| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Friday 19 December 2003: |
| Do not watch The Matrix 3 without the following guide. It will still be painful even with the guide, but at least you won't feel the need to shoot yourself in the eyes with cosmic rays afterwards. The Essential Guide to The Matrix 3: Revolutions We open on a repeat of the nonsense ending of the second movie, so that we can pretend the two movies are somehow connected and sequential. Once that's out of the way, there's room for about six thousand hours of conversation, including these extracts: "Who are you?" "I am the Oracle." "You don't look like the Oracle." "No, I don't. There's a reason for that. It's mumble mumble cough mumble. Sorry you couldn't hear that bit, I'm old you see, but it was a good explanation I assure you." "Great. That explains it then." "Who are you?" "I am Apu, a program, and a cartoon shopkeeper. Your name is Neo - you dance in the sand." "Who is someone else?" "He works for the Frenchman." "Do you know him?" "No." "Then how do you tell me about him?" "I don't know." "You're after my robot bee, aren't you?" "No." "YOU WON'T GET IT!" "I just said some words." "Then I will say some words too." "Shouldn't something be exploding or getting kicked by now?" "Only if we wanted a good movie." (all point at the paying audience and laugh) There's a brief intermission in the dialogue, in which a gunfight scene from the original Matrix is replayed, but this time it's played upside down in the hope that you won't recognise it that way. The next segment of dialogue makes up 80% of the movie. There are three lines of dialogue, but one of them is spoken by Morpheus (remember how slowly he speaks?) and the other two are from the Frenchman, who, not to be outdone, speaks at one-third of Morpheus Prime, an exacting one word every three minutes. Since they're speaking so slowly, you can't actually make out anything they say, but there are subliminal messages assuring you all the while that it's very important, whatever it is. I played this bit in fast forward, and discovered that the ten years of dialogue is actually comprised of the following: "Hello." "Hello." "How are you?" Morpheus leaves the movie at this point, because, you know, we're all sick of him and his bloody prophecy ramblings by now. The rest of the characters, inexplicably, don't go with him. "You need a thing from a place." "Where?" "You know where." "What does that mean?" "Yes." "Who are you?" "Everything that has a beginning has an end." "Who are you?!' "I am the Oracle." "You're after my robot bee, aren't you?" "Who are you?" "I don't know, I wasn't in the other movies." "You must be related to the production staff or something." "Yes." "You're after my r-" "No, I'm not qualified to fly robot bees." "Ha! You're rubbish then." (several scenes later) "Oh, now I know who I am - I'm Sylvester Stallone." "That's an actor, not a character." "Oh. I'm Judge Dredd, then, because you can't make out a word I'm saying." "What?" "I said mumble mumble!" "What? My robot bee?" Then Trinity and Neo snog. There is implied gay sex, but this time, unlike in The Matrix 2: Neo's In The Well it's not shown - this omission is the high point of the movie. Then Agent Smith, in someone else's body, shoots Neo in the eyes with cosmic rays, blinding him and simultaneously giving him the powers of Daredevil, which he uses for fighting for great justice and for pretending he doesn't know where Trinity is so he doesn't have to listen to her. An irrelevant nameless character in a mech suit stolen from another movie informs a hundred other mech suit thieves motivationally, "we're going to die! Hooray! Let's go and die now!" "Hooray!" they respond. Some clumsy computer graphics stolen from Tron fly around with some other clumsy computer graphics stolen from Tron, and then there's a tension-building intermission filled by an advertisement for Jurassic Park 3: This Time It's Robots Instead Of Dinosaurs. "Oh no!" screams Mech-thief, "why oh why didn't we install some sort of computerised targetting rather than relying on our slow human reactions? Why are we driving in these suits at all? We could have just left a lot of fridge magnets around the place!" This is the true moral of the movie, and the most educational moment, that didn't happen at all. What he actually said, over the course of about half an hour, was "Blobala! Hemo! Buboes!" Too lazy to bother with any more computer graphics, the Winch-cow-ski-lamp-hatstand brothers thoughtfully wave a couple of sparklers at the camera for twenty minutes to simulate the chaos of war. If you listen carefully you can hear them in the background saying "ooh, look, I can write my name. NOO, DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS! AIEE! MY EYES!" Trinity dies, yet again. She whispers her own eulogy, to Neo: "I wish -" "Blub!" "You remember when -" "Blub!" "That time when -" "Shut up and fucking die! For god's sake woman, you've got three spikes through you, what does it take to make you shut the hell up?" "And I just wanted to say -" "SHUT UP! WHY WON'T YOU JUST SHUT UP?" "I -" "SHUT UP!" "You -" "If I