Matrix Revolutions: The Epic Edition
Updated
User reviews
23 reviews
Overall rating
8.9
Audio/Video Quality
9.6(11)
Audio Editing
9.3(11)
Visual Editing
8.6(11)
Narrative
7.9(11)
Enjoyment
8.8(23)
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Overall rating
9.0
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Narrative
8.0
Enjoyment
9.0
Generally speaking, I enjoyed the Matrix sequels. Sure, they weren’t as good as the original, but few sequels are. I never really bothered with any edits until now because hey, why watch an edit of a film I like in its original form? Then Geminigod came along, with promises of an epic finale and so on. I was intrigued, and since I had the time to spare, being on summer break from university, I decided I’d check it out.
And I was absolutely impressed. About an hour and forty minutes into it I asked myself where my rubber stamp was. Ambition is the name of this game, and it’s safe to say that Geminigod is winning (duh).
VIDEO:
Absolutely stunning. The Blu-ray source (and the further clean up by the editor) really shines through even on the DL DVD version. Gem also did some VFX work for a few bits (no, I won’t tell you which) and his work was very well done. There was only one shot that was a bit off due to color correction, but it was a necessary evil.
10/10
AUDIO:
Lacking the proper equipment for a true 5.1 experience I can’t really say how the surround was, but it sounded good, though I did feel a few times the music was over powering the dialogue and sound effects, though I think that may be a flaw of the original and not this edit.
10/10
THE EDIT
The opening was very well edited, flowing from the Revolutions code opening through to the Reloaded one. The title “The Epic Edition” was a bit awkward…perhaps if it had been in the Matrix font it would have fit a bit better, but hey, it was still good.
While several semi-major scenes were excised, I didn’t really notice until about twenty minutes after the cut bit would have taken place. All of the cuts were well made, though there was ONE I didn’t agree with at the end in terms of dialogue, but it was a minor quibble. There was one flash frame during a cut in the rave sequence at the beginning, but the funny thing is, I couldn’t recall what had been cut. There were a couple awkward fades elsewhere, but nothing overly distracting.
Now, for the story. Gem did a great job condensing the two films to a slightly-less-than-three hour long experience. There are a few spots near the middle where he began to use blend the events of Revolutions and Reloaded, and it worked wonderfully. Gone is the silly plotline if Neo being comatose in the Matrix and everything related to that. While he DOES have a noted change in demeanor after the Neb is destroyed, it fits with what he has to do. Is it perfect? No, but if you pretend that you’ve never seen the original versions, it works.
The biggest issue is that, the way the story has been restructured, a number of characters don’t really get an emotional climax, or one at all. It can be left to interpretation, but something would have been nice. Though, this is more a fault to the source material not really having much room for alternate takes, but Gem did the best with what he had to work with.
I don’t want to write a novel on what works and what doesn’t, but suffice it to say that this edit is brilliant, and a definite improvement on the sequels.
8/10
THE DVD:
The disc is simple enough: the movie, chapter selection, and two bonus features: The Final Flight of the Osiris as the prologue, and The Second Renaissance from the Animatrix as “In The Beginning.” As with the main feature, the quality here is excellent.
10/10
IN SUM
I really enjoyed watching this, and as it charged towards its climax, it felt as if I was watching a new film entirely. The few faults are easy to overlook, and on the whole it is an enjoyable experience.
9/10
Review by Aztek463 — June 10, 2011 @ 10:33 PM
And I was absolutely impressed. About an hour and forty minutes into it I asked myself where my rubber stamp was. Ambition is the name of this game, and it’s safe to say that Geminigod is winning (duh).
VIDEO:
Absolutely stunning. The Blu-ray source (and the further clean up by the editor) really shines through even on the DL DVD version. Gem also did some VFX work for a few bits (no, I won’t tell you which) and his work was very well done. There was only one shot that was a bit off due to color correction, but it was a necessary evil.
10/10
AUDIO:
Lacking the proper equipment for a true 5.1 experience I can’t really say how the surround was, but it sounded good, though I did feel a few times the music was over powering the dialogue and sound effects, though I think that may be a flaw of the original and not this edit.
