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Basebf555 posted:Is that part of what he means when he says part of Neo was "imprinted" on him? The thing imprinted on him was the fact that 'something impossible happened anyway.' Seeing it happen drove him mad. The trick with the Matrix sequels, as in Inception, is that all the exposition is largely distracting bullshit. References to mythology, psychoanalysis and whatever matter infinitely less than the blunt imagery of Smith persisting after death as this black goo. What is the black goo? Naturally, it's the same stuff as in Prometheus, Beyond The Black Rainbow, and countless other films. Hugo Weaving even played a variation on the same basic character with Red Skull in Captain America. This abstract imagery of psychosis manifests in 'the real world' as a random crazy dude. Of course, we can flip this: everything going on with Smith in the matrix is just a visualization of this one man's psychosis - a journey into his head (or whatever). The main reason the Matrix sequels are less effective is that they flip everything this way. Instead of showing the oppressive machinery 'underneath' the everyday reality of cars and office buildings, the sequels treat Zion as the everyday reality and the matrix as a surreal nightmare world.
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Sep 11, 2014 19:02
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The Architect scene if often denounced as 'boring' in a sort of offhand way. But it does a very good job of characterising the Architect as a machine with a very poor understanding of humans and a sort of jaded view of it all. It functions as a sideways jab at the 'matrix and philosophy' folks who take reading the film to increasingly ridiculous heights until it becomes, in this case literally, armchair philosophy. It makes him out to be stupid in a very pretentious and overconfident sort of way, putting him in the role of the archetypical scientist character who thinks they understand something perfectly in literal terms, and thereby misses the point - the psychologist in Psycho or the prequel Jedi. He contrasts well with the Oracle, designed to empathise with humans and better understand their psychology - causing her to empathise too much and 'go rogue', gaining unexplainable future-sight in the process. Also the movies do the fun thing of inverting the ideas set up in the original, rather than progressing them linearly - they don't fail in the sense SMG describes, but rather successfully do something else on purpose. The One is an event that can be planned around, and is just as much a part of the system. The actual unexplainable creature of the film is Smith, who the Architect woefully fails to properly explain with crappy scifi gobbledigook. Because of course he does. He doesn't understand it at all. Also the image of a man who returned from the dead and whose ultimate power is to make you like him. I love it. Oh my god. The Matrix sequels are amazing and wonderful things that only someone with my exact appreciation for camp, anime and cinema seem to be able to enjoy.
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Sep 11, 2014 19:46
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The films also never answered the most important question they posed in the first place: Why should humans want out of the Matrix? Cypher was right. e: "The real world is lovely." "Yeah, but at least it's real!" "SO IS THE MATRIX YOU FIRST YEAR PHILOSOPHY NINNY!"
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Sep 11, 2014 19:54
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:When I learned that Will Smith was tapped to play Neo, these films made so much more sense. It becomes drat near Rastafarian. A full-on Rastafari version of The Matrix would own. I suppose in that version you'd call the promised-land city Zi- 
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Sep 11, 2014 20:06
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A note for the younger ones: the Rave Scene was embarrassing and hilarious even on release day. I have no clue what they were thinking, but it probably literally involved drugs.
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Sep 11, 2014 20:11
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Something that comes off as pretty stupid is how the 2nd movie has Trinity die at the end and then the third movie... has Trinity die at the end. Also Neo's One powers bleeding into the real world also came off as just confusing.
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Sep 11, 2014 20:16
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precision posted:A note for the younger ones: the Rave Scene was embarrassing and hilarious even on release day. I have no clue what they were thinking, but it probably literally involved drugs. The Rave scene is one of the few things I fondly remember from the Matrix sequels, that and High Councilman Cornell West.
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Sep 11, 2014 20:37
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I got the impression from the second and third movie that they thought I was actually interested in the overarching Zion story or their stupid rambling philosophy. As it turns out, I really only cared about the stylish fighting and shooting and only tolerated the ship/Oracle/etc. as an excuse to move to the next matrix-world setpiece.
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Sep 11, 2014 20:46
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Hbomberguy posted:Also the movies do the fun thing of inverting the ideas set up in the original, rather than progressing them linearly - they don't fail in the sense SMG describes, but rather successfully do something else on purpose. It's a little of both. Audiences are understandably vexed when Morpheus is deliberately made an ineffectual weeaboo, and the 'rebel' humans are deliberately made to just re-enact the logic of the system they supposedly escaped. (People complaining that there's no "the real world is also fake!!" twist generally miss this point. Being out of the matrix doesn't make them free automatically. They just moved to future-Somalia.)
