Matrix DeZIONized, The
Hot
Updated
User reviews
48 reviews
Overall rating
8.1
Audio/Video Quality
8.2(6)
Audio Editing
9.0(6)
Visual Editing
7.8(6)
Narrative
7.5(6)
Enjoyment
8.2(48)
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Enjoyment
10.0
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 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
C
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Enjoyment
5.0
I’ve debated back and forth as to whether or not to write this review, due to the fact that I myself have created a fanedit of “The Matrix” sequels and wanted to avoid any type of bias that may cause. So, to keep this review fair and balanced, I will not be making any contrasts between this fanedit and my own and will only be comparing it to the original theatrical versions from which it was derived from:
“The Matrix Dezionized” by CBB
I’ll make no bones about it: The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were some of the bitterest disappointments that I’ve had in a cinema. So many aspects of the sequels, were to put in mildly, “insanely half-assedâ€:
- over 2/3 of the writing was atrocious
- the new characters ranged from poorly developed (Niobe, Link, Mifune, Hamann) to the flat-out terrible (the Kid, Sati, the Councel, Roland, Locke)
- previous characters introduced in the last film were either cheap knockoffs of their previous selves (Morpheus, Trinity) or just disappeared with nary a reference (Tank, I’m looking at you)
- too much emphasis of bigger and better CG graphics and action sequences in place of Story and Character
- self-referential moments that would devolve into self-parody of the first Matrix
- the ending… oh god, the ending was wretchedly, mind-numbingly bad.
Even to this day, I still refuse to believe that these later films were written during the same time as the first Matrix (either they were really written by Hollywood executives instead of the original creators or the Wachowski brothers are indeed a couple of hacks).
In an effort to remove much of the crap, CBB has opted to remove every scene relating to Zion and has book-ended Revolutions to the end of Reloaded to tell a single continuous story of Neo’s journey as the One. I have no problem with cutting nearly half of the film’s runtime, but in this case, it’s what has been removed that keeps me from enjoying this edit. When it comes to fanedits, I believe very much in the advice of the Mike J Nichols (the Phantom Editor): “Not everything about a film has to be good, so long as it works for the further develop the plot and its charactersâ€. Yes, many of the Zion scenes were terrible, but they did serve a purpose to the overall story of Reloaded and Revolutions (even if that story was terrible). In addition, for every removal that CBB makes which created a positive aspect, there was an unfortunate negative that reared its ugly head in its place. Yes, the Kid has been removed, but Sati still remains in the story and while a good chunk of her backstory with Rama-Kandra is taken out, the scenes that she remains in still portray her as being a “precocious little girl†(aka, so damn sickening-sweet and annoying that she could give Jake Lloyd a run for his money). Yes, Commander Locke and his poor subplots (Niobe love triangle, crappy leadership, hatred of Morpheus, etc.) are now gone, but Captain Roland scenes remain mostly intact and the character still comes across as a blowhard and asshole who hates Neo for no reason. Ultimately, what this edit shows is that there is many more things that do not work than just the Zion plot-point and that the story of these films is fundamentally flawed in more ways than one.
I can also understand the desire to refocus the story back onto Neo, but honestly, the character was such an underwritten afterthought in the sequels that no amount of cutting can improve him. At least in the original versions, I can kind of distract myself with Niobe or Zee or Mifune, but with all those characters gone, my focus is back on an uninteresting and bland main character played poorly by an actor who doesn’t know where to take the character next.
Another aspect which I had hoped that CBB would correct, but didn’t is what I refer to as “3-Year-Old Audience Syndrome†– this is the poor storyteller’s technique in which everything that visually happens onscreen is redundantly repeated by the film characters to the audience because the filmmakers miscalculate the intelligence of the audience (for further examples, look to the work of Roland Emerich and Michael Bay). In the Matrix sequels, this storytelling redundancy is given to other lesser characters such as Link, who is constantly cut to sitting at his console in order to pointlessly explain what is happening to Neo and crew in the Matrix while the audience is watching the EXACT same thing occur onscreen a few seconds later. As I said, I had hoped that CBB would remove or reduce these moments, but alas, they are still there.