10/10
THE EDIT
The opening was very well edited, flowing from the Revolutions code opening through to the Reloaded one. The title “The Epic Edition” was a bit awkward…perhaps if it had been in the Matrix font it would have fit a bit better, but hey, it was still good.
While several semi-major scenes were excised, I didn’t really notice until about twenty minutes after the cut bit would have taken place. All of the cuts were well made, though there was ONE I didn’t agree with at the end in terms of dialogue, but it was a minor quibble. There was one flash frame during a cut in the rave sequence at the beginning, but the funny thing is, I couldn’t recall what had been cut. There were a couple awkward fades elsewhere, but nothing overly distracting.
Now, for the story. Gem did a great job condensing the two films to a slightly-less-than-three hour long experience. There are a few spots near the middle where he began to use blend the events of Revolutions and Reloaded, and it worked wonderfully. Gone is the silly plotline if Neo being comatose in the Matrix and everything related to that. While he DOES have a noted change in demeanor after the Neb is destroyed, it fits with what he has to do. Is it perfect? No, but if you pretend that you’ve never seen the original versions, it works.
The biggest issue is that, the way the story has been restructured, a number of characters don’t really get an emotional climax, or one at all. It can be left to interpretation, but something would have been nice. Though, this is more a fault to the source material not really having much room for alternate takes, but Gem did the best with what he had to work with.
I don’t want to write a novel on what works and what doesn’t, but suffice it to say that this edit is brilliant, and a definite improvement on the sequels.
8/10
THE DVD:
The disc is simple enough: the movie, chapter selection, and two bonus features: The Final Flight of the Osiris as the prologue, and The Second Renaissance from the Animatrix as “In The Beginning.” As with the main feature, the quality here is excellent.
10/10
IN SUM
I really enjoyed watching this, and as it charged towards its climax, it felt as if I was watching a new film entirely. The few faults are easy to overlook, and on the whole it is an enjoyable experience.
9/10
Review by Aztek463 — June 10, 2011 @ 10:33 PM
A
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Enjoyment
9.0
Watched the Epic Edition AVCHD last night without having watched the original versions for a long, long time (5 or 6 years). So I can’t really imagine what was cut and what not. Therefor no comments about the cutting, yet.
Just two points:
- Unfortunately the subway scene was cut, that is one of my favourites of the whole matrix trilogy.
- Unfortunately the Zion dance rave scene was NOT cut, that scene is boring and so cheeesy IMHO.
Picture Quality is amazing! I really couldn’t believe that I’m NOT watching a blu-ray.
Sound quality is very good, too, but sometimes dialog is a little too low for my old ears. Maybe it depends on the stereo downsampling from my blu-ray player to my stereo?
All in all the story comes out clear, there were two or three moments I thought “What now?”, mostly at the end of the film when there are several cuts between the differents plots.
Just point ot out: I like this edit very much. It has a safe place in my DVD-Map now (no space on the shelf left) beside the DeZIONized edit and the original first movie. Maybe it’s time for trashing the REVOLUTIONS and RELOADED originals?
Thank you for your stunning work!
Review by MR.LOVEBUCKET — April 14, 2012 @ 3:15 PM
Just two points:
- Unfortunately the subway scene was cut, that is one of my favourites of the whole matrix trilogy.
- Unfortunately the Zion dance rave scene was NOT cut, that scene is boring and so cheeesy IMHO.
Picture Quality is amazing! I really couldn’t believe that I’m NOT watching a blu-ray.
Sound quality is very good, too, but sometimes dialog is a little too low for my old ears. Maybe it depends on the stereo downsampling from my blu-ray player to my stereo?
All in all the story comes out clear, there were two or three moments I thought “What now?”, mostly at the end of the film when there are several cuts between the differents plots.
Just point ot out: I like this edit very much. It has a safe place in my DVD-Map now (no space on the shelf left) beside the DeZIONized edit and the original first movie. Maybe it’s time for trashing the REVOLUTIONS and RELOADED originals?
