jerick said:
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.
My pleasure bud. Glad you liked it.
I fear my deteriorating computer will never actually let me watch this in one viewing (it's my birthday today, anyone wanna send me a disc? lol) but I keep coming back and watching new scenes and finding something new to rave about. My mrs is frankly tired of it.
It's quite shocking how cutting this right back actually makes the story more clear. There are more than a couple of scenes that I would never have considered cutting, yet to my surprise the film functions just fine without them. Cutting the second Oracle completely
should leave a gaping hole... it doesn't. There's a bittersweet, meta sense of loss having the Oracle die leaving so much un-explained, and it works far better than the underwhelming babble we got from Alice Eve in Revolutions.
I am always torn on the Rama/Sati stuff being axed. It is easily removed, in fact probably easier to cut than it is to keep when trimming these films down. It does serve an important purpose in showing the machines' potential for human characteristics, it's just a damn shame that it's part of such a pointless deviation from the main plot. In the end, you have to go by what serves the story and it doesn't enough to stay.
Zion benefits the most from the trims (as it usually does in edits) and it's a stroke of genius replacing the Neb's return wih the Logos. Not only is there nothing to gain from sending Neo & Co back there in the middle of the story, it gives Niobe a greater sense of importance and more to do, and feels more significant for Morpheus to finally get there at the end having never seen him in Zion.
Stripping back the convoluted "get to the architect" sequence is expertly handled. There was not much wrong with it orginally I suppose, but it is merely an unnecessary hurdle when you view the story as a whole. The characters spend the most part of Reloaded on a wild goose chase to get to that meeting, only to find that it was part of the machines' plan all along. It's kind of dumb to make it such a perilous mission when you think about it. What would have happened if someone important died and Neo couldn't make it?
Locke being a constant douche is thankfully limited, and has the probably most notable additional scene sourced from the video game. Somehow his only scene of tangable humanity appeared in Enter The Matrix, and I was happy to see it here as I was to see it in the previous Jerrick edit. The Logos stuff used at the beginning works just as well as it did in the last edit too.
Smith's path has been cleverly reimagined here, albiet very subtley so. As Jerrick already described, he is more of a bug in this edit and less of a grand villain. Smith essentially accomplishes the same thing of course, though it seems to fit better here as a secondary villain role who is later used as a bartering chip for peace. I mentioned before that I'd miss Bane-Smith... I don't. As with many other plot points in the original films, Bane is a hurdle that ultimately adds very little to the big picture. I will say that I did miss a sense of him conquering the Matrix. It was pretty poorly depicted in the original films too, though I feel that with the footage available there was room for maybe a short montage of him assimilating other people and not just the Oracle. Not a huge deal.
The ending is great. The Zion siege has never been particularly enthralling to me but it works much better here thanks to the edits to the scene itself and the earlier changes that made Niobe feel like a more significant character. I can't believe both Neo and Trinity *spoiler* live *spoiler*, nor can I believe how well that works. The little bit with the Architect during the credits is fun, really simple and works well. My only gripe with it would be the cutting down of Smith and Neo's final exchange. Obviously the Oracle stuff had to go as it no longer paid off a previous conversation, but it felt noticably edited, and Neo's decision to let Smith "win" didn't have room to breathe. I wish "This is the end isn't it?" and "What are you afraid of?" were retained. This is a rare case where less isn't more.
Overall it's a fantastic piece, much much better than what was originally offered. It'd be funny to compile a list of "deleted scenes", because I'm sure there's countless scenes and moments that I have completely forgotten existed.