Enter the Matrix

It's unclear whether the human outpost was formed solely by people who broke out of the Matrix or if some folks who managed to evade the machine pogrom helped the founders break out of the Matrix.

The "love conquers all" message isn't out of touch considering that the dynamic is man versus machine/logic versus emotion. Keanu was already on the verge of mastering the Matrix in the early stages of that showdown (witness how he matches Trinity move for move despite only having been out of the Matrix for all of three days) and, after being pushed to the verge of death, Trinity's whisper into his ear gave him the last bit of strength he needed to dig down inside of himself and really let loose.

http://www.technoccult.com/archives/2008/06/05/open-source-personal-fabrication-device-creates-first-copy-of-itself/

Okay that photo.

Maybe it can fabricate those guys a life?

they're hoping for some emergent aesthetics.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y16/mondooltro/mantrix.jpg

ENTER THE MANTRIX

Surely the Mantrix does the entering.

https://thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com

trailer this Thursday

picking each pill gives you brief clips, I'm so hard for this

the clock gag in those clips is pretty neat

also I've watched these clips a billion times now and I swear that although most of the clips you'll see again and again, there are rarer clips that are randomly placed

or maybe I'm just imagining it but I stg

ok so I wasn’t imagining things

The revived "What Is The Matrix" website can show you over 180,000 different combinations of teaser shots and footage from The Matrix Resurrections depending on chance and when you check it.

Here are just a few cool images. https://t.co/8Qz2vCJ85D pic.twitter.com/p3iXcGga5w

— IGN (@IGN) September 7, 2021

"IT DOESN' MADDA WHEDDA THEY'RE IN DA MATRIX OR NOT; CONSCIOUSNESS IS ITS OWN PRISON, AN' DA FIVE SENSES AH' ITS WARDENS! DA TRUTH IS, YEH JUST AFRAID *WE'RE* IN DA MATRIX, AN' EVEN IN A BOUNDLESS DIGITAL WONDAHLAND YEH LIVIN A COWAHD'S LIFE, LIKE A DOG!" pic.twitter.com/2HuEp7oQZ0

— Gretchen Felker-Martin (@scumbelievable) September 7, 2021

had to accept cookies before i clicked a pill...trenchant..............

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB59tJPthZg

I mean it seems like it's a pretty accurate documentary about San Francisco.

I haven't (re)watched a matrix since I walked out of the movie theatre disappointed after watching the third one, but that trailer has me anticipating

(I might just generally be missing watching big budget action movies in a movie theatre)

i'm so fucking excited

I love the enthusiasm! We, one of my kids and I, couldn't make it through the second one, which she'd never seen and I had only seen once and didn't like at all the first time, so no idea if I'll see this or even want to see this. The first one's belated impact has been impressive, in terms of themes and FX, but both have been ripped off (and the FX matched or bettered) so much in the ensuing years that I doubt FX alone can draw me in and the inevitably shitty writing will likely push me away.

you watch MCU garbage, i doubt shitty writing is that much of a repellant

cool

I figure I'll watch it, my irritation with Keanu of a time has shifted since he clearly knows what he's doing, and I know enough of the basic tropes and iconic scenes or whatever that I'll come into this fresh. Plus, the SF angle. (Between Shang-Chi, the new Venom and this it's clear that the world loves us.)

(Also given the whole redpill thing among shitty morons vs. the Wachowskis becoming their true selves in a much different way I'm kinda interested in the meta commentary that's half hinted at in these scenes.)

The best scene of the trailer pic.twitter.com/EvnnxP9VpO

— Tits McGee (@Scientits) September 9, 2021

We, one of my kids and I, couldn't make it through the second one

could not relate less

action sequences in reloaded blow most action sequences out of the water

I'm hoping the twist is that 'real' Neo is the graying balding dude in the mirror, because I mean how likely is it that Thomas Anderson is still hot in 20 years?

and the philosophical gobbledygook really struck a chord with teenage me, whose favorite work of art was neon genesis evangelion and thus for any major studio action/scifi movie to climax with a discussion that just hovers out of comprehensibility was fucking thrilling to me

and the actual message of it still lands home with me, i.e. "you thought you had broken free from this system of control, but the degree to which your actions are not your own is far vaster than you imagined" xp

This looks pretty good but I guess 2 & 3's trailers didn't reveal what a shitshow they were.

The freeway chase / multi-weapon fight still looks awesome, but unsurprisingly the thousand-agent one looks pretty dogshit these days.

The main problem with Reloaded is that it's part 1 of 2, and I defended it on the basis that Revolutions would cause it to all make sense - and it made a liar of me :)

thousand agent smiths scene looks like a ps2 cut scene on our modern quadrillion pixel televisions but caring about this seems pointless to me

also what doesn't make sense about it???? idk, hatred for the matrix sequels seems like one of the worst hangover opinions from the early '00s

I'll come back to you when I rewatch them ahead of this one coming out - it's been a while and I remember being massively underwhelmed more than the details.

