What are you watching?

[Helikaon]

I really hope HBO pivots and starts doing Westeros movies. Like, The Conquest should be a 2.5 hour movie, not a show. There's not enough strory for a full season, and what story there is (Aegon, Visenya and Rhaenys land, wrecks shit) would be pretty boring. But a movie? I wouldn't mind seeing Balerion the Black Dread in full movie glory.

[Wayno]

See, there's theories that I love that probably wouldn't make it to the film.

book theory:

Aegon never had kids. Rhaenys had a bastard with a Minstrel which explains Aeny's sickly nature and Visenya had Maegor via dark magic which is why he never had kids, but monstrosities. He should have had for more than 2 kids if he was fertile. All Targaryen primogeniture is based on one huge lie.

[Jassassino]

Tales of Dunk and Egg was on my reading list, be real with me fellas, after the shit show of the GOT TV ending, should I just read these instead of watching the show, or does it look more promising?

[tr0nic]

I don't know what compelled me to do so, but I watched The Matrix: Resurrections (Matrix 4) last night. Not entirely sure what to expect, except badness. But you know what? Wasn't bad. It was actually pretty fun, and at this point Lana Wachowski seemed to be focused on having fun with it rather than entirely making some social commentary. It's in there, for sure, and it's just a bit heavy-handed with it right at the beginning, but then it's just about doing cool Matrix shit. I could really tell that she's had a bunch of unfinished ideas from the original trilogy that she wanted to flesh out. She didn't fully succeed, there's like a dozen concepts introduced that went nowhere and were barely explained despite having a runtime of 2 Hours 30 Minutes, but that's all very par for the course with Matrix movies.

They jump the shark a little around the halfway mark though (they actually jump like 3 sharks at once), make no mistake, and as the second hour of the film passed I was like "come on, wrap it the fuck up, Lana" but it was fun to see Keanu do his thing. The man does not age, I swear. Keanu Reeves is a great example of a human being that has visibly done very few drugs.

Gotta say though, there was no green tinting in the new one. The green tint was a criticism of the original trilogy, but now without it, it just feels wrong. At this point it's kind of necessary, the film overall was too colorful for a Matrix movie.

Matrix super-fan here.  Without going too much into my thoughts on the fourth movie (dislike it but it has redeeming qualities) - the absence of the green tint wasn't a mistake, per se.  

Spoiler:

In the original trilogy, the green tint differentiated the Matrix from reality - along with a severe absence of the color blue beyond the pills.  That is, of course, until the end of the third movie.  With The Truce in effect, and Sati's influence, the System has its first blue sunrise (note Trinity's reaction to seeing the sky in the real world - she had never seen a blue sky in her entire life.  No living human had!) - and the green tint is absent.

In The Matrix Online, which took place after the third movie and is mostly upheld by the fourth (only one line contradicts) - the green tint came back, but would be almost invisible whenever Sati controlled the sky, which was typically once a week.  Some people called these, "Sati-days".   

That said, there were incidents where the sky's color changed significantly.  In one short story arc - A Piece of Blue Sky - some absolute nutjobs tried to revert every awakened human to ignorance, as though they had taken the blue pill.  As they attempted this, they transformed the sky to be a vibrant blue - just like in the new movie!  The Analyst's Matrix was designed to keep more humans subservient than The Architect's efforts.  As such - green tint gone, blue saturation up.  I dislike the aesthetic, to be sure, but it does mesh with the deep lore.

Now, what really bakes my noodle - in the movie's many, many flashback sequences, we see Trinity's death twice.  Once, it appears as it did in Revolutions. The second - it has the green tint.  Even though it happened in the Real World.  What the hell THAT means?  I have no idea.  The implications are huge, and it's almost literally blink and you miss it.

So I watched Matrix Resurrections a couple weeks ago (my grand ideas of playing the games first and seeing it in a cinema got dashed as film choices in my girlfriends house is often left to fate as we spin a wheel with a selection of films on that everyone has put in and the one it lands on has to be watched-no vetoes. My girlfriend hated this film on her first watch so she wasn't too pleased). I have to say it was a little awkward...but I feel like it had a lot of heart, especially for a legacy sequel, and I have a good deal of respect for it. I'm gonna wax lyrical for a bit.

The Analyst works as a great representation of the evolution of our real-world internet and tech. He is a lot 'lamer' than The Architect, the internet's status as this respectable, unknowable monolith made up of 'locations' fixed in a somewhat objective geography that netizens can 'visit' has given way to self-perpetuating environments that are made for every individual user based on what the environment has gleaned about them, whether they like it or not. Despite the fact that these environments are presented under the guise of socialising they have no interest of promoting genuine human connection and instead are often used as tools to keep us complacent and stuck in the feedback loops we’re already in. The coffee shop, Simulatte (lmao), is the physical manifestation of this design philosophy. It creates the illusion of an environment made to meet, but said illusion is its entire purpose. It keeps Neo and Trinity close enough to hope for human connection but uses it as a carrot on a stick. The yearning for something real stops them from seeing how fake it all is. The sheer amount of blue in The Analyst’s immediate proximity is nice too, the brazen nature of this new Matrix that almost flaunts what the previous version worked so hard to obscure-the desire to keep you there, to placate you, to deny reality.

