They're making a Matrix 5.

[BloodSquirrel]

Drew Goddard is directing.

Comments about WB missing the point of The Matrix: Resurrections abound, but they would have more bite if The Matrix: Resurrections hadn't missed the point of The Matrix: Resurrections, or if The Matrix sequels hadn't missed the point of The Matrix in general, or if any of them had at least been any good.

This falls squarely into "Why not?" territory for me. I'm hardly optimistic about the result, but it's not like there's any great opportunity or potential being squandered here either. The less Wachowski involvement there is in it the better, and the more the movie is willing to dump the franchise's baggage overboard and try a more thoughtfully-conceived direction the better.

[Vahnavoi]

Animatrix, Reloaded and Revolutions didn't miss the original's point - indeed, the latter two in part exist to address a criticism about the original missing the point of its own source material, Simulations & Simulacra. Reloaded and Revolutions suffer from many other problems, but that's not one.

Resurrections is an odd case where it has (mostly) the right actors and the correct setting elements, but fails to put them together into a cohesive whole. A new Matrix movie would be better off ignoring most of it. I especially hope they won't try to revisit Neo and Trinity again - the setting has a lot of interesting concepts to explore outside the old cast of named characters.

[Tyndmyr]

Honestly, the last Matrix movie has...no real reason to exist, and I have never met anyone who actually liked it. Could certain ideas within it have been used better? Yeah, sure. But as it was, it was somewhere between a cash grab and intellectually bankrupt, and worse, it was boring.

The mere existence of a fifth one is proof positive that Hollywood is creatively defunct.

[Talakeal]

The last one was really bad, so I have no hope for a fifth one.

Admittedly, I was suffering from a bad toothache watching four, and so I wasn't in a very charitable mood, and it might get better on a rewatch.

But man, not being able to get Hugo Weaving to do even a brief cameo really killed that movie for me; having some random guy declare himself to have been Agent Smith all along and turning on the villain at the last minute could have been a great "Hell yeah!" moment to end on, except that without a Hugo Weaving face reveal it never comes off as remotely plausible. But that is just my particular gripe, the movie has many.

[Lurkmoar]

I suppose Warner Brothers like stepping on rakes.

I didn't bother to watch 4, and I have zero interest in watching another one. I would rather see Keanu Reeves, Carrie Moss and Lawrence Fishbourne in a new John Wick movie, and I would be perfectly happy with no new John Wick movies!

[BloodSquirrel]

Animatrix, Reloaded and Revolutions didn't miss the original's point - indeed, the latter two in part exist to address a criticism about the original missing the point of its own source material, Simulations & Simulacra. Reloaded and Revolutions suffer from many other problems, but that's not one.

That sounds like missing the point of the original with extra steps.

The Matrix was a good movie because it was a well-executed action film/hero's journey. The style, the high concept, and the philosophical window-dressing helped elevate it into a great movie, but the foundation that those things rested on was a fairly simple, timeless story about Neo becoming the hero. The genuis of The Matrix was that it had just enough philosophy to make it interesting, but it ultimately let Neo's arc of becoming the one do the heavy lifting.

The sequels did, indeed, miss the point. They overrated the depth and complexity of the original's philosophical content, tried to give it increased focused in the sequels, and wound up with a lot of trite navel-gazing. They overrated the importance of the special effects and forgot to give most of the fights clear narrative purpose, tension, or proper stakes. They gave us a lot more of everything that The Matrix was on the surface level, but they failed to understand what all of those things were ultimately in service to.

I'm not sure what point you think that The Matrix missed, but whatever it was, it was probably better off for having missed it in favor of being what it was.

Honestly, the last Matrix movie has...no real reason to exist,

...and it knows it. My take, back when it was released, was something like "The movie spends its entire runtime trying to find a reason to exist and never does".

The movie wanted to subvert and criticize its own existence, but it didn't have any ideas on how to do that other than some fourth-wall straining comments about WB. It then unironically had scenes from the original playing in the background, tried to remake iconic moments from the first movie, and tried to replace Smith and Morpheus with new versions instead of coming up with new characters. It gets lost in convoluted metaphysics that make nonsense out of the plot, gives us "bullet time, but better!" that's basically just the Time in a Bottle scene from Days of Future Past, and ends with, "Hey, uh, I guess we're back to the end of the original Matrix movie now, only with two Ones?".

It's an astonishingly confused film, and in a very different way than the usual kind of cluster**** that we get from Disney nowadays (which basically comes from trying to write the scrip three days after principle shooting wraps up). There's so much conscious effort into trying to be... something. And the best it can do is "Here's Neo vs. Smith from the first movie again, only with much worse stunt work, cinematography, choreography, and costume design".

[Ramza00]

the sequels did not miss the point with the philosophical nazel gaving

you are supposed to hate the Merovingian and the Architect , the philosophy they spout was not liberatory but another layer of control / ideology critique justifying their place in a broken system.

