Quote:
Originally posted by Moskie
Found a handful of reviews here:
Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune
Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Steve Murray
Christpher Null at filmcritic.com
Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter
Most of them have virtually nothing good to say about the movie. I don't think I'll be able to see the movie (in english, at least) anytime soon. I might resort to downloading it, we'll see. Anyway, I get from the reviews that Revolutions is everything I hated about Reloaded, only about three times worse.
And, please, the idea that people "don't get it" is tiresome. Reloaded was a bad movie. So much that happened in Reloaded was irrelevant to both the plot and to any theme they tried (yes, tried) to discuss. The fight scene with that asian dude (which ends with "You do not truly know someone until you fight them", gimmie a break), the huge fight scene with Agent Smith (which starts for no reason, and ends with Neo flying away, whoopdedoo), the twins, the French dude, kissing the French dude's girl... there's probably more, but it's been a while. All of these parts of Reloaded could have been either taken out or heavily altered, and you'd have the same exact movie (in terms of plot and theme). And having characters named "The Keymaker" and "The Architect" is juvenile. Why don't they just wear big signs that say "METAPHOR" while they're at it?
I've been wanting to get that rant off for a while 
**added** I know some people are going to say that the parts I mentioned that could be taken out are relevant to some philosophical undertones/themes. That's all well and good, but a skill needed for good film-making is incoporating your themes into the plot well. This is where Reloaded failed. If you're going to discuss philosophy in a movie, fine, I think that's great. But take the time to create a plot and script where these themes are transparent, in that they jive with what's going on in the movie. The mere fact that philosophy is discussed or brought up isn't good enough.
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If you take out the parts that you mentioned, there wouldn't be a plot. The first Matrix started the theory that Neo was the One; Reloaded is finishing that theory. The Keymaker was the only way for Neo find out if he is the One, and the Merovingian (french guy) was the only way that they could get the Keymaker. If you took either one of those out, it ruins the plot of the first movie, and makes the entire trilogy useless.
The Smith vs Neo scene wasn't useless, either. Neo is the good guy and Smith is the bad guy. Good and evil. How can the entire plot the trilogy be useless? Are Neo and Smith expected to talk it out and write poetry? Neo flew away at the end of it because...well, he was getting his ass kicked at the end? Wouldn't you run from a fight you know you couldn't win?
Persephone (the Merovingian's wife) is basically longing for love again. Yes, she makes Neo kiss her, but guess what? Ghost and Niobe are also forced to kiss her in the side plots for her telling them vital information. She passes on info to the rebels, but only if she can be made to experience love again, something that the Merovingian can no longer give her.
The "asian guy fight" had a purpose as well. Seraph (the asian guy) isn't a human. He's a program. He's a program that is designed for guarding the Oracle. In other words, he holds the dutie of stopping agents and all other intruders that want her dead. The only way Seraph can tell who people really are is by fighting them. That's not so hard to believe...what if his programming can tell the true identity of people after combat? He fights other rebels as well when they need to see the Oracle (shown in the horrid videogame Enter the Matrix). That fight wasn't useless.
As for the Keymaker and Architect being named juvenile aliases, what else can you call two computer programs? Would it be better if they were named "BEFR(***XXMM)2045?" They have a name in the real world, as do all of the programs. If they were humans, it would be a different matter. The Twins are cast in Revolutions too, so I imagine that there will be some explanation of them in the sequel (aside from being the top bodyguards for the Merovingian).
Reloaded was an excellent movie, much better than the first one. Roger Ebert gave the first Matrix 3 stars and Reloaded 3.5 stars out of 4. He's one of the few critics that didn't want Reloaded to fail, and actually saw it for what it was worth. Just because a movie is different from the first doesn't make it suck. You have to remember that the Wachowskis had to make the first Matrix a type of movie that could be set up for sequels or end with no sequels (Warner Brothers told them this; if the first Matrix didn't sell good there wouldn't be sequels). If the Wachowskis knew ahead of time that people would love the Matrix so much, I imagine it would be more like Reloaded. I just keep getting the feeling that if someone liked the first Matrix and didn't like Reloaded then they watched the first one for the wrong reasons...or better yet, expected something different from Reloaded and wasn't willing to like change. I knew it would be different, and I agree that the first time I saw it I was "weirded out," but the more thought and viewings I gave Reloaded, the more I liked it. Now I like it much, much more than I ever liked the first one.
-Lasereth