Forget The Last Jedi, the Matrix Reloaded was a truly deconstructionist sequel

Deconstructionist, you keep using that word...

This is revisionism, not deconstructivism.

I'd love to see a deconstructionist criticism of TLJ or the Matrix trilogy, but I suspect most of it would go over my head. Though the whole light side dark side conflict is explained in most modern star wars media using deconstructionist concepts of meaning through opposition, compared to the original movie that suggested a more traditional western concept of the light side being the true natural order and the dark side being man's corruption of that order.

BocoDragon said:

Nobody had it though. No coffee shops and normie homes anyway.

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You can just say "Ok, I was wrong."

Yeah in theory this was an interesting take on the previous film. In execution however it amounted to a bunch of fetch quests for a character who has no agency over his own decisions.

Also tlj wasn't deconstructionist in the least bit so not sure why thats mentioned here.

CampFreddie said:

This is revisionism, not deconstructivism.

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This is the kind of thing Morpheus would say. He was in denial for a while.

If nothing else, Reloaded was a godsend for giving us the scenes with Monica Bellucci

NinjaGarden said:

You can just say "Ok, I was wrong."

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My point is that wifi was not a thing you put in a fantasy exploration of technology in 2003. No one had heard of it.

But if we're telling people how to respond, you don't need to dig deep into a 5 word joke comment with a smiley face at the end.

El Bombastico said:

When looked at by itself, Reloaded was excellent.

But then Revolutions came and shit all over its concepts, or worse, just ignored them.

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This. Reloaded introduces a lot of cool and unique aspects to do some really revolutionary stuff for a blockbuster with it's sequel and then that sequel just pisses down it's leg by being the most generic thing ever.

While less consistent than the original, I think Reloaded and Revolutions are both extremely underrated. Some of the most ambitious films of their time.

The Matrix - 9.5/10
The Matrix Reloaded - 8/10
The Matrix Revolutions - 7.5/10

BocoDragon said:

My point is that wifi was not a thing you put in a fantasy exploration of technology in 2003. No one had heard of it.

But if we're telling people how to respond, you don't need to dig deep into a 5 word joke comment with a smiley face at the end.

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._.

One thing I can never get over is the very end of the movie. The movie shows us a new character for 1-2 scenes, has Smith overtake him, then after an hour or more, the movie goes "DUN DUN DUN" while showing his face UPSIDE DOWN!! I'd guess less than half the audience would know who that was the first time around.

and just like the last jedi.....................I still loved it.

LakeEarth said:

One thing I can never get over is the very end of the movie. The movie shows us a new character for 1-2 scenes, has Smith overtake him, then after an hour or more, the movie goes "DUN DUN DUN" while showing his face UPSIDE DOWN!! I'd guess less than half the audience would know who that was the first time around.

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It would have worked really well if it had actually been a member of the Nebuchadnezzar or something. I agree, though. I remember trying to rotate my head in the theater to see who it was clearly.

shaneo632 said:

I remember all the fan theories between the sequels, they were nuts:

- Merovingian was a previous One
- Seraph was the true One
- Smith would turn good, because of the intonation in one trailer where Morpheus says "he fights for us"

lmao

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Ngl. All of these would have been better than what we got in Revolution.

BocoDragon said:

My point is that wifi was not a thing you put in a fantasy exploration of technology in 2003. No one had heard of it.

But if we're telling people how to respond, you don't need to dig deep into a 5 word joke comment with a smiley face at the end.

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Who hurt you

Yep. It's the reason why I hated the movie too.

To me there was only one matrix movie .
I did enjoy the other two but they are just so far quality wise from the others .

I liked the Rave scene. Not neutral towards it, no, actually liked it a lot. I might be the only person ever to have this opinion though.

Bjomesphat said:

Except Neo did everything fans wanted him to do.

Luke died after a strenuous meditation.

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"Luke sucks because he didn't do what fans wanted" is and has always been a really weak criticism of TLJ.

Yeah reloaded was alright as just a pure action flick.

Honestly I wouldn't mind a new matrix trilogy. Why not.

