The FIGHT Scenes

[Original Desmond]

As someone who has been involved on and off with martial arts since the age of 7 and has watched zillions of martial arts movies, i'm very critical about fight scenes on screen

Now the fight scenes in the matrix, all i gotta say is they should have coughed up more money to get Jet Li!

The fight scene with the Smith agents had some cool set moves but overall was way too long. Keanu's moves are just too forced, his basic martial arts expertise is so very obvious. Carrie anne, i'm sorry babe, your terrible !

you can't but that kind of talent, i'm sorry. Jet , Jackie and most of the top HK movie stars could do heaps better with a much less budget

[UKingdom]

Jet Li would have played Seraph; I'm not sure how much better it would have been. You have to remember, Keanu has to fight in these scenes too. You can't expect a Hollywood actor to fight like Jet Li who has trained all his life. The trick is to speed up the fight scenes. They did this is in Fist of Legend and other things; here they fought like they would in real time, so maybe that's what made the scenes look dull (apart from not being very innovative and repetitive)

[Tarantino]

I liked the fights.

[madcougar]

Not knowing my @$$ from a hole in the ground with regard to martial arts, I liked it quite a bit.

[uteotw]

The dumbest thing about the fight scenes, I thought, were that Neo could fly away at any moment. Why stand there and fight 100 agents when he could just "up up & away"? Just for something to do? That aside, I thought they were awesome, and Jet Li would have only added to the mix.

[DVDHO]

Jet Li does kick a$$ but the dude cant act at all,im not saying Reeve's can act but he has some talent,IMO Jet Li makes a damm good B flick and I would have prolly passed on Reloaded if he was in it,sorry all its just the way I feel,he is a better fit for those low budget movies that come out once or twice a year,does anyone remember a movie called The One?

[mzupeman2]

Originally posted by uteotw
The dumbest thing about the fight scenes, I thought, were that Neo could fly away at any moment. Why stand there and fight 100 agents when he could just "up up & away"? Just for something to do? That aside, I thought they were awesome, and Jet Li would have only added to the mix.


Here goes, the answer in my own opinion:
Neo is 'The One' and he knows he has defeated Smith before. He's not afraid, and more in touch with using his special abilities than before. Smith revealing himself not to be an 'Agent' anymore, Neo sees no reason why not to go ahead and put Smith back in his place again when Smith starts the fight. More come and during this fight scene, Neo gets touched here and there but nothing compared to what he's doing with all the Smiths. I think it's pretty amazing that he was able to handle his own against so many Smiths. Damn amazing scene. But when he was getting dogpiled and such, and the numbers of Smith were obviously not going to thin in the least, in fact, exactly the opposite, Neo decided to live to fight another day. Also back on the ship, Trinity had said 'come on get out of there'... and the fact that almost right after he did, it could have been another way to show the connection between Neo and Trinity.

[badger1997]

I think too many people go into movies these days to nitpick any martial arts scenes there might be in it. I know absolutely nothing about martial arts and was wowed by every single damn fight scene in the movie. If you are watching with such a critical eye and not just losing yourself in the movie, I think you are doing yourself a disservice. At least, that's my opinion.

[TCG]

Originally posted by UKingdom
The trick is to speed up the fight scenes. They did this is in Fist of Legend and other things; here they fought like they would in real time
1. Exactly. In Fist of Legend, they sped it up. But at least in the MAtrix, they have an excuse to (if they do), but i dont think they have.

2. Chou is a much better actor than Jet Li. For that reason alone, he's better in the part.

[TCG]

Originally posted by uteotw
The dumbest thing about the fight scenes, I thought, were that Neo could fly away at any moment. Why stand there and fight 100 agents when he could just "up up & away"? Just for something to do? That aside, I thought they were awesome, and Jet Li would have only added to the mix.
it made perfect sense to me watching it. Neo obviously thought he could take them. He had no idea that Smith could create THAT many.

He fought until Smith's multiplying power became too much, and they simply overwhelmed him. When he realized he had no chance, he took off.

[Corvin]

Originally posted by badger1997
I think too many people go into movies these days to nitpick any martial arts scenes there might be in it. I know absolutely nothing about martial arts and was wowed by every single damn fight scene in the movie. If you are watching with such a critical eye and not just losing yourself in the movie, I think you are doing yourself a disservice. At least, that's my opinion.

I agree, although I don't think they do this disservice on purpose and I have to wonder if it's really avoidable.

That being said, I think the scenes were awesome. Especially Neo vs. the Smiths. Reeve's basic martial arts knowledge might stand out to, say, someone with years of experience, but to the mass audiences it looks like he knows his stuff.

Also, it takes some time for Neo to fly away. He always had to create that wave effect before flying, so that could be a plausible explanation as well. The Smiths weren't exactly going to let him get away.

