The Matrix is over 10 years old. Just saying.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MatrixPosted Dec 29, 2009, 4:46 AM UTC
197212
en.wikipedia.org
Too bad they never made any sequels. :(
87
Repeating over and over the same xkcd joke is fucking annoying.
The sequels weren't that bad, it just the first one was that good.
62
The sequels weren't that bad, it just the first one was that good.
The original Matrix you can take or leave the the philosophizing, which somehow made it more powerful. For instance, one character tells Neo in the beginning that he's "[his] own personal Jesus Christ". Not exactly subtle, but you can ignore it as a brain-fart and move on.
The sequels? Not so much. Every long talky scene is just a rehashing of allegory and metaphor we are already aware of, each trying to out-stereotype each other. It felt like playing baby's first philosophy, were you have to write the philosophical school of each character over their heads based on their diatribes.
Also, and this seems to be a point that bugs only me, since the fuck when can Neo see the future? The Oracle says he can't see how to save Trinity because he can't see past choices..blah blah, but go back. You never answered the question. All you said was he's "seeing the world without time". That's just another way to say he's seeing the future you question-dodging cunt. Does Neo have a fucking Delorean in his brain? That scene where he mind-raped some sentinels was stupid sure, but it's quick and irrelevant, a la the brain fart thing I mentioned earlier. But Neo's time travelling prophecies is something the entire second film is built around. And the only explanation we ever get is a re-wording of the question itself.
30
While I agree that there are serious deficiencies in the second and third films, the first film does not stand up to re-watch if you view it with a non-mystified eye. The dialogue is almost unbearable, it feels like it's written by a fifth grader. Morpheus saying, about Neo, "He's starting to believe!" Come on. I can't not roll my eyes thinking about that.
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the first film does not stand up to re-watch if you view it with a non-mystified eye
I watched that movie so many times and I am ready to bet I am far from being alone. It was the most searched sci-fi movie by a ridiculously large margin in the end of the 90s and on top of Amazon sales. Did you watch it in 1999 or did you rented it a couple of years latter with the 2 and 3?
However it is true that once I saw Matrix 2-3 it "does not stand up to re-watch", I never watched it again. Seeing Keanu almost make me puke.
1
Repeating over and over the same xkcd joke is fucking annoying.
Same goes for bacon and fucking narwhals by the way.
26
but you see, that's the essence of the whole "inside joke" mentality that has carried over from real world "in crowd" to the virtual world "in crowd".
nerds like to think they're different, but in the end they still watch soap operas (star trek) and they still want to be popular.
9
You seem like a positively delightful person.
8
I agree but has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
3
I'd like to add "you, sir are a..." to this list. Doesn't matter if it's "gentleman and a scholar" or anything else.
It's so fucking annoying now.
1
So, the original xkcd joke was funny. All the sequels to it suck. :-)
12
If you have a slice of triple chocolate raspberry cheesecake one night and then have a slice of plain chocolate cake the next, the cake will seem only so-so in comparison to the cheesecake. If the cake stood alone without having to compete with the cheesecake you'd think it was pretty good... but it just can't compare to that cheesecake. Everyone claims the cake was crappy but that's because they remember how tasty the cheesecake was.
Give them a few months without any dessert at all and they'll be raving about that chocolate cake.
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Not if everytime someone brings up chocolate cake, some asshole brings up how much better the tripple chocolate raspberry cheesecake was and pretends the chocolate cake never existed. My favorite part of chocolate cake was the invasion of zion. That shit was sweet and deliscious.
6
Doesn't work for me, I don't like cheese :D
But I guess analogy will work for everyone else :)
-11
Everyone but you. You're the only one.
"Doesn't work for me" = you
Everyone else = 6.7 billion people
6
I, too, am sick of that fucking joke.
5
I agree, but I understand the OP's sentiment - For instance, I've always wondered what would happen if someone made a prequel trilogy to Star Wars?