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Sep 11, 2014 20:50
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Obligatory Zizek post: "I want a third peel." e: In response to the 'why would we want to leave' question: I think that's half of the darker side of the story. The Matrix is far more comfortable than reality. Part of the point is that people would choose it over Zion. Why make the world a better place when I can sit inside and watch The Matrix (and play video games) all day? I like the ending being working with the machines to maybe start to patch things up. In a way, this is the 'third' world people guessed we'd all turn out to really be in - one where man and machine can coexist peacefully in a better situation. We tenuously begin to build a path to that world. Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Sep 11, 2014 |
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Sep 11, 2014 21:12
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's a little of both. Audiences are understandably vexed when Morpheus is deliberately made an ineffectual weeaboo, and the 'rebel' humans are deliberately made to just re-enact the logic of the system they supposedly escaped. (People complaining that there's no "the real world is also fake!!" twist generally miss this point. Being out of the matrix doesn't make them free automatically. They just moved to future-Somalia.)
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Sep 11, 2014 21:18
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precision posted:I'm just still really disappointed that they didn't go with the twist that the "real world" was also a simulation to give humans a false sense of hope. And a tiny part of me thinks they didn't do that because so many people predicted it. Pursuant to this idea, do they ever explain how Neo gains the ability to shoot energy out of his hands and see with Aura vision when outside of the Matrix? I think they might, but I haven't seen the film in so long and don't remember. If they don't, then your dream that reality is a Matrix surrounding the Matrix can still live on.
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Sep 11, 2014 22:26
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I think The Matrix stands alone extremely well. The major fault with the sequels is that Revolutions capitalizes on absolutely nothing they seemed to set up in Reloaded. There were all sorts of little cool things they introduced or hinted at in Reloaded that didn't end up mattering at all.
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Sep 11, 2014 22:37
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DFu4ever posted:I think The Matrix stands alone extremely well. The major fault with the sequels is that Revolutions capitalizes on absolutely nothing they seemed to set up in Reloaded. There were all sorts of little cool things they introduced or hinted at in Reloaded that didn't end up mattering at all. It's especially hard to understand how that happened since they were both produced back-to-back.
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Sep 11, 2014 22:40
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muscles like this? posted:Something that comes off as pretty stupid is how the 2nd movie has Trinity die at the end and then the third movie... has Trinity die at the end. Also Neo's One powers bleeding into the real world also came off as just confusing. Trinity's death scene in the third movie goes on an absurd amount of time (looking it up on YouTube, it's 4 minutes long), to the point where it actually becomes comedic because she's laying there with like three pieces of rebar jutting out of her torso and is able to have this drawn-out heartfelt goodbye.
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Sep 11, 2014 23:36
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It's a good day to talk about this, because I think one of the problems with the Matrix sequels is the 9/11 attacks. The Matrix came out in 1999, and features righteous terrorists as the protagonists. There's this whole speech about how any random person can be an agent of the system and must be killed if necessary, etc. The sequels came out in 2003, and there's a different atmosphere around terrorism. Suddenly the plots revolve a lot less around rebellion and bringing the system down, the Merovingian, this kind of sleazy information broker is the antagonist and the movies reconciliation with the robots at the end. I do like a lot of things about the sequels though, but there's also a lot of crap in there and just stuff that doesn't really go anywhere. Reloaded lampshades the fact that the plot is just a fetch quest that the protagonists don't even understand, but that doesn't make it more compelling. Also Neo flying in to save the day repeatedly sucks the tension out of the otherwise excellent action sequences. quote:what exactly happened to Smith? What is he when he comes back exactly, and how did he survive? What exactly is it that Neo did to him and how did it happen? quote:I don't fully understand how it happened, perhaps some part of you imprinted on to me, something overwritten or copied, but it is at this point irrelevant what matters is that whatever happened, happened for a reason. I think the bit about some of Neo getting copied onto Smith is crucial. If you look at Neo's conversation with the Architect, the Architect describes the One this way: quote:Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. What I get from this is that the little fractional bits of rebellion, the .01% that reject the matrix on an unconscious level get collected up until they add up to 1. Neo - the integral anomaly - the One - is basically the sum total of human rebellion that will crash the Matrix. You can see this in his reactions on the video screens behind him while he talks to the Architect (yelling No!, giving the finger etc., you can't make me). The rebellious element gets purged from the Matrix periodically in the form of the One and his group of survivors. So, when some part of Neo, the essence of rebellion, gets written onto Smith suddenly Smith can't follow the rules anymore either. But I don't know, Smith was never like the other agents anyway, he obviously had this dark obsessive quality from the beginning. So now they've got a nice dark mirror to the hero constructed, the way Smith acts just flows from there. Neo can lead a rebellion against the Matrix, Smith creates copies of himself until he overwhelms the Matrix. Neo is a persuasive leader, Smith forces others to obey. Neo has hope, Smith is a nihilist. The scene with the Architect is amazing BTW, I love having a whole movie leading up to what's behind this door, and what's behind it is this incredibly verbose guy. It must have been hilarious on opening night to get that scene dumped on an audience.