[BloodSquirrel]

the sequels did not miss the point with the philosophical nazel gaving

you are supposed to hate the Merovingian and the Architect , the philosophy they spout was not liberatory but another layer of control / ideology critique justifying their place in a broken system.

You were supposed to hate Agent Smith too, but his "Humans are viruses" speech was still compelling and iconic instead of tiresome.

Again, the point of the first movie was that the philosophy was interesting enough to elevate an otherwise functional story. The problem with the Merovingian isn't that he's a bad guy with an incorrect philosophy, it's that his purpose in the story is a contrivance in order to give him a chance to monologue to us. Story wise, he's just a plot coupon vendor.

It's a deeply structural problem with Reloaded. The plot all boils down to "Get a key and go to a building so that Neo can go into a room and have the Architect lecture him". There's very little going on character-wise with Neo, Trinity, or Morpheus. They fulfilled their arcs in the first movie, and now they're just there to follow the plot around. The first movie's philosophy felt organic because characters like The Oracle were helping push Neo's character development forward. The Merovingian's doesn't because he isn't.

If the Merovingian were a better-developed character in a better developed story, he could explain his philosophy in a few lines of dialog that were well integrated into character-centric conversations and they would have worked in the same way that they did in the first movie.

[Velaryon]

I only ever liked the first Matrix movie, so I am definitely not interested in yet another one. I always thought the original film was weakened by its sequels, and if they had to make more movies I would rather have seen a prequel.

[Vahnavoi]

I'm not sure what point you think that The Matrix missed, but whatever it was, it was probably better off for having missed it in favor of being what it was.

What the original missed is that once the map becomes the territory, it's not possible to just "wake up" and exist outside of it. As a result, the set-up between the resistance and the system is naively black-and-white - there's a reason why the iconography of the original was appropriated by conspiracy nutjobs and other suspect types who miss other points of the movie.

Animatrix, Reloaded and Revolutions are absolutely on-point in giving closer look at human' own role in their oppression and showing how Zion and the messianic prophecy of the One are equally artificial systems of control as the Matrix. Another way to put it is that Animatrix and Reloaded deconstructs the heroism of the One, and Revolutions reconstructs it. Another sci-fi classic that treads this path, with recent filmatization, is Dune, so don't bother telling me how bad it supposedly is.

The fact that Reloaded and Revolutions try to cram in too much spectacle, too much dialogue, etc., are genuine cinematographical problems, but they do not constitute missing the point.

[Ramza00]

You were supposed to hate Agent Smith too, but his "Humans are viruses" speech was still compelling and iconic instead of tiresome.

Again, the point of the first movie was that the philosophy was interesting enough to elevate an otherwise functional story. The problem with the Merovingian isn't that he's a bad guy with an incorrect philosophy, it's that his purpose in the story is a contrivance in order to give him a chance to monologue to us. Story wise, he's just a plot coupon vendor.

It's a deeply structural problem with Reloaded. The plot all boils down to "Get a key and go to a building so that Neo can go into a room and have the Architect lecture him". There's very little going on character-wise with Neo, Trinity, or Morpheus. They fulfilled their arcs in the first movie, and now they're just there to follow the plot around. The first movie's philosophy felt organic because characters like The Oracle were helping push Neo's character development forward. The Merovingian's doesn't because he isn't.

If the Merovingian were a better-developed character in a better developed story, he could explain his philosophy in a few lines of dialog that were well integrated into character-centric conversations and they would have worked in the same way that they did in the first movie.

I repeat, I just disagree

the point with the Merovingian is to set up Persephone. For all the talk of power with the Merovingian dry monologues is that he is impotent, for his own family does not love him and they are bored.

And Persephone says she will give Neo what he wants, but he must sacrifice his beautiful ideals he can not remain pure and achieve his goal. So Neo does a minor sacrifice, which sets up the larger sacrifice with Reloaded where Trinity dies but Neo brings her back. Which sets up Neo’s descent into the underworld where Trinity will risk all for Neo, which sets up Trinity dying on the trip to the machine city.

Neo has to sacrifice in order to win in the 3rd movie. He can not just better kung fu, or beat someone in a philosophical argument, or assimilate to win. He had to self-undermine to make the social work. Which is literally the opposite of smith, the architect, and the pompous french guy.

Neo has control for he has surrendered himself which is also the opposite of control.

What the original missed is that once the map becomes the territory, it's not possible to just "wake up" and exist outside of it. As a result, the set-up between the resistance and the system is naively black-and-white - there's a reason why the iconography of the original was appropriated by conspiracy nutjobs and other suspect types who miss other points of the movie.

Both the men and the machines did a death drive thing, the whole morpheus explaining mankind history how they struggle for control and blocked out the sky

and Morpheus is in a fancy chair and utters “the desert of the real line” well Morpheus is referencing Baudrillard Simulcra and Simulation (the book that neo keeps his drugs in at the start of the movie)

specifically this chapter, which literally starts with a map and territory reference (which is Descartes with his matrix metaphors, the evil demon, a+b+c=x+y+z standardized math grammar, and him creating cartesian coordinates with that being descartes name in latin instead of italian)

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true.
Ecclesiastes



If we were able to take as the finest allegory of simulation the Borges tale where the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory (but where, with the decline of the Empire this map becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few shreds still discernible in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness to an imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing), this fable would then have come full circle for us, and now has nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.l



Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.

