They're making a Matrix 5.

[Ramza00]

We are not going to agree Tyndmyr. I said what I said about I liked the movie after you started the conversation that you have not met anyone who liked it.

{Scrubbed}

[Tyndmyr]

We are not going to agree Tyndmyr. I said what I said about I liked the movie after you started the conversation that you have not met anyone who liked it.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

I have not said that there is something wrong with you. This is the second time in this thread that you have significantly misrepresented what I have said.

[Saph]

I've gone back and watched clips from Reloaded a few times in the past few years, and I've found they've aged pretty well. The chateau fight/highway chase is one of the best extended action sequences ever filmed, and the Architect interview is genuinely intelligent and makes a lot of things about the setting make a lot more sense – it avoids the trope where, to serve the needs of the plot, the bad guys have to be simultaneously omnipotent and incompetent.

That said, at the time, I remember finding Reloaded pretty unsatisfying, and a big part of that is, as Tyndmyr says, that the actual structure of the movie is pretty bad. The worldbuilding is good, the conversation is good, but it just doesn't go anywhere – the big goal of getting to the Source ends up being largely an anticlimax. Looked back at as a whole, as part of the Matrix setting, it's fine, but as an individual movie, it doesn't work very well.

(Oh, and sorry Ramza, but Resurrections was terrible. It's the textbook example of a sequel no-one wanted.)

[Ramza00]

(Oh, and sorry Ramza, but Resurrections was terrible. It's the textbook example of a sequel no-one wanted.)

That’s the point. WB was going to make a morpheus prequel and the only way to stop it was Lana came back and brought back half of the original cast. Then 1/2 of the movie is a love story, pure euphoric sentiment (which not everyone will enjoy I recognize, when people cheer at a football game that too is euphoria but not everyone is going to have at football)

and the other half is saying I hated I had to do this, in order to defend something I made but that is capitalism for you. Literally in the video game office there is an easter egg of the matrix squid, and behind it to the left hand side is a prop object giving the middle finger and next to the middle finger is Batman (aka one of the WB mascots). In another place one of the heroes is doing kung fu trying to escape from people with guns and they fall down a building and it is full of lightbulbs and sparks on a sign, and the sign says “for those who love to eat ****” and then an arrow pointing to inside (a reference to the theater.)

The first movie is perfectly irreverent and disrespectful as well. Everything the body needs can be calculated as electricity, as amino acids, as tubes for you to poop in. Food is food, but it can also be steak, chicken, snot, runny eggs, or tasty wheaty tasted like (as Mouse and Apoc argued in the first movie). That’s all an animal needs to survive, like a city of pigs (plato reference) or a pod farm. Yet both the machines and humans reject this, I repeat the machines both the ones who like the matrix and smith who hates the matrix reject this. There has to be something more, both drive and desire that moves the animal and machine inside us. Thus we created this *gestures at the city, the matrix* including art. Art people like or dislike, and not all stories are for all people. (just like sports are not for all people)

If no one wanted the sequel, and the sequel must be made. Make it for the people who want a love story, who want to feel euphoria.

[Vahnavoi]

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.

Of course it's not a satisfying pay-off because it's the middle of the arc. Reloaded and Revolutions were shot together and are, for all intents and purposes, two halves of the same movie. The architect scene is the midpoint revelation that recharacterizes the conflict. This, in fact, follows the extensive form of hero's journey to a fault.

Saying the films are padded or take too long to get here are legitimate criticisms. They didn't have to tell this story with a two-part five hour movie. Saying the architecht scene isn't or doesn't have a story to it continues to be wrong. Saying there is no struggle is especially wrong, since after this is the entirety of Revolutions where Neo, quite visibly, struggles to find a solution since the previous one failed.

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.

I already noted they are predictions of this Neo, not the previous ones. The monitors, rather obviously, show alternate reactions Neo could have, including the "this is a load of crap!" reaction that you and other audience members might have, before zooming on the reaction the movie wants to build on. It's a neat bit of visual storytelling that tells us how the Architect thinks, especially in context of what the Oracle says of him later: "that man cam't see beyond any choice". He can predict all possible Neos, but can't tell which one is the real future before it happens.

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.

The last two doors rather obviously present a fork in the road. The Architecht sets up a version of the Trolley Problem (either spare many at the cost of one, or spare one at the cost of many). Neo calls his bluff on allowing him to choose at all and he doubles down. Neo, then, confidently chooses to spare one at the cost of many.

Could they have gotten here with less dialogue? Yes. That doesn't mean there is no point. The whole speech exists to establish that the Architecht is serious and these are the terms Neo has to live by. This becomes extremely obvious if you imagine any alternate conclusion where, say, Neo punches the Architecht and goes on to save Trinity and Zion in one fell swoop. The movie makers deliberately take that option off the table. Revolutions is a direct logical follow-up, and the fact that Neo loses Trinity on the way to his alternate solution adds weight to the Architecht scene as well.

[Saph]

That’s the point. WB was going to make a morpheus prequel and the only way to stop it was Lana came back and brought back half of the original cast. Then 1/2 of the movie is a love story, pure euphoric sentiment (which not everyone will enjoy I recognize, when people cheer at a football game that too is euphoria but not everyone is going to have at football)

and the other half is saying I hated I had to do this, in order to defend something I made but that is capitalism for you. Literally in the video game office there is an easter egg of the matrix squid, and behind it to the left hand side is a prop object giving the middle finger and next to the middle finger is Batman (aka one of the WB mascots). In another place one of the heroes is doing kung fu trying to escape from people with guns and they fall down a building and it is full of lightbulbs and sparks on a sign, and the sign says “for those who love to eat ****” and then an arrow pointing to inside (a reference to the theater.)