2
That sounds like it could be the greatest piece of cinema ever made!
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Watch the sequels together as a single film, and I think they are pretty good. They just didn't have the impact of the first film because they all the concepts and ideas the first film introduced were already out there.
2
Two Words - Thunder Dome.
or one word- thunderdome
0
That sentiment predates xkcd, being at least as old as The Godfather 3.
Compared to the first one, the sequels did just about everything wrong.
2
Repeating over and over the same xkcd joke is fucking annoying.
Was that an xkcd joke? I am sorry but it's the other way around, xkcd take it's jokes from the mainstream. People have being making that joke long before xkcd existence. At least I have.
2
I disagree, though probably for different reasons than most people do.
The problem is that the first Matrix movie had plot holes you could drive an office building through, but it skimmed over them quickly and stylishly with lots of gunfights and whatnot. You can get away with that in a one off movie sold mainly on stylish gunfights.
The problem is that then they went back and the plot holes just kept getting bigger, and they kept putting more in, until finally the whole thing just seems more than slightly silly.
There's the huge, gaping, "humans as batteries? Bullshit. You've got to get an energy input from somewhere, feeding the humans dead humans won't last forever, or even more than a few weeks." plot hole. The entire premise is so spectacularly stupid that it was only by zipping past it extremely quickly, and bracketing it with stylish fights and quick cuts that the entire audience failed to burst out laughing.
Then we get to the "wait, they're using giant clumsy robot exoskeletons to fight off the sentinels? Didn't we establish that they have cool EMP devices? Didn't we establish that the cool EMP devices shut down the sentinels hard? Why the fuck are they bothering with big machine gun armed robots?" part.
Every scene used plot holes to cover plot holes until the entire thing just looks like a joke.
The only part that was really good in the second movie was Monica Bellucci's pubes in that semi-transparent latex dress. The fight scenes were ok, but looked kinda rehashed, and everything else was just a giant pile of increasingly silly plot holes.
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"Didn't we establish that they have cool EMP devices? Didn't we establish that the cool EMP devices shut down the sentinels hard?"
There are some plot holes in the Matrix, but I don't think this is one of them. They also established Zion electronics weren't completely hardened against EMP pulses. Some things would survive, some wouldn't. There seemed to be a limited number of EMP devices, and an unlimited number of sentinels that could come back down the bore holes, from the perspective of the humans. EMPs were basically the nuclear option, with the convenient side effect that they didn't kill the humans.
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They could perhaps have built there defenses with an outer layer of emps far away from there machinery.
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The only part that was really good in the second movie was Monica Bellucci's pubes in that semi-transparent latex dress.
Yep. And then that was ruined for me by her horrible anal rape scene in "Irreversible". Damn it all :-(
0
The sequels are some of the most retarded shit to destroy what could have become a good franchise, much like Star Wars I-III.
1
I knew for sure I'd find that someone posted this same exact comment. The fact of the matter is, they did make two sequels, and they're not as bad (or non-existent) as everyone here tries to make them out to be. They flesh out the story in 3D. It no longer becomes your old and tired "good vs. evil" or "us against them".
People just want their clear-cut lines and to be told who's good and who's not, and that's lame.
21
They flesh out the story in 3D.
The story gets bigger, it certainly isn't fleshed out. The scripts are horribly tortured so that nobody properly explains anything, a poor excuse to imitate philosophy and force the films to go where they're supposed to without having to justify it.
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(spoilers)
The only thing that just bugged the FUCK out of me was at the end of Revolutions when Trinity if fucking dying and she goes into this five minute monologue about how when she died in Reloaded she regretted not having the time to tell him what she really wanted to say "kiss me, once more...." I made me angry because it was so amazingly unbelievable and stupid (if it was that important to her, why would she be spewing monologue and wasting time?).
Other than that, I liked the other two movies. The reason why people weren't impressed by them as much is because by the time the last movie was done technology had sped up 4X and we had all been desensitized to bullet-time in every single thing.
