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Maarak posted:Why not? Neo had official McFarlane toys on his desk. I do thing the part about the Matrix story being a videogame didn't work that well. Because when they have the writer's room going around asking what the next Matrix game is going to be, it felt alot more like they were pitching a movie than a videogame. They should have been putting in clips from the Matrix MMO and Enter the Matrix to make it really fit.
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Jan 5, 2022 08:17
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Qualia posted:do you fear that if you become disillusioned with the movie(s) after more reading you will dislike yourself (for having that 'loving owns' feeling)? or do you fear that you may be disliked for not sharing similar grievances others (SMG, myself, et al) have? oh I'll take self-hatred any day! I have a very basic understanding of the foucauldian and hegelian themes of the movies as a whole, and understand how problematic the implications of those themes can be, but I'm happy to give Lana Wachowski the benefit of the doubt as she seems like a pretty awesome person. Mostly I just enjoy how audacious and self-indulgent the Matrix movies are. My knee-jerk reaction is to say that Matrix Resurrections is the second best Matrix film after the Matrix, but my favorite moment in any of the Matrix movies is the orgy of self-referential fan service that is the burly-brawl and BDSM Agent Smith channelling the pigs-in-the-trough audience in begging for 'more' (an opinion I hold despite SMG wagging their finger at it)
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Jan 5, 2022 08:57
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Finally got to watch this with a few friends, oh man. So good! This movie Matrixes so hard. I'm delighted with it, much like I was with Bill & Ted 3 oddly enough. Toy Story 4 is another one that comes to mind. All had some mixed reception, and really appealed to me. Sequels have a lot of baggage with expectations. I like this vibe of a kind of low key or smaller in production style sequel to more bombastic efforts. And I like where Lana and co. went with it. Humor, awe, a pleasure to hang out in this world with Neo, Trinity, and just Matrix the hell out of everything. By that I mean the dialogue, tone, how it played with things, I like it.
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Jan 5, 2022 10:01
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GoutPatrol posted:I do thing the part about the Matrix story being a videogame didn't work that well. Because when they have the writer's room going around asking what the next Matrix game is going to be, it felt alot more like they were pitching a movie than a videogame. They should have been putting in clips from the Matrix MMO and Enter the Matrix to make it really fit. I imagined the Matrix video game having the exact flavour as a Hideo Kojima joint. The kind of game that would be divisive how much the experience was about the gameplay vs the plot.
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Jan 5, 2022 10:50
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Yes, every society has a base and superstructure - but that’s not saying anything except that the film depicts a society. Thomas Anderson does actual work for Metacortex, but it's in the same sense that I could do you, my cellmate, a real favor, and you in turn might pay me back in real cigarettes. The superstructure isn't a ritual pantomime and has real effects on the base (if it didn't, then for starters death in the matrix shouldn't mean death in real life) but on the other hand if you don't understand what undergirds it all your attempts to interact with it will be like writing on water. The movies already explain pretty straightforwardly why the matrix looks like the '90s. It doesn't have to; that's just how it happened to develop. You might as well act incredulous at the incredible odds against Neo happening to have been placed at a particular cubicle with a particular boss. We don't actually need to take the fantasy literally to take it seriously, though. Even if Neo can't actually stop bullets there is still an inhuman power feeding on his vital energy, and while that power might most outwardly manifest itself as a lovely manager it will ultimately congeal into the shape of an armed agent of the state. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 11:34
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With the game being made with matrix code and footage of the game being movie footage I got the impression the game was matrix fuckery. I feel like if you actually played it what you would actually do or see would be vague. Like maybe the game on screen would look like matrix online and while you play it it’d be blasting you with matrix code giving you a bunch of images and experiences that you couldn’t quite explain in words.
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Jan 5, 2022 14:13
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VROOM VROOM posted:what the hell are you two talking about. you're expecting a movie to look into the camera and explain a casting joke? No, I'm lamenting the fact that the movie did a couple of honestly funny things that I had no idea about at the time because they are inside baseball.
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Jan 5, 2022 14:23
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I just realised that the implication that bot Morpheus within the Matrix video game modal is a 'real person' who can be extracted the same as any other is troubling considering that that game has been shipped to millions of people- we're in a Black Mirror USS Callister situation.
