Matrix DeZIONized, The

My second favorite Matrix edit, after Doctor M’s Hacked. It’s amazing how well this movie works without a single scene in Zion. And bonus points for including subtitles, something I wish more edits had. On a scale of 1 to 10 Frinks, this edit receives 9 Frinks.

Review by TV's Frink — October 24, 2009 @ 3:51 AM

I’m not going to drag out my explanation too much as to why I like this edit,but as many have stated before me: the two sequels to the original Matrix were a bloody mess.Harsh words but nothing but the truth.Poor Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski fell in love with themselves and their Matrix universe to the point that they lost their sanity.The tale of Zion was just boring and the not-so-clever-riddles-filled dialogue made me cringe each time.I remember the strange feeling after having seen part 2 in the cinema,on one hand I was happy the long torture was finally over ,and on the other hand I was angry that I really had to see part 3 for the real ending.The worst part is the sad fact that I really hate Keanu Reeves,whatever he does seems boring and he`s been like this since early 90`s.I`m a sucker every time I pay good money as I hope,no pray, that the director can force Keanu Reeves into giving a memorable performance.No luck!

This edit rips out the spinal cord of the Zion story mess and forces two movies into movie that even I,a Keanu Reeves hater,can watch without too much problem.
Kudos for trying to salvage this story,must be real hard,and giving me more action(meaning less spoken meaningless drivel from dead face Keanu Reeves).
This edit makes it easy to say,without lying:Sure I see The Matrix trilogy once a year.

Review by ColdNorway — February 11, 2009 @ 1:08 AM

This is one of only a handful of fanedits I’ve actually seen, the others being Superman Redeemed (combining III and IV), X-Men Requiem War (all three movies), Superman – Last Son of Krypton (combines the first two movies) and Start Wars – Rise of the Empire (combining the original trilogy). To be honest I was starting to lose faith in fanedits as nothing more than a bit of fun or an excuse to cut through swathes of story and bring down the running time. Without wanting to be derogatory towards the other edits I’ve mentioned, Superman Redeemed just didn’t have the chance of being a good film given the source material (the edit was a vast improvement on the two movies though), Superman LSOK and X-Men both made drastic cuts to some of my favourite films in an attempt to improve a flawed sequel, but because of the cuts made to the first movies the edits will never be superior to them, and Star Wars, well, the opening crawls stretched out to four hours long would have been an improvement on the trilogy as originally released so that edit was bound to be an improvement.

But this edit, given how unsatisfactory I found the original versions, is enlightening and entertaining. The pacing is great and the two and a half hours fly by. Still inferior to The Matrix, but hey, the editor didn’t have a budget of millions, a crew and a screenplay he could tinker with at whim, so given the limitations put on him I think this is a great job. I can see why some people feel that Morpheus didn’t get closure but I don’t think it’s all that important. Of the crew of the Neb who made it through to the sequels he’s the only one who lived. He played his part in getting Neo to where he needed to be so I think that it’s fitting that his fate is left hanging. I can honestly say that on viewing this it actually feels like a full movie in its own right and doesn’t need to sacrifice anything. Definitely a replacement to Revolutions and Reloaded in my eyes.

To anyone who’s new to fanedits I would highly recommend this as an ideal one to start with. It is a perfect example of how improvements can and should be made, and highlights just what we could be missing out on by not giving fanedits a go.

5/5

Word of warning – when unpacking the archives for the DVD version using WinRar I received an error message for each file. The ISO file generated fine but Windows Explorer shut down every time I tried to open the folder it had extracted to. It’s not an infected archive – thorough malware and antivirus scans confirmed that – and it may have just been a corruption limited to my PC, but just in case it’s not and anybody else wants to avoid the same problems I encountered I recommend extracting it to a new folder away from any other files, buried in a tree of two other new folders with no other files in, and once the ISO has been created move it to your intended destination and delete the new folders.

Review by latenights — January 18, 2009 @ 4:21 AM

Like seemingly everyone else on the planet, I was blown away by The Matrix when it hit theatres in 1999. And, like seemingly everyone else on the planet, I eagerly awaited the the release of the sequels. So highly anticipated were these sequels, that many genre magazines and websites already began predicting that The Matrix Trilogy would be one the greatest trilogies of all time, aside the original Star Wars trilogy. The first trailer looked great, the cast and crew were all back and everything was set to blow us away again. And, then, something happened. I didn’t know what it was at the time but the sequels were a bit … off. I didn’t hate them but they just seemed so much more disposable to me than the original. And, at a time when Lord of the Rings was showing up nearly every other franchise, The Matrix sequels stood out even more. It wasn’t until I watch The Matrix deZIONized that I realized what was wrong with these movies. First off, they don’t work as two separate sequels. Like the later Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, there just isn’t enough story to justify two movies. It was clearly all about money. When the story fails, the Wachowskis turn to psuedo-intellectual nonsense and hollow action scenes to fill out the running time. The second thing that doesn’t work, obviously, is Zion. Zion’s one of those things that fans thought they wanted to see until they saw it. There isn’t a single character in Zion that we remotely care about, so it’s just plain dull spending time with them. And, the end battle means nothing. We just want to get back to the original characters. deZIONized is not without it’s fault’s though. The action scenes still go on too long but I’m not sure much could be done to edit them for continuity and technical reasons. Also, by chopping off Zion we are denied Morpheus’s ending. He simply disappears when Neo and Trinity head to Machine City. Since Morpheus is one of the original characters, it feels wrong denying him any sort of closure. Still, these small criticisms aside, deZIONized brings dignity back to The Matrix sequels and is once again a lesson for Hollywood. I loved it and I don’t see myself revisiting the theatrical cuts again anytime soon (except for the Blu-ray release).

Review by Kolpitz — September 4, 2008 @ 5:39 AM

its amazing how less is actually more, Alot More!, this is my favorite fanedit thus far in my limited experiance of edits, i will definately make this the sequel to watch, this is a masterpiece to a masterpiece!

Review by DawgLB — March 4, 2008 @ 7:31 PM