I don't think revolutions was terrible either, just not nearly as good as the first two so it was just a let down.

Garlador said:

It would have worked really well if it had actually been a member of the Nebuchadnezzar or something. I agree, though. I remember trying to rotate my head in the theater to see who it was clearly.

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Exactly. I get why they used a new character (because most of the old ones were dead), but they needed a way to make him really stand out BEFORE he got 'possessed'. Eye patch, maybe?

I sort of like Dan Olson's interpretation of how much better the sequels are without Neo and Trinity.

Garlador said:

I do enjoy Reloaded, but it introduces concepts and characters with little payoff, while what it does offer is emotionless exposition dumps that just ground the whole pacing of the movie down to dull philosophy discussions you'd get in a college seminar. The action was great, the ideas were great, but it never really gelled into a cohesive whole.

It, ironically, lacked the "humanity" that made the original so good.

But it gave us a pretty solid MTV Movie Awards parody.

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ERGO. VIS A VIS. CONCORDANTLY.

Garlador said:

.

But it gave us a pretty solid MTV Movie Awards parody.

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I forgot how good that was. Probably was peak mtv.

I thought the main problem with the sequel was that it wasn't self contained like the first one. I loved how small the first one was, and left mystery about how the rest of the world was like. The sequel fucked that up by making everything bigger.

BocoDragon said:

Didn't exist in 2003 bro ;)

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sorry to inform you the 802.11 spec is 2 years older than the first film. Whether or not consumers were using it widespread or aware is irrelevant.

digitalrelic said:

While less consistent than the original, I think Reloaded and Revolutions are both extremely underrated. Some of the most ambitious films of their time.

The Matrix - 9.5/10
The Matrix Reloaded - 8/10
The Matrix Revolutions - 7.5/10

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This is basically how I feel, they're decent sequels but not in the same league as the original.

Reloaded and Revolutions should have been cut down into one movie

I really liked Reloaded but it had way too many scenes where the characters just describe the plot. The final scene with the Architect while full of great ideas was the perfect example of how poorly they told that story.

I think Revolutions is a bad film. it's awful. Everything from storytelling to acting, dialogue and editing is piss poor in that movie. At least Reloaded felt like a well directed movie.

I think honestly they told the story that needed to be told in the first Matrix movie.

The second and third films were just kinda "uh .... yeah .... of course we have a trilogy, we have a big master plan ... uh .... maybe Neo is not the one ... nah he basically is, it's all about being in love with Trinity".

The Animatrix bit that describes how the Matrix came to be is far more compelling of a story.

VeryHighlander said:

I liked the Rave scene. Not neutral towards it, no, actually liked it a lot. I might be the only person ever to have this opinion though.

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If loving sweaty rave orgies is wrong, I don't want to be right.

That was a nice write-up, OP. Really got me thinking. Cheers. I always liked Reloaded and am...ok with Revolutions, but the trilogy as a whole is probably my favorite movie trilogy. It came about in my formative years and helped shape me in some ways. I'm due for a re-watch, and need to snag a copy of The Animatrix.

I love the concepts and lore, but R + R are a chore to watch

On the other hand .....orgasm cake. There is a lot to commend Reloaded but it has a lot of crap too.

I still really enjoy Reloaded and Revolutions has actually been growing on me more and more over the years. The last fight was actually the least interesting part of the movie, because the rest of the movie is pretty much everything falling apart, inside and out, and watching the better part of Earth just slowly die. It did have a couple of fantastic human moments (like Trinity seeing the real sky and sun for the first and only time in her life) and several moments during the Zion fight. It gets a lot of hate and a lot of it isn't justified, IMO.

I really, really wish that for both movies they had remembered to speed up the fights because they're choreographed really well, but they're so slow compared to the original and all of the movies they're emulating.

Eh... in the context of the movie, Neo actually was the one and Morpheus was right? Being "The One" just didn't mean destroying the machines in a literal sense.

I also think the first movie didn't need the two sequels, I didn't hate them though.

Reloaded is an underrated movie in the sense that it opened up the possibilities of the Matrix Universe and did tons of world building. There were some bad decisions there, no question about it but overall they gave us more questions to answer the questions and somehow it was satisfying.