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Jan 5, 2022 14:59
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Maybe, or Neo only kept him in a local environment.
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Jan 5, 2022 15:05
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:This is where various commentators will jump in to say that the (bad) matrix-machines represent [...] transphobia Interestingly enough it is the unawakened humans in the original movie not the machines that are probably more comparable to the experience of transphobia. Understanding gender and its components does feel like seeing a secret code, and the knowledge that there are people who want to murder you because of the sanctity of girls have vaginas and boys have penises.
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Jan 5, 2022 17:08
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Simiain posted:I have a very basic understanding of the foucauldian and hegelian themes of the movies as a whole, and understand how problematic the implications of those themes can be, but I'm happy to give Lana Wachowski the benefit of the doubt as she seems like a pretty awesome person. Something I'm always perplexed by is when people (and I'm not calling you out, just using your post as a launching point) seem to think that someone being awesome means they are a good or coherent writer. Like yes, Lana Wachowski is probably cool and I wish she were my friend. I'm with you all on that. Doesn't make the movie good, doesn't mean I have to be like "hmmm it must be really deep and have a lot of complex interlocking meanings" We're talking about someone who wrote half of Jupiter Ascending. Being a rad person doesn't make you suddenly become Pynchon. I think maybe this sounds more harsh than I intend it to.
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Jan 5, 2022 17:19
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There’s alway that question of separating art from artist. It’s an easier answer with decent people, but many great works have been created by some awful people also. And I suspect we can’t always separate them. But luckily this was a pretty good film so everyone can be happy.
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Jan 5, 2022 17:53
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massive spider posted:I just realised that the implication that bot Morpheus within the Matrix video game modal is a 'real person' who can be extracted the same as any other is troubling considering that that game has been shipped to millions of people- we're in a Black Mirror USS Callister situation. The modal is local to Thomas Anderson only. Was just on his dev computer where he tries experiments. But it is interesting how he creates life there. And then there is the question if all of the original matrix game programs were alive also. I would argue that only the self aware programs can be counted as ‘human’ like how we treat sentience with animals. This is how all of the matrix programs are portrayed originally. So maybe the in game ones are just a scripts. But then that’s nice parallel to how Thomas Anderson was living his repetitive life (the white rabbit montage)…
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Jan 5, 2022 17:59
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I've made a lot of complaints about her choices, but Lana seems like a cool person. One of my biggest issues with Resurrections is that it felt unfocused and low-effort, half-assed. On-screen characters tell you not to care about the film, there's a solid case to be made that this was a protest $200B gently caress you to Warner Brothers. And it's like going over to Emeril Lagasse's house for dinner to find that he's heated up a can of Spaghetti-o's. Emeril doesn't owe me a perfect meal, but there's an expectation that he's going to try in his own home. Resurrections is disappointing because you're also watching Lana piss away her legacy. It's like the rule where you don't reference a better movie in your movie; Here we see clips of peak Matrix worked into Lana's weakest work and the comparison is just depressing. We know she can do better. She shows us in the film that she's capable of better. So what the gently caress, Lana? You've got beef with WB so you're taking it out on me?
