The Matrix films (or how/why did the Wachowskis muck up the sequels so badly?)

[mothman]

I remember reading a hilariously prudish review of the Zion rave/Neo-Trinity sex scene. Trying to recall where it was...

All I remember from Revolutions was wondering why the quality of the video file I had was so bad. I got my answer just before the file ended, when somebody stood up just as the credits rolled. Yes, it was a cam job.

[Custard]

Those cam recordings are great though, cos all the unintentional laughter was captured in them. Wish I'd kept them!

[mothman]

Yeah, I just want a screen grab of that last second of the file! I think I've long since thrown the disk out...

[badaids]

Well.  Basically in the 2 hours of Revolutions nothing happens.  It ends a literally little bit past where it starts and the in between is taken up with makes you think type exposition talking in rooms before we get to the agent Smith and freeway scenes which are dropped like bricks into the soup.  To be fair it's not as bad as I remembered and there are few good action scenes and moments, but as an overall film it's a mess.

Does anyone fancy a group watch of revolutions?

[chveik]

what's it about?

[mothman]

Talking about Revolutions, I can still remember hearing this for the first time in 1988, when my friend Joey in the room next door in our dorm got the CD and played it at high volume in his high-end stereo system, far more vividly than I can remember watching any part of Matrix Revolutions in 2004.

[Twit 2]

The sequels are incoherent tosh. The architect's speech is some of the worst dialogue to ever feature in a film. I remember being both astonished and offended by its utter stupidity and smug contempt for the audience.

The 1st film is OK. Derivative, philosophically empty and with mostly awful dialogue; on the other hand, it is at least coherent, stylish, technically well-made and memorable—a veritable masterpiece compared to the abominations that followed.

[evilcommiedictator]

Most of you haven't watched The Animatrix and it shows

[13 schoolyards]

What are the Zionions even rebelling against? Even if the world outside it wasn't completely horrible, what's so terrible about living in the Matrix? Neo goes clubbing in the first film, so it's not like Zion wins any points for the rave scene. He freaks out about being used as a battery, but it doesn't actually seem to do anyone any real harm (although the Soylent Green-esque drip feed is minging).

Joey Pants had the right idea, I reckon.

IIRC the final moment of the final film is basically "well, now humans will have the right to choose between the Matrix and the real world". Cut to that drippy Neo-worshipping kid wandering around a completely empty Zion calling out "...Hello? ...Anyone?"

(I think the sequels really tried to make it that it wasn't so much The Matrix itself that was evil, more that humans were being enslaved in it without being given the choice to participate. Which is fair enough as a point, but as a good vs evil plot driver it's pretty weak - the bad guys are saying "get in the battery" and the good guys are saying "you can get in the battery but only if you really want to")

[Replies From View]

Most of you haven't watched The Animatrix and it shows

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[Replies From View]

IIRC the final moment of the final film is basically "well, now humans will have the right to choose between the Matrix and the real world". Cut to that drippy Neo-worshipping kid wandering around a completely empty Zion calling out "...Hello? ...Anyone?"

The final scene is the Architect, the new version of the Oracle and the family from the subway station in a garden, and the little girl is somehow making a cheesy CGI sunset happen in remembrance of Neo.

And there's a really awful slow motion smile from the Oracle that seems to last most of the film's running time.  She just kind of smiles and turns and begins to walk away but it's presented like an episode of Jam.



I'd so love that wiener kid to be alone in a giant echoing Zion though.  And I've only just realised you were joking when you suggested it, but never mind.  If they'd stuck it in after the credits it would have been the best part of the Matrix sequels.

[Blinder Data]

Most of you haven't watched The Animatrix and it shows

I think there were some worthwhile concepts in the sequels, Animatrix, etc. The problem is in their execution.

A philosophically interesting story and broader universe (for Hollywood standards) does not make up crap characters, dialogue, plotting, CGI - plus everything else that's shit about the films.

They are frankly poorly constructed films and no amount of after-the-fact contextualising by its makers will make up for that. The old political maxim "if you're explaining, you're losing" works with films too.

[Replies From View]

Most of you haven't watched The Animatrix and it shows

The Animatrix pieces clearly serve a world-building function, and that's great but the movies themselves should have been standalone.  I remember in 2003 some of the promotional stuff saying "and to get the most out of this movie you will want to immerse yourself in a PlayStation 2 game".  It was bad enough as a promotional line and it certainly doesn't stand up to scrutiny nearly two decades later.  The films have holes in them and it doesn't matter if an animation series and a computer game put content in some of those holes.  Just make films without holes.