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I think it was more that the first movie set the bar for the sequels higher than they could pull off.
10
yeah that but also the fact that the sequels were shit
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If by "flesh out the story in 3D" you mean, "make a CGI Dragonball Z episode starring Jesus."
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People just want their clear-cut lines and to be told who's good and who's not, and that's lame.
I disagree. The earliest example I can think of is The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. The protagonist (the so-called good) cheated the Ugly at gun point and left him to nearly die in the desert. More lying and manipulating later on too.
1
whooooosh
0
Shut up. Those two movies suck and that's the bottom line.
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They did...and then someone made them better.
"This combines Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions to one improved movie, leaving out all scenes on and about Zion. A worthy sequel to a masterpiece."
4
thank you. never heard of it before.
1
Glad they never made any Alien movies after 2 or Terminator films after 2.
3
Latest Terminator wasn't bad, it's just that shitball 3rd one that needs to be ignored.
I didn't really like Alien 3 but I've heard it suggested that it was actually a much deeper and higher quality movie than it is given credit for... which, in retrospect, I can see as being possible, though I don't really want to go back and watch it to convince myself either way.
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Alien3 may be "deep" or "thoughtful" or something, but it's boring as shit.
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Yep, T4 is pretty good. It is totally different from previous ones, but continues the plot.
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I keep hearing about how bad the sequels were but when I first saw them I thought they were good so now I'm afraid to go back and ruin them.
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There's no way you can ruin them. You're not a Wachowski.
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Were you listening to me...? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?
1
I watched all three Matrixes again recently. The second two are terrible! Too bad my girlfriend proceeded to provide running commentary on everything. Now I think the first one is ridiculous.
-18
Three Matrixes? What the hell are you talking about? Did you watch it in three languages or something?
9
Neo el Uno?
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efffff
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Whoa.
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I fully expected this to be the top rated comment here.
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Yes!
1
Oh man.... I'm getting old :(
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Age is irrelevant once you are part of the Matrix. Remember, there is no spoon.
16
Yeah, but in another 10 years, my there-is-no-spoon is going to bend and not be able to go back up again.
17
Damn, now I feel old.
1
The Matrix is actually 210 years old. It's really 2209. The answer is out there, reddit, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.
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Spongebob Squarepants premeired TEN YEARS AGO.
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Hey, I still watch random Spongebob episodes before going to sleep every night.
4
And I still watch random Roseanne episodes before going to sleep every night.
4
And I still watch Bill and Teds Excellent adventure before going to sleep every night.
4
And I watch random Sunny episodes before going to sleep every night. What's your point?
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There's a point?
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Damn, am I the only one that actually thought the sequels were awesome? Yeah there were maybe some parts that should've been cut (the zion rave scene), but otherwise I was glued to the screen the whole time with the characters and the action scenes.
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No, they were good, but very different movies from a philosophical perspective.
The motto of the first one was "yes we can..." (...break through the illusion, etc.) while the other two suddenly veered towards the old cliche "nothing worthwhile is accomplished without sacrifice".
It's really the aeons-old ethos of "death is mandatory" (Gilgamesh, heck even Jesus) versus the new "we can change the rules and win" (Superman, the Singularity, etc.).
Very, very different. Night and day.
33
I enjoyed all three.
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In my opinion, the first one was a piece of art. Something new, very profound and memorable.
The second one was an outstanding and mindblowing action movie. It was revolutionnary and it was a major step in the industry of cinema (camera work, fighting/car scenes). Not much more than that.
The third had nothing of this. It was neither profound or mindblowing. Maybe it was, maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any of it. But again, that's my opinion.
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wasn't either
My friend! Allow me to introduce..... "neither"!!
(applause)
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Thanks. Not everyone is a native english speaker here :-P
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1
wasn't neither
"was neither"
1
You are probably not the only one, but I hate all of you.