In fact, even inverted, the fable is useless. Perhaps only the allegory of the Empire remains.

from Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.166-184.

the rest is here, that is the first 3 paragraphs of the chapter
https://web.stanford.edu/class/histo...Simulacra.html

And Baudrillard with his emphasis of exchange value where everything becomes symbols handed back and forth

has a logic structure where the things that can not be exchanges will either doom a system or become organizing nodes the system has to integrate around. Literally death drive stuff (though Baudrillard goes through other reference points with his french theory)

Of course Baudrillard HATED the movie, the first one. Did not see movie two or three, and turned down consulting on the script the Wachowskis were trying to run by him with movie 2 and 3. Then Baudrillard died in 2007 which is 3 years after movie 3 and Baudrillard was 77.

=====

edit one last bit, what I just did was a slight of hand even if it is literally true. I expect 99% of people to not be able to clock Morpheus speech is a reference to a thing, to follow the white rabbit and easter eggs (plus other 80s and 90s hopeful hacker metaphors about cyberspace.)

this type of hope is willfully naïve (a utopic like dream, like morpheus) and Vahnavoi is correct that

the iconography of the original was appropriated by conspiracy nutjobs and other suspect types who miss other points of the movie.

the imagery in the movie for such people is the ear piece the agents use, and smith decides to not always wear in movie 1 and totally abandons between movie 1 and 2 (the inciting incident is he gives it as mail to the humans for neo)

but the conspiracy nut jobs do not care about that imagery and choose the red pill as their metaphor instead for they identify as the heroes of their own story

[KorvinStarmast]

The mere existence of a fifth one is proof positive that Hollywood is creatively defunct.

If we keep trying we may one day get it right. (Another version of "The Last Remake of Beau Geste" I suppose).

I suppose Warner Brothers like stepping on rakes.

Heh, that got a chuckle out of me. Bugs Bunny would approve.

What the original missed is that once the map becomes the territory, it's not possible to just "wake up" and exist outside of it.

Animatrix, Reloaded and Revolutions are absolutely on-point in giving closer look at human' own role in their oppression and showing how Zion and the messianic prophecy of the One are equally artificial systems of control as the Matrix.

Let's just say that the delivery was lackluster.

Simulations & Simulacra.
Added to my reading list. This summer there is quite a bit of travel so I'll have a lot of reading time.

As for good use of my time, another Matrix movie isn't it.
Enjoyed the first, the next two underwhelmed me, didn't bother with the fourth.

[warty goblin]

I found the Architect scene to be by far the best part of Reloaded. It didn't save the movie by any means, there's too much pointless action and the increased budget for CG meant it aged way worse than the first movie*, but I found the lecture, far from boring, to be a fascinating evolution of the concept of control. And the more I've rewatched the first movie, the more logical and inevitable an extension it is.


*which by contrast has mystically de-aged so now it looks better than most modern action movies.

[Tyndmyr]

The last one was really bad, so I have no hope for a fifth one.

Admittedly, I was suffering from a bad toothache watching four, and so I wasn't in a very charitable mood, and it might get better on a rewatch.

But man, not being able to get Hugo Weaving to do even a brief cameo really killed that movie for me; having some random guy declare himself to have been Agent Smith all along and turning on the villain at the last minute could have been a great "Hell yeah!" moment to end on, except that without a Hugo Weaving face reveal it never comes off as remotely plausible. But that is just my particular gripe, the movie has many.

The character didn't even feel like Agent Smith, either. It lacked his edge...he was always the most hostile of the agents, a group particularly given to lack of empathy and chill, so to suddenly throw a different actor at us with wholly different motivations and attitude is to basically just use a wholly different character altogether.

The whole end fight scene was repetitive and boring, and the movie basically goes full mask off and talks about how executives just want a cash grab early on. It manages to be both wildly incoherent as a film and also still boring. Elements like using people as weapons was discussed a bit in the first film, and while it seems as if they wanted to use that idea in this film, they didn't really bring any deeper insights to it.

the sequels did not miss the point with the philosophical nazel gaving

you are supposed to hate the Merovingian and the Architect , the philosophy they spout was not liberatory but another layer of control / ideology critique justifying their place in a broken system.

Yes, of course their philosophy is awful, but that doesn't mean that the audience should be bored out of their mind. The audience loves to truly hate a villain. Agent Smith we love to hate. The Architect just makes us think about getting KFC instead of watching to the end.

The idea that there is another layer of control is a pretty small and obvious thing. Yes, yes of course the enemies have another plan for evil. The mere existence of a sequel guarantees that. So? What is the story told by it and the opposition to it?