[Krug]

I thought the fight scenes were cool. Unlike say, in Hero, where you had Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi pretend to fight. I thought the fight at the staircase was actually more exciting and fun.

[B.A.]

Most amazing fight scenes ever, imo. I refuse to nitpick them.

[atari2600]

agreed bahist. just friggin amazing.

did the actor who played smith have to tape himself like 100 times over to play all those parts? how the hell did they film those fight scenes?

[tor_greg]

There was a casting call for people that fit Hugo Weaving's physical profile.

[Bandoman]

I thought the fight scenes were fine. It's true that Keanu isn't a martial arts expert, but that didn't detract from the fun for me. Knowing that one Smith could handily kill any "normal" human, it made Neo's standstill against multiple Smiths pretty cool.

Jet Li would have been better as Seraph, but it's such a small part (in terms of screen time) that his absence didn't bother me.

If this were "merely" a martial arts movie, I would have been disapopinted, but the fighting was just part of the overall spectacle. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[clemente]

Originally posted by Original Desmond

you can't but that kind of talent, i'm sorry. Jet , Jackie and most of the top HK movie stars could do heaps better with a much less budget

Yes, they can, because they're life long trained martial artist. Narrowing your field of actor requirements for this movie to life long trained martial artist limits who you can cast....and if you look at HK stars there lack of command of the English language would hamper the movie much more than Keanu's rudimentary command of martial arts.

[hypeiv]

Originally posted by madcougar
Not knowing my @$$ from a hole in the ground with regard to martial arts, I liked it quite a bit.

I also don't know anything about martial arts, but it seemed all the fighting was a block then a pause, making it a choppy fighting style... I like the stuff in the first one better.

[theneobez]

Originally posted by bahist17
Most amazing fight scenes ever, imo. I refuse to nitpick them.

I'm with you. The movie has the finest action sequences and fight scenes along with the finest story line I have encountered.

[SunMonkey]

A few points from my perspective.

1. Neo knows most every martial art there is, so his "style" may well look bad to one only focused one or two styles.

2. Bad or not, a good portion of Neo fighting in the Smith gang fight was computer generated. Jet Li, Bruce Lee, or the Dali Lama would all have the same look in that sense when fighting.

3. Knowledge of martial arts also plays little in how wire work looks.

4. As was seen in The Phantom Menace, just because you see two actor fighting doesn't mean it is actually the actors fighting. Stunt fighters, with CGI faces of the actual actors might have been used. I don't know if this was the case in Reloaded, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

5. My problem with the Smiths fight rested soley on the cloth rendering, which to my eye just didn't look right.

[jarofclay73]

Like every other American movie which features Kung-Fu style fighting, the fight scenes are shot too tight.

Although Reloaded was technically better than the first, I feel the story element surrounding the fights was missing (e.g. fighting to talk to the Oracle). Sometimes I felt there was fighting for the sake of fighting. There was no element of danger that someone could die or even get hurt.

[devilshalo]

Four words:

Too. much. slow. motion.

[trigun]

The thing that I didn't like about the fights in Reloaded compared to some flicks I recently saw (Blade 2, Brotherhood of the Wolf) and the original Matrix, is that fights didn't seem to have any "umph" to them. In the first Matrix, every punch and kick looked and sounded very solid. Snipes was brutal in Blade 2. I winced when Mani would send guys flying with kicks in the stomach.

[collven]

OK, I'll be the first to admit, the fight scenes looked cool, on a technical level. But, come on, did we need a good 25% of the movie taken up by fighting. It got old very fast for me. My wife even looked at me and said it was stupid during the Smith fight. Now, I won't go that far, but like jarofclay said, there's no way that Neo or Morpheus were going to lose any of their fights, so what was the point of them lasting that long. I think the Wachiowskis were just trying to put as much eye candy in the movie as possible, at the expense of a tight narrative. I think a good 30 minutes could have been cut from the movie and it would have been much more tolerable, including the horrible "rave" scene.

[atari2600]

Originally posted by devilshalo
Four words:

Too. much. slow. motion.

uh, the slo-mo parts ruled. great effect.

[atari2600]

Originally posted by collven
OK, I'll be the first to admit, the fight scenes looked cool, on a technical level. But, come on, did we need a good 25% of the movie taken up by fighting. It got old very fast for me. My wife even looked at me and said it was stupid during the Smith fight. Now, I won't go that far, but like jarofclay said, there's no way that Neo or Morpheus were going to lose any of their fights, so what was the point of them lasting that long. I think the Wachiowskis were just trying to put as much eye candy in the movie as possible, at the expense of a tight narrative. I think a good 30 minutes could have been cut from the movie and it would have been much more tolerable, including the horrible "rave" scene.

well we dont know they were going to win the fights...ive seen good guys lose fights before (of course, never the final fight) but i loved the fight scenes and as i realized how long they were, i was more and more impressed with what they did. just unbelievable.

lots of new unique 'moves' when he was fighting the smiths and just all around fun. i was glad they were long and i just sat in my seat soaking it all up with a smile on my face in amazement.

my fav scene was on the staircase against those 4 or 5 guys with the swords.

