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Matrix Reloaded Trailer Online 400

Posted by michael from the bullet-time dept.
cheinonen writes "Trying to steal away the thunder from the opening of Star Wars, the trailer for The Matrix Reloaded is online now in Quicktime format. Must say I'm looking forward to this far more than I'm looking forward to Episode 3."
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Matrix Reloaded Trailer Online More

Matrix Reloaded Trailer Online

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  • Streaming Video + Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)

    by saveth ( 416302 ) <cww.denterprises@org> on Thursday May 16, 2002 @12:16AM (#3527966)
    A site with streaming geek-type video getting Slashdotted and still being able to hold its own, as far as bandwidth is concerned, is rather impressive. In about ten minutes, I'm sure it won't be doing as well, though. :)

    Anyway, trailer is pretty neat. I don't particularly like the fact that it features a song from the previous The Matrix soundtrack, but the rest is good stuff.

    Comparing it to the old The Matrix trailers, I'd have to say I'm not so thrilled with The Matrix: Reloaded. I may be jumping the gun when assuming things about it, but it looks like it's less "matrix theory" and more cultish action. I hope the movie doesn't turn out like that.

    At any rate, I'll probably get suckered into standing in line for an hour, opening night, and loving the entire movie, so you'd probably be better off just ignoring me. :P
    • I don't particularly like the fact that it features a song from the previous

      This is very common, unfortunately. They probably because a) the soundtrack isn't done yet, or b) they want to keep the soundtrack a secret (since it's a part of the whole movie experience, and they don't want to take away too much of that experience with one ad).

      The Attack of the Clones ad has music from Episode I. The most recent add for the Twin Towers (At the end of FotR) has the soundtrack from FotR.

      And still, to this day, many action movie ads use the sound track from Aliens (during the part where the Terraforming Plant is exploding); and that song is nearly 16 years old!
      • The most recent add for the Twin Towers

        Twin towers? Tolkien wrote a book called The Two Towers, as I recall. Or has the movie been renamed as a tribute?

      • Re:Streaming Video + Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)

        by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @01:31AM (#3528168) Journal
        And still, to this day, many action movie ads use the sound track from Aliens (during the part where the Terraforming Plant is exploding); and that song is nearly 16 years old!

        Ah, yes. The infamous "Bishop's Countdown." Not only has this snippet (about 1:20 into the track, if you care) been used in tons of movie trailers and commercials, but Horner has even plagarized it himself. You'll find it woven through several of his scores.

        Of course, that's Horner for you. He writes some great ones-- the Star Trek II and III scores are great, and I've been listening to A Beautiful Mind a lot lately, but the degree to which he "borrows" from himself is pretty startling. Listen to "A Kaleidoscope of Mathematics" from A Beautiful Mind and "The Machine Age" from Bicentennial Man to hear what I'm talking about.
      • music industry tip - soundtrack has to be written *last* thats because it has to go along with the film that presumably isn't done yet! This isn't to say they dont have an idea what it will sound like, but the orchestra definatley hasn't been hired.
      • Can anyone tell me the "operatic" music heard in The Matrix (1) trailer? The music playing while clips of the lobby scene are shown? It isn't in the soundtrack, nor is it in the movie. Thanks in advance.

      • Battlefield Earth actually used music from the Matrix for its trailer. (The music from when Neo awakens and looks up and down, seeing human-pods in all directions.)

      • This is very common, unfortunately. They probably because a) the soundtrack isn't done yet, or b) they want to keep the soundtrack a secret (since it's a part of the whole movie experience, and they don't want to take away too much of that experience with one ad).

        Yeah, or Rage Against The Machine's "Bombtrack" intentionally making a return in this movie.
        IMHO it is a very fitting "theme" song for the matrix movies.

        On the other hand, this song has made an appearance in countless movies. Guess it's just good for action.
    • A site with streaming geek-type video getting Slashdotted and still being able to hold its own, as far as bandwidth is concerned, is rather impressive. In about ten minutes, I'm sure it won't be doing as well, though. :)

      An hour later, the downloading is working fine.

