MATRIX: revolution

[supapimp]

critics reviews

[dam60]

critics reviews

 

WTF!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!

[drbanner]

"...they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion..."

 

Any more questions?

[dam60]

"...they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion..."

 

Any more questions?

My coworkers and I were just talking about that line in particular . . . sad, sad . . .

 

I'll still happily pay my $10 to get my own opinion . . .

 

DAM

[supapimp]

"...they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion..."

 

Any more questions?

My coworkers and I were just talking about that line in particular . . . sad, sad . . .

 

I'll still happily pay my $10 to get my own opinion . . .

 

DAM

 

true...so true

[Rip]

Exactly, some of my favorite movies got some bad reviews.

But for the record I thought the second one was just so so.

[Zanarkand]

From a mini bio on Keanu -

 

'Reeves now is shooting the occult comic-book adaptation "Constantine."'

 

Keanu in Hellblazer? Did I miss something?

[Rip]

So then its true.......hmmm......

[FlyingDonut]

Only an Illusion

'The Matrix Revolutions' Drops the Plot To End the Film Series With a Big Bang

By Stephen Hunter

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page C01

 

Neo, schmeo! In "The Matrix Revolutions," directors Andy and Larry Wachowski give up on character; instead, they try havoc and let slurp the dogs of war. The film is a soggy mess, essentially a loud, wild 100-minute battle movie bookended by an incomprehensible beginning and a laughable ending.

 

As a final act and summation of the brilliant "Matrix" and the not-so-brilliant "Matrix Reloaded," it's utterly inconsequential; as pure spectacle it's almost a hoot but only a little more entertaining, finally, than the Redskins.

 

For those hundred minutes, we just watch -- without reference to Neo (Keanu Reeves), Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) or any of the other boys and girls -- a movie that might as well have been called "Zion vs. the Insect Machines." The familiar characters are absent from the picture for this long tour of duty, which has many variations but essentially one issue: Gun crews from the underground city try to spray-paint their way out of an onslaught by mechanical creepy-crawlers. You might say the Wachowskis have fallen for the Steve Spurrier fallacy: They've overcommitted to a fun-'n'-gun offense.

 

The imagineers are not without a certain level of low cunning. They have conceived the machine attack not so much as an invasion or an assault but as an infestation. Thus they play on resonant, universal fears of things that swarm and buzz and bite and have lots of legs and chompy, gibbering jaws. A million tentacled, flying voracious creatures breach the vault of ZI-on (the movie's characters invariably allot the name two full syllables when they speak it), the last remaining human city sequestered somewhere down below, where platoons of manned robots with Gatling-gun fists spit ack-ack and ball tracer at them.

 

Encased in gigantic mechanistic exoskeletons, the valiant warriors of ZI-on try to kill enough of the flying metal arachnids to survive through the night. It's like the siege of Fort McHenry on steroids from outer space, and the only anthem to be written would be "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition." The illusion is stunningly real, even if it's only happening in geekspace in some anonymous San Fernando Valley bunker where professional entertainment is now manufactured. But you do believe that the hordes swirl and buzz and strafe and the gunners track them and pump them full of glowing slugs amid explosions, collapsing beams, shrapnel and crumpled-up, unused pages from the -script. It's pretty neat.

 

But you have to ask: Why is this sequence more than an hour long? It could be five minutes and there'd be plenty of time left for old-fashioned stuff like, you know, story and character, both of which are given scant attention over the movie's long, relentless running time. And perhaps then the filmmakers would have gotten around to picking up some of the plot pieces left in the air in the last installment.

 

But no. The brothers want their battle scene, ahead of the Christmas curve of battle scenes ("The Last Samurai," "Lord of the Rings III," "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," etc.), and so they get their battle scene. It seems to have eaten all their energy and passion.

