Matrix 2.0, The: Battle for Zion

Took the liberty of watching this last night. Glad I did!

I’ve seen Reloaded a couple times, Revolutions about 4 times. Reloaded came over as a sort of quasi-philosophical ride, that had potential, but got bogged down in subplots and redundancy. Revolutions just went all out Sci-Fi. Whilst they’re nice to watch, they never even got close to the original with it’s dark, thrillerish intrigue.

I’ve watched Spence’s take on it. I’ve also watched JasonN’s Evolutions. Neither are fully satisfying, but are good attempts.

With this in mind, yours appeared to be the most radical take on it, but I will admit to going into this a little half-hearted, but at 90 minutes to cover both films – it wasn’t going to kill me……and boy it didn’t!!!!

This is a really fun ride DanGarrett. At only 20 minutes in, I realised this was going to be a fast actioned take on things. You’ve seriously slimmed down two fats dudes into a trim athlete here, who is not some dumb action hero either. There’s still intelligence in this film, you’ve managed to keep the theme of fate running right through. You’ve trimmed it right back to a single plot and this is a good thing. It’s easy to follow and keeps your interest all the way through. There’s no dropoff in pace, in fact we have many high impact scenes that seem appropriate. At 58 minutes in, I was thinking, ‘yea, this is really working.’

- I like how you replaced Neo’s visions of Trinity’s death with visions of his own death, which we never saw in the original film.

- I liked how the mainframe was essentially – The Source.

- I’m sure you’ve split up the scene of Smith taking over The Oracle and placed it further back in the film. This works wonderfully.

I’ll give this a 9/10 overall I think.

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

Just finished watching it. First let me say ‘you did it’. You made a Matrix sequels fan edit the way I had always wanted to see it. A while back, after having watched all of the other Matrix sequels fan edits, I had planned on making one that combines both into one film, and most importantly moves the fight against the machines in the real world to the same time in the story as the end of Reloaded. So for doing that, I say ‘thank you’.

My first impression when I started watching this was “Wow, BOTH films condensed into only an hour and 47 minutes? Impossible!!” But, you proved me wrong, for the most part. If anything, my only suggestion to improve this fan edit is that I feel the narrative should be fleshed out a little more. I like how everything you did changes the plot, but I feel like I’m watching an edited for tv version that condenses it down for time. What I mean is, it feels rushed and over-edited. To me this edit would be perfect if you added back in roughly 30 minutes of footage, making the run-time 2 hours 15 minutes. Granted, I’m NOT saying I want you to add back in characterization for characters that don’t need it (like Link, his wife, the kid, the general, or the little girl and her family), but I feel that we should’ve had a little more just to give us a better idea of who some of these characters are (like Lock and Niobe). A little bit more of Smith never hurts either, but I do like how the first time we see him use his “duplicating powers” is on the agent, and DEFINITELY prefer seeing him do that to Neo only once at the end. Adding back in a little bit would also help with the ending, which is very feel good and uplifting. I would’ve used the dance party scene as a way to show Zion celebrating their victory, but I wonder if you cut that out because you didn’t care for the scene.

Also, I would’ve liked to see more of the fight/battle scenes (though you edited them better than all the other Reloaded/Revolutions edits. Remember, I’ve seen them all. None of them ever edited the fight scenes right, mostly due to the music). However, I understand that since we’re seeing this all in one movie, pacing is important and too much of the fighting scenes can be overkill. Though one scene in particular that I wish you hadn’t edited so much was the chase scene in Revolutions when Niobe is outrunning the sentinels, as I felt it was the funnest scene in the theatrical version. The other captain’s line of “I had no idea this ship could do that” makes me laugh every time. I can tell you don’t care for CGI Neo and Smith during the first Burly Brawl. That’s why we only see a little bit of them in CGI at the end of the scene, correct?

No reason for me to go into detail about these points, but I’m glad your edit doesn’t have any sub-plots of Neo having power outside of the Matrix, no sub plot of there being other “ones”, no sub plot of system shut down and resetting the Matrix, no Neo premonitions of the future, no dude who is Smith in the real world, no train station guy, no Trinity deaths, no council elder talking to Neo with his pseudo-psychology 101 rhetoric, no time wasted on characters that appear out of nowhere (and/or add nothing to the plot), and not much of the little girl and none of her family. In fact to me, in your edit it seems more like she will be the next Oracle, and not the next “one”. Which works better IMO.

Ok, onto my nitpicks. I didn’t like the Oracle’s sudden change in appearance or Neo’s outfit, but that can’t be helped. The edit of Sariph and Neo switching places in the small house (since they don’t fight) kinda threw me off. Lastly, I personally didn’t care for the opening 5 minute flashback. Everyone has seen the first film, so we all know what’s going on. It was edited perfectly though.

Anyway, for now the “Hacked” edits are my “go to” edits when I’m in the mood for some Matrix, but you’ve laid the groundwork for that changing. Consider some of my ideas and your edit will de-throne them from my collection. However, do not let this deter you, as after the “Hacked” edits, yours is WITHOUT A DOUBT the next best edit (and very close to being better than them). Remember, I’ve seen all the edits so I know which ones are good. When I planned on making my own edit of these films I re-watched ALL the fan edits of the Matrix sequels and took notes of each of what I liked and disliked about each one so that my edit would be perfect. You’ve basically done it for me. And that really, really means a lot.

