Reviews

I've watched the original animation and while not my favourite it's somehow charming, a little goofy and most of all short. This movie repeats everything but adding more on top which extends the runtime to over 2 hours and that's not helping at all. I bet most kids who have seen the original will likely get bored by the end. None of the added scenes are good - the songs are so cringy I can't believe someone gave the green light to include them in the movie. I liked the original songs. The re-design of Sebastian wasn't to my taste at all. The cartoon crab was so much more entertaining. The bird changed from being a bit awkward in the original to annoying and quite irritating in this one. That scuddlebutt song was the lowest point of the whole movie.

Of course, there were good changes which made a litlte more sense compared to the original. I liked how the relationship between Ariel and Eric progressed more naturally. I liked all actors and the effort they put in this movie. Everyone did their best with what was given to them even though with so much blue screen there wasn't much space to really shine.

Overall, it was a decent movie, but rather uncalled for. It was done just because they could do it. Even the effects weren't as good. I can tell this won't age well in 20 years.

Everything that happened in this finale serves only pone purpose - to make S4 possible. All the characters acted irrational and illogical doing stuff they would never do in other circumstances. All of them except maybe Frenchie and MM. Butcher switching sides because of a promise? The kid would have turned normal after the blast and so would Homelander. What's the point of attacking Soldier Boy at that moment except to drive the story further. I doubt Maeve would have lasted normally that long against Homelander either. Obviously everyone wants to see more, but they better not drag the show to the bottom simply driven by greed.

There is absolutely no thought put in writing this episode. A nobody pulls a rank on the main security officer in a top-secret establishment? Storm troopers shooting randomly when glass breaks from blaster fire? Glass withstands tons of pressure underwater yet breaks from one shot with a blaster? Rebel ships come out of nowhere and nobody can detect them even though the base is the only structure on the entire world? I can go on and on. Not a single minute of this episode that wasn't a convenient sequence to convince the viewer that this dumb stunt could actually happen. The scene from Epsiode 4 with the millenium falcon and the death star when they saved Leia and which happened over 50 years ago is still way more believable than this nonsense. By now I'm entirely convinced that this show is nothing more than a rushed attempt to capitalize on SW yet again.

We're already half way through the show and it seems like another failed attempt. Half the episode is aimless wandering though some wilderness until they bring Vader in. By that time you're thinking some epic fight scene will be revealed but disappointment strikes yet again. That second half is also what makes me so disappointed with the majority of all the recent shows. Everything recently is being written so lazily. They're given so much epic material and the effort is just laughable. First thing, Obi-Wan is fire-proof. How? Darth Vader is afraid of fire and so are his soldiers? Why? He is also randomly murdering innocent locals? Since when? Reva finds the secret pathway with no effort just so she is the one to find Lea even though Lea was much further ahead. How did Reva teleport all the way at the end not even knowing where the tunnel was heading? When will those writers learn that making something magically happen for no reason except to fit the story progression is not fun and spoils the enjoyment of the whole show.

I think comparison with the original are almost inevitable as that is where this new movie goes so far away and forgets its roots which ironically it glorifies in the first 30 minutes. The original Matrix was a visual revolution, no doubt. Resurrections provides nothing even close to extraordinary. Quite the opposite. It even falls behind some of the recent movies in the same category. For example, the analyst speed power feels extremely cheap. The world of the original was almost a timeless stylized alternative reality while this one feels like just another movie set in 2022. The crew of the Nebuchadnezzar all mattered and had a role to play With a few exceptions this new ship's crew matters very little. I don't even recall the ship having a name. There was a sense of threat and tension in the old Matrix. Resurrections has none. Nobody dies nor is even remotely threatened. The urgency to find a phone and escape is non-existent here. Agents appear briefly and that's it. The new bots are supposedly more effective but while 1 agent can dispose of the whole crew, it takes a thousand bots to do absolutely no damage. Neo went from being the one into being less than half. In Reloaded the architect is supposedly a busy program and was close to impossible to locate. Here, the analyst is Neo's psychiatrist. To what purpose? There could have been a program for that. There's probably more but that is all I can think of on top of my head.

Major annoyances and spoilers: Never understood how did they bring Trinity back from the dead? She died in the real world where none of the matrix's rules works. At least Neo's body was physically preserved save for the eyes but they recovered those as well. No way could the Matrix work as a game. What would happen if the player picks the blue pill? Game over? It's way more plausible if it was a movie, but the new generation associates more easily with video games. Niobe's makeup was just horrendous. She looks fake and nowhere near whatever age she's supposed to be. Nobody else survived since Revolutions to remember Neo? Zombie chase scene and Neo's Jedi powers near the end feel very very cheap and for what is considered the climax of the movie, it is extremely poorly executed. Agent Smith shouldn't be in the new Matrix. He had a clear purpose as an agent in the original before going rogue. There was some huge purpose that happened in between and yet the biggest nemesis to everyone and everything got spared??? Him addressing Neo as "Tom" is probably the most annoying thing I found with the whole movie. NPH was too much himself from any other movie and not enough of a matrix character or a villain. I was expecting him to say "wait for it..." at some point. New Morpheus was confusing since he was nothing like the original, too. I don't even get how his character was mixed with Smith while being programmed.