Saying "yeah, my movie sucks, but it's the fault of studios/audiences/capitalism" doesn't make your movie any better. In fact it makes it worse, since you're basically admitting that you know it's bad and you don't care. Yes, when you're making a piece of art, you have to take into account market forces and what the audience wants – no ****, Sherlock, this is something artists have been dealing since forever! But if you're worth anything as an artist, you'll still do the best job that you can anyway. This sort of passive-aggressive "okay, you're paying me a ton of money so I'm going to do it, but I'm going to do it really badly" attitude is the kind of thing you expect from teenagers.

[Vahnavoi]

Resurrections being self-aware of being made under duress is neither a point for nor a point against it.

It could've been a point for, if the movie had build on it, but it didn't - it's left as mostly isolated bit of metacommentary that has little bearing on the larger theme and plot. It could've been a a point against, if the movie would've been a cheap piece of crap, but it isn't - it is, mostly, state-of-the-art. The tragedy of Resurrections is that even when given a chance to redeem itself from WB's money-grubbing hands, it fails to do so.

It also doesn't fail because it was "unnecessary" or "unwanted". Nearly all films are unnecessary and no film has its desirability decided before being made. Had Resurrections been better, those would've been easy to forgive. Compare and contrast with Blade Runner 2049. Blade Runner didn't really need a sequel either and a lot of people were vocal about not wanting any - part of that may explain why it didn't do so well in the box office. But the finished product? It holds up fine compared to the original, has a positive critical record and is on its way to becoming a cult classic. Resurrections could've been to the Matrix at least what Blade Runner 2049 is to Blade Runner. It just wasn't.

[Tyndmyr]

Of course it's not a satisfying pay-off because it's the middle of the arc. Reloaded and Revolutions were shot together and are, for all intents and purposes, two halves of the same movie. The architect scene is the midpoint revelation that recharacterizes the conflict. This, in fact, follows the extensive form of hero's journey to a fault.

Saying the films are padded or take too long to get here are legitimate criticisms. They didn't have to tell this story with a two-part five hour movie. Saying the architecht scene isn't or doesn't have a story to it continues to be wrong. Saying there is no struggle is especially wrong, since after this is the entirety of Revolutions where Neo, quite visibly, struggles to find a solution since the previous one failed.

I expect a movie to be a viable story in itself. Merely setting groundwork for the next movie is not, itself, much of a story.

The last two doors rather obviously present a fork in the road. The Architecht sets up a version of the Trolley Problem (either spare many at the cost of one, or spare one at the cost of many). Neo calls his bluff on allowing him to choose at all and he doubles down. Neo, then, confidently chooses to spare one at the cost of many.

Yes. But take away all the lecturing, and any door that Neo goes through or doesn't is a choice. He goes through quite a lot of doors in this movie.

None of which are particularly important.

So, the difference is the dialogue, but the dialogue is not good. It is some heavy duty filler.

Could they have gotten here with less dialogue? Yes. That doesn't mean there is no point. The whole speech exists to establish that the Architecht is serious and these are the terms Neo has to live by. This becomes extremely obvious if you imagine any alternate conclusion where, say, Neo punches the Architecht and goes on to save Trinity and Zion in one fell swoop. The movie makers deliberately take that option off the table. Revolutions is a direct logical follow-up, and the fact that Neo loses Trinity on the way to his alternate solution adds weight to the Architecht scene as well.

Why shouldn't Neo punch the Architect? He has no motivation not to, and in fact, ends the speech by threatening the architect, which seems utterly pointless.

And, in any case, thanks to Matrix 4, all the talk of sacrifice is undone in any case. One can no longer take Trinity's death seriously, since she is merely resurrected again in any case. What meaning is left to the "choice?" We are left with the inescapable conclusion that all the paths lead to the same place regardless, and thus even the choice of which door is walked through is ultimately as meaningless as the words the Architect babbles.

Granted, the overall story would be rather less bad without 4, but if you're insisting that one can only fairly judge a movie as part of the broader whole, well, then you're stuck dealing with the fact that the whole includes some pretty rough stuff.

[Dragonus45]

That said, at the time, I remember finding Reloaded pretty unsatisfying, and a big part of that is, as Tyndmyr says, that the actual structure of the movie is pretty bad. The worldbuilding is good, the conversation is good, but it just doesn't go anywhere – the big goal of getting to the Source ends up being largely an anticlimax. Looked back at as a whole, as part of the Matrix setting, it's fine, but as an individual movie, it doesn't work very well.

Reloaded was so close to being a good movie it's tragic, but the moment they get to the Architect it just slams to a total halt and loses all momentum. I think of the whole Matrix Trillogy the same way I think of the Star Wars prequels really. It's absolutely the story it's creators wanted to tell warts and all and that feels right even when it's terribly flawed.

Resurrections was the movie the Wachowski sisters never wanted to make and literally screamed that as loudly as it could while ripping apart the idea anyone would ever want to make it and demanding nothing ever be made after it. Terrible as it was I respect that. The idea of a Matrix franchise without them just sounds meaningless. I hope, just for it's own sake, that whatever gets made finds creators who care and make something good. But for all it might or might not have any drawing power they may as well just make something totally new at this point because The Matrix as a franchise may as well be dead.

