mol on 17/12/2008 at 21:52
Quote Posted by Martin Karne
Let me play devil advocate here, what was wrong with the sequels?!?!?!?
[/runs away like an Olympic runner]
They had absolutely nothing to offer. Effects, but no plot to speak of. They were rehashes, so clearly just made for the dough. The first one had something going for it, the others just rode on the wave. And were rubbish. At least I thought they were.
Thirith on 18/12/2008 at 11:10
Actually, I felt that they weren't made for the money - I honestly felt that the success of the first film had gone to the Wachowskis' heads and they thought that they really had something cool and deep on their hands. The films didn't feel calculating to me - they felt like the writers/directors were never told that they were coming up with pretentious drivel.
Muzman on 18/12/2008 at 15:01
Yeah, the story takes on the 'Woah' factor and runs with it like sophomoric fan fiction, trying to encompass all life and philosophy.
So much ink had been spilled on The Matrix's subtext that the sequels appeared to be nothing but subtext on top of subtext and nobody noticed that the actual story didnt really function on its own. And let's face it; Once you have the metaphor of the The Matrix being the conceptual prison of the mind we all live in and characters actually escape said thing you have a problem of 'oh, sorry. Reality is actually reality, it's just the last reality wasn't. This one is though!' and things start to unravel. You've also made the relevance of the place where the cool stuff happens questionable at best. There's ways they could have made all this work, I think, but they were too busy cramming the I Ching and the Bahagvad Gita et al. (and, embarassingly, 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail'; a book eviscerated and staked for all time by tired historians in the wake of The DaVinci Code's success)
SD on 18/12/2008 at 16:07
I liked the sequels. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before. I know they're flawed, but I prefer a movie that aims high and falls a bit short than one which aims squarely for mediocrity in the first instance (see: virtually every other blockbuster action film ever made).
Sure, we can all be intellectual snobs and mock the muddled philosophical elements, but in doing so, we conveniently ignore the fact that most moviegoers are never exposed to ideas like this in any other sphere of life.
I'm sure we would all wish that Joe who stacks shelves at K-Mart would go out and read some Wittgenstein and expand his mental faculties, but it ain't gonna happen. If films like this can take quite complex philosophical concepts and make them more accessible, even if they're only partially successful, I think that's probably a good thing.
And you know, regardless of how successful the first film was, it was still a bit of a risk to do what they did with the sequels. It would have been easy to make a couple of dumb action flicks, but they didn't want to do that. They put themselves out there and tried something a bit different, and whether it worked or not, I think you have to respect them for at least trying in the first place.
Morte on 18/12/2008 at 18:30
I still haven't seen the last Matrix movie, I was so put off by the second. It's easy to pick on the sophomoric philosophy, but the core of the problem is with that movies is that nothing happens. For over two fucking hours. Oh sure, things explode and there's burly brawls and people chase each other around but it all amounts to nothing.
Oh yeah, and then the Explainer comes in at the end to explain things. And Trinity get shot. That's hardly a pre-credits sequence.
Martek on 19/12/2008 at 01:57
The Matrix was my first DVD purchase - made before I had yet bought a DVD player. I love it and have watched it many times over the years.
However, over time, I have come to enjoy the second one even more than the first. It's my favorite Matrix movie. I think it's spot-on excellent all the way through.
Martek
Matthew on 19/12/2008 at 09:33
I actually found that myself, Martek. Like you, the first film was one of my earliest DVD purchases, too.
Thirith on 19/12/2008 at 10:10
Hmm... In terms of story, acting, characterisation I find very little that is positive in the second and third films. I find them boring and pretentious, almost entirely lacking in humanity (which would ground both the action and the philosophy in the characters). They felt like a string of sequences designed to top what came before it, infused with wannabe deep philosophising of the sort that first-year students come up with after lots of cheap red wine and pot.
Technically they're magnificent, obviously, but pretty much like the Star Wars prequels the constant onslaught of effects meant that they very soon lost their impact on me.
I know this sounds like I'm just repeating the ususal Matrix bashing, but part of me is trying to understand what people might see in the second and third movie.
