Tons of Spoilers and Harsh Criticism

[The King Of Rock]

This isn't to troll, please feel free to disagree and debate with me etc etc. The following is simply my opinion...


I hate the Matrix. I mean, I loved the first movie. It was what it was. It wasn't particularly original but it wasn't supposed to be. It was really fun.

Then the hype started. All my dumb friends thought The Matrix was just the most brilliant piece of film making ever. Ohhh it's so deeep.

So a couple years go by and people have puffed up the Wachowski Brothers a bit and they decide after they've cashed the checks that oh it's time to make this a trilogy. Pbbbtht..


If they had written this whole 3 movie story in advance I bet it could have been really special, but in my opinion the last 2 movies are very half-assed.

Granted the bike chase in Reloaded is awesome, the ending where Keanu goes and talks to Colonel Sanders from KFC about the Matrix is just a bunch of horse crap.

The ending of Revolutions is ripped straight out of Dune. The blind messiah thing, give me a f-ing break.

Anyway, this is my opinion. I really wanted to like these movies, don't get me wrong, but I felt very let down.

Holy **** also what about Trinity's death? It took a half an hour and she was impaled by about 10 robot arms. She kept on talking and talking and talking and monologue blah blah blah my god I wanted to rip my eyes out sitting there in the theater, couldn't believe I paid good money for that garbage.


What do you think?

 

[Rodders]

I don't think that you are alone in thinking this. I certainly felt the same way and i think a lot of other people were hugely disappointed.

I did really enjoy the cartoon DVD that was released though. Some very good stories, particularly about the start of the machine/human war.

 

[C Of K]

I won't disagree.

The sequels were inevitable after the success of the first one. They weren't as good as the first, but they did introduce interesting characters like the Trainman and the Merovingian.

I must admit that I would choose the Matrix Trilogy over most of the scifi crap that Hollywood has released since. Not all, but most. At the moment, I can't think of any post Matrix scifi that I like more than the Matrix movies, but I'm sure they exist...somewhere... I'm just too tired to think much on it right now.

I noticed the similarities with Dune as well, and mainly Children of Dune. Truthfully, they could have handicapped Neo some other way, like severing his arms. If he truly was "The One," what are a couple of arms to him? Well, at least Trinity didn't end up giving birth to twins before the end.

 

[The King Of Rock]

LOL yeah, at least she didn't have twins. I bet they considered going that route. I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I think The Matrix is best treated as a standalone film, and the sequels as non-canonical cash-ins that were, at times, extremely good (the highway chase) and at times simply beyond disbelief (the robots attacking Zion, defended by men in mech suits with no protected cab - I actually got bored in the cinema at this point).

I've watched Matrix Reloaded a few times and enjoyed it to a degree, though always felt I was holding it back at arms length somewhat. Matrix Revolutions I've only ever seen once - I might see it again one day, but am not making a big effort.

Plan to rewatch The Matrix again very soon - was watching the original film trailer a few days ago as well:

YouTube - |HD| The Matrix - Trailer

 

[ktabic]

Entirely agree with you about treating it as a standalone film. I've only seen the other two once each. Will probably never see either again.

I rewatched The Matrix a couple of weeks ago. It's still great.

 

[cidetraq]

The only problem I had was that Neo could "see" in the real world and destroy the machines in the real world in #3, which suggests the real world was just another Matrix. But the film never goes into detail there.

 

[Overread]

The only problem I had was that Neo could "see" in the real world and destroy the machines in the real world in #3, which suggests the real world was just another Matrix. But the film never goes into detail there.

It's totally possible that it is another layer of control; however its also likely that any human born in the Matrix has within them more implants than they are aware of. They mostly only seem to make use of the connection ports to re-enter the matrix so it wouldn't be a surprise if there were other parts of their cybernetic structure that they are unaware of. A simple built in wi-fi system that would allow machines to track them when released and similarly that could be hacked and reversed could be the avenue that Neo uses.

The machines themselves clearly operate on layers of control themselves so a simple war drone might well be operating quite low on the pecking order and thus be totally unaware of the potential connection.

 

[Stewart Hotston]

It's weird - the coders ethic that runs through the whole thing is superb, as is the virological ontology/soteriology but it should have gone so much further, could have been so much more full on weird. It lost me at the moment that 'The One' has to have a fist fight with a werewolf inside a world in which anything is feasible. That, right there, is a massive failure of imagination and a dumbing down for audiences who were expecting more martial arts.