Resurrections being self-aware of being made under duress is neither a point for nor a point against it

I don't entirely agree with this, since how the creators choose to react to this and fold it into the story and what it meant for the creative process makes for something fascinating in it's own right. If not inherently good.

[warty goblin]

Reloaded was so close to being a good movie it's tragic, but the moment they get to the Architect it just slams to a total halt and loses all momentum. I think of the whole Matrix Trillogy the same way I think of the Star Wars prequels really. It's absolutely the story it's creators wanted to tell warts and all and that feels right even when it's terribly flawed.

As I said before, the Architect scene is to me the best part of the movie. It absolutely sizzles to me, precisely because it's the point where the standard hero journey bit stops and gets recontextualized into yet another layer of control. Having the hero find out they've been doing the villain's bidding all along isn't all that weird, but the way it connects to the overall theme and structure of the film is genuinely unique.

Part of this is that as I've gotten older, I've found the action bits of the Matrix less and less interesting, and the philosophical bits more layered and interesting. This isn't to diss the action, I'd happily put the lobby fight on a list of all time greats, but if I watch the Matrix any given Friday, it isn't why. The Architect scene is, to me, the movies finally cashing that check.

[Vahnavoi]

I expect a movie to be a viable story in itself. Merely setting groundwork for the next movie is not, itself, much of a story.

It is half of the story. You can criticize Reloaded and Revolutions for not being good standalone films due to that. But do you extend that to other multipart films? Do you also complain that (say) Peter Jackson's the Two Towers isn't much of a story?

Yes. But take away all the lecturing, and any door that Neo goes through or doesn't is a choice. He goes through quite a lot of doors in this movie.

None of which are particularly important.

So, the difference is the dialogue, but the dialogue is not good. It is some heavy duty filler.

Here you veer into nonsense again. Yes, the plot is Neo going through just another door if you ignore all the context and story around that choice. That's not a fair criticism of anything. Saying the very dialogue that establishes and explains the difference is filler is a complete oxymoron. It's like saying all the talk in Lord of the Rings explaining what rings of power are, and all the flashes of Sauron's eye in Peter Jackson's films, are filler - then turning around and wondering why people are so upset about a wedding band.

Seriously. Taking too long to get to a point, is not the same as not having one. Being bad, in whatever subjective way, is not the same as being unimportant.

Why shouldn't Neo punch the Architect? He has no motivation not to, and in fact, ends the speech by threatening the architect, which seems utterly pointless.

It has completely sailed past you that this might tell you something about who Neo is as a person, and tie in to the fact that Neo ultimately goes to the machine city to negotiate peace, rather than, say, try to blow the city up.

Neo doesn't punch the Architecht because he knows it is, at this point, futile. It cannot save Trinity or help him in any other way, it can only distract him. He threatens the Architecht to make his personal dissatisfaction known. The Architecht replies the way he does because he knows the threat is empty. For Neo, acting on his love towards Trinity is more important than acting on his rage against his creator.

And, in any case, thanks to Matrix 4, all the talk of sacrifice is undone in any case. One can no longer take Trinity's death seriously, since she is merely resurrected again in any case. What meaning is left to the "choice?" We are left with the inescapable conclusion that all the paths lead to the same place regardless, and thus even the choice of which door is walked through is ultimately as meaningless as the words the Architect babbles.

That's untrue. Remember what Architecht said: "She is going to die and there is nothing you can do about it."

Neo does nothing about in Resurrections. His and Trinity's continued existence was completely out of his hands. It is other people who make the choice to bring them back, a choice they only make because of Neo's and Trinity's earlier sacrifice and disappearance. Resurrections isn't subtle about this point.

You don't have to let Resurrections off the hook just for that, though. You can fairly argue the movie makers had better options than bringing Neo and Trinity back. You can also argue they could've made a better movie about them coming back. But saying the earlier sacrifice was meaningless because of an ultimate happy ending (20 years later in real life and 60 years later in the movie!) is silly.

Granted, the overall story would be rather less bad without 4, but if you're insisting that one can only fairly judge a movie as part of the broader whole, well, then you're stuck dealing with the fact that the whole includes some pretty rough stuff.

Resurrections wasn't shot concurrently with Reloaded and Revolutions. The point I made of Reloaded and Revolutions being two halves of the same story doesn't apply to it. It's a late addition made under duress and self-aware of it. If I found Resurrections to detract greatly from Reloaded and Revolutions, I'd have no trouble telling people to disregard it. As is, I'm mostly lukewarm to it - it doesn't defeat the point of Reloaded and Revolutions, but neither is it an interesting continuation of them.

Animatrix shorts and Enter the Matrix videogames are far more relevant to judging Reloaded and Revolutions, as they actually directly tie together.

[Dragonus45]

As I said before, the Architect scene is to me the best part of the movie. It absolutely sizzles to me, precisely because it's the point where the standard hero journey bit stops and gets recontextualized into yet another layer of control. Having the hero find out they've been doing the villain's bidding all along isn't all that weird, but the way it connects to the overall theme and structure of the film is genuinely unique.

Part of this is that as I've gotten older, I've found the action bits of the Matrix less and less interesting, and the philosophical bits more layered and interesting. This isn't to diss the action, I'd happily put the lobby fight on a list of all time greats, but if I watch the Matrix any given Friday, it isn't why. The Architect scene is, to me, the movies finally cashing that check.

