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The Matrix Revolutions Decoded Version 2 NOW AVAILABLE

ErikPancakes

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That part is not intact in "Decoded." The whole bit with Morpheus/Keymaker/Neo/Smith in the hallway is cut completely.

And the two Smiths showing up earlier (after the captains' meeting/Neo vs. Agents) is foreshadowing, not exposition. The Burly Brawl includes the exposition necessary for the audience to understand the Smith situation, which is integral to the climax of the movie.
 

revel911

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And unfort. that scene ruins this version for me! Curious if it could have been cut drastically. The second they knocked him against the wall, that is when he flies up, that would at least save 90% of the bad cgi elements.
 

henzINNIT

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I haven't had a chance to finish this yet but I've gotten about 90 minutes in and I'm loving it. Great work.

The Good:

From what I've seen, this film manages to do the impossible and focus these two poorly made films into not just one film, but something of a reasonable length and solid pace. Revisisted was pretty great to start with, but this feels like a more refined version of the same clever ideas.

Action sequences are well selected. The best are kept and the most unnecessary are gone. So glad to see Neo vs. Agents was kept.

The characters are well handled for the most part. The films as they were gave us a wide selection of dull and under-developed side characters. This edit makes great decisions to fix this. Characters like Niobe and Locke actually get extra screen time, while particularly pointless characters like Zee and Kid are cut to shreds. This is awesome. You now know who to connect with. The meat of Neo's story is here and actually enhanced by more focus.

The not so good:

Burly brawl is too long imo. There are many options in trimming this and I couldn't help but picture them while the sequence (frankly) bored me. Obviously I can't hold it against jerrick for how the original scene came out, but it is odd to see such a bloated chunk in an otherwise elegantly streamlined experience.

While I know it was cut for good reasons, I miss Bane. The dangers of Smith in the real world should be there to up the stakes, as would the only fight scene where Neo is in real danger (and really hurt). If it doesn't fit though, it doesn't fit.

I will have many more thoughts when I get a chance to finish it haha, but really, really good work here.
 

jerick

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I think we can all agree that there is no happy medium between those that like the Burly Brawl and those that don't. Regardless of your feelings about the CGI, most of the elements of the fight have to be kept in any Matrix edit that retains Smith's arc. To remove it would leave too much information left unexplained. I personally have no issue with the fight as I expect a CGI experience that is over a decade old when I watch the film.

I'm glad you all seem to be enjoying the edit so much and would enjoy discussing any of the hundreds of changes that were made that don't directly relate to the unfixable Burly Brawl :)
 

herowoac

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I also watched this a couple of days ago.
In general I would say I'm as impressed as the rest.
You did an admirable job of cutting the sequels down to size.
I especially liked how you shortened the action scenes. I think the tedious long action scenes are the worst part of Reloaded,
which is most of what any fanedit of the sequels is made up of. (because revolutions was, well, awful really).

I too felt you could have cut more from the bury brawl. Geminigod did in his "epic edition".
The epic edition by the way was pretty much my preferred cut of the sequels up until this one was released.
Now I'm torn. I love the heavily cut action scenes, the pacing and the shorter runtime,
but I'm not sure which version of the overall storyline I like best.
I keep thinking the best possible version must be somewhere in between the two,
yet they really are too different to be combined.
Hrm, I'll definitely rewatch both, compare and make notes when I have the time.

Anyway, while I can't say for sure this is my one-and-only preferd version of the Matrix sequels.
I certainly love it for what it is, and I'm proud to have had some kind of input at some point.
It really is wonderful, and quite an achievement.

There are quite a few fanedits of the Matrix sequels and only two have, in my mind,
ever come close to being the Matrix sequel I always wanted.
This is one of them, and this one has the best pacing and the best overall watchability of the two by far.
I just keep missing something, and I'm not even sure what it is.
Maybe I'm just spoiled. :)
 

jerick

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I should probably take a moment and explain my choices in the Burly Brawl. I did cut footage from this fight along with every other fight in the film for pacing, but I didn't cut it as much as I did in my previous edit. The reason for this is probably not very obvious.

Those of you that have seen my previous edit know that I retained all 4 fights between Smith and Neo that were present in the sequels. Each meeting was increasingly redundant as the only purpose they served was to show that neither Neo or Smith could be truly beaten. Smith was not a real threat but a constant annoyance to our heroes as they otherwise went about their journey. Because of this redundancy there was no reason to keep as much of the Burly Brawl in my previous edit, as you were going to see Smith and Neo fight over and over again throughout the film.

In 'Decoded' Smith and Neo only have 2 big battles. Therefore the first battle has to set the stage for the second one and both battles have to feel consequential. Despite how you may feel about the CGI in Burly Brawl the fact remains that this fight introduces Smith's new powers to the viewer and as it builds to its climax it feels more and more like Neo could lose. Therefore it is a consequential battle even though I know it doesn't feel that way to a repeat viewer. In 'Decoded' the viewer must witness and feel the increasing threat of the Smiths as they continue to grow in number and hostility to truly feel that Smith has become too powerful for Neo to handle. This fight has to be long enough to tell a story so many of the same beats have been retained from the original fight. This I feel would make more sense to the first time viewer than to someone who has seen the fight many times.

If Neo escapes Smith too easily in the Burly Brawl, the consequence for Neo is lost and therefore the meaning is lost when he makes the choice to face Smith again and ultimately sacrifice his life (seemingly) to save Zion.

