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Oh god no. not another dreadful matrix film.
we've had 3 terrible films already.

Loved the first film didnt really think much of the next two. Can't say I am excited about a 4th. Plot wise not sure where they go from 3.

I liked the first film a lot, enjoyed the action sequences from the second, and think the third is bad, but perhaps not quite as bad as internet hyperbole makes it out to be - But I really can't see this film working well - I mean, prequel, sequel, reboot, whatever, It does feel a bit of a desperate "Hey, here's something that worked ages ago, let's beat this dead horse!"

Who knows, it might be great, but I have a suspicion that the whole trilogy was a product of it's time, so slavishly copying it will feel a bit outdated, but I'm not sure that you could "update" it without losing what made it iconic.

I'll wait for the trailer before I get too apocalyptic in my predictions though!

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Because movies that have no reason to exist are often bad movies. You can get into philosophical arguments over why we should criticize bad movies instead of just letting their fans (few as they may be) enjoy them in peace, but in a world where movie critics exist it's entirely fair to wonder why they seem to be setting up to produce a bad movie.

But - once again putting aside that your opinion of what constitutes a bad movie is exactly that - you're not criticising a bad movie, or advocating that bad movies should be criticised even if there's a fanbase who enjoyed them. You're questioning whether a movie that might be bad should even be made at all despite the people making it clearly believing there will be an audience out there for it. If they make Matrix 4 and it turns out to be trash, by all means criticise away, but the mere possibility that it may be trash combined with your own personal disinterest is not actually an argument against it being made in the first place.

Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, why does anyone ever debate the merits of attempting any creative endeavour? That's pretty much the whole point of this thread, so it's more than a little weird that you're making a big deal out of people putting forth the view that a new film might be a bad idea. I mean, what did you expect to see in this thread exactly? The reasoning many people have given seems pretty sound too - the first film was pretty good - generally very well received by critics and public alike - and the 2 sequels got progressively worse to the point where the 3rd film is almost universally maligned. Given that, and the fact the trilogy forms a complete story, there are grounds for at least debating the wisdom of making another one.

Could reveal the second and third were Neo peering in the future because He's A Tech Wizard, and deciding 'we'll do it differently'.

 Dark Apostle 666 wrote:
I liked the first film a lot, enjoyed the action sequences from the second, and think the third is bad, but perhaps not quite as bad as internet hyperbole makes it out to be - But I really can't see this film working well - I mean, prequel, sequel, reboot, whatever, It does feel a bit of a desperate "Hey, here's something that worked ages ago, let's beat this dead horse!"

Who knows, it might be great, but I have a suspicion that the whole trilogy was a product of it's time, so slavishly copying it will feel a bit outdated, but I'm not sure that you could "update" it without losing what made it iconic.

I'll wait for the trailer before I get too apocalyptic in my predictions though!

The first movie has aged surprisingly well because it's mostly film noir styled early on and the SFX are used only where necessary, so there aren't the ton of laptop-from-Buffy moments you might expect. (The sequels are a different story, by trying to look futuristic, they became instantly dated - early 2000s concept cars don't hold a candle to a mid century Lincoln Continental.)

In theory the truce established in the third film could allow for the simulation's timeline to progress forward for the first time, and from a movie making point of view I think it would be wise to do so and revive a primarch incorporate some newer themes in the process. But if they go back to how the first one treated the visuals of the simulated world it doesn't have to lose the same feel.

It can incorporate the rotary phones and classic cars and guns etc, in an only slightly more 2019ish world. I think revisiting that world after 20 years (!) of theoretically mutual machine/human symbiosis could actually be what make room for some really interesting ideas.

First film was awesome. Legitimately one of the best Sci-Fi movies to come out of the 90s. The second and third were...not good at best. The third I don't even remember. I feel like I fell asleep during it every time. Matrix could have been done after one movie and gone down as one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time. Making it a trilogy ruined it.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
The third I don't even remember.

Yeah, same. I read people talk about a truce and it means nothing to me. I remember 15 minutes of percussive dancing in Zion at the start, a guy in a white suit looking at loads of monitors somewhere towards the end and that's about it.

I didn't even know there was a second and third, only knew about the first one.

But..

 Necros wrote:
But..

Spoiler:

Didn't Neo & Trinity die in the end?

LOL this is a good point...

 Stormatious wrote:
I didn't even know there was a second and third, only knew about the first one.

Stay that way, sweet Summer Child.

Spare yourself the suffering.

 Riquende wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
The third I don't even remember.

Yeah, same. I read people talk about a truce and it means nothing to me. I remember 15 minutes of percussive dancing in Zion at the start, a guy in a white suit looking at loads of monitors somewhere towards the end and that's about it.

Just in case this isn't a joke, those are all from the second film

 Stormatious wrote:
I didn't even know there was a second and third, only knew about the first one.

