Reply With QuoteIt's going to suck, just like the first Matrix.
hehe i'm wondering with all the media hype blitz on tv and internet, what if this movie sucks? For some reason I think it would be cool! And everybody finds out X2 was the better movie! HAHA WACHOWSKI WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS BROTHERS!!! Actually it might be good...
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It's going to suck, just like the first Matrix.
you know what... i really didn't like the first matrix all that much too... it was ok, but not that great... i actually liked Dark City more than Matrix...
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Funny PvP on the Matrix:
http://www.pvponline.com/
I really liked the first movie and am figuring out a way to convice my wife to go see it - either by myself or with her don't care :D
-DavidCPA
That's because Dark City was a MUCH better movie than the Matrix.
The Matrix was an odd film. When I first saw it I thought it was some of the worst tripe I've ever seen, a bunch of special effects with insipid dialogue and a stupid story in-between. Then I learned to watch it like a computer game, i.e. turn my brain off and ignore the story. Now I was absolutely fascinated and rewatched the DVD like five or six times. But then I had memorised all the stylish moments and kung-fu stunts, and now I'm back to my original opinion.
Is the new film going to have a story that's not completely idiotic?
And it would have been so easy to give it a more believable story, too. For example, instead of using humans as batteries (moronic), use their brains instead. The combined computing power of billions of parallel-processing cerebral cortexes would provide a nice home for the AI's.
Still, the original was great fun. I laughed at the inanities and then let them go in order to just experience the effects and fights.
Oh, one other note: why isn't this thread in the movies forum?
Because...
http://entertainmenttonight.com/celebrity/a14375.htm
"It's really the first time anyone's told a story in multiple mediums," explains producer JOEL SILVER. "If you just see 'The Matrix Reloaded' by itself, you'll love the movie, but there are all these other avenues of content and story. The video game incredibly interconnects with all that has happened so far in the movie, and you have scenes that the Wachowski brothers wrote and directed for the video game that are not in the movie, but connect."
"It's really the first time anyone's told a story in multiple mediums"
WARNING
WARNING
HULL DECOMPRESSION IMMINENT
I thought the first movie did an OK job of maintaining its internal consistency, but I didn't really care about the story. It was just the "humans versus supermachines" story recycled again, and only needed to provide some backdrop for lots of cool effects and fight scenes. Asimov it ain't.
Same goes for the next films. I'm ignoring most of the hype, but the trailers look like they are on the right track.
He has apparently forgotten classics such as Johnny Mnemonic.Originally Posted by Jason McCullough
What I've heard about the movie is that there is a lot of Action and its very cool and there is even less of everything else that was in the first movie.
Since those pesky critics very very rarely like pure Action movies I predict it will be panned.
It should be good entertainment though.
I thought the original Matrix was great, and I'm looking forward to this new one. Sure the fights and effects were fantastic, but I think it had more going on in the story department than you guys give it credit for.
Forgive me for getting Koontz-y on your asses, but I read it as a parable about the oppressive nature of consensus reality and what happens when someone is able to break free from it. The first time I saw it, it actually felt revolutionary to me -- both in the sense of overturning the paradigm of sci-fi cinema, and as a genuine provocation to revolt against the dominant culture. Unfortunately, though, art no longer seems able to move human beings that way, and the Matrix trilogy -- like pretty much all art these days -- will just end up as more mere product on the shelves of consumer culture, part of the system it seems to have set out to criticize.
No other genre film I can think of even tries to go as deep as The Matrix, while still maintaining a sense of humor about itself. It's clear, for instance, that the Wachowskis know their Gnostic Gospels, their eastern philosophy, and their metaphysics. That they managed to dress all that up in high style and make it fun as hell to watch is amazing to me. I mean, what other action movie has ever chosen to end not with a huge, boring explosion, but with the hero transcending his physical incarnation?
The sequel may well suck, but I though the original was brilliant, stunningly original filmmaking. Plus the best use of Keanu outside of River's Edge.
Great post Jason.
This has a nice double-meaning to it. :wink:
The Matrix was stupid because they didn't put 5 minutes of thought into common sense, logic, or consistency within the hare-brained world of their assumptions. It was offensive because they assumed no one would care about these things, and it almost seemed like they deliberately disconnected the events of the movie from any sort of connecting skein of rationality. They could easily have delivered all the fun cool bits along with any putative deep message without sacrificing the brains of the audience on the altar of the lowest common denominator.
Much as I want to do so for the masochistic thrill, I will refrain from listing all the idiocies and all the trivial ways the many solecisms of plot and narrative could have been rendered acceptable with trivial changes in dialogue or minor edits to offending scenes.
So will I see the sequel?