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Sep 11, 2014 23:42
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I like Reloaded, and certainly don't think it is crap. If I have an issue with it, it's that it has a really awkward structure. The movie starts abruptly, spends two hours moving our heroes from point A to B to C (just because others are telling them where to go), then ends abruptly. Also, most of the fight scenes involving Neo seem very flat and sterile. But the movie did introduce some very neat concepts, such as rogue programs loose in the Matrix with their own agenda, and Smith's ability to copy himself into the real world (a story twist that did not really pay off in Revolutions). Also, the whole sequence from the chateau fight to the freeway chase was fantastic. And while the Architect's speech felt clunky, it really introduced some mind-blowing questions to the whole nature of the matrix - that, once again, Revolutions failed to follow up on. I even didn't mind the rave scene!
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Sep 12, 2014 00:59
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Wabbit posted:It's a good day to talk about this, because I think one of the problems with the Matrix sequels is the 9/11 attacks. The Matrix came out in 1999, and features righteous terrorists as the protagonists. There's this whole speech about how any random person can be an agent of the system and must be killed if necessary, etc. The sequels came out in 2003, and there's a different atmosphere around terrorism. Suddenly the plots revolve a lot less around rebellion and bringing the system down, the Merovingian, this kind of sleazy information broker is the antagonist and the movies reconciliation with the robots at the end. On the topic of Neo's powers in the real world, it clearly ties into Revolutions where it's revealed that he is still partially attached to the Matrix even after being disconnected, which is why he's able to observe and interact with machines in the real world. This in turn implies something even more profound about the relationship between the Matrix and the Machines, which is that it's more than just the source of their power, but in fact the network within which their collective consciousness resides. The Machines are just as trapped by the Matrix as the humans are.
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Sep 12, 2014 01:17
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It only just became apparent to me, but at the point where Neo is able to blow up Sentinals in the real world with his powers, he is in turn rendered (relatively) powerless in the Matrix; the only interactions he has with the Matrix after that have him i) stuck in a purgatory of sorts (from which he has to be freed by his friends), and later ii) fighting against Smith, who is effectively equal to Neo, only without any other bystanders for Neo to weld his powers over.
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Sep 12, 2014 11:47
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I personally dislike the two Matrix sequels because it is really obvious that the Wachowski's stopped cribbing scenes, shots, themes and general 'ambiance' from that graphic novel series and, unfortunately, they weren't up to the task of making sequels to the Matrix without that crutch.
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Sep 12, 2014 13:07
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Milky Moor posted:I personally dislike the two Matrix sequels because it is really obvious that the Wachowski's stopped cribbing scenes, shots, themes and general 'ambiance' from that graphic novel series and, unfortunately, they weren't up to the task of making sequels to the Matrix without that crutch. Are you referring to the Invisibles? One of the reasons I love the Matrix is because it reminds me of the comic so much (first 20 issues or so, anyway).
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Sep 12, 2014 13:15
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Back when I first saw it I really loved the chataeu fight and the burley brawl because hey I'm twelve and whoooooa lookit all these cool moves, but going back now I don't really care so mucha bout those two scenes but the freeway chase is still fantastic. Twenty seconds of talking to establish the freeway as some nebulously dangerous place you should stay the hell away from and then a fantastic car chase and mini-setpieces of the fight vs the twins in the car, the motorcycle chase vs oncoming traffic, and Morpheus vs the Agent on the top of the truck. The CGI bits are a little ropey but otherwise everything was great 'till Neo arrived and ruined it by flying off.  Also one of the agents in that scene reminds me of a Baldwin. VVV Someone - maybe on this forum now I think about it - pointed out that the entire Burly Brawl is pointless for exactly that reason. Pierson fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Sep 12, 2014 |
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Sep 12, 2014 13:45
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After about the 5th fight in a row where neo ends the fight by flying away at an arbitrary point in the action it started getting dull.
