Post by Harkovast on Dec 22, 2014 22:03:59 GMT
Blah blah read parts 1 and 2 first blah blah.
I've heard the next bit of the movie compared to trying to tell the world's funniest joke.
You know that its going to suck.
The very effort of trying to make it the biggest, most amazing, most mind blowing thing ever will leave it bloated, too long and ultimately boring.
This is a good summation of the car chase that followers.
Two of Mr M's minion are these twins dressed in white who look cool and can turn into kinda ghosts and pass through things. They use this to avoid getting hit in fights and to leap from car to car, which is actually really cool.
Things that I actually liked count -3
Like Darth Maul in episode 1 of Star Wars they are criminally under used despite being one of the few truly memorable things in the movie.
I am not even 100% who they are. Some kind of programs again? I guess. That seems to be the all covering answer for everything at this point.
One of the things that makes them cool is they get a little subtle characterisation. Whenever violence or carnage happens (like ramming cars out of the way as they drive) they both smile as though amused. They also use straight razors as their primary close combat weapon, further implying a certain sadism.
Something that kinda boggles my mind is if you are going to have two bad guys that are copies of each other...why aren't they the ones copying themselves loads and loads of times instead of Agent Smith? That could have been a more interesting gimic for an entirely new villain (who could then be stated to be a computer virus that replicates itself) and with two actors they would have had an easier time filming it (These guys are played by two real life twins.)
But of course the thinking was that you can't have the Matrix without Agent Smith. Rather than reaching the correct conclusion that since he died this means you should not make a sequel at all, they instead decided to bring him back with extra super powers to try and fail to recapture the magic.
As with the agent smith battle earlier, this chase scene starts off kinda fun but just WILL. NOT. END.
Rather strangely the two ghostly twins are in a van that crashes and explodes and we see them flying up into the air and turning to ghosts again.
Now since when they are ghosts they become invincible and regenerate damage, you would assume this means they survive...which I assumed at the time as well. But then they never come back, in this movie or the next one. This movie seems to thrive on leaving me uncertain if the characters are alive or dead, or even can be killed or not. So I guess these guys are dead then?
See how awkward this all is? How can anyone be excited about anything that happens in this film when I'm not even sure if the characters are supposed to be in danger or not.
You might be wondering why, after just telling you this chase goes on way too long, I would then turn around and tell you that the main antagonists for the chase get killed off fairly early on in it. Wouldn't that end the chase by default?
Well sadly not. The Agents show up to get the heroes, along with loads of police cars that don't really do anything and seem to get forgotten about after a short time.
The Agents say they want to get the Exile, which is the Keymaker. Not sure why. Wouldn't they still want to get Morpheus like in the last film? He has the access codes to the Zion mainframe. Why is an outdated exiled program any concern at all? If they want to get rid of exiled programs, why aren't swat teams attacking Mr M's restaurant/cum cake factory?
So the agents just kinda show up into the the mix and start shooting everything and smashing stuff.
Somehow Morpheus ends up on top of a truck fighting one with a sword...what the hell is going on with this stupid movie?
Interestingly, in the previous movie we saw that Morpheus could not fight the seemingly invincible agents and since then they have been upgraded so this time it should be even more one sided.
But now he seems to be able to hold his own pretty well, I guess because he has a sword or something?
The entire gimic of being on top of the truck is incredibly fake seeming because the characters are not struggling to stand or stumbling due to the high speed or truck swaying. It feels more like they are just fighting in front of a projected back drop of stuff moving past them while they pretend to fight on a sound stage...probably because that is exactly what's happening and the movie makes no effort to hide that fact.
To further suck me out of the movie is the fact the Keymaker, who is important because they keep tell me he is, seems to be completely indestructible. He leaps from bridges onto moving vehicles, gets flung up in the air and lands on top of a moving truck and is generally flung around like a rag doll. A healthy young man would probably break a rib and vomit from being shaken around like this, but some little old guy? He'd shatter every bone in his body! The movie again fails to remain grounded in the real world, so its impossible for me to care about whats happening. Yes you can argue that the Keymaker is really a program and so might be super hard to damage, but by that logic nothing in the Matrix can be relied on to do anything it is supposed to! I no longer know the rules of this world and I can't tell what is shody film making and what are deliberate super powers!
