Robots VS Kung Fu: The Matrix Grindhouse Edition

Let me preface this by saying that every time I would see someone write "you should do a grindhouse edit of _____" on the forum, I wanted to ban them immediately. There were a lot of hack attempts, but shitty-ing up the picture quality and making a bunch of hard cuts does not a grindhouse film make. Fortunately the trend seemed to fade from the spotlight for a bit. TMBTM's War of the Stars edit was a bit closer to the real deal, and that edit was a lot of fun.

Now, with Robots vs. Kung Fu, we have as close as a true grindhouse film as you are going to get. The editor did a fantastic job with this. The editing was quite good at times, the music choices were great, and it really did feel like a cheap grindhouse film. That said, not everything worked for me (a bit too much Johnny Mnemonic footage was used, and the filters/compression were a bit much for me) but I did really enjoy this. I look forward to watching the bonus features and listening to the commentary. Great job!!!!

I really struggled writing this review.

The good news is that the editor succeeds in pulling off a grindhouse version of The Matrix. It's obvious that he worked very hard on this and the end result is commendable. Unfortunately, I didn't quite enjoy this as much as I thought I would. Perhaps it's because I'm not a fan of the grindhouse genre, and it's a bit more straightforward (from a comedic standpoint) than The War of the Stars.

Stuff I liked: The intro cast credits made me smile. I generally liked most of the music choices. There were some actual literal laughs out loud on my part. The Animatrix stuff. The ending(s) were fantastic and easily bumped my narrative rating up a few points. The DVD is really well done, and I'm definitely going to listen to the commentary (the parts I sampled were quite interesting).

Stuff I didn't care for: The intro trailers (again, this is more my disinterest in the whole genre more than anything). The melting film parts (seen it before). The Johnny Mnemonic stuff (I'm not sure why but it didn't engage me). The changes to the narrative (maybe my fault, but there was stuff I didn't get until I read the description on IFDb).

Overall, I'm glad I watched this, and I did enjoy it, but not as much as I expected. I do wonder if I had seen this before WOTS if I might have liked it better, because I couldn't help but compare the two. And it's no fault of the editor that my tastes skew more towards WOTS.

Cautiously recommended.

This one was a little tough to review. I'm not a connoisseur of grindhouse films, and fanedits is what's introducing me to the genre.

It's gloriously, gleefully terrible. So, where is that deliberate, and where accidental (and not happy accident). I re-watched with the faneditor's commentary to put that into context.

With that context, the edit is great. The grain & scratch filters are obvious from the start, the liberal use of other movies (mostly Johnny Mnemonic--a guilty pleasure of mine) and unfinished footage jumps out and mostly works. There's a few cuts of behind the scenes that felt a bit over done. The bad audio jumps are just part of the fun, even though a good chunk of Morpheus' lines *really* stand out. The bad color grading, bad camera angles, screwed up continuity is giggle-inducing.

It was fun seeing how a different edit can change the thrust of the story and characters. It took the commentary viewing to really get where matrixgrindhouse was going with it though.

The fake trailers were great. Those really helped you get into the mindset. You could almost smell the burnt/stale popcorn and feel the stick floor by the time the movie started.

In the final assessment, I greatly enjoyed this edit. There were numerous laugh out loud moments. Now I want to see some of those previewed movies.

I loved the "cheap" feel of the footage, the use of behind the scenes was great! Seeing the wires and missed punches/kicks was genius. Overall i felt like it was a solid edit, and really felt like a shoestring budget version of the matrix. The only thing i really didn't like and why i gave the narrative a lower score was the fact i don't really think the Johnny Mnemonic scenes worked very well, it through the story flow off, and i had a little trouble understanding what was happening.

I watched the DVD version (still have to watch the 2nd disc with the extras). I haven't read any reviews of the edit yet, and I didn't read any of the detailed info about the edit before watching. Here is my stream of consciousness bulleted noted that I took as I watched the edit:

- Nice DVD Menus!

- Cool Previews

- opening with the cityscapes and narration/conversation kinda caught me off guard

- Nice choice with Jefferson Airplane

- sound replacement/foley effects etc. is kinda interesting, not sure if its intially not supposed to sound polished, either way it works

- the inclusion of some of the behind the scenes/outtakes footage worked, sometimes it didnt (just my opinion)

- been a looonnggg time since I've seen Johnny Mnemonic

- LMAO at "long story"

- in certain places (for example the kung fu training scene), the music could have been a tad lower and the dialogue could have been a bit louder. This is somewhat nitpicky, as this wasn't a constant problem throughout the edit, just in certain spots

- from the meeting with the oracle onward, the narrative and visual editing felt a bit erratic sort of all over the place (again, just my opinion)

- The ending was great though. very, very clever.

- I didn't really know what to expect going into this edit but overall this was a fun, outside-the-box fanedit.

Nice work matrixgrindhouse! Looking forward to Chapter 2!