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u/troglodyte14 2d ago
The Matrix sequels cooked and I’m tired of pretending they didn’t.
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u/Ayn_Diarrhea_Rand 2d ago
Most of the dialogue was awful. The rest of Reloaded and Revolutions were quite good.
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u/doofpooferthethird 3d ago edited 3d ago
yeah same, and I always liked the implication that Neo picked up a sizeable Machine fanbase after his visit there. We see City residents crawling/slithering/flying out of their nooks and crannies to get a good look at the Anomaly that somehow made it past all their defences. They were probably live streaming the footage to all their friends and followers as they gawked.
It's like when that escaped cow Yvonne became a celebrity after evading capture against all odds. Sure, many of us have no problem tucking into all beef patty hamburger, but also can't resist a compelling underdog story. Also helps that the "cow" in question turned out to be a cyberpunk messiah that went on to save civilisation.
Later on, it's stated that Neo and Trinity's visit to the Machine City had an enormous effect on their culture, and we see many Machines risking life and limb to help them out.
Even some random octopoid fetus-rancher, who had no prior contact with Io, was almost immediately persuaded to defect and help the Trinity heist once it had a chat with Kujaku.
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u/Eva-Squinge 3d ago
I would kill for a Machine City centric movie or short that’s official. Like what the heck goes on in this city that doesn’t seem to have expanded much beyond what they’ve needed? What are they doing to NEED so much energy by creating birthing fields and the Matrix energy generator towers?
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u/Projinator 1d ago
Resurrections casually dropping a mention of a machine civil war and then not elaborating at all
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u/Eva-Squinge 1d ago
Right?! Like we got that kind of hint in the AniMatrix with Machines learning to choose to work with humanity, and a possible class hierarchy in the final war between pre-doomsday humans and Machines with the human designed machines being fodder while the early Machines that would upgrade to the modern ones in The Matrix.
And also that conversation with Neo and the programs from the Machine City. Like these artificial beings know they’re just Ones and Zeros inside of a super computer complex, but they’re interacting with each other where love can form, and they can find a means to basically take a vacation in the Matrix. That’s an amazing storyline that just doesn’t get brought up much at all until Matrix 4 where Programs and formally Machine City residents with bodies are completely chill with working with humanity over working in the Machine City.
Like there’s a limited series gold mine there of Humanity interacting with the Machines after the final war for Zion, or anywhere else in the Matrix’s history, and we’re just not gonna get anything out of it but fanfics and speculation.
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u/Rough-Percentage-956 3d ago
Zion is being completely destroyed, Neo has just lost the love of his life, the Matrix is out of control... After many centuries, Neo is the first man to see the sun and reach the machine city, speaking face to face with the "father."
Neo connects to the Matrix one last time, and the final battle begins as "Neodämmerung" plays. He ultimately fulfills his purpose, bringing peace to Zion and balance to the Matrix, dying as a messiah. It's an emotional moment, watching the hero sacrifice himself for a greater cause, being carried away by the machines with a certain respect.
Then Matrix 4 came along, and they thought it would be a good idea to crap all over this.
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u/false-forward-cut 2d ago
>Neo is the first man to see the sun
No, he is not, he was blind. Trinity is. I noticed Neo's face was expressionless when sun shined to Trinity. Generous present from Wachowski to the character, huh.11
u/SleipnirSolid 2d ago
Finally someone saying what I think. I was SO gutted seeing how M4 shit all over Neo's sacrifice. It cheapened the whole trilogy and was totally unnecessary.
I refuse to watch it again and don't consider it canon.
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago
People complaining about "how M4 shit all over Neo's sacrifice", in these simplistic terms, is quite comparable to the way Critical Drinker keeps snidely calling it "Regurgitations" while completely oblivious to the way the movie already did that gag lmfao - as Mike Stoklasa was lucid enough to notice, the movie was in fact several steps ahead of any simpletons that might wanna go for that pun,
and analogously it's also several steps ahead of basic "oh no the sacrifice" type of complaints - if you wanna criticize the movie effectively, you need to get ahead of it rather than obliviously lagging behind.
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u/Iaasf 2d ago
It addresses the sacrifice perfectly. A character literally argues with Neo when he say”So everything I do was for nothing”. That however doesn’t stop a person from not liking the movie because it does still undue the war ending. The matrix does infect still exist and Neo’s sacrifice may have created machines that want to coexist with humans but it did not end the war.