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Jan 5, 2022 18:10
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The speculation on what's going on in Lana W's head and her relationship with WB is strange to me. I doubt anyone is given free reign to spend $190 million of their boss's money to gently caress around and make fun of the boss. Random criticism: the way Neo manifests his powers by just Force Pushing baddies around struck me as very lazy and unimaginative.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:26
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Halloween Jack posted:The speculation on what's going on in Lana W's head and her relationship with WB is strange to me. I doubt anyone is given free reign to spend $190 million of their boss's money to gently caress around and make fun of the boss. Yeah I can't believe some people think that like, she tricked WB somehow, those scenes are fun and obviously WB liked them. I agree about the action in general. I don't think anything's ever really lived up to the implied potential when Neo absorbs/kills Smith in Matrix 1 and then the entire world breathes in and out with him right after.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:39
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I mean if we're going to speculate on behind the scenes stuff pulling the movie down I'd point the finger at it being made it the middle of a pandemic before I would at Lanas presumed grude with WB. I can't begin to imagine the amount of subtle ways not being able to freely mingle with people would gently caress with a production.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:49
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precision posted:Something I'm always perplexed by is when people (and I'm not calling you out, just using your post as a launching point) seem to think that someone being awesome means they are a good or coherent writer. Yeah I don't think we disagree. I just meant that, where possible, I'm inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the cultural politics of this movie, given how widely they can be interpreted. That said I never felt that this movie was particularly badly written.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:51
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There’s a lot of love for the matrix characters in this film. She’s talked about how personal Neo and Trinity are to her and how she wanted to bring them back. She even gave them a perfect happy ending, which is something you cannot say for many nostalgic characters in other franchises. IO, sati, the Merovingian, are all small characters that could have been left out but she wanted to include them. There’s no hatred for the franchise here. And I don’t think there is that much wb hatred. The pitch and white rabbit are probably just her own stress and fears at making a sequel. Real feelings put on film. Real confusion on what a sequel should be. But Smith is now notably The Big Executive and not the main antagonist. And while he and Neo will battle it out a little, they notably work together in this film enabling Neo and Trinity to be artist again. It’s recognition if having to work with the machinations of the industry. It’s fine not to like the film. Their filming methods have changed, but there’s still a lot of love.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:52
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Neo Rasa posted:
I think realizing that potential would have meant a different kind of sequel, one where you would have to grapple with a superman who can rearrange the universe at their whim and erase agents with a thought. Instead we got the burly brawl, which is, rather like the matrix resurrections, an extended and indulgent (in the best way) "give the hogs what they want" moment.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:56
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checkplease posted:There’s a lot of love for the matrix characters in this film. Yes, the word I would use to describe a lot of this film is "genial". Smith's having the time of his life and of course comes in clutch when needed like an old friend. NPH simply isn't sinister, he seems like a loser kid torturing the local wildlife. Even the punks just aren't very punk. Those guys who show up at Neo's door in Matrix 1, they look like they could be there to mug him. This new batch seem like the counterculture kids I work with at my day job. But there's enormous affection for everything Matrix, you can tell. I'm not sure if the Matrix should have good vibes, but this one does.
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Jan 5, 2022 19:12
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Yes, the word I would use to describe a lot of this film is "genial". Smith's having the time of his life and of course comes in clutch when needed like an old friend. NPH simply isn't sinister, he seems like a loser kid torturing the local wildlife. Even the punks just aren't very punk. Those guys who show up at Neo's door in Matrix 1, they look like they could be there to mug him. This new batch seem like the counterculture kids I work with at my day job. But there's enormous affection for everything Matrix, you can tell. I'm not sure if the Matrix should have good vibes, but this one does. Agreed. There’s a chosen tone that’s different than the old matrix films. It’s more in line with Jupiter ascending I think. How much that works for you will probably impact your view of this film.
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Jan 5, 2022 19:45
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Ferrinus posted:Thomas Anderson does actual work for Metacortex, but it's in the same sense that I could do you, my cellmate, a real favor, and you in turn might pay me back in real cigarettes. You're still making recourse to analogy, instead of just clearly describing the alien socioeconomics. Here, you're saying that the world within the matrix is (like) a gift or barter economy within the larger system. Tom shows up and types things into a computer as a favor to his boss, and the boss will give him some noodles. However, with the "but, in a sense," you also qualify that the barter-like system is 'not really' part of the economic base of the overall society. (And, of course, Tom is actually paid in American dollars that he exchanges for noodles, so it's 'not really' like a barter economy at all....) Then you shift to saying that the boss is an "outward manifestation" of the alien economy, serving a role in the superstructure akin to - but distinct from - that of the police/military forces. But this is, again, saying that the boss is not a representative of business but of civil society in the Gramscian sense: of the ideological/cultural relations that enforce hegemony (e.g. churches, schools, media, etc.). So we're back to the point that, under your interpretation, Metacortex looks like a corporate workplace but is actually the site of an 'empty' performance/ritual where no actual work is done because the obedience itself is the point. What I'm emphasizing here is the distinction between form and content, where you are somewhat intermixing the two. It's like you're half-way accepting the illusion that The Flintstones takes place in prehistoric times, because Fred walks barefoot and wears a crude leopard-skin poncho. In truth, under your interpretation, the content of the matrix is liberal capitalism of the year 1999, but the form is entirely different. Fred Flintstone drives a car and lives in the dang suburbs. So, overall, what you're saying is just that the paranoid fantasy presented by Morpheus is internally consistent. There aren't any 'plot holes'. But, I mean, what's the point? SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 20:01
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Neo Rasa posted:Yeah I can't believe some people think that like, she tricked WB somehow, those scenes are fun and obviously WB liked them. Yeah it does my head in that we're sitting here in 2022 and some people haven't yet arrived at "the most corporate thing of all is to let someone mock your own corporation". It's a demonstration of power, a flex. WB is saying "ha ha we're terrible and we suck, and yet here you are paying to watch this". It's a gottem. It's not an in-joke, it's not a wink and a nod, it's a product. It's a well done steak and a glass of Scotch.
