Part 13: Never watching THE MATRIX again

OK, it’s been about 6 months now and the dust has settled. I heard from a friend that someone at Warner Brothers had a copy & it was making the rounds. Just want to state for the record that I LOVE Warner Brothers. What a great, easy-going, non-litigious group of folks that is…

Also, I noticed a DivX version of what appears to be my edit has popped up on some torrents. Turns out there was another Matrix : Regenerated fan edit out there, only limited to the 2nd & 3rd films. This created some chatter I think, but up until this week I hadn’t seen mine leak out yet.

Also, I was curious as to how a rabid MATRIX fan would take my version. People seem really passionate about the ‘sanctity’ of an original, but REGENERATED doesn’t make a claims against that or even generate any profits. My version is at least mutated enough (Chinese dubbing, false subtitles) that no one would rightly mistake it for the originals or even use it as a substitute for the others (i.e. “I just downloaded this for free, why would I buy it?). It does feel like a different film, not some bastardized version.

Most criticism seemed related to tampering with the artistic vision of the originals, but I guess that is the knee-jerk reaction. There were some valid points about ways to have improved the flow of the story, or recommendations if I was going to clean up sections with minor tweaks, but I’ve decided against further changes. I’d rather re-edit a new film. There’s only so much “Matrix” a guy can take…

For me, the most ‘unprofessional’ aspect of the edit is the section in which Neo is meeting with the Oracle after entering “The Source”. I had no good explanation for why he was there, why the Source led back to her, etc. And the editing is a bit clumsy to top it all off. I wanted to get Neo awake and the plot moving again, but couldn’t resist the little scene where she warns him of Smith. By far this is the weakest link in my edit.

Anyway, if you enjoyed it, great. It was mostly for my own fun and technical education. And if you’d like a more high-quality version of the edit than these XVID encodings, I know that some of the full 2-disc copies are floating around. I got some reaction back from people who had seen it while at a comic convention, so I’m sure you can find it if you look…