The
Ultimate Matrix Collection: Discs One & Two
Title: The Matrix & The
Matrix Revisited
Genre: Science Fiction
Stars: Keanu Reeves,
Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne-Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano
Writers: The Wachowski
Brothers
Directors: The Wachowski
Brothers
Matrix Revisited Director:
Josh Oreck
Feature lengths: 136
minutes/122 minutes
The Matrix Extras: Written
Introduction By The Wachowski Brothers, Audio Commentary With Scholars Dr.
Cornel West and Ken Wilber, Audio Commentary With Critics Todd McCarthy, John
Powers and Dave Thomson
The Matrix Revisited
Extras: Music Tracks, Behind The Matrix Featurette, Take The Red Pill
Featurettes and Follow The White Rabbit Featurettes
Languages: English and
French (Dubbed In Quebec) Language Dolby Digital Surround 5.1 Surround Sound
Subtitles: English Captions
and Closed Captions and French and Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging: Two-Disc
Digipack Within A Cardboard Slipcase
Chapter Stops: 38/33
Sound: Dolby Digital
Surround 5.1 Surround Sound
Year of Theatrical Release:
1999/DVD Release: 2004
Theatrical Distributor:
Warner Brothers
Home Video Distributor:
Warner Home Video
MPAA Rating: R
Reviewer: Mark A. Rivera
Taking The
Red Pill Once Again… An Overview Of The
Ultimate Matrix Collection
Every year it seems that
there is at least one genre feature film franchise that gets the “Ultimate”
treatment with enough features to keep one busy in front of their monitors for
hours. Last year Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment released the “Alien
Quadrilogy” DVD set that raised the bar for film sets in general with a
whopping nine discs worth of material. This year Warner Home Video resets the
bar Fox set last year with an incredible ten-disc DVD set entitled “The
Ultimate Matrix Collection.” Regardless of how one may feel about the second
and third feature films in the series, the truth is that The Matrix Trilogy
is one of the most popular American science fiction feature film franchises ever
produced. “The Matrix” is truly an example of post-modern mythology and just
as George Lucas’ original “Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope” changed the
way space opera films and television shows were produced with what was then
ground breaking technology that no one had ever seen executed in such a way
before, “The Matrix” truly has changed the manner in which films and
television programs of all genres are produced today.
Originally released on DVD
in 1999, “The Matrix” is one of the best selling DVD titles of all time and
probably had an impact on DVD player sales thereafter. Times have changed a lot
since 1999. We now have technology that appears to grow exponentially more
sophisticated in almost every area of being. DVD-Video has changed so much that
“The Matrix” DVD that was released back in 1999 seems antiquated in
comparison to what has followed since. Producer Joel Silver had commented over
the past year or so a wish to revisit “The Matrix” on DVD again and release
a version with better picture quality in keeping with the DVD releases of Warner
Home Video’s “The Matrix Reloaded: Widescreen Edition” and “The Matrix
Revolutions: Two-Disc Widescreen Edition.” With the trilogy complete and all
of the films already available on DVD, The Wachowski Brothers along with
Director of Photography Bill Pope supervised the new digital transfer of “The
Matrix” found only within this ten-disc box set.
Cosmetically speaking, the
set is very eye catching with a hard cardboard box slipcase with the signature
matrix coding streaming down on all sides. If one were not familiar with “The
Matrix” at all, one could mistake the set for something you might see The Borg
fly around in on “Star Trek.” Inside the slipcase are five Digipack
gatefolds similar to the way Paramount Home Entertainment packaged “The
Godfather DVD Collection” that was released in 2001. For the three feature
films there are two discs with handsome cover and surface art. There is also a
“Revisited” documentary disc for all three films now. The fourth Digipack
gatefold contains “The Animatrix,” which serves as a prequel to The
Matrix Trilogy, a prelude to “The Matrix Reloaded,” and a companion to
the entire series in general. The fifth Digipack gatefold is labeled “The
Matrix Experience” and features three more discs full of bonus materials and
are labeled as “The Roots Of The Matrix,” “The Burly Man Chronicles,”
and “The Zion Archive.” I will detail the contents of these sets in four
more parts that included with the review you are reading now will and make up my
appraisal of “The Ultimate Matrix Collection” DVD box set as a whole. I did
the same thing last year with the “Alien Quadrilogy” and I find for me
personally examining the parts in individual full reviews is easier then trying
to cram everything in one shot and I think that it does the product more justice
than just a general overview too.
Right from the beginning I
was happy to see that the discs were easy to get to because in last year’s
American Region One edition of the “Alien Quadrilogy” set from Fox, the
discs were all in this giant nine-disc gatefold Digipack that was extremely
cumbersome to get through. There’s also a beautiful 24 page booklet inside
detailing the contents of the set along with colorful artwork and a text
introduction by The Wachowski Brothers, which is also available for onscreen
reading on disc one of the set and there is even a bibliography that somehow
adds a sense of completeness to the entire set as a whole as if it were an
academic project or something.