As for the discussion of philosophy, it isn't a unique concept, but is at least as old as Plato's cave. Discussion of simulation and unreality is very, very old, and a reference to a specific book doesn't make the concept any more novel. It's a fine basis for the story, sure. It is not the story itself. The first movie would be empty without the story of Neo. The sequels fail to replicate that story. More philosophy references are merely setting details. They are not story.

[Talakeal]

The character didn't even feel like Agent Smith, either. It lacked his edge...he was always the most hostile of the agents, a group particularly given to lack of empathy and chill, so to suddenly throw a different actor at us with wholly different motivations and attitude is to basically just use a wholly different character altogether.

Yeah, I never bought that he was Agent Smith for a second. Which is why they really needed at least a cameo from Hugo Weaving to sell it.

Recasting Morpheus was also a choice.

[Ramza00]

More philosophy references are merely setting details. They are not story.

sometimes setting details are communicating facts
sometimes setting details are communicating values

(to use a David Hume framework above, but switching to an in the story character) , "Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo" and “We can never see past the choices we don't understand” finally

“Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand *why* you made it. I thought you'd have figured that out by now.”

the story is there are things people will assimilate or symbolic exchange, it is a mass market phenomenon that everyone can clock. But there are other things you need an intuitive leap … we are not communicating facts we are communicating values.

Smith destroyed himself for even if he had all knowledge he could not understand the values and thus the choices Neo made and thus he could not see the trap.

This is just like the Architect could not understand Neo for Neo to him was irrational,
or the Merovingian could not understand why his wife was mad (and it was not even about the other girl, she wanted to feel alive and he in his pompous analytical head space no longer did that for her)
or the false choice of the Matrix itself you must accept it all as a blue pill, and if you choose the red pill you must be destroyed due to pathic projection. Note the untold story here, the machines could have separated the red pills out and put them in a different matrix farm, but they choose not to. They wanted only one mass market product that all will enjoy and if you did not enjoy it just like them then you lash out and say you are a bad fan.

to circle around

and I have never met anyone who actually liked it.

hi 👋 I liked the resurrections and I have met two dozen people face to face (not the net) who liked the movie

maybe we all live in our own little bubbles, our own communities which we can not see outside of

[Vahnavoi]

.
The idea that there is another layer of control is a pretty small and obvious thing. Yes, yes of course the enemies have another plan for evil. The mere existence of a sequel guarantees that. So? What is the story told by it and the opposition to it?

Why are you asking? These aren't unanswered questions in context of Reloaded and Revolutions. The original asks if Neo is the promised hero in the war of man against machine - he is! Animatrix shows that the conflict might have more facets to it - maybe men are less innocent than thought and maybe machines can have sympathetic reasons for what they do. Reloaded reveals the promise of a hero is a set-up - this has all happened before and Neo cannot live up to the promise simply by playing the part laid out for him. Revolutions is all about Neo's reaction to this and whether he can live up to the faith placed on him and redeem the concept of the promised hero - which he does by negotiating peace with the machines, becoming a champion for both sides of the war.

The movies aren't subtle about this. Being critical of delivery is no excuse to miss the story before your eyes.

As for the discussion of philosophy, it isn't a unique concept, but is at least as old as Plato's cave. Discussion of simulation and unreality is very, very old, and a reference to a specific book doesn't make the concept any more novel. It's a fine basis for the story, sure. It is not the story itself. The first movie would be empty without the story of Neo. The sequels fail to replicate that story. More philosophy references are merely setting details. They are not story.

Firstly, both the original and the sequels are perfectly aware of the philosophical traditions they're part of, containing obvious references to Plato's cave, gnostic idealism and their equivalents in Eastern Philosophy. Second, in cinematography, there is a distinction between plot and story. "Plot" is the sequence of events, the what, when and how, while "story" is the themes, characterization and emotional reactions, the who, why and feel.

The philosophical discussion with the Architecht? That's story, tons of it, right there. It's all about Neo's character and how he reacts to the revelation before him, with myriad reflections on the Architecht's screens literally showing you alternative ways the story could play out before zooming in on the specific one the movie wants to focus on.

You can dislike the scene all you want but if you think that discussion isn't or doesn't have a story to it, you are just wrong.

[BloodSquirrel]

What the original missed is that once the map becomes the territory, it's not possible to just "wake up" and exist outside of it. As a result, the set-up between the resistance and the system is naively black-and-white -

This is exactly what I'm talking about. The set-up in the original movie wasn't "naively black-and-white"- keen observers were even noting at the time that the resistance's lack of concern for collateral damage was morally abhorrent. It was, however, conceptually clear and an in accordance with the movie's narrative and thematic goals, which were to present a hero's journey packaged with a metaphor that audiences found broadly compelling and applicable. Taking the parts of the philosophy that were compatible with making a stylistic action film and leaving the more esoteric parts that couldn't have possibly been worked into the plot in a coherent matter wasn't "missing the point".

The sequels could have gotten into some of those ideas, but in order to do so successfully, they would have needed to start with a story that was structurally sound enough to support them. But they never managed to come up with the right emotional core and the right metaphors to weld the philosophical ideas to said core that they would have needed in order to do that. Instead, they just have characters talk at the audience in-between pointless, overblown action sequences.

