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jackI wonder, maybe "revolutions" is a reference to tensors? Nah, too much to hope for.
Anyway, I rewatched Matrix II (I really can't remember what it was called) and decided that on the whole it *was* pretty good after all. It had some weaknesses and didn't live up to the first, but wasn't *bad*.
Things that are just cool:
* Morpheus, Neo and Trinity walking about in their black leather looking ominous
* Agent Smith
* Neo fighting fifty agent Smiths
* Neo flying
* The virus twins
* The Merrovingian, both the idea of a powerful rogue program, and the petulant French incarnation.
* Neo blithly fighting a dozen Merrovingian minions.
* Neo being repeatedly baffled by doors which close and open onto a mountain temple. Apart from making the absolute most out of Keanu's best acting ability -- going "Whoah!" -- it's a perfect impediment. Neo has a lot of skill and can brute force most problems. But M has lots of experience, so it makes sense he can do something which Neo doesn't know how to defeat, but can circumvent by flying really fast and/or being bad-ass.
* The idea that the freeway is suicide. Of course it's scary -- you're always less than two meters away from a potential agent with a two-ton blunt object under his control1.
* Some of the freeway fight is pretty cool.
* The idea that Neo must find a well-but-not-perfectly-protected door to the machine mainframe, and the three crews can just achieve this with a sophisticated combination of hacking and motorcycles.
* The ending. Despite being stupid in resolution, and being too ambiguous with still being in the matrix, Neo suddenly freezing a lot of sentinels is emotionally impressive and miracle-like.
Things that aren't stupid despite people saying they are:
* Neo picking Morpheus up off the truck. He does stop, and then pull him upward, he doesn't drive into him at hundreds of miles an hour (and maybe Morpheus could survive that anyway -- maybe blunt impact like falling is the easiest thing to kung-fu-survive, they certainly leap off buildings with abandon :))
* Neo blithly fighting a dozen Merrovingian minions. Yes, Neo is the one, but M's allies are fairly powerful agent-like programs with unknown abilities. Of course Neo kicks their arses in the end, but there's enough doubt that it doesn't make it just automatic
* The fusion power explanation. OK, this is more from the first film, but some people resolutely say "because the puported premise doesn't make any sense I'm not going to even listen to anything else in the series ever, la la la la." Well, I'm as critical of stupid premises as anyone else (*criticise* *criticise*). We all agree, it's stupid. I think it could be patched up. But the point is, it just doesn't matter. It doesn't affect the plot *why* they're all in the Matrix.
Things that aren't very good, or are kind of gratuitous or drawn out:
* The gratuitous dancing, sex, speaches, philsophy, politics, and just about everything else in Zion. The city gave the right impression, but almost all of it was boring and/or stupid. (This was a problem with the third film.)
* The fight with Seraph. Completely gratuitous, and not even exciting, you never have the sense that either of them is in the slightest danger.
* Since when can Morpheus fight an Agent? In the first film he makes a decent showing but is then completely canned by Smith. It makes Agents an order of magnitude less ominous.
* What they should have done for the lorry-top fight is to make his katana a flaming-death-katana. Then there'd be a reason he could last out. He'd be really cool. And the Agent would be really scary because it would be very hard to hurt with the super-weapon, and always on the brink of flattening Morpheus if he can just get past his guard.
* Colonel Sanders. This is the mainframe, not the matrix. It's pure code, not a simulation of the real world. It should at least be all green and character-ised. Not an old man in a chair. (Though as old-men-in-chairs go, it was well done. The screens were amusing.)
* The back-story. This is just stupid. An unbalancable equation? An inconsistent number of previous matrixes? A magic prophetess that there's no reason should be possible? A master plot of some sort for no reason? It's so dumb people keep thinking there's some hidden truth, but I don't think so. Almost anything else would have been better.
* The original was stylish and creepy, making the matrix seem quite exciting and ominous. This one didn't.
Finally, the philosophy. This is another "Thing that isn't very good, or is kind of gratuitous or drawn out", but sufficiently interesting I put it by itself.
The first film was cool. It took the philosophical concept of a cartesian demon (roughly, the question "how do we know we aren't living in a matrix?") posed by Descartes, and made it easily accessible to everyone. It did it so well most people can't believe it needed explaining, can't believe it ever wasn't obvious to them.
(Note, I'm not saying it explored all the possible ramifications of that. But it did something that needed doing, and did it very very well.)
The second I think tried to do the same for predestination. Well, it gets credit for trying. I think I'm biased because I think I think the point it's trying to make is stupid, but I don't think it did it very well, either. AFAICT their world has no reason to be more predestined than hours (making the Oracle a sort of cheat). The first film worked because the whole idea explained the concept, but here it was tacked on, and their "insights" into predestination didn't have anything to back them up, so were just vapid.