It was this point during my first viewing of this film that it really struck me that I absolutely didn't care about anything that was happening on screen. Suddenly it dawned on me that I don't have any clue about anything that is happening or why any of it mattered. I wasn't even sure any more who was involved in this sequence. It's action, but meaningless action, utterly hollow and pointless.
And then Neo flies in and rescues everyone.
Need I say more?
Pointless Scene You Could Skip- 5
Now our heroes sit down with the Keymaker to listen to a really weird lecture where he explains about a building and in the building there is a floor and in the floor there is a room and in the dark dark room there lived two skeletons and their dog.
Okay that last but was a quote from a classic children's book series, but the way he says it really does sound like that.
Turns out there is a building with bombs built into every floor where if you try to break in the whole place will explode.
So Mr M's building again, right?
Actually not, this is another completely unrelated building.
Here the explosives are a major plot point, as they heroes have to try to get into the building without setting off the bombs.
Two questions arise here.
1) Why would you include a building with the same weird gimic earlier in the movie that has nothing to do with this one? Won't that just make it needlessly confusing?
2) Why do the heroes need to get into this second building anyway? Why are they listening to the Keymaker? Other than because the story needs them too?
Neither of these questions are answered.
What follow is a strange, confusing sequence where our heroes have to take out a power station and various security systems and things in order to get into the special door that will take them to the special room they have to get to.
Why?
Because.
While they are all doing this nonsense (and it really is nonsense) one of the ship crews doing one of the important jobs gets destroyed by sentinels and Trinity has to go into the Matrix to do the job herself. This causes the events of Neo's dream from the start of the film to come true...oh noes!
While in the building, Neo, the Keymaker and Morpheus get attacked by Agent Smith, I assume because he is just keen for us to remember he is in the movie.
Remember that Agent Smith so far has no real goal or explanation for his actions and isn't related to the machine plot to destroy Xion.
He's just here for another scrap.
How did Smith know they were going to be here, anyway? This is a secret building with loads of security. Is he following them? Why do things keep happening for no reason other than because the screen writers need to include certain characters and move the story forward to their predetermined goal?
The Smiths kill the Keymaker but Morpheus and Neo get away to the special room.
The Keymaker then tells Morpheus to go home because Neo needs to go on alone.
Look, alright stop the review.
I have to clear something up.
Its probably starting to seem like I don't know how to explain this movie properly, but I swear I am explaining it as well as I can. The reason it doesn't make sense is because there is simply no sense to be made here!
Making this movie understandable is like making a square circle, it can't be done!
So Neo goes to the special room, which is the source of the Matrix, which is a thing now I suppose. This will allow him to save Xion somehow.
Inside he meets a guy in a white suit who looks like colonel Saunders.
Unfortunately what comes next will not be finger licking good.
This man explains he is the architect of the Matrix.
He then proceeds to talk...and talk...and taaaaaaaaaalk
TTTTAAAAAAALLLLLLLKKKKKK!
Never have people spoken so much and communicated so little.
In part one of my review you might remember me mentioning the phrase "Show, don't tell." Well now we get to see what happens when ignoring that advice is taken to its logical extreme.
He starts off by telling Neo that being human he will not understand all of the answers he is given (Way to cover your backs, screen writers! Now no one can complain that your shitty movie makes no sense! Smoothly done!)
Basically what his rambling waffle boils down to is this-
There have been "The One"s before Neo, in earlier versions of the Matrix.
Ultimately because of choice, some people always reject the Matrix and eventaully this some how causes it to crash.
The Machines deliberately set up Xion as a place for people who reject the Matrix to escape to. Then everyone hundred years they destroy it again and make a new version.
The One has to return to the source of the Matrix during this because....because shut up and let me finish the review!
Neo now has a choice.
He can either go to the souce of the Matrix and then select people to start a new Xion, or go back to the Matrix to rescue Trinity, which will cause the Matrix to crash, killing everyone in it. The Machines will also then destroy Xion and thus render humans extinct.
Neo obviously decides to save Trinity, because hes a fucking moron.
Interestingly, the systems crash that was promised never happens, and it never even mentioned as a possibility or a threat for the rest of this movie or the next one.
