesh.

    Like MeBeJedi has said, he's made two so far. 8-} Oh, and waiting years for two bad Star Wars movies in a row, and having further changes made to the beloved OT with little chance of seeing the O-OT on DVD ever again are things that make me feel like I got a nice kick in the ribs from Lucas, anyways.

    Adam, I happen to love that shot of Yoda bathed in red lights for being so unique. A shot of Obi Wan speaking and an FX shot of the X-Wing flying out of Dagobah are superfluous and the decision to let them play off-screen is a great one. Had it been filmed the good old standard way, it would not be as powerful.
     
  9. gezvader28

    gezvader28 Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Mar 22, 2003
    Cometgreen
    And I was saying that these questions were open to your own imagination at the end of the Matrix. Nothing wrong with finding out what happens, I just prefer the "make up your own ending" movies.

    So would you prefer it if they hadn't made TESB?

    Now then, on to the "We need machines" scene. From my pov, there are two ways to do this scene:

    1) Have Neo stroll through Zion in the middle of the night and come upon the Chancellor, which then starts a rather long philosophical dialogue, completely stopping the story (to be fair, lots of movies have a break when the heroes are safe, though not this early in the movie ).

    2) Have Neo stroll through Zion in the middle of the night and walk by a wall of machinery running Zion. He watches it as he walks by, and then wanders off.

    I would choose the second choice, as it utilizes that sweet, sweet tool of subtelty. Instead of a dialogue telling people the irony of these people fighting machines, yet using machines to stay alive


    But the scene with Councillor Haman tells us more than that. Firstly it shows a lot about the size and structure of Zion. Haman is alluding to something, Neo cuts to the chase and concludes his point for him, but then Haman says "I don't understand how you do the things you do, but I believe there is a reason, I only hope we understand that reason before it is too late." This concern over the reason for Neo's abilities is clearly important.
    And the point about the humans being able to turn off the machines is neatly mirrored by the Architect when he talks of the extinction of the human race: "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept."

    Durwood
    and the fact that people are now starting to refer to TPM as a classic film tells me that this has paid off in spades.

    And the fact that people have for so long referred to TPM as a dreadful, embarassing mess tells me that Lucas played whatever cards he had badly. :p

    Scott
    And also the fact that the majority of the special effects are designed to NOT stand out as ?Ooh! Look at that!? special effects (as opposed to the Matrix?s slow motion, bullet time, spinning cameras etc) but with the goal of being as unobtrusive as possible.

    I'd hardly call JJB unobtrusive.

    " Instead, GL decided to make it 'Sonic the Hedgehog on LSD', I guess to avoid any copyright infringement issues."

    Not really relevant, but I love it when people talk about ?such and such on LSD? when talking about something that bears no relationship to either someone on, or something someone might see when on LSD?


    Well you're right - LSD doesn't have that kind of effect on people, but studies have shown that giving LSD to digital characters causes exactly this effect. ;)

    Anyway, I have a Matrix question. How come in every ?matrix explained? essay I read, there?s a big deal about ?machines can?t understand love- this is why they will fail?, but the way Persephone (a program, right?) can understand so much about an individual?s love from a single kiss in never addressed?

    Well I've seen the kiss scene talked about a lot - some believe that this indicates that Persephone is the intuitive program which the Architect spoke of, that she is in fact the mother of the matrix. personally I don't, but I do think the kiss is very significant - she now understands his love, she has 'decoded' it perhaps. This could give her power over him.

    g




     
  10. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    JohnWilliams00

    "and having further changes made to the beloved OT with little chance of seeing the O-OT on DVD ever again are things that make me feel like I got a nice kick in the ribs from Lucas, anyways."

    Wow! Thanks for catching that. Can't believe I missed those. [face_laugh]
     
  11. Cometgreen

    Cometgreen Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 28, 2002
    Heh, I thought that X-wing quote came from Kurtz, but since it came from the actual director, I must say good call. ;)

    Ok...here we go! Starting from latest...

    Gezvader: "So would you prefer it if they hadn't made TESB?"

    No, because the ending of ANH did not give the impression that the story was done. It was one small victory, yet Vader lived, the Empire still ruled, Luke still didn't know his father, the love story was still very divided, etc. If it was suggested that Vader died and that the Empire will surely fall with the destruction of the deathstar, than yes, ANH would have just been Star Wars, imo. ROTJ ends like this, as Vader dies, the Emperor dies, the Skywalker family is revealed in its entirety, yet the Empire is not fully destroyed. Surely it still controls planets and Star Destroyers. The rebels taking over is left to our imagination, as Neo showing the people the truth at the end of TM was.