The movie addressing it doesn’t make it immune to the criticism.
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago
The movie addressing it doesn’t make it immune to the criticism.
As long as the "criticism" doesn't seem oblivious to the way the film handles it (in the ways you mentioned, and some others) but rather takes it into account, sure - again,
if you wanna criticize the movie effectively, you need to get ahead of it rather than obliviously lagging behind.
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u/crossal 2d ago
Does that make it really good?
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago
huh
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u/crossal 2d ago
Does the movie making a gag about it being a regurgitation etc. make it a good movie?
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago
That's off topic lol
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u/crossal 1d ago
How is it off topic? You were talking about it
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 1d ago
The topic was the quality/validity of the criticisms and the arguments used in those - and if the film has shown a higher level of awareness of its own content than the hapless critic who's several steps behind it, then his critiques aren't that valid.
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u/crossal 1d ago
The topic was how these things make the newest movie shit. You refuted those things. I'm saying your rebuttal wouldn't even make the movie not shit necessarily. So still in topic
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u/Specialist-End-8306 3d ago
Ressurections was absolute trash. It was basically like a remake of the first film but worst. And not having Hugo Weaving or Laurence Fishburne back in the cast was quite disappointing. It made Revolutions look like a much better film than everyone thought.
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u/Xikkiwikk 3d ago
It was a troll film. Lana was trolling WB to destroy the franchise so no more Matrix films could be made. She was done with it but “they were going to make it with or without us.”
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u/Art_of_the_Matrix 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's not. To quote Lana from her interview with EW.
Speaking at a panel during the Berlin International Literature Festival on Friday, Lana explained how, for years, she and Lilly saw the story of The Matrix "concluded," though "every year Warner Bros. would ask us to make another one."
"It never was interesting to me as an idea to continue it," she said. "Then something really hard happened: Both my parents got ill. My dad first got ill, and my wife and I went home to take care of them, and we were really close to them. And also a good friend died in this very short period… It was just this constant grief. My dad died, then this friend died, then my mom died. I didn't really know how to process that kind of grief. I hadn't experienced it that closely."
"I couldn't have my mom and dad… yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most important characters in my life," she continued.
"It was immediately comforting to have these two characters alive again, and it's super-simple. You can look at it and say: 'Okay, these two people die, and okay, bring these two people back to life, and oh, doesn't that feel good?' Yeah, it did! It's simple, and this is what art does and this is what stories do. They comfort us and they're important."
We also have commentary from Toby Onwumere talking to starburst magazine.
I was kind of there around the time of her parents passing, so I was able to bear witness to how taxing it all was, and how it all affected her. She said that this was the last gift that her father gave her, this idea of resurrecting these people, and having the last memory of her father. Always being able to resurrect the feeling of what her parents were in her life.
It's highly unlikely that Lana was just looking to waste everyone's time and WB's money just to destroy a franchise she and her sister built. Which should have been apparent when she dedicated the project to their deceased loved ones at the close as can be seen at the end of the credit roll.
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u/Xikkiwikk 2d ago
The narrative of the film suggests what I have proposed. The dialogue and insulting WB executives IN the film secure this. It was a troll film and yes, someone who hates WB would definitely destroy their own creation just to be done with it.
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u/Art_of_the_Matrix 2d ago
Going to have to disagree. The slight at WB comes and goes with little attention or narrative importance. It's at the beginning of the first act and the remainder of the movie tells a story that Neo is not being put at gun point to run through but instead is an active participant in.
And I'm sorry but this level of vindictiveness you're attributing to Lana is near psychopathic. Why exactly would anyone want to dedicate such a project to their dead loved ones if it were even true?
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u/Xikkiwikk 2d ago
She never said or attributed the film to loved ones when making or finishing the film. In every interview during the making and premiere she was moody and aggressive. Not until long after the film came and gone did she say it was suddenly dedicated to loved ones.
She retconned the reason it was made for profit.
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u/Art_of_the_Matrix 2d ago edited 2d ago
And let's not forget the dedication at the end of the credits.
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago
Then Matrix 4 came along, and they thought it would be a good idea to crap all over this.
I always like these selective blindspotty outrages that people smugpost about.
For one thing, ANYtime a sequel either reverses the previous part's positive ending, or undoes its gloomy ending (see T2 and how almost no one's whining about that one lol - but then T3 oh noooeeees), or resurrects a sacrificed hero or a dead villain/overlord, yes something from that previous ending gets taken away - however usually not anywhere to some kinda extreme "craps all over and ruins everything" degree, unless like that ending had explicitly presented itself as "utopia paradise forever now"?