You would be missing very little if you kept things that way.

 Riquende wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
The third I don't even remember.

Yeah, same. I read people talk about a truce and it means nothing to me. I remember 15 minutes of percussive dancing in Zion at the start, a guy in a white suit looking at loads of monitors somewhere towards the end and that's about it.

A TLDR'able summary -

It's far, far further into the future than even the good guys realise. It's been "around 1999" for at least 500 years, which was a pretty cool idea when it actually was around 1999.

The machines have been triggering, containing and wiping out human revolts in cycles over and over because more than anything else, humans need the illusion of free choice to stay compliant.

Neo breaks this cycle and chooses to save Trinity rather than playing and saving a token population to restart the cycle, like all his predecessors did. This dooms both the matrix to collapse under all the glitches and leaks that will now accumulate, and the entire human race. Humans have only been surviving because the machines have ensured it - and since humans aren't solely being used for power - they're also being used as organic processors for the machine intelligence - both live or die by the other. Neo makes an irrational, sentimental choice which screws everyone.

....

(Bit that doesn't really make sense where Neo has superpowers IRL)

...

Neo and Trinity make a last hail mary dash for the machine's "capital". Trinity sees the real sky, which is not "scorched", and could potentially clear someday, then dies.

Neo negotiates a truce where he saves the matrix (and thus the machines) after all, if Zion isn't destroyed again and humans can actually stay or leave at will.

He returns the "code" he carries to the machines and closes the loop, then dies.

 carlos13th wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:
I didn't even know there was a second and third, only knew about the first one.

You would be missing very little if you kept things that way.

I feel im missing little with almost every movie in the last like 14 years or so, its all just un originality and lame remakes. . I mean im sure there some exceptions to this. But i wouldn't know im not knowledgeable on this subject. I may try finding out if movies are good these days, but i fear there would be too much political influence.

Eh, I'll give it a go. I'm not going to expect my mind to be blown like it was in 1999, but if it's an amusing couple hours of cyberpunk gun-fu, that's about all I'll expect from it.

While Matrices 2 and 3 were not what The Matrix was, they also haven't gone the way of Star Wars just yet where I simply no longer care about the franchise, and other Matrix stuff like the Animatrix was awesome.

 Stormatious wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:
I didn't even know there was a second and third, only knew about the first one.

You would be missing very little if you kept things that way.

I feel im missing little with almost every movie in the last like 14 years or so, its all just un originality and lame remakes. . I mean im sure there some exceptions to this. But i wouldn't know im not knowledgeable on this subject. I may try finding out if movies are good these days, but i fear there would be too much political influence.

Very few modern movies are actually political in that sense. Off the top of my head, if you like sci fi action you should see Upgrade and Mad Max Fury Road. Alita was decent, if rushed. Tarantino still makes good movies. The MCU has a lot of good space opera elements if you're not sick of their formula. I'm pretty sure there's been at least a couple of great movies every year recently, same as it ever was.

 Necros wrote:
But..

Spoiler:

Didn't Neo & Trinity die in the end?

Lol, I don't believe in spoilers for 20 year old movies. If you're reading this thread and you didn't watch a movie that is old enough to drive if it were a human being then you're just plain silly. Vader is Luke's father, the Full Monty has nothing to do with either Mr. Burnes or WW2 generals, and they shoot the golden retriever in the end.

 Necros wrote:
But..

Spoiler:

Didn't Neo & Trinity die in the end?

Yes, very much so.

In the far future, people with wealth go into vat-baths to become immortal, transcending into a Matrix-esque electronic existence. One of them mistakenly puts John Wick on a spam-list, and he goes into the Matrix to hunt them down. I would watch this.

 Elbows wrote:
In the far future, people with wealth go into vat-baths to become immortal, transcending into a Matrix-esque electronic existence. One of them mistakenly puts John Wick on a spam-list, and he goes into the Matrix to hunt them down. I would watch this.

Hmm, free humans voluntarily putting themselves into the Matrix after the truce could be an interesting idea to explore, I imagine that would create all sorts of friction and factions in Zion. Anti-machine fundamentalists, through freedom means you have a right to chose to do this thing we think is stupid all the way to full-on singularity / symbiosis machine worshippers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I’m actually really stoked by this idea; if it looks like they’re going that way I reserve the right to get my hopes up!

I was making a simple John Wick joke, but there's something there to consider.

If people did wake up to a gakky existence, many would want to go back. Perhaps though only the richest of the rich can afford to do so (kinda like that Matt Damon film where all the rich people live on that orbital ring or whatever). It would make logical sense in the future though for people to go into an online existence if it means more or less immortality (or even just an extended life where you're physically capable of doing things). An induced medical coma with a nutrient drip feed - meanwhile you're 20 years old and jet-setting around the world, etc. etc. Been explored a bunch of times in various sci-fis, but could be an interesting idea in the Matrix.

