Enter the Matrix

when I think of the matrix I think of neo doing the "come hither" movement with his hand before a fight

I have a certain regard for the sequels but I rewatched the whole trilogy recently and the dialogue in the last two is super cringe at times.

Things I liked about the sequels:

- maximum Agent Smith (do not @ me, I love that character)
- the soundtrack for Reloaded is great iirc
- the weirdness of two of the guys from Changing Rooms cast as villains
- Revolutions maybe edges Reloaded slightly for me, Reloaded is very fun but it’s a bit too computer game and there’s not enough humour. A big part of what I loved so much of the original was the touches of humour in the right places that stopped it being overly pompous.
- also, the notion of contamination between the worlds (even if they don’t flesh it out right)

Things I didn’t:
- Cypher is an incredibly relatable villain, there’s nobody quite like him in the sequels. They’re all either Smiths or rushed caricatures, whereas Cypher is genuinely less is more and Pantaliano really does the most with it
- the dialogue, fuck me, I wanted to die at some of Morpheus’s lines in Reloaded
- they didn’t lift enough stuff from The Invisibles to tip it over
- some of the cgi (esp for the Burly Brawl) aged horrendously
- they didn’t spend enough on Trinity being the only person to see the sun in centuries

Am interested in seeing this fourth one, despite decidedly mixed reviews

I love Brad's enthusiasm for, well, everything, and I agree at least as far as my memory has it that the highway chase in part 2 was pretty awesome. when we tried to watch the movie last year or so, though, for the first time since I either saw it in theaters or more likely an advanced screening, we didn't even make it that far
It's one thing to be silly, but that second movie was so boring. as I recounted here some months ago, at the start there's something like 50 minutes after the first fight scene before anything interesting happens again, and this sequel ain't no Aliens.

This is how I break it down

watching matrix reloaded, I had forgotten the refuelling section in zion at the start feeling like 18 hours of painfully slow in-engine rpg cutscenes. I know this one is good too but I am dying to press select in my mind to skip this shit.

— Marty Punkhouser (@NoChorus) December 23, 2021

the zillion agent fight is so good and then we're immediately back to this stuff, god help us. pic.twitter.com/hWFrscrLcs

— Marty Punkhouser (@NoChorus) December 23, 2021

Otm

simply the hardest shit of all time pic.twitter.com/LDNAfJ2vZJ

— Marty Punkhouser (@NoChorus) December 23, 2021

some of the cgi (esp for the Burly Brawl) aged horrendously

It looked crap at the time too tbf

Oh sure but even from that low base it hasn’t aged well.

i do not really care about realism re: cgi so the burly brawl works for me just via the impact and weight (plus bowling pin sounds) and the insane camera movement

the battle of zion cgi is still astonishing

portentous dialogue, a five minute sequence of ships docking, oh i love it so

also agent smith is the best character and the best analogue for fascism i’ve seen in a science fiction property

otm, was thinking about the first interview scene and the little grimace when he’s saying “and you help your landlady take out her garbage”

Apart from imelda staunton in potter surely

I can see why ppl dig Reloaded - Zion is awesome, complicates the Chosen One idea, all the crazy stuff with the horny French dude, lotsa good kung fu still. It's not my thing but there's lots there.

Revolutions tho I found much flimsier in its thematic concerns and less creative in its action - Reloaded introduced all these ideas about programs within the Matrix having moral shades of grey but outside of the Matrix in Revolutions the machines are all just mindless bug robots to shoot down; felt like watching an unironic version of Starship Troopers at times. Likewise despite Reloaded's revelations Neo ends up in a messianic role.

I hated Revolutions when it came out, but I hadn't even seen Reloaded so I'm sure a lot was lost on me.

are we doing spoilers yet

Likewise despite Reloaded's revelations Neo ends up in a messianic role.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, December 23, 2021 11:54 AM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

kinda but he wouldn’t be successful at all without everyone else’s efforts in zion + the machines

as niobe says, she doesn’t believe in “the one” but she believes in neo

i won’t be able to see the new one until the 30th so if spoilers start happening in this thread i’ll stop reading

I feel like there’s an effect of power creep throughout the original trilogy where other characters are able to do things in the matrix that they weren’t at the beginning. As if being The One isn’t necessarily a unique individual, it’s just the person who has a sixth sense that’s stronger than anyone else currently plugged in, and being around that person helps others more finely tune into that sense

Obviously having people running around the matrix doing things that seem impossible eventually leads to the system breaking, needing rebooted, etc. but Neo’s the tipping point, just like all the prior tipping point Ones that came before him

Revolutions tho I found much flimsier in its thematic concerns and less creative in its action - Reloaded introduced all these ideas about programs within the Matrix having moral shades of grey but outside of the Matrix in Revolutions the machines are all just mindless bug robots to shoot down;

Think Matriculated (the Peter Chung short!) did some interesting work on connecting humans outside the matrix with the machines

i love matriculated. i hated it when i was a kid bc i just didn’t aesthetically jibe with chung’s stuff at all but now i think it’s so gorgeous and sad

agreed that the animatrix is highly optional but the second renaissance aka the entire history of human/machine relations enriches the narrative a lot

Yeah it does, it’s great. I don’t mean it’s optional in a derisive way, just that the majority of the audience are never going to seek it out so a lot of that backstory gets lost.

Matriculated is really great, agreed.

i love that one short that’s just a bunch of kids playing with the gravity glitch in the matrix that they found

the horny cgi short at the end is really weird

This...is true.

holy shit the matrix resurrections end credits music is a ratm cover by the lady who peed on somebody onstage. neo is livin' his life it's golden

— Al Shipley (@alshipley) December 24, 2021

Also SF mayor London Breed is one of the Neo/Trinity support team at the end.