just cry loudly, then will you shut up?" "Yes." Neo cries like a schoolgirl, and Trinity finally stops talking, about fifteen minutes after she stopped breathing. In the Matrix, Agent Smith eats Neo, and then Neo turns into Jesus and shoots Jesus lasers out of his eyes, which consume all the Agent Smiths with Jesus power. The computer core which suddenly somehow has its own personality that Neo talked to earlier then calls off the war because it told Neo it would do so if he killed the Smiths for it. Because warlike computers always keep their word rather than exploiting situations logically. It also decides of its own accord to release any humans who don't want to be batteries any more, which wasn't part of the promise and has in no way been demonstrated to be a reasonable course of action for it. Hoorah, the humans win, because, er, the computer decided not to finish them off when it completely could have done, and they get to continue their life in a stinking pit of filth just like before, with robots that will fry them if they try to leave. Victory for humans! Oh yes, and Neo's magic powers outside the Matrix are explained by mumble mumble mumble, and also his Daredevil powers are because mumble mumble a reason. Hooray! [13:14] |
| Digi |
| Remember when you said you wern't ever going to the Cinema again? Here: http://blog.ravenblack.net/archive200212.html#19 (Queue him telling me he saw the film in some other way) |
| Soli |
| "In the Matrix, Agent Smith eats Neo, and then Neo turns into Jesus and shoots Jesus lasers out of his eyes, which consume all the Agent Smiths with Jesus power." This is the best part of the review, and beautifully sums up the entire trilogy. Oh, how I wish they had stopped at the original. |
| RavenBlack |
| Or stopped at the original five minutes before the end, so as to avoid the magical flying phone-booth scene. |
| Soli |
| Ah, good point. Yes, that would have been ideal. Or heck, while we're fantasising.... perhaps they could have done a decent job at the second two. |
| Naazima |
| It is my firm belief they should have stopped the first Matrix 15 minutes before the begining of it. That way I wouldn't have had to see any of the nonsense to begine with. The Matrix trilogy was obviously thought up by someone doing some serious drugs. And is intended to be seen only while also doing those drugs so as you can get the total "trip". For those of us who've not done those drugs and probably won't ... it's a waste of money to see them. |
| Digi |
| Do the drugs then. |
| AttackOfTheSpam |
| You know how in the second one there was that whole MTV scene - sex, dancing, bac to sex, more dancing, yet more sex? Did they actually expect that to move the plot along, or was it just so the stupid people that liked the first one's special effects could feel like they understood something? As for the third, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm going to, just so I can warn other foolish young consumers against the Curse of the Crappy Sequels. And now I will cuss for a while in french. Zut! Pourqoi c'est que toujours les films est le plus merdique de leurs premiers? Je ne comprende pas le poussée de les directeurs et leurs suites meridque. Les directeurs damnent leurs âmes par leurs films mauvais. And stuff. Ahem. |
| Vecsar |
| I really wish I hadn't seen the second or the third...I was perfectly content with my experience with the first one. I love your summary of the third film, but yours was still more entertaining than the full film. Even though the Wachowski brothers 'borrowed' the plot from a book they did not write, I still thought the first was pretty good. (except that whole phone-booth flying thing at the end, right on) Also, you are really awesome, Raven. I look forward to reading more of your site as I am very pleased and in agreeance with most of what I have read so far. |
| Chris Chambers |
| I'll say the same basic thing I've said to people in real life: It does make sense, but only if you've studied the Manichaean Heresy. I imagine that the Watchaican'tspell Brothers think they're quite clever, what with using a theology based on a 13th century persian's synthesis of Buddhism, Gnostic Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. They're wrong. It's the worst thing they could have done; with a more reasonable/familiar underlying metaphysics, they might have had more time to focus on what matters; Kung Fu vs. Robots. |
| Nameless |
| Exactly. |
| Digi |
| Chris Chambers: That's a Zebra diagnosis mate. You probably don't know what that means, which is a pain, because you need to know in order to understand this comment. Ah! A solution. I'll just tell you; if you hear hooves a'clip-clopping outside your window, just straight out think horses, and not Zebras, yeah? It's probably just that they got a bit lucky in making the first one, and it turned out to be a pretty original looking film, with snazy fight scenes, and that. Then they decided to make a load more cash and didn't apply the same style to the second two; not neccasarily some 13th century Hindu-Catholic Druidic kniting circle doodad or whatever, you know what I'm saying? |