    "Well you're right - LSD doesn't have that kind of effect on people, but studies have shown that giving LSD to digital characters causes exactly this effect."

    Well played. ;)

    MeBeJedi: "If you look closely at the the picture, you'll see giant sets, but you see them only briefly. Usually, in Hollywood pictures, when yuou have gian sets, you pull back and show them. But here the sets were not important; it was the people in the sets that were important. If you look at the scene in the big hangar where Leia is briefing the Rebel soldiers, it's huge, yet you see it for just a few seconds. I never wanted to say, "I'm going to show th sets' I wanted to show a piece here, a piece there, and eventually the audience would put it all together in their heads. You see more of a set if you show it in pieces around the shots than if you show it in a long shot. If I ever used a long shot, it was for an emotional effect, not to show the sets."

    I find the incredibly wide shots of Tatooine in AOTC very emotional and very focused on the characters. Unless Lucas really loves the look of sand.

    "Those movies were so big and they were so hard to do that I just felt that I couldn't deal with all the issues and be on the set every day at the same time. I decided not to direct so that i could get an overview of the whole thing, which meant i could oversee the shooting but didn't have to be on the set all the time. There was a lot of work with these movies, and you really had to take a step back in order to make it work."

    To be honest, this is what I think George should have done. Give him complete control over the story and the editing, maybe let him control the camera, but let someone else deal with the actors and production crew. I think it would have been beneficial to both himself and the films.

    GDS: "What are these themes? Where are they shown?"

    I'm running out of time. I'll probably watch TPM again Friday or maybe next week, maybe I'll make a list of all the themes that I see presented.

    "How could you possibly state that there was no ?virus talk? in the original?? The interrogation scene is one of the pivotal scenes of the film! You are just proving your arguments have zero credibility because you don?t even know what you?re talking about."

    To paraphrase JenX, feel free to leap in any time, GDS, but do try to read the post fully before you reply. :p

    "Once again, completely incorrect premise. No point. Zero credibility."

    So people are allowed to baselessly say what GL is thinking, but I'm not allowed to baselessly say what the Wachowskis were thinking? Hardly fair. ;)

    "Wow. Please tell me the character development of the droid factory scene? Or how it advances the story? Even AOTC fans point to that scene as the one that was the most unnecessary in the film!"

    Anakin, after telling Padme that he will stop people from dying, begins cutting up Geonosian after Geonosian. After promising his mother that he will never fail again, he fails his infultration of Geonosis. After Padme telling Anakin she doesn't want to start a war, unwittingly starts a galactic war that will enslave her people years d
     
  12. Durwood

    Durwood Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 18, 2002
    examples?? feel free to cite them.

    Why? Would my doing so actually change your mind? Didn't think so.
     
  13. JenX

    JenX Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 26, 2002
    Cometgreen

    gezvader28: "So would you prefer it if they hadn't made TESB?"

    No, because the ending of ANH did not give the impression that the story was done.

    And do you think the end of The Matrix did? Yeah, Neo might well start to show people "the truth" but that still leaves the rather gigantic question of how do you free five billion people, and how do stop the machines from killing you all afterwards.


    I didn't say Neo was god like or could beat Smith, simply unbeatable. I, personally, got the impression from the first movie that Neo CANNOT die in the Matrix...

    I think the possibility exists that Neo can be overwritten by the Smith programme...

    ...which is why Smith goes undercover in the real world (something that makes little sense unless Zion is also a program which Smith knows about).

    Why do you think Zion has to be a program for that to make sense? I think I can guess your criticism, but I don't want to type out a response in case I'm wrong.

    Green_Destiny_Sword: "Smith explains to Neo that their explosion in the original somehow led to an exchange of code between the two and as a result neo is gaining new abilities and becoming more machine like while Smith has gained new abilities and is becoming more human-like."

    Which was perhaps the funniest piece of dialogue in the movie, as it seemed like the Wachowskis were grasping for straws trying to keep their only naturally cool character in their sequels.

    Well I disagree with both you and Green_Destiny_Sword here. I don't see any evidence in the speech that Neo gained new abilities or became more machine-like, and I don't think the Wachowski brothers were grasping at straws.

    I love this scene; I didn't want it to end, I wanted to soak in it, luxuriate in it. Hugo Weaving just nails every part of that speech; the slightly giddy way he shakes his head when he says that he is a "new man", the ever so polite "thank you", the way he growls when he says purpose "drives us"

    Mmmmmm....