      AOL, the service picked on for housing a pile of newbies, proves that it can defeat the onslaught of thousands of geeks. Take that /.!

  • Download Trailer (Score:4, Informative)

    by sameerd ( 445449 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @12:16AM (#3527967) Homepage
    here [aol.com].

  • Matrix multiplication (Score:5, Funny)

    by techmuse ( 160085 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @12:17AM (#3527972)
    I can't wait for Matrix III: The Matrix Diagonalized. ;)

    No one can tell you what the matrix is, but a TI-86 can solve for it in seconds.
  • check out the trailer in svcd format
    http://www.jimmyhack.net/MATRIX_SVCD_JH.ra r

    note: it's not linked on purpose... if anyone wants to mirror it, please do, i give the website 5 minutes before it's dead, and it's routers are dead, and everything else on that side of the planet is dead.

  • Download the trailer here (Score:5, Informative)

    by gandalf23 ( 95572 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @12:25AM (#3528009)
    Here's the link to the trailer in 640x288
    http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wbonline/reloade d_teaser_1_640.mov [aol.com]

    It's about 24 MB

    480x224
    http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wbonline/reloade d_teaser_1_480.mov [aol.com]

    and 320x144
    http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wbonline/reloade d_teaser_1_320.mov [aol.com]

    -gandalf23

  • Are there two sequels? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @12:34AM (#3528032)
    Sorry for being so completely out of it, but are "Reloaded" and "Revolution" two separate sequels?

  • Imagine... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Agar ( 105254 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @12:36AM (#3528038)
    A trailer that gives away neither plot nor ending, but still makes you want to see the movie.

    Shouldn't this be how all trailers are made?

    Sigh. Instead, I'm sure it's only the first one of many. By the time we're a week away from release we'll be able to reconstruct the entire movie by splicing and re-editing the trailers.

    • Re:Imagine... (Score:2, Informative)

      by broller ( 74249 )
      A trailer that gives away neither plot nor ending, but still makes you want to see the movie.

      Shouldn't this be how all trailers are made?

      Nope, sorry, this isn't a trailer. As it clearly says when you go to the site, this is a Teaser, which, while similar to a trailer, is not the same as a trailer.

      This is the first hype of many and it's supposed to get you excited about the movie. Looks like it worked. :)
    • Even better, it doesn't have a guy with an amazingly deep voice saying, "Imagine a world were..."

  • Star Wars ~ The Matrix (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zook ( 34771 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @12:38AM (#3528047)
    I've come to think that Star Wars---all of them---and The Matrix are pretty similar: they're all big flashy movies that make the viewer feel like there's some deep meaning in them when they don't.

    I have to say, I've enjoyed them all, but I think they're all overhyped.

    • I had the reverse experience with The Matrix: I watched expecting a total action flick, no real meaning at all. In fact, I didn't watch it until well over a year and a half after it came out. I looked down on Matrix weenies. And the first time I watched it, I saw nothing but popcorn on screen.

      Over time, tho', it's interesting... I started to see some of the Greek Philosophy and allusions come through. Now it's something I DO actually think about. Humans as Batteries? Don't make me laugh. Keanu Reeves as a Messiah? It does make me laugh. "There is no spoon?" OK, not deep. But the mythology of overcoming lack of confidence, making a choice to risk, choosing to risk for others, undertaking a quest for something bigger than yourself, looking for guidance from an oracle (and a fairly Delphic one at that!)... all good stuff.

      Plus, I just love Agent Smith. "It's the smell!" I'll bet you two of my best baseball cards that Agent Smith could kick Darth Vader's butt.