As for a rating: 9 out of 10.

I really enjoyed the narrative choices that were made in this fanedit. Several of little things that bothered me in the original films were cut like the Kid and Link's wife. Like others have stated, the location markers are a little distracting but I can understand why they were used especially during the second act climax as Neo enters the source and the Hammer is preparing to return to Zion.

There were a few audio jumps that I noticed while wearing headphone and the visual editing is slightly 'choppy' in spots, as another reviewer mentioned. However, the run-time for this fanedit is in what I like to call the sweet spot, between 90-120 minutes, and like I stated earlier the narrative is unique and refreshing. I particularity like the new ending.

Overall, I really enjoyed this take on the Matrix sequels and think that the editor did a fantastic job.

Battle for Zion is a really interesting effort to combine the two Matrix sequel films in a new context, and I felt that some decisions were strokes of genius while others exposed that the two original stories actually had more plot than I realized, making them diverge more (and combine less effectively) as this edit progressed.

SPOILERS FOR THIS EDIT FOLLOW.

First, I should say that I’m relatively new to Fanedit and this is the first Matrix edit I’ve seen (and that means that I don’t know whether or not any editing decisions here have been made in others), but the concept of making a totally new film out of the guts of the two existing sequels really fascinated me, and the way Dangermouse pulled it off led to some really brilliant CHANGES to the story, entirely repurposing some scenes for use in a new way. Some scenes were used like that to create “shortcuts” that helped excise subplots, and these were the parts I enjoyed the most, for their ingenuity.
One of these is the decision to make the encounter with the Architect into a significant end goal. There’s no need to visit the elaborate machine mainframe environment, because we can visit the Architect at that point instead and it serves the same purpose! And the removal of the Trinity-death subplot means that Neo’s motivations change significantly, because his recurring visions of HIS OWN death from the end of Revolutions (in place of the visions of Trinity’s death) give him a totally different kind of internal conflict. When he says he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do and is reluctant to open up to Trinity, it’s for different reasons – he knows he’s going to die if he chooses to face Smith. In his discussion with the Architect, he finds the courage to open the door anyway, returning from there to face Smith in the matrix, even though he already knows the end result – he’s doing it because he wants to make a choice. I’d say “choice” is what this edit really boils down to and emphasizes far more than the original films, and it’s where this really shines – the Architect makes it clear that the problem is human choice – it’s something that the machines can’t wrap their brains around. So, it works extremely well when immediately after this discussion Neo returns to face Smith, because after being beaten he continues to struggle and attempt to fight, and when Smith asks him why, Neo says it’s because he chooses to. This is all thematically rock solid, and I really applaud Dangermouse for this combined sequence. There are a number of great things like this that refocus the story on something new, and give the remaining action sequences more meaning. I also really liked that the real-world-Smith character was entirely removed – a fantastic idea.

However, there are parts that I think don’t work very well at all. I can’t really nitpick about some of the hard cuts that come late in the story because they simply have to be there – the stories of the two films have diverged so much by that point that putting them together is going to mean an awful lot of jumping around. Too much, really. At the end, there are like 6 different locations with simultaneous events – so many that Dangermouse has to have a constant “location” identifier text message appear at the start of each scene, telling us where we are now and what certain groups of characters are doing, and how long it is until a certain event will occur that was mentioned earlier. If I look at this edit alone and try to forget the original films, that process just doesn’t work well; if there needs to be a message to tell us what characters are doing in each scene, the movie itself isn’t doing a good enough job at communication. Without those messages I would have been utterly lost, which makes me think there must have been a way to streamline things a bit more. There are just way too many characters at the end, characters from both films. Perhaps somehow removing some of these characters entirely would have helped, or making it so some things happen in sequence instead of simultaneously. Other reviews here are saying a solution might be to cut LESS – but since the story this edit is telling is basically something new, I might even cut MORE – whatever it takes to focus in even tighter on the characters and storylines that really matter here, if just so we don’t need that text. Some of the subplots that were kept in really only seemed to be there to show how a character got from one place to another. I’m not sure how an issue like that could be resolved with the available footage, but there it is.
Another issue I had was the ending, which, for me, hurt the edit – it felt blatant and out-of-place. I don’t know how it could have been done better, given that both Neo and Trinity survived – but perhaps leaving things a bit more ambiguous could have helped. If not, I like tylerdurden’s idea of maybe just using the entire rave sequence as the ending so it’d feel a bit more substantial – but I still respect and appreciate the decision that was made.

END SPOILERS.

Conclusion: I have to say, I definitely couldn’t just show someone this edit and call it a standalone sequel to The Matrix, because while it does conclude that story within a single movie, everything just gets so fractured and dizzying that the plot progression has to pretty much be held together by text notifications as it moves along.
However, as an exercise in editing, The Matrix 2.0: Battle for Zion is a great success. I will recommend this edit specifically to those who are already very familiar with Reloaded and Revolutions, because once you see how everything has been repurposed and reorganized, you will really appreciate exactly what Dangermouse has done to establish totally different motivations and arcs for characters. It’s evident that this was really a tough thing to do and it’s a lot of fun to see the results.

7/10