Was Orson Welles Not Available?

[digitaldiscipline]

After the train wreck that "Reloaded" was, it was with a lot of trepidation that we went to see Revolutions last night. Now, a slightly more comprehensive review of Matrix: Revolutions.

High points: Nona Gaye & Monica Bellucci [yum], and whoever the guy who looked like Bil Dwyer channeling Hugo Weaving beautifully.

Low Points: Blatant Christianity overtones, awful dialogue, and, for the love of Optimus Prime, Unicron?!? ("Why would the machines have a pre-built voice interface to talk to a human?")

Indeterminate Value Points: Huge battle scenes, sentinels schooling like mackerel.

Okay, okay, I'm getting ahead of myself here. It was, to traumatize ladysoleil, a giant fucking sneetch at the end. [aside to M: WotC's use of "sneetches" most of the way through had me thinking of Dr. Seuss, since I'm not up to my nipples in HP/JKR shite].

Um, right. We last saw our plucky band of refugees preparing for the machine assault on Zion, with Neo and some other dude laid out, semi-comatose, for not very well specified reasons. We pick up right there, only Neo is freejacking, or something, and is discovered to be hanging out with a nice, if virtual, Pakistani family in the world's cleanest subway station. Why is it clean and blindingly white, when the guy who lords over it looks like the adult bastard love child of Nick Nolte and the Unabomber? No fucking clue, mate.

Er, right, where was I? Oh, yes, Oracle 2.0 makes an appearance, though, really, it felt gratuitous, strained, and just awkward. Not exactly helpful, or even as engagingly obtuse as she used to be. Rebooting is apparently a bitch.

Really, recapping the plot is pointless. There's some abysmal editing, some wooden dialogue I'd like to build a summer cabin in Maine out of, and, literally, a character called "Deus ex Machina." Frankly, if Unicron had been subtly plastered with a sticker that read "Hamdingers" [bonus points to anyone who gets that], it couldn't have been less dopey.

Dramatic tension? Errr. . . umm. . . a guy held a scalpel to Trinity's neck for a minute, and there was a chase scene.

Really, when the aftermath of a "narrow escape" is peppered with such gems as "I knew we'd make it, because you said we would," that's not exactly compelling drama.

Frankly, the "pilgrimage" looked like nothing so much as a video game with a really tough boss level with a nifty cheat.

Even the climactic fight drags on. . . and on. . . and on. . . I felt bad for Hugo Weaving, because not only was he not given ehough to do, you could tell he was trying to infuse some awful writing with some level of spirit that it just couldn't warrant.



Well, at least it was better than "Reloaded." Yes, that's called damning with faint praise, but, frankly, that's all it warrants.

As I said as the credits rolled [over a must-have techno track, the name of which eludes me, but ain't Neodammerung], "If I =EVER= meet the Wachowski brothers, I am giving them the biggest fucking wedgie."

Comments

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Altho' Trin's line about "it took me 10 minutes just to buckle one boot" was kinda funny. Welcome to our world, sweetie.

[mykal.livejournal.com]

The "Lord of the Subway" was the gyro copter pilot from The Road Warrior. I think.

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

As I said as the credits rolled [over a must-have techno track, the name of which eludes me, but ain't Neodammerung], "If I =EVER= meet the Wachowski brothers, I am giving them the biggest fucking wedgie."

I'm next. I'm gonna give them the Atomic Hillary Clinton wedgie (in which you yank someone's underwear up so high over their head that they're using the waist as a headband).

And aside to R: yeah, I too took the sneetch references to be Seussian, since the potter ref would correctly be a Snitch, not sneetch. At any rate, the joke still sucked. ;)

[angel-renewed.livejournal.com]

It sucked. It sucked big.

The only eye-candy for me was the guy with dreads.

*sigh*

[etcet.livejournal.com]

i think K's eye candy was the preview for "Troy."

roman elves, ahoy!

[etcet.livejournal.com]

exactly!

my unspoken aside there was, "you're wearing moccasins!"

[etcet.livejournal.com]

[insert Jared cameo here]

[a-green-macaw.livejournal.com]

I don't get why so many people bitch about how "christian" the theme of the Matrix is. The Wachowski brothers never tried to hide it. 100% pure Gnostic Cathar Christianity with guns and computers, thats the Matrix from the first movie to the last.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

it was substantially less blatant.

i'm dense enough to not have noticed it, at all, in the chronicles of narnia, so when even -i- am picking up the symbolism and thematic elements, it's just about gotta be written in foot-high magic marker.

[geekers.livejournal.com]

It was way longer than it needed to be... and the script was teh s uck. I will not bring myself to elaborate as I should be writing a thesis right now. ;}