Longer Movie Review

First, let’s talk about what was cool about the first movie. It was green and oddly timed. The whole thing was shot with this errie greenish, slightly-off feel to it. Everything was kind of decayed. It was awesome. and the soundtrack was really good. the product placement, coupled with the excellent cinematography made it the movie equivalent to reading Wire Magazine We’re all anti-capitalist now, but at the time, it affirmed our dot com lifestyles. The whole movie was like a matephor for working at a startup. Neo works at an office that represses him. The establishment gets him down. But then someone approaches with a crazy plan, they can’t even reveal until he signs an NDA. His personal life sucks after that. He eats gross food and lives in a funny little room, and his clothes are beat up, but none of this matters, because he spends all of his time hacking the matrix. And he gets the cool dot com accessories. He gets the nokia. the super-fast network connection. Um, some machine guns, but you know they’re suppossed to represent palm pilots or something. He becomes the uber-hacker. He’s thinking outside the box. there’s no sex in the movie. Who has time for that when they’re wortking at a startup? The scene at the very end where he takes off like superman, that representes the stock after the IPO.
Ok, now on to the current movie. dot coms crashed. cell phones ar enot as ubiquitous as they were. nobody is buying toys like that anyway. and most importantly, AOL bought time Warner, the company that made the film. and the film people smelled a franchise and brought in some new writers. so the new movie has sex in it. Do you ever need to see whats-his-face that plays Neo’s bare butt? nononononononoNO. but there it is, on the big screen, larger than life. there’s more sex than that too, but it’s pg-13 sex. It’s really pg-14, since the target audience is clearly 14 year old males. and they got rid of most that confusing science fiction stuff. and the women in it were a little too powerful and onconventional, so they fixed that. And the soundtrack was little too alternative and not hollywood schmaltz in the first one, so they fixed that. And wouldn’t it be cool if there was a big fight, like in a medival chalet with a bunch of armor and swords and stuff stuck to the walls, so that people could just grab them and start fighting?? what an original idea! i’ve nevr even heard of that except in 2186731647983624 james bond movies and other lame action films. Oh, and throw in a bad guy that speaks french. they even got rid of the product placement. There’s really not much to say in terms of the plot, since the plot was clearly an afterthought to the really really really long, violent fight scenes. i think if you have over an hour of special effects, you might forget to do some of the finishing touches, like texture mapping. the special effects in the first film were awesome. the ones in the second film were rushed through production or something. it was on a par with some video games that i’ve seen. unrealistic movements. lack of texture on fast parts. bleah. bleah. bleah.
Ok, now I know all of you are going to go see it anyway, becauyse the original was so awesome. It’s not the same movie. It’s got the same actors playing charecters by the same names in an entirely different movie. an action movie. one where the sci-fi component has been dumbed down to Trinity guessing a root password in one try and hacking an entire system in three keystrokes. It provides some unintended comedy.
But you’ll see it anyway because it was shot in Oakland. there is a long long long long long get-up-and-go-to-the-bathroom-come-back-get-popcorn-come-back-go-for-a-smoke-come-back long long chase scene filmed on 880. It’s a whole bunch of car accidents. I think it was about an hour of the movie of car accidents. they keep going back and forth over the same stretch,, but traffic never gets snarled, despite it being in the 880 cooridoor and there being so many accidents. I think maype it was suppossed to look like they were moving forward, but the effect doesn’t work if you know the freeway. I can only imagine what KCBS’s traffic report would sound like. and no news helicopters ever showed up. anyway.
the also tear up and down broadway. and they go in one of the tunnels to alameda. is this why the tunnel was closed every night for months? you can see all sorts of local landmarks. so go and you might recognize a restaurant or something. otherwise, there’s really no reason to see the movie. i want my money back. and it cost $3 for a soda. that’s sugar and water!!!! for three dollars. it’s an outrage. i wish i’d gone to a concert instead.