I thought it was an awesome movie! But I can respect everyone's opinion...it is a free company. But whether you liked it or not...it is creating conversation. I believe it was designed to make you think. And create thoughtful banter. So in that essence it is already a blockbuster, whether it makes another dollar or note.

It's just my thoughts...
[This message was edited Tue May 20 17:44:02 PDT 2003 by Frederick96]

I thought it was a good movie. I was never really a fan until now. I will definetly go see the 3rd one. I wonder how many people who didnt like it will go see the 3rd one anyways. hmmmnnn

vgallo6 said:

I would say 60% and up.

vgallo6 said:

If you watched the first 2, you will watch the third just to see what happens. I saw this movie the weekend and i still don't know if I liked it or not. There were equal parts good and bad. I think that this movie alone would be considered fantastic ,but in comparision 2 the first one it does not measure up.But if we are to be truthfull, what could mesure up to the first one. Like I said I don't know how I felt about it my bf loved it. I want to go see it again, so I guess it wasn't that bad.

I'm to young to remember what the hype was like for return of the jedi,I wonder if it initially measured up to starwars or if there was a backlash like there is now. Maybe some of the older orgers can help me out here. Is it a similar situation or not?


Fuck the edit
[This message was edited Tue May 20 18:52:51 PDT 2003 by Sweeny79]

I liked the movie. I like the Twins and how they could dematerialize. The freeway scene is cool.

This second installment of the trilogy is just a muscle stretch for the third and epic conclusion.

I think the Oracle is gonna play a lead role in the next film. Any other predictions?

Well, the problem I had was that it could have been trimmed into half of the time. I would have rather seen a three hour part two that actually had a plot, that see two 2 hour films that really didn't merit that much time. So much of this film was filler, and the actual story didn't kick in until the film was almost over.

Here's hoping part 3 is better.

Blackcat said:

Doubtful. She died during the middle of the filming, so many of her scenes were written out. Perhaps she was suppossed to have a bigger part, but its unlikely.

Blackcat said:

The woman who plays the oracle died while filming reloaded. So I dont now how they r going to handle that.

Need to see it again and watch the first one before I do...good action, freeway scene, but the fight with Neo and the 100 Agent Smith's bordered on the ridiculous...

TheGillman said:

what happened to the oracle? i thought it brilliant that she was cast as that character.

While not as bad as Time Cop or one of the later Police Academy installments, The Matrix Reloaded was largely a load of steamy, moist donkey poop.

• Horrible acting. Just horrible. Even thinking about it makes me feel like two-thousand ants are crawling straight up my asshole.
  
• Awful dialogue (almost Lucas bad).
  "Bomb? Did he say 'bomb?'"
  "Yes."
  
  "She used to be with Morpheus. Now she is with ___(whatever his fucking name was)."
  
  "Because I love you too damn much." (This last line was indeed from The Matrix...I know it sounds like it might be from Full House, but I swear I'm telling the truth!)
  
  "No...I need you."
  "But they need you."
  
  
• Way too many movie cliches. The over-eager young kid who wants to "join the team?" The woman handing her man an amulet for "good luck?" The crew-member who just has to learn to trust his commander? The last-minute rescues every four seconds? The choice between saving the world and saving a woman? The self-doubting, somewhat reluctant hero? I could go on and on. This movie was written by idiots. Idiots who are apparently recent members of the Brotherhood of the Incompetent. The first movie wasn't full of cliches like this.
  
  
• The ridiculous Philosophy 101 approach that treated the audience like a bunch of fucking boobs. I see people pretending like free will vs. predestination is some sort of new theme in entertainment. It's one of the oldest. You can even find it in the Bible (if you enjoy fairy tales). Even if you wanted to pack a movie full of cheesy philosophical messages, couldn't you find a creative way of getting those points across that didn't involve characters merely staring at each other and speaking in monotone? Maybe the writers should have brushed up on Kant's Theories on Lazy Scriptwriting or Burke's Reflections on Mediocrity in American Cinema.
  
  
• The meaningless, arbitrary fight scenes. "I will let you go to tell my husband...so that there can be another cool fight scene..." They may as well have just looked at each other and said, "Hey, wanna fight?" Go back and watch the first movie. None of the fights there seemed forced. That movie pulls you along...drags you closer and closer to the excitement. This ass-dumpling of a sequel pushed you the whole time, using CGI to numb your brain so that you won't stop and think, "Wait, why are they all fighting again?"
  