I was initially disappointed at the lack of a meaningful soundtrack and, more importantly, of steezy fits. Despite characters having their same iconic silhouettes they seemed flat, and while there was more colour across the board in their wardrobe the clothes were made of fabric that visually lacked punch, edge, and any sort of sightly sheen. At first I thought that this was some aspect of costume design that had dropped the ball. But after thinking on it I feel as if it ties in nicely to the themes the film is playing with about the assimilation of culture by the corporate machine. The Matrix and the Matrix have divorced what they are exploiting from the counterculture that once gave it power and a voice. The seedy underground raves and shining leather that guided and empowered Neo are replaced with soulless corporate coffee shops and a cast of cotton-blend costumes. It's almost as if Neo has been made to 'grow out of it' and is now living the mature life expected of an upstanding member of society. That which set him on the path to revolution is something for the young, and now that he is old (something the new Matrix works overtime to portray him as to others) it is not his to yield. This narrative is one many people may have had thrust upon them in the years since the original trilogy, expected to abandon the fashions and lifestyles associated with any kind of radical ideas once they hit a marker society deems as the time to straighten up and fly right.

The meta-elements were sometimes genius, and when they weren’t they were at the very least fun. “Why use old code to create something new?” Is such a strong opening line to a legacy sequel that dares to try and do something different. The fact that the in-universe answer to the line is the new Morpheus, a character that is so displeasing to witness due to his status as not-Laurence Fishburne, who was created to try and reignite the consciousness of an aged Neo who has forgotten what he once was woken up to (stay woke, Neo!).  New Morpheus is the reification of Resurrections. Something new made from something old that is (almost disturbingly) not said old thing, but still exists to remind us of the lessons the old thing taught that the passage of time (and advancements in corporate greed) have so effectively eroded. The fact that Neo made the new Morpheus as a way to remind himself paints a picture of a Lana Wachowski who's found herself at the same place she was when her and her sister first created the original film-time and success has replaced small offices with big offices but it is all too easy to leave behind the causes and lessons that once helped us break out of the systems that kept us down, and fall straight back into those very same systems.

While new Morpheus paid off for me due to the way his recasting worked with the film’s story and themes…new Agent Smith was, unfortunately, just a real disappointment. I could think up no purposeful point to the somewhat deflated feeling I had when watching someone who wasn’t Hugo Weaving carry on the rivalry with Neo. This is supported by the fact that Weaving's absence was purely due to a clash of schedules-which makes it that much sadder! Regardless, I did get great satisfaction in the brief exploration of Smith as the 0 to Neo’s 1, making up a binary of opposition wherein Smith is the negative and Neo is the affirmation. After Reloaded I really thought this would be something discussed in Revolutions and when that film didn’t touch on it I worried I’d thought too hard about it (Thankfully there is now proof I thought about it just the right amount!). The film's second act wherein we see how the society of those free of the Matrix has progressed was also a little bit too meandering. It still had its moments but I think pound for pound it's the segment with the least interesting stuff.

Now most of this post has been me talking about the ways the film baked its societal commentary in in ways that I enjoyed, but I have to say beyond all of that I did also just appreciate the sheer sincerity of the actual plot. After all of the meta-reflection on being a cash-grabbing Matrix sequel and the somewhat stunted advancements of the "real world" story, Resurrections is about loving each other and how that is vital for our survival in the face of adversity. The scene where the Analyst throws everything he has at them to stop Neo and Trinity touching was a great moment and the satisfaction when lovers reunited felt very earned. Making Trinity's faith in Neo essential to his becoming The One and having Neo return that favour and then some here feels like a beautiful addendum to the messages of the original trilogy. It's all for the ones we love, and it's all thanks to the ones we love. The fact Wachowski only made a new Matrix film due to the death of her parents and the fact she couldn't save them but she could save Neo and Trinity feels like art at its purest. It's wish fulfilment, it's catharsis, it's important. It's not perfect...but it's human.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️★★★

(My girlfriend was also swayed from her original position as a hater who wouldn't let us watch it #ResurrectionsGangRiseUp)

Okay, coming back months later to respond to this as I've recently done a rewatch of Resurrections and Revolutions.

@starschwar many apologies for not initially responding, that makes sense. I sort of knew that the green tint was in itself a piece of lore, it's a very visible motif in the original trilogy, but I didn't connect at first that the part of the actual Matrix that would cause this green tint could be gone. Like I was expecting it to come back at some point, like the Merovingian did, and was let down when it didn't. But watching again yeah it makes sense that it doesn't make an appearance. New Matrix, new rules.

