See, I'm gonna have to disagree here. I got a lot of these references (not all, but a lot). And to be fair, the symbology is very cool - dissecting these films is fun. The films themselves, though, are teh crap. Despite choosing Trinity at the end of the second film, Neo still does EVERYTHING that the Architect says he will. He resets the Matrix, Trinity dies, etc, etc (it's been a little while, so I don't have all of them, but I saw Reloaded on DVD for the first time a week before Revolutions opened so it was fresh in my mind then and it annoyed the hell out of me). Humanity lost. Again. At the end, there's no reason for the Architect to give humanity anything aside from then we have a happy ending.
And as far as all this 'the Architect did a touchdown dance' crap in the first essay, then why the hell is he pissed off at the end of movie three about giving the Oracle and humanity freedom from the Matrix?
Plus, the storytelling is just plain bad - at the end of movie two, Neo saves Trinity - then, when she dies at the end of three, AGAIN, she has this craptastic speech that never ends about how all this time he's given her has allowed her all these revelations and blah, blah, blah, and she's talking like they've had all this time - except it's been less than 24 hours since her resurrection. Just because months elapsed between the releases of the films the stories did not have similar time. As I recall, her speech is just reiterating stuff she said then, but frankly, I don't give a crap. It's worse than Cyrano's death scene.
I like symbology. I really, really do. But if you can't tell a story which works on the surface then you fail. Big 'F', red marker. It's just masturbatory 'ooh I got a degree in classic literature' BS at that point, and they can do that in their own room instead of spewing it onto a movie-going audience thank-you-very-much.
PS - I apologize if some of my points are muddy here - I watched Reloaded and Revolutions once and do not intend to do so again. The second one is only worth it for the scene with the Architect, and the third one isn't worth the price of admission. The best thing to come out of movies two and three was the spoof of Reloaded done for the MTV Movie Awards.
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And as far as all this 'the Architect did a touchdown dance' crap in the first essay, then why the hell is he pissed off at the end of movie three about giving the Oracle and humanity freedom from the Matrix?
Plus, the storytelling is just plain bad - at the end of movie two, Neo saves Trinity - then, when she dies at the end of three, AGAIN, she has this craptastic speech that never ends about how all this time he's given her has allowed her all these revelations and blah, blah, blah, and she's talking like they've had all this time - except it's been less than 24 hours since her resurrection. Just because months elapsed between the releases of the films the stories did not have similar time. As I recall, her speech is just reiterating stuff she said then, but frankly, I don't give a crap. It's worse than Cyrano's death scene.
I like symbology. I really, really do. But if you can't tell a story which works on the surface then you fail. Big 'F', red marker. It's just masturbatory 'ooh I got a degree in classic literature' BS at that point, and they can do that in their own room instead of spewing it onto a movie-going audience thank-you-very-much.
PS - I apologize if some of my points are muddy here - I watched Reloaded and Revolutions once and do not intend to do so again. The second one is only worth it for the scene with the Architect, and the third one isn't worth the price of admission. The best thing to come out of movies two and three was the spoof of Reloaded done for the MTV Movie Awards.