Minor annoyances: Music wasn't up there with the original soundtrack. Up to this day I listen to Reloaded soundtrack. The music in the original trilogy went so well with the action scenes. In here it felt as if it was just thrown in. It's not terrible but not memorable at all.

Good impression: Bugs was probably the best thing in the whole movie. She really stole the show. Her and maybe Trinity were the most memorable characters.

Last thoughts - I honestly don't think Lana Wachowski wanted to make this movie. It was almost clear when they mentioned WB and the sequel game inside the movie itself. Obviously, there were good ideas within, but it is almost as if the desire to do it wasn't present. You can't make a film of which 1/5 is just a rerun of the original. Everything felt as if the green light was given for a fan-made direct-for-TV movie with the exception of the huge budget. I don't care how bad Revolutions was, at least it tied up with the other movies and was a good conclusion. After I finished the original back in the days I came out of the theatre not realizing what I just watched, almost wanting to back in again for a rerun. For Resurrections , I feel no desire to do so. Nothing remains unanswered.

I remember Jango in the prequels and his son Boba in Ep 5 being among the most dangerous bounty hunters in the universe. What we get in this episode is an old dude who almost got his a** kicked by some weird desert ninjas and got saved by his pig guards, the same useless ones in Jaba's palace. Understandably he's recovering from past misfortunes, but seriously how did he get to be the crime boss? He's neither menacing nor ruthless. He's almost got Ben Kenobi's attitude of living in the desert and not caring much about anything. Surprised Robert Rodrigues actually directed this. This episode felt rushed as if they knew how to make it good, but just wanted to get it over with sooner. I'll give it another shot in Ep2.

The movie starts well with sort of an interesting concept, even if seen in other movies already. Ryan Reynolds is a good actor that presents a likeable average "guy" who happens to be an NPC in a shooter game. I've played a bunch of video games, but who knew that NPCs have daily routines written by the programmers. They actually live somewhere with a pet fish. So during the time they walk from their house to whatever their job is, players can't do missions or what??? That's the kind of childish logic that leads the movie completely downhill. The protagonist and supports are doing a decent act, but the main antagonist is a complete idiot. How did someone like him manage to run a game company without the basic knowledge of computers? I mean the guy tried to axe the servers instead of pulling the plugs near the end. You'll say that it's a videogame movie, so it can't be too realisitc, but everything in it defies the most basic logic of software development. The original Tron makes more sense than this movie and it was written almost 40 years ago. So story aside and all the plotholes, the movie is further ruined by a bunch of youtube personas whom I've never heard of nor do I care to know. I did not need their opinion on guy to like or dislike him. Additionally, for a gamers' movie, it's somehow weird that all the male characters seemed like jerks or idiots while the good and ethical real player happens to be a female. I can go on and on since it's a trend throughout the whole film, but it's the kind of product you get when it passes through disney filters. At the end of the day it's mindless fun like pixels, but even that one stayed away from unnecessary messaging. In my book they're both equally fun/bad so I'll leave it at that.

This season finale felt rushed for so many reasons. Someone told the writers they had to connect all episodes into one final and get the protagonists/antagonists from earlier in here to fight mega powerful Ultron, but there was hardly any time to bond or develop a plan for that final battle. In "infinity war" the avengers couldn't beat Thanos and they had so many battles together already. So you're trying to convince me that a bunch of misfits with no strategy whatsoever could defeat a being so powerful it threatens the whole multiverse?!? The only one who was of any threat was Strange. The rest were just filler. This time around there was no iron man, no hulk, no guardians, no antman, etc. In reality Ultron would have decimated them in seconds. The fighting and all that were exciting to watch but the rest is way too shallow to be a satisfying finale. 9 for animation, 2 for story makes for an average 5.5.

Watched all episodes so far and this is by far the worst of the series by a huge margin. It's so bad that I skipped chunks here and there. It has no plot, substance or anything interesting going on. Couple of dumb jokes here and there, characters from various movies in a one giant mess of an episode. Oh, and how did Ultron get the infinity stones in the end when they were on Asgard at the beginning of the episode? He just took them without anyone noticing? Someone in elementary school wrote this.

To summarize the general agreement :

The first10 minutes are the only thing worth watching. Cole Young was unnecessary and given powers he did not deserve. Acting from all the cast was average or below. Worst of them were raiden, kung Lao, Liu Kang which were supposed to be the main ones. Best ones were sub zero, kano, scorpion and that's about it. The movie suffers from the same thing as annihilation. It throws characters without explanation who die within 10 minutes. How can they kill main characters without giving them barely any background story. The gory kills work in the game but here they're so cheesy it's just laughable.

Overall I'm a fan of the games and even the cutscenes in the last one make for a better story or acting than what's being told here. This is a B movie with good fx. Nothing more. Mk 1 is much better and that should tell you something . That one I can still watch because it was fun. This is a pretentious mess. Sure it tries to cater to fans but we need something more than mindless action. This movie is just an average flick that feels like a fan fiction of some sort. The costumes don't make things much more convenient, that's for sure. Saying one liners from the game didn't work in the previous movie. Doesn't work here either.