I really liked the second one a lot (some of the best action sequences I've seen), strongly disliked the third one (boring action sequences). I don't really care too much if these kinds of movies make sense or not, just give me a couple of weird wtf moments.

Iirc it was the *lack* of action that did us in with number 2. At least for the half (1/3rd?) we watched. Up to the big Agent Smith(s) fight, whenever that part arrives. She was just bored and I couldn't handle the acting or directing or writing or most of all the enervating portent. But whatevs, different strokes!

My memory of 2 & 3 is of interminable, low-stakes fights like playing Doom on God Mode.

I just went back to check, and between the end of the intro fight and the Agents Smith fight in the second film there is I think a 45 minute break, and those minutes are super silly and absolutely stultifying. The rave, the inexplicably stilted robo acting, the grandiosity. That's what did us in.

Great trailer imo - it took me from indifferent to pretty excited in under three minutes.

I'm not convinced yet, come on we've all been burnt by many trailers in the past (mute white rabbit from that trailer and meh imh). Will wait and see.

Matrix 2 & 3 struck me as the Wachowskis not really understanding what folks loved about the first one and doubling down on all the wrong bits

See also: Lucas and his prequels, sad proof that maybe an unlimited budget and full creative control are not always a good thing. (Cameron lifts his head in the editing bay, alert, chuckles to himself, then gets back to work on Avatar 5.)

Also: the Peter Jackson of the LOTR films vs the Peter Jackson of the Hobbit films. (Darragh proceeds to complain about how they're all like that, etc.)

Also Ridley Scott & Prometheus etc - are there actually any examples where unlimited budget and creative control turn out well?

i literally can't have this convo with any of you. ok the hobbit movies are not great i assume i have never seen any of them. alien covenant is one of my favorite movies of the last decade and prometheus is dumb and gorgeous

Fully agreed with Brad on Prometheus. (And yes, trust me on the Hobbit movies.)

Also Ridley Scott & Prometheus etc - are there actually any examples where unlimited budget and creative control turn out well?

Mad Max: Fury Road?

Watched the first Hobbit movie and that was enough for me, but I just finished reading it with my son for the first time and now he really wants to see them all.... ugh (we've already watched all the LOTR ones)

Anyway some SF specificities

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/matrix-resurrections-trailer-san-francisco-filming-16446150.php

And a full trailer breakdown if you want it

https://gizmodo.com/breaking-down-the-matrix-resurrections-head-trip-of-a-f-1847639698

Did anybody recognize who’s doing the score for the film?

stuff i didn't really like:

the action is fairly perfunctory - it's not bad but it totally lacks the cartoonish flair and ambition of the originals. it's not the focus and gets away with this but it's still kind of a shame?

morpheus mostly didn't work here & not having fishburne back was a real shame. he's also by far the biggest victim of too many ideas, there's just so much going on with what they do with him but none of it really goes anywhere at all & there wasn't really space for it to begin with. smith also suffers from more ideas than there were room for, but what they did with him works much better.

i totally get how people who hadn't watched the originals very recently could have found the plot hard to follow in places. i only had pretty minor complaints there though (smith's motivations here took a little bit to figure out & could have been clearer).

re: the action, no matter how you cut it a film without Yuen Woo-ping is not gonna live up to one with him onboard.

If you want more to chew over

https://gizmodo.com/the-matrixs-queer-subtext-is-plain-text-in-resurrection-1848323936

this is a good appreciation of Keanu

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-matrix-resurrections-is-a-crucial-keanu-reeves-movie

It is very weird to play Cyberpunk 2077 after seeing this for how much Keanu is in that game(and how monotonal his voice acting is)

Griffin and David naturally go on for quite awhile about this one: https://audioboom.com/posts/8006197-the-matrix-resurrections

i just love this movie

this is my husband chad

“Handsome Chad”

the meta-ness of Chad is delightful

the chad who is a chad, but also a construct and then the guy who shoots keanu doing violence in another franchise

AND the chad who was keanus stunt double in the original matrix

ty for filling in the omission

glitch, etc

on rewatches, I appreciate that they make it clear that Smith isn’t a megalomaniac, just hates the Matrix as much as Neo. I don’t think he’d ever want to be a free range ai construct like nu-Morpheus, he just wants an autonomy that is yet to be defined. it’s impossible to be an ally or true enemy that doesn’t have a clearly defined idea of what they want

Finally got around to watching Resurrections - honestly I had forgotten it was even released. I was hoping that the movie would continue with the meta-commentary set-up in the first 20 minutes, until it because just another Matrix movie. Good to even great at times, but I couldn't tell you a goddamn thing about it now. nuMorpheus was underused.