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The Matrix Resurrections

Started by Bad Ambassador, December 06, 2021, 09:07:05 PM

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Replies From View

Watching this now, via putlocker which is hopefully not shoving viruses on my laptop while I type.  Glad I am.  1 hour and 10 minutes in.  The set up has been pleasurable but my heart has sunk a bit the more I'm being reminded of the stuff on Zion with the utterly uninspiring grey/brown visuals and yet again a general not believing in The One.

Hopefully it'll pull together, though.  I certainly have more hope attached to this than I did during part 3.  Maybe in some way it'll be possible to skip from the first film to this one, if you wanted, and kind of let the bits in between be a mystery.

Never knew before that Niobe was a two foot dwarf.  The ways that this film is taking me by surprise are not the ways I was expecting it to.

Replies From View

oh that's good that the jesus one meets a character called shepherd.  the subtlety is creeping back in

JamesTC

Quote from: Replies From View on December 23, 2021, 09:05:56 AMoh that's good that the jesus one meets a character called shepherd.  the subtlety is creeping back in

Spoiler alert
In the new Matrix (as in the world itself), Trinity appears to be "the one".
[close]

Josef K

Watched this last night on the HBO Max and I generally quite enjoyed it, but found it really distracting in places at how it looked a lot cheaper than even the first film's (relatively) modest budget - it had this whole mid-tier made for Netflix look about it.

I'm not really sure why, surely Warner would've given them a healthy budget for it? Is it just that the original trilogy was shot on film, or pandemic restrictions made things harder?

A lot of people in reviews have mentioned already, but the fight choreography was just awful, lots of cuts and shaky camera. I know Yuen Woo-ping wasn't back to choreograph things for this one, but you'd think they'd get someone decent to block out the scenes. They hired Chad Stahelski to make a couple of appearances as Trinity's husband instead of getting him to bring his John Wick expertise to the fight scenes?

Just watch the Morpheus dojo scene in the original and it's clear just how much work the actors put in - the action is crystal clear, it's not cut to shit, and it's genuinely impressive to watch. Now, 20 years later, the equivalent scene looks like something out of the Taken franchise.

This aside, wasn't terrible, Jessica Henwick was great, laughed out loud at the audacity of some of the meta references

Replies From View

Finished it now, and concur with the 6/10 better-than-parts-2-and-3 responses above.

True the action was strange, too much motion blur and very cheap-looking - in terms of effects it's the Superman 4 of the series - but it had more heart than the two earlier sequels as well as better storytelling, character motivations that made sense and infinitely less pomposity.

You could probably skip from part 1 to part 4 without losing much, considering how many flashbacks are used.  The arbitrary and nonsensical way peripheral characters are introduced in parts 2 and 3 you wouldn't be losing much to see them first introduced here instead.

Replies From View

Weird how Niobe is now a two-foot dwarf though.  Also she's doing perplexing "I am such an old woman, croak" acting through latex make-up that evokes Back to the Future Part 2 more than it does the Matrix.  Very strange decisions.

Replies From View

Bit on the nose calling it "bullet time" within the film.

A lot of annoying millennial-style language in usage throughout.  Can't decide if it's as annoying as the pompous, expository language used more prominently in 2 and 3.  Both types took me out of the films, in different ways.

Why is the post-credit scene there.  Just meaningless babble.

Replies From View

Quote from: the Fallen on December 21, 2021, 01:10:53 PMIt'll unsettle the redpill nutters which isn't a negative

Eh, it was all a bit on the nose with it's "sheeples" speech, and I can't see it unsettling anyone who already finds that kind of discourse reductive and irritating, which is pretty much everyone not in their teens or (at a push) early twenties.

It's all open-ended and vague enough to be giving a thumbs-up to any random conspiracy theorist who thinks they're onto some truth that nobody else can see.  And that's not a good thing.

Replies From View

Another problem for me, and this is entirely my own issue

Spoiler alert
was that the new Architect and Smith look too similar to my stupid brain.  Whenever I saw either of them I honestly couldn't remember which was which.  When the main characteristic of your new Smith is "piercing blue eyes" then why also give your new Architect that exact same feature?

