I really could have done without the Zion orgy scene.
The Holocaust references are over-the-top offensive. Knock it off.
the problem is the matrix is /was the comic book they wanted to write when they wrote for marvel but never got to which is why nothing in the story was a revelation to anyone who was reading comics or cyberpunk fiction at the time … its just a mishmash of tropes that were happening in Sci-Fi and the comics in the late 90s early 00s …
Surprised nobody has called out the sequels for shying away from a fascinating premise, that there were nested realities and the Zion one was simply part of the next level up. They seemed to be strongly hinting at just that, given Smith showing up in Zion as Bane and Neo affecting the Zion world with his mind. Not to mention the nonsensical battery thang, which at the time I assumed was a big clue leading to just that; a simmed world could make up its own thermodynamical laws, and nobody within it would necessarily wonder if it makes sense or not.
Then they bailed on the entire notion (assuming it was ever entertained in the first place), and the result was III. Instead imagine having the third movie involving Neo having to navigate level after level, each weirder than the last, until he finally reaches the final (top) one and confronts TPTB that exist there. TV Tropes would call that They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot.
I think that level of abstraction and knowledge of thermodynamics is beyond the ken of most movie goers. The directors tend to aim for the lowest common denominator.
That’s why I think “I Am Legend” movies (there have been three I think) all skip the main plot twist. They don’t think audiences will grok what happened. Too bad too since that is the best part.
Agreed. The idea that the “regular person” is the one that the “monsters” are terrified of and consider the boogey man, and that he’ll be the greatest fear passed down for generations, like their Satan. It made the story. Hollywood might be worried that moviegoers aren’t going to accept the idea that the protagonist is really the Big Bad without knowing it, and maybe they’re right.
I know I Am Legend was written almost 70 years ago but still, in case someone wants to read it I don’t want to ruin it.
They did not even fully explore the new fascinating premise they introduced in the second one. They tease that myths like vampires and werewolves are residue in the minds of people because of the Matrix and even begin to hint they will show these creatures. We get little hints of it, but in the end, that idea is abandoned and we never get to see full vampires or werewolves.
Here is the exchange from the movie’s script:
In the first MATRIX when we first meet Neo he is selling some street punks a mini-disc. They acted like it was drugs or something illicit, but what? Some kind of illegal VR thing ala STRANGE DAYS(1995)?
We know Neo is an elite hacker. While we do not know what Neo sold them we can guess it was more than a mix tape he downloaded off of Napster. The punk tells Neo he is a lifesaver when he gets the disc.
I was actually happy they didn’t go that route, because “it’s turtles all the way down” has always felt unsatisfying to me.
IIRC, the original idea was that the humans’ brains were being used for distributed computing, but the battery thing was easier to explain to the audience in 1999, when the notion of “the cloud” didn’t really exist yet. My personal headcanon is that Morpheus is simply wrong about what the machines get out of keeping people alive and in a simulation, since he’s also wrong about other aspects of the Matrix (such as how old it is, for instance).
There’s no way a 1999 audience wouldn’t understand that the human brain can function as a sort of computer system. That was a miss of the screenwriters underestimating the audience’s intelligence, not a fault of the audience. Sci fi audiences have understood far more complex ideas than that. That’s just bad writing.
You could even say something like “there’s a certain type of process that our brains do that they cannot, and they have us solve their problems while we’re asleep through our dreams within the matrix” or something like that. People would get it.
I mean, in 2012, 29% of those surveyed thought cloud computing had something to do with actual clouds, and 51% thought it could be disrupted by stormy weather.
Considering that the demographic of this board has always been more tech-savvy, I think you overestimate how much the average American knew about IT in the '90s.
This is my take as well. Agent Smith (I think) outright says in the third movie that the machines can survive perfectly well without humans, they just prefer the taste. Humans, in other words, are steak.
The movie doesn’t have to be an AWS manual. People already understand that their brains are linked. That’s how they are in the matrix. It’s trial to say that the computers are using the unique power of our biological computers to serve some purpose. One or two lines.
When Neo talks to the Architect Neo notes that if he saves Trinity the Matrix is screwed since all the people will die. The Architect tells Neo that there are levels of existence the computer is prepared to accept (or something like that) if Neo chooses that route.
This suggests that, while the AI prefers to have people plugged in, it does not need people to survive. The AI would continue but at some diminished capacity.
It’s trivial to you because you’re not a studio exec in 1999, nor are you part of a test audience in, let’s say, Greenville, SC in that same year. Clearly someone with some degree of authority thought it was confusing enough to force the Wachowskis to say “they’re big batteries” instead.
You’ll recall that the previously mentioned Dark City has Kiefer Sutherland explain the entire plot in an opening monologue for much the same reason.
I went to a book signing with Douglas Adams of “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” fame.
He related a story that when he was in discussions to sell the rights to the book for a movie a studio exec asked him if the ANSWER to life, the universe and everything had to be 42 because audiences would probably feel really ripped off. 
That just means that someone thinks they needed to dumb it down, not that they were right. They very well could be, and probably were, wrong. One of the most common and dismissive criticisms of the Matrix was the battery analogy, so people at the time - as caveman-like and ignorant as people from 20 years ago obviously were - managed to figure out how dumb that one was.
People could understand that their brains were linked directly to a simulation, that they could interact with others in that simulation, that their own cognitive self-image determined what they looked like and did in the Matrix… they could also understand the idea that the computers could harness some of their brainpower. It’s really only a tiny, tiny step from what we already accept as part of the premise of the film.
People have understood the human brain = a biological computer for decades before that, so that’s not a big stretch either.
You could even say something like “the machines are sophisticated, but that lack our creativity, so they use our subconcious minds to solve problems that they have difficulty with”
There’s no way an audience in 1999 that can accept the premise of the neural links to the shared computer simulation would’ve been completely baffled by the idea that the computer used our brains for processing, too.
There’s no question plenty of people would understand it.
But when movie execs want to maximize their money I don’t think they make the movie more difficult to understand.
I think “Ex Machina” was an outstanding movie and really smart sci-fi. It’s worldwide box office was about $40 million. “The Matrix” had a worldwide box office of $465 million.
As noted above, the movie “I Am Legend” is made from a book of the same name with a fantastic plot twist that makes it a really interesting story. Three movies have been made from that book. They ALL skipped that plot twist. That is not Hollywood putting money down that the public is smart and savvy.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. ~George Carlin
Ah yes. I should have remembered that it was the Architect who said that. He regurgitated a lot of information.