Review Detail

9.2 55 10
MatrixRevolutionsDecoded2_front.jpg
FanFix September 03, 2014 29266
Overall rating
 
9.8
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0

This edits put all the players in their roles without being distracted. For the first time I have felt an actual consistent theme to arise from the films. Mainly from the editors original ideas to dramatically change what Neo and Trinity do and where they end up. It felt exciting to get a sense at the end that the Matrix finally has a real sequel.


First Matrix:

Humans should be free vs Humans should be controlled.

But what do you do after you remove the wool from your eyes? You try to figure out your purpose, this is what the sequels tried to do but failed.

Matrix Sequels:

The sequels reveal that humans can't just be constantly forced to act, so two levels of controls were created to maintain the Matrix.

1. Humans make choices - Morpheus and the Oracle. If people feel they have a degree of choice, most just go along.

2. Just do your duty - Locke and the Architect. For those that the first level wasn't enough (the One's), their duty to save their race is presented as overpowering enough to get even them to go along.

These two levels proved insufficient for three main characters: Merovingian, Agent Smith, and Neo.

There is no purpose - Merovingian and Agent Smith

While the Merovingian wasn't a threat because he kept himself distracted enough with games and pleasure. Smith has angry enough to want to destroy everything, which the Machines' levels of controls couldn't handle.

What is Trinity's role? Beauty. In the Platonic sense of "insight into the greatest transcendent good."

By putting her in less direct danger, Neo's motive seems to be more about Trinity as an ideal. It was less "I love YOU so much, so I will save YOU" and more "I have known what it means to love, therefore I will fight for everyone". That insight was enough to spread to the Machines and create peace, having the first shared value.

The theme of the Matrix films: It is wrong to start by valuing people as a faceless crowd and just caring about the "common good", instead start by seeing the objective worth of each individual and expound that to everyone.

-------------------------------

The original films just kept repeating:
Neo - "Don't do anything dangerous Trinity because I have to protect you, I'm so worried, hurr."
Trinity - "Looks like I have to put myself in danger again because I want to help out, durr."

And then tried to backpedal and make Neo a messiah in the last 15 minutes.

This fanedit keeps Neo's journey to truth going from the end of the first film without derailing like the original films did.

It keeps the orgasmo cake (still a stupid explosion effect IMO) and the Architect speech which many don't like but with the improved pacing, I wasn't as annoyed. The cake gives the Merovingian more time to make his point about causality, shows that he ended up a hedonist, and shows that his wife is more upset.

Without cutting away to Trinity falling and making the choice about saving Trinity 'right NOW', the pacing in the Architect room is better. Also Neo makes the choice to leave and fight to save Trinity and everyone else who he thinks would just die in Zion being purged and reset.

This edit also made Niobe and her crew a much more memorable part of the story. The transmission, Locke, and calling a meeting in the Matrix all made more sense in this edit as well as where all the ships were in relation to each other. 1. Machine army is found. 2. Ships are ordered to withdraw and defend choke points except Morpheus disobeys. 3. Two ships sent to look for him. 4. Two out of three are destroyed. 5. Hammer is only surviving ship from defense and is trying to get back to Zion.

The fight sound volume is low in many areas to help with the editing. I get that it is needed but it was distracting, especially in the very first Neo vs Agents fight. I watched the streaming version but other than that the editing felt fine.

The added scenes from Enter the Matrix didn't feel out of place.

No Bane - thank God.

The edits for the Fight for Zion are seamless and really change it into a tense situation.

This has replaced the sequels for me and anyone I introduce the films to in the future.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
Owner's reply September 22, 2014

Thanks very much for your well thought out review HumanShield. I tried very hard to focus the movie on the themes that were prevalent in the original Matrix and I'm happy to see you noticed that and that it worked well for you. One note about the Audio on the streaming version. Vimeo does not support 5 channel audio and reduces everything to 2 channel which can make action scenes seem a lot less intense. Hopefully you'll find that this problem does not exist on the higher quality downloadable version.

H
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