  
• That stupid, stupid, stupid rave/sex scene. One of the lamest scenes in cinema history. I think I'd rather watch Steve Gutenberg, Ted Danson, and Tom Selleck play with another goddamn talking baby than to sit through that party scene again. I had imagined Zion being really cool...a great update on the classic theme of a dystopian hellscape. Instead, it all just looks like MTV Spring Break. Great. If that's what it's like, then hand me the BLUE PILL!
  
  
• Way too straight-forward exposition. Everything was just in-your-fucking-face right until the end, and in a bad way. Give the audience some credit.
  
  
• Bad pacing.
  
  
• Fake looking CGI, even compared to crap like the Star Wars prequels. The 100 Agent Smiths battle was the entertainment equivalent of finding out the girl you've lusted over for years and years has a fucking penis.
  
  
• All that crap about ghosts, angels, werewolves, and vampires. I almost barfed into my popcorn.
  
  
• A stream of boring new shallow characters. Were we really supposed to give a fuck about those people?
  
  
• Lame romantic scenarios like love triangles all over the place, or Trinity getting jealous because Neo kisses someone (how trite is this???).
  
  
• Horrible explanations of things that happened earlier (think of Agent Smith's re-introduction. The writers have him just flat out telling the audience what went on. It may as well have been a silent film with title cards!).
  
  
• Smack-you-across-the-face telling and re-telling of the movie's major points...free will vs. destiny, man vs, machine, etc. The writers couldn't find any creative way to SHOW these things, so they just spell it out. Awful. Pathetically awful. We've all seen this shit before. If you want some REAL man vs. machine shit, check out Kino's recent DVD remaster of the film Metropolis. And that motherfucker's from like 1927!!!
  
  
• Couldn't the writers have created a good speech for Morpheus? That shit was painful to witness...I've taken shits that were more inspiring.
  
  
• That woman needing a kiss from Neo. That scene was so ear-fuckingly ridiculous, I can't even decide what to write about it. Maybe if I could somehow type out the sound of a crippled goat being sodomized by a rusty shovel, then I'd accomplish my task.
  
  

I did, however, thoroughly enjoy the highway battle. Which shows that the writers DO UNDERSTAND what makes a sci-fi action movie good, thus making their failures even more tragic. But, a few cool fight scenes does NOT make a good movie. If having high standards is a fucking crime, then I'm glad to be guilty.

I'm sick of hearing that bullshit about "oh, your expectations were too high blah blah blah." Eat it. That's the same cowardly, bullshit defense I myself gave people a year ago when they didn't like Attack of the Clones. It's a fucking lie. We SHOULD have high expectations of a movie. I went in to the theater expecting a good action movie, and got poop. A couple weeks before that, I entered the theater for X-2 expecting a good action movie, and got blown away by its excellence. I was bored by Matrix Reloaded...fucking BORED for damn near the first hour and a half!

People also say, "Well, it's part two of a trilogy...it's not supposed to be good on its own; it's only a bridge between the beginning and the end." Well, fuck you. Look at The Two Towers. That shit was near perfection. Don't give me excuses.

sounds like a renter

XxAxX said:

You could poop in your DVD player and get the same results. Plus, it'd be free (minus the clean-up).

sorry...i liked it.

artstfn said:

that scene and the cheesy one where Neo saves Trinity...the only parts of the movie that i had a hard time with...loved the French dude tho...'i need to take a peesss'

lillith said:

.

Saw it last night. Thoughts...


I liked the original movie. I still do, even though I cannot bear to watch it again (a roommate of mine had it on DVD and watched it every day -- then it hit HBO, ad nauseum). I think they should have stopped at 1 movie.

It's not that I'm disappointed in the second one because it couldn't live up to the hype or the expectation set by the first one. It's because of the concepts involved. The whole thing is based on a freshman philosophy course (the dead giveaway is the causality vs. free will debate smack dab in the middle of Reloaded, if there were any doubts).

