Being a HUGE zombie fan this got me interested. First ive heard of this film. However, if you go to the main website they just updated the news section only one week ago. Go check it out... the movie isnt dead, they just got huge delays. Thanks for giving me some insight to this movie ill def be waiting for this to come out.

Same here. I'll have to check it out. I just about gave up hope and quit checking altogether. I'm a big fan of the zombie genre also whether it be movies, games, books, you name it.

Just something about mankind having to band together against a common enemy. Low budget, high budget... it's all good.

Hm. I've always considered the Robot stories quite hard. Susan Calvin developed into a fairly deep and very sympathetic character, but the stories are based on intellectual questions rather than character interaction or emotion.

I have to admit I've started reading Foundation a couple of times and could never get into it, so I can't say anything about that series! It's the only Asimov that I've found not at all to my tastes.

I wouldn't say butchered cause I still enjoyed them, but the Matrix sequels would have been a lot more effective if they'd cut the fluff and the oracle hadn't died.*


* not a spoiler.. I'm talking about the actress

Perhaps it would be simpler if you just said "and if the actress who played the oracle hadn't died."

Yes.

• Matrix I: "Wow, they have something fantastic going on here. I'll buy the DVD."
• Matrix II: "Um, okay. But you know, it's the middle one, so the next one will make up for it. I'll go ahead and buy the DVD".
• Matrix III: "Oy. This think smells like a freshly plucked butt dingle-berry" <sells Matrix II to some poor lost soul>.

Can anyone here think of a trilogy that tanked worse? Go on, I dare you.

But did you get the collection of short films "The Animatrix"? Didn't make up for the way the trilogy went but some really nice pieces of work on that. It's well worth checking out.

I think the Matrix sequels are highly underrated.

2 and 3 suffered from a lot of redundant characters and side-plots, some of which were due to original actors being absent for various reasons (Tank, The Oracle), others I guess to over-ambition: trying to cram too many things into what could have been a much tighter story. I maintain that the story-arc of Neo and Smith is a flawed masterpiece.

We could have done without the big dance scene, the orgasmic cake, etc... but these did not enough detract from the main story to ruin it for me. And yeah, Reeves and Moss don't have the chemistry of Bogey and Bacall, but if I wanted romantic tension I would just watch To Have and Have Not again...

Agreed on the Animatrix. Added much to the backstory and helped solidify some of the themes they were going for in the sequels.

By the way, people who bitch about

Spoiler:

Neo 'surrendering' to the machines by making peace with them when apparently he should have reduced them to a smoldering pile of rubble

just didn't get it. That was not the point of the story.

If you want an example of a less coherent trilogy, I give you Pirates of the Caribbean. Started to drift in the second outing and really lost the plot* in number three.

*I wanted to say anchor, I did.

Liked The Matrix and The Animatrix, I agree with "Not A Speck Of Cereal", really poor sequels, not because they were specifically flawed technically in writing or cinematography, but it was mediocre. If I were to list moments, locations, characters, that were memorable, I don't think the sequels would give that many. The focus seemed to zoom out, become epic, but nothing was gained from that, but everything good about the original was lost.

Zion looked dead, the place had no character, the people had no character, it's hard to engage emotionally in the fate of such place.

I also think Neo/Smith, and Neo/Trinity, was rehashing of things we've already seen, and they were there because people loved them in the original movie. After Neo becomes all powerful, and can fly, he becomes boring, it was fine for the end of the original film. Neo and Trinity's relationship consumes a lot of time, but it's boring, relying on the original movie, not developing, or adding elements.

I really didn't get the whole human battery thing, that reasoning didn't seem plausible in the first movie, and I didn't feel it got answered in the others.

I actually agree with you that for a last bastion of humanity, Zion was a bit cold... not somewhere you'd call home.

Personally I count the exploration of the relationship between Neo and Trinity among the unnecessary side-plots. If it had been done more elegantly it could have added something, but the story didn't really need it. Also, I think Trinity's

Spoiler:

initial death would have been a more dignified end than her ultimate demise in Revolutions. I think her dying there and then sans resurrection would have been more powerful and would have added more weight to Neo's final solitary journey.

What I liked was the interplay between Neo, Smith, the Oracle and the Architect and the story that developed from that. It's too bad Gloria Foster wasn't there for Revolutions... and Tank for both sequels. He was cool. The whole thing with Link and his wife didn't really grab me.

As for the battery thing, I'm OK with suspending disbelief on that.

At the end of the day I think they're a flawed but still fitting conclusion to the story.

The human battery concept seriously annoyed me in the first movie, but then I read somewhere that the Wachowskis had another idea initially (I think it may have been that the machines were using people's brains as computers, in effect making them their hosts), but that it was too complicated for the average viewer to understand, so they went with an easier, though ridiculous, explanation.