Matrix Reloaded

[Human_Error]

http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/


http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_img/newfront_group.jpg


HOLLYWOOD - Sitting across from Keanu Reeves during interviews for "The Matrix Reloaded," it is quite clear that he is no longer the same boy from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" - even if he does use the word "stoked" occasionally.

Dressed casually in a black T-shirt with a suit jacket, Keanu comes across like an actor who takes his work very seriously - not to the point of being obnoxious, but definitely more seriously than the Keanu from "Bill and Ted," shot nearly 15 years ago.

"Adolescence ... I mean characters like Rimbaud got a handle on it I guess pretty early on, but - in my quiet I was working something out," Reeves smiles at the changes he's undergone since he first started acting in the early '80s.

At the moment, Reeves is focused on his current project, the first of two sequels to his 1999 film "The Matrix." It's clear the film brings out the boy in Reeves; his energy for the work is contagious. But the actor comes across as a very expressive person in general, often using his hands while talking and often quoting lines from the films (and sometimes with a French accent).

"I'm very excited. I can't wait to see it," he says about the premiere of "Reloaded."

Later in the interview, he enthuses about a key scene in the film: "Don't you think it was neat, the Architect scene? Isn't that? I don't want to give away plot, but the aspect of what Neo finds out about being the one. I love that."

More Matrix interviews
• Jada Pinkett Smith
• Carrie-Anne Moss
• Producer Joel Silver




"Reloaded" may just be the most highly anticipated film of 2003, thanks to the success of the first film. While fan expectations are high, Reeves says there were only two people he was trying hardest to please in the making of the film.

"I'm just trying to live up to what the brothers, Larry and Andy Wachowski, the directors and writers, want. I'm trying to realize their dream. That's the pressure I felt. To be able to do what they wanted me to do," he says.

"Reloaded" continues Neo's story, after his discovery in "The Matrix," that what he thought was the real world was instead a computer program called The Matrix. After meeting Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), he is awoken to the real world and there finds out that he is "the one" - the one person with the ability to change the codes in The Matrix with his own will.

"It's the development of the birth of a messiah and the identity of a man," explains Reeves. "I think Neo in the beginning of 'Reloaded' is full of a lot of fear about what he has to do and the responsibilities that the community is asking of him."

While many have tagged Neo as a reluctant hero, Reeves doesn't see the character that way.

"I don't think the character is such a reluctant hero. I think he's accepted it, but I don't think he's accepted it without question," he says. "Neo is trying to find out 'what is my life' and he's not just taking it ... he says, 'what if I fail?'"

Part of the success behind "The Matrix" was its innovative action scenes.

For "Reloaded," the directors upped the ante, not only increasing the number of action scenes, but also their length and bravado.

"I've got five fights in the second one and I have more moves in the fight with the Smiths than I did in the whole first movie. Probably twice over," he laughs, admitting that much of his time off between shots was spent learning moves for another fight scene.

Another reason behind the success of "The Matrix" is that the film doesn't try to be a simple action or science fiction fantasy. Instead, the Wachowski brothers filled the story with religious and philosophy context, ranging from Catholicism to Taoism, and the writing of Nietzsche, just to name a few. While the famously private Reeves is reluctant to reveal his own beliefs, he does admit that they are similar to many brought up in the film.


http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/special_packages/matrix/5814540.htm

[Human_Error]

I can't wait to go....haha


Megaton of Matrix

Explosive sequel will blow your mind

By BRUCE KIRKLAND
The Matrix Reloaded is stunning, absolutely thrilling -- and a giant leap forward from the original. This sequel is not just reloaded, it is an entirely new arsenal.

The Wachowski Brothers, Larry and Andy, were armed with more weapons, including a far bigger budget, for their two sequels. Warner Bros. and partners ponied up a reported $310 million for both Reloaded and the final installment, The Matrix Revolutions, which is due in theatres Nov. 7.


Critically, the mysterious co-writers and co-directors were not just being indulgent with the money when they shot the two sequels as one giant project on set in Australia and California. The new money is obvious on screen. There are more fantastic fight sequences, including a scene in which the Christ-like Neo (Keanu Reeves operating at a sublime level) fights his nemesis Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) and 99 Smith clones in what has become known as the Burly Brawl. It is really more of a martial-arts ballet than a brawl and it is beautiful.

So are many of the other major battles -- most of them almost bloodless -- and so are all the remarkable one-on-one confrontations. With the long cloaks, leather, and dark shades on the great ensemble cast, the movie looks slick and plays cool. Technically, it is even more sophisticated than The Matrix. The filmmakers have gone beyond the "bullet time" style of the original to enhance the eye candy and intensify the "real" world as well as the fantastical ones.

