no one will care how pretty your fights are if they don't care about why you're
fighting in the first place case in point how many people prefer the
fights in the matrix reloaded to the fights in the matrix that is far
from the only reason that people prefer the matrix to the matrix reloaded but by
gosh it's good enough for a video so off we go the matrix is a 1999 movie where
the wachowskis decided that what the people really wanted
was a green tinged digital plato's cave allegory with alice in wonderland
references messianic overtones ridiculous
outfits comic book stylized action scenes and of course
guns lots of guns well quite spoilers by the way and yes
turns out that was exactly what the people wanted one of the many effects
that the matrix had as i may have mentioned in my one x-cellent scene
video about nightcrawler was that hollywood was
suddenly forced to be much more ambitious when it came to
fight scenes and action scenes and special effects
also slo-mo but you can use all of the slo-mo and bullet time in the world and
still have the outcome be meh as the first sequel amply
demonstrates which is a shame because the first film really is such a good
time and so to talk about why the matrix reloaded fights are so
disappointing we're going to need to talk about the original
because it's not just about the fight and as i said in my video about the last
agni kai in avatar the last airbender it's great
because of everything that has got us to that
point not just because of the fight itself
pretty much everything that happens in the matrix is important and that
includes every single unarmed fight which
is what we're going to be talking about every one of them teaches us things
every one of them has stakes and all of them look
fantastic each of them has its own individual arc and they also contribute
to the film as a whole the fights in the matrix reloaded on the other hand
look good when they don't look uncanny at least but they often fail to give us
a compelling reason to worry and they don't build up
so much as they act a bit like the pod race in the phantom menace
yes it may look quite exciting but it does rather slam the forward momentum of
your plot into a wall my name is jill bearup i make videos about fight scenes
in media from the perspective of someone who does stage combat which is to say
that fake fighting stuff you see on stage and on screen and if you're
interested in that kind of thing you should subscribe
and also hit the bell otherwise you may never see me again and hot
dang i had forgotten how good the fights are in this movie and how badly they
fall down in the sequel by contrast even though the choreography is still pretty
good okay mostly mostly looks good the matrix is cold
open is a masterful piece of storytelling
look at this young lady everyone she can leap from building to building in a
single bound she can do the double eagle kick while the camera zooms around her
she can take out multiple police officers in a fight that lasts under 25
seconds in this scene we're not only introduced
to the style of the fights which is very hong kong kung fu wire work kind of
choreography and the style of the cinematography
which is very much look we brought a comic book to life for you
we're also showing that trinity is special because we seem to be in our
world (heh) and normal people can't do that
The actors trained really hard for the movie and did a lot of their own fighting and
wire work and you can tell it shows on the screen because
they can just stay with them for extended periods of time without having
to cut to hide the stunt performers and if you can get your actors to do
that that's a huge help in the editing room because
"choice" exactly you're not forced into editing decisions because you have to
hide a face or you have to hide poor form you can
fulfill your artistic vision and precisely the way you had imagined it
going back to the fight itself we are also shown that there are people chasing
trinity who scare her she's a superhero by the standards of our world and yet
she's visibly terrified her fear makes her more sympathetic to us and we
empathize with her much more than we do with the
mysterious suited agents or the police which is useful since she's one of the
main protagonists so we've got stakes tension style world building it's all
there and it grabs you from the word go the first fight in the matrix reloaded
is similar in style to the original we've got trinity we've got tension
we've got slow-mo it's bigger and explodier but it's along the same
general lines with bonus creative use of a motorbike helmet
and then we shoot trinity and it's a dream
and not even a 'did neo dream that or are we just cutting to another character?' but
no an actual dream it becomes a bit tricky to feel any tension about
trinity's fate now that neo's had his prophetic dream
the scene itself is fine it's good but in context it provides information that
robs us of tension in subsequent fights not a great start the second fight in
the matrix neo having come out of the matrix into the real world is now back
in a construct dojo and of course i know kung fu he knows kung fu the
setting color scheme and wardrobe choices mark the contrast between both
the matrix and the real world and while it's the same kind of exaggerated style
