Matrix Reloaded Awesome or Stinker?

[PatriciaH]

Originally posted by ErikdaRed
Also, CGI costs time to make it better/more realistic. I wouldn't be suprised if a large portion of the effects budget was poured into Gollum and Yoda since they were on screen for a long period of time. Where a fight scene would be a good place to just get it good enough and save the money to place elsewhere.

I just read in Entertainment Weekely that the Burly Brawl/Smith fight scene took 2 YEARS to make! I would say that is quite a lot of time on one scene. Wow.

 

[ScarletIndigo]

Originally posted by ahutton
I enjoyed it, but felt like many of the scenes were stretched too far. They could have accomplished just as much of the story with a lot less time spent fighting Agent Smiths, fighting on the freeway, the intimacy between Trinity and Neo while the dancing is going on in Zion... Those scenes seemed to go on forever and while they had good special effects and were well done technically they could have been shorter and not lost any of the impact on the story.

My thoughts exactly. The whole tribal dance thing in Zion was unnecessary and kind of cheesy, in my opinion. The chocolate cake scene was silly, and after the movie was over I had a good laugh over the Persephone character, as "Entertainment Weekly" had made a big deal about this "sexy new actress" in Reloaded -- but in essence her screen time was less than ten minutes.

The highway scene was excellent, if a bit long, and the fight scene with Agent Smith definitely took on a bit of a cartoonish quality near the end, especially as more and more of the clones showed up to fight. You had to wonder, if Neo is symbolically invincable (or just about, with all his "superhero-like" abilities), why would he even stick around and give Agent Smith the time of day? The whole Superman flying thing is kind of ridiculous, I thought. When Link made the comment about Neo doing his "Superman thing", I had to laugh, because even his character seemed to realize the silliness of the whole act.

"Matrix Reloaded" was fun, but definitely nowhere near as impressive as the original. Too verbose, too pseudo-philosophical for my tastes. During the scene with the Architect, I was so intent on the TV screens surrounding Neo, I missed almost all of the dialogue. Bad idea, folks -- don't cloud your scene with tons of imagery or action that will distract the viewer. After the film ended, I asked DF to summarize what happened in that scene, but he said it was so over his head, he had no idea what was really said -- even though he'd purposely tried to pay attention! ;-)

Having said all of that, though, I'm definitely looking forward to Revolutions in the fall. The CGI in these films may not ever hold a candle to Gollum in LOTR, but it's still fun!

 

[tax58]

We saw reloaded today and I must agree that I was hopping for more from the movie.