The Matrix (1999) - Page 2

I LOVED Juno Reactor's contributions to the Reloaded score. I'd hoped there would be more of it in Revolutions, but Tetsujin and Navras aside, I was a bit disappointed that it became more of a conventionally orchestral affair.

Being a lifelong Dragonball fan, I got a big kick out of the Neodammerung fight! ... till I realized how dull it actually was. Fights like that are really suited to animation. Kung Fu Panda's climactic battles were pretty much the same fight as the one from Revolutions, but were way more enjoyable. And shorter!

Urgh the Battle for Zion, why won't you end already. I don't give a fuck about any of these people, no matter how many sad faces they make whilst being digitally super imposed into tonka toy mechs.

I actually kinda liked Mifune, the constantly shouting Maori dude.

I definitely think that the negative reaction to the film, as well as the fact that both movies came out in the same year, screwed Revolutions from getting the VFX nomination I thought it definitely deserved. There was some really great work done on that movie.

Inspired by Matchstick, I give you Zion, a haiku.

Battle of Zion
If only both sides could lose!
Link's wife is hot, though

Also who is Niobe and why is she suddenly a massive part of Revolutions. It's like Jada Pinkett Smith appears out of nowhere and is JUST AWESOME.

"Damn girl, you can drive!"

REALLY

There's an interesting bit of subtext with Zion in that it's 80% non-white. Which seems to be the Wachowski Brothers saying that ethnic minorities are more susceptible to see the reality of the Matrix. Are they trying to suggest that to understood the truth of the Matrix you have to feel disassociated from society, like Neo is at the start? I mean what's more disassociated in the late 90s than being a member of an ethnic minority?

It also suggest that every white member of Zion is the kind of person who got the shit kicked out of them at school.

I don't think that's too much of a stretch. It makes sense you'd be less inclined to reject the reality with which you are presented if that reality disproportionately benefits you.

You could also make a not-so-huge leap that every white member of Zion comes from a Jewish background.

Niobe's the character that makes Morpheus her bitch. That's about all I know. That and the fact that she was the only character whose skin looked amazing even when blown up to IMAX. If Lawrence Fishburne was one extreme (moon craters!), Jada Pinkett was the other.

You remember that all of Niobe's material was mostly incorporated into the Enter the Matrix video game as a part of the Wachowskis vision of the Multimedia Experience of The Matrix? You ever watch that footage? You should thank your lucky stars that you don't know what the hell Niobe is to these movies. Those scenes from the game were dull dull dull.

I did always appreciate the largely diverse casting the Wachowskis employed for the sequels. For Speed Racer as well, in fact! HA!

...or perhaps that it being in the far future humanity has gotten to the point where instead of "black" "white" etc more often than not people are some form of brown.

I get the impression that Jet Li and Aaliyah made the right choices in not taking roles in these movies.

Gloria Foster realized it a little later and jumped ship before the shit went down in Revolutions. Pity. I loved the way she played The Oracle.

She didn't so much jump ship as die inconveniently.

Oh god, here comes Trinity's death. It's sad because the moment just before her death is actually quite affecting. Seeing those blue skies above the MAGNETIC STORM CLOUDS OF DOOM AND DESPAIR really kicks you in the teeth about how bad things are. With Trinity you kind of wish she'd been impaled by more inanimate carbon rods.

Foster knew what she was doing!

I think I actually said "Wow..." when they shot up past the DOOM CLOUDS. A nice moment. Hahaha, then comes the 5 minute death speech.

The Neodämmerung is fucking awesome in how retardedly bombastic it is! WHY MR ANDERSON WHY DO YOU PERSIST

<3 hugo

The Big Brawl is cool and all apart from a few little details.

• Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving are roughly the same height, are both wearing sunglasses, both have dark hair, and are both dressed in dark clothing.
• It's night time
• It's raining
• The shots are really far away at times

As such it gets kind of difficult to work out who is beating the shit out of who at certain moments. The Weaving face punch is epic though.

I actually bought the Revolutions score just for Neodammerung and it's end credit remix.

Love the way he goes, "IS IT OVER!?" Even Weaving can't wait for the movie to end. Little did he know it would end with such blatant Christ symbolism and a shitty CG sunset.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, more like...), it really doesn't matter who is beating up who, since the point of the fight is that it's absolutely pointless till Neo lets Smith 'win.'

Check out The Interview for a shit-ton of Weaving. I think he's in damn near every second of the running time.

So I don't want to derail the Inception thread with discussions of The Matrix (to which Inception is compared). Can someone explain all the complexity of the original Matrix film?

I'm kind of worried though. The last time I talked about the philosophical complexities of the Matrix it was with a really really creepy Philosophy professor at a frat house not long after the film came out. Did the creepy professor just permanently scar me? IS the Matrix more complex then I suspect?

I mean it always struck me as an example of two fellas (now a fella and a lady!) reading some manga and some Joseph Campbell and some Nietzsche and then making a movie that would so perfectly coincide with the Columbine shootings as to ruin trenchcoats FOREVER.

The Matrix premiere predates Columbine by a couple of weeks I think.

I never got the idea of The Matrix as a ‘complex’ movie. I’d suggest that it was because mainstream audiences weren’t used to having metaphysical ideas in their cinema, but the films always seemed to shy away from the tougher issues associated with the concept.

The Matrix essentially posits a world where all the main cast are happy to live in squalor away from the comfy, but fake, world of the Matrix itself. Cipher raises the point about people preferring the fake reality, but he’s such a completely reprehensible asshole that it’s never seen as an issue. As such the inate conflict between that which is real, and difficult, and that which is fake, and easy, is never really looked at.