So the architect was...bluffing?
Was anything else he said a load of bollocks?
Did I just listen to all that for nothing?
Neo goes back to the real world and explains that all the prophecy stuff, all the journey of the first film and basically everything Morpheus taught us in the last film was utter crap.
This also raises a lot of questions.
Why have agents been trying to kill Neo for two movies? What would have happened if they had succeeded? Do the agents no know that Neo is actually vital to the machines plans? Why not? Why create programs that have the express purpose of ruining your own plans?
What would have happened if the Agents in the first films had got Xion's main frame codes from Morpheus (they nearly did, after all!) Would the machines not have attacked? How would they have explained this to the agents? Wouldn't the people in Xion have got suspicious? They can't attack till the one is in position, so what were they actually planning to do?
Why was the building with the explosives on every floor (not Mr M's building, the other one...fuck I hate this film) so well defended with bombs and fail safes and shit?
Neo only barely got the keymaker (remember the agents wanted to kill the Keymaker earlier?) then only barely got past all the buildings defences that the key maker told him about.
If things had just got slightly worse, all of these could have gone to shit.
The machines seem to have devoted enormous resources to making THEIR OWN PLANS FAIL!
Or are the machines lying? Am I supposed to believe anything this movie tells me?
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
Neo now has powers in the real world...look this is going to go quicker if we all start letting a few things slide...stops some attacking sentinels and then goes into a comer.
We then learn that Xion's fleet of ships has been destroyed because someone set off an EMP at the wrong time, hitting their own ships so the machines destroyed most of them.
One survivor was picked up and we see his face upside and its....
BANE!!
DUN DUN DUR! (The music literally does that!)
Then cut to music, roll credits!
Wow, what a shocking ending, right?
Phew, never saw that coming.
.....
.....
Wait...whats that?
No, not Bane from Batman.
Bane from earlier in the movie.
You remember him!
No?
Well me neither the first time I watched this.
During this scene I literally had the response of "Who the hell is that?" and left the theater confused about what the ending meant.
Bane is the guy whose body Agent Smith took over.
He has only appeared in the movie a couple of times at this point, the last time what must have been more than an hour ago.
We saw him in the Matrix when Smith got him.
Then we saw him in the real world, where he looked totally different so I had no idea it was the same guy. He was acting all crazy and cutting himself and seemed to want to stab Neo. You know, acting nothing like Agent Smith at all.
He was in the meeting where they planned about how to fight the machines and he wanted to go along with Morpheus or something but got told not to, though I doubt anyone but me even remembers he was in that bit.
And now we see him again, for the first time in what must be more than an hour, upside down.
After leaving the movie theater after this movie I remember commenting that it felt like I had a spinning ball of wire in my brain. I was utterly baffled and frustrated by everything I had just seen. There was no character arc, no story structure, no motivations I could explain.
Nothing in it made any sense to me at all.
Now there are a lot of people (stupid people, as we shall see) who claim to understand this film.
Some of them are liars, others are just extremely stupid and assumed things in this film made more sense than they did.
If you claim you understood this movie, you are wrong. You didn't.
Saying you understood this movie is like saying you understand the following equation-
Ant eater + 7.89 = melancholy.
Saying you understand that does not make you good at math. If anything it shows that you don't understand maths at all.
Things happen in this film for which there is simply no explanation.
Why is Agent Smith still alive?
Why can he copy himself?
Why can he take over people in the real world?
Why do the heroes think they have to get the keymaker?
Why doesn't the Matrix crash?
And about a dozen other questions the movie does NOT answer.
I've talked to people who claim to understand it and act as if they can explain it to me and they just crumble at even one of these questions.
I have literally had this conversation-
"Why can Smith copy himself?"
"Because hes like a virus now."
"I get that, but why? Wasn't he destroyed?"
"Well...you see...he's like a virus now."
That is WHAT he is ! Not WHY!
You do not understand this film, and neither do I.
It's nonsense.
This is pretentious crap that serves to undermine everything the first film was about.
It pulls a cheap, nonsensical series of twists at the end that only makes events more confusing.
You want to end on a shocking cliff hanger?
Well I've got one for you.
Let me show you how its done!
Time to get schooled by the master.