I appreciate more and more as I get older the Architect as a concept. But I still find that all the energy of the movie just drains out when it gets to him whenever I go to re watch the series. It's not entirely his fault, middle movies of a trillogy always seem to suffer when it comes to being a complete story while also existing as a sequel and a prequel at the same time and Reloaded is paced poorly outside of just his scene. His scene is just the moment the wheels fall off. Also a non zero part of this problem? For all the unfortunate ideas implicit, and explicit, in the philosophy of rebellion as presenting in the Matrix that some people were cognizant of and were willing to critique I think that Reloaded expected too much from the wider audience in how aware and ready to engage with that discourse they were. The Architect was just not the best tool to get someone who wasn't already plugged in there to start searching for the outlet.

It is half of the story. You can criticize Reloaded and Revolutions for not being good standalone films due to that. But do you extend that to other multipart films? Do you also complain that (say) Peter Jackson's the Two Towers isn't much of a story?

Yes, Twin Towers isn't a great example since it did have conflicts to play out to completion and form character arcs inside of it though in a way Reloaded doesn't.

That's untrue. Remember what Architecht said: "She is going to die and there is nothing you can do about it."

Neo does nothing about in Resurrections. His and Trinity's continued existence was completely out of his hands. It is other people who make the choice to bring them back, a choice they only make because of Neo's and Trinity's earlier sacrifice and disappearance. Resurrections isn't subtle about this point.

You don't have to let Resurrections off the hook just for that, though. You can fairly argue the movie makers had better options than bringing Neo and Trinity back. You can also argue they could've made a better movie about them coming back. But saying the earlier sacrifice was meaningless because of an ultimate happy ending (20 years later in real life and 60 years later in the movie!) is silly.

Nah, the ending is totally re-contextualized by the Revolution in not a great way. Yes sure you can say the important bit was the willingness to make that sacrifice, and I have heard people argue that the happyish ending of Resurrection is justified as a reward for their selflessness which is as fair a reading as any, but ultimately it does completely change the impact and feel of that ending which otherwise I thought of as one of the high points of the movie. Meaningless is a very fair way to describe that loss of impact.

[Ramza00]

Saying "yeah, my movie sucks, but it's the fault of studios/audiences/capitalism" doesn't make your movie any better. In fact it makes it worse, since you're basically admitting that you know it's bad and you don't care. Yes, when you're making a piece of art, you have to take into account market forces and what the audience wants – no ****, Sherlock, this is something artists have been dealing since forever! But if you're worth anything as an artist, you'll still do the best job that you can anyway. This sort of passive-aggressive "okay, you're paying me a ton of money so I'm going to do it, but I'm going to do it really badly" attitude is the kind of thing you expect from teenagers.

we are going to disagree for we have different ideas about Genre. (and this is okay)

Unsatisfactory endings can be its own form of satisfaction and pleasure!

Sated means to feel full, as in food or drink, we feel it is completed. Sated and Satisfaction are also language cognates with the word Sad. How many movies end with a sad ending and we feel this sadness is enjoyable!? How many movies end with an indecisive ending like a spinning top and the meaning is ambiguous? (like Inception or the Sopranos) . How many movies use a twist ending like the Sixth Sense?

So on and so on. Many movies produce an unsatisfactory ending so you chew on it for minutes, days, months, years. The matrix came out 25 years ago (its anniversary was less than two weeks ago) and people are still arguing about it, thus one’s anger, anxiety, and angst (similar words all with the same root but slightly different meaning) is still being produced and that righteous feeling of anger can be its own form of enjoyment

Do you ever get enjoyment where one can not vanquish one’s rival but you get to have a smart alec remark about rainbows 🌈 ? Is speaking with banter and the best form of just living well can be its own form of revenge? I can not fix every evil in the world , the world and others surpass my reach , but each day I can do one task to completion and find enjoyment with my rock I push up the hill, the video game I play, the dnd character sheet I craft, the painting I paint the movie, the movie I watch.

I eat food and it nourishes me, and the food I can not break down I let it leave my body after 8 to 72 hours. This is satisfaction, including the un satis•faction for I am a factory and I am organic!

=====

So yes it is about genres for people wanted one thing and then they are given another thing

and sometimes people like me enjoy the SURPRISE and find it a good surprise, and other people hated the surprise and found it a bad surprise and find it to be ****!

{Scrubbed}

[Trafalgar]

Matrix, Alien, Terminator.....

What other dead horses need a beating?

[Ramza00]

Matrix, Alien, Terminator.....

What other dead horses need a beating?

the twilight zone

[Tyndmyr]

It is half of the story. You can criticize Reloaded and Revolutions for not being good standalone films due to that. But do you extend that to other multipart films? Do you also complain that (say) Peter Jackson's the Two Towers isn't much of a story?

An interesting perspective. I certainly don't think I'd sit down to watch the Two Towers without also watching Return of the King. Last time I watched them, I did watch the whole trilogy at a go. Last time I watched the Matrix, I watched only the Matrix.

I think the big difference here is that LotR was a trilogy from the start, and the first Matrix movie is pretty much a complete film with two sequels bolted on. I do think that multipart films are criticized more heavily when they go awry, particularly when it feels as if one film is being padded into multiple. Long as we're talking LotR, the hobbit films come to mind. Oh, they absolutely had some good bits, but there was some general discontent about padding and added plot. I'll concede that adding the love plot was, technically, story, but it did feel a bit out of place, and it and other bits definitely felt like a distraction from the central tale, not advancing it.