Yeah, I'm afraid so. I like special effects and silly martial arts choreography. I just hope I don't leave the theater with an unquenchable thirst for PowerAde.
*Yes, I know this is a stretch.
Hmm...I guess I end up somewhere between Jason and Miramon. I admire the Matrix for even addressing question of epistemology and morality, something few Amercian films even bother with. In that sense it is a part of the great sci-fi tradition of mixing both the visceral and the cerebral.
However, if is true (and I'm not saying it always is) that sci-fi is really a comment about the present through the prism of the future, then, well, I don't think it is all that insightful about our current state. I don't think we live in a culture of massive self-delusion and I don't think we suffer from a disease of group think. If anything, I think the exact opposite is true; that skepticism and relativism are the default modes of the vast majority of people on most issues, and that there is very little common thinking on any particular deep philosophical issue.
I agree with Miramon that the basic science on which the Matrix rests, that humans can be harnessed as a significant source of energy, is laughable, especially considering outside the Matrix seems to be a hot world of lava, sulfur vents, and other sorts of more plentiful and reliable energy. I also don't think that when computer programs "fight" that it looks like Kung-fu.
I was just finishing up my last year in grad school when the Matrix came out. I went to see it with a lot of other philosophy students at the time. We all sort of giggled at it and dismissed until we started teaching our classes on Monday morning only to find that it captured our students' imaginations and peaked their philosophical interests more than any of our lectures ever did. In that sense, I welcome it and the coming sequels.
The Matrix is nothing more than a pretentious action flick. I thought of the exact same "what if I'm trapped in a computer program in the future" thing in 1992 in high school.
Then my senior year of high school we did Plato's Allegory of the Cave and realized that the "what if reality isn't reality" thing was, surprise surprise,not thought up by me first.
Because McCullough stuck his Scrooge thread in Movies. The forums were out of balance.
There are actually two Matrix films coming out this year: The Matrix Reloaded (May 15th) and The Matrix Revolutions (Nov. 7th).
One of the things about the Matrix that was great (didnt know anything about it when I first saw it) was the doubletake of when you find out that what you're watching is just a program, not real. It sort of gets in most peoples heads with that "what really is REAL?!?" stuff... but then again other movies like Dark City, Total Recall, Truman Show and Jacobs Ladder had done that already, though probably not as dramatically... and The Matrix obviously has better action scenes. But at the end of the Matrix.. it kinda got too supercomic booky for me... which isn't bad, but the payoff of a determined programed universe beneath it all seems betrayed... knowhutimsayin? meaning it kind of turned cheesy... but in a good hong kong meets western action flick way... theres alot of that pop cultural zeitgest influence to the movie with that hong kong arcadey anime sci fi feel of it... probably why its so darn popular. I liked it.
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Oh, come *on*. It's a cool looking movie, but the philosophical angle is on the level of an eighth-grader skimming through Descarte for the first time. Even Dark City's half-assed attempt made a little more sense.
The Matrix is certainly a handy and more contemporary version of the old stand by of the mad scientist example used the second day of philosophy 101, introduction to epistemology. Not particularly profound, but a smarter premise then most kung-fu FX movies. Basically the greatest accomplishment of the premise is that it unchains the writers/directors, allowing them to put any crazy ass thing they want on screen, cause there are no rules in this world.
If anything, the Matrix is really effective. A great amalgemation of HK wire stunt techniques and digital effect to achieve the same kind of action sequences you might see in anime in a live action setting. It's not god's gift to the cinema, and the fans who say it changed their lives were probably poorly informed to begin with, but it looks cool and is exciting to watch.
Once you forgive the human battery thing, there isn't too much to complain about.
Or as we call it around here, "The Marxist".
I saw The Animatrix the other day. I'm convinced those animated shorts will prove to be much better than the movies themselves. Of course, they're pretty good; I especially enjoyed the "Reneissance" ones. And in the first one, the Square USA one, the hovercraft shoots the robots with quad machine guns, not dinky energy weapons. Buddhabuddhabuddha!
wow, you guys are harsh. Name another action movie that attempts philosophy, or for that matter even attempts to make you think while you watch it?
Give them about twenty years and you'll hear "Fuck The Matrix" as a new warcry on some future time Qt3. Everyone will want to have "Fuck The Matrix" t-shirts, etc.
FTM!
--Dave
Wait. you called the Matrix a parable?
Ya know... some movies are just meant to entertain us. The Matrix isn't Citizen Kane, but it also isn't Ernest Goes to Camp.
It's a fun movie set in a world that, yes, does not and will not exist. Yes, you can ask all kinds of questions. There isn't a movie out there that you can't question into the ground.