Yeah, IIRC there's a bit in some mission briefing where they tell one of the rebels that she needs to blow up a nuclear power plant, and it all sounds very exciting, but then the film just cuts to her watching the plant explode from a distance - because her mission was actually in the video game. But most of the people in our audience didn't know that, and the cinema burst into uproarious laughter at the anticlimactic cut.

"Most of you haven't played Enter The Matrix and it shows"

[Mr Trumpet]

The bit that got the biggest laugh in the cinema when I saw it was in the third film where they crash the spaceship and blind Neo is all "let's go Trinity!" and she says "I can't come with you Neo" and he says "Why?!" and it cuts to her impaled on a giant girder. Unintentional visual comedy there.

Another thing I like is that in the first film they establish that Neo is The One and his powers include:

- Being really fast
- Stopping bullets in mid-air
- Being good at fighting agents
- Seeing all the code
- Flying

And it suggests that he can basically do anything now. But in the sequels it turns out that those are literally the only new things he can do, they couldn't come up with any new stuff.

[Replies From View]

Another thing I like is that in the first film they establish that Neo is The One and his powers include:

- Being really fast
- Stopping bullets in mid-air
- Being good at fighting agents
- Seeing all the code
- Flying

And it suggests that he can basically do anything now. But in the sequels it turns out that those are literally the only new things he can do, they couldn't come up with any new stuff.

For me it wasn't so much that they "couldn't come up with any new stuff", but they intentionally shrunk down what had been implied at the end of the first film:  in order to make sequels including Neo, what was originally conveying "Neo has transcended the Matrix" was re-interpreted as "Neo has gained the above powers".  Strictly speaking the difference was only a matter of reading, but nobody following the themes of the first film thinks at the end that Neo has merely gained a bunch of powers.

See also my previous post:

There seemed to be a lot more potential at the end of the first film that was never really acknowledged in the sequels.  Neo was seeing Matrix code and was able to take apart the physical reality facing him.  In the final moments of the first film, that process happened to involve dissolving the threat of the bullets fired at him, as well as transcending the need for physical fighting, opting instead to launch himself into Smith to kill him.  And then, kind of as a gag at the end, he flew off into the sky.

The flying annoyed me, because I felt that it involved accepting physical distance within the Matrix that we had seen Neo transcending.  I felt using his mind to draw places towards him, essentially teleporting himself, would have been more in line with his progress, but I understood the flying looked cool as a final gag, like the flying Delorean at the end of the first Back to the Future.


The problem came with the sequels, when the Wachowskis decided that films two and three should continue to focus on Neo's journey.  But we had already had the full form of the hero's journey in the first film, and he was transcending physical reality by the end of that.  He should have been a myth by the start of Matrix Reloaded - a godly figure referenced away from the main action, no longer accessible to the mere mortals that we'd be spending time with. 

But they wanted to continue Neo's journey, so they took what we'd witnessed him achieve at the end of the first film:  seeing Matrix code, stopping bullets in thin air, and flying, and they made these three things his powers.  His only powers.  The notion that he had transcended everything else was only in my head now:  he was back to fighting agents with his hands and feet which, by the way, Morpheus and everyone else could also do, for reasons that were never addressed.

So it felt like the sequels never connected with the first film, for me.  They certainly were not intended from the start as the producers would go on to claim.  If they'd been planned from the start, they wouldn't have put Jennifer in the car.

[Custard]

The bit that got the biggest laugh in the cinema when I saw it was in the third film where they crash the spaceship and blind Neo is all "let's go Trinity!" and she says "I can't come with you Neo" and he says "Why?!" and it cuts to her impaled on a giant girder. Unintentional visual comedy there.

Haha, yes, that was a good one

[Dex Sawash]

Most of you haven't watched The Animatrix and it shows

I've driven a Toyota Matrix and none of you would know if I hadn't told you

[Replies From View]

You wear Neo sequel sunglasses on purpose

[Dex Sawash]

And I live.about 300 yards from the Eno River

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It seems like they were wary of straying too far from the iconic stuff of the first film. Much the same thing happened with The Force in the Star Wars prequels/sequels. Audiences liked the kung fu fighting, they might not be so enthused by Neo waving his hand and turning the agents into owls.

