Matrix Reloaded review (plenty of spoilers)
Ghāshūl
It's very funny, in my opinion:
Uhm, and, don't read if you haven't watched the movie, but you knew
that, right?
Have you seen "The Matrix: Reloaded" yet? Jesus, it ****ing sucked. It
sucked so bad, that I'm actually a little bit angry. I need to *****
about this movie because I think this was perhaps one of the stupidest
films I have EVER seen. I just got out of the theater two hours ago,
and I still can't sleep because I'm so annoyed. So allow me to
share...
First, we open up the movie with some more crap "bullet time" slo-mo
shots of people falling through glass, and big fiery explosions.
Apparently, in the Matrix, EVERYTHING is explosive. Wood, glass,
concrete, metal, puppies, human skin, whatever - if two things make
contact with one another in the Matrix, they explode into a big fiery
orange ball of flame. But in slow motion. Same old, same old. God
forbid we don't catch every little tiny glimpse of an explosion, or
the poor Watchowski Brothers (or however the hell you spell that)
might actually have to write a ****ing story. But, no fear; they've
packed this movie so full of other crap, that there's no time for
story. Yee-haw, boys, we gots some 'splosions to watch!
So after Trinity jumps through the air in one of those interminable
slo-mo-with-shattered-glass-and-bullets falling scenes, we see her get
shot. But then Neo wakes up and its all been a dream (what a
magnificent and groundbreaking piece of storytelling THAT was). Then
Trinity wakes up and they spend some time looking at one another like
a pair of retarded, malnourished junkie models, which I'm sure was a
real acting stretch for Keanu (or however the hell you spell that). I
cannot imagine these two people actually being in love, or even being
able to maintain a conversation for more than about three minutes.
They exchange a few lines of vapid, pseudo-intellectual dialogue and
then stare long in into each others sunken, vacant eyes. The unspoken
message they convey is clear:
“This movie is going to SUCK.”
Some other stuff happens next. I can't really remember what it was
because I at this point took a sip of my beverage. It was root beer -
a favorite of mine - and it was so sweet and delicious that for a
moment I forgot all about the horrible crap fest unfolding before my
eyes. My mouth was all a-tingle with the sharp but mellow flavor of
the root beer, and I almost didn't remember that I wasn't having a
good time, and that I was supposed to be mindlessly praising whatever
I saw on the screen, and that I couldn't get away because I rode there
with a friend...
Then Elron showed up. Just as in the first film, he was dressed up
just like the Secret Service/FBI/CIA agent from every movie ever made.
He was obviously there to do something interesting, so he copied
himself, and, in what was an unbelievable coup in motion picture
special effects, we see TWO of him on the screen at the same time. It
was clear at this point that the filmmakers wished for us to marvel at
the fact that there were two of him there, even though that particular
special effect was perfected some time back during the Korean War. But
the Watchowskis (or however the hell you spell that) have just learned
that they can cut and paste and flip stuff horizontally with
Photoshop, and they want you to be impressed. At this point, I
actually heard a guy behind me say, "Whoa!" Oh, how I weep for the
future.
Next, Neo showed up and left really quickly just to show that he can
fly. I must give credit here: the pre-flight special effect is
actually pretty cool, although certainly not groundbreaking in any
manner. It is one of those cool little understated graphic effects
that add a bit of individuality to the character and to the movie.
Which means, of course, that in this movie, it is very lonely indeed.
Then some more stuff happened. Really, you think I'm being flippant,
but so many scenes in this film could have been placed ANYWHERE in the
movie and it wouldn't have made a difference that it is really hard to
remember what happened in which order. Eventually, Neo goes to the
Oracle, but before Neo gets to the Oracle, we have to have yet another
pointless kung-fu fight in which absolutely nothing interesting
happens and no real threat is offered. At least the guy actually
looked like he might be a kung-fu expert. But the fight scenes in this
movie had already been scheduled to be dull and non-threatening, so
any skill the actor may actually have had was mercifully prevented
from actually making its way on screen. Thanks, Hollywood.
When Neo finally meets the Oracle is the first time you can really
tell that the Watchowski Brothers (or however the hell you spell that)
have absolutely nothing to say and no story to tell. The dialogue in
the Oracle scene is the template for every other conversation that
takes place in this movie. It went something like this:
Oracle: "Hi, Neo. I know everything. I know everything you need to
know. I know how to help you. I know exactly what you need. But I'm
not going to tell you until you dance a little, monkeyboy. I'm gonna
make you sit here and we'll both pretend to be philosophical and a lot
cooler and smarter than we really are, and we'll have ourselves a
nice, long, pointless chat during which I'll contradict everything you
say in a very vague and nonspecific manner. And when you've kissed my
*** enough and we've annoyed the audience a great deal, then maybe
I'll spill the beans. But even then I'm going to give you just enough
so that you suffer needlessly for the rest of this crap movie. Now how
do you like them apples?"
