Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2003-11-05 10:14 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2003-11-05 10:14 pm
Fuck.
Matrix revolutions sucked. From beginning to end, it sucked like a whore in a bad porno movie. It was pretentious, confusing, gratuitous, repetitive, sell-out, dumbed-down, drawn-out shit. And I'll even take those in order, and try to avoid spoilers.
Pretentious. As in, an overblown idea of its own importance. It wasn't as bad as Reloaded on this front, because the speeches and rambling were a little more cut down, but god--we know it's the final battle, we don't need the operatic soundtrack to tell us that. We don't need characters dabbling in half-baked philosophical babble with no thought-provoking twist on reality behind it. The directors also had an overblown idea of how much the audience could connect to the characters--in reality, not at all. I just sat back with my popcorn and watched the boom-boom-crash action scenes, I couldn't really bring myself to care about the fate of X minor character.
Confusing. Okay, this is one of my biggest gripes with Revolutions--it has ten zillion subplots and no main plot. We're simultaneously expected to take in Neo and Trinity's quest, Naiobe's daring pilot maneuvers, at least three different Zion battle subplots, and keep in the back of our minds the fates/"philosophies" of Smith, the Oracle, the Architect, and a bunch of programs we were introduced to in the beginning of Revolutions. Not happening, sorry. Especially when the purpose uniting all these things is obfuscated at best.
Gratuitous. I'm sorry, but there was a lot of shit in there I just did not need to see, shit the Wachowski brothers seem to have thrown in just for the sake of showing off. Like, say, most of the Zion battle. This ties in closely with "drawn-out," which I'll go into in more detail below.
Repetitive. Actually, it wasn't really that repetitive, I just needed a single word to reference "gakking shamelessly from every good sci-fi movie ever made." There's a Return-of-the-Jedi fight scene. There are Sigourney Weaver wannabes running around taking potshots at machines. There is even--I kid you not--a rehash of the lobby scene. What kind of a saga copies off itself?
Sell-out. A theorem began formulating itself in my mind, four years ago as I walked out of The Phantom Menace. It came to full fruition tonight, and here I state: there is an inverse relationship between the fanciness of the special effects and the quality of the movie. The directors have obviously forgotten this.
Dumbed-down. Oddly enough, this goes with pretentious. Gee, the viewers might not notice that this is the Final Battle (to be followed by the Final Final Battle)! Let's make it really, really obvious! I don't need to be bashed over the head to know when something important is happening, thank you very much.
Drawn-out. Another major bitch of mine--everything took ten times longer than it should've. The battle for Zion, which probably lost many people after five minutes, was drawn out for the better part of an hour. ________'s death scene was stretched out to what felt like ten minutes, when (s)he should've been writhing and screaming in pain for thirty seconds and died based on the wounds (s)he had, instead of making a way-too-long, way-too-calm speech.
A few other bones to pick--The Matrix Revolutions is vying closely with Chamber of Secrets for worst movie ending ever filmed. I won't say more than that. Also, aside from the very beginning Trinity was relegated to the role of sidekick, just being there for support and to save Neo's ass when he got himself into really deep shit. And there are more plot holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese.
Okay, more later, including *gasp* the good stuff. I have to catch my bus now, since this was written half last night and half this morning.
Pretentious. As in, an overblown idea of its own importance. It wasn't as bad as Reloaded on this front, because the speeches and rambling were a little more cut down, but god--we know it's the final battle, we don't need the operatic soundtrack to tell us that. We don't need characters dabbling in half-baked philosophical babble with no thought-provoking twist on reality behind it. The directors also had an overblown idea of how much the audience could connect to the characters--in reality, not at all. I just sat back with my popcorn and watched the boom-boom-crash action scenes, I couldn't really bring myself to care about the fate of X minor character.
Confusing. Okay, this is one of my biggest gripes with Revolutions--it has ten zillion subplots and no main plot. We're simultaneously expected to take in Neo and Trinity's quest, Naiobe's daring pilot maneuvers, at least three different Zion battle subplots, and keep in the back of our minds the fates/"philosophies" of Smith, the Oracle, the Architect, and a bunch of programs we were introduced to in the beginning of Revolutions. Not happening, sorry. Especially when the purpose uniting all these things is obfuscated at best.
Gratuitous. I'm sorry, but there was a lot of shit in there I just did not need to see, shit the Wachowski brothers seem to have thrown in just for the sake of showing off. Like, say, most of the Zion battle. This ties in closely with "drawn-out," which I'll go into in more detail below.
Repetitive. Actually, it wasn't really that repetitive, I just needed a single word to reference "gakking shamelessly from every good sci-fi movie ever made." There's a Return-of-the-Jedi fight scene. There are Sigourney Weaver wannabes running around taking potshots at machines. There is even--I kid you not--a rehash of the lobby scene. What kind of a saga copies off itself?
Sell-out. A theorem began formulating itself in my mind, four years ago as I walked out of The Phantom Menace. It came to full fruition tonight, and here I state: there is an inverse relationship between the fanciness of the special effects and the quality of the movie. The directors have obviously forgotten this.
Dumbed-down. Oddly enough, this goes with pretentious. Gee, the viewers might not notice that this is the Final Battle (to be followed by the Final Final Battle)! Let's make it really, really obvious! I don't need to be bashed over the head to know when something important is happening, thank you very much.
Drawn-out. Another major bitch of mine--everything took ten times longer than it should've. The battle for Zion, which probably lost many people after five minutes, was drawn out for the better part of an hour. ________'s death scene was stretched out to what felt like ten minutes, when (s)he should've been writhing and screaming in pain for thirty seconds and died based on the wounds (s)he had, instead of making a way-too-long, way-too-calm speech.
A few other bones to pick--The Matrix Revolutions is vying closely with Chamber of Secrets for worst movie ending ever filmed. I won't say more than that. Also, aside from the very beginning Trinity was relegated to the role of sidekick, just being there for support and to save Neo's ass when he got himself into really deep shit. And there are more plot holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese.
Okay, more later, including *gasp* the good stuff. I have to catch my bus now, since this was written half last night and half this morning.