In response to @Dirty Duck's great breakdown of things: 

My attitude towards New Morpheus totally shifted on this second rewatch. It really struck me this time around how not bringing back Laurence was a direct message to the viewer; this sequel was never going to be exactly what each one of us wanted, and it shouldn't be. The Matrix that we knew is gone, a new Morpheus had to be created to reactivate Neo, and he is almost literally some AI-generated outline of what we knew as Morpheus. He's got the moves, he's Morpheus-shaped, but he looks...Wrong. Indeed, Lana is holding up a mirror and telling us that this highly personalized internet we've found ourselves stuck with has changed us, as we have changed it. 

And so we don't get a truly "new" Matrix movie, we get a highly stylized rehash to remind us of what was previously said, and while Lana has made the universe bigger, the story has been made smaller and properly focused on Neo and Trinity. The Messiah messaging, the insane Atlas weight of humanity on Neo's shoulders is also the burden of The Matrix as a franchise and the expectations of everyone that loves it. At the end of the day it is a story about humans, and at the core of being human is finding love and some kind of purpose. It's worth everything.

I also found The Analyst angle entirely unnecessary. If all that was really left over of the original Smith is just pure hatred for Neo, then why recycle him at all? Adding more layers to the Matrix to disorient Neo further seems way, way more efficient and effective than going balls to the wall with it when the layers start to inevitably break down again. Like, The Machines are sentient. They have some concept of trust amongst themselves, how the fuck do any of them trust Smith ever again? Someone must have known this would end badly if the goal is to contain Neo.

Now, I'm probably going to butcher some lore interpretation here, but I'm a big fan of the oft-theorized "Nightmare Matrix" theory. That is, in a previous iteration of the Matrix, the world itself was filled with programs that manifested as mythical monsters (vampires, werewolves, ghouls, etc.) to maintain a more direct control over humanity and the visual representation of the Matrix. The Merovingian was the Operating System of this Matrix, and his henchmen were previously the Agents that manifested as these monsters. Largely, the theory makes my imagination run wild because of the possibilities. If there were previous Agents, a previous OS, then there was possibly a previous "The One". At the center of the Machine race is something that continues to perpetuate these concepts of Agents, of Neo, of Humanity endlessly resisting The Matrix. Possibly to perpetuate itself. Matrix 4 seems to also somewhat support that with its rehashing of previous scenes with new actors. The only way to keep things balanced is to allow controlled detonation from time to time.

I also think that the Human-Machine alliance is a very logical, very good progression in the story, and while it doesn't reference anything directly, finally the Matrix fans get to see some level of crossover between Animatrix and the mainline films. Humanity is learning from the mistakes of the Second Renaissance and the Machine War, that's what it's all about baby. Evolve and adapt. I hate that it's such a boring slog part of the film, that had some serious potential.

All in all though, yeah not as disappointed with Matrix 4 as I even previously was. What it made me think and feel makes the boring parts worth it.

[starschwar]

@tr0nic , you make some interesting observations. Morpheus being a Smith replica that chooses to be a Morpheus is an interesting concept. The movie's persistent use of mirrors as both imagery and means to progress the plot are not accidental. There's a lot individual ideas in Resurrections that I like, but just about anything that isn't about Neo and Trinity feels underdeveloped. I know a lot of material was cut for time, and I hope someday, maybe, a longer cut will be released (such as one that was confirmed to have been screened for critics) that will let these ideas breathe more.

I gave it three chances, and it never clicked with me. I've made peace with it. Maybe someday I'll give it another go, especially before that fifth movie comes out. But I can live with disliking a Matrix movie. I'm still a fan for life. I've come back to lesser series with far worse films in them!

[tr0nic]

@tr0nic , you make some interesting observations.  Morpheus being a Smith replica that chooses to be a Morpheus is an interesting concept. The movie's persistent use of mirrors as both imagery and means to progress the plot are not accidental.  There's a lot individual ideas in Resurrections that I like, but just about anything that isn't about Neo and Trinity feels underdeveloped.  I know a lot of material was cut for time, and I hope someday, maybe, a longer cut will be released (such as one that was confirmed to have been screened for critics) that will let these ideas breathe more.

I gave it three chances, and it never clicked with me.  I've made peace with it.  Maybe someday I'll give it another go, especially before that fifth movie comes out.  But I can live with disliking a Matrix movie.  I'm still a fan for life.  I've come back to lesser series with far worse films in them!

See I'm right there with you. 15 minutes into this second rewatch, I was already telling myself "Fuck why am I watching this again? Just watch clips on youtube." Nothing else on this planet does this to me like Matrix films do, where I'm sitting there thinking "Why am I watching this again?" Then days later I'm still thinking about all these ideas that were presented to me, generally unfinished, and I'm captivated all over again.

[starschwar]

I'll say this. While I do dislike Resurrections, it is an incredibly memorable film, even the parts that I find unsatisfying. I have seen much worse movies since that my brain has already "taped over".

[Wayno]

I'm so glad we get the next season of A Knight of the Seven Nine Kingdoms next year rather than a two year wait. It's been such a beautiful, sweet show. An absolute palate cleanser and I have zero complaints about any deviation from the source material and everything they added was wonderful. I could talk about all the cool additions in the final episode all day. Six 30 minute episodes was the perfect decision.