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themovielord's Blog
(Mon 03/05/2007 02:30pm)
The other day I bought a new rack for my DVD's and I started to organize them. But how to organize them? By letter? By Genre? As I was stacking them up I started with Genre. A little different for me but any way. Something happened when I got to the cartoons. Particularly when I got to the Animatrix and Star Wars: Clone Wars. I stacked up The Matrix Reloaded and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones with them and realized how disappointing the films were and how inspiring the cartoons had been.
See for me and I am sure most of you, the Matrix sequels and the new Star Wars trilogy, not the old trilogy, had so much promise before we saw them, read about them, and discussed them with friends and family. We watched the original trilogy and wondered how did Darth Vader become Darth Vader. I sat around and discussed with my boss what I thought where the Matrix movies would go and we discussed what it could all mean. Those discussions and thoughts got my creative juices flowing and apparently it did to other people as well. Which is why we have things like Star Wars: Clone Wars and the Animatrix, both of which spawned comic books and video games that are far superior to the films that inspired them. So I thought are the Matrix sequels and the new Star Wars trilogy great films? Yes, but not because I am the ulitimate fanboy. No they are not great films or even cinematic giants. Casablanca, the Godfather, Gone with the Wind, and the Wizard of Oz are great films/ cinematic giants. The new Star Wars and the Matrix sequels did make oodles of dough and cluttered a lot of desk tops with action figures. What does makes these movies great is their ability to inspire and create. Star Wars in George Lucas's hands is Bantha poodoo. Star Wars in the hands of Genndy Tarakovsky (director of Star Wars: Clone Wars) is a pure joy and a light in all the darkness that George Lucas has delivered on the screen. So these movies burned out fast and eventually, one day, will fade away, but their impact will be felt for years to come, because they have inspired peoples imagination and creativity. Truely making them great.
Yeah the problem with the Matrix sequels (I would stipulate) was that by the end there was a perception that ..there was no spoon.
To be honest I remember doing a double-take in the theater, my eyebrow shot up and I got the distinct impression that the Wachowski's had been reading what we in the online community had been saying (on the boards after The Matrix) and had incorporated bits of the community's collective analysis of The Matrix into their sequels.
eg. The whole architect-speech
..read like it was lifted from pieces of our conversations; yet instead of delving deeper and elaborating (as one would expect had it been part of the filmmakers original intended philosophy) his speech came off largely as pseudo-philosophical political doublespeak.
..a collection of soundbites.
Leaving an impression that they had less of an idea what they were talking about than the fans did.
..that therefore there was no spoon.
(at least to this viewer)
I'm not one who ardently dislikes the Matrix sequels though; I think where they suffer most is in comparison to the brilliance of the original film.
re: DVD grouping
Good point. I wind up doing what I did with the Hellraiser series.
I consider Hellraiser 1&2 to be _one_ film and consider the rest of the series to be an alternate universe entity, and separate them accordingly in my DVD collection.
ditto I see The Matrix and The Animatrix, as 1 separate entity.
I'll watch them in one sitting, and let my imagination fill in where the story might go (rather than watch the sequels in that sitting)
and then another time I'll watch Reloaded and Revolutions as an alt universe take/1 version of how The Matrix might continue.
AISI Lucas went the other extreme, while I felt the Wachowski's had been eavesdropping on online fandom, Lucas conversely didn't appear to care what the original Trilogy fanboys had to say.
(and hell hath no fury like a fanboy scorned - Ed)
He just went ahead strong-headedly with what he wanted with the Star Wars Prequels.
Which apparently was primarily to be family-fare and to display ILM's mindblowing FX above all else.
Here I have to recuse myself of any critical analysis of the Star Wars prequels.
I can NOT in all honesty objectively say they de facto suck lark's vomit, because I am not an objective member of the prequels target audience.
I feel I have to leave it to the kids the movies were aimed at to judge the prequels. Because they were the target audience.
I think a lot of original SW trilogy fans wanted the new Star Wars to target them (myself included) but they're all ADULTS now (allegedly - Ed) and that just wasn't the primary demographic that the Star Wars prequels were targeting.
No matter how much we might have wanted it to be.
So, I'm leaving that judgment up to the kids.
All I know is that I love the original Star Wars trilogy, and I'm far less offended by the prequels than most here seem to be.
What I will say is that I am disappointed that they didn't retain the same level of on-screen gravitas as the original series.
something which I feel is/was in particular a Lucas cinematic/storytelling forte':
ie. he shines best when his ability to present fantastical material in a professional and serious manner., is on display.
So when he deliberately targets younger audiences, (I feel) we miss out on one of his greatest gifts as a film-maker: that ability to present it in a serious professional (non-Jar-Jar-Binksie - Ed) manner.
That's my take anyway, good blog TML 'mate!