I was rewatching the Matrix Reloaded yesterday, and the fight scene between neo and all the thugs while the keymaker is trying to escape was really incredible. ( i knew that, i had just forgotten exactly how incredible) I was also thinking, why didn't Lucas make the fight between sidious, and the three Jedi masters more like that one? It wouldn't have added a lot of stage time, because instead of Neo hitting them over and over and them getting up, when sidious hit them once with a saber, they would have been finished, it would have also made their deaths much more realistic, and made sidious appear that much more powerful, because now his feat of killing the three all at once just makes them appear that much weaker.
When Neo is leaping around the hallway, from stair case to stair case, and using the sword, that can only be described as Jedi. If he had been holding a saber, and the others had been too, it would have been the greatest fight scene in Star Wars history. I've heard that the reason for the famous Star wars "pause" at the end of fight scenes to allow one combatant to win, is because its almost impossible to coreograph an actual "loss" in a sword fight. But apparently not. You don't see one such pause in the matrix.
So in conclusion: should we have expected more from lucas than he ended up giving us? I heard a lot "it was the best they could do" comments for a few months after episode 3, but as the matrix shows, it could have been better.
In terms of combat scenes, Matrix surpasses Star Wars, at least the PT anyway as both trilogies make use of CGI and SFX. And that would have been a good fight, replace Neo with Sidious and the henchmen with the Jedi.
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Actually I think the SW duels were better- though Neo vs. Smith in the first Matrix film is the ultimate challenger to that- but Matrix did larger fights better, I would agree.
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Err... no, while SW big-scale fights aren't generally very impressive, stuff like Sidious vs. Yoda and Obi-Wan vs. Anakin simply trumps the shit out of anything Matrix has to offer. In a response to Knightfall, Sidious looked like an old man in the fight against Mace because McDiarmid IS an old man; and the CGI stuff, like the spin, were pretty cool. You saw the difference when Sidious was done using CGI and stunt doubles in his fight against Yoda- that's why is was so much faster than the Mace duel.
However, I would've done the same as NG's original vision and let doubles do the duelling, rather than mainly the actors like GL suggested. Definetly no Matrix stuff.
you wouldn't even have the leaping around? i mean, that is what Jedi DO. Everything neo did, if he were a jedi, could have easily been explained with the force. So, don't call it matrixy stuff, call it force jumping and acrobatics. You wouldn't be interested in more of those?
But for the sake of it, the Neo vs. Smith fight in the first Matrix is IMO, the better out of any PT duel (I don't count OT, as they're a different league in their own right from the PT). And I'd still rank the Reloaded Neo vs. Smiths on par with the Duel of Fates and Anakin vs. Obi-Wan.
Still, one's a sword fight, the other's hand-to-hand, too different to fairly compare, preference aside.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
I wasn't actually talking about Neo vs. the Smiths, it was Neo vs. the Henchmen, in that one they were all using weapons at one time or another. And you are right, they were punching in between sword swings, but that would still be possible of a Jedi, and would make them seem that much more dangerous.
While I would have preferred a flashier fight that lasted a teeny bit longer against the three Jedi that accompanied Mace, I was satisfied with the actual Sidious vs. Windu duel.
Registered: Apr 2008
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Errr... Tangible God, do you actually consider OT fights superior to PT fights?
Anywayz. The only stuff I've seen that RIVALS the duels in Star Wars are stuff like the final fight in Return of the King and the massive maelstorm battle at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean 3- flashy, intense, and massively thrilling large fights. Even fights like Sidious vs. Mace do the job; in the cinema, I was absolutely thrilled by the fight, as I was by almost every duel in the actual movie. Sorry, I still consider Ani vs. Obi/Sidious vs. Yoda to be the best action scene I ever saw.
Never said that, said it was a different league. Flashy and fast-paced CGI-enhanced fights are cool, but there's still something about the OT duels that inspires a little more soul.
And yeah, those final sequences are awesome, but seeing as how one's an epic battle between hundreds of thousands of orcs and knights, the other an epic sea battle between pirate ships in a whirlpool, and Star Wars being one-on-one sword fights between Force-wielding Jedi... they don't really mesh in terms of similarity.
There is a difference between something as upscale as the RotK and Pirates battles, and something as down-scaled (though no less epic) as Star Wars saber duels. Duels and battles are different things.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
May 30th, 2008 08:17 PM
FER TEA!!