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Sep 12, 2014 13:54
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DFu4ever posted:I think The Matrix stands alone extremely well. The major fault with the sequels is that Revolutions capitalizes on absolutely nothing they seemed to set up in Reloaded. There were all sorts of little cool things they introduced or hinted at in Reloaded that didn't end up mattering at all. I think a big part of that is the tie-in products like games and Animatrix. I haven't played any of the games but know that an entire side-plot featuring Morpheus' girlfriend, the Oracle and the Merovingian takes place in cut scenes in one of them and that's just sad. Goffer posted:If the Smiths have been upgraded to Neo's level, Morpheus and the rest of the crew should be getting slaughtered in a heartbeat. Morpheus and the others are basically Yamcha to Neo's Goku. And I like it.
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Sep 12, 2014 14:42
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One of the Matrix games had a pretty cool combat system that was a little bit like a precursor to the Arkham games' system. You would do counters and Neo would do cool kung fu moves without the player having to worry about the specifics. Then of course there was bullet-time gunplay, so the combination was very fun. I think the game as a whole though was kinda crap, its been like ten years though so its hard to remember.
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Sep 12, 2014 15:04
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If the romance scenes with Anakin and Amidala didn't exist I would say the worst acted and least believable romantic scenes I've ever seen are the Neo and Trinity ones in those sequels.
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Sep 12, 2014 15:51
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I'm not a hugely fond of any of the three, but I will say for a while I probably liked Reloaded better than the first. A lot of the criticisms levied against Reloaded end up also applying to the first (meaninglessness of the action scenes, obnoxiousness of the dialogue), though watching it again a few months ago I may be coming back around on the first. What I like about the second is pretty much what Wabbit talked about. The human anomaly of choice the Architect speaks of imprints itself through Neo onto Smith and so Smith is now a new sort of being, the true One in that he's the one who can actually break the cycle of the One we learn about in the Architect scene. A being of the system who comes to rebel against the system from within. It's probably the most interesting concept from the whole series. And so in Revolutions, he eats the entire system and the Matrix becomes nothing but Smith and then I guess his consumption of Neo imprints more of the human element onto him causing him to implode. Too much garbage leading up to it, but hey at least it wasn't a complete waste of time.
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Sep 12, 2014 15:52
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I still think the first one, while a product of it's time, is a classic. The second and third where both too ingrained with eachother (due to how production happened) and went into entirely different directions that didn't mesh with eachother at all.
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Sep 12, 2014 16:12
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Morpheus got fat
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Sep 12, 2014 16:20
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One of the things that disappointed me most about Reloaded was how it downgraded the Agents from being these terrifying, near-invincible threats to basically just mooks. The first movie spent a lot of time establishing them as the most dangerous beings in the Matrix. They were so deadly, your only chance was to run away as fast as you possibly could. Morpheus, presumably the most skilled fighter of the crew, barely survives a minute against Agent Smith. ...and then in Reloaded, he and the others are now an even match to apparently-upgraded Agents? This killed the tension for me long before SuperNeo arrived to finish it off. That being said, I could watch Hugo Weaving chew scenery all day long. He's easily the most fun thing about both sequels. I have no idea where he came up with his Evil Carl Sagan voice, but it's so perfect for the character; all oddly-emphasized syllables and unnatural cadence. It's mesmerizing. Morton Haynice fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Sep 12, 2014 |
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Sep 12, 2014 18:00
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I took an honest to goodness college class on the matrix. It was only one credit but it was a real class a real (state) university offered. The first movie was a really really dense movie. It doesn't mean it was good, but every single aspect of the movie was references to symbolism and religion and philosophy and every name had like 3 levels of meaning. Like it's easy to argue that it's all "baby's first layered story telling" and anderson meaning 'son of man' isn't much deeper than calling a werewolf remus lupin. But it at least was all there. (and people LOVED there being a werewolf called remus lupin, it made them feel smart since almost everyone got it) Dumb or not every single thing on screen was layered in meaning. If there was a number anywhere on the screen it probably was a bible verse. If someone used an odd word it was probably a gnostic thing. Almost nothing in the whole movie wasn't layered 50 layers deep. (regardless of if much of it was stupid and it was 50 layers of bullshit). The other movies didn't have that, it had a ton of name dropping philosophy and religion, but it didn't tie in in any way. It didn't have the "agents? that means like government agents but it's also a computer science word but also their defining feature is a lack agency so it's a triple meaning!" the first one meant something even if the meanings were doofball, the second and third just didn't bother as much. like merovingian is a obscure religious reference but it didn't connect to the character and if it was some sort of triple pun like oracle or agent was I didn't catch it. Owlofcreamcheese fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Sep 12, 2014 |
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Sep 12, 2014 18:14
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Tailored Sauce posted:As someone who has seen the trilogy at least 30 times and has studied the philosophy of the films, the movies are amazing in that perspective. They cram so much into these movies you won't understand everything in the first sitting and a lot of what happens is dependent on viewing the trilogy as a whole. I can see from the average movie-goers' perspective why they would dislike the sequels, exactly because they cannot wrap their head around everything that is happening. It seems rather than taking an interest and learning more about the philosophy or symbolism, people ended up getting frustrated that they did not understand the movies. The Matrix by itself was actually fine and presented a complete story, but the Wachowski Bros gave us A LOT MORE which I imagine was too much for the public to take in. Is this a real post? I can't even tell anymore.
