Talking to someone online, the Matrix movies came up, and she said they'd have been better if the only things in the movies had been the fight scenes, with no context or plot.
However, it's futile to claim there was nothing wrong with the movies, or even that they were good. At best they were decently entertaining, which is far from saying anything about their quality. There were a lot of just plain dumb things about them, and yet the basic concept is intriguing.
So what could have been done to make the movies better?
Scale back the overabundance of philosophy and symbolism. Get more into how a person is supposed to disbelieve something they hear see feel taste and smell. That's the thing that caught my attention, that and bullet time.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
What matrix sequels?
There was only one matrix movie.
I can't hear you!
NaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNa
They had a good concept and lots of cool stuff but I think they overcooked the sequels.
It all just seemed to go too far. And the car chase sucked. Once you have a sucky car chase, by definition the movie fails.
If they had just kept the sequels simple action movies, with a hint of mysticism, then it would have been fine. Given the length of the sequels, I wouldn't be surprised if someone could re-edit them into something watchable.
The third Matrix movie is a schmaltzy abomination and could not have been saved. The second one uncomfortably straddles that line between 'too pretentious/artsy to be an action romp' and 'not enough plot/character development to be an action-drama'. They needed to pick a direction and stick with it.
The second one could've been saved by reshooting (or eliminating) some key scenes and paring down the length of the action scenes. If they cut down on all of the pretentious symbolism or at least kept it to the level of the first Matrix movie (even though that movie had some stupid moments in it) it could've been more watchable.
Or if they didn't just want to have a straight-up action movie they had an equally daunting task ahead of them. As far as adding stuff goes, another big problem with the 2nd movie are the characters. There are a lot more of them than in the 1st one, but they still get the same broad character sketching. I had to look on a wiki to see what was up with the Merovingian. Why didn't the albino twins feature more heavily into the plot or at least have a proper showdown with Neo? Why didn't Trinity and Morpheus have a bigger role to play? Also, confusedmatthew is right. Postmodern philosophy sucks and has no place in a movie like this. It made a bunch of plot points laughable. So either go back towards using universal symbols/concepts or pick another philosophical angle.
It's easier to cut things than it is to rework ill-fitting concepts, so most people go with the 'run it through an editor' option. I can't really disagree with them there. But it's frustrating because Matrix Reloaded could've been a good movie. All of the pieces were there but it just never gelled into something good. Sort of like what happened to Iron Man 2. You see traces of brilliance but they get crushed underneath the aimless mediocrity.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:You see traces of brilliance but they get crushed underneath the aimless mediocrity.
You could argue this of the first movie as well, it tended to get slightly aimless. But the idea behind it and the special effects were enough to pull it through.
You thought that the first movie was aimless? In which parts? I thought it was pretty tightly-plotted for when it came out.
A lot of the Matrix's concepts were new to the public at large when it first came out, so some of their blathering or Seinfeldian conversations I could forgive since they directly expanded on 'new' themes. I didn't think that said parts were great, just decent-to-good. Enough to capture peoples' imaginations. Remember that the movie came out in the 1999 and a huge portion of the viewing public still viewed the Internet as alien. I mean, people were still mostly connecting on dial-up for God's sake.
The second movie could've been even better than the first if they would've tightened up the action sequences, gave more for the secondary characters to do (both on the heroes and villains side), made the stakes higher, and didn't wank their stupid postmodern philosophy all over it. The characters in the first movie were two-dimensional cardboard badasses (with Morpheus and Agent Smith coming the closest towards having a personality) so the second movie had some catching up to do, but not a LOT. Which seems like a tall order, but a month's worth of script rewriting beforehand could've taken care of that.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Wed Jun 30, 2010 1:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:You thought that the first movie was aimless? In which parts? I thought it was pretty tightly-plotted for when it came out.
It was reasonable, but (from hazy memory) contained too many little asides. I'm thinking that they could have swapped some background material for fleshing out the characters or abandoning characters and going for the full action movie or putting more thought into the universe.
I keep thinking about scenes from the various movies, and though I hate to admit it... I think one of the larger problems may have just been Keanu Reeves... he's too damned wooden.
Think of how the role would have been different with someone like Robert Downy Jr or Brad Pitt...