But it's my own issue with facial recognition.  Considering how much I struggle with nuanced ordinary facial differences it's annoying really that I don't like films where characters are easily demarcated with superhero costumes.
[close]

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Replies From View on December 23, 2021, 01:20:34 PMAnother problem for me, and this is entirely my own issue

Spoiler alert
was that the new Architect and Smith look too similar to my stupid brain.  Whenever I saw either of them I honestly couldn't remember which was which.  When the main characteristic of your new Smith is "piercing blue eyes" then why also give your new Architect that exact same feature?

But it's my own issue with facial recognition.  Considering how much I struggle with nuanced ordinary facial differences it's annoying really that I don't like films where characters are easily demarcated with superhero costumes.
[close]

On that last point I think it might come down to your own issues with facial recognition, I thought they looked very different, plus one of them is Neil Patrick Harris who has been around for decades and so I never had any trouble telling the two apart.

Replies From View

Well I did say it was my own issue with facial recognition.  Quite openly and directly.

JamesTC

Quote from: Replies From View on December 23, 2021, 12:57:43 PMEh, it was all a bit on the nose with it's "sheeples" speech, and I can't see it unsettling anyone who already finds that kind of discourse reductive and irritating, which is pretty much everyone not in their teens or (at a push) early twenties.

It's all open-ended and vague enough to be giving a thumbs-up to any random conspiracy theorist who thinks they're onto some truth that nobody else can see.  And that's not a good thing.

I would argue the opposite. The film is completely lacking any subtlety when espousing the message. It openly mocked (in a joking/loving way) the people who read into what the subtext of the original truly was and it delivered a big middle finger to the alt-righters who appropriated the imagery for their own means.

At times it felt to me like Lana Wachowski's version of Lilly Wachowski's Tweet to Ivanka Trump and Elon Musk.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Replies From View on December 23, 2021, 01:59:40 PMWell I did say it was my own issue with facial recognition.  Quite openly and directly.

I know, and I was just trying to confirm that, it wasn't meant as a slight or attack in any way.

Old Nehamkin

Watching this now. Afraid to say it kind of keeps reminding me of Red Dwarf Back to Earth.

Replies From View

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on December 23, 2021, 02:25:44 PMI know, and I was just trying to confirm that, it wasn't meant as a slight or attack in any way.

Thank you, and has anyone ever told you quite how much you resemble Carrie-Anne Moss from off of Memento

Replies From View

The
Spoiler alert
residual self-image stuff
[close]
was confusing this time.

the Fallen

Quote from: Old Nehamkin on December 23, 2021, 03:06:00 PMWatching this now. Afraid to say it kind of keeps reminding me of Red Dwarf Back to Earth.

ME too

it's meta af so far

The.Matrix.Resurrections.2021.1080p.HMAX.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.Atmos.HDR.H.265-NOSiViD.mkv

White Rabbit is too played-out

I say this about virtually every movie protagonist, but Neo should do ket to give him deeper insight into the failures of the original trilogy, doing keys in the toilets of that coffeeshop

Thursday

I thought it was good, considering the reviews are "polarizing" I found it strange that I found myself somewhere in the middle, but I'm not sure what people were wanting from a new matrix film.

Replies From View

Exactly - expectations must have been on the floor for most people.  The Matrix already had its Phantom Menace disappointment moment in 2003.  Everybody knows what a 20 years later belated sequels means now, and nobody was expecting anything from this.


I understand the Back to Earth vibes - I got feelings of Bill and Ted 3 too when they
Spoiler alert
wheeled out the Merovingian just because presumably he was one of the ones available for filming.  Half expected to see William Sadler as Death make an appearance.
[close]

Also made me think of The Five Doctors as well, at times.  Caroline John is available for an hour on Thursday!  Quickly write a scene with Liz Shaw!

JamesTC

Didn't think anybody else would think of Red Dwarf Back to Earth. Two scenes in particular from BTE

Spoiler alert
Craig Charles confronting the characters and having a bit of a breakdown and Lister leaving Kochanski at the end.
[close]

Old Nehamkin

Well I thought it was OK. Aside from the meta-heavy first act (which I found quite tediously self-satisfied despite a couple of cool flourishes) it felt broadly similar to the two previous sequels and ran into some of the same basic pitfalls (fuzzy dramatic stakes, Zion and the internal politics thereof being fucking boring) but I felt more endeared to it than otherwise by the end. Reeves and Moss still make a great screen couple and I liked that the film maintains/reaffirms the almost magical fairy tale quality of Neo and Trinity's relationship. The final shot left we with a smile on my face and that's not nothing, I suppose.

elliszeroed

Was it intentional that the new "Bullet Time", Swarm Mode, was basically suicidal zombies?

