Happy Panic Productions

A Critique of Criticism

So, has everyone seen The Matrix: Reloaded yet? I liked it, but I thought it was pretty confusing! I mean, what's the deal with Hugo Weaving? You never see him weaving anything! And Laurence Fishburne, you never see him burning a fish! And what's up with Carrie-Ann Moss? You never see her carryin' moss.... Thank you, I'll be appearing at the Target across the street, doing some shopping after the show.


Actually, I found M:R pretty good and pretty interesting, but what I'm really finding interesting are other people's reviews of the movie, especially from the people who are getting paid to do it. To sum up the review in the Michigan City News Dispatch: this move has one of the best fight scenes ever and the absolute best car chase ever, putting The French Connection to shame. Two and a half stars.


I never thought I'd say this about anything published exclusively for the Michigan City News Dispatch, but this seems pretty representative of the national response. An action movie that delivers incredible action, and people act like they yawned through it. It makes me wonder: what were these people expecting? How did professional film critics allow their expectations to get so inflated? And why can't they remember the movie they're basing those expectations on?


The most common criticism I'm hearing is that the movie has too much talking and takes too long to get to the action. How long has it been since you've seen The Matrix? Here is the extent of the action in that movie, with my unoficial estimates as to the screen time each is given:


Trinity at the very begining of the movie: about a minute
Morpheus and Neo training (note: about a half hour later in the movie): 3 minutes?
Morpheus vs. Agent Smith: less than a minute
Neo and Trinity in the lobby/on the roof/with the helicopter: 7 minutes?
Neo vs. Agent Smith: 5 minutes


And that's about it, plus about a minute of Neo running. Basically 3 real action sequences, plus two little ones. Less than 20 minutes altogether I'm guessing. And what, do you suppose, was filling out most of the rest of the 131 minutes? A whole lotta talking! The way people are writing about M:R, you'd think the first one had non-stop action. That's just not the case. Their faint memories are getting the better of them.

There's more to say, but I don't have time.