I hope that makes sense :)
 

reaper18783x

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i loved this edit and it is the best matrix edit out.
i always felt that to much was always cut out of the burly brawl it was my favorite action scene in both sequels.
yes the cgi is now a bit out dated but if i thought to not watch movies where the cgi looks a little out dated i would not see many movies.
i always loved the whole burly brawl and dont really like it changed to much were i think a lot can be edited out of the final battle as it get very repetitive and others are to showy if that makes sense.
i love when neo gets the pole out of the ground and then spins in to the middle of the smiths and then beats the hell out of them its an awesome scene and i always love it.
so i am happy not a whole heap was not cut out.

ive watched this edit 2 times already and i would like to thank jerick for this edit.
i have left review for this move on its main page.
 

TV's Frink

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jerick said:
I personally have no issue with the fight as I expect a CGI experience that is over a decade old when I watch the film.

I agree as long as the CGI fits with the time it is created. You can see plenty of early-2000s appropriate CGI in the movies, but there are parts of the fight that are more like early 90s CGI. The digital characters in the Burly Brawl look terrible in this movie. By comparison, look at the job Weta did with Gollum in The Two Towers, which came out one year before Reloaded.
 

jerick

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TV's Frink said:
I agree as long as the CGI fits with the time it is created. You can see plenty of early-2000s appropriate CGI in the movies, but there are parts of the fight that are more like early 90s CGI. The digital characters in the Burly Brawl look terrible in this movie. By comparison, look at the job Weta did with Gollum in The Two Towers, which came out one year before Reloaded.

The LOTR movies certainly broke new ground as far as CGI is concerned but for every screen grab from the Burly Brawl that is "terrible" there is an equally terrible screen grab from 2003's Hulk movie which was a comparable blockbuster with comparable CGI technology used.
 

TV's Frink

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But as I alluded to in the first part of my post, the bad CGI in The Matrix sequels stands out when there is good CGI in the very same film.
 

tylerdurden389

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tumblr_mwhw70wo2P1swh3svo1_500.gif


LOL!! Nah but seriously,

Never really thought about it before but I guess it is jarring to see Neo constantly go from real life Keanu to CGI in the same scenes. Especially when he did a lot of his own stunts. Case in point, CGI Keanu Flies through the glass window when the building explodes, but then real life Keanu is flying towards the camera (with the cars and debris all caught in the vacuum). Then again, seeing as how the special features shows us that the actors did do a lot of the burly brawl for real, one has to wonder why they decided to do it with the intent of nearly all CGI later when they were already capable of shooting the scene to begin with?

What I mean is, they should've only used CGI sparingly for the Smith doubles heads, and possibly some other things they couldn't do with wire work. I think it was within their power to do the 2nd half of the fight with doubles the same way they did for the 1st half, but CGI being the new big thing at the time meant going in that direction.
 

henzINNIT

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Would have been better to do the sequence with real performers, but the film was made when directors were trying to push the envelope with CG. Still love that shot above, even if the sequence as a whole hasn't aged too well.
 

revel911

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Which brings me to my point that some way this fight needs to be either trimmed down or removed.
 

herowoac

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I certainly understand why retaining most of the burly brawl is so important to this edit.
Giving Smith some gravitas and showing off his abilities as well as his connection to Neo is important.

In fact because of the amount of material cut one of the things that doesn't come across so strongly in your edit
is Smith as the evil nemesis. In my mind it comes largely from cutting most of his screen time in the oracle scenes,
and removing Sati and her eventual death at Smiths hands. In my mind a lot of his personality and the feeling of him as an
all powerful evil corrupter taking over the matrix and destroying all that's good and innocent in the process comes from those scenes, and not so much the action scenes.

That said even geminigod, who had no intention of reducing the action scenes and who's edit is far longer than yours,
still cuts more of the burly brawl, specifically because of the bad cgi and stupid jokes. (Smith bowling? Come on)

So, yeah. I understand why you prioritized the burly brawl. Although I imagine you could achieve much the same thing using other scenes (but that would probably lengthen the run time and might change the pacing). This is probably a point where I imagine I would have made other choices. (but of course I never actually tried so what do I know) But it's your edit not mine.
And like I said in my previous post I very much like it for what it is. It's not like the Burly Brawl ruins the whole edit or anything.
 

jerick

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Some people like the brawl some people hate it, such is life.

You are absolutely right that Smith is not the evil nemesis in this edit and that was intentional. The original Matrix was Smith's movie through and through, but in the sequels Smith is purely an annoyance. He's an enemy that cannot harm Neo and cannot be killed, he is never a driving force in the journey of our heroes. I want the viewer to feel like the machine apocalypse is the focus of the movie. Our heroes journey is to find a way to stop it. Smith simply becomes the means to that end. "Super Smith's" creation is Neo's responsibility and his burden and he finally decides that the only way for there to be peace is to settle that old score. But the end of the war is the driving force for our heroes not Smith. That's not even my editing that's the way the script was written, Smith just had a bigger (and more pointless) part to play in the original.
 

jerick

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henzINNIT created a terrific new cover art for "Decoded". Thank you so much to him! I'm pretty terrible with Photoshop and I really appreciate the eye for detail henzINNIT displayed in the creation of this much improved cover.

MatrixRevolutionsDecoded_cover_artwork_zpse3442487.png
 

mystery7

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Recently joined the forum,

The Matrix Trilogy is one of my favourite trilogies out there, with "The Matrix" being my favourite (I'm a sucker for origin stories).

I liked both sequels at the time where some people were quick to put it down, that being said, after watching this incredible edit, I prefer this version now to both the sequels, it really has a tighter pace and the story has a more linear goal.

This version will now forever replace the both sequels whenever I want to watch them again, and it also made The Matrix marathon much less time consuming, thank you very much for the edit.

Also, I absolutely loved what you did with the final closing credits of the movie!

Mystery
 

mrbenja0618

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Just watched the first 10 minutes and I'm hook. Great job! It's been awhile since a Matrix edit caught my eye.
 
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