There's a deep irony that people talking about "the map becoming the territory" are failing to realize that, if you're going to put things in those terms, the original Matrix was the map that became the territory, and it was the sequels that naively thought that they could "wake up" and get outside of it.

You, along with the sequels, are completely missing the point by trying to argue about the validity of the philosophy rather than the mechanism for their delivery.

there's a reason why the iconography of the original was appropriated by conspiracy nutjobs and other suspect types who miss other points of the movie.

...and I'm not sure there's any possible better demonstration of missing the point than trying to rehabilitate the message of the original Matrix into "Don't question authority".

[Ramza00]

The sequels could have gotten into some of those ideas, but in order to do so successfully, they would have needed to start with a story that was structurally sound enough to support them. But they never managed to come up with the right emotional core and the right metaphors to weld the philosophical ideas to said core that they would have needed in order to do that. Instead, they just have characters talk at the audience in-between pointless, overblown action sequences.

but they did do that, people expect the heroes journey to be something like a man chasing after a women in a red dress in the crowd

but what if doing that leads to death

and the true journey is something a little more like a masquerade ? Mouse made that red dress lady for morpheus, mouse who rejected the matrix and took the red pill, who is one of the examples of who he is on the outside is different than his digital persona in the matrix (he adopts more swag.). Mouse who is obessed with tasty wheats and chicken and he is literally set apart storytelling wise with Cypher the betrayer.

If the machines can predict what you want and give you false binary choices, the only way to fully win or to fully lose is to see that there are more than two choices in the first place, and ask what values the choice giver is desiring and what their fears are.



and yes this story about faustian choices keep on reappearing in stories for when we invented coin money (not money in general) in multiple cultures, a universal substrate that can buy other things. Then we start seeing these type of stories in dramas (actually created the drama) and in myths.

[sktarq]

Well it isn't often that one can predict that this will be a CGI bore fest where we will be lectured to without that prediction being political in this day and age. There is something vaguely fun and ironical about that.

Pity that Hollywood still can't seem to actually do something with even a new reskin on older ideas and classic themes...nope got to mine the well of the recent past.

Could you do something almost techno-noir and philosophical in the vibe of Only Lovers Left Alive? Yeah I think you probably could.
Do I think they will? nope
Do I think it will be rubber body CGI bounce fest (with just a wee bit of artistic blood dripping) that will place spectacle over story? Far more likely.
Lots of member-berries and faux deep lines...either way for sure.

Oh and that the revolution is part of the system as a theme...may not work all that well anyway...that the system will tell you that the revolution has been commoditized and has merch at Hot Topic which is a division of BigBrandInc..just kinda fails in a medium is the message kinda way even when it is true.

[Vahnavoi]

This is exactly what I'm talking about. The set-up in the original movie wasn't "naively black-and-white"- keen observers were even noting at the time that the resistance's lack of concern for collateral damage was morally abhorrent.

You're confusing audience reactions with what's shown in the movie. Yes, many "keen observers" found the resistance's actions morally repugnant - and held it against the movie, because the movie didn't adequately address that point. (Up to and including considering the Matrix immoral and irresponsible, not helped by how some people tried to invoke the movie's ideas as legal defense for crimes.) You can have whatever opinions you want of people who moralize about fiction, but it's still a flaw in the original that it too uncritically sides with the idea that "if you're not with us, you're against us".

There's a deep irony that people talking about "the map becoming the territory" are failing to realize that, if you're going to put things in those terms, the original Matrix was the map that became the territory, and it was the sequels that naively thought that they could "wake up" and get outside of it.

Not remotely what the sequels tried to do. They straightforwardly doubled down on every element that made original Matrix what it was - that includes the philosophical self-deconstruction and reconstruction. The Architecht scene echoes and builds on both Morpheus's exposition dump and Smith's motive rant, and Neo's choice between two doors is similar to the red-pill-blue-pill scene. This doubling down just wasn't always the best choice they could've made.

You, along with the sequels, are completely missing the point by trying to argue about the validity of the philosophy rather than the mechanism for their delivery.

You are weirdly resistant to the idea that the original Matrix was not perfect in its delivery of its philosophical content, and that its imperfections were legitimate grounds for new supplementary material and sequels. The fact that not all those sequels were complete successess isn't the same as them missing the point. I agree Reloaded, Revolutions and (eventually) Resurrections had their share of problems, I even agree with you with what many of those problems are. But I can and do make a distinction between different kinds of problems that you are all too quick to lump under one catch-all phrase.

...and I'm not sure there's any possible better demonstration of missing the point than trying to rehabilitate the message of the original Matrix into "Don't question authority".

Not even remotely what the message of the sequels was, nor what I'm arguing for.

[Saph]

...and I'm not sure there's any possible better demonstration of missing the point than trying to rehabilitate the message of the original Matrix into "Don't question authority".