There’s also interesting morality at play with stuff like the Lobby Shootout, I mean we’re essentially watching a movie about a bunch of terrorists at points.

Well yeah but it was still a big ol' deal. Columbine plus movie with trench coats had people flipping out. I mean who DIDN'T have to go to football games guarded by FBI snipers after that?

But yes, I'm with you on missing the complexity. I mean it was a fun film with great visuals, and a populist intro to some fun philosophical concepts, but it was essentially about people looking bad ass while doing bad ass things and spouting bad ass catch phrases. High brow for an action film, but low brow for a "deep" (for lack of a better term at this time of night) film.

The Matrix is a simple film, but the arguments around it are complex. Is it better to be free and in misery or enslaved but having every need catered to? Were Morpheus and crew really doing anyone any favors?

Columbine didn't ruin black trenchcoats, the people wearing black trenchcoats ruined black trenchcoats. People eventually realized there's nothing cool about the dork with the ponytail, shitty mustache, Vans sneakers, and Maverick cigarettes.

Oh, and the movies definitely get more philosophically complex, but peak with RELOADED. Doesn't mean they're good thoguh.

I think a lot of Spike's questions could be answered if he watched The Animatrix. It's required viewing before watching the sequels. And while conceptually a movie should work on its own, the Wachowskis were very into the multimedia experience.

I love the trilogy wholeheartedly, but can see its flaws. I'm not sure that I agree that the sequels drop the ball. They upends everything the characters (and we viewers) think they know about the Matrix, including Neo's purpose. It shifts the focus from the humans' plight to the machines, which is hard for many people to latch on to.

The biggest flaw of the films to me is the Wachowski's conception of Zion. The first film set up expectations that Zion was literally a handful of people eking out an existence with modest resources. Revolutions presents Zion as a thriving metropolis with a governing body and a full military. And had Smith (as Bane) not set off the EMPs early, the attack on Zion likely would have been thwarted.

Still, as a whole I love the themes these movies present and the fact that people are still discussing them years later is evidence that the films work on that level.

They don't feel like organic extensions of the first film though. That upending seems done simply to stretch the story out over two more movies.

Inert is a good word on the whole, but it has one of the best, biggest action sequences of all time... which makes it worth the effort.

The Architect reveal is also a good twist, which you don't see much of these days. The rest of the movie is plastic and by the numbers, the exposition is terribly handled and nothing resonates.

Revolutions is a nightmare from beginning to end, to see Reloaded lumped in with Revolutions bums me out.

FREEDOM FIGHTERS.

But yeah, good points.

I don't know about that. The Matrix was all about the nature of reality. The sequels are an extension of that. People often complain that the protagonists basically spend the whole time being told what to do, which is true. But that is what is interesting conceptually. Justin Clark talked about this in another Matrix thread. It's ironic that these people who are basically fighting for free will are kept in check by the machines precisely because they readily accept being told what to do. I love the Merovigion's speech because he basically says that to their faces and they just ignore him. It's brilliant.

Re: The Matrix (1999)

Well you are making me want to revisit this trilogy, but I'm curious. What's your background as far as smoke goes? Between Matrix and Repossession I entered college, discovered Hotline and started earning enough money that I could boost way too much of it on purchases are Suncoast. In the course of that rampant run at consumerism I watched a LOT of anime.

Where I'd been awed by the visuals and suggested complexity of the original film, I found myself thoroughly underwhelmed by the sequels. I felt as though I'd seen it all before. The desire to really look for the "truths" of the films and the trilogy as a whole just wasn't there for me.

Or maybe I just had a bad reaction to the philosophy pushed in the series? I am not a Nietzsche fan and I found his philosophy to just inundate the project.

I agree as well. I was here way back when that Reloaded thread was better than Revolutions.

I really liked Reloaded and hated Revolutions. Its like the Wachowski's just gave out. In my opinion they haven't been the same since.

Zion is a fucking black hole (no pun intended) there is just nothing there its just a void in the films space.

While its true the Wachowski's aped Woo, Anime, Cyberpunk etc etc they didn't learn from George Miller.

Watch Mad Max 2 to see desperate pathetic looking people. Zion would have been better with that understanding.

There's just as much Baudrillard in there as well actually. The films work on a lot of levels, philosophical, political, as a basic heroes quest, it just depends whether you want to engage with that - I totally accept and can see the flaws in that approach and how it doesn't work for many. I'm with Diva tho, I still adore the saga in it's entirety.

If you can be bothered I find watching the two parter from The Animatrix; The Second Renaissance as basically essential viewing to get a better sense of what the Wachowskis were going for with their direction of the sequels. I find watching Part One between the original and Reloaded, then Part Two between Reloaded and Revolutions to be pretty much essential personally. Also fun while being less essential is watching Final Flight Of The Osiris and Kid's Story before Reloaded as well. Neither add much thematic depth but they do fill in a little backstory.

The biggest contribution Second Rensaissance adds to the sequels is depth. The war isn't about Humanity Wants Freedom, Machines Don't Care, but Humanity Wants Freedom, Do They Deserve It?

Exactly. It also gives the ending a deeper resonance. I can see how the idea of peace and co-operation with the machines at the films conclusion left a lot of people unsatisfied if they were looking for a more traditional 'victory' by humanity in the war - but again, did humanity really deserve complete victory considering how the whole war began in the first place?

It's a very humanistic and frankly left-wing ending really.

Thirded Justin's post.

I appreciate that angle but execution was telegraphed as was almost everything in Revolutions.

This reminds me alot of David Lynch's Dune sure its shitty but I enjoy certain aspects I just don't expect people to read the book to enjoy the film or see a prequel animated short film to add resonance.