Even so, there was that bald monk kid going all Uri Geller on a spoon in the first film. You'd think that power might have come in handy when baddies in the second film were attacking Neo with swords and whatnot.

"Most of you haven't played Enter The Matrix and it shows"

I have. Aside from the absolutely terrible driving levels, it was good fun.

[Replies From View]

Haha, yes, that was a good one

Keanu Reeves' acting is great there as well when he says "oh no".  It's like he's knocked something over in the kitchen and now has to grab a cloth.


That's one thing about the video I shared before:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0VnYcMHuDc

Around 30 minutes in, the video starts talking about the 'vibe' between Neo and Trinity, and finds that the choices of direction and performance present both the characters as lesbians.  In particular there's some focus on Reeves' performance that I've always taken as limitations of his acting ability rather than anything intentional, least of all 'coded'.  But in fairness, I was not expected to read it that way.

[Replies From View]

I've just remembered as well how disappointed I was that the business with Smith taking over somebody in the real world merely led to a stowaway scene in the third film.  Making Neo blind in that final act didn't even raise the stakes in any meaningful way.  For me, almost all the ideas that the Wachowskis perceived as throwaway were the ones with potential for expansion.


Also, I love how Reeves doesn't quite know how to perform the hand-out-stopping-things routine when it's something massive.  Just shake your hand a bit more, like it's absorbing the impact, yeah.  And do a face like it's a tiny bit stressful.  That's it, and when we get to the machine city and you're blind, just do that really loads.  Job done, excellent.

[popcorn]

That's one thing about the video I shared before:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0VnYcMHuDc

Around 30 minutes in, the video starts talking about the 'vibe' between Neo and Trinity, and finds that the choices of direction and performance present both the characters as lesbians.  In particular there's some focus on Reeves' performance that I've always taken as limitations of his acting ability rather than anything intentional, least of all 'coded'.  But in fairness, I was not expected to read it that way.

I think this video is fairly silly.

[Twit 2]

Imagine getting arrested and tried in court and telling the judge they could establish your innocence by playing a computer game. You'd be sent down, and quite right too.

[idunnosomename]

WHY WOULD YOU SHIP NEW MOTORBIKES WITH FUEL IN THEM

you put a few gallons in cars because you cant move them easily otherwise. But you can just push motorbikes around a dealership. Fucking hell it's so stupid.

[Replies From View]

I vaguely mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I would like to ask it as a direct question:  did anyone watching Matrix Reloaded understand, when watching the motorway chase scene, that the two ghostly twins had died when their car exploded?

For me it was entirely unclear because their powers suggested they would survive something like that.  I thoroughly expected them to be returning later in the sequels, and assumed that all we'd seen of them had been set-up for something actually worthwhile.

[SweetPomPom]

WHY WOULD YOU SHIP NEW MOTORBIKES WITH FUEL IN THEM

Spoon rules innit.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I vaguely mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I would like to ask it as a direct question: did anyone watching Matrix Reloaded understand, when watching the motorway chase scene, that the two ghostly twins had died when their car exploded?

For me it was entirely unclear because their powers suggested they would survive something like that. I thoroughly expected them to be returning later in the sequels, and assumed that all we'd seen of them had been set-up for something actually worthwhile.

Indirect answer: Pretty much everything about the Merovingian feels pointless. The idea of another major faction within the story is interesting, but he's not developed enough to feel like a proper villain or a wildcard element. He doesn't seem to have any particular agenda or affiliation. He tells the heroes to bring him The Oracle's eyes, but (iirc) she doesn't have any bearing on the story at that point, so it doesn't introduce any meaningful stakes. He's just there for that comical cake scene and to give the heroes some henchmen to karate.

Youtube film talker, Patrick H. Willems, does a decent job of rewriting (or outlining, at least) the sequels: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqhhy0yGAX4

[Replies From View]

Spoon rules innit.

This would apply to unique individuals like The One, not any old fucker who's escaped from the Matrix.  And 'there is no spoon' would equate to 'there is no physical distance here' - ie they should be able to reach their destination by willing it towards them / teleporting, not faffing about on a highway with a motorbike that they have mentally filled with fuel.

[idunnosomename]

I watched the scene before I read your comment I think and I was like "oh is this their last scene then?"

I think if they hadn't flown up into the air like fucking Wile E Coyote I wouldn't have had the uncertainty.