As mentioned: http://www.avclub.com/articles/update-keanu-reeves-may-not-have-hinted-at-two-mor,50499/ http://www.avclub.com/articles/update-keanu-reeves-may-not-have-hinted-at-two-mor,50499/ by Sean O'Neal January 24, 2011 Although the diminishing returns of The Matrix trilogy would seem to have sated any desire to see the Wachowskis elaborate on that world further, star Keanu Reeves recently told a London audience that he’s met with the duo about adding another two films to the franchise. Supposedly there is a completed “two-script treatment” that would bring Neo back to expand the story, and perhaps more relevantly, that would do so in 3-D, which the Wachowskis even sought counsel on from James Cameron. According to the eyewitness report, Reeves promises the films will “truly revolutionize the action genre like the first movie.” Well, as long as you’re managing expectations. [AICN] UPDATE: Screen Rant now says it has heard from the school where this talk supposedly took place, only to learn that Reeves made no appearance there. If that's true, then congrats to AICN reader "El Nino"for successfully duping such a wide swath of the blogosphere.
The 2nd and 3rd movies progressively showed one of two things: 1) The audience never understood what the Wachowskis were REALLY trying to do/say with the original Matrix or.. 2) The Wachowskis never understood what audiences actually liked and connected with in the Matrix My opinion is that it is both are true, but the reason the 2 sequels sucked is mainly because the Wachowskis failed to understand the reasons why audiences loved the Matrix so much. To the Wachowskis, The Matrix was essentially one long existential/philosophical examination, taking one metaphor and tidbit from various schools of philosophical thought after another, and tying it all together with the final transformation/transcendence of Neo at the end of the 3rd film. There was actually a good idea there. The notion that Neo's decision to 'destroy' Agent Smith at the end of The Matrix 'from the inside out' having the unintended consequence of imprinting or overwriting some of Neo's 'code' onto the Smith program, and this then acting like a virus which would ultimately destroy both the human and machine worlds - well, it was clever enough, and on paper, could have worked very well. And the ultimate solution, or the Oracle becoming a 'virus' herself, to be triggered by the final integration of Neo's code at the end, and then ultimately wiping out the Smith virus.. well, again, it COULD have worked. The problem was in the execution. Far too much relationship drama around Morpheus' character, and far too much of the romance and dread surrounding the relationship between Neo and Trinity. And the character of Neo himself was left with nowhere to go, having already essentially become a God at the end of The Matrix. As many others here have stated, audiences loved the conflict within the Matrix itself, where these cool anti-heroes could engage in superhuman feats against large odds. That's what people wanted to see, and what we got a bit of in Reloaded. The fights and highway set-pieces were truly great (one caveat - the Neo vs Infinite Smiths fight, which cool in concept, was absolutely horrible in execution, as soon as it turned into an all-cgi cartoon, reminiscent of the dreadful fight scenes in Blade II). The introduction of more powerful enemies in the forms of the Merovingian's henchmen, as well as somewhat-upgraded Agents added what one would have expected to be added in a sequel to The Matrix. What would have been much cooler would have been to have actually seen the new Agents dealing with these henchmen in some ways, as well as a bit more of the Smiths attacking/corrupting the new agents as well. It would have established the world and given us some new cool characters to actually learn to love/hate. But no. Instead, we are given this very depressing litany of brooding worry, angst-filled desperate love/lust, and treated to Laurence Fishburne showing the whole world why he should never be asked to be a public speaker EVER. And I apologize, but Carrie Ann Moss is barely passable under the best of circumstances, but they seem to have gone out of their way to make her as ugly as possible in these films, which for me really hurts the romance aspect, and drags the whole series down. (Anyone wonder if there is an element of deep-seated women-issues lurking within in the Wachowskis? hehehe yeah) The unfortunate death of the actress playing the Oracle really played havoc with the films too. The original actress was very good in the role, the replacement was just not a viable substitute. And Collin Chou's character could have been an extremely cool addition o the overall package, but was instead almost completely wasted. By the time the third film rolled around, we were left with uninteresting things liek The Train Man, cyberpunk bad guys who jumped around on the ceiling, and a shoe-horn appearance of the Merovingian yet again. Finally, the character of Agent Smith... It just didn't work. There was no explanation of WHY he was doing what he was doing, no motivation, no reason behind any of it. And without that, the real plot, which should have come as a sort of revelation (Oracle and Neo as anti-virus programs essentially) instead either didn't register at all, or simply fell flat because we had never been given any understanding or reason to care. To the Wachowskis, telling the philosophical parable was enough, and they believed that that was what the audiences were going to connect with. But they were wrong. The Matrix bears many repeated viewings, and is re-watchable endlessly even now,because the 'message' such as it was, was subtle, in nuggets of dialogue and action which you might not even notice until you have seen it several times. The sequels were too overt, hitting the audience over the head, and as such really diminished their effectiveness. So, regarding more sequels, I could see that working IF someone else directs (and please God NOT McTiegue!) who is able to understand what people wanted and needed from the Matrix sequels to begin with. But judging from the most recent things I have seen from the 'creative vision' of the Wachowskis (Speed Racer and Ninja Assassin), I don't have much faith that this will actually happen in a way that we would want. Just like George Lucas and M. Night Shamalamadingdong, they appear to have been more lucky than good on their earliest efforts, and lack the ability to recapture that greatness. Think about what you could get if you took the core concepts from people like Lucas, the Wachowskis and M.Night and put them in the hands of truly great genre directors like Nolan or Cameron or even someone like Greengrass, Vaughn or Favreau. With potentially hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, you would think that someone somewhere would actually try to make this happen, but unfortunately, that is probably never to be.
That "transcendence of Neo" part had too much allegories to resurrected Messiahs in it. Seemed like they compromised themselves to the point where the audience felt like it had nothing new to offer.
I think I'm going to go back and re-watch Matrix Reloaded this weekend if there's time. It's been awhile, but I do remember a few incredible action set-pieces, it maintained a decent amount of noir-style atmosphere, as well as plenty of time in the matrix. I seem to remember it fell apart at the end for me, but I can't even remember what happened now. I agree with Nero that it gradually went far away from what drew people to it in the first place. You had reserved heroes in suits in a noir/stylish world. Flashy, choreographed, intimate fight scenes with martial arts. Now they were acting emo in grimey, tribal Zion, using big clumsy machines fighting other big machines in a rain of bullets.