14
"I voted for Nader, I hate everyone!!"
- Red vs. Blue
1
There was only one Matrix movie. Say it with me, everyone!
11
The third one was religious, which made a lot of people uncomfortable. Weren't all those "gnarly powers" just software-bullshit in the Matrix? Apparently not! I actually like the 3rd one almost as much as the first one.
3
Are you kidding me? The Zion rave scene is awesome. Morpheus' speech is stirring and the music when the dancing starts.. rocks.
2
It is probably the best Fluke's track. They've made it three times -- initially it was called "slap it", then there was "Zion" edit, and finally there is "Another kind of blues" on Puppy album.
1
The biggest problem I had with the sequels is simple: How does Neo see/control the robots outside the matrix?
It makes sense that inside the matrix, software could be hacked and controlled through a bug or even through mental discipline. But there is no rational reason why Neo should have any control outside of the matrix without getting into the supernatural. That changes it from a sci-fi movie to a superhero movie.
It could have been fixed with one very simple scene at the beginning of the third movie: "Check out this x-ray. It seems the machines knew Neo was coming. They installed a transmitter in him to try and control him." "You mean...?" "He's got wireless."
BAM!
2
The real matrix is the universe itself.
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Characters and action scenes were good, but plot totally lacked large-scale logic.
First movie was excellent because it was internally-consistent, and therefore very believable, but at same time it explored very cool ideas.
In the second and third movie they tried to invent something new and stuff in some more ideas, but that totally have broken plot's consistency, and it became more like duct-tapped pile of something.
When I first saw second and third movie, I tried to find some explanation, but I've failed. It is not longer a sci-fi, it is a fairy tale where magic happens. As fairy tale it is pretty awesome, but a part of me that was hoping to see a movie like the first Matrix was very, very disappointed inside.
It is ironic that I've seen some fan fiction which takes Matrix Reloaded plot and make an unusual ending which really explains everything in a logical way, but apparently people who wrote Matrix Revolutions script were not able to do that.
1
The Matrix is one of the greatest films of all time... just saying.
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...of ALL TIME!
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Well if it is "the greatest" then there should be no other "greatest" for it to be one of them... just saying.
-9
I don't know why you are being down voted. Good point.
-6
reddit is a fickle mistress.
2
Time to blow your minds:
the Terminator series is a prequel to the Matrix.
Back to The Future series is a prequel to the terminator.
20
William Gibson's corpus of work is a prequel to both (well, except that it's hard to count things as prequels to time travel movies).
3
Matrix is a prequel to .. STAR TREK!
3
wait... I get how the terminator series is a prequel to the matrix, but how is Back To The Future a prequel of the terminator? The time travel methods are entirely different. Marty never showed up in 1955 naked in a truck stop parking lot.
2
and then, there is Matrix vs Aliens
2
oh yeah, the aliens series is a sequel to the matrix.
2
The matrix overlords need to protect their "Batteries" from becoming a host. Sounds awesome to me.
2
So is Fight Club. Just saying.
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There must be some correlation.
2
You're not your bulbasaur. You're not how much yen you have in the bank. You're not the bike you drive. You're not the contents of your pokedex. You're not your fucking badges. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
5
I like you.
2
Wow. That one got me. Fuck time.
1
2001: A Space Odyssey is over 40 years old and still one of the best (scifi) movies.
13
More convincing methods of special effects too.
9
That's the trick with shooting huge, detailed models with the largest film format of all time - it tends to allow a greater degree of realism. Matrix is stunning, just a lot more surreal in the visual depictions.
4
except my attention span is now as long as a goldfish due to modern editing and its excruciating to sit through.
9
Watch Das Boot a few times in a row, that will cure it.
4
Speaking of modern editing, WTF were they thinking in "Quantum of Solace." I swear the editing was done by a goldfish!
Especially the one scene near the end where Bond and M are having the big conversation and it flips between 4 camera angles every 2 seconds.
