Out of Pod Experience

So Nathaniel:

You really do have to finish the Matrix trilogy. Very non hollywood type endgame. There's also a very schopenhauer type charachter in there you might like ;-)

I'd like to see what you think of Akria and Ghost in the Shell. Also, Appleseed.

And thanks for the civilised discussion. Doesn't happen very often here, so worth noting ;-)

i've been meaning to get around to akira and ghost in the shell for a while, actually! i remember spending the summer in russia when i was nine or so and seeing a commercial for ghost in the shell on some weird late-night russian channel that played an eclectic mix of sort-of-not-really hentai and obscure american cartoons dubbed over in russian by very clearly nonprofessional voice actors. i don't really remember the content of the commercial but i remember thinking that it was definitely the coolest and and most amazing thing ever.

also, i've apparently watched something written and designed by katsuhiro oromo of akira fame. i remember freedom being pretty good for a series made to promote cup noodles. my dad seemed to like it well enough and he's been the proud owner of an encyclopedic collection of anime (subbed, not dubbed, of course) since sailor moon started airing

anyway i think the rest of the matrix series is available on netflix so i'll just ignore the haters and follow through with fishing the trilogy. i've brought this upon myself by starting a thread about it, and i sure as hell can't back out now

Did not real all the replies, but its been said, "The Matrix" was a movie with stuff never before seen. The visual effects just were not done, the concept was good, the execution was great. The sequels blew but meh. The issue with the matrix is because it was so cutting edge for the time that it has been imitated over and over.

And asking 'dude whats the hype with the matrix? I saw it 15 years after and don't get it" is like saying "dude I don't get why all you guys were falling all over yourselves for star wars, I saw it like 35 years after it came out and it was not that good'

when I movie is good, cutting edge or very popular is get parodied to death and elements stolen for other movies and stories. Its he nature of the beast. And technology that was 'omg that's bad ass!" 10 years ago is "meh I've seen better" now.

Try watching the original king kong and not laughing at how bad the effects are, or even terminator 1. That scene where the exoskeleton walks out of the fire always makes me laugh by how bad it is.

i was a bit hesitant to write about it because i didn't think anyone would actually care, but since i’ve gotten a formal request to do so i might as well

rumors of the second and third movie being disastrous and grossly inferior to the original film have been greatly exaggerated. it’s impossible to understand the film’s philosophical core unless the trilogy is examined together as a whole, and many of the questions that the first film failed to answer were resolved in later parts. most critics of the second and third movies seem to at least partly focus on how they were “made less sense and featured a lot of impossible stuff” but those people are boring killjoy nerds with no taste for surreality, abstraction, or some very sexy religious overtones. anyway i’m just going to talk about my favorite movie stuff; aesthetics, humanity and philosophy

one thing that i liked about the first movie is the way it color coded and aesthetically defined its scenes; in the computer world, everything is green-tinted, people wear sunglasses and low-key haute couture and storm around looking badass. the real world is blue-tinted, people dress in urban outfitters grunge and look tired and scruffy. the introduction of zion in the second movie facilitated the addition of orange to the scene palettes, in order to denote that the city is warm and alive and great instead of false and unsettling like the matrix or miserable but at least the real deal like the real world outside of zion. the scene to probably make best use of orange was the cave party sex scene, which was really the only scene set in zion that had a lasting impression on me because of the very effective contrast it set up between the zion (orange, sexy, human, great parties and good sex) matrix (green, artificial, boring, people can go to clubs if they want but they are lame green-tinted clubs) and actually showed why people would prefer to live in the real world instead of the matrix. unfortunately, the other orange-tinted scenes were the endless robot fight scenes which felt completely out of place compared to the tones and moods of other, better scenes and should have all been edited out. other than that, costume design was right on point for most characters and was especially fun in merovingian’s club, what with all great textures and inventive use of layering and cut (costume designers seem to use club scenes as an excuse to go all out, so they’re always fun to watch for). i guess it was kind of weird how everyone’s ship-uniform sweaters were all torn up, but maybe they were too busy doing important things to fix their sweaters