The shocking twist ending to this review is....
The next film is even worse.
Hit the music.
I've heard the next bit of the movie compared to trying to tell the world's funniest joke.
You know that its going to suck.
The very effort of trying to make it the biggest, most amazing, most mind blowing thing ever will leave it bloated, too long and ultimately boring.
This is a good summation of the car chase that followers.
Two of Mr M's minion are these twins dressed in white who look cool and can turn into kinda ghosts and pass through things. They use this to avoid getting hit in fights and to leap from car to car, which is actually really cool.
Things that I actually liked count -3
Like Darth Maul in episode 1 of Star Wars they are criminally under used despite being one of the few truly memorable things in the movie.
I am not even 100% who they are. Some kind of programs again? I guess. That seems to be the all covering answer for everything at this point.
One of the things that makes them cool is they get a little subtle characterisation. Whenever violence or carnage happens (like ramming cars out of the way as they drive) they both smile as though amused. They also use straight razors as their primary close combat weapon, further implying a certain sadism.
Something that kinda boggles my mind is if you are going to have two bad guys that are copies of each other...why aren't they the ones copying themselves loads and loads of times instead of Agent Smith? That could have been a more interesting gimic for an entirely new villain (who could then be stated to be a computer virus that replicates itself) and with two actors they would have had an easier time filming it (These guys are played by two real life twins.)
But of course the thinking was that you can't have the Matrix without Agent Smith. Rather than reaching the correct conclusion that since he died this means you should not make a sequel at all, they instead decided to bring him back with extra super powers to try and fail to recapture the magic.
As with the agent smith battle earlier, this chase scene starts off kinda fun but just WILL. NOT. END.
Rather strangely the two ghostly twins are in a van that crashes and explodes and we see them flying up into the air and turning to ghosts again.
Now since when they are ghosts they become invincible and regenerate damage, you would assume this means they survive...which I assumed at the time as well. But then they never come back, in this movie or the next one. This movie seems to thrive on leaving me uncertain if the characters are alive or dead, or even can be killed or not. So I guess these guys are dead then?
See how awkward this all is? How can anyone be excited about anything that happens in this film when I'm not even sure if the characters are supposed to be in danger or not.
You might be wondering why, after just telling you this chase goes on way too long, I would then turn around and tell you that the main antagonists for the chase get killed off fairly early on in it. Wouldn't that end the chase by default?
Well sadly not. The Agents show up to get the heroes, along with loads of police cars that don't really do anything and seem to get forgotten about after a short time.
The Agents say they want to get the Exile, which is the Keymaker. Not sure why. Wouldn't they still want to get Morpheus like in the last film? He has the access codes to the Zion mainframe. Why is an outdated exiled program any concern at all? If they want to get rid of exiled programs, why aren't swat teams attacking Mr M's restaurant/cum cake factory?
So the agents just kinda show up into the the mix and start shooting everything and smashing stuff.
Somehow Morpheus ends up on top of a truck fighting one with a sword...what the hell is going on with this stupid movie?
Interestingly, in the previous movie we saw that Morpheus could not fight the seemingly invincible agents and since then they have been upgraded so this time it should be even more one sided.
But now he seems to be able to hold his own pretty well, I guess because he has a sword or something?
The entire gimic of being on top of the truck is incredibly fake seeming because the characters are not struggling to stand or stumbling due to the high speed or truck swaying. It feels more like they are just fighting in front of a projected back drop of stuff moving past them while they pretend to fight on a sound stage...probably because that is exactly what's happening and the movie makes no effort to hide that fact.
To further suck me out of the movie is the fact the Keymaker, who is important because they keep tell me he is, seems to be completely indestructible. He leaps from bridges onto moving vehicles, gets flung up in the air and lands on top of a moving truck and is generally flung around like a rag doll. A healthy young man would probably break a rib and vomit from being shaken around like this, but some little old guy? He'd shatter every bone in his body! The movie again fails to remain grounded in the real world, so its impossible for me to care about whats happening. Yes you can argue that the Keymaker is really a program and so might be super hard to damage, but by that logic nothing in the Matrix can be relied on to do anything it is supposed to! I no longer know the rules of this world and I can't tell what is shody film making and what are deliberate super powers!