From the technical side, this edit was for the most part very well done. However, there were several choppy jump cuts that were rather distracting, most of which occurred during the film’s fight sequences (Burly Brawl, Neo VS Merovingian’s Guards, Super Burley Brawl, etc.). I definitely understand the desire to shorten these action sequences, but the editor/s should not forget the importance of visual continuity. Audio-wise, I can also live with a 2.0 Dolby surround mix, but the audio mix sounds somewhat off as both character voices and soundtrack are several pitches higher than what it’s suppose to be (as someone who’s familiar with the original versions, this can be quite annoying to listen to).
In the end, no matter how many bad scenes of Zion are removed, the plot of The Matrix Dezionized follows the same path and reaches the exact same conclusion as the originals, which lays my biggest problem: the ending is still one of the most terribly acted, clichéd piece of climax garbage that I’ve seen in a modern film. Even worse, the removal of Zion and its inhabitants ultimately cheapens Neo’s “sacrifice†and “peace†between humans and machines – it’s kind of hard to care about the war’s end and the new peace/freedom for the last of humanity when you remove ALL of humanity from the story. The last words of the Oracle, Sati’s little rainbow “miracleâ€â€¦. all are further reduced to pandering, overtly-sentimental storytelling that is ultimately hollow and emotionless to the audience.
Just like the sequels to The Matrix themselves.
Rating: 2.5/5
Review by JasonN — January 26, 2009 @ 11:35 PM
“The Matrix Dezionized” by CBB
I’ll make no bones about it: The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were some of the bitterest disappointments that I’ve had in a cinema. So many aspects of the sequels, were to put in mildly, “insanely half-assedâ€:
- over 2/3 of the writing was atrocious
- the new characters ranged from poorly developed (Niobe, Link, Mifune, Hamann) to the flat-out terrible (the Kid, Sati, the Councel, Roland, Locke)
- previous characters introduced in the last film were either cheap knockoffs of their previous selves (Morpheus, Trinity) or just disappeared with nary a reference (Tank, I’m looking at you)
- too much emphasis of bigger and better CG graphics and action sequences in place of Story and Character
- self-referential moments that would devolve into self-parody of the first Matrix
- the ending… oh god, the ending was wretchedly, mind-numbingly bad.
Even to this day, I still refuse to believe that these later films were written during the same time as the first Matrix (either they were really written by Hollywood executives instead of the original creators or the Wachowski brothers are indeed a couple of hacks).
In an effort to remove much of the crap, CBB has opted to remove every scene relating to Zion and has book-ended Revolutions to the end of Reloaded to tell a single continuous story of Neo’s journey as the One. I have no problem with cutting nearly half of the film’s runtime, but in this case, it’s what has been removed that keeps me from enjoying this edit. When it comes to fanedits, I believe very much in the advice of the Mike J Nichols (the Phantom Editor): “Not everything about a film has to be good, so long as it works for the further develop the plot and its charactersâ€. Yes, many of the Zion scenes were terrible, but they did serve a purpose to the overall story of Reloaded and Revolutions (even if that story was terrible). In addition, for every removal that CBB makes which created a positive aspect, there was an unfortunate negative that reared its ugly head in its place. Yes, the Kid has been removed, but Sati still remains in the story and while a good chunk of her backstory with Rama-Kandra is taken out, the scenes that she remains in still portray her as being a “precocious little girl†(aka, so damn sickening-sweet and annoying that she could give Jake Lloyd a run for his money). Yes, Commander Locke and his poor subplots (Niobe love triangle, crappy leadership, hatred of Morpheus, etc.) are now gone, but Captain Roland scenes remain mostly intact and the character still comes across as a blowhard and asshole who hates Neo for no reason. Ultimately, what this edit shows is that there is many more things that do not work than just the Zion plot-point and that the story of these films is fundamentally flawed in more ways than one.
I can also understand the desire to refocus the story back onto Neo, but honestly, the character was such an underwritten afterthought in the sequels that no amount of cutting can improve him. At least in the original versions, I can kind of distract myself with Niobe or Zee or Mifune, but with all those characters gone, my focus is back on an uninteresting and bland main character played poorly by an actor who doesn’t know where to take the character next.
