The Matrix Resurrections (with Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Lana Wachowski)

Padre_Pio

I got this on the dodgy box and I'm so happy I did.

I'd be sick to my stomach paying money to see this movie. Turned it off after an hour.

What did they do to the Merovingian?

I was on board with the second movie, loved it even but remember being super pissed walking out of the 3rd on day one but mellowing to it in recent years seeing it a second time out. Could have been worse says me, yeah could have been as bad as the 4th movie and even worse than the Sense 8 scutter they made for Netflix.

I didn't rate V for Vendetta at all or Speed Racer which I think they only did screenplays for so what else have they really done other than Matrix? I just felt my time was robbed by them creating a franchise when one movie was good enough to do the job.

Housefree

Go in with the lowest of low expectations and you will still be disappointed

MisterAnarchy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118364124#Comment_118364124

Bound, their first film, they wrote and directed it, it is excellent.

corcaigh07

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118364124#Comment_118364124

I'd give V for Vendetta another chance

MisterAnarchy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118364188#Comment_118364188

Great film

fritzelly

Was a passable film - if you can make it thru the first hour or so

Think the last 30 minutes or so saved the film from being crap

Is it just me or were those fight scenes atrocious? I mean not Taken bad but everything seemed to be done really slow, think they could have done with speeding them up by 50% in post processing to make them look somewhat decent. You can forgive Reeves not been able for it considering he's reaching OAP bus pass age but the rest of them?

OhHiMark

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118363985#Comment_118363985

The Merovingian wasn't in the film until an hour and 20 minutes.

It takes ages to get going, even when it gets going it's boring. It looks like a cheap CSI show at times - the lighting and camera work etc just looks cheap. There's a cheesy motion-blur effect that is way overused. Most of the "team" are uncomfortably bad at acting, they wouldn't be out of place in a student movie. They have some generic black guy for Morpheus, he doesn't have 1/10th the presence of Laurence Fishborne. There are no memorable scenes or set-pieces like there were in the first movie, everything is bland and forgettable. It drags on too long.

It pointless.

somuj

Muck.

It dint even look like any of them were acting. Just reading lines for the scene.

BruteStock

If what was said about Warner Bros in the film is actually true, then this movie is a troll. Otherwise its a failure with some good moments here and there

Thargor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118363985#Comment_118363985

My thoughts exactly, I wouldnt say as bad a pointless nostalgia cash-in as the 2 recent Ghostbusters but it was close, a steaming turd of a film. So many scenes where its more like an SNL rip of the first film or one of those sketches they put on before the oscars, this scene in particular is where I would have walked out if Id payed for it but thankfully I downloaded it instead, pathethic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qtHO1uij3k

Tilikum17

I started it last night with herself. I went to bed after an hour.

Watched the 2nd have there….

shouldn’t of bothered.

Rubbish.

johnny_ultimate

I **** loved it. Truly.

Didn’t think Hollywood had these kind of bold, eccentric, personal, passionate sequels in it anymore. It’s a mess of ideas in the best possible way - angry meta-commentary on franchise sequels; lovely, cornball and charming romance story; pure, weirdo Matrix sequel; even a bloody heist film for a bit. If you’re just expecting ‘more Matrix’, you’ll only find drips and drabs here. If you want to see a wild new film from a major auteur using the Trojan horse of a legacy sequel… hoo boy this is something.

Right down to the look of the thing - incredibly raw, harsh and - most surprisingly - warm digital cinematography that feels almost the polar opposite of the slick, clinical, blue/green-tinged look of the original films - it’s Lana coming back to her most famous creation, reimagining it from a new, fascinating perspective. It’s the opposite of a ‘memberberries sequel - every callback is driven by theme, and it aggressively avoids so much of the easy gratification we’ve come to expect from the ‘for the fans’ sequel. Some characters are unrecognisable or broken; others get the triumphant moments or tragic punchlines they were denied last time around. It’s also a fascinating post-war film - sidelining any kind of major, world-threatening conflict in search of something more personal and the complicated quest for true peace.

The first 45 minutes is a delightfully cheeky meta-commentary on corporate filmmaking from within the system itself, and a reckoning with the messy legacy of The Matrix. The return to the ‘real world’ lulls a bit, it must be said, but the final act is a glorious, romantic blast. Some fantastically weird, imaginative set pieces too where the spatial and time borders just kind of collapse away.

Reeves and Moss are fantastic, but Jessica Henwick is just magnificent.

What can I say: I sat in the cinema with a stupid grin on my (masked) face the entire damn time. It’s big, indulgent, deeply personal filmmaking - a vivid burst of oddball creativity when almost all modern blockbusters are frigid and impersonal. Messy and indulgent? Absolutely, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Padre_Pio

Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

Maybe this movie is ahead of its time and I'll come back to it in 19 years and re-evaluate.

It worked for MGS2.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118368007#Comment_118368007

Ah sure Speed Racer has already been (rightly!) gradually re-evaluated as one of the more visionary CG blockbusters so the Wachowskis have form in that regard ;)

I actually totally get why many won’t like this film! Maybe they will eventually come around it, maybe they won’t! I’m just speaking for myself when I say I adored the thing in all its strange, unwieldy glory :)

anplaya27

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118367837#Comment_118367837

Saw it today.

Pure crap.

fluke

It's not for everyone. Sometimes the momentum gets winded, and it isn't a meat and potatoes sequel, but I enjoyed this.

youcancallmeal

I'm a huge fan of the original trilogy, even movies 2 and 3! This movie was utter nonsense, stupid plot, zero stakes, poor action scenes, terrible dialogue, dodgy cgi, immediately forgettable secondary characters etc etc. As the movie progressed I was getting the impression that Lana Wachowski didn't even want to make it but from watching/reading recent interviews with her I'm not so sure, I think she might just be creatively bankrupt

Edit: I'm just thankful the ending wasnt a blatant setup for a 2nd trilogy, or maybe it is!?