You know why the AI's aren't using cows? Because that wouldn't be much of a movie. You know why they harvest human energy instead of thermo energy? Because without humans, there is no movie.
Why don't the villians ever just shoot James Bond in the head? Why do the kids always break up into seperate groups? Why won't the car ever start when fleeing the bad guy? Because they make the movie. Cliche, unoriginal, tired... maybe, but still makes for a good movie.
OK, you made me do it, don't blame me. I've actually managed to forget most of the movie's details by now, but still:
1) Injected tracker thingy. This makes not the slightest bit of sense whatsoever. This scene is just there to weird the audience out, and they hope that the audience forgets it by the time the world is explained. Having identified someone to track, surely the agents don't need to inject something that looks like a biological creature into Neo's body? If that was just to freak him out, then it shouldn't have been removable (with a custom implement?) shortly thereafter. The smart thing to do would have been to track him using two methods, only one of which was that absurd creature.
2) Computer network under no one's control. Evidently the agents have little more power than a normal hacker. This could be explained but it isn't. OK, OK, there is a super computer system that runs everything that the evil agents don't actually have control of? But then, how do they have such complete control of the human population in the real world? The agents and good guys would have had to have been lying about the nature of the real world and how it came about.
3) Pointless kung fu. You must be joking, hand to hand combat between computer programs? Why would an agent even care if he was "killed" in physical combat? And if an agent was somehow vulnerable in that way, how could he possibly be so slow as to be touchable? You can come up with a handwaving explanation if you try, but it would be a dumb one. What is there in the faked world which is worth using imaginary combat on anyhow?
4) Pointless weapons and armory. OK, let's say by some distant and stupid stretch of the imagination that the good guys need imaginary weapons for some reason, why do they have these cheesy criminal-class small arms? Why not military weapons? Why not tanks and fighters? Why not nukes? Why not sci-fi weapons?
5) The Oracle? WTF? This is just moronic. Not philosophic. There is a difference. As Quine says "Whistling in the dark is not the method of true philosophy." The agents should just wipe out that whole stupid apartment of freaks, but they don't for some reason. There is no reason for the Oracle to be able to prophecy, no matter who or what she is. And why bother teaching kids to manipulate the Matrix when it just means they will get killed by Agents if they are ever noticed? Wouldn't it be smarter to extract them like Neo and train them in Zion or something?
6) The One? Magic prophecies have no place in sci-fi without an explanation. A rack of cookies is not an explanation.
7 Telephones? No, don't even bother explaining how it works or why some phones work and others don't, or why you can't just unplug the hacker directly. I just don't want to hear it.
8 ) Agent warns cop that his men are doomed. Why? None of the good guys have any interest in harming real people. WHy do the agents care about human cops? Why do the agents enlist local human help anyway, surely they are infinitely more capable than human cops.
All the above are just single items more or less disconnected from other items. Any one of them can simply be excused as a lapse, an oversight, or something that could be explained later, or explained by fanboy revisionist handwaving. All of them together make it seem like the filmmakers don't give a damn about their action plot, but in an action movie, the plot has to follow from point A to point B even more directly and sensibly than in some other kind of movie. However, all those little things listed above are less annoying than the overall plot, which just makes no sense. The good guy crew don't start out believing Neo is The One, and I don't see why they bother to deal with him in the first place as some random pathetic hacker, considering they presumably have some large population of people in Zion they can train up much more effectively. In the absence of Neo and the plot related to The One, which the good guys are unaware of for most of the movie, I don't see what in fact the good guys are trying to do and why. Their actions just don't make sense.
Then there is the basic premise of the movie, that reality is virtual, and subject to will and imagination. That is all very nice, but if it were even faintly true, even if it were only true for rare talented people, your real adepts would be adolescent boys living in some kind of porno harems, since you won't find any better combination of will and imagination in humans....
I could go on but I have mercifully forgotten many of the other plot details of the movie.
I wonder if it had not made such a huge splash and its sequels had not been over-hyped would people have bitched about it so much today.
I loved it. The story was not wholly original, but it did make you think about what was plausible and not. There were plenty of fresh ideas for my liking. WHo knows what is possible in an alternate reality if some of our scientific theories/laws are found to be flawed. As has been said, an action movie which creates debate on philisophical issues and requires brain power to decipher is rare indeed.
There were plenty of technological holes which close examination reveals. Maybe some can be explained away by the W. brothers and maybe they cannot. With only 2 hours in which to set the stage for a different reality than our own and tell the story of a few players within it, I thought they did a decent job.
You guys suck and blow.
But they feel so good about themselves now that they've done their little smackdown of popular culture. Just let everyone get it out of their system before the next movie screens tomorrow.
--Dave
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