What my mom says she’s excited to watch🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️#TheMatrix #MatrixResurrections pic.twitter.com/h7ntEqrbLG

— Beyoncé Bloodlust (@NylaRoseBeast) December 24, 2021

Morpheus (showing neo 2 advils in the palms of his hands): these are for headaches

— Rajat Suresh (@rajat_suresh) December 23, 2021

Need to watch Animatrix. Underrated youtube account Stevem is going through all of that studio's projects atm.

kinda but he wouldn’t be successful at all without everyone else’s efforts in zion + the machines

I might be missing something here but isn't the whole conflict in Zion after Neo and Trinity take the one ship totally irrelevant to the success or failure of Neo's mission?

well they’re interlinked efforts imo, get the other ship to zion so the first wave of machines doesn’t completely destroy zion, while neo’s ambassadorial mission appealing to the machines’ own desire for survival ensures zion’s

neo would have nothing to save without the defense of the dock idk

Made it through maybe half of the mostly well-regarded "are we in a simulation" doc "A Glitch in the Matrix." It was pretty dumb.

^ that was probably logged somewhere if we're in a simulation.

fwiw if anyone is interested in the matrix comics, including the original batch that were on the movie’s website, they’re collected and still for sale on the wachowski’s publishing company website, at least as of a week ago. seemingly sold out through every other distribution chain

http://www.burlymanentertainment.com/

Need to watch Animatrix. Underrated youtube account Stevem is going through all of that studio's projects atm.

Huh, I briefly thought that this would be ex-ILXoR stevem, who is(was) I think the non-Brad Revolutions stan on ILX

xp thanks for the tip on stevem video reviews, i love studio 4c productions
if you like animatrix, there was a similar project with 6 anime shorts done by different studios including studio 4c: “batman: gotham knight”

Just went to see that new Keanu film ‘Matrix: Exposition.’

— Seán Ono Lennon (@seanonolennon) December 24, 2021

Replies to his tweet are gold.

Well, my Christmas present is apparently finding out that Sean Lennon is a bitcoiner

Huh, I briefly thought that this would be ex-ILXoR stevem

Haha, had the same reaction when I first discovered the channel!

what a beautifully incoherent mess A+

also funnier than expected

I'd probably go more for B+, but that's pretty much my take too. It was sad to see the fight scenes edited to within inches of their lives, the one big knock I'd put on this movie

more like the Metarix mirit lol i have not watched this movie

watched the original sequels for the first time this week & reloaded is so good! it's messy and flawed in a way that the first isn't, but once it gets going (after a pretty slow start) it's fantastic nearly the whole time, enough for me to rate it higher than the first despite its issues. really made me go 'this is absolutely the coolest shit ever' in a way the first didn't. if you tightened up the plot just the tiniest bit, cut down on the zion stuff (especially at the beginning), and gave neo's conversations with the oracle & the council head another pass (they're pretty clunky), it would be a perfect film, but it's great as is.

revolutions is mostly a dud though, it triples down on all of reloaded's issues (which were fairly minor there) until they take up nearly the entire movie. the battle for zion is a huge drag and not compelling at all. the final smith fight isn't bad but pales in comparison to what came before, and he's not really given enough time to be actually set up as a threat to the machines too either.

unfortunately probably not going to be able to watch resurrections anytime soon since it's not streaming here

I thought the rhythm to the section where they're fighting on the highway was so great.
Had to go and see the 3rd one in Leicester Square, think I must have missed it in Galway cos I was trying to sort out times with someone and it went before we managed to do so.

I keep seeing the alien craft as being some kind of tribute to H.P.Lovecraft. Is that widespread?

I listened to teh Bechdel Cast podcast on the first film this week. They were talking about a trans subtext I hadn't been aware of before. Think it is totally outside of the fact taht the directors stopped being brothers and started being sisters since the film came out. Probably a bit linked to really and possibly evidence of it being an idea looked at but standing on its own.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5uRJ7GGGxErpSIhX85x1c7?si=df5071ea2f63484f

Still managed to miss the showing of the film this week cos i was watching 2 of the cast 20 years later in John Wick 3. So must have been Xmas day. Well hopefully have the dvd still , not looked at the state of it in an age. But got the box in the early 00ies.

the trans narrative is v real, the first film is about breaking out of the structures imposed by society and choosing your own name and family, reloaded and revolutions are about how even as you escape from these structures you still find other forms of control running beneath your every decision and how the only way to reconcile that is to love and believe in yourself and others hey

even if they weren’t conscious of it as they were making it (which, sure, most of these themes also seem to be saying something about the possibility and impossibility and (once again) possibility of political revolution) it’s so incredibly there

people talk and complain about the battle of zion but no one talks about niobe piloting the ship with the fat ass

I was reading trans people talk about the subtext on livejournal back in the noughties and it’s definitely been a discussed thing even before the sisters transitioned. Even at a super basic level, if you’re at all aware of the sisters, I don’t see how you ignore Smith constantly deadnaming Neo!

the zion battle’s shift in focus to extremely minor characters trying to survive and defend their home also reminds me of like, dfw's insistence that infinite jest is not about its main characters but is actually about everyone (except less racist and much better)

it's not a bad idea at all just the execution isn't really there

like most of revolutions really

I don’t see how you ignore Smith constantly deadnaming Neo!

Haven't seen the new one yet, but from what I read it starts with Keanu living in the matrix again under his old name. Per the above reading would that mean he effectively detransitioned?

i believe this is a theme in the new one (also haven’t seen it)