    • Re:Star Wars ~ The Matrix (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ender81b ( 520454 ) <[wdinger] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday May 16, 2002 @02:50AM (#3528342) Homepage Journal
      Very true. The matrix has huge plot holes throughout.. if the goddam AI's have 'some type of fusion' they would have utterly no NEED for the human's as 'batteries.' Fusion, even in the simple form we are devolping today, gives them all the power they could ever need. Since they are obviously a technically advanced race giant solar mirrors in orbit beaming power to the surface would work alss. The power used to keep the humans alive, and maintain the matrix, would exceed what the humans would generate (Young Lady, in this house we OBEY THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS!) It also never quite made sense to me why they even created "the matrix", simply putting russian sleep sets on the people (3 electrodes passing an electric current through your brain - puts you to sleep until it is shut off) would have worked.

      The only thing I could think of, and maybe they will address it in these next 2 movies, is that the AI's still have some sort of vestigal programming to the sort of 'never harm humans' or like Asimov's 3 laws of robots and are literally unable to just swear off the human race. Or, they could feel some sort of obligation to their creators, and feel a need to 'take care of them.' Worse crimes in history have been justified by a need to 'protect the race.'

      I still love the movie to death though... =)
      • On the subject of batteries, wouldn't the number of liquified humans needed to provide sufficient food for the rest of humans exceed the number of humans in existence? Considering the average human already eats many many animals (not all of us mind you), animals which ate many many pounds of food themselves, I find this system to be pretty messed up. =]

      • Re:Star Wars ~ The Matrix (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @04:19AM (#3528520)
        The Matrix, much like Star Wars, is really a fantasy movie that's trying to tell a story that's almost wholly removed from science fiction (in the traditional "fiction with loads of science in it" sense). Trying to find scientific holes in the quick and easy explanations they give for complex technology is like complaining that lightsabers are "scientifically unsound" and that The Force "has no basis in reality". Star Wars is a story about Flash Gordon-esque fantastic adventures and The Matrix is a story about enslavement by a race completely removed from humans; neither is really about science, but both use science as a thin background for a story, much like fantasy novels use a twisted version of medieval Europe as their setting. Which, by the way, could also be called a historically ridiculous portrayal of medieval Europe.
      • My take on The Matrix is:

        * It sets up a semi-plausible explanation which allows the main characters to exhibit "superpowers". The audience doesn't have to suspend as much disbelief as they do to enjoy Spider Man, for example. (Bitten by a radioactive spider? Yeah, that'll do it..)

        * There's a fairly strong anti-establishment message, backed up by powerful metaphor. Humans as batteries ~= humans as dumb consumers/peasants/wage slaves, the matrix representing the entertainment and news media. The message is: you are being used; wake up.

        * Ironically, the film has made a lot of money from dumb consumers. Heh heh.

        My take on Star Wars is:

        * (VI) Death to all ewoks. They should have used Wookies as I have heard was the original intention.

        * (IV,V,VI) Luke Skywalker is an incredible wank.

        * (I) That Jedi with the long neck stands no chance of surviving his first lightsaber fight.

        * (I) Death to Jar-Jar. I mean it. The first few minutes of the film were excellent. Then he turns up and ruins every scene he appears in.

        * (I) Annie is a girl's name. No wonder he turned evil. It was that or turn gay and shack up with Jar-Jar.

        * (I) Midichlorians are a stupid idea. Annakin's mum doesn't know who his father was. I think the usual explanation for that is most likely.

        * (II) I hope the last good act of Annakin Skywalker or the first evil act of Darth Vader is killing Jar Jar.

        As you can tell, I don't take Star Wars very seriously.
  • Someone made the smart decision to show Keanu but not play his voice. One can only hope the movie follows a similar path.

    ---------
    (not the one)
  • Don't forget. You should be able to see this teaser trailer when you see Star Wars: Attack of the Clones movie.