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Jan 5, 2022 20:44
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So, question about the Matrix. The machines grow humans as crops, using the Matrix to control the human's minds. Reproduction is completely artificial, no human has been born naturally outside of Zion in hundreds of years. Are the children created by the machines assigned human parents in the Matrix? Do they simply make a deja-vu causing change and suddenly Thomas Anderson might wake up one morning in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife, and asking himself, "Well, how did I get here?"
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Jan 5, 2022 20:47
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PeterCat posted:So, question about the Matrix. The machines grow humans as crops, using the Matrix to control the human's minds. Reproduction is completely artificial, no human has been born naturally outside of Zion in hundreds of years. That sounds more like Dark City where from day to day they directly gently caress with individual people's memories and stuff instead of letting a simulation play its course. To me in the matrix though, kid is made irl, they plug the kid in, kid grows up while in the simulation under whatever people in the simulation are going to give birth soon or adopt a kid or whatever. I forget if they bring it up in the first movie when they first pull Neo out.
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Jan 5, 2022 21:00
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You're still making recourse to analogy, instead of just clearly describing the alien socioeconomics. We both know the alien socioeconomics because they're revealed less than halfway through the first movie: imprisoned humans power the machine civilization, but only if they're kept in a certain kind of dreaming sleep. This is explained in the first movie and never contradicted. The takeaway isn't that matrix poverty is illusory (because, in the world of the matrix, it will literally kill you whether or not it is mediated through a computer simulation), but that it's artificial. The poor are only "always" with us because of how our economy has been constructed. That doesn't mean there isn't a functioning economy, "real" jobs, and so on, within the matrix, just that the true relations of production and force that maintain this system are obfuscated from you and your boss both, just like in real life. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 21:16
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Neo Rasa posted:That sounds more like Dark City where from day to day they directly gently caress with individual people's memories and stuff instead of letting a simulation play its course. To me in the matrix though, kid is made irl, they plug the kid in, kid grows up while in the simulation under whatever people in the simulation are going to give birth soon or adopt a kid or whatever. I forget if they bring it up in the first movie when they first pull Neo out. The only problem with that is it leaves the machines at the mercy of people in the Matrix mating to produce more kids.
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Jan 5, 2022 21:29
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PeterCat posted:The only problem with that is it leaves the machines at the mercy of people in the Matrix mating to produce more kids. They don't really need people purposely having kids, all they need is people having sex, which obviously is not an issue. People are gonna do that regardless.
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Jan 5, 2022 21:32
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I can only assume that prisoners of the Matrix are allowed to form relationships and mate, and the Machines respond by growing clones from their tissue samples. They can't just grow kids and assign them to people who think they're pregnant; if they did, the freed prisoners wouldn't look anything like their avatars. It's possible that every human pairing was specifically engineered, but I don't see any evidence that the Machines dedicated that degree of surveillance and control on every single person in the Matrix. The Machines are at the mercy of the capitalist system they keep creating, in which human society isn't sustainable and self-reproducing in the long term.
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Jan 5, 2022 21:51
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On the other hand I bet the matrix contains a lot of adoptees, orphans, and rootless young adults with sketchy paperwork and sketchier memories.