2
And a long leather trench coat still doesn't look as good on you as it did on Neo. So please don't use it and think you look cool.
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A few years ago goths decided that it would be cool to wear long leather trench coats to rock concerts where I live. I live in the Caribbean and the average temperature is 85F. There is nothing uncooler than a fat goth with runny makeup sweating his ass off while standing around doing nothing.
11
Wait, wait, wait. Goths in the Caribbean? I thought it was all homophobia and ganja (except for Grand Cayman, where there are banks). Where the hell do you live?
1
Mi nombre... es... Neo!!!
(I watched it on the Spanish channel the other day. I can't speak the language but I know all the words so it was awesome.)
9
It's still awesome. That is all.
7
Does anyone else get bothered when people say they like this movie but they're missing the point that the WHOLE PREMISE OF THE MOVIE is about FIGHTING THE SYSTEM and seeking FREEDOM from the MACHINE and they don't realize this is a total backlash to their "new-age conservative" beliefs of working for the system as a petty salaryman that lives and dies by the rule of money in our society?
Anyone?
6
You can like the movie without agreeing with the point it's trying to make, or even understanding the point. Also, I'd like to hear your plan to throw off the shackles of earning a paycheck to survive and feed your family. I'd love to not have to work to live, but there's a reason the only successful and long living people worked jobs for "the machine".
7
I hear ya. I am still waiting for the reconstituted amino gruel pudding to be invented and then I am all PEACE, see you in space.
2
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all fucking stuck in the wheel of oppression as described by Paulo Freire.
It's just that... it bothers me they have no fucking clue as to the message the movie is trying to convey. It bothers me as much as Ayn Rand Objectivists listening to RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. Really, WUT???
30secedit: Then again, my friend said that their ignorance is "okay" because The Matrix was awesome. Not really a justification for me, but I can see that from the aesthetics point of view.
1
Well, The Matrix is awesome, and so is RATM. I don't know the lyrics to half their songs, but I listen to them on the morning commute to a job I love to do, working for the machine. I listen to them because their music sounds awesome. I'm sure I'd find quite a bit to disagree with if I knew the lyrics, but I'd still listen, simply because I like their style. I don't base my enjoyment of art on some political or ideological basis, I just like what sounds/looks good in my eyes, even if I'm not "supposed" to like it.
1
A conservative may argue with you that the movie is more a metaphor for spiritual shackles. Why don't you see that Neo is Jesus? How can you like that movie without attending mass every Sunday? It's like you don't even get it.
We all tend to mold movies we like around beliefs we already hold. Let conservatives like the movie for their reasons/interpretations, and you for yours.
3
D::::::::
JESUS!??!?!?!?!!?!?
Any chance Objectivists would turn this into a fantasy about John Galt Jr.?
2
No, I think everyone pretty much gets it.
1
Conservatism doesn't mean socially conservative. You can be socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Namely, LESS GOVERNMENT AND MACHINE NOT MORE.
A typical knee jerk liberal you try to pigeon whole anyone who doesn't agree with you.
1
The Phantom Menace is just as old, also, Columbine.
3
The difference is that we want to see The Matrix again.
3
The Matrix was made 3 years from now and sent back in time.
3
It's about time for The Matrix 2.
3
Don't you mean The Matrix 2.0?
But technically it would be version 7. (I know, blashasmy for considering the sequels) but they were sorta... nah nevermind. Ignore this part of the comment.
3
Bomb? Did he say the bomb?
3
/facepalm
How did shit like that even make it into the rough?
2
And most people still don't realize it is a documentary.
Same with Curse of the Were-rabbit
Same with Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.
Same with Monsters Inc.
And you think I'm joking?
Reading this AND I'm watching Ink at 4 in the morning is kind of creeping me out.
Same with The Dark Crystal.
when does it reset back the 90s?
that was filmed in real-time
What? I did not know that. any links ?