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Dec. 5th, 2010 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brushwolfYep, you guessed it folks! I made the mistake of wasting another 2 hours of my life on The Matrix Reloaded, and you get to read all my opinions of the darn thing as it transpired, because like everyone else with an opinion, it gets posted to the internet.
Hoo boy, jumping around through mid-air, sucking cloud cover down with you. Neo, you might be a fantastic Kwisatz Haderach, but you're a lousy covert operative.
Wow. Billy Corgan was a lot less annoying as a character when he was merely written as sort of the starry-eyed hanger on that Neo would accumulate.
So I don't get it, some of the ground pounders and a lot of the captains obviously think Morpheus is potty, and the general populace of Zion thinks he's amazing. You'd think that command would have assigned M to go pilot a ship somewhere doing minor stuff which was nowhere near vital.
"Truthfully, I have no fear. Why? Because I have a Wis score of 8 and a Cha of 20, that's why."
"Tonight, let us remember that THIS! IS! SPARTAAAAAAAAAA!"
And so what they do about it is that they throw a taiko rave in the Rave Cave. Meanwhile, our unexciting heros sneak off to make hot heterosexual PIV missionary position love instead of dancing like crazy like the rest of Zion. Dude, Zionites are such straights. Don't any of the guys dance with each other or are y'all too good to be Queers like me? Yeah, s'what I thought.
Okay, the cut between M and what's goin' down in sim-Seattle is pretty clever and good timing wise. It's like the one good piece of editing in this film.
Wow, no wonder Locke is angry. He comes up with statements like "We need every ship" and gets "I believe our survival depends on more than our ships" rather than something like, say, "one ship is an acceptable loss, especially if there's a chance that it could work." Being cast in the role of Official Asshole is a great way to make you cranky and unsympathetic. If the Councilors and Council actually treated Locke like someone they respected, maybe he wouldn't be a jerk.
You know, the less warm lit, more limited color scheme the Matrix was, the easier it was to want it to fall. The Matrix in this movie is a much nicer place to live than the desert of the real, which is either a masterful or very clumsy bit of writing and filming. It's nice to see they still have some cool high angle shots but I do wish they'd kept the rotating HA shots from the first movie as a way of maintaining thematic coherency.
I do like the infinite corridor though.
The whole idea of rogue AIs is a logical offshoot to the idea of the Matrix not being a monolithic entity and is really very appealing. And timely too!
Rubber ducky, you're The One! You make bath time so much fun!
This is the point where I can imagine the Oracle quoting Top Hat's lines from the end of The Crow about "Ah am gonna miss you..." etc.
"So what have you learned from this?"
"Not a single one of us can defeat you..."
"Very good."
"So we'll have to gang up on you! Get him!"
"Boot to the head boot to the head boot to the head boot to the head boot to the head!"
Hey, 55 minutes in there's finally a high angle rotation!
It really bugs me how the council has decided that Captain Religious Nutjob is so right that they have to deliberately antagonize their military leader as well as deny him men and materiel. I have problems with religious nutters that I can't quite set aside, much as I dig the plot about Neo. Thank you Brothers for managing to make Zion as unsympathetic as the Machines!
Oh dude, and now they wind up being total assholes to some sleepers who just wanted to use the elevator. I mean what's the point of freeing humanity if you can't be nice to humans now and then?
"I am French! why do you zink I have zis outrageous accent!"
"A, mon frere, I love the bouquet of a fine Vin aux Pommes de Terre."
So wait. The Merovingian is so evil that he gives a beautiful woman the flying shits as an excuse for monologuing?
And then the monogamous straights argue over who gets to kiss who, complete with drawing sidearms, in the middle of the men's loo. So wait, the AIs are all jealous because they're monogamous straights, too?
Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh MORTAL KOMBAT! NEO. LIU KANG. BELDANDI. KEIICHI-SAN. MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAT!
"Oh, when they flash us like that they're not friendly..."
I love how committed they are to the Sleepers that they just get a shit ton of people killed on 101. Those guys were probably just coming off shift or going to pick up their kids or like the requisite three Latino guys in that one truck and our heros are exposing them to this crap? I mean at least during like, the lobby scene in the first movie, they were killing a batch of cops, which I kinda felt bad about but hey, I don't like policemen all that much and at least those guys were armed and doing their jobs. Now? They're just randomly getting people killed on the freeway in the middle of this crossfire and those Sleepers had families and kids and stuff. That said, I'm really liking the Eurotrash brothers. They're just so unapologetically jerky. Characters I want to punch are a lot more tolerable when there's no obligation to like them.