Also, back on Two Towers, the plot of the movie was not half finished. I think Helm's Deep was actually pretty significant, and delivered on the setup. Setup, payoff, that's all well and good. The architect's speech wasn't much of a payoff for its setup.

Here you veer into nonsense again. Yes, the plot is Neo going through just another door if you ignore all the context and story around that choice. That's not a fair criticism of anything. Saying the very dialogue that establishes and explains the difference is filler is a complete oxymoron. It's like saying all the talk in Lord of the Rings explaining what rings of power are, and all the flashes of Sauron's eye in Peter Jackson's films, are filler - then turning around and wondering why people are so upset about a wedding band.

Seriously. Taking too long to get to a point, is not the same as not having one. Being bad, in whatever subjective way, is not the same as being unimportant.

The architect truly does not have much in the way of a point. The transcript of it is available here.

The matrix reveals that this is iteration #6, Neo makes an unfounded but correct guess that choice is responsible. Thematically fitting, but from a conversational perspective, disjointed as hell. The initial failure and the need for iterations is not truly a reveal. This was already discussed in the first movie, which Smith flat out tells Morpheus this. Therefore, this is not actual progression of the plot. Oh, a number is given. The number doesn't much matter. If there had been five Neos or seven, the story would be the same.

The first movie already gave us the Oracle explaining that Neo had to choose between his life and Morpheus's. This...isn't fundamentally different. We've just changed the people in the choice. Only, it is not even a true choice. Trinity dies regardless, and apparently will be revived regardless. So, it is literally just discussion, and hardly even that. The Architect does all the talking here, it is a lecture. Barely more than a voice over.

It has completely sailed past you that this might tell you something about who Neo is as a person, and tie in to the fact that Neo ultimately goes to the machine city to negotiate peace, rather than, say, try to blow the city up.

The whole "peace is the answer" is again negated by the existence of the fourth film. After all, we basically end up with the cycle restarting all the same, showing that choosing peace is literally futile.

You don't have to let Resurrections off the hook just for that, though. You can fairly argue the movie makers had better options than bringing Neo and Trinity back. You can also argue they could've made a better movie about them coming back. But saying the earlier sacrifice was meaningless because of an ultimate happy ending (20 years later in real life and 60 years later in the movie!) is silly.

If it reconned the choice to not actually be a choice, then, no, that theme no longer works. The Matrix film with Resurrections in it is far less coherent than when it was just the trilogy(plus Animatrix, I suppose). I would argue even that the original film alone is thematically more cohesive than the trilogy, though the falloff is not so great as the addition of the fourth film.

It undercuts every message, discards a great deal of character, and generally diminishes the importance of all that came before. If the Matrix starts regardless, and you end up with Neo and Trinity in a matrix again regardless of which door Neo chooses, then the choice of doors does not matter. They are merely doors.

Nearly any other story would have been better than Resurrections, I think. I don't mind the Animatrix. I think it gave us some interesting other windows into the world, and more of that might have been interesting, but recycling the same old plot cannot help but be inferior.

[Ramza00]

we are arguing about the nature of time like the end of history or cyclic time where systems adapt around thing they can not digest fully, thus we can trace the cycles for how the system deals with irritants (like making them into a pearl, the grain of sand), is traceable / trackable. Thus history has not ended.

*shrug*

[Vahnavoi]

@Dragonus45: the Two Towers might not be the best example, but I didn't pick it randomly: I have seen it criticized for precisely the flaw you lay at the feet of Reloaded. Comparing where Two Towers succeeds in a way Reloaded doesn't is useful, but it doesn't answer the underlying question: does every movie truly have to be able to stand alone?

---

The architect truly does not have much in the way of a point. The transcript of it is available here.

I can watch the scene at will, you know. Throwing a transcript around doesn't make your case stronger.

The matrix reveals that this is iteration #6, Neo makes an unfounded but correct guess that choice is responsible. Thematically fitting, but from a conversational perspective, disjointed as hell. The initial failure and the need for iterations is not truly a reveal. This was already discussed in the first movie, which Smith flat out tells Morpheus this. Therefore, this is not actual progression of the plot. Oh, a number is given. The number doesn't much matter. If there had been five Neos or seven, the story would be the same.

Yes, the earlier versions were discussed before - by different characters, in a different movie, in different context. Just the fact that it's a fully lucid Neo there, reacting to the information imparted, rather than barely-conscious Morpheus, makes a relevant difference. You are right the exact number does not matter, but the fact that it is more than two establishes a new and important fact: this has happened before and Zion has fallen before. Neo even remarks on it being new information to him. That alone gives a point to reiterating this information.

The first movie already gave us the Oracle explaining that Neo had to choose between his life and Morpheus's. This...isn't fundamentally different. We've just changed the people in the choice. Only, it is not even a true choice. Trinity dies regardless, and apparently will be revived regardless. So, it is literally just discussion, and hardly even that. The Architect does all the talking here, it is a lecture. Barely more than a voice over.

Of course it isn't fundamentally different since it's continuation of a theme. Ditto for the choice possibly not being a true choice, which also a recurring theme in Reloaded and Revolutions. It's like you almost got the point but then didn't realize it's a point the movie was trying to make to you.