  • low bandwidth version (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pilferer ( 311795 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @12:54AM (#3528095)
    For those of you with low bandwidth connections, here is the trailer, in ASCII:

    $ { } & 0
    $ @ . . 0
    % 1 / ; 1
    ^ ~ # " 0
    @ @ ! . 1
    ! ( ] @ 0

    "THE MATRIX RELOADED"
    2003

    (and actually, that's pretty much all there is to the trailer)
    • cat coke | nose > keyboard
    • Well, that's more than EP2 has in the entire movie.

      To save you all your $8.50, the Star Wars EP2 story in it's entirety:

      Anakin guards Queen Amidala. That leads to discovering a covert cloning project. Anakin sees his mother die, blames himself, and goes a little evil because of it. Big jedi fight. Reveal corrupt ex-jedi in league with Sith. Yoda makes fearful prediction. Anakin get's the girl.

      That's it. There's really nothing else to the movie. Sorry, Lucas may have written a wonderful trilogy, but that's where it ended.

      Now everyone, go see The Matrix 100 times so we can get the title of highest-grossing movie back from the ever-idiotic Titanic. Star Wars sure isn't going to do it.

      • Re:low bandwidth version (Score:4, Funny)

        by Ryne ( 78636 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @05:17AM (#3528617)
        Anakin guards Queen Amidala. That leads to discovering a covert cloning project. Anakin sees his mother die, blames himself, and goes a little evil because of it. Big jedi fight. Reveal corrupt ex-jedi in league with Sith. Yoda makes fearful prediction. Anakin get's the girl.

        This is more story than a lot of movies has. E.g:
        Some dudes go to the mountain to throw down the ring into the pit

        Disclaimer: This was an attempt to be funny. I love Tolkien.
        • Actually, you are describing _three_ movies in your sentence there.

          I think it should go more like:

          1) Some people walk haltingly towards a bad place.
          2) Other people fight.
          3) The first people make it to the bad place and throw a RING into a HOT FIRE! Take THAT, evil!
      • Sorry, Lucas may have written a wonderful trilogy, but that's where it ended.

        Oh puleeeze. The first three movies (Ep 4, 5 & 6) were not that great either. We were young and impressionable and were blown away by third rate actors which were so bad nobody ever hired them after that. The story line is vapid and cheesy, along the lines of zillion "American boy meets evil, American boy pulls together, American boy beats evil" that were so popular back then. People complain about Jar-Jar, but the Ewoks were no different...

        The emperor never had any clothes...
    • Wow, that woman in the red dress is looking hotter than ever... I can see it. It's the piece of ascii that looks like this o8-< ... See the woman with the big juggies? I never knew they could convey so much just by asking us to turn our heads to the side by 90 degrees.

      What will those guys think of next?

  • Early Speculation (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Thakandar2 ( 260848 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @01:19AM (#3528153)
    Why are they using melee weapons? I was thinking about this after watching the trailor, and thought I'd share my thought process.

    At the end of The Matrix, Neo is able to stop bullets and the agents are "helpless." What if they reasoned that if you use something that doesn't obey the laws of the Matrix's physics once it leaves your personal influence, like how a sword does not leave your hand, whereas a bullet leaves a gun and is then subject to the air's "physics", then you could still "harm" that person.

    Oh... and from the crowd scenes, it looks like they either got a Fight Club like gathering to fight the agents from inside, or they actually visit Zion, which is something I always wondered about as well.

    Just a few thoughts. And it looks like the camera angles are going to be just as interesting as in the first, and from what I hear about it, the new effects (and this is from an interview with the effects guy which I can't seem to google), are 20x cooler than bullet time.

    I guess its time for new fight scene rip offs once this movie comes out. And strangely... I can't wait.
    • Interesting theory about melee weapons, but it won't fly: Neo jumped right in to one of the agents, after all.

      BlackGriffen

    • For the record (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Tokerat ( 150341 )
      The Matrix did not invent bullet time. They merely refined it. It used to be done with regular cameras and still film, all cameras in the sequence fired at once, and you then had to take each negative and attach it to the next and you'd have your bullet time. I saw it about 6 years ago on AMP, some video. I completely forget what it was though, totally shitting the bed on my point.