Also ramped up are the spectacular chase sequences which, of course, are an integral part of a trilogy in which the good guys -- Neo, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and new characters such as Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) -- have to outrun the bad guys while searching for The Truth about the Matrix, the computer system which has run amok and threatens humanity.

And Reloaded is actually about something, although some viewers may be vexed when the story abruptly ends with the words: "To be concluded." This is no different from being held in suspended animation at the end of The Two Towers, the second installment of Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings film trilogy. In the case of The Matrix trilogy, the final payoff comes more quickly, in six months instead of a year, although we had to wait four years between the 1999 original and Reloaded.

The Matrix was always part of a trilogy, at least in the Wachowski Brothers' heads, even though making the full set of movies depended on the surprise success of the original. This conceptual part is important: It means the trilogy has integrity and the sequels are not just exploitation.

Wrapped up in that idea is another Truth: that The Matrix Reloaded is the nearly perfect hybrid of action, art, sensuality and sexuality. There is also, of course, philosophy, religion, pop culture and even cliche (the Wachowskis delight in having their actors mouth old saws while exploring retro-future philosophies).

This is The Bible without the begats, the Holy Trinity blended with other world religions and mythologies, from Buddhism to Greek legend. This is fun. This is challenging.

Some may dismiss it all as bogus philosophizing. That is missing the point, surely. The Matrix and its first offspring tap into something profound and manage to make it matter for a new generation, many of whom don't go to any church and don't willingly read many books. The Matrix is a cult religion itself -- yet it threatens no other religion.

THE MATRIX RELOADED

Time: 2 hours, 18 minutes

[Dash_Riprock]

I went to see The Matrix Reloaded this afternoon. How disappointed I was. I just finished rating the movie on the Yahoo bulletin board for it. I gave it two stars out of five. I had read a review of the movie by the local newspaper's movie reviewer yesterday. He rated it 1.5 stars out of four. I thought he must be nuts--or a sci-fi genre hater. How wrong I was.

My rating was actually 2.5 out of 5, but the meter didn't allow for half points. Let me preface everything by saying that I loved the original Matrix movie. I own the DVD and watch it frequently. Folks, anyone who tells you the sequel is a great movie is, at a minimum, lying to everyone else and, at a maximum, lying to themselves.

I found one-half to two-thirds of the movie to be, simply put, boring. Far too much time is spent on psycho-babble talk. The fight scenes are adequate--the highway fight scene is excellent--but the special effects are shaky at times.

The story is muddled, but I will admit that the revelation by the "architect" near the end was intriguing. I also found the maker's vision of Zion (the last human city) to be a U.N. supporter's VFW dreamland--VFW, as in Very Few Whites. The celebration scene is...stupid and even a bit disgusting. Sorry, but there are no other words for it. The thought that came to mind as I watched it was "Soddom and Gomorrah". Watch the movie for yourself, but it's more worthy of a rental than a theater ticket. I don't plan to buy the DVD.

As I said, I am so disappointed in this movie. It could have been so much better. I feel that I wasted my money. Oh well, T3 preview looked good, and it comes out in July.

[Human_Error]

Dang....why do they do that...pump us up for dissappointment?

Dang it with all the money hollywood has why can't they be clever?

Well thanks for telling me....I will wait till it comes out on rental then.

*pouts*

[Dash_Riprock]

Hey, don't take my word for it. Go see the movie. The average rating for the 1500 or so Yahoo reviews is 3.8 out of 5. Obviously, that means that a lot of people liked it. I would also add that the average letter grade given to the movie by major newspaper and TV reviewers was a "B", a pretty decent grade. Roger Ebert, one of the most famous reviewers of our time, gave it an "A-".

Still, on Yahoo I found a lot of the five-star ratings given were done so by teenagers and 20-somethings (many of whom in their reviews angrily denounced in obscene terms those of us who had the audacity not to love the movie).

An opinion is like a you-know-what, everyone has one. Maybe I'm way off base. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I just thought the movie was boring, pretentious, and murky most of the time, and over-the-top the rest of the time.

By the way, the average Yahoo rating for X2, a movie I loved, was 4.6 out of 5--the highest average rating that I have seen for a movie on Yahoo. For X2, many of the low ratings given were done so my Matrix Reloaded lovers who were taunting us about how their movie (which hadn't even been released yet!) was going to be so superior to X2.

[Human_Error]

Dang...I was just fired up about the movie....