character development and interaction unfortunately remained a weak spot for the entire trilogy. the majority of the character development fell upon minor characters who were okay but not nearly as interesting as neo, who, due to keanu reaves’s skill, came across as a genuinely likeable and neat guy but was given very little to work with in terms of how much personality was actually written into the script. the original movie started out with him as an awkward, geeky guy lacking confidence in himself, and culminated with him realizing that he isn’t limited by what he thought was possible, and that he can really be the cool anime trenchcoat man that he wants to be. the scenes were his personality was really allowed to shine were a bit sparse but “i know kung fu” was a really great one. neo’s character progression starts doing some really weird things after the first movie, though. while the idea that neo would feel conflicted about being so powerful in the matrix but just having normal human capabilities in real life seemed like it was going to be explored in the second movie, all we got was a scene of neo feeling awkward about people treating him worshipfully and then a scene of neo feeling awkward about being at a big cave party with so many people until his hot gf shows up and they go have some orange-tinted sex. the rest of the films give neo very little room to do much emotionally but look stoic and cool, but there doesn’t seem to have been much of a logical progression from self-conscious and nervous to stoic and cool that wasn’t other characters saying “wow, neo is so stoic and cool now because he is the One and has accepted this with no struggle or internal conflict”. the scene were neo kisses the machine woman and the scene with the architect where the video screens displaying neo’s various inner thoughts provided were tantalizingly good (the latter was particularly interesting because apparently neo has a repressed urge to flip people off and generally be rude whenever he’s confused and this is never explored further) and i wish we got more of that instead of minor characters taking up screentime expressing emotions about whatever

i sat down to write this right after finishing the third movie and it’s already pretty long so i think i’ll write about my thoughts on the matrix’s overall philosophy and how the neo/trinity romance was terrible and pretty much the most poorly expressed thing in the entire series other than the kitschy rainbow sunset at the very end of the third movie in another post. and despite all my complaints, i actually did like the series as a whole lol

i’ll amend my statement; sati’s entire existence was kitschy. it’s difficult to write small children well in any piece, but especially when they’re only written to be cute.

i had to check back on the battle scene to see it, but it’s definitely noticeable in some places. i’ll admit i didn’t pay much attention to the battle scenes because they were mostly repetitive summer blockbuster explodey stuff and were often set right between scenes where characters that i actually cared about were doing something interesting. the scenes in zion at night are also blue tinted, i’m guessing in order to show that it is a) night time and b)to place zion on the “real world” side of the “matrix/real world” binary

other than sati and her utterly bland and forgettable family, most of the machine characters are great! the merovingian is a fantastic character and his wife is pretty fun too; the whole “machines acting like humans” thing would have been much better explored through them than sati’s family. agent smith is also an entertaining dude with some really good lines in the first film especially. at some point i stopped being sure if he continually referred to neo as “mr anderson” in order to make him feel insecure about his “cool trenchcoat katana man neo” persona and like the pathetic wannabe he used to be or if the writers just decided “well, that’s just what he does, that’s his thing”. anyway he’s sufficiently reminiscent of a bunch of the slimy authority figures that i know so it’s cool, i guess

about philosophy; one of the problems of only watching the first movie is not getting to find out exactly what the philosophy of the matrix series actually is. the first movie sets a few major questions; why bother freeing yourself from the matrix if life on the outside is more miserable and difficult than life on the inside, how do redpillers reconcile their fetish for ultimate freedom and choice with the idea of the oracle being able to correctly predict people’s fate, how did trinity go from “oh, neo’s kind of cute” to “i LOVE him he is my SOULMATE” in about a month without ever even touching the guy. the last question is never actually answered but i think i’ll complain about that some other time. the first two are confronted in somewhat roundabout ways in between all of the kung-fu backflips and shooting at robot squid, but the message i got boils down to about “humans have the ability to choose and they should exercise it because screw you, i’ll do what i want.”

the human philosophy has been established since the first movie as “sometimes there is preordained fate and other times our actions have an effect on the outcome of things, and it’s best to fall back onto the latter philosophy when you don’t know what to do or aren’t able to do anything because it’s very comforting in those times”. the second movie introduces us to machine philosophy, which is basically “things move in cause-and-effect patterns and if you want things to work in your favor you need to get rid of unnecessary and redundant factors, since those would create deleterious effects on their systems.” the oracle, who is set up as the fount of philosophical wisdom throughout the trilogy, says a lot of things about fate and choice and not being able to see past choices that you can’t understand that was all very zen and sometimes kind of ??? but the general theme seemed to be “fate exists in that it is possible to predict the effects of something when you understand the causes behind it, but sometimes humans do things for basically no reason and then there’s no telling what’s going to happen”

i’m guessing that the last philosophy is the one that we’re supposed to take away from the movie. the one to ask the most piercing philosophical questions in the trilogy was agent smith, who first confronted the oracle about the limits of her precognition by questioning whether she knew if he was going to show up to assimilate her into the smith collective and also throw a plate of cookies across the wall (although it’s like that she knew exactly what would happen because agent smith is a machine and thus is designed to follow a specific cause-and-effect protocol, he also behaves very humanly sometimes so maybe not?) and then during his climatic fight with neo demanded the reason that he didn’t give up and the answer was something along the lines of “i just kind of go with what i feel like and hope it turns out okay.” and in fact, it does turn out okay, because neo persisting despite the apparent irrationality of doing so leads to him foiling smith’s prediction of his victory and winning the day. the matrix is probably the first movie to argue that the power of will comes from its inherent irrationality, but it’s a weird and good idea.