      If the effects are really 20x as mind blowing as bullet time, I can't wait.
    • Damn, here I am with mod points and there's no -1: Spoiler choice. Luckily I'm on a dial-up at the moment so, by the time the trailer finishes, I'll have forgotten your post.
    • FWIW, the Shadowrun RPG does something similar. A gun merely fires a projectile, so magic critters are pretty immune to it. All that's there is a flying piece of metal. Big deal. However, if your will is directing it (i.e. melee weapons, hand-to-hand), then the magic beasty isn't dealing with random piece of metal, but a directed weapon/attack with the willpower behind it, "powering" it if you will.

      It's why my physical adept can kill spirits hand to hand with one blow, where the street samurai with the machinegun can't even dent it.
  • Every time I see Laurence Fishburn, I keep waiting for somebody to say "Candyman!"
    • Every time I see Laurence Fishburn, I keep waiting for somebody to say "Candyman!"

      • Then I check IMDB and realize I'm tired and dumb ... not in that order.

    • Re:Candyman! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by namespan ( 225296 )
      I don't know about that, but "Larry" Fishburne was in one of the best B-movies to ever come out of the 1980s. "Band of the Hand," brought to you by the people who made Miami vice, features a group of juvenille delinquents who are put through an experimental youth survival program in the Florida Everglades by a tough but caring ex-marine. When they move to a halfway house in Miami, "Larry" plays a pimp/dealer who resents them cleaning up the neighborhood. So the ex-marine trains the ex-delinquents in automatic weapons and paramilitary tactics and they clean up the streets. Fantastic stuff.

      It's weird, you watch it, and you keep thinking "I should be unhappier with this film, but it's strangely satisfying!"

      • Watching Apocalypse Now is almost as unsettling. I'd seen the film I don't know how many times when I suddenly realised that Gunner's Mate 3rd class was a 16-year old Fishburne.
        • "Larry" Fishburne was Cowboy Curtis on Pee-Wee's Playhouse, the TV show on CBS that ran some 10 years ago. That was where I first saw him, so it always tripped me out to see him in serious roles.

  • Fishburne = Vader? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Aash ( 130966 )
    Is it just me or is Laurence Fishburne's delivery of the line "it is our destiny" awfully similar to Darth Vader's delivery of the line "it is your destiny" in ESB?

    Yes, I've seen the trilogy way too many times.

  • I just got back from seeing Episode 2, and they didn't show the Matrix trailer here. It was at the Raleigh Grand Theater.

    Episode 2 was good. :)
  • GM must have struck a deal with the producers. The majority of the cars shown are GM, including the new CTS (silver one, gets blown up unfortunately... I coulda gone for one of those) and the cops are Chevrolet Impalas. I think the car flipping over onto the CTS is an Olds, not 100% sure though and I'm not sure about the overturned SVU (don't much care for SUVs...).

    Sorry, this is what happens when you are a car guy. ;) </mindless babble>

    • Re:Starring: GM (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GlenRaphael ( 8539 )
      GM must have struck a deal with the producers. The majority of the cars shown are GM, including the new CTS (silver one, gets blown up unfortunately... I coulda gone for one of those) and the cops are Chevrolet Impalas.

      All of the featured cars are GM. But there are also a lot of background cars that are pretty much whatever the people who worked as extras felt like bringing. (Me, I brought a silver civic, and I think you can actually see a tiny bit of my car at a long distance during one scene of the trailer.)

      The boneyard [warnerbros.com] was something to see -- they destroyed at least 40 cars making the film. They had two or three copies of every "significant" car so that if one got messed up they could just tow it away and do another take with the next one. They had about seven of the silver CTS, all with the same carefully duplicated bullet holes [warnerbros.com] in each.