It was this point during my first viewing of this film that it really struck me that I absolutely didn't care about anything that was happening on screen. Suddenly it dawned on me that I don't have any clue about anything that is happening or why any of it mattered. I wasn't even sure any more who was involved in this sequence. It's action, but meaningless action, utterly hollow and pointless.
And then Neo flies in and rescues everyone.
Need I say more?
Pointless Scene You Could Skip- 5
Now our heroes sit down with the Keymaker to listen to a really weird lecture where he explains about a building and in the building there is a floor and in the floor there is a room and in the dark dark room there lived two skeletons and their dog.
Okay that last but was a quote from a classic children's book series, but the way he says it really does sound like that.
Turns out there is a building with bombs built into every floor where if you try to break in the whole place will explode.
So Mr M's building again, right?
Actually not, this is another completely unrelated building.
Here the explosives are a major plot point, as they heroes have to try to get into the building without setting off the bombs.
Two questions arise here.
1) Why would you include a building with the same weird gimic earlier in the movie that has nothing to do with this one? Won't that just make it needlessly confusing?
2) Why do the heroes need to get into this second building anyway? Why are they listening to the Keymaker? Other than because the story needs them too?
Neither of these questions are answered.
What follow is a strange, confusing sequence where our heroes have to take out a power station and various security systems and things in order to get into the special door that will take them to the special room they have to get to.
Why?
Because.
While they are all doing this nonsense (and it really is nonsense) one of the ship crews doing one of the important jobs gets destroyed by sentinels and Trinity has to go into the Matrix to do the job herself. This causes the events of Neo's dream from the start of the film to come true...oh noes!
While in the building, Neo, the Keymaker and Morpheus get attacked by Agent Smith, I assume because he is just keen for us to remember he is in the movie.
Remember that Agent Smith so far has no real goal or explanation for his actions and isn't related to the machine plot to destroy Xion.
He's just here for another scrap.
How did Smith know they were going to be here, anyway? This is a secret building with loads of security. Is he following them? Why do things keep happening for no reason other than because the screen writers need to include certain characters and move the story forward to their predetermined goal?
The Smiths kill the Keymaker but Morpheus and Neo get away to the special room.
The Keymaker then tells Morpheus to go home because Neo needs to go on alone.
Look, alright stop the review.
I have to clear something up.
Its probably starting to seem like I don't know how to explain this movie properly, but I swear I am explaining it as well as I can. The reason it doesn't make sense is because there is simply no sense to be made here!
Making this movie understandable is like making a square circle, it can't be done!
So Neo goes to the special room, which is the source of the Matrix, which is a thing now I suppose. This will allow him to save Xion somehow.
Inside he meets a guy in a white suit who looks like colonel Saunders.
Unfortunately what comes next will not be finger licking good.
This man explains he is the architect of the Matrix.
He then proceeds to talk...and talk...and taaaaaaaaaalk
TTTTAAAAAAALLLLLLLKKKKKK!
Never have people spoken so much and communicated so little.
In part one of my review you might remember me mentioning the phrase "Show, don't tell." Well now we get to see what happens when ignoring that advice is taken to its logical extreme.
He starts off by telling Neo that being human he will not understand all of the answers he is given (Way to cover your backs, screen writers! Now no one can complain that your shitty movie makes no sense! Smoothly done!)
Basically what his rambling waffle boils down to is this-
There have been "The One"s before Neo, in earlier versions of the Matrix.
Ultimately because of choice, some people always reject the Matrix and eventaully this some how causes it to crash.
The Machines deliberately set up Xion as a place for people who reject the Matrix to escape to. Then everyone hundred years they destroy it again and make a new version.
The One has to return to the source of the Matrix during this because....because shut up and let me finish the review!
Neo now has a choice.
He can either go to the souce of the Matrix and then select people to start a new Xion, or go back to the Matrix to rescue Trinity, which will cause the Matrix to crash, killing everyone in it. The Machines will also then destroy Xion and thus render humans extinct.
Neo obviously decides to save Trinity, because hes a fucking moron.
Interestingly, the systems crash that was promised never happens, and it never even mentioned as a possibility or a threat for the rest of this movie or the next one.
So the architect was...bluffing?
Was anything else he said a load of bollocks?