Hate to think they were not clever enough to pull it off.

Kinda sad.

I have often thought when making sequels to movies why they don't put some avid fans from the street on the writers team. Seriously sometimes Hollywood tries to out do the masterpiece that they lose perspective.

[Dash_Riprock]

As I said, go see it for yourself. I'd like to hear what you think about it.

[MaximumSam]

I saw it last night, and I thought it was pretty awesome. There was definitely better action than in the first film. I laughed a lot more in this one, too. The only downer was that Lawrence Fishburne looks kind of fat, which takes away from his coolness. But otherwise, the movie has awesome special effects and is just as crazy and incomprehensible as the first one.

[Human_Error]

Ok Ok.....I will go and review the movie. LOOOOOOOOL BUT...if I walk out with gum on the bottom of my shoe, or someone spills one of those jumbo drinks on me.....or the kid behind me kicks my chair...or...

LOL I am blaming YOU....LOOOOOOOOOOOL

(just joking)

[Dash_Riprock]

Laughed? For the whole movie, I don't recall a single person in the entire theater laughing at any time during the movie.

I stand by my original review.

[MaximumSam]

I'm trying to remember where people were laughing. Let's see, the scene where Neo flew away from the hundred Agent Smith's and they just sort of stood around looking at each other got a lot of laughs. The French guy got a lot of laughs too. Of course, that may have been just because he was French.

Anyways, this movie got lot of mixed reviews. I think if you go in expecting a great action film, you won't be disappointed. But a lot of the movie is devoted to setting up the third film (those last scenes were really great).

[Trau]

Action was great, but the story was revoltingly lacking.

[Dash_Riprock]

Okay, I admit they may have laughed at the French guy: "All right, you have skill." But I simply found him annoying by the end of the scene.

The fight scenes reminded me of those pre-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Chinese kung fu films--the fighters each throw 5,000 punches in some overly-lengthy fight scene with 99.99 percent of the blows being blocked. I fought in martial arts tournaments (Green Belt, Tang Soo Do) in my younger days. Trust me, that ain't how it really is. Neo was portrayed as this omnipotent being at the end of the first movie. You wouldn't know it from his fight scenes. He'd hit or kick someone and they'd come back for more. And this guy is supposed to be "The One"? The fight scenes, especially the one with the Smith copies, went on, and on, and on, and on. Then he flies away because he can't take them in a fight? Doesn't sound very powerful to me. Egad, it was so tedious. If the master system program is smart, it'll just put 100,000 Smiths surrounding it and the gig will be up. The humans have no power over the agents inside of the Matrix. Even Morpheus got his clock cleaned by a single Smith in the first movie. So Neo is on his own in there.

And if Morpheus spouts one more friggin' line of dialogue about "fate" or "destiny", I'll scream!!! You're right, he is fatter (and more stilted--if that's possible, LOL).

The movie also had a lot of excess weight to it. Ditch the lovemaking scene, ditch the rave scene(!!!), minimize the dreadlocks guy (Link?) scenes, and rewrite some of the innane dialogue, and you might have a passable action flick.

I simply didn't care about any of the characters as I did in the first movie. Most of them looked like killing them would be doing them a favor.

I liked the first movie SO much. They really turned the story into a mess with this "sequel".

[MaximumSam]

The fight scenes reminded me of those pre-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Chinese kung fu films

I actually liked the kung fu scenes. I wasn't really looking for realism in them, but it was just cool to see people get thrown around. When Neo grabs that pipe and was whacking Agent Smith's everywhere, I was impressed.

Neo was portrayed as this omnipotent being at the end of the first movie. You wouldn't know it from his fight scenes. He'd hit or kick someone and they'd come back for more. And this guy is supposed to be "The One"? The fight scenes, especially the one with the Smith copies, went on, and on, and on, and on. Then he flies away because he can't take them in a fight? Doesn't sound very powerful to me. Egad, it was so tedious. If the master system program is smart, it'll just put 100,000 Smiths surrounding it and the gig will be up. The humans have no power over the agents inside of the Matrix. Even Morpheus got his clock cleaned by a single Smith in the first movie. So Neo is on his own in there.

I was wondering about that myself. I would guess the short answer is that it isn't cool to see Neo just obliterate everything in his path.

And if Morpheus spouts one more friggin' line of dialogue about "fate" or "destiny", I'll scream!!! You're right, he is fatter (and more stilted--if that's possible, LOL).

Morpheus being fat really bothered me. There were all these extreme closeups of his face, and he looked like a big bullfrog. The Wachowski(sp?) brothers did spend too much time with bogus fate b.s., and it didn't help that Fishburne developed Marlon Brando-itis, because he looked silly delivering some of those lines. But he still looked cool kicking ass at the end of the movie.