"Aw DUDE! You just ruined the finish on my SUV, I just had it in the body shop!"
Wait, what's with Morpheus - mister "Do you believe in fate? Why don't you like the idea?" - blathering on about how all of this was fated? Yay, someone finally calls Morpheus on being a jerk! Really, I'm finding myself wanting to punch Morpheus, a lot.
Oops. How did I know this character was going to be disposable too? These movies are definitely GURPs like in how long people can blather while dying.
Whoa! The lead system architect for the Matrix turns out to be Robert E. Lee and not Vinod Khosla after all!
"Look. I am another NPC who speaks turgidly and incomprehensibly because that behavior is, curiously, interpreted within this script as a good substitute for actual teasers for what is, in fact, the process taking place throughout these big sections of dialogue which, paradoxically, do not in fact further the plot of this movie. Thus I plan on merely haranguing you for what seems to be an incredibly long part of this movie such that you will, undoubtedly, prefer to return to long turgid fight scenes in which the extent of plot development is revealed to be merely a series of thrown punches. While you meanwhile contemplate the extent of these new and yet unexcitingly presented plot developments, or perhaps the manner in which Trinity's death is inevitable which might be truly upsetting if by now we weren't all dulled by the soporific quality of these loquatious pronouncements, I shall remain within the parameters of all prior confrontations with previous Neo Marks I, II, III, IV, and V, namely; to continue speaking in a droning monotone such that the audience promptly leaves to make sandwiches or get popcorn should they be located within a cinema, or promptly exit to use the lavatory for the fourteenth time. Do you need to get up to pee yet? I know I do."
Oh, and because Neo's such a good guy, now he blows up a shit-ton of just random civilians on the way to save Trinity. Hero... sympathy... decreasing...
"Neo... I never took the Kobayashi Maru test. What do you think of my solution? I've seen things you people couldn't imagine. Attack ships on fire off the shores of... hey, wait! What about my longwinded dying monologue?"
to the tune of "Ride of the Valkyries." Improbable plot twist/Improbably plot twist/Improbable plot twist!
By now I've lost all interest in this movie. No wait, I haven't, there's a gorgeous redhaired woman. No, wait, I have, here's another longwinded monologue. Dude, I think you guys spent all your "longwinded monologue" points on The Architect.
Hoo boy, jumping around through mid-air, sucking cloud cover down with you. Neo, you might be a fantastic Kwisatz Haderach, but you're a lousy covert operative.
Wow. Billy Corgan was a lot less annoying as a character when he was merely written as sort of the starry-eyed hanger on that Neo would accumulate.
So I don't get it, some of the ground pounders and a lot of the captains obviously think Morpheus is potty, and the general populace of Zion thinks he's amazing. You'd think that command would have assigned M to go pilot a ship somewhere doing minor stuff which was nowhere near vital.
"Truthfully, I have no fear. Why? Because I have a Wis score of 8 and a Cha of 20, that's why."
"Tonight, let us remember that THIS! IS! SPARTAAAAAAAAAA!"
And so what they do about it is that they throw a taiko rave in the Rave Cave. Meanwhile, our unexciting heros sneak off to make hot heterosexual PIV missionary position love instead of dancing like crazy like the rest of Zion. Dude, Zionites are such straights. Don't any of the guys dance with each other or are y'all too good to be Queers like me? Yeah, s'what I thought.
Okay, the cut between M and what's goin' down in sim-Seattle is pretty clever and good timing wise. It's like the one good piece of editing in this film.
Wow, no wonder Locke is angry. He comes up with statements like "We need every ship" and gets "I believe our survival depends on more than our ships" rather than something like, say, "one ship is an acceptable loss, especially if there's a chance that it could work." Being cast in the role of Official Asshole is a great way to make you cranky and unsympathetic. If the Councilors and Council actually treated Locke like someone they respected, maybe he wouldn't be a jerk.
You know, the less warm lit, more limited color scheme the Matrix was, the easier it was to want it to fall. The Matrix in this movie is a much nicer place to live than the desert of the real, which is either a masterful or very clumsy bit of writing and filming. It's nice to see they still have some cool high angle shots but I do wish they'd kept the rotating HA shots from the first movie as a way of maintaining thematic coherency.
I do like the infinite corridor though.
The whole idea of rogue AIs is a logical offshoot to the idea of the Matrix not being a monolithic entity and is really very appealing. And timely too!