 

The movie begins, drearily, with a kind of situation report on where the last film left off: Neo is in a neither-here-nor-there purgatory. The machines are nibbling their way to ZI-on. The council can't decide whether to rescue Neo or commit all its resources to the defense of ZI-on. A spy with a goatee is trying to subvert one of those weird underground submarine ships. (You know what? I never really got those ships. How do they fly? They're not in space, where there's no gravity.) Agent Smith has inserted himself into a Xerox machine and is replicating himself unto infinity. Morpheus and old flame Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) are spatting, while officers such as Lock (Harry J. Lennix), Mifune (Nathaniel Lees) and Colt (Peter Lamb) are saying "" too much and trying to decide on strategy.

 

Basically, all these stories are put on hold while the Wachowskis lead up to and perform their big war boogaloo. The lead-up is particularly dispiriting: It seems the two boys spent too much time in the den watching "Sands of Iwo Jima" when they were growing up, and so their military culture and heroic style has all the stilted stiffness of an old Duke Wayne picture, heavy on the macho gung-hoisms and the stern imprecations of the leaders ("If you let me down, you'll have to worry about the machines -- and me!" one officer barks). There's hardly a cliche from War Movies 101 as it was taught in the Republic Pictures back lot in 1948 that isn't exhumed as if it were a new gem. There's even a character called "The Kid."

 

After the fighting's finally over (whew!), the boys move on to their climax, and it has a sense of a blown budget, and a cast and crew out of energy. I know movies are shot out of sequence, so that can't be right; nevertheless, that's how it feels.

 

Neo ventures to what is called the Machine City but seems clearly modeled on Oz. The God in the Machine even has a giant face like the Wizard's big green one floating in space, though the Wachowskis aren't clever enough to come up with a man behind the curtain to pay no attention to. But like Dorothy, Neo is given a task that he must complete and, like Dorothy's, it involves assassination: He must go back into the Matrix and destroy Smith, who is busy taking over the cyberworld and presumably the human and machine worlds next (the logic is a little shaky here).

 

Which sets up the battle royale: Neo vs. Smith for the world championship. And you have to say the Wachowskis really don't deliver it. I mean, can this knock-down drag-out in the rain really be the climax to seven hours of moviegoing? It lacks energy and style, there's nothing singular to it, and compared with several fights-to-the-death in the recent "Kill Bill," it's pretty lame. Oh, yeah: kicking and spinning in space, punching and grimacing, but there's nothing special about it. It could be any of Neo and Smith's other fights. It certainly gets nowhere near the intensity of the battle between the two that concluded "The Matrix."

 

A lot of other "Matrix" pleasures are gone, too. There's no great, overarching metaphorical idea that echoes; intellectually, the film is less developed than the first edition. Neither Morpheus nor the great Trinity has much to do. Even Agent Smith hardly appears until the end, and when he does, he hasn't anything of the demonic force he had in the original. So, like too many great adventures, from Alexander's conquest of the world to Coppola's "Godfather" saga, the final stage doesn't so much end as bleed out. The only thing remaining is the corpse of our fond memories.

 

 

 

[ArAich]

Sounds like fun to me.... ...I can't wait...

[supapimp]

the best review thus far:

 

Wednesday, November 5, 2003

 

Last 'Matrix' lands a solid blow for the bold trilogy

 

By WILLIAM ARNOLD

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

 

Expectations are everything to a film's reception, and the consensus of opinion is that the unprecedented hype that surrounded the opening of the second "Matrix" last May made promises the movie couldn't possibly fulfill, and hurt it both critically and at the box office.

 

Conversely, the remarkably low expectations and general lack of fanfare and hoopla that have met the opening of the third episode of the trilogy, "The Matrix Revolutions," could very well help it to a happier fate than its predecessor.

 

Especially since it's a better movie. No, it doesn't exactly re-create the magic that made the original such an instant classic, but it's faster and more involving than "Reloaded" and it rounds off the premise and themes of the trilogy in a surprisingly satisfying way.

