Argh, thar be spoilers ahead.


At 02:53 PM 5/16/2003 -0700, you wrote:

>SPOILERS
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>I noticed that the Wachowski brothers slipped from Eastern to Western
>philosphy and brought the Matrix from 0 century Messianicism into some
>sort of post-Decartes existentialism. "What is the nature of choice?" and
>so on.
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>I think the first half was a sort of "Episode II" where they felt they had
>to set up the second half by establishing what everyone had to lose. It
>sort of dragged aimlessly.

Dragged? Did we see the same film? It seems to go from one action scene to
the next.

> Also, the audience is smarter than the main characters, so in addition
> to being clued in to things they don't know... actually, I don't think
> there's much we know that they don't know, so it's frustrating when they
> float around from plot point to plot point.

Actually, most audiences aren't any smarter than a popcorn bucket. I have
no doubt 90% of the audience had any clue of what the Architect explains to
Neo. At least American audiences anyway, after all the majority of the
U.S. audience could not follow the plot of Back to the Future 2.


>The second half felt very rushed, and I expect there will be a director's
>cut that fixes the flow and explains a bit more. I think they shot a lot
>more footage than made it into the movie and had to cut quite a bit for time.

I understand the video game has about 1 hour of extra footage filmed
exclusively for it that adds more back story. The movie does leave you
wondering what happens with certain characters.

>The speech that the Architect gave was very "deep" but it happened all at
>once. You didn't have a chance to absorb it and you're still trying to
>remember what while he's speaking.
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>A lot of the trailers "Give us Neo" and such seem to be from the 3rd movie.
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>I think the Wachowski brothers planned some of the humorous moments, but
>we weren't expecting a movie with humor.
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>The Smith fight scene... did you notice that there were practically no
>cuts? I did notice some of the Smiths were stunt doubles.

All of the duplicates are stunt doubles, they were selected based on
similar build and facial features, and CG used where needed, but they
clearly missed a few spots.

>Ultimately, I think it's very re-watchable, but not as much of a package
>as the first movie. I expect I won't get some of the symbolism until I've
>had a chance to re-watch it a few times, but a lot of it was repeated from
>the first movie (a lot of Room 101's). It's more straightfoward than the
>first movie. The first time I saw The Matrix I didn't really get the plot.
>I had to re-watch it once or twice before all the pieces came together...
>This one came together very quickly. Some things were too blatent, and I
>think some of the plot contrivances too obvious.
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>And finally... Are they still in the Matrix at the end? Why can NEO sence
>the sentinals?

Yup, they have never left the Matrix which is what the Architect
implies. All rebels are just system anomalies that must be purged before
the system can be rebooted yet again.

Flawed? Sure but totally fun and well worth seeing twice. Neo's
supersonic, faster-than-a-speeding-bullet rescue would have done far more
damage than the bullet. Just suspend disbelief and enjoy.