I think this is actually the biggest reason for why there's no possible way for a modern Matrix sequel to be any good. The Matrix is supposed to be about rebellion against the system, but modern Hollywood is all about conforming to the system. They're not willing to break any real taboos or advance any position that seriously challenges the establishment consensus, so the "rebellion" always has to be very weaksauce.

[Tyndmyr]

“Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand *why* you made it. I thought you'd have figured that out by now.”

Regardless of the philosophy, the structure of the story is still that of a hero's journey. You can say the choice isn't a choice, and layer on some philosophical theorizing, but from a story structure perspective, none of that matters. It fits the template.

We still see the hero grow, accept his role, fight back, etc. The precise details of how will vary from story to story, and that's great, but the latter films just...are missing most of the story. This is a problem that grows worse the further we get into the sequels. At least early on, we had the changes in Smith as at least one character with an arc, so that's....at least a little bit of a story, even if it isn't as strong with the primary characters.

By episode 4, we have no story at all. There's...a weird bit of rehashing the story from the first movie, which we already know, and can simply rewatch, there is no real benefit to slapping it in here....and then there is some lame love conquers all bit. A few tropes mashed together is not quite the same thing as character growth, and a memory wipe to retread exactly the same ground is pretty lazy.

Smith destroyed himself for even if he had all knowledge he could not understand the values and thus the choices Neo made and thus he could not see the trap.

If one is taking the sequels seriously, then Smith never actually destroyed himself, so this theme just doesn't work.

Why are you asking? These aren't unanswered questions in context of Reloaded and Revolutions. The original asks if Neo is the promised hero in the war of man against machine - he is! Animatrix shows that the conflict might have more facets to it

The Animatrix certainly had some good potential. Fun ideas that were not wholly explored, but yes, I can totally buy an origin story that begins with humanity being jerks. No quarrel with that.

Reloaded only manages to produce a new arc by erasing the conclusion of the first film. This is literally the same mistake made again in Matrix 4, albeit done much more lazily in 4. Erasing the progress only so that it can be done again is not a new story.

Firstly, both the original and the sequels are perfectly aware of the philosophical traditions they're part of, containing obvious references to Plato's cave, gnostic idealism and their equivalents in Eastern Philosophy. Second, in cinematography, there is a distinction between plot and story. "Plot" is the sequence of events, the what, when and how, while "story" is the themes, characterization and emotional reactions, the who, why and feel.

No. By definition, a plot is the sequence of events that make up a story. They are the same. The words are synonyms.

Where the movie is lacking in story, it is also equivalent to say that it is lacking in plot.

The philosophical discussion with the Architecht? That's story, tons of it, right there.

No. It's merely exposition. Exposition from someone who is adversarial and, by definition, not trustworthy and attempting to exert control. This narratively, serves the purpose of a confrontation...but instead it is a lecture. It lacks the energy of the hero having a tense meal with the villain, instead it makes the odd choice of having the hero simply be wholly reactive, listening to the antagonist and reacting to him.

One can tell a story of "I went to class today, and listened to a lecture" but that's not much of a story. Exposition by itself is not a tale.

In movie writing, scenes have one of three goals, to illuminate character, to advance the plot, and to expand the world. Good writers try to do accomplish more than one goal at once, but only the second is story. The filmbook in Dune explaining the features of the world is not the story of Dune. It's just some minor worldbuilding so the story can be told.

You can dislike the scene all you want but if you think that discussion isn't or doesn't have a story to it, you are just wrong.

Placing words in sequence is not a story. A definition in a dictionary imparts knowledge, and chains words together, but it tells no story.

One could argue that the architect scene is worldbuilding. It does tell us a little about the world. Fine. This comes far too late in the story for this to be relevant to setting up the story, and it's far too long, so it's pretty much a failure from this, but it most definitely does not tell us a story. Referencing philosophy books is not telling a story.

[Vahnavoi]

@Tyndmyr: story and plot both have various definitions. Some of them are synonyms. Others are not. In either case, Reloaded and Revolutions, both individually and put together, have a clear story and plot and the Architecht scene is pivotal to both. Claiming otherwise is equivalent to admitting you weren't watching the screen or didn't understand the dialogue. The latter is a legitimate criticism that can be made of the scene, given the language used, but I doubt it's your genuine issue here.

[Ramza00]

Regardless of the philosophy, the structure of the story is still that of a hero's journey. You can say the choice isn't a choice, and layer on some philosophical theorizing, but from a story structure perspective, none of that matters. It fits the template.

We still see the hero grow, accept his role, fight back, etc. The precise details of how will vary from story to story, and that's great, but the latter films just...are missing most of the story. This is a problem that grows worse the further we get into the sequels. At least early on, we had the changes in Smith as at least one character with an arc, so that's....at least a little bit of a story, even if it isn't as strong with the primary characters.

just a reminder that Joseph Campbell^{you invoked the heroes journey} was a creep, who taught at an all women university , and had ideas about women’s place in the household. And he was sympathetic to a specific nation state in his 30s until suddenly world war 2 happened. I am saying Campbell is both a philosophical man and a theological man where he had religious like ideas of order and chaos, and how the unique man always is supposed to reintegrate the chaos into the system. This was campbells ideology and he thought it non political for everything outside of his ideology felt crazy to him.