Another aspect which I had hoped that CBB would correct, but didn’t is what I refer to as “3-Year-Old Audience Syndrome†– this is the poor storyteller’s technique in which everything that visually happens onscreen is redundantly repeated by the film characters to the audience because the filmmakers miscalculate the intelligence of the audience (for further examples, look to the work of Roland Emerich and Michael Bay). In the Matrix sequels, this storytelling redundancy is given to other lesser characters such as Link, who is constantly cut to sitting at his console in order to pointlessly explain what is happening to Neo and crew in the Matrix while the audience is watching the EXACT same thing occur onscreen a few seconds later. As I said, I had hoped that CBB would remove or reduce these moments, but alas, they are still there.
From the technical side, this edit was for the most part very well done. However, there were several choppy jump cuts that were rather distracting, most of which occurred during the film’s fight sequences (Burly Brawl, Neo VS Merovingian’s Guards, Super Burley Brawl, etc.). I definitely understand the desire to shorten these action sequences, but the editor/s should not forget the importance of visual continuity. Audio-wise, I can also live with a 2.0 Dolby surround mix, but the audio mix sounds somewhat off as both character voices and soundtrack are several pitches higher than what it’s suppose to be (as someone who’s familiar with the original versions, this can be quite annoying to listen to).
In the end, no matter how many bad scenes of Zion are removed, the plot of The Matrix Dezionized follows the same path and reaches the exact same conclusion as the originals, which lays my biggest problem: the ending is still one of the most terribly acted, clichéd piece of climax garbage that I’ve seen in a modern film. Even worse, the removal of Zion and its inhabitants ultimately cheapens Neo’s “sacrifice†and “peace†between humans and machines – it’s kind of hard to care about the war’s end and the new peace/freedom for the last of humanity when you remove ALL of humanity from the story. The last words of the Oracle, Sati’s little rainbow “miracleâ€â€¦. all are further reduced to pandering, overtly-sentimental storytelling that is ultimately hollow and emotionless to the audience.
Just like the sequels to The Matrix themselves.
Rating: 2.5/5
Review by JasonN — January 26, 2009 @ 11:35 PM
J
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Enjoyment
10.0
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
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
L
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Enjoyment
6.0
It works very, very good. There was some little ugly transitions but difficult ones to void due to the soundtrack/score. Anyway, thanks for providing this different point of view. It makes me think about some kind of “Zion Chronicles” recycling the erased zion shots Have you ever thought about this, CBB?
Best regards,
Master Kenobeat
Review by kenobeat — November 28, 2008 @ 10:04 PM
Best regards,
Master Kenobeat
Review by kenobeat — November 28, 2008 @ 10:04 PM
K
(Updated: September 08, 2012)
Enjoyment
8.0
Very expertly done edit! It’s exactly what it sounds like: The Matrix without Zion. This is a considerably faster, more action-packed movie than the originals were, and the plot is a lot easier to follow. The one drawback is that it does feel somewhat incomplete, due to a lot of loose ends never being tied up. For example, Morpheus completely disappeared some time during the third act, so it still lacks closure. However, the ride to the end is a lot better this time, so I would definitely rather watch this than have to sit through both of the originals. It felt a lot more in tune with the first movie in terms of pace and overall style, which is undoubtedly thanks to the fact that there is no Zion footage at all (except for Neo recieving the chip from the oracle, although through clever editing we’re actually lead to believe this happened on the Nebuchadnezzar).
I can’t quite say this is the ultimate cut of the Matrix sequels, because frankly I’m still looking for that. In the mean time though, this is definitely a much more satisfying sequel, even if it’s still a little off. I gave it 4/5 stars. You get most of the good parts and none of the bad in a 2 1/2 hour movie, which starts off running and never loses its feet. The annoying plot twists are still in there, and the ending still leaves a fair amount of story threads dangling (which was a problem in the original, as well), but overall this is a solid sequel.
Review by Timstuff — September 11, 2008 @ 10:28 PM
I can’t quite say this is the ultimate cut of the Matrix sequels, because frankly I’m still looking for that. In the mean time though, this is definitely a much more satisfying sequel, even if it’s still a little off. I gave it 4/5 stars. You get most of the good parts and none of the bad in a 2 1/2 hour movie, which starts off running and never loses its feet. The annoying plot twists are still in there, and the ending still leaves a fair amount of story threads dangling (which was a problem in the original, as well), but overall this is a solid sequel.
Review by Timstuff — September 11, 2008 @ 10:28 PM
T