Personally, I think The Matric movies could have been saved by not making any more. The ending of the first Matrix was closure enough. I don't see a need to make more.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
Crissa wrote:The music from the movies was really good, though. Of course, it would've been good without the movies. Why did II need a rave scene, exactly?
-Crissa
Because when the movie came out, raves were becoming nostalgic. And they wanted one more reason for me to wish for a grapefruit spoon to gouge my eyes out.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
Another big aspect to the fail was that half or more of the backstory necessary to understand the matrix wasn't in the actual film. Theres been a lot said about the fact that the second film was cut up and messed around to be able to make a computer game, and there was some information in the animatrix films that wasn't in the films and was referred to.
Since the vast majority of the people watching them would only be watching the films they should have made it possible to get everything from the films.
Then there was parts like the fact that everyone thinks they're neo and can fight the agents. Which ruins the badassness of them if Morpheus can fight one for an extended period.
I also think a lot of it came down to the fact that the second and third films were originally one film. Why can't we have a pair of films and instead only have trilogies? How many good second parts to trilogies are there?
At the end of the first movie Neo should pretty much reshape the Matrix at will. "Upgraded" agents are laughable, and so in the first couple of the minutes the believability of the world is already in the shitter. I could have bought him only being to deal with stuff he can actually perceive and agents trying to ambush him. I could have bought hundreds of agents drowning him in bodies. I could have bought him refusing to kill hundreds of agents because he does not want to kill so many human beings. I could even have bought the couple of rogue programs being immune to reshaping. But we got agents 2.0, immune to the One for no reason whatsoever. The story was dead from that point, leaving us with the action scenes. Don't get me wrong, the highway chase is nice and I love the way they actually gave some thought as to how becoming incorporeal might work in a fight. But action scenes alone do not a great movie make.
CatharzGodfoot wrote:And they wanted one more reason for me to wish for a grapefruit spoon to gouge my eyes out.
YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE TERRIFYING LEGEND OF KEANU REEVE'S ALABASTER ASS. Not here you can't.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Oldboy being the second movie in what trilogy? Not that I want to remember anything from that film, despite its being on my list of the top 5 movies ever made.
Current pet peeves:
Misuse of "per se". It means "[in] itself", not "precisely". Learn English.
Malformed singular possessives. It's almost always supposed to be 's.
More seriously, The Matrix was philosophically pretty stupid. There were some decent spiderman jumps and alright bullet time, but you got much more exciting combat of that nature watching Equilibrium. The Matrix happened to get a perfect storm of marketing. Being pitched to just the right demographic to see some damn bullet time and freshman philosophy.
The problem was, that's all there was. The first half of the Plato's Cave analogy with a very simplistic Jesus metaphor and... that's it. That was the whole plot. The life of Jesus on a backdrop of very simple Eidos and some pretty action visuals.
There are lots of ways to go from there. You could explore the Third Man counterargument, where you keep dropping out of the "real" world into "realer" worlds. You could engage with the world you've created as something other than the backdrop for a freshman philosophy paper. Maybe do some worl building or politicking.
But what they decided to do instead was just repeat the first movie's formula. They told the life story of Jesus again, even though they had already gone to the end of it in the first movie. And they just slapped up another intro to philosophy topic: in Matrix 2 it was the topic that some people believe in Fate and other people believe in Free Will. But again, they never went anywhere with that idea. It just... sat there. Being fucking stupid.
And I don't think The Matrix 3 could have been saved. Because after Matrix 2: Electric Bugaloo, I elected to not watch it. It could have been shot by Cecil D. Cameron Spielberg and I wouldn't have watched it. Because I saw Matrix 2 for free, and I was so angry that I wanted my money back.
Oldboy being the second movie in what trilogy? Not that I want to remember anything from that film, despite its being on my list of the top 5 movies ever made.
Oldboy is in a series of three movies by that director (and most of the same cast) called "The Vengeance Trifecta." Warning: Sympathy For Mister Vengeance involves a little girl drowning and calling for help while a deaf man is standing a few meters away and looking in the opposite direction. The third movie does involve a woman slow poisoning a prison bully to death with bleach tainted medicine while smiling and being generally supportive - but it isn't nearly as soul crushing as the other two.