Thank you for your stunning work!
Review by MR.LOVEBUCKET — April 14, 2012 @ 3:15 PM
M
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Enjoyment
9.0
baileym43 January 11, 2012 @ 5:00 pm
i just watched this and it’s certainly an improvement over the studio version.
audio is great. video is amazing. clearly no issues there.
sure, sure, there were a few odd fade-to-blacks. sometimes they happened to quick. sometimes they were too close together. sometimes a hard cut would have worked better.
and there are some awkward moments. the Oracle suddenly smoking her cigarette. Neo suddenly getting up in the last Smith fight. Trinity fighting the Agent in the hallway.
and of course the stuff i’d rather have seen gone. like the rave, the annoying kid neo set free, all of Link’s non-exposition lines, more of Merovingian ranting.
but aside from that, i can say everything else, the obvious cuts and the rearrangements, worked and worked really well. the story flowed and kept moving forward. there weren’t any real long gaps of non-action. everything made sense without the audience having to fill in their own logic gaps (like we have to with sWars, thanks for nothing Lucas).
removing Smith from the “real world”, brilliant. removing Neo’s real world “powers,” brilliant. removing Neo from visiting the Source, brilliant. Neo’s visit to Machine City was awesome. it all worked.
i personally like the “burly brawl” more than the Merovingian stairway. the stairway fight seems to clunky to me. the brawl with all the smith agents, though, i think is more fun. and even years ago i argued it that they are in a computer system and Smith is slowly degrading the Matrix. so with so many of him in one place he’s using up so much processing power that’s he’s effecting the actual look of the Matrix itself. therefore the CG to us, the audience, starts to look bad. well, it looks bad to smith and Neo as well.
it was quite an epic. i sat through all of it including the animatrix stuff (which was a nice refresher introduction) and never felt bored or antsy or tired of it.
this one will fit nicely next to my studio copies.
you took two movies and mashed them together brilliantly, excised the stuff that slowed it down and made a three hour movie not feel that long. so with the few weird transitions, 9/10 from me. nice work.
i just watched this and it’s certainly an improvement over the studio version.
audio is great. video is amazing. clearly no issues there.
sure, sure, there were a few odd fade-to-blacks. sometimes they happened to quick. sometimes they were too close together. sometimes a hard cut would have worked better.
and there are some awkward moments. the Oracle suddenly smoking her cigarette. Neo suddenly getting up in the last Smith fight. Trinity fighting the Agent in the hallway.
and of course the stuff i’d rather have seen gone. like the rave, the annoying kid neo set free, all of Link’s non-exposition lines, more of Merovingian ranting.
but aside from that, i can say everything else, the obvious cuts and the rearrangements, worked and worked really well. the story flowed and kept moving forward. there weren’t any real long gaps of non-action. everything made sense without the audience having to fill in their own logic gaps (like we have to with sWars, thanks for nothing Lucas).
removing Smith from the “real world”, brilliant. removing Neo’s real world “powers,” brilliant. removing Neo from visiting the Source, brilliant. Neo’s visit to Machine City was awesome. it all worked.
i personally like the “burly brawl” more than the Merovingian stairway. the stairway fight seems to clunky to me. the brawl with all the smith agents, though, i think is more fun. and even years ago i argued it that they are in a computer system and Smith is slowly degrading the Matrix. so with so many of him in one place he’s using up so much processing power that’s he’s effecting the actual look of the Matrix itself. therefore the CG to us, the audience, starts to look bad. well, it looks bad to smith and Neo as well.
it was quite an epic. i sat through all of it including the animatrix stuff (which was a nice refresher introduction) and never felt bored or antsy or tired of it.
this one will fit nicely next to my studio copies.
you took two movies and mashed them together brilliantly, excised the stuff that slowed it down and made a three hour movie not feel that long. so with the few weird transitions, 9/10 from me. nice work.
B
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Enjoyment
8.0
Geminigod,
Much much better than the originals. First I want to say that it is technically near flawless.
