Futurenerd said:
It always pisses me off whenever I see someone hate on the Matrix trilogy because the sequels sucked.
In my opinion, even though the Matrix sequels weren't better than the first, they were still wonderful movies in their own right, just not shining in comparison to the first.
Can someone give me any other reason besides disappointment for hating the Matrix Sequels? I just don't really get it...
The Matrix kicked off a discussion of philosophy and a dissection of reality. I think the brainier of the nerds hoped that the sequels would further explore these themes of selfhood and reality when "identity" and "perception" is a mere collection of electrical impulses.
/pretentious.
Whether they are "wonderful movies in their own right" is not at issue. You can't look at a sequel just by itself. Because the sequel doesn't want you to look at it by itself. A sequel demands to be taken as a part of the whole, or it wouldn't be a sequel. They could just change all the names and make a different movie. Especially when you refer to it as The Matrix Trilogy. As a couple of movies? Yeah, they're fine. They're
fun. But as a unit of three? They are a failure.
And what they showed was, to me, a problem that happens a lot in entertainment, where the creators of a thing become successful and completely misinterpret what they were doing right. There are people who liked the warped storyline and skewed future-reality suggested by the first movie, and all they got with the second one was bitchin' special effects.
If you liked the bitchin' special effects, then, yeah. I bet that movie was something you dug. But there wasn't the thing from before that everybody expected to be there.
It's like Harold and Kumar. The first movie was dumb stoner comedy, but it was also very, very well-structured "plot." Two characters have goal, obstacles impede said goal, characters achieve goal and grow as characters as a result, Neil Patrick Harris?
But then the sequel to that had all of the funny pot jokes and gross-out comedy (all of which I like, in its way) and none of the nerdy, English major plot structure. It was an expectations game, I think. We didn't get the sequel we hoped for. And the sequel we hoped for would have been life-changing, in the way the first movie was for so many people.
tl;dr.