this came out way longer and more incoherent that i expected it to be and i didn’t even get to discuss trinity’s failed potential and how forced the romance was so maybe later

i don’t see why we need to know that programs can breed and produce cute lil kids, or why we need a goofy rainbow scene the cap off the series, but eh.

my main issue with the trinity/neo romance is that despite being a major point in all of the movies, it’s never given room to develop naturally and thus feels weird and fake for the entire series.

watching the first movie, it seemed pretty obvious that trinity and neo were going to get together; because trinity is set up as a hot babe that we, the audience is supposed to drool over, neo should get to sleep with her so that we can project our own feelings through him. there’s mild sexual tension, with trinity taking a more assertive role and neo obviously digging her back but being shy about it. then all of the sudden trinity announces that neo is her soulmate 4 ever and he’s like “oh, ok, i guess i am”

from this point on, we’re supposed to believe that this is a genuine, human romance, based on mutual respect, affection, and whatever else great legendary romances entail. generally, human women do not go into “weak kneed female love interest mode”, as that is something usually reserved for fictional female characters who are meant to kiss the main character once at the end of the movie and then get tragically murdered before the audience can notice that their relationship is insubstantial and built on nothing. however, instead of getting impaled by a robospidersquid, trinity manages to persist throughout most of the rest of the trilogy, doing lots of romance stuff with neo while i was left wondering “why are they doing this. why do they like each other so much. what is going on”

it might’ve helped if trinity was actually given a reason to like neo beyond “he’s cute and the oracle said so”, or if she received more character development than “wears shiny clothes, likes motorcycles, does backflips, nice butt”. their initial dynamic seemed to be that trinity was lusting after the dorky but pretty new guy but was being coy about it, while neo felt similarly but was too passive and nervous around women to do anything about it, and it would’ve made a lot more sense to continue with that instead of having them drop everything and shift gears into “deep epic romance” mode. a relationship based around sexual desire that evolved into genuine romance would’ve made so much more sense

on an unrelated note; the soundtrack for the matrix was okay but kind of unmemorable. i feel like some fool ever decided to remake the matrix, they’d totally need to get easter to do some of the soundtrack. surreal floaty german devotional rap would bring a whole new dimension to the experience, and even re-using some songs from "ur a great babe" would yield a winning soundtrack. also apparently every vaguely action time movie needs some kind of rap in the soundtrack, so maybe kicklighter and uzi under the tutelage of seasoned producer metro zu. personally i'd pick cakes da killa over everyone else but i'm probably the only one

i didn't even notice the red door thing; that's actually pretty cool! i really wish the uncomfortable misery of the real world compared to the comfortable misery of the matrix had been explored more beyond the opinions of the scummy guy who betrayed the redpill crew in the first movie.

the wachowski's answer to that question would probably be that it's better to build a prison for yourself, not because that decision would make more sense but because it is exactly the kind of stupid human thing that makes us so cool and unpredictable

that's an interesting take on it; i saw the end of the film as being a triumph of humanity's will rather than a submission to inevitability. but maybe the implication is that inevitability doesn't have to be a bad thing either? damn that's some heavy stuff

to be honest, most of the time the real world didn't seem half as exciting as the matrix was, so i could've done with less endless mech suit pew pew and more green-tinted backflips. the movies could've probably shown less of zion and it would've still had the association of being a cool, homey and important place like it was implied to be in the first movie

Hold old are you?

You either weren't around when the film was released, or were too little to watch it.

It had a lot of firsts (camera work, slow motion, etc).
The timing was right. The whole "plugged in" world was just starting to happen in RL, and then comes the Matrix with it's premise that it's all a lie.
The characters are not "underdeveloped and emotionless". They portray the anonymous internet users interacting in text only (before smileys completely took over). The whole glasses and "questionable wardrobe" adds to that "mystique". They were done that way on purpose.

Ask anyone what the greatest movie ever is, and the answer is Citizen Kane. Watch it now... and you will be just as bewildered... as you regarding the Matrix, because everything you see in movies today started in Citizen Kane when it revolutionized the camera work and audio of the movies at the time.

Technically that is siblings now, not brothers. But anyway.


To the OP, they took elements from many successful science fiction and mythology, threw them together, and put a cyberpunk aesthetic on top of it. The last bit had never been done with a high budget and CG before. There was nothing 'original' in the film except how it combined the elements it borrowed from elsewhere. It did that combining very well.