Neo: (staring blankly from behind ultra-hip Euro shades) "Uh. Er...
huh?"
Oracle: "Good doggy. You want a piece of candy? I love candy."
And then the Oracle starts talking about vampires and werewolves and
ghosts. No, I'm not kidding. As soon as she ****ing said it, I knew
they we're going to show up later. The first refuge of a crap sci-fi
writer is, whenever you have nothing else to offer, to try to
incorporate elements of fantasy or mysticism. It's an age old trick
that has NEVER EVER WORKED. Use some of the mildly interesting
elements we've set up in the prior movie to create a new and
interesting villain for our characters to interact with? ****, no,
let's use vampires! And why not; the leather clad,
pseudo-intellectual, self-pitying Goth angst-ers were already in the
theater. That's the vampire crowd, baby! Jesus, these guys are ****ing
amateurs.
So the Oracle leaves, and then Elron comes back to show Neo his new
self copying trick, and even though they start off the conversation
like they were going to be friends or work together somehow, the
writers obviously thought that this would be a far too interesting
turn of events that might actually engage the audience's brains in
some manner. So they decided to throw in another annoying kung-fu
fight. Elron makes a whole bunch of copies of himself to fight Neo,
which is apparently a completely new and interesting battle tactic
that the audience did not see the Insecticons use on every single
episode of The Transformers back in 1985. The fight itself lasts for
approximately one month, during which no one gets hurt at all, and
nothing happens to advance the story in any manner. At one point Neo
rips a metal pole out of the ground and swings it Sauron style,
sending Elron copies flying through the air, just like that battle
scene at the foot of Mt. Doom. It wasn't 'til then that Neo remembered
that he could ****ing FLY, so he takes off and leaves the Elron clones
looking at each other stupidly while a neon sign in the background
flashed "Laughter and Applause." The audience responds appropriately.
Sooner or later, we get to see Zion, the last human refuge. Imagine
the Death Star was built down in Moria and you've pretty much got it.
There were some decent special effects of the door mechanisms and a
guy driving a mech from one of the BattleTech games, but nothing to
write home about. Neo walks around and gets worshipped, and Morpheus
gets yelled at by another black guy (apparently white people and
Asians don't last long underground, because there aren't too many down
there). Then Morpheus goes to the Great Hall Of Exactingly Precise
Annunciation where people know and love him. Through his enormous
gapped teeth, he gives Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech,
and then the cast of Bring In Da Funk, Bring In Da Noise start banging
on huge weird pipes and the crowd goes ape****. Before too long, this
little scene turns into soft porn while we cut from what appears to be
a mass orgy in the Cave of Many Nipples, to Neo and Trinity having
sweaty sex in Yoda's little mud hut on Dagobah. Of course all of this
is accompanied by the requisite, mindless nu-metal house music, which
throbs like a hammered thumbnail in order to make us forget that none
of this really make a whole lot of sense, which seems to be the
underlying theme of this movie.
Anywho...
Eventually we go to a really classy restaurant where Neo, Morpheus,
and Trinity meet some Italian and/or French guy named
Aggravogueaddocious, or something equally improbable. He and his lady
are, of course, dressed to kill in the latest breast enhancing Euro
fashions while our heroes are garbed in patent leather and more
sunglasses. If anyone dressed like this in real life, they would be
mocked and ridiculed, but apparently this is not the way things go in
the Matrix. It is at this point in the film when Aggravogueaddocious
delivers the ONLY good line in the entire script - the one about
cursing in French. This is a damn good line. In fact, this line is so
good, I'm willing to bet the Bros. W. stole it from someone else and
then wrote the scene around it just to give their crap movie a tiny
speck of credibility. Just a guess.
Then Aggravogueaddocious brings some lady in the restaurant to orgasm
with a slice of Matrix pie. Again, I'm not joking. Aggravogueaddocious
writes the code for Matrix pie, and sends this chick a slice. What
sense does this make? I've stopped trying to figure it out by this
point. Long story short; she eats the Matrix pie, nuts in her chair,
and then makes her way to the ladies room to "freshen up" (that means
she's going to wipe off her creamy cooter, for all of you out there
who haven't been paying attention thus far). While this is going on
Aggravogueaddocious gives our heroes a VERY longwinded version of the
Oracle's speech in which he cleverly says nothing of value and
establishes himself as yet another entirely interchangeable character
whom the audience can immediately forget. He goes off to get head from
the lady he gave the pie to, and his woman takes our heroes into the
men's room to betray her man.
Why? Who the **** knows. She wants to betray Aggravogueaddocious, and
her price for doing so is... well, you'll never believe this. She
wants to make out with Neo.
What?! Hold the ****ing phone! She's going to betray an enormously
wealthy and powerful man, and in return she wants only to tongue Neo
while Trinity watches in the men’s room of a pretentious upscale
restaurant?! Because she wants to feel loved?! Huh?!? All logic has
gone down the drain at this point, and the film degrades into a high
school freshman's wet dream. This is stupid, but it's about to get a
whole lot worse.