 

That premise, in case you've been living on the moon, is that everything around us is merely a computer-generated dream world -- the Matrix -- monitored by artificially intelligent machines that have taken over the world but need human biological energy to run it.

 

In Part 1, hacker-hero Neo (Keanu Reeves) is recruited by a group of rebel humans who have broken free from the Matrix and believe him to be "The One" -- the messiah prophesied by a famous oracle who will deliver the human race from bondage.

 

In Part 2, Neo accepts his fate, gains superpowers and embarks on a quest to fulfill his destiny by journeying through numerous obstacles to reach the "Mainframe" of the Matrix -- hopefully in time to foil an invasion of Zion, the one human city left in the real world.

 

Part 3 starts off right where the last one ended, with the machine "sentinels" racing for the human stronghold of Zion, and our team of heroes staggering under the revelation that Neo is a fraud, and the whole idea of a messiah was just another means of machine control.

 

After a few talky sequences that stoke the metaphysics of the premise, the plot suddenly shifts into high gear and the rest of the movie crosscuts between two lavish action sequences: the defense of Zion, and Neo's seemingly suicidal journey to the Machine City to confront his fate.

 

Be warned that many of the problems of Part 2 that caused fans and critics to turn on the franchise continue here, including an overabundance of computer-program characters doing too many incomprehensible things with a frustrating "Alice in Wonderland" logic.

 

Moreover, two of the film's three human love stories -- the triangle of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Lock (Harry Lennix); and the marital problems of Link (Harold Perrineau) and Zee (Nona Gaye) -- seem weak and uninteresting, so much dead time.

 

Also, like "Reloaded," it suffers from sequel-itis: unlike "Lord of the Rings," the "Matrix" franchise was clearly not conceived as a trilogy, and its continuation has a certain sense of being a tag-on to an idea that was complete unto itself.

 

On the plus side, the film's central track -- the Neo saga -- picks up some genuine steam here. The now-deflated hero's quest and his star-crossed romance with Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) become more compelling, and both stars' performances become unexpectedly touching.

 

"Revolutions" also works to a conclusion that may not (on first viewing, anyway) make perfect sense, and might sound silly in words, but is emotionally satisfying, so you don't leave the theater feeling you've been ripped off by one more Hollywood shaggy-dog story.

 

And whatever else it is, "Matrix" 3 is a butt-kicking action movie. Granted, all its kung-fu fighting is getting tiresome, but its core sequence -- the machine siege of Zion -- is a virtuoso piece of computer filmmaking, as imaginative and engrossing as an Eisenstein epic.

 

So what's the final verdict? Does the now-complete "Matrix" cycle add up to a single, daring work of 21st-century art? Does it all come together to be the profound, quasi-religious, cross-cultural vision that its most devoted fans believed it would be?

 

Time will tell. But this much is sure. It's a body of movie work that you actually can have a conversation about -- ambitious, audacious, boldly open to interpretation. And in a Hollywood cinema that otherwise seems completely surrendered to formula, this alone is reason to rejoice.

 

 

WHEN IS THE MATRIX?

 

What is the Matrix? That's an old question. The real head-scratcher is:

Using background culled from the three movies and Animatrix shorts, The Associated Press compiled an estimated timeline of the war between men and machines:

 

2010-60 -- Humans create humanoid drone robots with artificial intelligence to fill jobs as construction laborers and servants.

 

2069 -- The hovercraft transport ship Nebuchadnezzar, later to be captained by Morpheus, is constructed in the United States.

 

2075 -- AI programs evolve and some robots began to resent their human overlords.

 

2077 -- In the first case of a machine rising up against its owners, the butler robot B166ER slaughters two humans, leading to B166ERs eradication and a backlash against robots and artificial intelligence.

 

2080-85 -- Rioting and violence against machines prompts robots to flee major cities and establish their own community -- known as Zero One -- in a remote part of the Middle East.

 

2085-2095-- Zero One thrives, creating superior vehicles, computers and weaponry and decimating the economies of many human nations, which now lack the machine-based labor that made them strong.

