No matter what Joss says, The Matrix is a stupid movie.
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Sunday, December 30, 2007 01:08
VIEWED: 6236
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Well, I live four blocks from Grauman's Chinese and walked over about an hour and a half early for the first show on March 31st, 1999, 'cause the trailers for this new sci-fi flick looked amazing, and I thought there'd be a big line.
The place was deserted, so I hunkered down in front of the box office with my little tripod camping stool, and the next person showed up after about 45 minutes.
After the show, I walked home all grinnin' & gigglin', because I knew I'd just seen history being made: "Man, they're gonna be talkin' about this movie for, like, forever!"
I also knew that when they made the (inevitable) sequels, there would be lines around the block at least the night before, so I was not gonna get to be First In Line so easily!
Saw it one more time at the Chinese, and another 7 times when it came to the $3 theater (where it stayed for 2 months)!
That's a record for me! I'd never seen a movie in theaters more than 5 times.
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I think the original Matrix was a good movie in that it had a good story line and great special effects, and while it is obvious that there was more to the story line, I feel the creators of Matrix's sequels dropped the ball.
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Hey Chris!
So, the first time I saw The Matrix I loved it vastly, because it so completely confused me and then explained what was happening and it more or less made sense. I like that. I like being fooled when a film does it well. And the effects really did rock. This film is worth being history just for that. Really, I mean it.
And now let me tear it apart. 
On subsequent viewings, the thing that kills me is some of the really stupid dialogue. "You're going to kill him. You're going to kill Morpheus." I find that scene unbearable. And the whole - "Is he the one?" deal. "He's the one!" "Neo, I know you're the one, because I love you!" Right - cause it's not sci-fi unless there's a dork-turned-hero-turned-master-of-everything-with-a-hot-chick for us male 20-40 year old viewers to identify with, right? 
As for the science - Doesn't a growing body take in more energy than it produces? Basic thermodynamics. The arrow of entropy points one way. Something like that. And they feed the living ones with ground up dead ones... okey, but that's not enough. Where does more food come from? How much does that cost in terms of energy? I just don't see that this system could produce a net plus. Better to go with orbiting solar panels.
Ignoring that issue, which I'm willing to do for Hollywood's sake, it would have been a whole lot safer for the machines to use elephants. Or maybe rats. Whatever body size you like. Then the machines wouldn't have to worry about humans rising up and being pests. Unless they just like to torture their creators, which is possible.
So I'm with you Chris - not buying the science. It did fine for seeing it once or twice, but it's not hard sci-fi by any means.
On to the sequels. The biggest thing that bugs me about these is that the moviemakers went so spiritual/philosophical. The mind-blowing thing about the original movie, for me and I'm guessing for many folks, was the idea that our real life is fake, and everything we experience can be a bit of programming. I kept waiting in the sequel for them to reveal more of that system - the oracle being the main thing. All I got was chocolate cake that gave some matrix manifestation of a program an orgasm. Um... yay?
Now - how do the programmers who know the matrix is the matrix use their knowledge? Um - besides flying. Which is fun and all, but does nothing for the programmed reality thing. Neo "absorbing" the Agent in the first movie was good - I can see a metaphor there. It's not physical force in the matrix, not bullets. It's rewriting the agent's code that'll beat him.
But no, there was no more of that. They were all into making Neo an uber-programming Jesus #2, savior of mankind. *yawn*
OK, anyway... to sum up: sequels? crap. Original movie? Good, but over. Can't watch it anymore.
EDIT: Rallem - oughta maybe make that cool picture smaller so it doesn't stretch the window so wide. Some of us got little bitty screens. Thanks!
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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
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Quote:Never got over the plugs....
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
did you have a bad experience with a matrix as a child?
It's hugely entertaining, it just has problems. Like, why does Neo wake up in his cocoon at all- wouldn't they have a provision for that? And why flush his body into the sewer? That's a waste when he could be liquefied and fed to the living...
And why did he seem to have some muscles upon waking? Shouldn't he have been skinny or droopy or something since his muscles had atropfied?
And why is the Nebukadnezer so hard to spot in a sewer system with no other working electronic activity to act as a cover?
Compared to this movie, Serenity comes off like a science paper...
Harsh Chrisisall
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Quote:Mmmmmmmmmm.....
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
.....Monica Bellucci.
Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Compared to this movie, Serenity comes off like a science paper...
Harsh Chrisisall
So the impetus for this thread is to raise the value of Serenity by tearing down The Matrix?
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We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
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Quote:Not at all- it's just that Joss is the first one to tell ya that he knows squat 'bout science, and that FF/Serenity ain't to be scientifically analyzed too close. I could just as easily have compared The Matrix to Space 1999, but who remembers that show?
Originally posted by singate:
So the impetus for this thread is to raise the value of Serenity by tearing down The Matrix?
