Movie Weekend

[cornerofmadness]

Movies and such. Contains heavy spoilers for the last Matrix movie (out on DVD) and Spiderman 2

 
Rented the last Matrix movie on Friday. Thank God it was from the library and FREE. It sucked that much. I loved the first movie. The second one bored me so much that I refused to see it again and wouldn’t go to the theatre for the final one. Good call. I was thinking as I watched this about George Lucas. I thought, after the second of the new SW movies, that really George must have had just a trilogy in mind back in the 70's and lied about having more than that to make it sound good. He confessed to this in a later interview. I think the creators of the Matrix had the same problem. They just had the first movie in mind and when it went all out and they felt the pressure to do more, they just didn’t have a damn thing left. To be honest maybe if they had trimmed an hour of the boring Zion scenes from #2 and an hour from the incredibly dull battle scenes from #3 they might have had ONE decent sequel. Where #2 was all deadly dull talking, #3 reminded me of the reason I quit buying manga. You pay top dollar for two pages of talk and 20 pages of battle scenes. There was about a half hour of talking in#3 up front that I couldn’t hear. No lie COULDN’T here. I maxxed the tv’s sound system out and still couldn’t make out what they were saying. There was a lot of totally unconvincing declarations of love between Trinity and Neo (Monica Bellucci reprises her role as Persephone to delivery like one line about how much Trinity loves Neo, please, what a waste). And that’s about the total sum of it. Agent Smith does something to the oracle and the squiddies attack Zion ENDLESSLY. It looked like every battle scene from every anime I’ve ever seen. No dialogue worth mentioning just endless battle scenes with characters we’ve barely ever or never have seen for well over an hour. Best part was the blinding of Neo and the death of Trinity. She couldn’t die fast enough for me (it was like looking at Keanu making out with his older, uglier half brother especially when she had the glasses on). The ending was simply confusing. Neo asks the machines to stop the war if he destroys a problem for them, Agent Smith (um, he wasn’t a problem until Neo made him one in the first place so how is this a good bargaining chip). I’m still NOT sure what the hell happened in the end nor do I care. I should have stopped watching with #1. Saw Spiderman 2. Let me say this, it’s very well acted and I liked it (but not as much as the original) but damn it’s depressing. I’m sitting there in the rather overly long beginning watching Aunt May losing her house, Peter out of a job, behind on his rent of his one room apartment, having trouble in school and having to give up his dreams. Told Mom this and she’s like no wonder it depressed you. It sounds like YOUR life (and it does, I gave up two men I really cared about to have my dream job but had to give up the dream, I had nothing but trouble in school lately. I’m months behind on the rent and I’m out of work so...). Mary Jane is a real jerk through most of this. She’s supposed to be fed up with Peter but it comes out more as bitchy, at least to me. Ditto with Osborne jr. The special effects in this are much better. Spiderman moves much more like a person than a CGI thing in this unlike last time. Doc Ock’s movements with his 4 arms is absolutely fantastic. He was interesting to watch and his history was well thought out (though the moral of the Spider movies appears to be science will make you insane). I liked him much more than I did the Green Goblin. ALL of the men looked ready to cry at any moment in this movie outside of Jonah. No kidding, wet eyes through the whole freaking movie. A big spoilery thing here but I LOVED how the stress in Peter’s life made him so ill and out of sync that he lost his Spider abilities. Note to director, don’t let Tobey do the action scenes maskless, he just looks constipated. The train scene was really cool (barring the Christ symbolatry) . I wish Mary Jane would do more than scream. Hell even Aunt May went upside Ock’s head once. The least convincing parts, at the end when Spider spins a web for him and MJ to sit and talk. They needed to wrap the wires better with the clear ‘web’ because I could see all the wires. Plotwise the least convincing part was the engagement of MJ to Jonah’s son. It felt too incestuous. Why couldn’t it have been a total outsider? (Though I wanted her earrings on her wedding day). Most needed parts - Peter’s confession to Aunt May and MJ’s telling him it’s HER life and she’ll take risks if she wants to and them NOT holding out his secret identity until S3. Funniest Part - the Asian street musician singing the Spiderman theme song from the 70's. Damn if I didn’t know every word of it still. Part I’m least sure I needed - Osborne’s breakdown and finding daddy’s Green Goblin room after learning who Spidey is. S3 had best not be Green Goblin #2

Comments

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

though the moral of the Spider movies appears to be science will make you insane

Yeah. How about that? I'm still recovering from my disappointment that UofM didn't have a college of Mad Science.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

Same here. Heck I'll be getting my FOURTH science degree in about two weeks. How insane am I?