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 was such an amazing edit! Serious skills on hand with you man. I'm so glad I bumped your thread and tagged you that one night.

Excellent A/V quality, damaged effects worked really well. Multiple sources are smoothly mushed together without leaving too many traces. Of course there are intentional errors, which adds to the pleasure. It's obvious a ton of work went into this. There were many moments I marveled at the sound editing; the music, rebuilt sound effects, dialogue mashing, etc. Some of the intentional abrupt or awkward cuts didn't work for me though but nothing major. Nicely done with all the added footage. Really made this a unique version without going too nuts on it.

I had a blast with this. Not everything worked for me but all the genius moments outweighed those easily. I sampled the commentary and will definitely give that a listen, and damn look at that a second disc with goodies! Highly highly recommended.

A/V Quality - 10
Editing - 9 visual, 8 audio
Narrative - 9
Enjoyment - 10 (original 9)

Recommended drink: Absinthe

never been the biggest fan of the matrix films i do however admire the concept and special effects, i just found the characters to be so serious in their delivery the film could have done with a little comical releif so the idea of a fanedit that would poke fun at the matrix universe was appealing.

matrixgrindhouse certainly manages to make the big budget matrix into a cheap tacky low budget affair. many of the aspects with what you'd associate with the film have been removed, and i must admit i found the idea of turning the matrix film into a grindhouse movie impossible but credit to the editor for accomplishing this. there is a lot of fun to be had with this edit, sure there are a few ideas that didn't work for me (i felt the johnny mnemonic scenes were over used) but overall the positives out way any negatives. the new soundtrack is the highlight of the edit, just as with nvjc empire edit it makes the edit fresh and very much like your watching the film for the first time

since TMBTM grindhouse edits i find it unfortunate that there ain't more similar edits in this vain so robts vs kung-fu is a welcome inclusion to the genre and could hopefully influence more edits in this style. a strong first edit and definitely one that you could get drunk to, disc 2 though not accentual has deleted scenes and trailers while the original work-print shows the progress this edit has gone through over the years.

I'm glad to have watched this fanedit just as a novelty because it was such a massive undertaking and its such a different viewing experience than the source material, but I didn't really like it that much and probably won't watch it again. I love the Matrix, but don't like grindhouse movies. So, me not liking this edit is something I probably could have predicted, but I was just curious at what you'd change. I actually thought the small changes were more interesting than the large ones (ie "that was a long time ago"). But all in all, it was just too weird for me.

My favorite part was the preview of Rush Hour (Dynamite Twins?).

Scoring the editing and quality is weird since its intentionally bad. But the more important part -
Enjoyment: 7
Original: 10
This isn't a fanfix, so comparing it to the original may not be the best comparison. I did like this fanedit better than any other grindhouse style movie I've seen, so that's something positive.