The Matrix

[gimlisam]

Does anyone else feel that a) the movie felt a tad bit rushed in terms of production and B) that they left the door for a sequel very VERY wide open? Just thought I'd ask. One more thing, I was sorely dissapointed in the movie. They had a wonderful franchise going; a great first movie, a decent second movie, and we get stuck with this. Oh, well, just over a month until Return of the King comes out!!

[Hammerskjold]

>They had a wonderful franchise going; a great first movie, a decent second movie, and we get stuck with this.

Now that Revolutions is out, I can make a purchasing decision. I'd buy Matrix 1, and it's true and worthy (imo) "sequel", The Animatrix. In context of Revolutions, Reloaded now feels like the cinematic equivalent of a friend talking your ear off after s\he attended first semester Philosophy 101. You put up with it because they're your friend, but you have your limits.

And with Revolutions, I reached my limits. The trailer (for Revolutions) at the end of Reloaded was a better film at 2 minutes than the real Revolutions at 2 hours. If I wanted to watch Neo and Smith fight Dragonball Z style, I'll go watch Dragonball Z. No wait, I'd probably go watch Samurai Jack instead.

The only highlights of the sequels now for me are, The Merovingian, and Hugo Weaving.

[botdude]

My disappointment regarding Revolutions is that instead of picking from a plethora of mindbending/boggling potential directions to go, the W.Bros went with a tamer route. Basically, they could have gone with the road less travelled and closed out the story arc by making the audience go "holy $#@&..."...though it would have required a lot more "daring" to drop that sort of bomb.

I went in with expectations of having to think...something to kick around over and over with friends whilst uttering "um...whoa...". Instead, I came out thinking "Oh, well there were some cool explosions and interesting images..." and pretty much not anything else. This is why I refer to Revolutions as the "lowest common denominator" flick.

Different people involved with the production of the trilogy were oftentimes heard gushing about the brilliance and genius of the W.Bros. In a way, I have to admit that on one front I don't disagree with them. They took a mindblowing story that had infinite promise and managed to dupe the general viewing populace into spending ducats to view Reloaded and Revolutions...expecting prime rib and getting chili-cheese-corndogs instead. The genius lies in the fact that they were able to hoodwink everyone for so long...

[Mithrandir]

I went into Revolutions trying not to expect much, but I still walked out slightly disappointed. In fact, I think the entire theater walked out of that movie quietly repeating amongst themselves: "What the f*ck?"

The Matrix was a masterpiece for the ground it broke in the action genre and its deep plot. Reloaded was a pretty good movie because of the mind-bending battles (Neo vs. 100 Smiths, etc.) and interesting dialogue. Revolutions was poor because it had none of anything that made the previous movies good... the dialogue was mediocre, the battles were ho-hum at best (Neo vs. Smith was horrible - leave exploding balls energy, giant craters, and fighting in the sky to animé mkay? The stooges running across the ceilng was just retarded. The Dock Battle, while visually stimulating, was pointless to the plot and boring.), the plot was an utter disappointment, and so on. It seemed as though the Wacowski brothers grew more concerned with jamming Jesus references in than anything else.

Which reminds me, I heard that a 4th Matrix is coming out... The Matrix: John, Luke, Numbers, and Revelations <_<

But back to the plot... could they come up with a worse explanation for Neo's powers in the real world? Color me disappointed when the best they could scrounge up was "The One's powers extend beyond the machine world." End of story. Never mention it again please.

They also couldn't do anything better with Neo's coma than sticking him in "Limbo" (oh, I'm sorry... "Mobil" or whatever other cleverrearrange job you did) - which was then promptly solved by yet another pointless inerchange with the Merovingian.

/sigh

I admit that it was worth the money, if for none other reason that to finish the story. However, it could have been so much... more... than it was.

[Occhidiangela]

I read PvP on line now and again, and no, I came up with that on my own without Kurtz influencing my thinking. Which strip are you referring to?

IRL EMP weapons are almost trivially easy to make, as compared to some other weapons. You heard me, EMP generating weapons are well understood in weaponeering circles, have been so for well over a decade, and they are assessed a very effective weapon for disrupting command and control nodes that are based on microcircuits and PC networks. EMP was a know side effect of both tactical and larger nuclear explosions for a generation -- ELECTRO MAGNETIC PULSE -- and as such has been a concern for some who see the current Third Wave method of war as being far too vulnerable to significant EMP effects.

The "digitization of the battlefield" brings with it considerable risk.

That said, any tech society that can build the "ships" that the Zion folks can build would find an EMP weapon ludicrously simple to construct. (A PhD from Australia, in a non classified series of papers, called them E-Bombs and laid out a couple of good blueprints for air delivered E-Bombs, non nuclear, about 10 years ago. If I can find his website, I will post a link, I have it in paper somewhere.)

The only problem is in directional deployment of the effects, which is also not that hard to do: think "shaped charge" of a conventional munition.

As to the doctrinal concept of Ambush, one that Rommel or Stonewall Jackson or any Apache war leader of any worth would recognize: You set up and execute an ambush well outside the perimeter of the docks, in the access corridors: you plant them to trigger on certain events, like a CAPTOR mine or an acoustic/magnetic influence mine, or on the visual signature and mapping of a senitnal. Again, given the tech level of Zion, trivially easy to do.

In short, you set the ambush Well Away from your high value area to defend, which is the docks. Defense in depth. The ships are the scouts who perform a screening action, but they set mines, or "claymore mine" EMP traps along the access corridors, and at tunneling routes. You have to know the terrain to fight the fight, particularly in the defensive fight.

Even a novice at tactical thinking can see that, so I repeat, the dumbassity that is displayed by the Zion defense establishment is reason enough for the Machines to wipe out that version of the human virus: the gene pool needs severe cleaning up, if intellect is any indicator of Darwinian Merit.

[Selby]

IRL EMP weapons are almost trivially easy to make, as compared to some other weapons.

EMP has been researched since the 1950's and is hardly a "new fangled" technology. I work in a research lab where we construct and test E-bombs and electromagnetic armor to shield against it. Simple to make... and they can be extremely compact (suitcase). This is what pulsed power (side of electrical engineering that handles this) is all about, charge a little energy over a longer period of time and then release it in a very short instant for devastating effects.

I assume Hollywood just doesn't understand it or uses it in a cheap way to serve itself rather than sticking to reality. In reality the Zionists would make tons of E-bombs and stick them on missles and breach the machine world easily. Using explosives, etc makes them even more compact and immune to EMP. Two sides using E-bombs fighting each other needs to be taking into account as if the bad guy sets his off first you just lost yours unless you take the antenna design into account. But this would have been too easy and using bullets and walker-robots to fight against a wave of machines that follow the same stupid predictable patterns rather than spreading out allows for little kids and people who don't understand to not need to (thinking is hard).

Selby