[Stealth]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
"the agents are ghost-like/they can copy themselves" trick and beat it to death, and throw in a scene ripped straight out of Xiao Xiao with one guy in black beating the crap out of two dozen other guys in black in a physically improbable way with a stick.

1)  Those "Twins", i don't think they're agents... in the "cast" they're noted as "Twin 1" and "Twin 2", if i remember correctly.

2)  Legend has it that Xiao Xiao copied the matrix

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Stealth
2)  Legend has it that Xiao Xiao copied the matrix

[color=66ff00]The last 6 seconds of xiao copied matrix.

Xiao Xiao copied every great Jackie Chan film perhaps, but it is concievable that Bros. Wackowski saw the nice bit with the staff in Xiao and thought 'hey that would be cool'.
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[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Stunaep
[edit] for some reason, I don't get sound with any of the trailers.

Download QuickTime 6.

[Stryke 9]

I'm aware that the last scene in that one clip was an obvious prop to the Matrix. I was talking about the "defying physics to beat the crap out of 500 guys" bit, which even Jackie Chan never did- being an actor in real life, and not on a movie screen, he was limited by such things as gravity and friction, and besides he routinely gets the crap kicked out of himself in the movies anyway. Which is good.

Icefire: No, not really. It was slightly better than most modern action flicks, in that it tried to make some sense out of the universe it was in. Doesn't mean there weren't plot holes the size of Saturn in there (so... you've turned the atmosphere into toxic, choking smoke, blotted out the Sun, killed all life on Earth, and can't possibly survive except via symbiosis with the robots, who syntesize food and keep people from realizing they're in a blasted-out hellhole of a world with no escape, and hence naturally going insane. So... of course the next thing to do is to wipe out your support system because it's making use of you in the process!) It was good, but it was far from an "intellectual" flick. Which wasn't the point of the movie, so it managed to be great without real coherence.

And that's not the point. The scenes in the original Matrix trailer were mostly special effecty bits and sound bites, yeah, but they weren't exact ****ing quotes of a previous sequel. If not for the 400 Smiths or the one-trick-pony "ghost" guys, I'd have thought it was the original being rereleased.


If they've run completely dry already, I shudder to think what they'll do in the third one. Likely kill all that was good in the original, leaving a negative deposit in the Wachowski intellectual account.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
I'm aware that the last scene in that one clip was an obvious prop to the Matrix. I was talking about the "defying physics to beat the crap out of 500 guys" bit, which even Jackie Chan never did- being an actor in real life, and not on a movie screen, he was limited by such things as gravity and friction, and besides he routinely gets the crap kicked out of himself in the movies anyway. Which is good.

[color=66ff00]Xiao is exagerrated but there is a lot in there that you could believe was motion captured, that's what makes it so good. Jackie Chan can't quite defy friction and gravity but he has kicked the crap out of many a badguy on more than one occasion and he is quite capable of the most fantastic physics bound stunts (that's another discussion though). The weapons work in Xiao is extremely reminicent of Jackie's choreographed set pieces IMHO, fluid, fantastic and pretty fun to watch.
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[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
If they've run completely dry already, I shudder to think what they'll do in the third one. Likely kill all that was good in the original, leaving a negative deposit in the Wachowski intellectual account.

IIRC they were gearing #2 towards action, and #3 towards intellectual whatever.

[Stryke 9]

Maeg: Not arguing that. It's well produced and images of little people hitting each other are always welcome. And it is inspired by the kung-fu genre in general- they're all about the same, but some do more entertaining tricks than Chan (yeah, he's all right but how many movies can you make around a guy kicking peoples asses with a ladder or whatever before it gets dull? I could seriously **** someone up in short order with a trench shovel, you don't see me getting a movie).


Sandwich: That's bad planning on their part then. Ideas in movies get staler with each sequel, pretty much without exception. And if #2 is this bad, then the odds that there'll even be much of an audience for a third movie. The Matrix has an impressive following, but they're not quite so impervious to suckage as, say, Star Wars fans are.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
I could seriously **** someone up in short order with a trench shovel, you don't see me getting a movie).

[color=66ff00]The thing about Chan is that he makes it all pretty 'light' and humorous. If I want to see someone kick ass convincingly I watch Bruce or Jet, it's a different kind of spectacle.

I do agree with you though on the possability of the matrix formula getting stale. It is the primary danger with creating a sequal afterall. I also think it is 'judging the book by its cover' to claim the film is going to be **** just because the trailer looks like something familiar. I'm not going to get hyped about it, I'll just go see it and then decide.

