Flutterby™! : 5150?

5150?

2003-05-01 17:41:39.566269+00 by Dan Lyke 20 comments

This is probably in the "well, duh" department, but anyone else noticed that the Matrix Reloaded(official site) release date is a reversal of 5150? Kewl marketing, especially since the Thursday release means they probably put it there for a reason (otherwise they'd go with Wednesday if the marketing folks believed in the movie, Friday if they thought it sucked and the opening weekend wouldn't be bouyed by the word of mouth).

[ related topics: Movies Consumerism and advertising California Culture Marketing ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment made: 2003-05-14 22:38:54.343437+00 by: Dan Lyke

Not an opening weekend film:

One of Hollywood's most anticipated movies, "The Matrix Reloaded" is possibly the worst sequel to a really good film ever made ("Jaws: The Revenge" excluded).

#Comment made: 2003-05-15 18:34:16.784403+00 by: Pete

That's so far from the truth. Even if you think it's crap, it's nowehere the benchmark for sequel crap, which is Highlander 2, a sequel so bad it soils the original.

And yes, I've seen The Matrix Reloaded. Who wants to touch me?

#Comment made: 2003-05-15 19:08:00.826761+00 by: Dan Lyke

Well, where's your review?

Although after looking at the pictures accompanying the SFGate review I'm wondering if I could handle a hundred and thirty eight minutes in the Sony Style store over at the Metreon. Even if it was watching someone kick the shit out of the sales assistants.

#Comment made: 2003-05-15 19:36:16.567322+00 by: Diane Reese

Well, at 12:15am last night, I picked up a carload of 16-year-old boys who had been in line since 6pm for the 10pm show. They refused to spoil it for me (I've got tickets for Sat.) so they only talked about it in generalities in the car, but they each gave it hearty thumbs-up. They liked the fact that "... it still has a lot of philosophy in it, but not too much," and one admitted, "The only complaint I have is that the sex scene was too long." He was universally derided by the rest of them for that comment.

If that's all that's "wrong" with it, it has promise. (Although I admit that their opinions may not be fully relevant to readers here...)

#Comment made: 2003-05-15 23:12:44.841322+00 by: Pete

7/10.

Early pacing is off, some effects are not convincing (not Blade 2 territory, but certainly room for improvement), lots of cool eye candy, some things that make you wonder "why did they bother?"

Ultimately, though, it does work, as shown by the fact that cliffhanger is pretty frustrating, meaning it got my attention and made me want more.

Possible spoiler: By the end of the first one, Neo's attitude toward kung fu was total boredom, and he could directly destroy agents. No sign of that here. It's like we're supposed to forget that and think that kung fu is the ultimate means of fighting the machines. Uh, ok. Sure it looks cool and is fun to watch, but I didn't forget that Neo grew beyond that by the end of the last one.

Lots left unresolved, so there's a ton for geeks (like us) to argue about.

I saw the first three times in the theater. This time I might go back for a second, but only if it's part of some larger social context for me. Have no doubt that I'll be there for Revolutions, though.

#Comment made: 2003-05-16 12:24:08.10627+00 by: meuon

Trinity used the SSHv1 crack to down the power station.. Laughing (yes I can read a screen that fast)..

It was good, but nothing compared to the original. Good Effects.. but just for the sake of doing them.. the fights WERE stupid.. The shooting terrible...(like watching the A-team.. 300 auto rounds at a vehicle at close range and nothing vital or human was hit, yet a couple of rounds from Morpheus's pistol and the Suburban (sorry, Esplanade - Caddy was a sponsor) blows to Smithereens.. as in Agent Smithereens..

Did anyone catch that they ended up in the - or another - Matrix.. hence Neo's powers over the spiders?

My bet: The 'free' programs and the remaining humans will save the world.. working together..

#Comment made: 2003-05-16 14:33:51.135535+00 by: Pete

Nice fucking spoiler warning, meuon. Way to go.

But that is your interpretation. Others are available.

MAJOR SPOILER BELOW.

A much simpler explanation that the sentinals are programmed to avoid harming Neo, since we now know that he is, or at least was, a tool of The Machines, a necessary part of their larger plan.

#Comment made: 2003-05-16 17:39:41.029574+00 by: Dan Lyke

Cool. Those spoilers tell me all I need to know about the movie.

Think I'll get a good book. Or go see the latest incarnation of Titillation Theatre, provocatively titled Let's Pretend I'm Not Your Mother. Tickets available from The Kabaret

#Comment made: 2003-05-16 19:24:13.689956+00 by: Dazed

Is there more to the "5150" reference that I'm missing? Why would the Matrix filmmakers/marketers throw in an obscure reference to part of the California motor vehicles code?

#Comment made: 2003-05-19 12:02:44.451811+00 by: Jeffery

Matrix Reloaded fired a dud draws a blank--my own personal impression of the film. The special effects were good, but the plot was without any kind of lasting purpose (unlike the first film). And the lead-in to the next sequel well, was, kinda sophmoric. Highly disappointing! Damn!

#Comment made: 2003-05-25 04:36:14.301813+00 by: MaStErMaC

Pete's idea about the sentinels programmed to not harm Neo is very interesting, but I think they could have gone about not harming him by steering clear of him rather than dropping dead at his feet. Plus, he said 'he could feel them' so I prefer to go with the theory that they are still in another Matrix, one that encloses the original Matrix, and the 'real world'.