[Original Desmond]

Originally posted by SunMonkey
A few points from my perspective.

1. Neo knows most every martial art there is, so his "style" may well look bad to one only focused one or two styles.



Actually it's just the reverse. I'm familiar at least to some degree with most style of martial arts around and Keanu/Neo uses about 2 of them ! His techniques are very very limited

with a skilled enough individual the choregraphy possibilties are endless !

you could transition smoothly from the tight hand techniques that Keanu actually did use of styles like Wing Chun and Northern Kung fu styles to the low leg kicks and knee techniques of Muay thai, then to the acrobatic kicks of Capoeria then to some dynamic groundwork of Brazilian Ju jitsu (a good flying armbar would look wikid on the big screen), then to the rapid fire combination kicks of Taekwondo. Throw in some good old Western boxing, some unorthodox Drunken kung fu, chain punches from Wing chun, ground and pound wrestling and you could have a hell of a fight scene!

instead we got very few techniques repeated over and over all due to Keanu's poofy martial arts ability

[clemente]

Originally posted by Original Desmond

with a skilled enough individual the choregraphy possibilties are endless !

you could transition smoothly from the tight hand techniques that Keanu actually did use of styles like Wing Chun and Northern Kung fu styles to the low leg kicks and knee techniques of Muay thai, then to the acrobatic kicks of Capoeria then to some dynamic groundwork of Brazilian Ju jitsu (a good flying armbar would look wikid on the big screen), then to the rapid fire combination kicks of Taekwondo. Throw in some good old Western boxing, some unorthodox Drunken kung fu, chain punches from Wing chun, ground and pound wrestling and you could have a hell of a fight scene!

instead we got very few techniques repeated over and over all due to Keanu's poofy martial arts ability

Yeah, that's an awesome possibility, why hasn't it been done before???

I'm guessing because even the best fight choreographer and skilled actor would have a hell of a time trying to do that.

[devilshalo]

Originally posted by atari2600
uh, the slo-mo parts ruled. great effect.

Sorry, to me, they didn't rule and made the scenes last a lot longer than they should have. Once is ok, twice.. eh.. but it was way overused.

[isamu]

To all those that did not like the fighting scenes...

THE MATRIX HAS YOU!

[matome]

In my book MR can now lay claim to:

Best Car Chase - don't know how much CGI they used during this but it was seamless. only nitpick is that all the vehicles were obviously Olds & GM vehicles (product placement at it's best)

Best fight scene (staircase)

[Travis Bickle]

Someone posted here earlier about a lack of "umphf" with the fight sequences and I couldn't agree more.

It's blarring to me because it's on every level - from the sound effects (very, very weak - no bone-cracking or brick bursting power punches), to a lack of importance or danger. My comment about a sense of danger may simply be unavoidable, since Neo is now the One. However, what the hell happened to the sound in this movie! I came home to watch the first one and it's got much better sound. You can hear every "whish" through the air, and every impact. Even when a target is missed (Smith punching the brick wall in the subway station, Morpheus landing on the dojo floor in training with Neo, etc.) we still hear and feel the impact. It just felt so damn synthetic. Was this intentional? Very, very diappointing.

Also, I never, EVER want to see another CGI fight sequence with CGI actors. Horrible is not even a proper word to describe it. It ruined what was looking to be one of the coolest lit and staged sequences in Blade 2, and did the same thing here. Thank God for the Chateu fight (is that is?) with the Marovigans henchmen.

Still, great movie, but for different reasons than the first.

[khai]

Originally posted by collven
OK, I'll be the first to admit, the fight scenes looked cool, on a technical level. But, come on, did we need a good 25% of the movie taken up by fighting. It got old very fast for me. My wife even looked at me and said it was stupid during the Smith fight. Now, I won't go that far, but like jarofclay said, there's no way that Neo or Morpheus were going to lose any of their fights, so what was the point of them lasting that long. I think the Wachiowskis were just trying to put as much eye candy in the movie as possible, at the expense of a tight narrative. I think a good 30 minutes could have been cut from the movie and it would have been much more tolerable, including the horrible "rave" scene.

Hmm, I think this has to do with knowing what is going on at a technical level. I most certainly enjoyed the Burly Brawl scene the most. I actually wished it lasted longer. :D

I read alot on what John Gaeta and his crew did to get the Burly Brawl to look the way it did. Customized Sony digicams streaming 1 Gigabyte of data per second!! holy crap! Just seeing the stuff happening just made me get a big grin on my face. :) Neo spinning like a helicopter hehe.