The problem was that with Revolutions they pretty much scrapped all the interesting questions for a more basic "Man vs Machine" storyline and not only was it a generic sci-fi movie then, it retroactively made Reloaded worse since you now knew all the answers to the interesting questions were irrelevant and didn't go anywhere.

JB1981 said:

What if Rey and Kylo did join forces and worked together to dismantle all the old systems of control. What if the solution to the conflict between the Resistance the TFO was a third way, that hasn't yet been explored? What if there needs to be a balance between the Dark Side and the Light, similar to the peace needed between human and machine?

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This is why TLJ sucked for me, it was a pretty safe movie all around but then they go "Let the past die Kill it if you have to" After playing with us and basically rebooting the OT they tease us that this dark/light struggle is dumb and they need to work for something different, I was like "wow, this new trilogy is redeeming itself" only for a few moments later "LOL j/k It's Empire vs Rebels again".

Laser Man said:

Eh... in the context of the movie, Neo actually was the one and Morpheus was right? Being "The One" just didn't mean destroying the machines in a literal sense.

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Kind of, but the prophecy was made up, so he wasn't The One since that was a made up concept brought about from the fake prophecy. He just happened to be the one who succeeded in bringing peace to Zion and the Machines. He was the anomaly, though, for that iteration/cycle of the Matrix/Zion (was it the 5th or 6th? Can't remember). So if you're simply saying he's the One as a result of being the anomaly, then in that sense yes Morpheus happened to be right, but for the wrong reasons.

JB1981 said:

What if the solution to the conflict between the Resistance the TFO was a third way, that hasn't yet been explored?

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Ever since they established the new Stormtroopers were brainwashed I 100% thought the solution would be 'saving' them.

Not killing them, but de-brainwashing them so the TFO has no soldiers, no one on the ground.

reloaded kicked ass.

The fan script of matrix reloaded was 10000000x better than the movie. Reloaded and revolutions focused too much on the real world when others in the real world should have been part of the final shot not half the trilogy

https://www.matrixfans.net/movies/the-matrix-reloaded/the-matrix-reloaded-early-script-draft/

Reloaded was really entertaining, with great scenes like the chateau and highway fights. The Last Jedi is just a sad shitty film with some avid defenders (as I encountered in another thread).

Wasn't there some lady that claimed that The Matrix was her idea and it was actually supposed to be tied in or a prequel to The Terminator?

I'm sure she was full of shit but boy wouldn't that have been something to see. Outside of Cinematic Universes (so basically Marvel and DC, plus low key the Conjuring) I feel like we don't really get a lot of crossover movies. RIP in peace MIB23.

I would love for the Wachowskis to go back and make a director's cut of Reloaded and Revolutions together, aiming for about 3 hours.

Fun action movies on their own but they both fall far far short of the greatness that is the original Matrix.

As for TLJ, it has some problems, like every other Star Wars movie but it was still a great movie, with good effects and solid performances from the cast. It made a ton of money and got great reviews too.

Some people just got upset because it did something different and not what people expected, which is pretty funny when people complained about TFA being too safe and being too much like A New Hope.

King Dodongo said:

Reloaded was really entertaining, with great scenes like the chateau and highway fights. The Last Jedi is just a sad shitty film with some avid defenders (as I encountered in another thread).

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It had one of the best action sequences of all time.

It's also way fucking up it's own ass, so, unfortunately it still fails.

Love the film & love the ghosts.



We still don't know why Seraph is gold.....deep fukkn lore

I still like it when Neo fights all the Smiths. So happy for the bowling sound effects.

I thought Reloaded was great. Not in the same league as the original, but still a great action movie with an interesting take on the original premise.

Revolutions just felt like it was padded and mostly unnecessary. Some of the ideas were okay, but it felt like they had lost the plot, and maybe needed another year or two to really figure out the script and wrap things up.

I've watched the first matrix probably 2 dozen times, yet I've only ever watched the sequels once each... I'm tempted to give them another shot cuz of this thread.

Reloaded is a good movie.

TLJ isn't.