I don’t like The Matrix movies, so I won’t be watching this. But it does kind of look like a rehash of the first film, in a The Force Awakens kind of way.
I hope they get Shia LaBeouf to play Neo’s son. Maybe he can swing in on a vine with a bunch of monkeys.
(Side note: today I learned that his name is spelled LaBeouf and not LaBoeuf.)
They revived the old whatisthematrix.com website. Be sure to choose both the red pill and the blue pill.
Wow…it knows what time you are watching and puts that time in the video seamlessly.
That’s really cool.
Generally I just say “The Wachowskis” now
I’m split, I liked the sequels well enough, and I am one of the few people who seemed to enjoy Jupiter Ascending, and Sense8 Season 1 was really good.
However, I didn’t enjoy Sense8 Season 2 at all (as far as I actually watched - like, 2 or 3 episodes?), and that was a solo Lana Wachowski effort, so I’m a bit cautious about this one as well.
Also, no Larry Fishburne but they bring back the fucking tedious Merovingian? What’s up with that?
I must’ve missed that. What’s the timestamp?
Let me get this straight: You paid $12 to see Matrix 2 and you “hatet, hated, hated” it so much, it being one of the worst movies you ever seen, that you forked up $12 to see the third instalment? Is that about right?
As for why?
The Washovskis are out of money, WB wants a tent pole movie and using an existing franchise has always been less risky. As with many sequels (Star Wars, The Hobbit (for a given value of sequel), fleshing out a back story/universe that originally was kinda weak on plot (“You fought with my father in the Clone Wars”) will lead to some contorted writing.
I’ll see M4 in the theatre for the visual whizz-bangery. I will not expect it to further the mythos or its universe.
I wonder if the younger version of Morpheus was chosen simply for the fight scenes with Neo. If you’ve seen Fishburne in the last few years, it’s obvious he wouldn’t be up to it. Still, I’m hoping for a cameo. I think Fishburne sold the first film; a lot of that dialogue would have been ridiculous coming from another actor. Sean Connery! Thank god he turned it down.
As to the rest of this thread, how could anyone like the first film and hate the second? What were you there for? Mouse?
Or Wachowski siblings.
Works, but more wordy.
Probably, but that doesn’t bode well for the kind of movie it will be. The point of Morpheus was always the talking, not the fighting.
Let’s face it, Fishburne wasn’t exactly lithe in the first movies, either.
Also, he’s only 3 years older than Keanu… 
When you pick red pill or blue pill the video tells you what time you think it is and it is the current time you are watching the video.
There are FAR worse sequels that the Matrix movies (Highlander*, anyone?) IMHO
Brian
- well, if there were any sequels, they would likely be very bad
I didn’t hate the second one, but I didn’t like it. And I loved the first one. The Matrix franchise is always my go-to when I try to explain why I like some movies and not others.
I try to take movies on their own terms, and pay as much attention to various elements as the movie itself does.
The underlying premise of The Matrix simply doesn’t make any sense. And the plot is mostly pseudo-profound BS. But the first movie also doesn’t spend that much time on any of that. It doesn’t actually care that much about its own premise or plot - it just serves as a barely serviceable tissue to connect a string of bravura set pieces. And those set pieces were (and still are) amazing. It’s one of the best pure action movies ever.
And even though the premise and plot are largely nonsensical, Neo’s character arc is solid enough. The movie holds together just well enough that there’s a real sense of triumph at the end when Neo achieves techno-Gnostic Enlightenment and transcends the Matrix.
The sequels take the premise and the plot much more seriously. They pay a lot more attention to them, and we get a lot more exposition. And the more the movies try to dive into the inner workings of their setting, the less sense it all makes, even on its own terms.
At the end of the first movie, Neo has achieved Enlightenment and transcended the limits of the Matrix. The sequels just kind of…forget that ever happened, and just portray Neo as having leveled up so he’s better at bending the Matrix, but he’s still just bending the rules instead of breaking them.
And then we get the whole bit about how ghosts and shapeshifters and other myths are just misunderstandings of glitches and code-hacking of the Matrix. Which gets into a whole recursive mess. That would seem to mean that the real world the Matrix is emulating didn’t have folklore and legends about ghosts and magical beings. Which…ugh, I could write a whole essay about how many internal contradictions that introduces into the setting.
And it goes on. And on. And on. In a stentorian monotone.
The first movie worked for me because the ridiculous premise was a small price to pay for a ridiculously giddy movie that wasn’t just a triumph of style over the substance, the style was the substance. The sequels included elements of the style, but dove deep into the substance, which was far too thin to actually sustain that deep dive.
That’s why I liked the first film and not the second. And just to emphasize, that’s all my personal reaction. I don’t expect anyone else to share my personal tastes and expectations and opinions and sense of aesthetics and emotional reactions to a movie. If you thought the whole series was a masterpiece, I’m not going to argue with you - we just have different tastes in movies.
All good points, gdave. I’ll add to it: in the first movie, the action pieces were part of the plot, not just a hurdle to get over. The team is trapped by agents and tries to escape; Trinity and Neo storm a building to rescue Morpheus; Neo is chased by Agent Smith when trying to escape the Matrix. The action was more than just fighting, and the outcome was in doubt.
In the second movie, too many action scenes felt like a stupid video game where you need to get past the boss blocking the doorway for no reason. You want to talk to the Oracle? First you must fight this guy. You want the Keymaker? First you must fight this group. You want to leave the park? First you must fight hundreds of Smiths. There was no reason for any of those scenes except as an excuse for a fight, and it made the movie feel stupid as a result.
In contrast, there were two parts of the second movie where the action had a plot purpose, and those were not coincidentally the best parts: the freeway chase with the ghost twins, and the final assault on the Source. Make the whole movie more like that (and get rid of the ridiculous Merovingian), and it would have been a worthy sequel.
Actually about $4 per movie, being in Bangkok. But I loved the first one so much that I had hoped the second was just an anomaly, so watched the third. Bad mistake. Both felt like I was being shoveled into the ovens of Auschwitz.
I loved the first film.
But I hated the second.
[But they are identical.]
And that is why.
Interesting. I feel that the “burly brawl” served a plot purpose (showing Agent Smith is replicating and becoming more powerful) but that the car chase was kind of pointless (Neo gets away with the macguffin, which he would have done even if there hadn’t been any car chase).
Is he credited as Morpheus somewhere?
This is the opinion of like 95% of people that have seen both films.
- Novelty is gone
- Plot is dumber
- Effects are bad (Burly brawl looks like absolute trash)
Why would liking the first one imply you’d like the second?
He announced on Instagram he was playing Morpheus after the trailer dropped.