elysium v.two.zero

wow ive been out of the loop for a while. this is the first review ive written in months. and yeah, the movie itself is long out of the theaters also. but bugger off...im slow like that, ok? think of this as the forthcoming review of the dvd...right. actually...you know what? we'll just pretend this review has been up for some time now and you just happened to have overlooked it. right then. going all the way back to november 6th....i caught the showing of revolutions opening nite, and again on the imax that same weekend. whew. a quick recap of the story thus far. zion is fucked, neos comatose, and the robots want to open extra cans of whoop-ass on the humans because, god...they really have nothing else to do, right? while in a comatose state, neo is trapped at a train station controlled by the merovingian, where he speaks to other programs waiting for the arrival of a train to take them to the matrix. from this small conversation, neo starts to understand how the machines have evolved...and how the war is beginning to seem meaningless. neo eventually leaves the station with a little help from trinity. the rest of the movie pretty much deals with neos travails to the machine city to broker a truce, and zions defenses taking on swarm after swarm of sentinels. craziness enues.

the first thing people will notice is the distinct lack of kung-fu and the matrix itself. theres one fight near the beginning as seraph, trinity, and morpheus make their way thru a club, but thats it. all proceeding fights take place man vs. machine and outside the matrix. this in it of itself is an interesting departure from the bread and butter of the matrix series. i actually find it welcoming...you can only do so many versions of fights, especially after the fight-heavy reloaded. on top of that, the siege of zion is absolutely ridiculous. it just pours on and on...as one wave gets abated, 200 more waves of sentinels pour thru and you go, "oh shit!" im sure alot of people know the exact scene im referring to. the apu's (mechs rock!) take down wave after wave and the machines just wreak absolute shitdogs on zion. its craziness. as this is all going on, niobe is racing back to zion in the mjolnir and neo and trinity are racing towards the machine city. it should be noted that since im writing this long after the movie, that the general population didnt really take to the movies. i think alot of people had unfounded expectations with the movie...which is inherent in any movie that elicits so much discussion. with something like the return of the king, there is no need to actually discuss the progression of the movie because it is dictated by the novel its based on. with the matrix, the skies the limits and everybody had their version in their mind already. and when the wachowskis version didnt match theirs, they retaliated. *shrug* c'est la vie. i personally thought the movie rocked. a few criticisms worth noting are that yea, the movie isnt as heady as its past iterations. one particular version that was posted on the net (which i apparently cant find anymore) had alot of potential, especially the ending. so after reading that particular version, and then seeing the movies ending...id give the nod to the online version. if you have to know...in the online version, neo isnt the one and instead paves the way for the kid (yea...the kid)...who is the real one, to take control of the architect and the movie ends as the kid begins the actual war against the machines. but if i hadnt read that on the internet, i wouldve still enjoyed the actual ending. ah well...such is the internet. hopefully the movie will be vindicated in the future, when people can look back and appreciate the groundbreaking trilogy.