Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

use Perl Log In

Log In

[ Create a new account ]

gnat (29)

gnat
  (email not shown publicly)

Journal of gnat (29)

Friday November 14, 2003
12:27 PM

Matrix 3

[ #15772 ]
One word review: "avoid".

Five word review: "At least it's the last."

It explains nothing, has ratshit pacing (about 45 minutes in, the action jumps to 11 and doesn't stop), steals from Gyruss and Beachhead, has a tediously overlong final death battle, and insists on ramming Christian bullshit imagery down our necks. I mean, crucifixion, the rising sun, free will, ... I felt used.

And did I mention that it explains nothing? The Wachowski Brothers are cheap hacks. They're no better than Chris Carter, who also ended up with self-contradictory ambiguous metawank. The difference is that Carter was trying to keep an open-ended show going, and by the time he knew he had to wrap it up, he'd already gone in too many different directions for there to be anything left to make sense. The Matrix, on the other hand, was allegedly planned as three movies. If so, the Brothers Dubya should be the fucking laughing stock of Hollywood for being unable to keep their shit together for a mere THREE episodes.

I've now seen part 3 twice, and it made no more sense the second time. So much for the benefit of the doubt. Oh yeah, if you do go and see it, play my drinking game: quaff every time a Zionista says "goddamn". You'll be shitfaced in no time.

--Nat


List all Journal entries
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Matrix 3 12 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.
  • While I haven't seen the last two Matrix movies (I wasn't all that enthralled by the first one), I feel deep resonance with your remark about Chris Carter. The X-Files had a few great seasons (culminating in /Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"/ featuring actor's actor Charles Nelson Reilly [creationent.com]) but Carter pulled to violently at the tapestry of the show's mythology. Towards the end of the series, it seemed like the over-the-top plots were an attempt to distract the viewer from the lost story arcs.

    Too bad.

    • Not everyone has the talent of Whedon. Or is it that "money" thing that perverts everything ?

      That said, I'd rather be distracted from plot holes by overcomplex stories à la X-Files than by giant bots with giant guns and a whole collection of clichés à la Matrix 3. Nat, how did you manage to see that movie twice ? I can understand that you can give the benefice of doubt to the last few seasons of X-Files, but honestly, Matrix 3 destroyed even the few possibilities for a good 3rd episod

      • I saw it twice because I watched it once with Orwant on the weekend, then when I got back my wife wouldn't take "it's crap!" for an answer. Now she knows to trust my judgement.

        I passed the time by trying to figure out the camera placement. Oh, and Milk Duds. Lots of Milk Duds.

        --Nat

  • Three part wankfest (Score:4, Funny)

    by ziggy (25) on 2003.11.14 13:50 (#25796) Journal
    The trilogy was doomed right about the time when Little Buddha himself uttered the line:
    Whoa! I know Karate!
    As far as I'm concerned, the series is 0-3. The only saving grace was that the first movie invented bullet time and the green Kana scrolling down the screen motif. And that second piece has dubious value.

    Unless you're looking for MST3K material, in which case all three are totally priceless.

    Neo: But...you're wrong!

    The Architect: Contradiction is the most predictable of all human reactions.

    Piers Cawley: No it isn't!

    Hollywood would be much better off it stopped reinventing Arthurian legend and the story of Christ and started developing truly inventive stories. Like something Phildickian [amazon.com] for [amazon.com] example [amazon.com].
    • Unless you're looking for MST3K material, in which case all three are totally priceless.
      Y'know, I've always wanted to do an homage to the work of Nelson, Murphy, and the rest...perhaps...Matrix Stinkfest Theatre? ;)
      --

      ------------------------------
      You are what you think.

  • There was Christian imagery in there? If so it was so obscured this Christian could barely make it out.

    (Yeah, I see it, but it ranks horribly on the "Christian allegory" scale. I found this review [pluggedinonline.com] from a religious perspective interesting; the author addressed whether or not the allegory consituted a reason to see the movie, while I never once thought of the movie as "a Christian allegory.")

    In the end, considered from the Christian allegory perspective, the Matrix is a tragedy like Christmas: too Chris

    --
    J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
    • I haven't noticed that much Christian imagery in it either. For example I completely missed the crucifixion part (was I asleep ? maybe). Note that Christian imagery doesn't make bad movies at all [imdb.com] ; what makes bad movies is bad storytelling. The first Matrix was full of Gnostic imagery, in which it got close to the latest novels of P.K.Dick, but that trend got completely lost in the sequels, where that was replaced by good old Hollywoodian clichés. I suppose that nobody would define Gnostics as Christ

      • I was using sort of a vague definition of pagan, but playing off the fact that Christmas was originally a pagan holiday.

        --
        J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers

      • Maybe 21 years of Catholic education and mind-numbing dogma would help see all the christianity shovelled into this movie like a cement truck in Sicily working overtime. Nearly everything in these movies could be distilled into some nugget of judeo-christian something or other I've worked hard over the years to forget.

        I agree with gnat about the feeling of being used...it's the same feeling I had when Anakin Skywalker revealed he was borne of an immaculate conception. I managed to avoid Battlefield Earth

  • ... relatively speaking, Matrix 2 wasn't all that bad.
    --
    • Randal L. Schwartz
    • Stonehenge
  • Yeah, Christian imagery sucks. Down with Star Wars! Oh wait ... whatever. I agree with jdavidb, it was weak imagery at best, and it all started in the first movie. They just took it to the logical conclusion. If you didn't see it in the first movie and figure out where they were going, well, that's your fault. :)

    As to answering nothing, I had no questions left, except about Neo's fate. What do you want to know? Maybe you expected too much. The original Matrix wasn't that deep or interesting. It wa
Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.