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117868662#Comment_117868662

I like this idea.

Watching the original matrix now.

@johnny_ultimate

I'm with @johnny_ultimate on this, I really went in with the assumption I'd hate it. The first thirty to forty minutes was an oddly fun and meta approach to it all. But as it progressed, while it did have elements of the original films, it felt different. The love angle was never particularly well handled in the sequels but it was the focal point in this one and it worked beautifully.

Also glad that it didn't do some easy things like bringing back older actors etc. It would have been too easy.

B.A._Baracus

Just watched it there... and yeah its not great. I've seen worse films. It at least holds you for the running time so it succeeds as a movie. But it's not great. Very meh actually. Currently has a 6.0 imdb rating which is probably fair.

You just know they are world building too. Hbo Max is gonna do what Disney did with star wars. So you'll have a matrix tv show.

youcancallmeal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118371004#Comment_118371004

That makes a lot of sense actually when you consider no characters good or bad were killed off

lawred2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118364215#Comment_118364215

Excellent film.

speedboatchase

Looks like it will gross around half what the original's opening weekend was in 1999, without inflation. Yikes.

MisterAnarchy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118371252#Comment_118371252

Well simultaneously releasing it on HBO Max is financial suicide.

B.A._Baracus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118371480#Comment_118371480

Accordingly , after doing some reading just there, releasing this and all the other movies this year has pushed the streaming service to the moon. They currently have 70 million subscribers worldwide. It costs 14.99 dollars per month (if you are not subscribed to hbo channel in America) To give perspective Disney plus has 118 million so not to far behind and 70 million subscribers equals 1 billion hbo max makes each month. The mind boggles at that figure.

Not bad for a service thats not even available in the UK and won't be anytime either as Sky has a deal with HBO till 2024.

Even if the movie cost 200 million to make it would have pulled in even more subscribers. 1/5 of its monthly revenue. Again, the mind boggles lol.

Fred Astaire

My unorganised thoughts after watching -

The people in this movie are more incompetent with firearms than the people in Halloween Kills. The gun and fight choreography in general was really bad - the opening scene with Henwick set the tone in this regard as she sluggishly ambled along while evading repeated gunshots from literally 2 metres away. The choreography in both the scene with the exiles and in the confrontation with all the cops was really bad and choppily edited to boot. And the train scene - don't even get me started. A total mess.

Wachowski really treats the viewer like a complete idiot by bombarding you with constant flashbacks to the original - as if to say - LOOK AT THIS REFERENCE! LOOK AT THIS PARALLEL! REMEMBER THIS!?

The stakes are very low - Neo is freed just because by people who don't know him. Then Trinity needs to be freed when we aren't even sure if she wants to be. If Trinity didn't want to be freed Neo was willing to reenter the Matrix forever, he really wasn't too bothered about being free. It really leans on the love story as a driving force and for me it's not enough to carry the whole plot.

There is no tension. Nobody dies unlike the original. Literally every single person survives. Only once does somebody look like they are in any real danger when the car is being swarmed and she is saved so easily that I was literally sat there thinking, 'fcuk me'.

Neil Patrick Harris' endless monologues were painful and kept completely stalling any momentum the movie was attempting to build when approaching a set piece. I actually hated his performance and character in general. Stop monologing all the effing time. Christ.

I was surprised to see the cinematography praised above because this movie has a significant problem with blocking.

Morpheus is supposed to be an amalgamation of old Morpheus and Smith and displays no characteristics of either. It doesn't help that the actor is a complete charisma vacuum.

Keanu Reeves just kept doing this force push thing so often that at one point I turned to my brother and said - can he please do fcuking anything else!?!

I barely had any time to digest what was happening with Trinity at the end - which seems remarkable that a movie this long can seem like it didn't have enough time to flesh out key moments such as this.

Jessica Henwick was probably the best thing about this. Reeves delivered what was for him a decent performance too but really wasted.

My biggest gripe, and it's a damning one is the movie spends a good 45 minutes on this meta commentary around reboot/remake/sequel culture - and then literally spends the remainder of the movie committing the sins they are admonishing. It's quite unbelievable how Wachowski can lack the basic self awareness to see it, or maybe it's just coming from a place of total ignorance and almost delusional levels of narcissism. So pretentious. You literally are what you hate - and you actually think you are superior. There is no reason for this to exist apart from an incredibly ironic desire to cash in on the nostalgia train of modern cinema.

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118367837#Comment_118367837

Didn't love it as much as you, but my opinion is much closer to yours than those who hated it anyway. Was really happy they jumped down the self-referential meta route, and looked at the role of sequel from a different perspective.

It's interesting that on the one hand some people are saying how crap Morpheus and the Merovingian were, and on the other hand complaining about 'memberberries' - they were clearly very conscious of using their callbacks as storytelling/emotional motifs, rather than just 'heres stuff you know'. So many iconic shots or details done just a little differently, or deconstructed altogether in interesting ways. I would've liked better fight sequences alright though, but all in all, I definitely enjoyed it.

Ultimately, the point of it to me feels like making something that at a glance from a distance looks like a typical rehash, but once you dig into it, it's all a bit topsy turvy, like an alt reality matrix.

manofwisdom

The first Matrix film was a classic ahead of its time and like any good movie can be re watched many times. The latest version, well to honest I expected it to be rubbish and it turned out to be average at best.