[1] Where *are* the female agents?
Anyway, I rewatched Matrix II (I really can't remember what it was called) and decided that on the whole it *was* pretty good after all. It had some weaknesses and didn't live up to the first, but wasn't *bad*.
Things that are just cool:
* Morpheus, Neo and Trinity walking about in their black leather looking ominous
* Agent Smith
* Neo fighting fifty agent Smiths
* Neo flying
* The virus twins
* The Merrovingian, both the idea of a powerful rogue program, and the petulant French incarnation.
* Neo blithly fighting a dozen Merrovingian minions.
* Neo being repeatedly baffled by doors which close and open onto a mountain temple. Apart from making the absolute most out of Keanu's best acting ability -- going "Whoah!" -- it's a perfect impediment. Neo has a lot of skill and can brute force most problems. But M has lots of experience, so it makes sense he can do something which Neo doesn't know how to defeat, but can circumvent by flying really fast and/or being bad-ass.
* The idea that the freeway is suicide. Of course it's scary -- you're always less than two meters away from a potential agent with a two-ton blunt object under his control1.
* Some of the freeway fight is pretty cool.
* The idea that Neo must find a well-but-not-perfectly-protected door to the machine mainframe, and the three crews can just achieve this with a sophisticated combination of hacking and motorcycles.
* The ending. Despite being stupid in resolution, and being too ambiguous with still being in the matrix, Neo suddenly freezing a lot of sentinels is emotionally impressive and miracle-like.
Things that aren't stupid despite people saying they are:
* Neo picking Morpheus up off the truck. He does stop, and then pull him upward, he doesn't drive into him at hundreds of miles an hour (and maybe Morpheus could survive that anyway -- maybe blunt impact like falling is the easiest thing to kung-fu-survive, they certainly leap off buildings with abandon :))
* Neo blithly fighting a dozen Merrovingian minions. Yes, Neo is the one, but M's allies are fairly powerful agent-like programs with unknown abilities. Of course Neo kicks their arses in the end, but there's enough doubt that it doesn't make it just automatic
* The fusion power explanation. OK, this is more from the first film, but some people resolutely say "because the puported premise doesn't make any sense I'm not going to even listen to anything else in the series ever, la la la la." Well, I'm as critical of stupid premises as anyone else (*criticise* *criticise*). We all agree, it's stupid. I think it could be patched up. But the point is, it just doesn't matter. It doesn't affect the plot *why* they're all in the Matrix.
Things that aren't very good, or are kind of gratuitous or drawn out:
* The gratuitous dancing, sex, speaches, philsophy, politics, and just about everything else in Zion. The city gave the right impression, but almost all of it was boring and/or stupid. (This was a problem with the third film.)
* The fight with Seraph. Completely gratuitous, and not even exciting, you never have the sense that either of them is in the slightest danger.
* Since when can Morpheus fight an Agent? In the first film he makes a decent showing but is then completely canned by Smith. It makes Agents an order of magnitude less ominous.
* What they should have done for the lorry-top fight is to make his katana a flaming-death-katana. Then there'd be a reason he could last out. He'd be really cool. And the Agent would be really scary because it would be very hard to hurt with the super-weapon, and always on the brink of flattening Morpheus if he can just get past his guard.
* Colonel Sanders. This is the mainframe, not the matrix. It's pure code, not a simulation of the real world. It should at least be all green and character-ised. Not an old man in a chair. (Though as old-men-in-chairs go, it was well done. The screens were amusing.)
* The back-story. This is just stupid. An unbalancable equation? An inconsistent number of previous matrixes? A magic prophetess that there's no reason should be possible? A master plot of some sort for no reason? It's so dumb people keep thinking there's some hidden truth, but I don't think so. Almost anything else would have been better.
* The original was stylish and creepy, making the matrix seem quite exciting and ominous. This one didn't.
Finally, the philosophy. This is another "Thing that isn't very good, or is kind of gratuitous or drawn out", but sufficiently interesting I put it by itself.
The first film was cool. It took the philosophical concept of a cartesian demon (roughly, the question "how do we know we aren't living in a matrix?") posed by Descartes, and made it easily accessible to everyone. It did it so well most people can't believe it needed explaining, can't believe it ever wasn't obvious to them.
(Note, I'm not saying it explored all the possible ramifications of that. But it did something that needed doing, and did it very very well.)
The second I think tried to do the same for predestination. Well, it gets credit for trying. I think I'm biased because I think I think the point it's trying to make is stupid, but I don't think it did it very well, either. AFAICT their world has no reason to be more predestined than hours (making the Oracle a sort of cheat). The first film worked because the whole idea explained the concept, but here it was tacked on, and their "insights" into predestination didn't have anything to back them up, so were just vapid.
[1] Where *are* the female agents?