Matrix Revolutions Decoded, The

This was SUCH an incredible cut of these movies.

RELOADED / FIRST 90 MINS
It felt like so many things were just sped along perfectly: no cave orgy sex scene (until the credits), no making out with Persephone in the bathroom, no ticking clock at the nuclear plant, no prophecy about Trinity dying and Neo giving her the Lazarus treatment, and best of all no Agent Smith inside Bane. It's just a badass story about machines drilling and wall-to-wall kickass action. And there are the many small improvements (no bowling pin sound effects during the Burly Brawl for one).

REVOLUTIONS / LAST HOUR
This hour is the Dock Battle, Niobi's Flight, Neo in the Machine City, and the Smith battle, and that's it. It's the perfect cap to everything the movie has been building toward. The plot sliding from Neo's conversation with The Architect to deciding to fly to The Machine City came rather abruptly, but overall the transition between movies went well. Removing Bane was very well done! Having the machine flying into him do the blinding was inexplicable in the narrative sense but was so goddamn clever that I didn't care. My only issue is that Trinity should have died as well, and the very last shot of the edit, the crane coming down, was a bit awkward (but I love the narrative implications of beginnings and endings).

Overall a TRULY superb watch!! It was really so good. I'm very impressed. Also loved the Architect getting what he deserved :)

My favorite fan edit ever.

After the success of the original Matrix, the creators decided to follow the story with an animated film a video game, and 2 full-length feature films all to be released in 2003, this ambitious task resulted in the 2 sequel films suffering from too many unnecessary scenes, a lot of needless subplots, confusion because you need to play the video game and watch the animated film, Annoying characters that shouldn't be involved in the story, etc...
There is still a good story in all of this mess thus, Matrix Reloaded and Revolution are some of the films with the most fan edits.

Personally above all of them "Matrix Revolution Decoded" stands out, not only does it fix everything, but it solves all the them in a clever way that improves the story and enhances the themes of the movies that weren't well explored in the original.

I see some people who don't give high scores because they don't like the narrative changes, but even if you don't like them the alternative solutions that the fan edit provided still make sense and allow the editor to cut a lot of bad moments, that would hurt the film.
The movie is 100% enjoyable from start to finish and it is on the same level as the original Matrix.

Watching the original now feels like watching a parody of this fan edit
It doesn't matter If you have never seen the Matrix sequels, hated them, or loved them.
Don't be bothered with them anymore and watch this instead

First review, so it'll be brief. I loved the first Matrix and enjoyed Reloaded, but I thought Revolutions was a mess with all the train station, Sati, Bane, Club Hell and Zion stuff. But I know somewhere in the second and third films, there's one really solid movie, and this edit came incredibly close to what I'd always hoped for. I especially liked the cleaning up of the Architect to make Neo's choice about hope rather than specifically love for Trinity. That really worked for me, but some of the other changes didn't. The only time this edit lost its path (specifically for me) is when it forced major changes on the original narrative, specifically at the end, where the source material didn't really support the ideas put forward. Still, I have a ton of respect for this ambitious take!

I love the idea of cutting Bane, and Neo has to be blinded, but Trinity living is awkwardly executed and kind of messy. At a minimum, her "I'm here" line could have either been cut or perhaps spoken over black screen to represent Neo's blindness. As it stands, she's "here" on her back and obviously injured and instantly upright taking care of Neo. Then she inexplicably stops taking care of him. Maybe there's a version where he's blinded by the machine flying through him and she still dies, but with a much shorter death scene than the source.

I love cutting Mary Alice out as well to avoid tedious explanations, but the one "cheers" shot of Gloria Foster felt awkward to me. I liked every other part of the scene though as it seemed to be presented in the Oracle's first person as she would see it through her eyes, which is kind of symbolic. I basically think the scene would have worked without showing the Oracle at all.

I also kind of missed Trinity going into the Matrix to take out the power plant. I think the brief shot of her loading in and blowing up the guard shack with the motorcycle would have done it. No need for the agent fight or the big rescue from Neo, but it at least would show her doing...something during that scene.

But these are ultimately nitpicks to a really clever and ambitious fan edit that I thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you for making and sharing it. Honestly, if the Neo/Trinity ending had stayed a little closer to the source material, I'd watch this instead of the sequels forever, as everything up to that point was more or less exactly what I've always wanted from the sequels. I think I just want a heavy edit without some of the narrative changes at the end. But kudos for ambition, and awesome work on the visuals and sound!!!

Wow.! I'm left just amazed at what the editor managed to accomplish with this one. I loved the original film but other than specific scenes here and there, generally disliked the sequels, and particularly the ending. Though many go "well, Resurrections fixed it", I actually dislike the way it handled things, and would rather just fix the ending to Revolutions in the first place. But I didn't think it would actually be possible to do with the video clips, so I was astonished to find that not only did this edit cut out a lot of the pointless plotlines (Bane, Sati, a lot of the excess stuff around Persephone and the Merovingian, etc.), but it actually fixed things with Neo and Trinity.

I will admit, the editing and narrative were a little weaker in the final scenes (not counting the rave stuff), but I'm reasonably sure there wasn't any other material to work with, and I had no trouble following exactly what was happening. I'm also impressed at how the rave was included. If I stop to think about it, there are a few "where'd that character go?" questions, but honestly, I don't tend to mind those as much. What I *did* see towards the end made perfect sense and I liked this ending for Neo and Trinity SO much better.

Frankly, this is, in my opinion, a far superior sequel to the original film than the two we actually got. Now I'm wishing someone wrote fanfic for THIS version of the films...

Bane is gone, and good riddance; his character arch was the most annoying and nonsensical of the original film. Without him, the main story is pretty much the same.

The change of the rave scene is a great idea, it works better this way. And the ending is quite ingenious; although some of the video edits were obvious, there’s likely no way around it considering the original source. I was skeptical about this one, but the new ending is an interesting variation, it even changes the thematic meaning of Neo’s arch.