Overrated Movies
Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 5:54 am
I've been wanting to make this topic for awhile. Feel free to state what you think are the most overrated movies and to refute other posts, should you disagree with anyone.
There are several on my list: Kill Bill, Sin City, Princess Mononoke, Pirates of the Carribean, Transformers, and Star Wars Episode 3 are the first ones that come to mind. I may address them in the future. But by far, the worst culprit, and quite possibly the most overrated movie of all time, is...
The Matrix
My God, how did this movie become so popular?
The presentation was like something out of a bad music video, the actors failed to lend any depth to their characters (aside from Fishburne, but that's just because his role didn't require him to emote at all), and the dialog was more awkward than anything in the Star Wars prequels. Indeed, any exchanges between the characters--right down to the awkward pauses everyone thought were so awesome when the movie came out--are downright painful to watch. The humans are robotic enough that I don't see why we should sympathize with them.
The concept was pretty damn good--nothing that hadn't been done before, but attaching it to a hacker theme was a great idea. Interestingly, a film with a similar concept (sans computers), Dark City, came out only a year before The Matrix and offered far superior character development and set design. Why that movie remained unsuccessful while The Matrix takes its place in the pantheon of "great sci-fi/action films" is a puzzle to me.
Want a good Sci-Fi/Action flick? There's more of a thrill in the slow, consistent, lumbering threat of Arnold's Terminator, in the genuinely human response of his victim, Sarah Connor, than in all the acrobatics Neo and Trinity use to shoot anything they see. The well-acted dialogs between Deckard and the Replicants in Blade Runner, the crude fistfights, lay a heavier burden on the viewer than all the postmodern bullshit spewed by the Architect and his ilk.
I will never understand the success of even the first film. As for the second and third, I was able to enjoy them for what they were when they came out--special effects reels that made for a good time at the movies. Where people were really taken aback by the architect in Reloaded, I think he served only to magnify the pretentiousness of the first film. Yeah, these films try really hard to make you think they're intelligent, but real intelligence doesn't confuse the hell out of its audience. Really intelligent films--right down to The Empire Strikes Back--can be not only accessible but witty and fun. The Matrix was obviously accessible, given its success; but wit, pathos, and humanity (in other words, quality storytelling) were absent.
The only Matrix property I can still appreciate (I deluded myself into thinking the first one was good for a couple years) is a two-parter at the start of The Animatrix detailing the history behind the machine-human war. It's called The Second Rennaisance and, running at about 20 minutes total (if I remember correctly), it does a far better job of lending weight to the situation than any of the films. It's narrated, and years of events are glossed over quickly, but it's cut in such a way that it makes you care about the humans and the machines.
Nothing else in the entire Matrix saga, including the insanely overrated first film, manages to duplicate this.
I love science fiction. But every good science fiction book I have ever read (the best sci-fi is still found in books) has at its core a heart. It offends me when The Matrix is the first example people can conjure up of the genre. How much can it really have in common with the best science fiction out there, when it is so narrowly focused on cheap thrills and pseudophilosophy?
There are several on my list: Kill Bill, Sin City, Princess Mononoke, Pirates of the Carribean, Transformers, and Star Wars Episode 3 are the first ones that come to mind. I may address them in the future. But by far, the worst culprit, and quite possibly the most overrated movie of all time, is...
The Matrix
My God, how did this movie become so popular?
The presentation was like something out of a bad music video, the actors failed to lend any depth to their characters (aside from Fishburne, but that's just because his role didn't require him to emote at all), and the dialog was more awkward than anything in the Star Wars prequels. Indeed, any exchanges between the characters--right down to the awkward pauses everyone thought were so awesome when the movie came out--are downright painful to watch. The humans are robotic enough that I don't see why we should sympathize with them.
The concept was pretty damn good--nothing that hadn't been done before, but attaching it to a hacker theme was a great idea. Interestingly, a film with a similar concept (sans computers), Dark City, came out only a year before The Matrix and offered far superior character development and set design. Why that movie remained unsuccessful while The Matrix takes its place in the pantheon of "great sci-fi/action films" is a puzzle to me.
Want a good Sci-Fi/Action flick? There's more of a thrill in the slow, consistent, lumbering threat of Arnold's Terminator, in the genuinely human response of his victim, Sarah Connor, than in all the acrobatics Neo and Trinity use to shoot anything they see. The well-acted dialogs between Deckard and the Replicants in Blade Runner, the crude fistfights, lay a heavier burden on the viewer than all the postmodern bullshit spewed by the Architect and his ilk.
I will never understand the success of even the first film. As for the second and third, I was able to enjoy them for what they were when they came out--special effects reels that made for a good time at the movies. Where people were really taken aback by the architect in Reloaded, I think he served only to magnify the pretentiousness of the first film. Yeah, these films try really hard to make you think they're intelligent, but real intelligence doesn't confuse the hell out of its audience. Really intelligent films--right down to The Empire Strikes Back--can be not only accessible but witty and fun. The Matrix was obviously accessible, given its success; but wit, pathos, and humanity (in other words, quality storytelling) were absent.
The only Matrix property I can still appreciate (I deluded myself into thinking the first one was good for a couple years) is a two-parter at the start of The Animatrix detailing the history behind the machine-human war. It's called The Second Rennaisance and, running at about 20 minutes total (if I remember correctly), it does a far better job of lending weight to the situation than any of the films. It's narrated, and years of events are glossed over quickly, but it's cut in such a way that it makes you care about the humans and the machines.
Nothing else in the entire Matrix saga, including the insanely overrated first film, manages to duplicate this.
I love science fiction. But every good science fiction book I have ever read (the best sci-fi is still found in books) has at its core a heart. It offends me when The Matrix is the first example people can conjure up of the genre. How much can it really have in common with the best science fiction out there, when it is so narrowly focused on cheap thrills and pseudophilosophy?
so disappointed. Didn't bother with the third.