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Sep 12, 2014 18:23
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Is this a real post? I can't even tell anymore. What is "real?" How do you define "real?"
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Sep 12, 2014 18:26
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:What is "real?" How do you define "real?" Some kind of a desert or some poo poo, don't really know I was kind of high.
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Sep 12, 2014 18:42
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Drunkboxer posted:If the romance scenes with Anakin and Amidala didn't exist I would say the worst acted and least believable romantic scenes I've ever seen are the Neo and Trinity ones in those sequels. Yeah, those two had exactly zero chemistry. It kind of comes out of nowhere in the first movie when Trinity says she's in love with Neo. Something else that kind of bugs me is the final Neo/Smith fight at the end of the third movie. It undermines their message and makes Neo look like an idiot that needs to be lead around by the nose.
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Sep 12, 2014 21:05
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Basebf555 posted:One of the Matrix games had a pretty cool combat system that was a little bit like a precursor to the Arkham games' system. You would do counters and Neo would do cool kung fu moves without the player having to worry about the specifics. Then of course there was bullet-time gunplay, so the combination was very fun. I think the game as a whole though was kinda crap, its been like ten years though so its hard to remember. Isn't that the one where they break the 4th wall, have the Wachowski's say a bunch of poo poo about how the movie ending doesn't translate well into a video game and basically have you fight Mecha Agent Smith?
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Sep 12, 2014 21:31
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blackguy32 posted:Isn't that the one where they break the 4th wall, have the Wachowski's say a bunch of poo poo about how the movie ending doesn't translate well into a video game and basically have you fight Mecha Agent Smith? It was basically them being pissy about people not liking the ending. Because you have stuff like all the Smiths combining together into a giant Smith, which then takes a giant pair of sunglasses off a billboard. And when you beat giant Smith it cuts to Zion with Queen's "We Are the Champions" playing.
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Sep 12, 2014 21:34
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I think the original Matrix just did a really good job of marrying all the action visuals with the story, whereas in the sequel those became gradually disassociated to the point where it started to feel like philosophical musings interspersed with video games. Action scene, exposition dump, action scene, philsophy scene, repeat. The original product just felt much tighter.
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Sep 12, 2014 21:53
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The thing about the first matrix film is it packs a lot of plot into one movie. You have the whole initial "what is the matrix" set up, then the real world and a bit of exploration of that, then a trip back to the matrix, the introduction of the oracle, Morpheous' abduction, then the rescue mission, then the conclusion. Its a very well plotted movie. The sequals on the other hand, have poo poo like the train station and the orgasm cake and the pointless fight with Seriph and the rave and all kinds of poo poo. If you left that poo poo on the cutting room floor you could have fit both sequels into one movie.
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Sep 12, 2014 22:27
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I really thought Reloaded was fantastic, and thought it introduced some great concepts and could have lead into an interesting final movie. Then Revolutions came out and was horrible. I don't care what people say, it should have just been a matrix within a matrix (the "Real" being another false reality created by the machines to trick certain people who got past the first layer). Instead the third movie just made no sense. Edit: Reading the thread more, I see others agree with my comments exactly, I still stand by them. zandert33 fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Sep 12, 2014 |
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Sep 12, 2014 22:53
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