The movie also had a lot of excess weight to it. Ditch the lovemaking scene, ditch the rave scene(!!!), minimize the dreadlocks guy (Link?) scenes, and rewrite some of the innane dialogue, and you might have a passable action flick.

The love scene was funny to watch because of all those plugs on them. I liked the rave scene ok. But there was a whole lot of extra stuff, as this really felt like a 'bridge' film. I liked this one solely because of all the cool action, plus the last hour or so was pretty sweet - the highway scene, then the architect, then the ending. I was stoked about the ending - it really makes me want to see the last one.

[DesertFox]

"Bridge" movies don't usually come out too well. The bridge from Back to the Future I to III was the least convincing of the three. From Alien to Aliens was a major step up -- Aliens being one of the all-time great sci-fi flicks, IMO -- but the second Aliens was lousy and the last one just awful. They had all that time to investigate where these cosmic cockroaches came from, how they developed, on what kind of planet, how did they come up with that extremely potent acid for blood, what kind of skin could they have to use acid that way, etc, and did absolutely nothing with it.

[Dash_Riprock]

Well, I was just on Yahoo, looking at the ratings board for the movie. All of the teenagers have finished adding their "greatest movie ever made!" five-star reviews. Now the adults are starting to post their reviews--and the overall average rating is starting to drop. Many of the people who have posted unfavorable comments didn't even bother to rate the movie--so it should probably be even lower.

I love how the 17 and 18-year olds on the board tell us in their reviews "your just to stuped to understand it" (deliberate errors in my quote).

I so hope the third movie is better.

[Wyatt_Junker]

Just saw it.

And liked it.

I think the purpose of the gratuitous sex/simultaneous rave scene was to juxtapose the nature of the human beside that of machine. (And BTW, extra body plugs mean extra orifices, uh huh).

I enjoyed the car chase, the Agent Smith whoop ass session, Neo's superhero flying and even the philosophy/story line.

I really enjoyed the Colonel Sanders dude, the Head Programmer and Neo's talk wit 'em. The concept of choice.

The concept that you already know the decisions you're going to make 'cause you already made 'em, and that life is more about learning WHY you made 'em. You have to live out your predestination in order to discover it.

And I like the fact that the Keymaker and the Oracle are so average-looking, and as correct as President Bush's cabinet. It brings a reality into it.

I thought it rocked. 4 stars outta 5.

[Dash_Riprock]

How dare you like that pathetic excuse for a sequel! http://freeconservatives.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Okay, I strongly recommend the movie "Equilibrium." It is similar, in a broad sense, to the Matrix films. It also borrows elements from Farenheit 451, Gattaca, Metropolis, and even Logan's Run. The story has depth, the dialogue is thoughtful, you care about the characters, the CG is excellent (but not a lot of it, thankfully), the sets are great, and the fight scenes are spectacular--crisp and they actually have a resolution to them. 4.5 stars out of 5

Rent it, it's worth the price!

[Wyatt_Junker]

Here's a weird factoid after cruising on IMDb about Equilibrium:

"In certain scenes, the muzzle flash of the pistols and rifles fired by the Clerics and guards will reveal the Tetragrammatron insignia."

Kind of reminds one of Ozzy backmasking beezlebub.

On another note, I've seen most of the other movies, but...

Logan's Run sounds like a prune juice diet gone awry. Metropolis needs better dialogue and character development(heh heh). Never saw 451. But I'm sure Bradbury's tome will suffice.

Let me ask you this. Did you ever see William Blatty's The Ninth Configuration? Its worth a couple hours of one's time. Kinda like Fight Club before there was one, with the same mind-bending, Hitchkockian conclusion. Stacy Keach's best work IMO.

[Dash_Riprock]

Nope, never seen The Ninth Configuration. I may check it out sometime. Never seen Fight Club either. Logan's Run received an Oscar for its special effects (pretty pale by today's), but its storyline has a strangely similar plot element. As far as Metropolis goes, what do you expect from a sci-fi film that is 70 years old? 451 was a bleak film, similar to 1984.

Those Grammaton Clerics were very bad dudes, but I never saw any insignia when they fired their weapons. Then again, the action scenes were very fast paced.

[ThomasMore]

I am with Dash.

I absolutely loved the original movie, both for its original ideas and original execution.

The sequel had great effects, but only a few bits and pieces of plot.

Out of four stars, I would give it two (and I love good SciFi).