They already have that discussion with the steak guy in one of the films right? The traitor or whatever who wants to go back and forget it all?

 Necros wrote:
But..

Spoiler:

Didn't Neo & Trinity die in the end?

Yes, which is why it's more confounding than normal that they are continuing the franchise. Normally when a beloved character "dies" and it's a ongoing franchise, you know they're not really dead. We all knew that every dead character in the MCU would come back.

Not only did those characters die, Neo - the 6th Neo - did so ushing in a reboot of the 7th iteration of the Matrix, one in which anyone who wishes to leave the Matrix will be allowed to do so for a difficult but "real" existence. What is the 7th version of the Matrix like? No one knows, because the trilogy ended within the first few minutes of its existence.

So yeah, there are a ton of awesome stories to be told in that universe. The Animatrix proved that conclusively. Altered Carbon showed the kind of stories that could be told in that type of universe as well, I think (they're not exactly the same but I think they're in the same ballpark).

But bringing back Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss.... that hints that isn't what they are going to be doing. Anything that brings back Neo and Trinity is I think going to automatically be the poorest version of the stories that could have been told.

Maybe they'll be literal "ghosts in the machine"?

It would be slightly entertaining given Reeves' role in the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 game.

 Jadenim wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
In the far future, people with wealth go into vat-baths to become immortal, transcending into a Matrix-esque electronic existence. One of them mistakenly puts John Wick on a spam-list, and he goes into the Matrix to hunt them down. I would watch this.

Hmm, free humans voluntarily putting themselves into the Matrix after the truce could be an interesting idea to explore, I imagine that would create all sorts of friction and factions in Zion. Anti-machine fundamentalists, through freedom means you have a right to chose to do this thing we think is stupid all the way to full-on singularity / symbiosis machine worshippers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I’m actually really stoked by this idea; if it looks like they’re going that way I reserve the right to get my hopes up!

Right? That's why I'm more optimistic than most.

The Matrix Online game - which, like most of the Matrix' extended universe stuff had involvement from the Wachowskis and is likely considered canon by them to some extent - takes place after the movies, and hinted at some of these very things, with one human subfaction trying to break the truce and another being willingly, knowingly loyal to the machines.

It also hinted that some version or emulation of Neo might exist, but it was shut down before anything came of it.

I'm gonna go on a limb and say that maybe there's potential here. I mean, if you dropped all the pseudo-Buddhist bs the Wachowskis put into the sequels and all the super-man Neo stuff, there was a lot of potential in the Matrix as a franchise of cyberpunk post-apocalyptic noir spahgetti action films.

Even the awful sequels had some good ideas, just with god awful execution.

After the utter disaster of the sequels and Jupiter Ascending, I'd hope that the Wachowskis were just kept far away because I think they were the real problem with the franchise.

 slave.entity wrote:

 Necros wrote:
But..

Spoiler:

Didn't Neo & Trinity die in the end?

LOL this is a good point...

Maybe they were still in the Matrix at some point when they thought they were out in the real world and died?

The Matrix was a good film. Perhaps the themes had been addressed in literary SF before, but not in the same way as bunging it up on a big screen in front of a mass audience, so fair enough. The sequels were just the same story again, in case we hadn’t paid attention before, but with more. More wire-fu, more slo-mo, more exposition. . If this new one is actually a sequel and not just a remake like the last two were, then perhaps I’ll go and see it. But the Keanu Reeves we should all be waiting for is Bill & Ted 3.

The original is great. I think the second is flawed and mostly doesn't know what to do with Neo or how to take the conflict forward. I actually quite like the Architect and the ideas of free will and how people generally respond how they're programmed to. There's a lot of good ideas that we saw the immediate applications of through the struggles with MMOs and other online communities. I haven't watched it in ages, but I do wonder if I'd be more fond of it had the third been less of a disaster.

I really wish the third had culminated in the idea that the machines were actively working to restore the world. In the original, Morpheus mentions humanity blacked out the sky to deprive them of solar power, but that would kill like.... everything. Revealing the machines to be using humanity to power themselves while repairing the sky would have gone a long way towards making the "truce" ending actually work. Smith makes for a more compelling villain if he's driven by a hatred for creatures he doesn't believe can be trusted to not destroy themselves. These are the kind of themes the series felt like it wanted to build towards; particularly with the Animatrix shorts.

Even if that's not the actual direction they take, the big problem is just that the machines themselves are never fleshed out well enough for the story to lean so heavily on characters like the Merovingian. He's a great idea, but if we're going to introduce the idea of an AI society you've got to take the story there. Have him smuggle the cast into the AI network and give the machines a sense of purpose. You can make it a world where the lowliest sentience can reshape virtual reality in a way that makes Neo seem common by comparison. There's tons of ways they could go, but it really seems like they didn't really have a bigger world in their heads to draw from.