  • Quicktime exploded at the end (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sits ( 117492 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @03:03AM (#3528366) Homepage Journal
    I just rebooted into Windows to watch the trailer and then just at the end when it was putting up 2003 it made a long beeeeep then crashed with a Program Exception. These trailers become more inventive all the time!
  • IMHO, some interesting info from netcraft.com:

    =-=-=
    The site progressive.stream.aol.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) mod_perl/ 1.21 ApacheJServ/1.1 on Solaris 8.
    =-=-=

    It is streaming a 24MB videos while being linked on /. frontpage, and it is still going after ~3hrs. Now that is reliability!

  • Must say I'm looking forward to this far more than I'm looking forward to Episode 3.

    Obviously cheinonen hasn't seen Episode II yet. Go see it just for the Matrix trailer; you'll gladly stay for the movie.

  • Car / overpass shots (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fahrvergnugen ( 228539 ) <fahrv AT hotmail DOT com> on Thursday May 16, 2002 @03:32AM (#3528437) Homepage
    Many of the shots in the trailer are clearly identifiable as having been shot at the former airbase in Alameda, CA., an island off the coast of Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco. The view of San Francisco is breathtaking from the airbase end of the island.


    • The shots are:
    • Trinity stopping the shot up car at the 47-48 second time marker
    • flipping car at 51 seconds
    • Morpheus with sword at 52-53 seconds
    • jump stunt followed by rolling SUV at 55 seconds (quick flashes)
    • Morpheus with gun and explosion at 56 seconds


    There's some large soundstages there, built from old airplane hangars, all owned by EON Productions, the Wachowski's company. During the Matrix 2 shoot they had the logo for Burlyman, the Matrix films' working title, emblazoned on them, and signs sprang up around town that simply said "BURLY" on them, followed by an arrow.

    Near the hangar soundstages, a set was built on a vacant paved area next to the coast of the island. A mock freeway, sturdy enough to drive many cars on, pointed towards downtown San Francisco but ended hanging in space at an incline. (you can see the Bay Bridge in the background of some of the aforementioned shots) When standing on the freeway set, it would appear to lead straight into downtown San Francisco. To add the appearance of "realism," there was a highway sign proclaiming, "Palo Alto 7 miles." Palo Alto's about 30 miles from San Francisco. Whatever.

    Anyway, the set was really amazing to see, and since it was right next to public property (the local skate park) you could walk out and take pictures of the set, and the various prop cars (including most of the ones in the trailer) parked in the lot around it. There were always a few guys out firing off cameras when I went by. The set was taken down very quickly, shortly after filming completed and all the "Burly" signs came down.

    Also interesting to note is that some of the car chases were filmed in downtown Oakland and in the tunnel between Alameda & Oakland (causing a nasty traffic snarl one Saturday morning). The tunnel is notorious for being covered in grime, and is in fact so filthy that grafitti artists will come in with squeegies and start cleaning their tags into the walls. Even after the truck comes through and washes the walls off once every quarter, the tags are always just a little cleaner than the rest of the walls.

    The most prolific of these taggers is apparently known as "wetso," and on Friday night before filming he had his name writ large toward one end of the (fairly recently cleaned) tunnel. I'm very curious to see if it survives into any of the final shots in the finished film. Go Wetso.
    • Holy crap! I had forgotten this email I got exactly a year ago tomorrow from a friend of mine named Will:

      I just spent all day as a driver on the film set of the Matrix II in
      Alameda. My girlfriend was signed up with an agency and somehow we
      both got invitations to be drivers today. They have this unbelievable
      1.5 mile long 'fake highway' built on the abandoned air landing
      strips at Alameda Naval Station. There were about 50 drivers, and
      basically our job was to drive alongside or in the opposite lane
      while they were filming to make it look like real traffic on the
      highway. We got paid $100 for the day but also a lunch of lobster
      tails and filet mignon. The first Matrix movie made $450 million, so
      it's not surprising that they have a massive budget to film the
      sequel. Anyway, if you see Matrix II when it comes out next year,
      keep an eye out for me in a silver Pathfinder.. I'm bound to be in
      there somewhere!