And either way it's such a common thing that's being done that pretending to get outraged anytime it's done again is just goofy.
Secondly, Neo's "death" at the end of 3 was in fact quite ambiguous - and MxO in fact generally did treat it that way (aside from giving Morpheus the weird conviction that he was definitely dead but the machines better "give up his remains" for some kinda uhhh, burial ceremony in Zion?) while here "both Neo and Trinity get resurrected" in some unspecified "expensive" way - as if their "deaths" had been depicted as even remotely similar / comparably unambiguously?
So if there's anything that Resurrections walks all over then it wouldn't be "undoing Neo's totally-unambiguous death-sacrifice", but rather forgetting about the ambiguous nature of what happened there and simplifying it for its own backstory.
And 3rdly yes, a new Machine faction takes over and the Analyst with his new sly irreverent attitude totally does crap all over what came before - in-universe.
Very similar vibes here to Spike putting "the Annoying One" into the sun cage, and his general contrast with the vampire master (or whatever his name was?) from season 1.So, what, you're gonna get outraged about that too?
However of course the whole way that happens, how there ended up being a "civil war over scarcity" even though no such scarcity seemed to be on the horizon at the end of M3, and the way the Oracle/Architect talked about the new paradigm and anything that might "end the peace" in some future was way too vague if something like this had been a direct concern.
So ultimately the Analyst's takeover was enabled by this rather huge retcon.
But, number 4), this obviously just leads us back to your hypocrisy and blindspots regarding which sequel-retcons you get mad about and which ones you let slide or even remain completely oblivious to;
the whole plot and climax of M3 revolves around ignoring M2's "impending system crash" cliffhanger and erasing it from continuity, while replacing it with the Smithpocalypse plot instead - the post-credits teaser made it look like that'd be part of it somehow, embedded into it or combined in some fashion;
like both Neo and Smith would've figured out some kinda method of control over this crash thing, or "the Anomaly" or whatnot, and are now fighting over who gets the reins over it? Neo wants it for his idealistic reasons, while Smith reveals whatever "interesting" motivation/purpose that he's been hinting at throughout Reloaded.He seemed clueless about the way the system ended up "using him" in that white hallway episode, even despite all the secret knowledge he seems to have acquired since his resurrection (that enabled him to intercept Neo in the hallway to begin with, seeminly) - has he become aware of that since? Is that what he's trying to gain control over now?
However M3 completely throws out all those intriguing prospects that were set up by M2, and instead just replaces the system crash threat with a new form of the Smith threat - and yet you seem to be completely on board with it here?
Then of course 4a) the way SOMEHOW SMITH RETURNED in Reloaded, now doesn't that crappe all over the M1 ending huh? Where's your outrage about that?
That Revolutions climax that you're exalting here, is entirely built on top of this movie crapping all over Reloaded which in turn crapped all over the original lol
And there are other ways Reloaded, from its very outset, ignores things from the M1 ending,
just as the M1 ending itself forgets about premises set up in the middle stretch of that movie; while the middle stretch ignores set-ups from the 1st act.But that's of course something that a lot of the people who do get mad at either Revolutions, or already at Reloaded, are often still oblivious to and need to be reminded of.
Tldr quit being a hack lol
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u/JudoTrip 2d ago
Reloaded and Revolutions both did a disservice to The Matrix, but they had redeeming parts/qualities, while Resurrections has none.
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago
Wdym by "redeeming qualities"
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u/JudoTrip 2d ago
I mean parts of the movie that would have been entertaining or interesting enough to let me overlook its massive flaws.
For example: Reloaded is way up its own ass in the psuedo-intellectual angle, but the freeway chase scene and other moments are incredible, so it balances out.
Resurrections has nothing to counter-balance the terrible. It's just bad, and then when you think it's as bad as it can be, it invents new ways to suck.
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago
Oh, "enough to let you overlook the flaws", well ok so it's like a balance thing then.
but the freeway chase scene and other moments are incredible, so it balances out.
Resurrections has nothing to counter-balance the terrible. It's just bad, and then when you think it's as bad as it can be, it invents new ways to suck.
So it seems like you happen to value big production value action/vfx but not so much stuff like great acting, wit or dialogue, or premises/ideas etc. - Resurrections has the latter but not so much the former, so therefore "it has no redeeming qualities" acc. to you.