But you make a mistake in not considering the path not taken. If Neo had not chosen to rescue Trinity, his actions would've not lead to Revolutions and Resurrections. There is no good faith argument to be made that it wouldn't have made a difference. Another way to realize this is to consider common audience reactions to the Trolley Problem, which Neo's choice is a version of: there's always a segment of people who refuse to accept the terms and insist on finding a third option. The Architecht's bit about hope points this out, and, again, tells us something about who these characters are. The exchange tells us that Neo does not genuinely want extinction of everyone - he's hoping for another choice beyond this one, and his quest for that choice is the entirety of Revolutions. The weight of Trinity's death is to pull the rug from under such third optionism: it is not in Neo's hands to save his cake and eat it too. It is exactly as the Architecht said.

Additional information from Resurrections does not change that last bit. It is abundantly clear his and Trinity's resurrection was not in Neo's hands, it's not a choice he made nor information that factored into the decision he made. It is a pretty bad case of hindsight bias to use events decades after-the-fact to recharacterize a decision.

The whole "peace is the answer" is again negated by the existence of the fourth film. After all, we basically end up with the cycle restarting all the same, showing that choosing peace is literally futile.

Except the lines of conflict got redrawn, it's no longer the same people fighting for the same sides. I'll grant you that Resurrections doesn't focus on this enough to make you feel the difference, but it does explicitly address it.

Remember: I don't particularly like Resurrections either. What bothers me is not your dislike for it, it's when your justification for that dislike turns ignorant of what happened on the screen.

[Ramza00]

(with resurrections) remember there was a machine civil war and the machine civil war is still going on with multiple factions even if the analyst faction now has more control of the farms

the architect and the oracle are likely gone for good / deleted

Zion got a whole lot bigger before the civil war for the red pills were free to leave. Then Zion was destroyed but due to the early warning much of the people in it flee-ed before hand. And Io after it was set up is both more prosperous with more people and a higher quality of life with its living standards compared to Zion

=====

war and strife is still occurring, but in many ways things are better even if they are not utopic *shrug*

and yes I am a sucker for a love story and the freedom to try again

[Dragonus45]

we are arguing about the nature of time like the end of history or cyclic time where systems adapt around thing they can not digest fully, thus we can trace the cycles for how the system deals with irritants (like making them into a pearl, the grain of sand), is traceable / trackable. Thus history has not ended.

*shrug*

I'm sorry could you clarify what you mean here?

@Dragonus45: the Two Towers might not be the best example, but I didn't pick it randomly: I have seen it criticized for precisely the flaw you lay at the feet of Reloaded. Comparing where Two Towers succeeds in a way Reloaded doesn't is useful, but it doesn't answer the underlying question: does every movie truly have to be able to stand alone?

Is it charging me full price for entry and running for a feature length amount of time? Then yes. A film needs to stand up as a complete movie even when it's a sequel or a middle child. You really can't take an extra long movie chop it in half part way through and then call it "complete". Also I lay a lot of flaws at the feet of reloaded I might need clarification here on which one also applies to Two Towers.

and yes I am a sucker for a love story and the freedom to try again

You keep saying this, but a movie being up your alley doesn't make it good in it's own right. It just means it's something you are more likely to overlook it's myriad flaws.

[Ramza00]

You keep saying this, but a movie being up your alley doesn't make it good in it's own right. It just means it's something you are more likely to overlook its myriad flaws.

are you familiar of The Myth of Sisyphus by the french guy Albert Camus? Camus being a world war 2 survivor who later died in his 40s via a car crash and wrote some of the french classics like The Plague, The Rebel, The Stranger, The Fall and before his death a year before he got the Nobel Prize in Literature. (forgot to mention written in 1942 after France lost and is now an occupied power, it is a story of failure and living)

Well the Myth of Sisyphus is a 4 chapter short story and arguably only the last chapter matters. If the world is cursed (this is a bad summary and the original is only 2 pages long) then it is cursed. Yet we find moments of enjoyment in this absurd. Thus when all we can see is the badness we are doing self-annihilation, might as well just die. (Princess Mononoke is a good similar story if you want a point of comparison)

But the absurd man (which is different than the aesthetically pleasing man, or the ethical man, this is from Kierkegaard where Camus comes from this tradition, and Kierky was trying to reconnect to the Greeks and his own religious tradition)

finds reasons to keep on living, he imagines himself happy and that is not enough to actually make him happy but it allows him to start a circuit of moving and aesthetics and ethics all over again, to restart the engine, to find love / religion again. (I put a dash here for this tradition is full of atheists and agnostics, it is a commitment to something outside oneself, to find joy among the absurd / cursed world)

A bad movie can exist, but if you find something lovely and true in it, is it not a good thing as well? The good can co-exist with the bad.

[ read the two pages for it is way more than this and talks about ideology and isms as manuals of happiness that fail and so on ]

I'm sorry could you clarify what you mean here?

It is Baudrillard and I can not explain it simply, wikipedia exists if you want to know more (this is his 1970s to his 2000s deatg stuff, The Mirror of Production: Symbolic Exchange and Death … aka think of Neo tripping in the first movie and touching the mirror and then deciding to face Smith instead of running, facing his death which then repeats the themes in movie 2 and 3, once again Neo is in an underground railroad and must choose what to do next. Baudrillard also did not create this he is borrowing from 1920s to 1960 guy George Bataille and also stuff like Plato )