      I'll have to review the trailer (when it's not slashdotted) to see if I can see the Pathfinder...

      -Russ

      • I just spent all day as a driver on the film set of the Matrix II in Alameda. My girlfriend was signed up with an agency and somehow we both got invitations to be drivers today.

        The agency that lined up the people on this is Beau Bonneau casting [sfcasting.com]. If you're in the SF Bay Area and have a flexible work schedule it's worth getting on their list; you have to pay $20 and get your picture taken to be in their database. Just last month they sent out a call for extras to work on some scenes from the forthcoming Incredible Hulk movie.

        Your friend must have been called in on a Friday; they only had the lobster and filet mignon on Fridays. Not that the food was bad any other day, mind you.

        There were about 50 drivers, and basically our job was to drive alongside or in the opposite lane while they were filming to make it look like real traffic on the highway.

        For a few scenes they called in more than a hundred drivers but 50 was about normal.

        In the shot where Trinity is driving the Ducati motorbike past a wreck with lots of smoke, police cars and men in orange vests in the background, I'm pretty sure my car is on screen, but it's way on the far right of the shot, just a tiny rectangle next to a police car.

        To add the appearance of "realism," there was a highway sign proclaiming, "Palo Alto 7 miles." Palo Alto's about 30 miles from San Francisco. Whatever.

        They changed the signs regularly and shot at different angles such that that mile-and-a-half of freeway will look like it was shot all over the Bay Area. All the signs refer to actual places, but the distances are nonsense.

        Anyway, the set was really amazing to see, and since it was right next to public property (the local skate park) you could walk out and take pictures of the set, and the various prop cars (including most of the ones in the trailer) parked in the lot around it.

        The prop cars usually had the keys left in the ignition. One weekend one of the security guards took a prop car and tried to see how fast he could go, causing an actual crash on that fake freeway. Another some gusty winds caused a section of freeway wall to fall over. Since they didn't have time to fix it, they just parked a truck on the shoulder such that it blocked the camera's view through the hole and shot around it.

  • Looks to be watchable and entertaining.

    I just wish trailers could have surround ^_^

  • High-Res Mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by rkohutek ( 122839 )
    There is a mirror available of the high-res video located below:

    ftp://files.rand0m.org/videos/reloaded_teaser_1_ 64 0.mov

  • I'm the opposite way (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @04:42AM (#3528555)
    After seeing Ep2 early this morning in the theatre (and being incredibly impressed for the most part - expectations far exceeded. Lucas may live another season!), I'm looking forward to Ep3 as I did Ep1 before I heard anything about it and saw the sucky trailers, etc. :)

    As has already been said, The Matrix: Reloaded looks like it might just be another actionish movie w/o the philosophy that helped make The Matrix cool. In my mind, sure, the philosophy and weird scifi made The Matrix cool, but let's face it. It'd have been a pretty weak ending without the revolutionary action at the end. THAT is what made The Matrix totally haul ass. Now that everyone has seen The Matrix almost 100 times each, and there have been dozens of 'immitation' movies, employing the same stop action photography, the effect is somewhat passe, and not all that nifty. I suspect Reloaded will be nothing more than an additional chapter with more action and little real plot development. Like Star Wars Ep1 - 3, we already know basically what's going to happen. We don't need basic plot - we need indepth plot (which, I feel, Ep2 provided fairly well, overall), otherwise it'll be dull and not all that interesting.

    I got enough purely action films from the 80's and early 90's, like Terminator. Give me a good solid plot, please, and make it stimulating.

    But I s'pose that's asking too much. Episode 1, for instance, got cheers throughout. Episode 2 (being substantially longer - I clocked somewhere around 2 hours 15 minutes) didn't really get much enthusiasm in the theatre I went to at all. I don't understand people.