we saw from trinity earlier we ratchet it up to
11 with the exaggerated poses and all the swishy wishy sound effects and
even more slow-mo it's made even more fantastical and unreal with the super
fancy wire work and in the last section neither morpheus nor neo seems to
breathe which i thought was a really nice touch we underlined that morpheus
is really really good at this stuff but neo
might be better what are you trying to tell me
that i can dodge bullets
no neo i'm trying to tell you that when you're ready
you won't have to. he still fails at his first jump but the potential is there
the stakes here are mental rather than having any significant physical
consequences morpheus and neo are sparring they're
not really going to hurt each other badly but we still want to see neo
succeed and we start to see a little of what it is he can do
it's very different in feel to the first fight and that's intentional its purpose
is not to make us bite our nails with tension but to increase our knowledge of
the world and our curiosity about what's going to happen fights 2 3
4 and 5 in the matrix reloaded all involve
neo he fights the agents he fights seraph he fights the agents
smith... agent smiths whichever he fights the Merovingian's
possibly supernatural dudes you might think this is the point where i
start to rag on the cgi and the general uncanny valley nature of some of the
shots but there's a more generally applicable
point i want to make here's my big takeaway from these fights
what is the big takeaway from these fights? um
that neo is capable of fighting agents and agent smith times a million
and seraph and the possibly supernatural dudes i guess that we learn that he has
telekinesis i would say that becomes relevant because then he uses it outside
of the matrix at the end of the movie but the thing he does at the end of the
movie is a bit more like the stopping bullets thing
so was it really necessary i mean it does look cool but was it
really necessary? the settings for each of these fights are different and
well two of them have some plot relevance
and he does use weapons in two of them which is new but here's the problem
neo is basically invincible and so there are no sticks the match with seraph is
meant to evoke the feel of that morpheus neo dojo fight but we don't know who
this guy is whose side he's on or if he's in any way
relevant to the plot so why should we care all the outward
style trappings are there but we're not actually
learning anything we're not developing neo's character or seraph's character
we're just stopping the story for some kicking and punching before we get to
the oracle the fight against the Merovingian's goons has at least some kind
of plot relevance but that's that's kind of the best you can say and
they look flashy but are you worried are you concerned are
you thinking oh no how is neo going to get out of this one
no me either contrast this with the third fistfight in the matrix which is
morpheus versus agent smith it's brilliant and it's different again
to the first two fights that we've seen so far in that movie it's
tense and brutal and ugly morpheus gets his butt comprehensively kicked by agent
smith and that underlines that however good
neo thinks morpheus is morpheus is not immortal and there
really are things scarier than him it's nasty and it's bloody while
sparring neo lands a hit on morpheus but it turns out that he's nowhere near the
level of agent smith not yet we build the fear of the agents
we feel the hopelessness of morpheus and things get very serious
from here on out now morpheus does fight with an agent in the sequel
as part of an extended sequence involving us cutting between neo
et al and morpheus and trinity versus the twins and the agents and those
fights contain a couple of slightly plot holy choices like if the
twins can just phase through things why didn't they just
phase into the car but it does at least have some tension because while we know
that trinity has prophecy armor the same is not true of morpheus or the keymaker
and the twins are formidable enemies that being said morpheus fighting agent
smith does not contrast well with morpheus fighting agent not-smith it does
make good use of environment on the moving lorry but either agent smith was
the strongest agent or morpheus has leveled up because agent not smith is
not really very scary compared to the desperation and brutality of smith vs
morpheus in the first film this is bloodless i do like morpheus's
shoes though they are pretty snazzy again i'm just
not that worried the final fistfight in the matrix comes
after the rescue of morpheus and includes the shot that launched
a thousand imitators neo in the subway versus agent smith
this fight is great i say that a lot about the fights in the matrix but this
fight is great great use of wire work and use
of environment and dust and trains and agent smith smarming and all that kind
of jazz neo moves almost like a machine and the vast
majority of it contains their faces rather than stunt performers so we
maintain that connection we just let the tension
grow the purpose is to show us that neo is growing into his power but he's not
quite good enough to beat agent smith just yet
and then you get to the end of the movie and after a dramatic death and