So yeah invoke your frame of reference this Joseph Campbell heroes journey, even though Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky is another frame of reference we can draw around the same facts. And which one you think is more apt is based off the values you choose. It is like those paintings of two women’s faces or a vace, well it depends on how you look at it.. Or the 2015 viral dress that looks white and gold or blue and black. Turns out how that optical illusion where people see different colors has to do with the background and if you look at the light source first or second the sun that is so bright your eyes will then calibrate the other colors based off that white source in the background. For our eyes are things from evolution and that type of bright light was often daylight and more important than color accuracy.

For Pete’s Sake The Matrix is supposed to be a utopia much like the Pallace of Crystal in 1840s London was a theme park the precursor to Disneyland and then Disneyworld. People loved and adored it. But Doestvsky, Marx, others saw the theme park as the modern day circus of rome and used as a bribe to justify imperialism and lack of freedom. Thus the madman in Notes from the Underground is against this thing.

By episode 4, we have no story at all. There's...a weird bit of rehashing the story from the first movie, which we already know, and can simply rewatch, there is no real benefit to slapping it in here....and then there is some lame love conquers all bit. A few tropes mashed together is not quite the same thing as character growth, and a memory wipe to retread exactly the same ground is pretty lazy.

you asked earlier who loved it, well that is why me and others loved Matrix 4, it is a loves conquers all story. That is the point!

Sorry you wanted a different story, but not all stories are for everyone.

If one is taking the sequels seriously, then Smith never actually destroyed himself, so this theme just doesn't work.

the philosophies the Matrix borrows from also are religions. They have rules they believe they know for sure they work in this world, but they are less confident what happens with life after death (the here after and the before after)

I am not going to elaborate further with “The Source” and how the world itself recreates itself (thus these religions assume reincarnation and re-circulation via metaphor) due to the boards rules about religions^{I will try my best to explain further without breaking the rules}.

One of the religions the matrix borrows from uses 6 lines of a religious text in the song at the credits for movie 3.

Likewise I can talk about the religion of a sub-urb of athens the Eleusinian Mysteries which the red pill and blue pill scene (and the mirror) is literally cribbing from [drugs are fun] This religion ritual that many men have done for the sub urb of athens “Eleusis” is less than a day walk from proper athens. Well the religion is centered around a specific cave (you can see pictures via google) where per religion this specific cave is where the whole demeter, personphe, hades thing went down (making it the center of the universe) so when Plato tells his Cave story everyone there in Athens would clock how it is similar but also how it is transgressive and transformative of the existing stories that super saturated the culture of Athens but our culture has forgotten those stories (mostly) so the same story lacks the frame of comparative reference.

No. By definition, a plot is the sequence of events that make up a story. They are the same. The words are synonyms.

Where the movie is lacking in story, it is also equivalent to say that it is lacking in plot.

Plato student Arisotle would disagree with you, he wrote one of the first formal rules for storytelling. But here is the thing about the formal rules they are meant to be broken and furthermore other people have their own ideas about forms and ideas / eidolon (like the summoner cohort, it is a greek word), idols etc. [all 4 of those english translated words come from the same greek source]

=====

as for the rest of what you wrote Tyndmyr to cut it down a lot (for we both went long)

where we disagree is memory and thus the act structure. The world is multiple acts and you can also not limit it to 3 acts or 5 acts or 10,000 acts.

And there can be actions that are internally coherent to a single act let’s say 30 minutes for often 3 act movies of 90 to 140 minutes long often have acts that are at least 30 minutes long.

Well the drama is how a value the character cares about exists outside from the previous act but it is confronted by this exchange this act. Like I want to be a hero in part 1, but part 2 brings a dilemma that challenges the previous story element that has moved from place to place. So on and so on, to infinity or to the storyteller loses breath for 140 minutes is a long time and is enough story for a single night.

The Matrix movies exist in a storytelling framework where things exist and it is beyond the knowledge of the point of view character to know the whole thing even if they know part of the thing. The world, the city, is larger than the cast of characters. The cast of characters can not “mastery the world”, not even the machines the one, or smith himself. (note not all stories are like that)

[KorvinStarmast]

just a reminder that Joseph Campbell^{you invoked the heroes journey} was a creep, who taught at an all women university , and had ideas about women’s place in the household.

Your argument ad hominem does not stand up well to even modest scrutiny.

[Vahnavoi]

Yeah, going after the guy who codified a thing is not the best way to criticize the thing. Cinema still uses tricks pioneered by Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will, after all - because, from a technical standpoint, they work.

[Ramza00]

I will attack a man’s “authority” when he starts saying he knows where women’s place is, and women are not supposed to be heroes in myth. It is political, even if the dead man sees it differently (for there is only one way to be myth, a mono-myth)

you may see it as bad form, but that is the entire point, the form-al structure where people can not imagine outside a story someone else told them about.