    Anyway, it seems to me like Smith is a rather important part of TMR, and I can't shake the suspiscion that he is going to play a very important part in Revolutions, and it all seems to stem from the information given in that scene, so I don't really think that something so central can be dismissed as "straw clutching".

    And I agree with Green_Destiny_Sword that TPM lightsaber duel can be made to sound as redundant and repetitive as you make the Burly Brawl sound.

    I like the Burly Brawl. I like the moves, the energy of the sequence, and I love the fact that, unlike a million other martial arts films, all of the main characters opponents wade in and attack him at once. None of this "stand around in a circle and wait for him to knock out one before the next one attacks" stuff.

    Whew...done. So, how about we discuss something I don't think we've touched on: the incredibly cliched "love story" between Morpheus and Niobe?

    "Love story"? Don't you mean "love sub-sub-sub-sub-plot that barely got two minutes of screen time"? Anyway, yeah, I'll touch on it and say that, from the brief moments of it we saw, the characters spoke to each other as if they were real people and seemed to have a genuine affection for each other.

    If it had been given more screen time, would it have (de)evolved into something as mind numbingly awful as the Anakin-Amidala story in AOTC? Who knows? Maybe we did a Neo and dodged a bullet on that one? ;)
     
  14. DrEvazan

    DrEvazan Jedi Youngling star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 19, 2002
    maybe, maybe not, but hopefully it would stop you from posting more made up facts and false comparisons. if you expect to be taken seriously when you say things, you might want to back up your wild statements with evidence. unless of course you have no evidence, which is more likely the case.
     
  15. Durwood

    Durwood Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 18, 2002
    it seemed like the Wachowskis were grasping for straws trying to keep their only naturally cool character in their sequels.

    Yeah, if the Wachowski Bros. were honest, the dialogue would have gone like this:

    Neo: "What are you doing here? I thought I destroyed you."

    Agent Smith: "Yes, you did. But the directors realized that my character was more popular than the so-called 'heroes' starring in this mess of a movie that they just had to bring me back no matter how little sense it made."

    Neo: "Woah!"
     
  16. Durwood

    Durwood Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 18, 2002
    unless of course you have no evidence, which is more likely the case.

    Whatever you say, slick. [face_laugh]
     
  17. DrEvazan

    DrEvazan Jedi Youngling star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 19, 2002
    and you call me "duck and run"?

    :D

    NOTE TO ALL POSTERS: Durwood would rather you never question him on his evasive statements and made up information. please let him make up anything he wants and never ask him to back up anything with facts. also make sure you are ready to back up any statements you make to him, as he will be the first to ask for proof.

    thanks for your attention in this matter,

    Dr E
     
  18. JohnWilliams00

    JohnWilliams00 Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 29, 2002
    JenX: I love this scene; I didn't want it to end, I wanted to soak in it, luxuriate in it. Hugo Weaving just nails every part of that speech; the slightly giddy way he shakes his head when he says that he is a "new man", the ever so polite "thank you", the way he growls when he says purpose "drives us"

    I agree with this scene and I think Hugo's portayal of Smith has been very effective to far. It's a character you want to see more of.

    I like the Burly Brawl. I like the moves, the energy of the sequence, and I love the fact that, unlike a million other martial arts films, all of the main characters opponents wade in and attack him at once. None of this "stand around in a circle and wait for him to knock out one before the next one attacks" stuff.

    This is also very true. [face_laugh] Even Bruce Lee films have always done this!
     
  19. TadjiStation

    TadjiStation Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 8, 2001
    Yeah, if the Wachowski Bros. were honest, the dialogue would have gone like this:

    Neo: "What are you doing here? I thought I destroyed you."

    Agent Smith: "Yes, you did. But the directors realized that my character was more popular than the so-called 'heroes' starring in this mess of a movie that they just had to bring me back no matter how little sense it made."

    Neo: "Woah!"


    And this, Durwood, is why you'll never be a good screenwriter. :p
     
  20. Green_Destiny_Sword

    Green_Destiny_Sword Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jun 20, 2001
    COMETGREEN -- >>> What theme has been developed in the saga of the PT? When you have people making threads, ?Should TPM have been a prologue?? or ?Was TPM Necessary?? , I question any significant themes being established.

    Interesting that in those threads, the answer seemed to be ?no? and ?yes? respectively?


    Well, the fact that the question is still being raised 4 years later shows that TPM did little to establish any themes. Again, of course, you don?t explain what relevance TPM holds.

    >>> How could you possibly state that there was no ?virus talk? in the original??

    And now I?m questioning whether you read the very sentence (don?t know who posted it) that you copied and pasted into your own post: ?as they didn't remind people of the virus talk in the original Matrix.?