I still think Reeves was a mistake in any case.
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[Stryke 9]

I could go through the trailer bit-by-bit and point how samey it really was, but I'm getting tired of belaboring the fairly obvious, and who knows- maybe it won't suck, maybe they should just fire, draw, and quarter their advertising guy.

Reeves?


EDIT: Oh, I was thinking Christopher Reeve for some reason. Cripple power!

Yeah, Keanu really can't act. At least in the last one they made up for it by having his character in a position where he'd be kinda out of it and stunned by everything that was happening to him, and surrounded him with competent actors like Fishburne (am I thinking the right guy? Never could get actors' names right). It'll be interesting seeing how they handle putting him in a role where he's actually NOT supposed to be just hanging around slack-jawed most of the time.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Yeah, Laurence Fishburne. Good actor and very convincing (Event horizion - Groovy flik).

If they keep Keanu's lines to a minimum (read: 'Acting' to a minimum) he'll be non annoying, kinda like Swartzenegger in Terminator. The supporting cast will make or break this film. I especially like Hugo Weaving, he's badass.
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[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
I'm aware that the last scene in that one clip was an obvious prop to the Matrix. I was talking about the "defying physics to beat the crap out of 500 guys" bit

Ahem, there's this little thing called "wire-fu" that's been around for decades. Started out in Hong Kong.

Are you done *****ing yet, or are you not quite finished bleeding off your bile tank?

[Stryke 9]

I'm aware of that, and also aware that that has no bearing on anything else in this thread

I'm also aware that "*****" doesn't activate the autocensor, so if you're afraid of the evil horrible dirty words that let Satan in through your mouth, you should stick with things like "Jiminy cricket" instead of bothering try to pretend.

And my bile tank will be nice and comfortably full so long as chronic incompetents and arrogant twits keep on fueling it. Thank you for contributing to that.

[Fineus]

Give it a rest guys, as much as people are entitled to their opinion - sometimes it's best to take some age old advice and shut the f*ck up. Got it?

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
And my bile tank will be nice and comfortably full so long as chronic incompetents and arrogant twits keep on fueling it.

Ah, so it's a self-sustaining system. Impressive!


EDIT: Oops, simul-post w/ the Thun-dude.

[Stryke 9]

Actually, the fighting bit was over, but Zylon evidently showed up late to the party and wanted to demonstrate how much of a fool he could make of himself. Now that that demonstration's over and he's had his little attention rush, I don't see that there's any problem.


Oh, they really need to come up with something other than the squidbots, though. Giant black evil robots are cool as hell, but there need to be lots of different kinds of them. Blowing each other up. Yeah!

[Fineus]

Right, let that be the end of it - you're both equally childish. Back to the subject matter please

I agree, they have the drilling machines, and we've not seen all the film yet so there's nothing to suggest that that's all there is. Then again perhaps they don't need variety - those squids seemed fairly capable of doing most offensive stuff.

[Stryke 9]

Who's talking about need? It's a movie, what they need to do is be entertaining. 40000 of the same robot, no matter how cool-looking, isn't entertaining for very long.


And they really didn't look all that effective anyway. I mean, maybe if the tentacles had something at the end to tear **** up, but they took a hell of a long time to take apart what was basically a flying junk car, they're not exactly fast movers, the design's inefficient, and they've got vulnerabilities to electronic hazards we learned to protect our computers against decades ago. They were cool, but of the sort of cool that's only sustainable for about ten minutes total. Then it's just "Oh, joy. More of that robot."

Fact, it looks to me like they just cut their production budget by not hiring more actors or making new models, just bluescreening or batch-rendering multiple copies of the old ones in. Which, you've got to admit, is a cheap trick.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
Fact, it looks to me like they just cut their production budget by not hiring more actors or making new models, just bluescreening or batch-rendering multiple copies of the old ones in. Which, you've got to admit, is a cheap trick.

Does DatDB show off all its new models and stuff in any trailer that might be made? No.

So why do you assume that the Wachowski bros do?

[Fineus]

And I don't think anyone who made their own custom 3 mile stretch of freeway would worry about budgeting costs

[Stryke 9]

Sandwich: Because we're smarter than marketing people. Have you not noticed how virtually every trailer made for a recent movie tells all the good jokes, shows all the cool scenes, and more often than not reveals the twist ending- all before you've even seen the movie? The Matrix, being a licensed Hollywood flick, would use the same major ad studios as everyone else.


In an even toss-up between someone being very smart and it backfiring and someone being stupid, it's a safe bet that lead paint was involved at some point.