The Matrix is Reloading 362
smoondog writes "The Matrix Reloaded is the highly anticipated sequel to Wachowski's geek epic. Time.com has opened a new preview site with pics and interviews. Make sure you check out the pics on The Matrix homepage. Too bad 2003 is so far away...."
Re:Matrix 2 and 3 (Score:2, Insightful)
2nd movie: primarily inside the Matrix (Neo destroys the Matrix?)
3rd movie: primarily outside the Matrix (Neo and humans destroy the robots?)
simple enough, I think
When Neo isn't in the Matrix, he's a wuss.
Re:Brain Candy (Score:2, Insightful)
Same, although I still have a lot of reservations. The "Evil Genius" concept is nothing new. I got sick of hearing people say "it's such an original idea." However, The Matrix did present the idea in a way that was easy to swallow for a lot of people. I almost wish that they wouldn't make a sequals, because they did such a good job of presenting the idea.
Re:Saturation (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally I'm sick of Matrix rip-off movies. Even the parodies are overdone. The movie itself just wasn't good enough to take over every single freakin' directors' mind since 1999. Here [bigempire.com] is a great review of the movie.
Anyway, enjoy your Matrix, but don't let your stoned friends try to engage you in sophomoric philosophical discussions about the nature of reality.
"High-Toned Philosophy" (Score:4, Insightful)
From the Time article:
...high-toned philosophy borrowed from sources as diverse as Plato, the Bible and Snow White.
Yeah, it's hard to beat the high-toned philosophy of Snow White. At any rate, I suspect they meant Alice In Wonderland, but hey: Carroll, Disney, what's the diff?
Face it people: the movies are a lot of fun, but they aren't especially deep. Most of the ideas are drawn directly from classic fantasy, Golden Age sci-fi and cyberpunk. For a different and in some ways superior treatment of the idea that the world we're living in is just a shadow of the real one, for example, I'd recommend Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber.
Re:Brain Candy (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no idea what the game will be like, but I seriously hope that they try something innovative with it. Imagine a Lucas Arts style adventure game (like Maniac Mansion, Full Throttle, or Day of the Tentacle...), with some action sequences as well.
What I don't want to do is go running around blowing stuff up, and not having much other to do than that. Give me an adventure, not an FPS.
Sorry for the negativity, I'm just really concerned that they'll time the release of the game to the release of the movie, and bank on the title of the game instead of the substance. Too MANY games are like that today. The original Matrix movie could lend itself really well to some original concepts in gaming and I just can't imagine they'll do anything more than remake Quake with the stopped time effects.
Re:We we would (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Matrix 2 and 3 (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are just using people as crops, you really don't need their brains to be aware. The robots could just as easilly strap people in to those force-feeding pods and not give them any mental stimulation at all. They would be miserable and want to die, but they would still be alive which seems to be the whole point.
The Matrix seems to just be their as a courtesy, so all the livestock is happy in their belief that they are living in a world before the robots took over. Once Morpheus and Neo started making trouble, just switch the damn thing off, and the problem is solved.
Another huge plot hole: the part about how man blotted out all the sunlight to stop the robots because it was the source of their power. Excuse me, the sun in the only source for OUR power, and robots, unlike us, can run on pretty much anything that makes electricity. How stupid were these people!?
Worst of all: these human crops are being raised, without sunlight to grow external food sources, by feeding the biomass of the dead to the living. Since a healthy human body has only enough nutrients to feed one adult for about one week or so, you would rapidly run out of humans under this system.
Besides, the power required to run the Matrix itself, let alone the life-support systems, would be more than you could get by using "people as batteries".
Stupid on all levels.
That said, 2 and 3 will both be cool. Neo is now a super-hero, which is what they intended all along: to create a new, modern super-hero franchise. Matrix 1 was the origin story. Now the sequils will be the kind of stories they wanted to do in the first place, but had to get through the last film to do it.
Anybody who goes to these films to see anything other than Kung Fu fighting and neat camera effects is wasting their time anyway.
Re:The Matrix: An Example of Bad Software Engineer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Matrix: An Example of Bad Software Engineer (Score:3, Insightful)
The best answer, ofcourse, is "we simply don't know".
No, the best answer is: Because the writers didn't really think it through very well.
Which brings me to what I thought was one of the biggest weaknesses to the show... Why do the agents bother to broadcast their presence to the rebels by morphing into "Men In Black" whenever they take a body over. Wouldn't it be fare more efficient for The Girl In The Red Dress to just stay looking the way she does, and blow Neo's head off?
The Matrix was a Groundbreaking movie. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would people feel such a strong urge to offer up their opinions on a movie if they really, truly felt that it was mediocre? Lots of movies I'm sure they hate just as much are mentioned every day, and these people don't succumb to the temptation to compose a huge commentary on all the borrowed cliches in "Notting Hill." And yet, one need only mention "The Matrix", and even now, 3 years later, and people come out of the woodwork, trying to show off what little they know about classical mythology and contemporary filmmaking. I guess "Intro Filmmaking 101" makes experts out of you all, eh?
I particularly love the poseurs who say they think people are being modded down just because people resent those who rip on popular things. And yet, here on Slashdot, I see far more negative comments about "The Matrix" than positive ones. This little subculture does rip on popular things. The little teeny-bopper geeks-in-waiting have only been around a little over a decade, but they already (claim to) know more about programming than Microsoft, and more about filmmaking than the Wachowskis. They see a couple 60's kung-fu movies at a friend's sleepover and think that makes them film connoisseurs.
Face it - a lot of the kids on this site have been bred to hate popular things. And they don't even consider that it's because they're not popular, so one way to feel good about themselves is to embrace a culture that preaches "popular things are bad." Linux fits that bill nicely. And thus, you have your target audience for Slashdot. Unfortunately, you then have a truly groundbreaking movie like "The Matrix", and it gets shunned by people who think the makers were going for Shakespeare.
The Wachoswkis weren't trying to re-invent the world. Read some interviews with them. All along, all they wanted was to make a cool sci-fi, kung-fu movie. They're just a couple of kids who got their dream come true and were granted a budget by a major studio. Like children in a candy store, they made the movie they wanted to make, and it worked. The editing was bang-on, the effects were groundbreaking, and it was a box-office sleeper hit. They succeeded.
But, unfortunately, in the eyes of their target demographic (Slashdotters), they had crossed over to the dark side. They were (shudder) popular.
Oh well. You can't please everybody. There are so many movies out there that are content with working on just one level. They follow the standard formula of plausible plot, one or too big-name actors, maybe a couple effects, rush it through the grinder and get it up on the screen. I really liked that the Wachowskis bothered to put in so many clever references, even if they didn't rival Freud's greatest works. It's just something fun, something new to discover each time you watch the movie. I think that's all they were going for, and I think it's sad that so many people think they are the final authority on what the film should have been, or was trying to be, when the Wachowskis have clearly articulated their vision already.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd wager to say that half of what's cool about The Matrix is that it was introducing the 'world' that the Matrix is. And even that won't be new.
Hey, if the two brothers can make a prequel and a sequel that don't suck, I'd say the two of them are cinematic geniuses. Otherwise, they got a) incredibly lucky, or b) in the right place at the right time. Not denying that The Matrix is good, but I feel true genius would be able to make a decent sequel/prequel, even if the original is as good as The Matrix is/was.