May 16, 2003

The Matrix Reloaded

09:32 AM

We saw the Matrix Reloaded last night. If you don’t let yourself get sucked into the hype, and don’t expect to see the best movie you’ve ever seen, you won’t be disappointed. It’s definitely not the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it is a damn good action movie. There’s not the same kind of “What the hell just happened?” story as the first Matrix, but there’s definitely more of a story than many people thought. The following will have some minor spoilers (nothing you won’t know if you saw a trailer on TV), so you’ve been warned.

The movie includes some of the best wire-fu I’ve ever seen. Three sequences in particular are just awesome. The beginning of Neo’s fight versus the 50 Agent Smiths is amazing. Some of the wire-fu I wouldn’t have believed if I wasn’t sure they weren’t CGI. The work that Keanu Reeves did in particular is unbelievable. The wire-fu is far superior to anything in the original movie.

The only disappointing thing about the movie is some of the CG. Where the effects in the original Matrix were amazing because they were accomplished using fancy camera tricks and wires, the most amazing shots in this movie were created inside a computer. My complaint is that it was immediately apparent because of the poor lighting in most of the CG scenes. The latter half of the fight with the many Agent Smiths is a prime example. The Agents close to Neo are lit perfectly, and seem human. The faces of the Agent Smiths farther from Neo are all brightly lit, as if they’re staring at a spotlight. This jars the viewers attention away from the action and into the background. It was really quite disappointing. I’m sure they just ran out of time to run the lighting shaders (running lighting calculations for multiple models can take an hour per frame per model to run, even on massive render farms with hundreds of PCs) on all the Agent models for the entire sequence, but I hope they finish the lighting for the DVD release.

Still, this is a must-see movie in the theater. My reaction may be atypical. Let me know how you feel.

///Will | Movies | Email this entry
Comments

Yeah, but if my everyday life is CG, wouldn't the computers make the in-movie Matrix look fake or strange to ensure that none of us started making comparisons between the 'real world' and the Matrix in the movie?

Of course I guess my perception of what I think is the real world dictates what I think looks fake, so if I'm really in the Matrix, the real world could easily look fake.

I'm confused. I'm gonna run get a Powerade.

Posted by: Will at May 19, 2003 11:13 PM

How do you KNOW that the CG shots were fake? How are so so certain of reality? Perhaps you are actually seeing reality in the Matrix Reloaded while your everyday life is CG.

Posted by: B at May 19, 2003 11:21 AM