Eagleisall
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Quote:All interesting points, but most are a simple limitation of budget or film making. Why does everyone always walk around spaceships like there’s gravity in space always coincidentally pulling parallel to the floor? Sure some sci-fi shows give lip service to some kind of gravity-generating apparatus to explain this away, along with a little lip service into some sort of “inertia dampening” type deal. This results in problem for Firefly, because if mass-free propulsion exists, there should be no problem at all with light-speed and even FTL travel, which means zero-time between travel points but massive time-dilation. In fact, very few sci-fi shows ever actually get the space travel right. Firefly did a good job, but it still had problems. Most of these problems probably weren’t overlooked, but simply deemed too small to be worth the budget or complexity to deal with. To treat Serenity as a low-gravity environment would have meant expensive methods for counter acting the appearance of Earth’s gravity. To treat Serenity’s travel time appropriately relativistic would have introduced confusing plot events (Sure the crew just arrived on Persephone after zero-travel time, but it’s the next day.) And I think a major reason why producers avoid this kind of realism is because they fear it will create too alien an environment for audiences, which is the exact reason why many people fought with Joss over the whole no-sound in space thing.
Originally posted by chrisisall:
It's hugely entertaining, it just has problems. Like, why does Neo wake up in his cocoon at all- wouldn't they have a provision for that? And why flush his body into the sewer? That's a waste when he could be liquefied and fed to the living...
And why did he seem to have some muscles upon waking? Shouldn't he have been skinny or droopy or something since his muscles had atropfied?
And why is the Nebukadnezer so hard to spot in a sewer system with no other working electronic activity to act as a cover?
So yes, I completely agree with your observations about the Matrix - they are all more-or-less correct. But when it comes to deconstructing sci-fi films we should all remember that moderation is always better and take the words of a wise man who once said:
AUSTIN: So, Basil, if I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, presumably, I could go back and look at my frozen self. But, if I'm still frozen in 1967, how could I have been unthawed in the '90s and traveled back to the '60s? Oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.
BASIL: I suggest you don't worry about those things and just enjoy yourself.
It is, finally, entertainment so it’s appropriate to divorce the acceptable flaws from the unacceptable. And I suppose there will always be a degree of subjectivity in where that line is drawn. I tend to be pretty critical of sci-fi in this way, and I ream many sci-fi films, including Serenity, for the use of sound in space, which I think its time for the sci-fi fans to mature as an audience and realize that there is not sound in space. Furthermore, it’s also a simple low-budget feature that can add realism to sci-fi. And even as I gleefully applaud Firefly for its willingness to go this level of realism, I recognize that some other levels (such as gravity issues) are probably too expensive, right now, to deal with.
Of course, the more critical flaws, however, remain the acting and the plot and dramatic elements that are necessary in all movies or tv-shows to appropriate tell the story.
That all being said, the Matrix had its share of stupid stuff. Yes, it made very little sense that Neo woke up and was even able to move. In fact, I suspect that after spending thirty years never using a single muscle, his entire body would have atrophied to the point where he would not only not have been able to move at all, but probably wouldn’t have been able to produce the electrical power for which he existed at all. Of course the movie did address this, and even had a scene in which Neo required surgery
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Quote:Excellent fanboy save there! I no longer consider that one of my problems with it! Good one, Finn!
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
As far as being flushed into the sewer, how do we know it was the sewer into which he was flushed? Perhaps it was the human liquefaction tank.
Quote:Hey- leave Ted, er, I mean Keanu alone!
In my opinion, the more pressing problems was Keanu’s wooden acting
Quote:I agree completely here, and I did try to watch them recently, and BOY was it a chore. I couldn't even make it to the end...
All-in-all, the Matrix was a good film. It’s sequels were far too abstract, and came across like preachy scifi subterranean hippies battling the electronic Man. They seemed to be massively overcomplicated. Maybe one day my puny mind will grasp a straw of brilliance when at once the meaning comes to me and I wake in bed with a “Eureka!” moment and realize how good the sequels truly were, but I doubt it. Pretentious crap, is usually just pretentious crap.
Whoahisall
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With you on that. THE MATRIX is on my list of "Overrated" movies, especially considering that DARK CITY was out a year earlier and had pretty much the exact same concept, but done so much better. I was never bummed by the sequel's poor reception since I was never that much into the first one.
Actually, if you want to make a really funny MST3K remark for RELOADED, when Morpheus goes up in front of the rave and yells "ZION...HEAR ME!!!" Say right after that "CAN YOU DIG IT!!!" That moment always remids me of the beginning of THE WARRIORS when Cyprus rallies the crowd of street gangs with that whole "CAN YOU DIG IT? CAN...YOU..DIG...IT!!!"
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"And it starts with a sentence that might last a lifetime, or it all might just go down in flames. If I let you know me, then why would you want me? Each day I don't is a shame. Each day I don't is a great shame."
Loudon Wainwright III - "Strange Weirdos" off the "Knocked Up" soundtrack
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