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Jan 5, 2022 22:12
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Neo Rasa posted:Yeah I can't believe some people think that like, she tricked WB somehow, those scenes are fun and obviously WB liked them. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 22:15
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Ferrinus posted:We both know the alien socioeconomics because they're revealed less than halfway through the first movie: imprisoned humans power the machine civilization, but only if they're kept in a certain kind of dreaming sleep. This is explained in the first movie and never contradicted. The takeaway isn't that matrix poverty is illusory (because, in the world of the matrix, it will literally kill you whether or not it is mediated through a computer simulation), but that it's artificial. The poor are only "always" with us because of how our economy has been constructed. That doesn't mean there isn't a functioning economy, "real" jobs, and so on, within the matrix, just that the true relations of production and force that maintain this system are obfuscated from you and your boss both, just like in real life. I also wonder about the various barriers that must exist to keep people from traveling out of bounds. The common example is what happens if Neo wants to take a plane to Heathrow Airport and look for clues as to Morpheus' whereabouts. Does the UK exist as some kind of Potemkin village, with a few landmarks that you can visit?
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Jan 5, 2022 22:32
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Basebf555 posted:They don't really need people purposely having kids, all they need is people having sex, which obviously is not an issue. People are gonna do that regardless. IDK, birth rates and sex rates in the US have been trending down for a long time. The Machines can just make more humans, they have to figure out how to integrate them into the Matrix. Ferrinus posted:On the other hand I bet the matrix contains a lot of adoptees, orphans, and rootless young adults with sketchy paperwork and sketchier memories. This too.
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Jan 5, 2022 22:36
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Halloween Jack posted:I haven't done the reading to keep up with the conversation, so this is just a random observation: Neo gets his noodles from the kitchen at the noodle place. The noodle chef gets them from a Sysco truck. Sysco gets them from a food factory, which gets ingredients from the farms. At what point does the supply chain vanish, and the Machines are just manifesting goods in the Matrix? Given that the Matrix seems to be made up of discrete, vague locations like "The City" and "The Mountains," I imagine that they're not simulating wheat fields and rice paddies. At the peak of our civilization, all that obscene labour is carefully hidden. It's an interesting question. In Resurrections, the crew teleports to Japan, which suggests that if not the whole globe at least a number of other famous locations are simulated and populated by people. It may well be that shipments of raw materials from elsewhere just get manifested into cargo crates that are steadily delivered to fully-simulated docks and warehouses at the edges of the play area, so to speak.
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Jan 5, 2022 23:14
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Timeless Appeal posted:In less than a year, WB has released two film reboots in which they are cast as quasi-Villains and the movie actively suggests that its own premise is a bad idea. I understand that supports your argument, but I also have no idea what the gently caress is going on with WB outside of misguided Disney envy. WB doesn't give two fucks how they're portrayed because at the end of the day you're paying them to see them be made fun of. They own the franchise, they're going to do anything to make money from it and off people enjoying whatever medium it's manufactured in. They win.
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Jan 6, 2022 01:29
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sigher posted:WB doesn't give two fucks how they're portrayed because at the end of the day you're paying them to see them be made fun of. They own the franchise, they're going to do anything to make money from it and off people enjoying whatever medium it's manufactured in. They win. I mean if anything I interpreted this as the central joke behind the whole movie- the Matrix solved the problem of people noticing it by turning it into a story within the Matrix. Plus the whole meta thing behind how this version of the Matrix draws more power from people dreaming things were better.
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Jan 6, 2022 11:57
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It's still very dumb to me that they went with the "humans make energy" explanation and not the "humans make good computer chips" explanation. Our big brains are the only really special thing about us. It would even make more sense why giving people constant anxiety/depression makes them better, More stress = more brain activity or something. Let me write the next matrix: *jacked in, 2 cool trenchcoat wearers fight while doing flips and twirls* *In the real world (Maybe...), a bunch of robot squids fight Mechs Note: the entire film is slightly green It would make billions, and have a 100% rating.
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Jan 6, 2022 15:23
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Butternubs posted:It's still very dumb to me that they went with the "humans make energy" explanation and not the "humans make good computer chips" explanation. Our big brains are the only really special thing about us. I think they didn't want to outright retcon it but they were more vague about it in the new one.
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Jan 6, 2022 16:17
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sigher posted:WB doesn't give two fucks how they're portrayed because at the end of the day you're paying them to see them be made fun of. They own the franchise, they're going to do anything to make money from it and off people enjoying whatever medium it's manufactured in. They win. Yeah exactly. Despite the law, corporations are NOT people and do not have feelings. Making fun of them is still engaging with them. It's still them winning. The only way to defeat corporations is to ignore them.
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Jan 6, 2022 17:50
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