[Dragonus45]

I will attack a man’s “authority” when he starts saying he knows where women’s place is, and women are not supposed to be heroes in myth. It is political, even if the dead man sees it differently (for there is only one way to be myth, a mono-myth)

you may see it as bad form, but that is the entire point, the form-al structure where people can not imagine outside a story someone else told them about.

Sure attack the person I guess, but it's completely and totally immaterial to the actual point though.

[Tyndmyr]

@Tyndmyr: story and plot both have various definitions. Some of them are synonyms. Others are not. In either case, Reloaded and Revolutions, both individually and put together, have a clear story and plot and the Architecht scene is pivotal to both. Claiming otherwise is equivalent to admitting you weren't watching the screen or didn't understand the dialogue. The latter is a legitimate criticism that can be made of the scene, given the language used, but I doubt it's your genuine issue here.

Getting to the architect is treated as the goal of the plot, but once there, it's just...a lot of lecturing. It's not truly a back and forth. The language is not hard to understand. It's padded with large words, and that is, I suppose, part of my criticism, but fundamentally, it's not a satisfying payoff to the journey of getting here. Generally exposition is seeded up front in order to inform the viewer about the nature and stakes of the world and struggle, here, they are delivered after the fact, and there is no struggle.

They talk for what, seven minutes, and the only consequence is that Neo walks back out, to save Trinity, who would not be trying to save him if he wasn't here to begin with. It is a thread that accomplishes nothing save for providing an opportunity for the scriptwriters to narrate at us, and even that is padded beyond reason. The videos are just empty flash, showing the architect's predictions. They're not actually previous Neos. Neo is the sixth iteration, there's hundreds of monitors.

Does this scene actually carry any more weight than Neo walking through any of the previous doors? Yes, yes, he technically made a decision to walk through the door, but he chose to walk through all the other doors too. The speech itself is pretty pointless.

just a reminder that Joseph Campbell^{you invoked the heroes journey} was a creep, who taught at an all women university , and had ideas about womenÂ’s place in the household. And he was sympathetic to a specific nation state in his 30s until suddenly world war 2 happened. I am saying Campbell is both a philosophical man and a theological man where he had religious like ideas of order and chaos, and how the unique man always is supposed to reintegrate the chaos into the system. This was campbells ideology and he thought it non political for everything outside of his ideology felt crazy to him.

Come now, commonality of story structure has been recognized by many people. Insulting political perspectives of one man is wholly irrelevant to the idea that stories have familiar shapes.

See, in the first movie, the philosophy is simple, but effective. It isn't the first movie to suggest that reality is false to some degree, and behind everything is a dystopia. Probably Metropolis is the first such film, and of course the idea is common in literature as well. Its simplicity is fine, as it serves a purpose. It gives the hero something to struggle against, and the commonality of the idea makes it easily understood without devoting too much time to it.

So yeah invoke your frame of reference this Joseph Campbell heroes journey, even though Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky is another frame of reference we can draw around the same facts.

You can say literally anything, but that book is literally not about story structure at all, and is largely irrelevant, just like the earlier mention of the origin of coins as currency. I get that you really like those ideas, but the Matrix just isn't about them.

you asked earlier who loved it, well that is why me and others loved Matrix 4, it is a loves conquers all story. That is the point!

Sorry you wanted a different story, but not all stories are for everyone.

The idea that the love for Trinity was essential was found even in the first movie. Matrix 4 added nothing new here. The first movie, however, had a great deal more going on. The fourth movie was lacking in other ideas, and so it turned to recycling old ideas in a more hamfisted fashion.

As for "not all stories are for everyone," Matrix 4 was evidently not for very many people. I also never asked who liked it. I stated that I had never met anyone who liked it, which is a very different thing. I suppose even the worst movie probably has a fan or two somewhere, but objectively, the movie lost a pile of money and was not well regarded by most.

Plato student Arisotle would disagree with you, he wrote one of the first formal rules for storytelling. But here is the thing about the formal rules they are meant to be broken and furthermore other people have their own ideas about forms and ideas / eidolon (like the summoner cohort, it is a greek word), idols etc. [all 4 of those english translated words come from the same greek source]

Sure. Every rule can be broken. e.e. cummings flat out ignored capitalization and rules of punctuation. This does not mean that doing the same is going to be considered good writing or is a good idea. In almost every case, doing that will get your work criticized, disliked, or rejected.

I'm not saying that the Matrix 4 couldn't ignore rules. I'm saying that doing so made it a bad movie, and to some greater or lesser extent, this is true of all the sequels. Obviously 4 did so to a greater degree than the others, but all of them were much sloppier with story structure than the original, and this is a large part of why they were not as good.

where we disagree is memory and thus the act structure. The world is multiple acts and you can also not limit it to 3 acts or 5 acts or 10,000 acts.

Other structures exist besides a strict 3 act structure, but if you're writing a 10,000 act movie, it's going to be awful.

There are multiple ways to bake a cake, but there are also ways that will predictably fail to bake a cake.