What I like:
1. With the new Oracle being brought in quicker, it does flow with the movie quite a bit more
2. The dance sequence is there, but cut to bare minimum so that it makes sense and the audience can stand it
3. Glad to see Smith not being able to come out of the Matrix and getting rid of Neo having powers out of the matrix.
My one compliant:
I have never been a fan of the first Neo vs Smith fight (CGI wise it’s horrid and it runs too long) ….. so personally I would have went directly from the Oracle talking to the Merovingian’s place. I think cutting this action sequence also makes the action Sequence at the Merovingian’s Manor and the Car chase better.
Iffy about:
1. I have never been a fan of the original ending, always felt it should have ended at Morpheus’s scene.
2. I do agree that there is technical end to Neo and Trinity’s part in the movie and that feels missing.
Definite 8/10
Review by revel911 — June 10, 2011 @ 6:01 PM
Much much better than the originals. First I want to say that it is technically near flawless.
What I like:
1. With the new Oracle being brought in quicker, it does flow with the movie quite a bit more
2. The dance sequence is there, but cut to bare minimum so that it makes sense and the audience can stand it
3. Glad to see Smith not being able to come out of the Matrix and getting rid of Neo having powers out of the matrix.
My one compliant:
I have never been a fan of the first Neo vs Smith fight (CGI wise it’s horrid and it runs too long) ….. so personally I would have went directly from the Oracle talking to the Merovingian’s place. I think cutting this action sequence also makes the action Sequence at the Merovingian’s Manor and the Car chase better.
Iffy about:
1. I have never been a fan of the original ending, always felt it should have ended at Morpheus’s scene.
2. I do agree that there is technical end to Neo and Trinity’s part in the movie and that feels missing.
Definite 8/10
Review by revel911 — June 10, 2011 @ 6:01 PM
R
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Overall rating
7.0
Audio Editing
6.0
Visual Editing
8.0
Narrative
6.0
Enjoyment
8.0
It is a bold and confident step to refuse to tell us what changes have been made in this Matrix edit, but I put my trust in GeminiGod and set aside three hours to see if the ‘Epic Edition’ meets its highly ambitious goals. While this is certainly a project which has received a lot of effort and is a display of some impressive technical skills, on the whole I feel it loses its way as much as the other Matrix sequel edits that I have viewed.
The Good
- In general, the trimming down of the films is good, I particularly enjoyed the first hour which was a finer version of Reloaded.
- The added scenes, though noticable, are still impressive.
- The inclusion of the two animatrix films is an excellent choice and perfectly sets oneself up for an epic Matrix experience.
The downfall however, is the narrative. It isn’t easy to blend two films or to reshape the plot as much as GeminiGod has attempted, and again for the first hour it mostly holds together. But towards the middle, things get shaky.
It is not clear how Neo and Morpheus find the Meriovingian so quickly, but this can be assumed by the audience. However, immediately following that scene, Neo meets the Oracle for a second time (taken from the second film): the fact that he knows where she is undermines the film’s plot so far – everybody disobeyed direct orders simply awaiting word from the oracle, Neo must then pass a test simply to be taken to her, after which she dissapears again. The conversation which they have does not make much sense in the context of its new place. The Smith subplot now feels rushed and does not feel like the logical conclusion to Neo’s journey (because it isn’t). The squeezing together of the two films makes an already convoluted plot even weaker – look at the ships for example. As the films begins, Ship #1 The Nebucaneza returns, but ship #2 waits for the Oracle. Ship #2 returns, so #1 leaves with ships #3 and #4. Ship #3 gets blown up, then ship #1 is also blown up, at which point ship #5 turns up and takes the crew of ship #1 to find ship #4. Five ships with no characterisation of the crews is too many but at least over the course of two movies they progress the plot, here the flaws of the sequels are highlighted rather than reduced. Similarly, the inclusion of every Neo fight scene from the movies means we spend most of the time watching him engage in pointless fights (agents, to seriphim, to smith, to meriovingian guards, to smith again). Finally, the inclusion of Sati, and the Architect at the end doesn’t make much sense. Sati may have been hard to edit out, but the use of the Architect would be plain confusing to somebody who had not seen the original, not to mention his dialogue with the Oracle doesn’t really work without the plot developments cut from this edit.