I think that holds the answer for revolutions, that Neo will discover how to break free of the one overall Matrix.

The thing that annoys me though, is all that story line about Zion, the battles with the machines, Earth history etc is all untrue, and just part of the machines world they made for us. Kinda a let down cos i have been wooting for Zion and co for a while now.

#Comment made: 2003-05-25 23:23:08.47595+00 by: Dan Lyke

Dazed, 'cause it's also the title of a Van Halen album and referenced in a bunch of other places.

#Comment made: 2003-05-27 06:58:10.836492+00 by: Pete [edit history]

RELOADED AND ANIMATRIX SPOILERS ALL THE WAY THROUGH

I just saw the complete Animatrix. I have to assume that "Kid's Story" is canonical, because the character appears in Reloaded, and even a critical piece of dialog is repeated.

Based on the combination of information found in the movie and the short, I am now firmly in the "Zion is in the Matrix" camp. The main character in the animated short gets clues that his world is not real, and, under great duress, pulls himself out of the Matrix, unaided.

I now believe Neo did the same thing, but pulling himself out of the Zion level of the Matrix.

He gets clues his world is not real when he at least senses and maybe even stops the Sentinals, and then his body drops, just as if he was in the known level of the Matrix and had his connection cut.

His interactions with the Sentinals provide the clues that he is in a Matrix, and then Neo "saves himself," by pulling himself out of that level of the Matrix, just as he knows the kid did. It wasn't until the kid's performance that they even saw that it was possible for someone to pull himself out.

(autodefenestration? :)

#Comment made: 2003-06-05 05:02:28.596206+00 by: Shawn [edit history]

********** MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILER WARNING ***********

I waited to join the conversation until I saw the movie (yesterday - I was trying to get to see it on an Imax screen, but no luck so far) due to the spoilers here. (And since I view the comments in reverse order, I wasn't hit by meuon's misstep ;-)

Although I thought the Zion scenes flowed a little... oddly, I thought the movie overall was great. A little different from the first but I felt it was right in line and consistent - at least with my interpretation of certain events.

The Matrix-within-a-Matrix plot is one possibility, but I will be sorely disappointed if that is the path the brothers wind up taking. I have two other plotlines that I think would be much more interesting and not nearly so cliche-ic:

The Matrix trilogy is the brothers' interpretation of The Singularity. Perhaps it is because I just finished researching and giving a presentation on this in school (I should have the script up in a few days) but the concept - coming out of the second movie - applied perfectly in my mind. Neo is not in another Matrix level. He is evolving. His time spent intimately connected to, and manipulating the Matrix has conditioned his mind to work in new ways - ways that are intimately familiar with code and machines. Thus, he is starting to be able to "sense" them - and to even disable them with a crude, barely focused/understood energy burst. Agent Smith, with his apparent ability to hack a human mind - even persisting outside the Matrix - is another side of the same coin: A program becoming a human. The co-dependence issues between machines and humans were far too heavily foreshadowed in this movie to ignore in favor of the simple box-within-a-box-within-a-box metaphor, IMO.
Another possible plotline that occurred to me a few days later would be: What if Neo is actually a sentient (or even semi-sentient) machine who is a servant of humans in the real-real world? Perhaps he is dreaming of being a human, enslaved by machines, who eventually breaks free and saves everyone. I envision the last scene being one of Neo-machine waking up to another day of robotic servitude.

#Comment made: 2003-06-05 12:12:28.493899+00 by: Pete [edit history]

Interesting angles. One point I haven't seen anybody draw on yet is Tank's assessment of Neo in the first movie during his training: "He's a machine." Sure, it could be a throwaway, but the movies have been too intricately constructed for that to be a safe assumption.

ANIMATRIX SPOILER
One of the episodes does deal with recruiting/duping machine intelligences to serve Zion.

#Comment made: 2003-06-05 20:40:22.844838+00 by: Shawn [edit history]

Hmmm... don't remember that line. Guess I'll have to go back and watch again. Not a bad idea anyway, now that I've seen Reloaded. I think this would support my angle of the Singularity tie-in, though. Neo is a merging of man and machine. In a sense, he is a machine - a human machine.

RELOADED SPOILER

And now Agent Smith is a machine human.

#Comment made: 2003-06-08 20:12:43.931804+00 by: Stephen

The real question is with the twins when The SUV is blown up you see them flying into the air due to the explosion....but in "spirit" form. Shouldn't they have just floated back down to earth and kicked morpheus' ass?

#Comment Re: 5150? made: 2003-07-26 09:55:31.674824+00 by: vikas

i think that the wachowski brothers didnt find a damn storyline and the SFX guys were lying unemployed.... thus crearting the "reloaded" shit.... therez little about the story and too much of the trinity shit.. can the revolutions thing be better or worse?????

#Comment Re: 5150? made: 2003-09-12 05:39:30.505437+00 by: Shawn [edit history]

I think [MATRIX RELOADED SPOILERS:]this comment on /. makes some very good points. As I've said, I enjoyed the movie. For me there was a lot to think about and ponder in the storyline and philosophy being tossed around. (And then there's the fact that I *like* gratuitous Kung Fu.) Anyway, the post says it better than I have been.

#Comment Re: 5150? made: 2003-09-13 13:16:46.978669+00 by: ebradway

Nah...At the end of the next movie, Ted (Keanu Reeves), from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, will wake up: "Dude! I just had the most awesome dream!"