After the kiss, they all go off to the big mansion to meet the
werewolf/vampire creatures. Really. Stop laughing. They look just like
people, but she tells the audience how bad they are, and how they come
from an "old version" of the Matrix, and how they are really tough,
and then she proves they're supernatural by shooting one through the
head with a silver bullet and killing it. See? It died when she shot
it with a silver bullet. It must have been supernatural. No normal
person would have died if they were shot through the brainpan with a
speeding silver slug. Makes sense to me.
So then there is another Kung-Fu fight, which includes a guy fighting
Neo with a ****ing trident, right out of Gladiator. Neo uses the Force
to pull some sai off of the wall, and then runs through a few Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtle moves, Raphael style. There is a lot of jumping
and dropping of weapons, but fortunately for Neo every square inch of
wall space in this mansion has been covered with sharpened ninja
weapons and other useful tools of death. Trinity and Morpheus go off
to fight two albino ringwraiths which look like Milli Vanilli. They
have a big gunfight on a freeway. Ultra powerful agents easily destroy
every car on the road by jumping on them real hard, but when they jump
on Trinity's car, they land softly and just can't seem to do anything
useful. Go figure. Morpheus kung-fu fights an agent on top of a semi
trailer while Trinity rides a crotch rocket with a weird little Asian
guy on the back. They ride with traffic. They ride against traffic.
Blah, blah, blah.
Next two semis crash into each other head on. Even though I'm positive
this is not what a collision of this type would look like, this is the
coolest special effect in the movie, so I pause to give it a modicum
of respect. There. Now back to the movie.
Other stuff happens here. To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t tell you
what, because the movie was really on my nerves at this point, and I
was enjoying the last of my delicious root beer. Eventually Neo meets
Colonel Sanders, who supposedly designed the Matrix. He calls himself
The Architect, and he is EXACTLY like The Oracle and
Aggravogueaddocious. He proves this by talking in circles in a very
self important and oh-aren't-I-just-the-cat's-pajamas manner and not
making any sense at all. He tells Neo that Trinity is going to die,
and that nothing Neo does can save her, and then Neo goes and saves
her anyway just to put Colonel Sanders' panties in a bunch. There is
some more flying, and lots of fire, and Trinity dies and Neo brings
her back to life, because, as we learned in the first movie, Neo is
actually Jesus. Some more trite things happen, and then we have some
really loud music and lots of green credits, which include the "To be
concluded" line that the Watchowski Brothers (or however the hell you
spell that) stole from "Back To The Future: Part II."
I stayed for the special, ultra-secret trailer at the end, which
everyone else in the theater knew about also. Apparently the next
movie is going to be just like this one, but with rain. I find it
difficult to contain my anticipation.
Let me save you some time and money; if you've seen Star Wars, Return
Of The Jedi, and either of The Lord Of The Rings movies, then you've
seen this film. This movie really wants to BE those films, but with a
club soundtrack and lots of Goth chic nonsense. If you really want to
get out to the theater, go see X-Men 2. Give this piece of **** as
wide a berth as you possibly can.
See you at the movies,
Chris
--
Regards Ghâshûl <JCHC><
For e-mail replace "spamfilter" with my nick.
ART Gallery: http://ghashul.dk/art/
"::thud, squish, thud, squish, thus, squish::
Poor dead horsey, why cant they just leave you alone?"
-ksp0704 (@ www.evboard.com)
Purple
audacity to state the following:
<chop>
I didn't even read past this paragraph. It's so painfully obvious that the
author is just bitching indiscriminately and didn't bother paying attention
to the plot that *was* there *and* forgot that this is a fucking trilogy.
The plot's not standalone, you dork! Good lord.
--
Purple
"Sometimes you get what you want.
Sometimes you get what you need.
But you're always gonna get what
You deserve." - Diffuser - Karma
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Grand Fromage
>It's very funny, in my opinion:
>
>Uhm, and, don't read if you haven't watched the movie, but you knew
>that, right?
Not really amusing or accurate. Good try at being funny, though.
--
"After all, can you imagine a world where the entire population worships a god
who *created* the horrible world they live in?"
Rich G.
> I just read this and I don't believe it's been posted in here yet.
> It's very funny, in my opinion:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and agree that it was funny in a "Rant as
artform" kinda way. I forwarded it and corporate mofo's review to a slew of
friends.
--
--
Rich G. http://www.livejournal.com/users/simplerich/
"You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people
can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad)
Ghāshūl
wrote:
>I didn't even read past this paragraph. It's so painfully obvious that the
>author is just bitching indiscriminately and didn't bother paying attention
>to the plot that *was* there *and* forgot that this is a fucking trilogy.
>The plot's not standalone, you dork! Good lord.
I would say that you're the dork :)
I found it to be very amusing *MOCK* review.
--
Regards Ghāshūl <JCHC><