Rubber ducky, you're The One! You make bath time so much fun!
This is the point where I can imagine the Oracle quoting Top Hat's lines from the end of The Crow about "Ah am gonna miss you..." etc.
"So what have you learned from this?"
"Not a single one of us can defeat you..."
"Very good."
"So we'll have to gang up on you! Get him!"
"Boot to the head boot to the head boot to the head boot to the head boot to the head!"
Hey, 55 minutes in there's finally a high angle rotation!
It really bugs me how the council has decided that Captain Religious Nutjob is so right that they have to deliberately antagonize their military leader as well as deny him men and materiel. I have problems with religious nutters that I can't quite set aside, much as I dig the plot about Neo. Thank you Brothers for managing to make Zion as unsympathetic as the Machines!
Oh dude, and now they wind up being total assholes to some sleepers who just wanted to use the elevator. I mean what's the point of freeing humanity if you can't be nice to humans now and then?
"I am French! why do you zink I have zis outrageous accent!"
"A, mon frere, I love the bouquet of a fine Vin aux Pommes de Terre."
So wait. The Merovingian is so evil that he gives a beautiful woman the flying shits as an excuse for monologuing?
And then the monogamous straights argue over who gets to kiss who, complete with drawing sidearms, in the middle of the men's loo. So wait, the AIs are all jealous because they're monogamous straights, too?
Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh MORTAL KOMBAT! NEO. LIU KANG. BELDANDI. KEIICHI-SAN. MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAT!
"Oh, when they flash us like that they're not friendly..."
I love how committed they are to the Sleepers that they just get a shit ton of people killed on 101. Those guys were probably just coming off shift or going to pick up their kids or like the requisite three Latino guys in that one truck and our heros are exposing them to this crap? I mean at least during like, the lobby scene in the first movie, they were killing a batch of cops, which I kinda felt bad about but hey, I don't like policemen all that much and at least those guys were armed and doing their jobs. Now? They're just randomly getting people killed on the freeway in the middle of this crossfire and those Sleepers had families and kids and stuff. That said, I'm really liking the Eurotrash brothers. They're just so unapologetically jerky. Characters I want to punch are a lot more tolerable when there's no obligation to like them.
"Aw DUDE! You just ruined the finish on my SUV, I just had it in the body shop!"
Wait, what's with Morpheus - mister "Do you believe in fate? Why don't you like the idea?" - blathering on about how all of this was fated? Yay, someone finally calls Morpheus on being a jerk! Really, I'm finding myself wanting to punch Morpheus, a lot.
Oops. How did I know this character was going to be disposable too? These movies are definitely GURPs like in how long people can blather while dying.
Whoa! The lead system architect for the Matrix turns out to be Robert E. Lee and not Vinod Khosla after all!
"Look. I am another NPC who speaks turgidly and incomprehensibly because that behavior is, curiously, interpreted within this script as a good substitute for actual teasers for what is, in fact, the process taking place throughout these big sections of dialogue which, paradoxically, do not in fact further the plot of this movie. Thus I plan on merely haranguing you for what seems to be an incredibly long part of this movie such that you will, undoubtedly, prefer to return to long turgid fight scenes in which the extent of plot development is revealed to be merely a series of thrown punches. While you meanwhile contemplate the extent of these new and yet unexcitingly presented plot developments, or perhaps the manner in which Trinity's death is inevitable which might be truly upsetting if by now we weren't all dulled by the soporific quality of these loquatious pronouncements, I shall remain within the parameters of all prior confrontations with previous Neo Marks I, II, III, IV, and V, namely; to continue speaking in a droning monotone such that the audience promptly leaves to make sandwiches or get popcorn should they be located within a cinema, or promptly exit to use the lavatory for the fourteenth time. Do you need to get up to pee yet? I know I do."
Oh, and because Neo's such a good guy, now he blows up a shit-ton of just random civilians on the way to save Trinity. Hero... sympathy... decreasing...
"Neo... I never took the Kobayashi Maru test. What do you think of my solution? I've seen things you people couldn't imagine. Attack ships on fire off the shores of... hey, wait! What about my longwinded dying monologue?"
to the tune of "Ride of the Valkyries." Improbable plot twist/Improbably plot twist/Improbable plot twist!
By now I've lost all interest in this movie. No wait, I haven't, there's a gorgeous redhaired woman. No, wait, I have, here's another longwinded monologue. Dude, I think you guys spent all your "longwinded monologue" points on The Architect.