    I understand the statement. And I explain how the original virus talk in TM is completely developed in TMR. This is development. For someone to say it was ?unintended? is ridiculous. You?re just not paying attention.

    >>> The guys in TMR are doing much longer, and far more impressive sequences. Please feel free to offer scenes that match or exceed it. I love discussing fights/martial arts scenes.

    Off the top of my head (cos I saw it on Saturday): most of Once Upon a Time in China?


    Look, if you are not going to offer a scene, you don?t have a point. And for the record, Once and TMR had the same fight choreographer.

    I thought it was pretty clear from the preceeding sequence that Dooku was completely in control of Anakin?s moves in that fight- hence their looking more like they were dancing than fighting, lightsabers weren?t actually touching,

    I?m not completely sure as to what this description means. Dooku was ?completely in control of Anakin?s moves??? Via mind control? How was this done?

    Either way, AOTC is on HBO all the time this month and I have seen that fight scene at least 4 times recently. As I felt on the first viewing, it is illogical that Anakin suddenly has his defenses wide open. Not to mention they just cut to the shot of it. And it does not even look credible in the final version of the film.

    Anakin?s style being completely different to how he?d previously fought and much more like Dooku?s?

    Where did we see Anakin fighting before this point? Let me know, I would love to see those scenes.

    >>> Instead, GL decided to make it 'Sonic the Hedgehog on LSD', I guess to avoid any copyright infringement issues.

    Not really relevant, but I love it when people talk about ?such and such on LSD? when talking about something that bears no relationship to either someone on, or something someone might see when on LSD?


    As someone who was an avid Sonic fan as a kid, I can assure you, that if da ?Hog were to ever dabble in some LSD, he would look exactly like Yoda in that duel.

    Anakin, after telling Padme that he will stop people from dying, begins cutting up Geonosian after Geonosian. After promising his mother that he will never fail again, he fails his infultration of Geonosis. After Padme telling Anakin she doesn't want to start a war, unwittingly starts a galactic war that will enslave her people years down the road. C3PO (yeah, I'm going for it...) tells R2 to be careful, yet gets himself in a whole heap of trouble.

    This is thematic development of the droid factory scene? Please. Why don't you just stick with the "these films are for the child in you" response?

    Durwood said:My impression has always been that the force with which Dooku struck Anakin's saber caused his arm to swing away from his body.

    Not the case. The shot before Anakin gets his arm sliced off is just their sabers clashing. There is then a cut to the ?arm-chopping? shot. It is not a seamless series of moves. But of course, like most PT action, the choreography is choppy and poorly edited. Thus we are left with a shot of Anakin, with his arms suddenly spread wide apart and his defense completely open and Dooku easily chops his arm off. Making no ty
     
  21. Cometgreen

    Cometgreen Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 28, 2002
    "And do you think the end of The Matrix did? Yeah, Neo might well start to show people "the truth" but that still leaves the rather gigantic question of how do you free five billion people, and how do stop the machines from killing you all afterwards."

    Just like the end of ROTJ. The rebels barely have any ships left, and they need to go planet to planet and liberate the people. When you look at it that way, you could make a tv series depicting that. But the fact of the matter is that the story is done. The villians are dead, the heroes have prevailed, grown, etc.

    Again, there's nothing wrong with explaining it. The same thing can be said about the prequels, and T3. It's all superfluous information, but it's still fun to see how the events that are described in the original movies go down.

    "Why do you think Zion has to be a program for that to make sense? I think I can guess your criticism, but I don't want to type out a response in case I'm wrong."

    Thank you for not answering for me. :) I just find it hard that Smith, who is all but a piece of code, could control a human in real life. I can kind of understand that Smith downloaded his entire "consciousness" into that guy, and so he wakes up he wants to kill Neo, but he seems to know exactly how he should do it. I dunno, I'll wait till Revolutions (on HBO ;)).

    "Well I disagree with both you and Green_Destiny_Sword here. I don't see any evidence in the speech that Neo gained new abilities or became more machine-like, and I don't think the Wachowski brothers were grasping at straws."

    I just found it incredibly hokey. "Look, the villain we all was sure died in the last film is back! Yay!" I just get irritated when storytellers can't let go of their characters, even though it's their decision to kill them off in the first place. In SW, Obiwan didn't suddenly come back in ESB, or at the very end of ANH; it was immediately shown that his spirit lived on.

    "Anyway, it seems to me like Smith is a rather important part of TMR, and I can't shake the suspiscion that he is going to play a very important part in Revolutions, and it all seems to stem from the information given in that scene, so I don't really think that something so central can be dismissed as "straw clutching"."