• But the short of it is I like acid in the outside world, or acid in my digestive system can not reduce the entire world into base elements and rebuild it. My digestive system / my satisfaction system (sate is a word tied to eating and drinking and being full) can not handle it and this also applies to all those outside me mechanical tools which can not break down all things into macro and micro.
• Just because I can liquidfy so many things , then exchange them with others, then recreate them as the same thing in a new form or create entirely new things out of them. There are some things I can not change.
• Thus a mixture of things I can change and things I can not change.
• The things I can not change have a different language grammar tied to them than the things we can change. Not just male and women in some languages like feminine or masculine grammar (and some languages have a third grammar of neuter / neutral.) In other language traditions things are alive and animate for they move differently than the things that are dead and inanimate. Different grammar, different code, different words.
• The system which can not kill / liquidfy / dissolve a thing must organize around it. All the various isms like capitalism but other isms go here, the system must adapt around the things it can not change. Adaptation is re-integration.
• Likewise humans at an individual level do this too, for example the 3 line Serenity Prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr which Y.W.C.A. and Alcoholics Anonymous made hyper famous and then everyone critiques it from Calvin and Hobbes, Slaughterhouse Five, True Detective, etc … there are things we can change, things we can not change, and the third thing.
• But there is ambiguity in the 3rd line the wisdom to know what can and can not be changed? No one knows what it is before hand what is possible and impossible, it is a leap of faith.^{🎶some call it love🎶}
• And when the leap of faith occurs when the impossible becomes possible, or the possible becomes impossible the grammar of our words, our code also change even if actually living is far more important than words we communicate, the signs we share.

Enough? Questions?

[Dragonus45]

are you familiar of The Myth of Sisyphus by the french guy Albert Camus? Camus being a world war 2 survivor who later died in his 40s via a car crash and wrote some of the french classics like The Plague, The Rebel, The Stranger, The Fall and before his death a year before he got the Nobel Prize in Literature. (forgot to mention written in 1942 after France lost and is now an occupied power, it is a story of failure and living)

Well the Myth of Sisyphus is a 4 chapter short story and arguably only the last chapter matters. If the world is cursed (this is a bad summary and the original is only 2 pages long) then it is cursed. Yet we find moments of enjoyment in this absurd. Thus when all we can see is the badness we are doing self-annihilation, might as well just die. (Princess Mononoke is a good similar story if you want a point of comparison)

But the absurd man (which is different than the aesthetically pleasing man, or the ethical man, this is from Kierkegaard where Camus comes from this tradition, and Kierky was trying to reconnect to the Greeks and his own religious tradition)

finds reasons to keep on living, he imagines himself happy and that is not enough to actually make him happy but it allows him to start a circuit of moving and aesthetics and ethics all over again, to restart the engine, to find love / religion again. (I put a dash here for this tradition is full of atheists and agnostics, it is a commitment to something outside oneself, to find joy among the absurd / cursed world)

A bad movie can exist, but if you find something lovely and true in it, is it not a good thing as well? The good can co-exist with the bad.

[ read the two pages for it is way more than this and talks about ideology and isms as manuals of happiness that fail and so on ]

Good in the sense that it manged to bring some modicum of joy to your life? Sure. Good as in being a quality well made product? No. It's unrelated.

Enough? Questions?

No that was even confusing. Could you boil it down it down some more?

[Ramza00]

Good in the sense that it manged to bring some modicum of joy to your life? Sure. Good as in being a quality well made product? No. It's unrelated.

It was stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly ninety-nine percent of the movie watchers accepted the program provided they were given a choice - even if they were only aware of it at a near-unconscious level. If you do not like the movie there are many more of them and soon perhaps a #5

No that was even confusing. Could you boil it down it down some more?

Literally the things you can not boil, the system must adapt to.

[Tyndmyr]

Yes, the earlier versions were discussed before - by different characters, in a different movie, in different context. Just the fact that it's a fully lucid Neo there, reacting to the information imparted, rather than barely-conscious Morpheus, makes a relevant difference. You are right the exact number does not matter, but the fact that it is more than two establishes a new and important fact: this has happened before and Zion has fallen before. Neo even remarks on it being new information to him. That alone gives a point to reiterating this information.

He's not reacting very much.

More to the point, his reaction does not matter. Any reaction whatsoever leads to the same outcome.

. It's like you almost got the point but then didn't realize it's a point the movie was trying to make to you.

So? Something being intentional does not make it good.

The Room was made intentionally. The Room is not good, save for in the ironic sense of amusement that such an insane work managed to be made at all.

If Neo had not chosen to rescue Trinity, his actions would've not lead to Revolutions and Resurrections.

How so? Resurrections is pretty much just recycling the original "The One" storyline. It doesn't differ much from just another iteration.

The storyline is a good deal more coherent without that. One can still somewhat believe that Neo is unique, and thus that the Agent Smith problem is also unique, and therefore the original trilogy has some sort of actual change to the status quo as a result. Resurrections undoes that, and makes it all meaningless, because despite it all, we are back at another iteration.

Another way to realize this is to consider common audience reactions to the Trolley Problem, which Neo's choice is a version of: there's always a segment of people who refuse to accept the terms and insist on finding a third option. The Architecht's bit about hope points this out, and, again, tells us something about who these characters are.

In this room, Neo does not attempt a third option. He literally just picks one of the two presented options.

Except the lines of conflict got redrawn, it's no longer the same people fighting for the same sides. I'll grant you that Resurrections doesn't focus on this enough to make you feel the difference, but it does explicitly address it.

Remember: I don't particularly like Resurrections either. What bothers me is not your dislike for it, it's when your justification for that dislike turns ignorant of what happened on the screen.

Agent Smith swapping sides is not terribly well justified, motivated, or even consistent with the character in any way. Ultimately, it remains humans with a secret AI ally against the machines...it doesn't actually differ from the original in this, because the Oracle always served this role. Resurrections is literally just the plot of the first movie recycled, but a great deal worse.

