I'll admit. I never liked ANY of the Matrix movies. Just couldn't get into them at all.

not even the first one? it's a good action flick with a decent dystopia plot, I agree that how they developed the plot was boring and sometimes hard to follow.

Wait..there were MORE of these movies?!

Ohhhh, Film Brain sounds positively evil at the end there, I am looking forward to the next Crossover review you two do. :D

I thought the animatrix was pretty good for the most part.

Animatrix was sweet =]

Amen.

Finally! You and Film Brain doing a review together! Yippee!

lol....its too late MikeJ....that little line about the bathroom and "coming out with a sore ass" just landed you a smexy fanfic ;)

Interestingly, Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture, has a whole chapter on the Matrix mythos and how it is mediated across both film and games. Jenkins sees the introduction of characters though games (not well introduced in the film) as a postmodern way of consuming media.
In other words, he doesn't see the distribution of the Matric mythos (the characters, plot, etc.) across games and films as a negative thing, but instead a positive thing as it requires deeper interactions with both forms of media.

Ok, sorry for the geek out.

I sincerely hope this entire review was played for satire. Otherwise, you didn't pay attention to the elements of the plot and who/what certain characters are.

He pretended not to know what a blowjob was. I think it's safe to assume he's playing dumb for comedic effect.

Was that Film Brain in the background. That would be a great crossover.

I'll admit it, I enjoy all of the matrix movies, no doubt because I first watched them due to my philosophy of religion class last year. I adore all the philosophical discussions of free will v foreknowledge, Taoism, the references to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the levels of realities...and I think I'll end it there, though there's more. I won't say they're really good movies per say, but the philosophy does make me smile. And my head hurt x3 Free will v foreknowledge isn't an easy subject to wrap your mind around.

Still, I enjoyed the review. Especially the part about the lipstick x3 Your reviews are always entertaining.

Personally, I loved all four of the Matrix films (The Animatrix counts!), and I actually enjoyed the ending of Revolutions. And that's right, I said ending. If you ask me, it was, both philosophically speaking and narrativly speaking, quite conclusive.

Good stuff Mike.

Just to let you know though, I've got a Matrix month planned for later on this year, and I'll be giving both the sequels a fair chance on it.

did you pay no attention to any plot points during the review?

I always liked all three movies. While the first one is obviously the best, I still liked the second and third. The final battle of the third movie between Neo and Smith was fantastic, and epic in the true meaning of the word.

Meh... I just like the film for the Burly Brawl (Smith fight), Chateau Battle, and the Highway Battle. Seriously. When I watch the DVD, I just skip ahead to the Burly Brawl and turn it off after Neo swoops in for the save.

Also, say what you will about the rest of the film, it DOES have a kick-ass soundtrack.

For me, the first Matrix movie was pretty good. It was a pretty decent action flick with a good storyline and action scenes. I felt the series had been ruined by the Animatrix, as well as the other two sequels.

Great review. Nice cameo from Film Brain.

I thought the sequals made too much sense personally. The way the first sets it up it is difficult to bring in the same mysterious tone now that we know what the Matrix is. The Wachowskis outright failed with Mirovingen, Smith as the Anti-One and the archetect though creepy wasn't nearly creepy enough.

I have to admit that this is kind of my favourite Matrix movie. It's not nearly as good as the first one, in that it is more complicated while at the same time more brainless, but I just find it really entertaining. Though it helps that I skip the cave-rave scene every time I watch it. The third movie on the other hand is like taking almost everything I dislike about reloaded, and making a movie out of it.

Please MikeJ, review also Revolutions.

was the cliffhanger ending and 'to be concluded' not a big enough hint that I would? :P

What really bugged me was how the original Matrix implied that Neo could fly at the end because he was now like a great savior, but Reloaded changed it so now he's just a flying man.

Im getting tired of hipsters using the word "ruined".

Even if you dont like a sequel, it shouldn't affect your enjoyment of the original whether were talking about movies, games or any other media.

The problem is once you see something you can't unsee it. This stuff is canon and it destroys much of the story of the first movie. When you watch the first movie, after seeing the sequels, you just can't help but think about that crap.

It gets better over time, ofcourse. Once you slowly suppress the memory.

>going to bed in a tux

LIKE A BOSS

I know this is going to be overly fanboyish, but here goes anyway:

The henchmen Persephony kills were not vampires, they were werewolves (i.e. the monsters that could only be killed by silver bullets). All of the henchmen in the Marovengian's house were older versions of the the current "Agent" program. This implies that all of history's monsters (ghosts, werewolves, vampires, etc) were, in fact, legends built up by the populace of the Matrix to explain the superhuman abilities of its Agents.

As to the Keymaker, of course he's durable, he's not human. The Keymaker, like the Marovengian, Persephony, and Agent Smith, was a "freed program" or a collection of redundant or obsolete code expressing itself in the Matrix as a sentient being. The Keymaker's orginal purpose was to build "backdoors" into the Matrix's code. Say, for instance, a programer was creating the code that would govern any movement a given species of fish could possibly make. Despite seeming like a simple task, this would require mountains and mountains of code to make the fish seem realistic enough to fit into the matrix. So, in case any of the code ever needed to be updated or changed, small phrases would be included between lines of code so programers could easily and quickly find the parts of the code they wanted to adjust. To continue the example, a programer wanting to update how the fish's flipper moved while swimming forward, he could type in something like "fishfinforward" which would jump him strait to the point where the code he wanted began.