    I know... As I have said, I think that Smith will turn out to be the hero in Revolutions.

    ""Love story"? Don't you mean "love sub-sub-sub-sub-plot that barely got two minutes of screen time"? Anyway, yeah, I'll touch on it and say that, from the brief moments of it we saw, the characters spoke to each other as if they were real people and seemed to have a genuine affection for each other."

    That's why I put "love story" in quotation marks. ;) It's just an incredibly cliched character relationship from the moment Niobe's boyfriend is introduced. Damn, I hate that character. He's just so...annoying. He should try smiling for once, it might help.

    JW00: "I agree with this scene and I think Hugo's portayal of Smith has been very effective to far. It's a character you want to see more of."

    It's the only character you want to see. ;)

    EDIT: Ah crap, more typing...

    "Well, the fact that the question is still being raised 4 years later shows that TPM did little to establish any themes. Again, of course, you don?t explain what relevance TPM holds."

    TPM holds no relevence? It establishes no themes? You're just not paying attention. :p

    "Thus we are left with a shot of Anakin, with his arms suddenly spread wide apart and his defense completely open and Dooku easily chops his arm off."

    If you look closely, you can see that he's really trying to regain his balance. The two spin around, Anakin holds his arms out to gain balance, and Dooku cuts one off. It's quite a long pause, but all of the duels in the movies end with rather strange choreography.

    "Especially in AOTC, in which the entire "story" (using the word very loosely) is one big plot hole."

    Whatever you say...

    "And of course the Wachowski Bros. were not grasping at straws. These movies are pur brilliance as Princ
     
  22. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    No, if only we had been so fortunate as to have our Phantom Menace.

    To quote one film critic, Matrix:Reloaded, "Plays like a cross between a video game and a preachy episode of Star Trek"

    No, not a Phantom Menace at all. What we got was a Star Wars Holiday Special.

    But then on the other hand, most who thought they were fans of the Matrix series wouldn't call themselves that after seeing Reloaded. I'm certainly among them, unless this final Matrix movie has some kind of stunning redemption for the whole saga.

    To start giving reasons, I will say that most of what the Wachowski's did was go BIGGER, LOUDER, LONGER without purpose. For instance, Neo vs. 100 Agent Smiths. It is physically impossible for any more thna about ten people to have access to you all at once. And surely enough, about ninety of those Agent Smiths just spent their time standing on the roof yelling. So why make such a glaringly awful shot (the CGI stood out there too much) for something that's not even logical/practical in the first place? Then your going to exacerbate the problem by making the scene incredibly long? There was really no reason for Neo to stay that long, as he could have flown off at any moment, including from the first sign of trouble. Instead, he decides to engage in a fight that achieves little in terms of the overall story arc. It didn't even seem there was a reason for him to stay that long.

    Then, rather than having more sublte symbolism, like in the first one, they butcher the movie by bringing it to the forefront. A la, every single scene including the Merovignian. Every painful line of dialogue seemed to come straight out of some sort of pop, Reader's Digest version of philosophy.

    Finally, elements were repeated enough that it seemed in many ways like the same movie over again. For instance, Trinity's death and resurrection played out in almost exactly the same way as Neo's did. Moreover, Neo's ability to destroy the hunter/seekers just seemed to be another case of escalating powers. If you're going to present a problem that the main characters must solve, the larger part of things should be the main character learning how to solve it, not getting special powers to do so at exactly the right moment. Otherwise, there won't be much tension to the film in the long run.

    To be fair, though, Reloaded did have a few parts that were mildly interesting, and managed to reestablish some dramatic tension in the series as a whole. The larger part of it, however, was rubbish. It was certainly subpar compared to the original Matrix. As for people saying that its just because things can't be new twice, I would challenge you to think again. Many sequels have been just as good/better than the originals while staying true to the style of the series. This includes Aliens 2, Empire Strikes Back (its a SW board, after all), Terminator 2 and that one Back to the Future where they're in the wild west. There's no reason why the Matrix couldn't have done the same thing.
     
  23. Cometgreen

    Cometgreen Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 28, 2002
    "No, not a Phantom Menace at all. What we got was a Star Wars Holiday Special."

    LOL. Ouch. You shall be condemned for this. ;)

    Cometgreen
     
  24. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    Don't you mean "what we got was a Star Wars Pre-Holiday Special Edition"? ;)
     
  25. Durwood

    Durwood Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 18, 2002
    Well done Jabba-wocky! That was a concise and brutally accurate dissection of The Matrix: Rehashed--er, I mean Reloaded.
     
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