(Because everyone loved The Walking Dead/ zombie stuff a few years ago)

Creative bankruptcy or a satire of the same?

Custard

Yeah, I thought this was ok. It was certainly a step up from the sequels, though I guess that wasn't too hard

Agreed that the action scenes were plop, however. And the one thing you expect from a Matrix film is a decent looking bit of action.

Maybe I'm a bit thick but I didn't really get what was going on in the first half of the film, and found the first 50 minutes or so really confusing. Why's Morpheus a program now, who does silly dances?

Some of the dialogue was a bit shit, but again a big step up from the sequels. Though again it was filled with (seemingly) unintentionally funny moments, like when Trinity shouts out Neo's name in the cafe fight, and he bellows hers back to her. Made me proper belly laff

Also thought the ageing effects on Niobe were bad. Surely that's not that hard to achieve these days? Look at Captain America at the end of Endgame, for instance

And for someone who apparently did so much good for her and her people, she don't half act the twat towards Neo. Ungrateful moo

I laughed at the end as it'll clearly wind up many, many manchildren, and that's also a good thing

3 bags
6/10

13 schoolyards

I thought the return of
Spoiler alert
the Merovingian and his band of hobos
[close]
was interesting (though not particularly well done) in a meta way as it was both "according to the logic of this new Matrix there aren't going to be any big kung-fu battles against Agents so bringing in these guys is the only way we can do an old-style big battle" and also "this is a character we feel is so central to The Matrix story we have to bring them back, even though nobody outside of the film-makers has given a single solitary shit about them and even having them back in the third film was one time too many".

Though if anyone had ever given a shit about the second and third films then *not* bringing them back would have been a big plot hole considering
Spoiler alert
the previous movies had explicitly said he and his buddies were from an earlier version of the Matrix and could survive the updates that wiped out everyone else
[close]

Bence Fekete

Not gonna lie, after all the 6/10 scores on here I was expecting a bit more from this

Replies From View

Quote from: Bence Fekete on December 24, 2021, 06:46:10 AMNot gonna lie, after all the 6/10 scores on here I was expecting a bit more from this

Lol what happened

olliebean

I honestly don't know who or what
Spoiler alert
the Merovingian and his mates
[close]
are, even after rewatching all three films earlier this year. I mean, I remember that they existed, but I can't recall anything about them or what part they played in the story.

A bit like Bucky in the Marvel films.

Custard

He was the French bloke. It took me a while to recognise him too

The most interesting thing he did was get an unseen nosh in the toilets

That was another unintentionally funny moment actually, him bellowing shit dialogue in this new film about things not being original anymore, as there was a clunky fist fight going on around him. Couldn't even hear most of what he was saying

I kinda love these films. Theyre so clunky and stilted. That first film really was either a flash in the pan or a fluke, wasn't it? The sequels are so inferior that it borders on hilarious

I've gotta ask though, why was the budget for this clearly so miniscule? The Matrix was a major fucking thing 18, 20 years ago. It appears to still have a very large fanbase, so why was this so cheap looking?

Replies From View

Because it is easy enough to just stand still while someone moves around you, and use motion blur for when someone nips in to grab something.

Verrrrry easy and therefore good enough

Replies From View

Quote from: Custard on December 24, 2021, 10:17:03 AMHe was the French bloke. It took me a while to recognise him too

I had no difficulty recognising him (which is ironic considering my stated issues with facial recognition, but relatively speaking he is a cartoon character) - but still, knowing he's the French bloke in the Matrix sequels, who was he?


He sat around drinking wine, he wanted the eyes of the oracle for some reason, he seemed to be holding the key maker prisoner and he had a bunch of kung fu henchmen just like he did in this one.  He engineered matrix code into cakes that gave women orgasms for his own amusement.

I remember all of this, but I'm still none the wiser about who he is!



Within the reality of the film, why would a character bellow "spin-off sequel reboot" as he fucks off?