The first film was awesome - completely unexpected - but it lost its balls after that and never really recovered. I can see the lack of ability to follow through being both the fault of the writers and the studio who probably felt they knew what made the first film such a success.

 

[HanaBi]

With regards the sequels to The One, I can barely remember the stories for each! In fact I can never remember which followed The Matrix given the rather confusing titles - was it Reloaded or Revolutions? Either way they were totally unmemorable and hugely disappointing,.

Give it a few more years, and a Matrix reboot will be on the cards!

 

[Anthoney]

I always thought that after the first movie the Wachowski brothers, I mean sisters, bought into their own press. They decided the trilogy was supposed to be some kind of religious experience, rather than just some really fun movies.

 

[Overread]

I think the problem was that the actual story got lost in the action sequences. Furthermore they threw a lot of elements in that, visually looked cool but didn't make perfect practical sense to those viewing. The underlaying story - as I can see it - is actually rather good; its just presented really poorly and you have to go hunting for it.

My understanding of the story is essentially that the machines and humans were stuck in a cycle of mutual dependants and control issues.
The machines had won the war, but they couldn't beat their own core programming for purpose. Each machine requires purpose or it is deleted, which is fine for your data management and power regulation machines, but someone has to be at the "top" of the machine chain. Or rather not someone but an objective - something has to drive the machines forward and this was serving humanities interests.

That's why they developed the power system of using humans as a power source, use the humans as power and lock them in the matrix in order for the machines to then have reason and be able to serve humanity for ever whilst humanity also powers the machines - a near perfect exchange of dependence.

However layered on top of that is the machine desire for self preservation. If we go back to the war and assume that the machines focused on being far more efficient when the sun was blacked out, it would make sense that they likely placed a war-based machine in charge of most of their culture in order to win faster. This machine did indeed win the war, however if we also assume this machine had a sense of self preservation it would also realise that by winning it was also going to be deleted. With the power and matrix system it would have no reason to exist any more. There would never be a war again. Therefore I believe it sabotaged the early forms of the matrix - rather than it being humanity rebelling without realising, I think that machine broke the Matrix in subtle ways each time. Prolonging a period of uncertainty and potential human rebellion.

The early oracle program was likely one of the few that identified this and sought resolution, at first by presenting the idea of allowing a specific type of mindset to "reject" and escape the Matrix. Built under the guise of still serving humanity by releasing them "at their request" and then providing the "escaped/released" with a settlement of viable use; then wrapping the whole package up so that the humans would interpret it as a prison system to fight against it created a perpetual war. Every time the escaped humans rose up to dangerous numbers they would be stamped down and the cycle restarted.
Neo is part of that in a sense that I think the war machine realised that humanity had to have a fighting chance otherwise it would not be needed; so you sneak an error into the code again that results in a creature like Neo being made. Not only does it help to unify the escaped humans so that they don't fall to in-fighting; but it also keeps your subordinate machines in line. Yes you need to build that huge military defensive system because what if the "chosen one" comes. Just look at the defences the machine city has; there's really no need what so ever for that sheer scale of defensive setup as the humans would never ever rise to be able to defeat it. But a Neo can.



This time around though the Oracle acted again and I believe engineered it so that when Neo released Smith, Smith's code moved outside of the influence of the core machine people. This allowed Smith to do exactly what he was programmed to do. By this point we also look at Saphy who shows that many of the machines are now not just of an intelligence whereby they see their own "morality" and many try to hide in the matrix to avoid deletion; but that machines can exist now without a singular overriding purpose save to "exist". At this point the Oracle can see that the old war machine was going to keep the cycle going forever because it benefited it alone, even though machine society had moved on. It was a revolution for the machines almost more than humanity because the idea of peace I think was to set the ground work for machines "living" as opposed to serving. Perhaps even the concept that old machines might even die for a new generation to take over (note how when the "god" machine (which I assume tobe the war machine) says "it's done" its not a victorious statement but quite resigned. Because with the concept of peace that machine might well have just signed his old dead sentence - bound as it is too much to its old core code.



Essentially the latter two films should have built into a story more for the machines than Neo and the human uprising; but this was poorly presented and even what I surmise above is only a guess at what the underlying story might be.