God dammit, now I want to go see the movie again.

[Spiky]

Originally posted by Travis Bickle
Someone posted here earlier about a lack of "umphf" with the fight sequences and I couldn't agree more.

It's blarring to me because it's on every level - from the sound effects (very, very weak - no bone-cracking or brick bursting power punches), to a lack of importance or danger. My comment about a sense of danger may simply be unavoidable, since Neo is now the One. However, what the hell happened to the sound in this movie! I came home to watch the first one and it's got much better sound. You can hear every "whish" through the air, and every impact. Even when a target is missed (Smith punching the brick wall in the subway station, Morpheus landing on the dojo floor in training with Neo, etc.) we still hear and feel the impact. It just felt so damn synthetic. Was this intentional? Very, very diappointing.
.
Wait for the DVD. Movie theaters suck. I saw this in the newest theater in my area. The bass didn't even approach what I can do at home for depth and presence.

I agree that the fight scenes with Neo did seem pretty synthetic and a bit underwhelming because of his ability. But I wouldn't know how to avoid that because of his ability in this story. Tricky.

[CheapBastid]

Originally posted by clemente
Yeah, that's an awesome possibility, why hasn't it been done before???

I'm guessing because even the best fight choreographer and skilled actor would have a hell of a time trying to do that. I suggest you investigate some good old fashioned Sammo Hung movies...

=)

While he's not combining all the styles mentioned before, there are a good representations nonetheless.

[Daytrip]

i think it's perfect, you can't expect even the ONE to just start kicking butt after what he went through to get out of the matrix the first time. the fights in the matrix are determined by how fast your mind works not how good of a martial artist you are. i think the cast's progression in martial arts makes sence in the movie, you have to admit they are A LOT better than they where in the first one...........as they should be, at least neo anyway. he's had time to hone his skills. i think the first neo/agent fight and the fight with Seraph where the best fights in the movie. the neo/smiths fight was awesome because of the fact that neo could keep up with that many agents............it took him so much to beat one smith in the first one now he can handle that many. shows his advancement

[Derrich]

Originally posted by Spiky
Wait for the DVD. Movie theaters suck. I saw this in the newest theater in my area. The bass didn't even approach what I can do at home for depth and presence.


You're going to the wrong theatres. I saw it at two different places and you could feel the walls shaking from the bass.

D

[TCG]

Originally posted by Travis Bickle
Someone posted here earlier about a lack of "umphf" with the fight sequences and I couldn't agree more.

It's blarring to me because it's on every level - from the sound effects (very, very weak - no bone-cracking or brick bursting power punches), to a lack of importance or danger. My comment about a sense of danger may simply be unavoidable, since Neo is now the One. However, what the hell happened to the sound in this movie! I came home to watch the first one and it's got much better sound. You can hear every "whish" through the air, and every impact. Even when a target is missed (Smith punching the brick wall in the subway station, Morpheus landing on the dojo floor in training with Neo, etc.) we still hear and feel the impact. It just felt so damn synthetic. Was this intentional? Very, very diappointing.
Well, I had the same feeling after seeing it in one theater. But I saw it again last night in a different theater, and the sound was much better. The fight scenes had more 'oomph'. especially the first one with Trinity. i could clearly hear crunching bones.

so, to explain - no, there is too much. let me sum up: it might be the theater.

[Crack 6K]

I think the countless fight scenes that shows Neo being superior in every way and virtually unbeatable plays extremely well and contrasts the end sequence (meeting with the Architect) nicely. For 90% of the movie you expect Neo being basically Superman and killing everything without effort. The interesting part is what kind of resistance he will face. But then the Architect bombs your expectations.... changes everything you thought without changing the main goal. Do you honestly think the speech would've been as intruiging or surprising if the Neo fights had been less dramatic? The fights solidify our thoughts about Neo being "The One", and the Architect leaves us going, "Woah...."

[f1shf00d]

going back to why Neo does not fly away: Remember that the Oracle tells him that he's not too bright? Well, Neo seems to be the kind of guy who needs a little push to figure out stuff; hence, he just fought Seriph who tells him, "you don't truly know someone until you've fought him." So Neo has this thought in his head when Smith shows...so he fights, but the fight escalates very quickly, and since Neo can only fly (like the Hulk leaps) by pushing off from the ground, he doesn't really have time to do that (as far as he's concerned). We suspect that he could push off from the walls of just take off from a jump, but he doesn't seem to fly without pushing off the ground (until after he talks to the architect--which we don't see, but since the building is exploding around him, I think he just flew).
So anyway,...........................my2¢............