  • The Matrix is one of the few films... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Spytap ( 143526 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @04:51AM (#3528575)
    ...willing to push some boundaries.
    It attacked Sci-Fi when Sci-Fi (with a few notable exceptions in Star Wars and Terminator) was not considered a viable genre.
    It brought Hong Kong style action and anime inspired cinematography to the masses, when both were considered to be niche markets at best.
    It pushed the limits of technology and special effects going so far as to invent proprietary techniques to better show off the ideas of the filmmakers (yes, Bullet time was invented for the Matrix and is a trademarked and patented technique. It was first seen in a Gap commercial as a sort of technology test to see how audiences would react, but was created entirely for and because of the Matrix).
    It was willing to have a complex and highbrow storyline that was dark and brooding while still being fun and exciting.
    It was also, and maybe most importantly, a test in trust from the studio to the filmmakers. They were given a lot of leeway in developing and making this movie. They were allowed to market it in the way they saw fit and rack up a huge expense bill to make sure that it was as good at they saw it in their heads. It led to other films being made under trust (decidedly rare in Hollywood), such as the filming of all three Lord of the Rings movies at once and letting Spiderman be directed by Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame (kind of a contrast there) and played by Tobey McGuire who is more known as an arty actor than an audience drawing teen hunk.

    Overall I trust these sequels because of how well The Matrix was done the first time around. I have confidence that it will be as esoteric and interesting as the first, while still kicking ass. I also appreciate them for the changes that the first brought about to the movie industry, and hope that these lead to more in the same direction. As a film major, I can only hope that there are more mass movies made to the same caliber as The Matrix, LOTR, and Spider-Man and hope to see these sequels as another catalyst for change. I also hope to be able to leave the theater with the same sense of awe and adrenaline that the first left me with.

    Here's to hoping.
    • It pushed the limits of technology and special effects going so far as to invent proprietary techniques to better show off the ideas of the filmmakers (yes, Bullet time was invented for the Matrix and is a trademarked and patented technique. It was first seen in a Gap commercial as a sort of technology test to see how audiences would react, but was created entirely for and because of the Matrix).

      Oh right, then I guess that freeze-frame three-D stuff I saw in pop music videos from the Rolling Stones (Michael Gondry [google.com]) and Orbital was just a figment of my imagination. Or the similar slow bullet dodge thing in Blade? Or the way the physical landscape in Dark CIty was psychically mutable?

      The Matrix, like most great sci-fi movies, was an accomplished pastiche of several cutting edge style trends, but it borrowed heavily from less-successful or non-genre precursors. You can see it in Bladerunner, how it borrows heavily in mood, scenes, and dialogue from the earlier PI movie Klute with Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda.
  • Since this trailer was in front of the Star Wars AOTC movie I saw (in California) I'd guess that the web release merely coincides with the theatrical release of the trailer, which in turn is released to advertise with AOTC rather than steal any thunder.
  • Well, I saw Ep2 and this trailer was there. The theatre I was in was DLP so this trailer was as well. The big fat Green preview aproved for all audience screens was flawless - ... however, that was about the only thing I noticed - and after talking to may people, the masses dont notice scratches

    also, brand new projector and re-done sound system cut out in this trailer

    I got the whole theater to laugh cause when it says 2003 I said "2k3? Thats when the sound will work" -- Yea, Im proud of myself

    PS - Where is the official talk about SWEP2 thread? I saw the movie 4 hours ago and can't sleep right now so I wanna talk about this shit!

  • trailer question in general (Score:3, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @08:18AM (#3529221) Journal
    OK, I understand that the trailers are made with a movie audience and TV commercials in mind, where you have X seconds to fill... BUT:
    Could some kind /.er please explain to me why it seems that every 1 minute QT trailer on the net seems to have 10 seconds of title track at the front end and 15 seconds of static title crap at the back end? If you're pumping 24 megs of a 640x480 trailer over the net, wouldn't it be a commercially sound decision to chop 10 of those megs off and reduce the time it takes to d/l said trailer? Won't that mean more of them are distributed/seen? Maybe I just don't 'get it'.

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