 

2096-- United Nations officials refuse to accept the robot civilization of Zero One as a sovereign nation. A trade blockade of robot goods leads to war.

 

2097 -- Zero One survives a nuclear attack -- its inhabitants are impervious to the heat and radiation and casualties are quickly replaced. Counterstrikes launched against humans.

 

2098 -- As cities fall beneath the might of mechanized forces, desperate military leaders attempt to block the main source of energy for the robot city: the sun. The plan destroys the atmosphere and fills the sky with choking black smoke -- but does not stop the machines.

 

2099-- Machine forces overtake human armies and capture survivors and civilians for experimentation, determining that human bio-electricity can be harnessed to replace the sun's energy.

 

2100 -- Machines create the Matrix, a dreamlike world set in 1999, to extend the lives of the comatose human batteries.

 

2105 -- The first human known as The One, locked in bondage inside the Matrix, learns he can manipulate the world through thought and manages to break free. Seeks sanctuary in the underground human stronghold of Zion.

 

2105-2150 -- Zion resistance movement created, although The One later dies under unexplained circumstances.

 

2161 -- Morpheus born in a Matrix womb; freed in childhood.

 

2167 -- Trinity born in a Matrix womb; freed in early childhood.

 

2175 -- The Oracle prophesizes that Morpheus will discover the second coming of The One.

 

2199 -- Trinity and Morpheus discover Neo, a hacker in the Matrix. They free him and do battle with Agent Smith, a program designed to rid the Matrix of humans who detect its flaws.

 

2201 -- The Osiris, another human rebellion ship, discovers machines drilling through the Earth above Zion. Crew members send a message through the Matrix to their compatriots shortly before being destroyed.

 

2201 -- Now living in Zion and working with the rebellion against the machines, Neo encounters The Architect, the artificial intelligence program that created the Matrix.

 

2201 --The Architect reveals that the Matrix places rebellious humans in Zion, which it then targets for destruction, thus eradicating bugs in its system. He states that Zion has been destroyed five previous times -- suggesting the Matrix may be much older than he thinks.

 

[12c_Comic]

At my local movie theater....

 

 

just watch and enjoy the movie ....

[Amazing_Bag_man]

At my local movie theater....

 

 

just watch and enjoy the movie ....

 

Exactly, what do you want the meaning of life or revelation or in this case a "Revolution".... just enjoy the movie for what it is............. a movie that's all

[drbanner]

At my local movie theater....

 

 

just watch and enjoy the movie ....

 

Dude...to eat that much popcorn I'll have to assume you're going to the "4:30" show!!

[Illiterati-migration]

At my local movie theater....

 

 

just watch and enjoy the movie ....

 

Dude...to eat that much popcorn I'll have to assume you're going to the "4:30" show!!

 

"4:20" show, you square!

[jonnydouble]

At my local movie theater....

 

 

just watch and enjoy the movie ....

 

Dude...to eat that much popcorn I'll have to assume you're going to the "4:30" show!!

 

"4:20" show, you square!

 

I'm there!!

[drbanner]

At my local movie theater....

 

 

just watch and enjoy the movie ....

 

Dude...to eat that much popcorn I'll have to assume you're going to the "4:30" show!!

 

"4:20" show, you square!

 

Gotta give yourself a good 10 minutes lead time for de-contamination prior to entering public domain, now dontcha??

[uluru]

Awesome!

I love the movie!

I really recomend it!!!

 

A+++

[Rickdogg]

I'll take your word for it because i'm going anyways. It's thr Matrix trilogy after all

[Illiterati-migration]

At my local movie theater....

 

 

just watch and enjoy the movie ....

 

Dude...to eat that much popcorn I'll have to assume you're going to the "4:30" show!!

 

"4:20" show, you square!

 

Gotta give yourself a good 10 minutes lead time for de-contamination prior to entering public domain, now dontcha??

 

ROFL!!!