The
Matrix
Day-in, day out, humanity
has been lulled into an illusion created by all-powerful machines that comprise
a large network of sentient artificial Intelligence, who use humanity literally
as batteries in a nightmarish symbiotic relationship. However, a prophesy of one
who will lead the fight to free humanity from the matrix has a select group of
freedom fighters jacking into the matrix in search of their savior while trying
to evade the clutches of the Agents, computer anti-virus programs that are
practically unstoppable within this artificial world.
Honestly, this film is so
huge and was so successful, I do not think an extensive review of the film
itself is necessary except to say the Wachowski Brothers have managed to take
elements from Hong Kong Cinema, Classic Science Fiction, Japanese Anime,
Religion, Mythology and so on and created something that as a whole is original
on to itself. “The Matrix” is the rare film that satisfies on so many levels
that almost anyone can watch the film and enjoy it. In short, “The Matrix”
is truly “the whole package!”
Warner Brothers new DVD
edition exclusive to this set features a (2.40:1) widescreen transfer enhanced
for 16 by 9 televisions that is simply great coupled with an intense English
Dolby Digital Surround 5.1 Soundtrack on a dual layered DVD disc. I popped in
the original 1999 DVD release after I finished watching the film and listening
to both audio commentary tracks and the difference in picture quality is in my
opinion profound. In part because this is from a newly supervised digital
transfer and in part because of the advances in DVD authoring technology that
have occurred over the years, “The Matrix” just looks so mind blowing that
comparing this new transfer to the original is like comparing the original to a
VHS tape. The amount of compression grain that softened the image quality of the
1999 DVD is all but gone and the overall look of the film now matches the look
of the sequels on DVD too. The green tone of the matrix is more pronounced, but
less fuzzy. The world outside the matrix has a blue tint to it that
distinguishes the two realms more clearly than ever before. The English Dolby
Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack seemed a bit crisper, but the soundtrack
difference did not jump out at me the way the picture quality on the disc caught
my eyes. A French Language (Dubbed in Quebec) Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Soundtrack is also included along with English Captions and Closed Captions for
the hearing impaired and French and Spanish Language Subtitles encoded onto the
DVD as options.
Some of the extra value
features found on the original 1999 DVD release have been pushed onto the other
discs in the set while other features like the commentary with Actress
Carrie-Anne Moss, Editor Zach Straenberg, and Special Effects Supervisor John
Gaeta as well as the isolated music-only commentary with Composer Don Davis
remain exclusive to only the original 1999 DVD release. To provide a greater
contrast, which they hoped would encourage further conversation about The
Matrix Trilogy as a whole; The Wachowski Brothers have elected to have
Philosophers Dr. Cornel West and Ken Wilber provide feature length comments for
all three films while on an alternate track, Critics Todd McCarthy of Variety,
John Powers of Vogue, and David Thomson, Author of The New
Biographical Dictionary of Film provide a different point of view that is
purposely not always favorable with regard to the trilogy as a whole.
West and Wilber seemed very
much beside themselves while discussing the film in part from the context of
being only a part of a greater whole. At times they can’t help but reveal
spoilers of things to come and at other times they both don’t say a word as if
they’ve become captivated by the action itself. In contrast the Critics never
stop talking and are not quite as enthusiastic about the film as the
Philosophers are, but they are generally positive in their comments about the
film, recognizing that this film resonates more with younger people than it does
older people. Overall, I found both commentary tracks to be extremely
interesting and entertaining.
The menus begin within the
den of the Architect with the walls of monitors that give away to full motion
scene selection menus and fully animated transitions and all of the interactive
menus easy to navigate.
The
Matrix Revisited
The interactive menus on
disc two begin in the same way the disc one menus open so I’m guessing this
will be the case for the other eight as well. Aside from the main menu, which
features scenes from the film, all of the other interactive menus are standard
still frames that are also easy to navigate. Originally released in the autumn
of 2001, “The Matrix Revisited” is presented again here in a (1.33:1) aspect
ratio with an English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack and English Captions
and Closed Captions for the hearing impaired as well as French and Spanish
Language Subtitles encoded onto the DVD as options.
This behind-the-scenes look
at “The Matrix” in many ways seems more like an extended EPK and some of the
comments regarding the second and third films in the trilogy just don’t seem
to carry as much weight as they might have because by now anyone who is a fan of
the series has seen all three films on big screen and DVD already so it just
doesn’t hold up as well as just watching the movie itself. I found the extra
value materials included on the disc to be more entertaining than the 122-minute
documentary. “The Music Revisited” contains nearly three hours of music
chosen by the Wachowski Brothers in creating the film. These 41 tracks can be
listened to individually or collectively in sequence. I cannot say I have heard
much if any of the music contained in this section, which I guess shows my age
as a reviewer as much anything else. The six “Behind The Matrix” featurettes
(17:15) as well as the two “Take The Red Pill” featurettes (17:99) and six
“Follow The White Rabbit” featurettes (22:50) from the original 1999 DVD
release are now included here on “The Matrix Revisited” disc. All of the
discs are InterActual enhanced and feature DVD-ROM links for Windows based PC
users.
“The Ultimate Matrix Collection” DVD box set will debut at retailers on and offline on Tuesday, December 7, 2004 from Warner Home Video, but don’t stop reading about the set just yet. Follow the white rabbit to part two of my review.
© Copyright 2004 By Mark
A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
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