Did I just listen to all that for nothing?
Neo goes back to the real world and explains that all the prophecy stuff, all the journey of the first film and basically everything Morpheus taught us in the last film was utter crap.
This also raises a lot of questions.
Why have agents been trying to kill Neo for two movies? What would have happened if they had succeeded? Do the agents no know that Neo is actually vital to the machines plans? Why not? Why create programs that have the express purpose of ruining your own plans?
What would have happened if the Agents in the first films had got Xion's main frame codes from Morpheus (they nearly did, after all!) Would the machines not have attacked? How would they have explained this to the agents? Wouldn't the people in Xion have got suspicious? They can't attack till the one is in position, so what were they actually planning to do?
Why was the building with the explosives on every floor (not Mr M's building, the other one...fuck I hate this film) so well defended with bombs and fail safes and shit?
Neo only barely got the keymaker (remember the agents wanted to kill the Keymaker earlier?) then only barely got past all the buildings defences that the key maker told him about.
If things had just got slightly worse, all of these could have gone to shit.
The machines seem to have devoted enormous resources to making THEIR OWN PLANS FAIL!
Or are the machines lying? Am I supposed to believe anything this movie tells me?
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
Neo now has powers in the real world...look this is going to go quicker if we all start letting a few things slide...stops some attacking sentinels and then goes into a comer.
We then learn that Xion's fleet of ships has been destroyed because someone set off an EMP at the wrong time, hitting their own ships so the machines destroyed most of them.
One survivor was picked up and we see his face upside and its....
BANE!!
DUN DUN DUR! (The music literally does that!)
Then cut to music, roll credits!
Wow, what a shocking ending, right?
Phew, never saw that coming.
.....
.....
Wait...whats that?
No, not Bane from Batman.
Bane from earlier in the movie.
You remember him!
No?
Well me neither the first time I watched this.
During this scene I literally had the response of "Who the hell is that?" and left the theater confused about what the ending meant.
Bane is the guy whose body Agent Smith took over.
He has only appeared in the movie a couple of times at this point, the last time what must have been more than an hour ago.
We saw him in the Matrix when Smith got him.
Then we saw him in the real world, where he looked totally different so I had no idea it was the same guy. He was acting all crazy and cutting himself and seemed to want to stab Neo. You know, acting nothing like Agent Smith at all.
He was in the meeting where they planned about how to fight the machines and he wanted to go along with Morpheus or something but got told not to, though I doubt anyone but me even remembers he was in that bit.
And now we see him again, for the first time in what must be more than an hour, upside down.
After leaving the movie theater after this movie I remember commenting that it felt like I had a spinning ball of wire in my brain. I was utterly baffled and frustrated by everything I had just seen. There was no character arc, no story structure, no motivations I could explain.
Nothing in it made any sense to me at all.
Now there are a lot of people (stupid people, as we shall see) who claim to understand this film.
Some of them are liars, others are just extremely stupid and assumed things in this film made more sense than they did.
If you claim you understood this movie, you are wrong. You didn't.
Saying you understood this movie is like saying you understand the following equation-
Ant eater + 7.89 = melancholy.
Saying you understand that does not make you good at math. If anything it shows that you don't understand maths at all.
Things happen in this film for which there is simply no explanation.
Why is Agent Smith still alive?
Why can he copy himself?
Why can he take over people in the real world?
Why do the heroes think they have to get the keymaker?
Why doesn't the Matrix crash?
And about a dozen other questions the movie does NOT answer.
I've talked to people who claim to understand it and act as if they can explain it to me and they just crumble at even one of these questions.
I have literally had this conversation-
"Why can Smith copy himself?"
"Because hes like a virus now."
"I get that, but why? Wasn't he destroyed?"
"Well...you see...he's like a virus now."
That is WHAT he is ! Not WHY!
You do not understand this film, and neither do I.
It's nonsense.
This is pretentious crap that serves to undermine everything the first film was about.
It pulls a cheap, nonsensical series of twists at the end that only makes events more confusing.
You want to end on a shocking cliff hanger?
Well I've got one for you.
Let me show you how its done!
Time to get schooled by the master.
The shocking twist ending to this review is....
The next film is even worse.
Hit the music.