Matrix DeZIONized, The

This edit proved that Reloaded & Revolutions could work as a single movie narrative without the Zion scenes-- even without giving closure to Morpheus, Niobe, and Link-- but the execution was shoddy at best. The picture quality was a little off, and the visual cuts were obvious, which is a shame because it was otherwise a serviceable edit.

Overall, with some tweaking, I'd recommend it for those who'd prefer to skip the Zion scenes entirely. A good effort, but it doesn't replace the originals for me.

This is'nt a bad one really, Zion is'nt really missed, the scenes on the ships are our best window into the ''real world'' and don't deter the drama all that much. There was one particular transistion [a fade to black one] that got on my nerves. Some plot threads seemed to lack ellaboration too, while some that should have been left out unfortunatly stay in. Overall, this is a servicable mash-up of both movies, but could have been a bit more bold.

Without going into it too much let me just say I was never a Matrix fan. #1 was a sweet movie but I wasn’t crazy about it. 2 & 3 sucked hard and every time I watch them I promptly forget everything I saw.The only other Matrix fanedit I’ve watched is Geminigod’s and I thought it was pretty damn good (although I do have a bit of amnesia on that one as well, I just can’t retain memories of Matrix sequels). This edit wasn’t near as good as I hoped it would be, these movies are still painful as hell and full of dumbassery. The 2-in-1 approach didn’t work, it felt like 2 shortened movies. Quality was fine, editing-wise there were some bad transitions and whatever.

A/V Quality - 9
Editing - 9 visual, 8 audio
Narrative - 6
Enjoyment - 6 (originals are 5)

Recommended drink: Hpnotiq and 7-Up

I had high hopes for this one, but it just didn't do it for me. While it's true (and pretty funny) that cutting all of the Zion scenes really didn't kneecap the story as much as it should have, it does wreak havoc with the pacing. Mashing these two movies together while excising the Zion scenes means that most of the runtime is dedicated to Reloaded, which barely has a story at all. Our characters go from macguffin to macguffin with scenes invariably ending in massively bloated set-pieces. I know CBB cut these action sequences down, but I feel a heavier hand was needed. Nothing has time to breathe, and what down-time we have is mostly laughably nonsensical philosophy. There were also some things that were (wisely) cut down but left baffling threads, such as the whole last exile thing, which moved the story along faster but left no explanation for Sati's presence later in the film, or the removal of the "Smith in the real world" subplot which simply made crewmember Bane's dead-on Smith impersonation anachronistic and hilarious. I do think there is a decent Matrix followup in the two sequels, but finding it is going to require a ruthless hack job.

This was a pretty good editing job, technically, with a few rough or awkward transitions, but not consistently so. I don't remember noticing any errors in audio cutting, though.

I think I much prefer watching this to watching the sequels in their original form. There are a couple things I didn’t like, but overall a very entertaining edit!

Technical quality – 9/10 – video seemed sharp, black levels were deep. Audio was good too.

Editing – 8/10 – there weren’t any hard cuts (except for one, it may have been intentional), but I didn’t care much for the fade to black edits which probably showed up at least ten times. They kind of made the movie seem edited.

Presentation – 10/10 – cool animated menus with sound. Very nice. A few trailers thrown in as well, and some snazzy cover art.

Entertainment – 8/10 – the idea of cutting Zion is creative, and allows for a completely different take on the movies. Luckily, the edit didn’t lose too much momentum when it transitioned from Reloaded to Revolutions. There were a few things that I wish had been fixed: Neo’s whole too-cool-for-school attitude, which Spicediver already talked about. Unlike him, though, I think it can be fixed just be simply editing out some of his lines and moves. Some other poor scripting also stayed in, especially the Merovingian’s painful dialogue about the French language. If some of this stuff had been cut, the edit would have been much more enjoyable. As it is, because of this and the fade-to-black cuts, I can’t give it 10/10, despite its creative story flow. Altogether, good job though.

Overall – 8/10

Review by QuickCut — May 15, 2012 @ 3:02 AM