In doing this, what comes before is made ridiculous. See also, episode 7 of Star Wars. If the status quo has suddenly reverted swiftly and almost inexplicably, does this not diminish all that was done to overcome evil before this? Of course it does, and this is a fundamental problem with Resurrections. The story being told doesn't advance the plot, it mostly just resets it. The quality being far worse doesn't help it, but the story at the core of it isn't good or new.

Is it charging me full price for entry and running for a feature length amount of time? Then yes. A film needs to stand up as a complete movie even when it's a sequel or a middle child. You really can't take an extra long movie chop it in half part way through and then call it "complete". Also I lay a lot of flaws at the feet of reloaded I might need clarification here on which one also applies to Two Towers.

This, I feel, is also a fair view. The most recent Spiderverse movie was generally well received and considered good, an assessment I agree with. However, there was still some annoyance at the fact that it was a mostly unannounced first half to a two parter.

That's reasonable. Viewers came expecting one movie, not to be obligated to watch a second to finish the story. The story being good means the saltiness won't be as bad as Matrix 4/5, but still, it's fair to expect the studios to deliver what they promise us.

are you familiar of The Myth of Sisyphus by the french guy Albert Camus? Camus being a world war 2 survivor who later died in his 40s via a car crash and wrote some of the french classics like The Plague, The Rebel, The Stranger, The Fall and before his death a year before he got the Nobel Prize in Literature. (forgot to mention written in 1942 after France lost and is now an occupied power, it is a story of failure and living)

I think almost everyone who reads is familiar with the tale of Sisyphus.

One can imagine Sisyphus happy, if one wishes. He is fictional. It does not change the quality of the work. One can be satisfied by eating bad food, because it is superior to starvation, but that does not mean a terrible meal is actually wonderful. You are free to enjoy a bad movie, or to eat bad food if you wish, but it's not reasonable to redefine every word to justify your opinion as having some kind of universal meaning.

To say that a move is satisfying because it is unsatisfying is to ignore the plain definition of words. This is incoherent, not wise, and no amount of literature references can change this.

[Dragonus45]

It was stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly ninety-nine percent of the movie watchers accepted the program provided they were given a choice - even if they were only aware of it at a near-unconscious level. If you do not like the movie there are many more of them and soon perhaps a #5

I'm sorry what solution? I would like some more details on that, and yes I am quite aware there might be a 5th on the way or other movies that exist.

Literally the things you can not boil, the system must adapt to.

Expungement is also an option.

[Wintermoot]

I'm sorry what solution? I would like some more details on that, and yes I am quite aware there might be a 5th on the way or other movies that exist.

.

He's paraphrasing a quote from the Architect's speech about how they got 99% of humanity to accept the Matrix and not reject it by giving them the illusion of a choice.

I'm pretty sure it was meant as a joke (I was wryly amused). But now that it had to be explained, it's failed.

[Aedilred]

I have to wonder who actually wants this movie.

The Matrix was a good movie, but it was also of its time and the sequels have displayed rapidly diminishing returns creatively. Most non-Matrix films the Wachowskis have directed have been either rubbish or box-office flops or both. Even if the critical reception for Resurrections was cautiously mediocre, rather than outright negative as with Revolutions (or most other Wachowski movies), it didn't make its money back.

We can argue endlessly about whether the initial Matrix sequels were any good (I'm firmly in the "they suck" camp) but what is clear is that audiences have moved on. Who is a fifth Matrix film for? What is it for? The directors apparently aren't interested, audiences apparently aren't interested and studios shouldn't, on all the evidence of the numbers, be interested. Even if anyone does go to see this movie, they won't be able to hear it over the deafening sound of barrel-scraping.

[KorvinStarmast]

I have to wonder who actually wants this movie.

The same people who wanted yet another version of Batman of Spiderman: some movie producers.

{snip assessment} Even if anyone does go to see this movie, they won't be able to hear it over the deafening sound of barrel-scraping.

Heh, that was a nice turn of phrase.

[Dragonus45]

I have to wonder who actually wants this movie.

The Matrix was a good movie, but it was also of its time and the sequels have displayed rapidly diminishing returns creatively. Most non-Matrix films the Wachowskis have directed have been either rubbish or box-office flops or both. Even if the critical reception for Resurrections was cautiously mediocre, rather than outright negative as with Revolutions (or most other Wachowski movies), it didn't make its money back.

We can argue endlessly about whether the initial Matrix sequels were any good (I'm firmly in the "they suck" camp) but what is clear is that audiences have moved on. Who is a fifth Matrix film for? What is it for? The directors apparently aren't interested, audiences apparently aren't interested and studios shouldn't, on all the evidence of the numbers, be interested. Even if anyone does go to see this movie, they won't be able to hear it over the deafening sound of barrel-scraping.

I don't think the Wachowski's are going to be back for this one? Honestly that interests me more then anything. I still would say I'm a fan of their films and willing to go check out anything they make but I can't say I wouldn't be interested in seeing what some other people with fresher takes might want to do with the property.

[Talakeal]

The same people who wanted yet another version of Batman of Spiderman: some movie producers.
Heh, that was a nice turn of phrase.

But people like Batman and Spiderman.

There are a few duds, but for the most part Batman and Spiderman movies are well liked and make bank.

Matrix, not so much.

I guess someone is just hoping they will recapture the spark of the original?

Hell, they are making a new Highlander film, despite the fact that it is infamous for terrible sequels.