Why they should have stopped at the first one is that, while it's all pop-philosophy/psychology as the subtext, the first one put forward the notion, played on it, but you weren't given ALL that much of it, so that the flaws in the whole thing didn't jump out at you, when you actually went on to think about it.

I'm reminded of a thread on this forum about a month ago, where rdhull and I were debating Matrix Reloaded and X2 and which would be better. It led to a mini-debate about the themes of both movies. X-Men has always been my favorite comic book for this very reason: their concept has a point. It has a point that is derived from and can be applied to the real world. Persecution. Discrimination. Ignorance. Fear. Hatred. Society's outcasts who only want to be accepted and live as normal people, even though they're different. It's a simple concept really, one grounded in the real world, despite the extraneous context of superpowered mutants.

The Matrix, on the other hand, seems to me, like sci-fi derived from pop-philosophy derived from sci-fi based on freshman philosophy concepts. (Reminds me of Scientology, actually, but with a different subject matter). It's all rather incestuous and, while there is a kernal of validity and something of interest to find in the concepts, it's very simplistic to the point of going round in circles, based on premises one may or may not subscribe to in the real world. For all the talk that we're living in the Matrix, machines running our lives, "the system" telling us what to do, what to believe, and how to behave, it's only that... just talk. The kind of talk that people who want to think they're deep talk about, but really has no basis in reality in the context of a day-to-day life. It's the kind of thing communications/philosophy professors write about in their books that they can't sell because no one's really interested and they aren't all that relevant, so they make a class of 30 buy it and use it as a text book for the class they're teaching.

That's why they should have left it at 1 movie. The basic premise stands up if there isn't a great deal of attention paid to it. It's a great set-up for a cool sci-fi movie. Having a second and third movie about those concepts is too close an examination of what the movies are about, and that's where it falls down. On top of that, I could really give a rat's ass if Zion falls or not.

As for the movie itself, i found it to be fairly entertaining. The 3 major action set pieces were great. Great movie, so-so film. It could have been edited better. Even just 10 minutes from the total running time would have made for better pacing. About a minute cut from the major fx/action scenes (I found my mind wandering even during the chase scene). That whole Dance Party USA/no-chemistry sex scene needs to go altogether. And any point where Morpheus is speaking (ie, before the Soul Train bit, and toward the end when they're enacting their big plan) needs to be chopped. A lot.

My favorite scene was the bit with the many Agent Smiths, and the climax of that. Very cool. The other action scenes were cool too. Viewed on that level, it's entertaining. Below the surface, though, it's trying too hard to be deep in areas that are pretty shallow to begin with.

lillith said:

well she resurrected him in the first one. but, then, that was also the cheesiest moment in that one.


*kiss* "... now get up"

AaronSuperior said:

.They also added a lot of other religious theory to it as well. I like this review of it. A fair assessment

rdhull said:

i'm surprised. thanks

EvilWhiteMale said:

And you have half a brain don't you buddy??

i never saw the first one...and i wont be going to see the second one...
doesnt look interesting at all to me

Daywalker7700 said:

whoa dude..i think you took rd's post the wrong way...

EvilWhiteMale said:

I want to give you something for disliking this movie and it ain't shit: Seriously, I didn't like it either. The fight scenes were way too long to me.

It was basically a demo reel for special effects and fight choreography.

I agree and disagree with mostly everything here. I saw the movie on the weekend and some of the scenes were pushing the credibility a bit.
Why did the girl want to kiss Neo? It didn't help the story or give any information to the story either.
I cringed when Trinity kissed Neo after he brings her back to life. Did we need that? It seemed a bit forced to me.
The speech scene was a bit over done. I was waiting for someone to laugh.
Other than those key things...I liked the movie. Yes some fight scenes looked a bit forced. Especially the one Neo has with that Asian dude. What was that all about...and the shit about knowing someone better through fighting.
But it was designed as a bridge movie. Not really to stand on it's own but to serve as a helper for the 3rd movie.

There...that's my 5 cents worth.

I think it sucked just like the first one they really should have stopped right when someone read the script. Because it was just crap. but that is my opinion.

If there's money to make, Hollywood will stop at nothing.

I have to agree with some of you. The dance scene is crap and too long, the pseudo-philosophical talk gets way too much. Besides that, I think it's alright, IMO.
Besides, in such a movie I'm surely not looking for good dialogues or good acting.