Well ok, riddle solved then lol
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u/JudoTrip 2d ago
Resurrections does not have great acting, interesting dialogue, or interesting ideas.
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago
Resurrections does not have great acting
Well great, good, whatever.
Either way this is kinda getting off-topic, I initially just addressed your whole confused/misguided sounding "it crapps over the thing" point.
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u/JudoTrip 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well great, good, whatever.
You're on the wrong side of the scale. It would be more like bad, vacuous, lazy, terrible. Comparable to other non-Matrix Wachowski projects.
Of course, this is just my subjective opinion, but I think most people see it for what it is, hence it being an embarrassing flop and pretty universally panned as a bad film.
Every piece of shit release will always have some defenders, somewhere, whether it be film, music, games, or something else.
Either way this is kinda getting off-topic, I initially just addressed your whole confused/misguided sounding "it crapps over the thing" point.
Oops, you have me confused for someone else.
Resurrections does go out of its way to crap on actual Matrix films, though. The efforts to do this are as prominent in the film as the main plotline.
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well great, good, whatever.
You're on the wrong side of the scale. It would be more like bad, vacuous, lazy, terrible.
I mean the acting certainly wasn't, and if you want to insist it was then I can't consider you a reasonable person anymore.
Resurrections does go out of its way to crap on actual Matrix films, though. The efforts to do this are as prominent in the film as the main plotline.
That's arguable; but even to the extent that all the satire bits can be said to do that, the fact that "Neo got resurrected" isn't part of all that so your original point was still misguided.
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u/nexusoflife 3d ago
I always wanted to see an exploration of the Machine City. It looks hauntingly beautiful.
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u/Vaportrail 2d ago
I always love a good silhouette shot like this.
I don't know if they're intending to evoke Friedrich's "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog", but I had that poster in college and I think of it every time.
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u/Bookwyrm-Pageturner 2d ago
Oh, quite possibly a homage I'm sure, that's a really famous painting.
Isildur/Frodo standing before the Mount Doom chasm after having climbed up and then gone through a tunnel also seems to have been a big influence;
was Tolkien thinking about the Wanderer back then when he wrote that, I dunno?
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u/BeneficialSpace6369 3d ago
This is clearly inspired by the famous "wanderer above the sea of fog" by Friedrich.
We don't see the back of the figure so it can be anyone, and we project ourselves onto it.
The landscape is always mysterious and it looks promising, like a place full of adventure.
It inspired many movie posters, like Spiderman 2, star trek into darkness, and hogwarts legacy (where you can choose gender and appearance, that's why you don't see the face).
In Sherlock episode the reichenbach fall, Sherlock is shown this way before he does something really important for the series.
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u/Agreeable_Outside381 2d ago
How they breathe with no trees or plants?
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u/mrsunrider 2d ago
Most terrestrial organic life on Earth is dead.
Who's left to breathe the oxygen?
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u/Iaasf 2d ago
Me baby, I’m breathing all up and loving it
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u/mrsunrider 1d ago
Virgin coppertops: ~breathing oxygenated amniotic fluid~
The Chad u/laasf: ~breathing deeply of the ancestors' air~
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u/CycleZestyclose3510 2d ago
I watched this a couple of days ago and It sort of seemed that they continued to talk after he said peace wonder what was talked about.
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u/Born_Assistant_1993 2d ago
Yes, very beautiful image, I like it too. And with the black or illuminated sun it is also excellent.
Here is an excellent video that ends like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65xLByzT1l0
You are the guy at the end. You live an inner war during the outer war.
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u/Independent_Poem_470 1d ago
Just binge watched the entire matrix trilogy a few days ago for the first time, the lore is so interesting
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u/Rough-Percentage-956 3d ago
[as the machine drones swarm around him]
Neo: I only ask to say what I've come here to say. After that, do what you want and I won't try to stop you.
[the drones withdraw and resolve into a face]
Deus Ex Machina: Speak.
Neo: The program Smith has grown beyond your control. Soon he will spread through this city, as he spread through the matrix. You cannot stop him. But I can.
Deus Ex Machina: [shouting] WE DON'T NEED YOU! WE NEED NOTHING!
[the drones swarm around Neo again]
Neo: If that's true, then I've made a mistake, and you should kill me now.
[the drones swarm... and draw back into the face again]
Deus Ex Machina: What do you want?
Neo: Peace.