At last, a movie that answers the question: “Is it possible for the original creator of a groundbreaking work to return to it years later and produce a follow-on work that is so lame, derivative, self-indulgent, self-referential, and unimaginative that it could be mistaken for fanfic and leaves you wondering if the original actually was all that brilliant and groundbreaking, or if it was merely a lucky accident?”
Yes, I know, George Lucas answered this question ages ago, but for those of you lucky enough to have forgotten: consider The Matrix Resurrections to be Lana Wachowski’s The Phantom Menace.
You have been warned.
Recommendation: Avoid. If you watch this one, it will destroy whatever affection you may still feel for the original movie.
Also worth missing…
Years ago there was a fairly decent movie, Kingsman: The Secret Service. It was a snarky, jokey, spoofy movie of the James Bond parody variety, based on the graphic novel of the same name by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, and it did well enough at the box office to spawn a sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, which was only tangentially related to anything Millar wrote. The second movie was just plain awful in just about every way in which a movie can be awful, but nonetheless it did make money, so after giving it a few years for the stench to air out someone decided that what this series needed was a prequel.
Enter The King’s Man.
When it comes to prequels, I have a simple rule: prequels always suck. Always. Without fail. Don’t make them. But if you must, at least try to figure out what was good about the original property, and then attempt to tap into and replicate that.
The makers of this film seem to have taken the opposite tack. Instead of figuring out what was good about Millar’s original story and attempting to build on that, they apparently decided to take what was bad about The Golden Circle and make it even worse. It’s too long, too loud, too violent, too stupid, and aside from one scene in which a sword fight in Russia turns into a saber dance… No, that was it. That was the only redeeming moment in this film. The rest is garbage.
Plus, it apparently was written by someone who thinks all Scotsmen are homicidal morons.
Recommendation: Seriously? Well, on the bright side, at least Elton John doesn’t have a part in it.
2 comments:
You clearly don't see Matrix Resurrections for the work of sheer genius it is. It's a love letter to all the other films, framed by the Wachowski’s gender transition.
A woman is now the one, the hero. Subtle clues that you're back in the Matrix are dropped right in your face for you to see, if you've got the smarts to recognise them as such. The bad guy literally waves his flag while you're looking at him and dares you not to notice.
The psychiatrist giving out THOSE pills. Maybe look at the colour of his glasses frames too. Right there, telling you who and what he is, the entire time.
Sure, there's no Fishburne, but his replacement plays Morpheus well.
Apart from pacing, (the movie is too damn long), there's almost nothing wrong with the film. Every concept pays off well, Keanu accepts that he's not the star in his own life this time. Probably one of the best movies I've seen in the last decade.
Ray, I caught all of that. I just thought it was more like the sort of self-indulgent and self-referential inside joke material that sci-fi fans produce when they get together and decide to, say, write their own script for a Kirk-and-Spock Star Trek episode.
Where you see a love letter to the earlier movies, I see Wachowski's $190 million love letter to herself, and I was bored and disappointed.
Post a Comment