resurrection he doesn't need to dodge bullets anymore
the arc is clear even in the fights we contrast
the first sparring match when he barely knows the extent of his power with the
mostly a gunfight rescue of morpheus where he fearlessly takes on all the
agents then the fight with agent smith and then
the end which isn't really a fight at all where morpheus is right
and he does everything without effort each hand-to-hand fight and
indeed gunfight though we haven't been talking about those builds on what came
before it each one has clear stakes and each one
moves us forward in our understanding of the world and its characters the matrix
as a whole is a tightly plotted slickly put together
piece of cinema it grabs you right from the start and it
takes you on a complete journey in spite of all the world building it has to do
now the fight i find most engaging in the matrix reloaded is also a fight that
is near the end neo versus agent smith
times a million in the hallway i'm not going to imply
that it looks good but there is a genuine sense of tension that time might
run out and the building might blow up and they might not be able to save zion
i grant you it's not likely from a plot perspective that neo is going to die at
this point but there is some uncertainty there trinity
in the power station is barely a fight which is fine
and trinity vs agent not smith looks good and
is tense but it's mostly tense because we've seen this bit
before and we're waiting for her to get shot reloaded's climax is neo bringing
trinity back to life and the cliffhanger that oh neo can
affect real world machines now but that last part is basically out of nowhere
and while it is intriguing neither it nor agent smith in the real
world is enough to get me to watch the matrix revolutions again i'm sorry
i'm just not going to do that not even for you the thing about the
fights in the matrix and to a certain extent in the sequel is that they all
tend to look good because the actors trained really
hard before shooting them also because for example the choreographer in the
first film was Wu Ping who's legendary the wachowski saw his work and
basically went can we have that guy we want that guy and you can see that in
the quality of the finished product but even if the matrix reloaded hadn't
relied rather too heavily on somewhat uncanny
cgi it wouldn't have improved the fights that much
because the problem isn't the fights themselves
it's that there are no stakes and the plot is muddled
and so who cares it's kind of sterile really which is a shame because it does
have at least one interesting concept in it which goes
absolutely nowhere seraph and neo engage in this well executed but ultimately
pointless fight and then seraph says 'you do not truly
know someone until you fight them' that is such an interesting premise
such an interesting premise and yet it goes nowhere why
actually i thought of another one we go to see the merovingian and persephone
says that these guys can only be killed by
silver bullets so basically they're werewolves right that
would be really neat except they just fight like regular dudes who've been
unplugged from the matrix there's nothing
special or unique about them. as i mentioned previously these two are
ghosts! they could present a real threat to neo
but he doesn't meet them in this movie at all
oh well never mind and of course we know that trinity is in no danger because we
saw the cold open so unless she's falling off a rooftop
we're not going to be worried where the matrix takes us on a journey with neo
and everything that happens has a purpose
we're now kind of just hanging around with these people some of whom have
stuff to do the scenes containing people who aren't neo or trinity might have
some tension but the build up is all over the place
the matrix gives us a hero's journey and it would have stood fine on its own
the sequels are an attempt to answer the question but why would there be a human
inside the matrix who can alter the code to his liking and
that's an effort i appreciate but ultimately i felt it got bogged down
with all of this extra philosophical waffling and stuff that you couldn't
understand unless you'd seen the animatrix
and problems with pacing and trying to tell the story over the course of two
movies instead of one and hand waving a bunch of really
important questions away with vague platitudes delivered by the most
annoyingly verbose character ever sorry back on topic if you want a
model for how to make your fights meaningful for how to use them to
facilitate the arc of the movie then you should really watch the matrix
each fight teaches us something new each fight
has clear stakes and each fight does indeed look great i just can't
say the same for reloaded the fights should be enhancing the plot but the
plot is already staggering under the weight of its own self-importance and
incoherence it doesn't matter how good they look because they're mostly
pointless and that's just not a good time i don't even remember if the fights
and revolutions were any good and i refuse to sit through it again without a
good reason so if you actually remember what happens
in the matrix revolutions let me know if you think i should give it another
chance or if you also find it as forgettable as i apparently did the