Within the virtual world of the Matrix, these doors are expressed visual as connecting to the big white hallway that leads everywhere. The door Neo enters at the end of the movie might as well have been labeled "GOTO Architect" to really hammer home the connection between world and code.

Wow, that rant turned out longer than I thought it would O.o

It wasn't really a rant, it was pretty informative actually and you clearly paid a lot more attention to those films than I did XD

But one thing I do not understand still. The matrix was instituted by rogue AI sometime in the 21st century, right? Naturally, legends about ghosts and zombies and werewolves existed long before then, and so they clearly predate the matrix itself. So how could all of history's monsters be the result of popular misconceptions of the agents?

Matrix Reloaded was a C+ movie whereas
Matrix Revolutions was a solid F

Part 3 is the one to bitch about and on a side note, All Zion scenes blow ass.

Nice review, even though I disagree in some bits.

To me, the Matrix sequels should have been just one movie. Cut the unnecessary and pointless fights scenes from the two movies, and you could have a nice sequel.

In this movie, the highlights are the Architect speech and the ending when Neo stop the Marleyans, I mean, Sentinels.

The Architect say somethings really deep in the way society works, reminding me of the pornography control in the book 1984, for example. I only get it in full after the second view.

Wait are Film Brain and Mike J reviewing Revolutions together!?

If so that would be the best thing ever!

I had always sort of thought before the third that neo effecting the robots in the "real" world was a hint that they were still in the matrix, just a broken off sub routine, to keep those that realize the matrix's nature to keep them from corrupting the others, and that atthe end of the third they would awake for real and enter the real world.

Sadly that would have made too much sense for this series. -.-

Considering Neo was "chosen" to be The One by the machines, I always saw it as perhaps some kind of chip or something they implanted into his brain in the embryonic stage.

Focusing on stopping the machines would send out a type of communication that would be like an "emergency shutdown" that only the chip in his brain can project.

This is also the reason why he could shut down the machines when heading to the Source. Only The One is allowed passage to the machine city, and he needed this "shutdown parameter" to stop the sentinels.

I like the fan theory created after Reloaded but before Revolutions, that the heroes are all robots created by the humans in Zion to pose as humans and make the machines better masters by acquainting them with human suffering. This would have given the trilogy the meaning and coherence that it desperately needed, and besides everyone was thinking of the nesting doll Matrix thing after Reloaded, that wouldn't have surprised anyone.

Took a while to figure out what the hell Concordently Sanders was talking about, but once i did i did enjoy the story of this movie. I also enjoyed the action. The first time i saw it, i did think the Smith fight lasted just a little too long. A lot of the fighting just seemed phoned in. Well choreographed, but pourly executed - especially Neo vs. Seraph, and the car-seat fight looked more silly than serious.
But i still had fun watching them.

This is what happens when you throw lots of money around. Quality gets tossed in the scrap heap, ie Michael Bay.

Why is it that the first sequel of a franchise is NEVER allowed to be self-contained (maybe except for Transformers, but that franchise is more concerned with explosions and restoring the status quo at the end of every bloody movie)?

They really should've ended this franchise after the first. Why? Well...

Neo.
is.
INVINCIBLE.

Ever since he literally activated his God Mode, I can't enjoy any of his fight scenes. The big showdown at the end of the first movie was fine since it concluded his journey to become the chosen one, but how in the hell should I care about his fights in the sequels now that he's an unstoppable cheater? That the annoying bullet time makes these fights FAR longer than they should be doesn't help, either.

This first sequel really showed that they KNEW this: towards the end, Neo only appears as a literal Deus Ex Machina (since he could've single-handedly ended every single one of these fights in 10 minutes of slow motion), and the whole film is padded with slow motion and pretentious bullshit.

I agree. The fight scenes in reloaded are downright insulting, given that Neo simply flies away after he gets tired of them.

Wait. The first Matrix was original? All it was is a combination of a mental holodeck/Truman Show combined with the plot of Dark City.

Still, although I enjoyed the first movie I remembered walking out of the theater thinking "The script needed one more rewrite."

All-in-all, issues asides (most you did hit on, although many other criticisms you had seemed to be due to a lack of attention - no offense) I prefer the second movie over the first. Better action, more complex story elements, and the style worked for me. I was enough into it by the end I could actually even follow (most of) what the Architect was saying.

Oh well. To each their own.

... although the third was mostly dreck.


Still, this was an okay recap and I look forward to the next one.

I doubt the Wachowskis had seen Dark City before writing the Matrix seeing as the original script predates Dark City's release by around two years. The Matrix did actually use a set left over from the filming of Dark City though.

I like all the Matrix films, but the sequels definitely failed to live up to the original.

What are you wearing? It must be some sort of nightmare... Muahahaha!

Oh, you don't fool me. I know THAT voice....

Bad movie.... In the end I though "OK... Neo has Superpowers, that must mean the real world is not real either and there be some really exiting revelation in the next one."

Screw You, Revolutions.

Say what you will about The Matrix Reloaded, it still has one of my favourite movie licensed games ever r him???