JayPinkerton.com Rates The Matrix Reloaded DVD

October 15th, 2003 Posted in Other Reviews

There’s no conceivable opinion I could put forward about the film Matrix Reloaded that wasn’t flogged to death by the media earlier this year. It was really stupid. It was too intellectual and confusing. It was nothing but a big violent, explosion-filled video game. It was boring. It was the best film of the year. It was the death of the franchise.

And on and on, to the point where you start to thinking about that old maxim about opinions about Matrix Reloaded being like assholes: namely, that everyone who wants to tell you their opinion about Matrix Reloaded is an asshole.

So looking at this from an “Is this worth buying?” perspective only, I’d say that, well, it is a long movie, and yes, it does have fairly long stretches of exposition. Good film or no, if this wasn’t The Matrix, I’d probably advise against buying it. Long, expository movies don’t lend themselves well to multiple viewings; you could probably rent it once or twice and still come out ahead.

Case in point: I bought Glengary Glen Ross for about $25. At $5 a rental, I would have had to watch the DVD five times to break even, and six times before I saw a profit. As of this writing I’ve watched it once, making it—if you don’t count the $30 worth of late fees I racked up after I forgot Pauly Shore’s Son-In-Law under my couch for a week—the most expensive movie I’ve ever seen.

But then again, it’s not like Glengary Glen Ross had Jack Lemmon doing flying spin kicks on an army of cloned Al Pacinos. This is The Matrix we’re talking about—so it’s worth it, right? Well, maybe. I admit that the series is pretty groundbreaking, and probably deserves a place on your DVD shelf alongside Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and, knowing you, some pretty shocking black market pornography.

Still: I say hold out till next year. I don’t doubt Warner Brothers will repackage the entire trilogy into a collector’s edition with a ton of cool extras. That’s worth your money, true believers. ‘Nuff said.

The Reloaded DVD, though, isn’t worth much more than a rental. The extras on it are fairly substandard, and that’s the reason you buy a DVD in the first place, isn’t it? You enjoyed the film enough to want to immerse yourself in the experience of its making. That being the case, Reloaded’s extras will allow you to immerse yourself just up to your ankles, leaving the rest of you standing around in your bathing suit looking kind of silly. Read on for an extra-by-extra breakdown.

The Extras

Audio Commentary:
It’s difficult for me to pick my favorite commentary on the DVD, the directors’ or the actors’, since neither are actually on the DVD. In fact, no commentary is to be found anywhere. I find it hard to believe that a film costing $150 million to produce isn’t interesting enough to discuss. More likely is that the entire cast and crew had their vocal cords sliced to avoid leaking the plot early.

Feature: “Preload”
Among the relevations uncovered in this jaw-dropping behind-the-scenes documentary: apparently the cast loved working with the directors, and the crew loved working with the cast, and everybody loves everybody else because it was such a joy working with them. Sorry, I should have told you to sit down before telling you that, so you didn’t fly backwards into the wall from the ass-kicking shock. “Preload” packs all the punch of an Entertainment Tonight interview, and you don’t even get to look at Mary Hart’s breasts and teflon hair.

I would have enjoyed this a lot more if it were a lot longer than its fifteen minute running time, and if it hadn’t been edited by music video directors in a centrifuge. Trying to follow it is like watching a flipbook movie at a rave. Every cool behind-the-scenes shot you see lasts for all of half a second before moving to the next, and everything is drowned in pumpingly phat techno beats. So you get the joy of just barely glimpsing approximately 12,095 scenes that would have been great to actually see—Hugo Weaving practicing kung fu with Carrie Ann Moss; Keanu Reeves flubbing a move, then joking around between takes with martial arts star Collin Chou; Neil and Adrian Rayment practicing their parking lot fight with Laurence Fishburne, then chatting over a coffee while the set’s prepped; fight choreographers walking Hugo Weaving through the Burly Brawl fight, at which point he makes a joke that cracks up the entire crew, and that probably would have cracked you up too if it hadnt been muted out by the pumping techno soundtrack before cutting away to another one-second scene.

It’s infuriating, and adds nothing to the experience. If you like fifteen minute commercials for films you’ve already seen, you should be too busy drowning your head in a bucket of water to be reading this.

Feature: “The Freeway Chase”
This is the longest feature of the DVD, and is admittedly pretty interesting. It’ll give you a whole new respect for what you saw in the freeway chase, in terms of complexity and actual danger. It’ll also test the limits of how interested you are in prep-work for stunt driving. If you’re like me, the answer’s “not very”, and the feature gets old amazingly fast.

Feature: “Enter the Matrix”
Remember that video game that came out like half a year ago that everybody bought and nobody liked? Here’s a commercial for it.

Feature: “The Matrix Unfolds”
Giving new meaning to the term “DVD padding”, which I think I just invented, is a feature that “examines” the Matrix phenomenon. In other words, instead of putting a lot of cool shit into a DVD for the sorts of die-hard fans willing to drop $30 for it, the filmmakers dumped in a documentary about why we’re willing to drop $30 for a DVD with stupid documentaries in it. “Unfolds” is little more than a series of short sound bites from cast and crew explaining how fantastic The Matrix is, interspersed with products you should purchase because The Matrix is fantastic. Did the Wachowskis sink all their money into the anime shorts and video game or something? The DVD seems to mention them more than the film itself. And if there’s one thing I like about dropping $30 for a DVD, it’s getting the chance to feel shamed for not dropping $100 for two DVDs and a video game. Did the cast mention how fantastic they are? Man. They are fantastic.

Trailer: “The Animatrix”
Remember that series of cartoons that came out like half a year ago that die-hard fans bought and then forgot about? Here’s a commercial for it.

Sketch: “The MTV Movie Awards Reloaded”
I remember thinking Will Farrell was hilarious when I watched this on TV, but sadly the version shown on the DVD isn’t the one shown on MTV with the audience laughing hysterically in the background. It’s a lot more difficult to envision Justin Timberlake as a comedic genius without the help of 10,000 people in hysterics.

And that’s about it. There was something else about the commercials made to tie in with the film, like for phones and powerade and such, but I was so overwhelmed by the flogging for the video game and anime shorts I’d already hit my consumer threshold and didn’t have the patience. So basically, a whole extra disc of extras that I managed to get through in about half an hour, none of which I’d consider a reason to buy the DVD. Hold out till 2004, Matrix fans. Don’t waste your time.