On the plus side, the Epic Edition did remind me how much I enjoy the sequels in spite of their obvious flaws, but the films are designed to be separate. Putting the films focus on Zion is a good idea, and it works for the first half, but by the second half the edit is trying to be something which the source material does not allow.
I do not mean to put down a labour of love, and my review is only harsh due to my ridiculously high standards; for me a true fanedit is one that manages to improve on the original film – a feat in itself – and can be viewed with absolutely no knowledge that it is an edit (for example, Star Wars Revisited, Black Knight Rises, Spiderman Redemption). There are some good ideas here, and some very high quality editing, but the final product isn’t for me.
Overall ratings
DVD menu: 8/10 simple, with excellent selection of shorts.
Sound 6/10 the dialogue is very quiet and the action is far too loud, although this might be simply from the original. I did find myself having to constantly change the volume while watching.
Narrative 6/10
Editing 8/10 (a few technical errors)
Review by gugliemo — June 24, 2011 @ 4:23 AM
The Good
- In general, the trimming down of the films is good, I particularly enjoyed the first hour which was a finer version of Reloaded.
- The added scenes, though noticable, are still impressive.
- The inclusion of the two animatrix films is an excellent choice and perfectly sets oneself up for an epic Matrix experience.
The downfall however, is the narrative. It isn’t easy to blend two films or to reshape the plot as much as GeminiGod has attempted, and again for the first hour it mostly holds together. But towards the middle, things get shaky.
It is not clear how Neo and Morpheus find the Meriovingian so quickly, but this can be assumed by the audience. However, immediately following that scene, Neo meets the Oracle for a second time (taken from the second film): the fact that he knows where she is undermines the film’s plot so far – everybody disobeyed direct orders simply awaiting word from the oracle, Neo must then pass a test simply to be taken to her, after which she dissapears again. The conversation which they have does not make much sense in the context of its new place. The Smith subplot now feels rushed and does not feel like the logical conclusion to Neo’s journey (because it isn’t). The squeezing together of the two films makes an already convoluted plot even weaker – look at the ships for example. As the films begins, Ship #1 The Nebucaneza returns, but ship #2 waits for the Oracle. Ship #2 returns, so #1 leaves with ships #3 and #4. Ship #3 gets blown up, then ship #1 is also blown up, at which point ship #5 turns up and takes the crew of ship #1 to find ship #4. Five ships with no characterisation of the crews is too many but at least over the course of two movies they progress the plot, here the flaws of the sequels are highlighted rather than reduced. Similarly, the inclusion of every Neo fight scene from the movies means we spend most of the time watching him engage in pointless fights (agents, to seriphim, to smith, to meriovingian guards, to smith again). Finally, the inclusion of Sati, and the Architect at the end doesn’t make much sense. Sati may have been hard to edit out, but the use of the Architect would be plain confusing to somebody who had not seen the original, not to mention his dialogue with the Oracle doesn’t really work without the plot developments cut from this edit.
On the plus side, the Epic Edition did remind me how much I enjoy the sequels in spite of their obvious flaws, but the films are designed to be separate. Putting the films focus on Zion is a good idea, and it works for the first half, but by the second half the edit is trying to be something which the source material does not allow.
I do not mean to put down a labour of love, and my review is only harsh due to my ridiculously high standards; for me a true fanedit is one that manages to improve on the original film – a feat in itself – and can be viewed with absolutely no knowledge that it is an edit (for example, Star Wars Revisited, Black Knight Rises, Spiderman Redemption). There are some good ideas here, and some very high quality editing, but the final product isn’t for me.
Overall ratings
DVD menu: 8/10 simple, with excellent selection of shorts.
Sound 6/10 the dialogue is very quiet and the action is far too loud, although this might be simply from the original. I did find myself having to constantly change the volume while watching.
Narrative 6/10
Editing 8/10 (a few technical errors)
Review by gugliemo — June 24, 2011 @ 4:23 AM
F