This movie had to be a troll.
The ending cover song of RATM's "Wake Up" was just something else.
The ending cover song of RATM's "Wake Up" was just something else.
Not so much a "troll", but there's a scene in the first act that literally lays out the entire premise of the production and the creator's feelings about feeling forced to do it.
There are "lampshade hanging" fourth-wall breaks in the production meeting scenes that make Deadpool look conservative.
The Wachowskis didn't want to do more Matrix. Warner were going to do more Matrix regardless, so Lana Wachowski decided to do it herself and use it to deconstruct both their own movies and reboot/nostalgia cinema in general (looking at you Force Awakens, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Space Jam et al)
I actually really enjoyed the first ~half of the movie, even laughed out loud a couple of times (esp the 'warner bros will make the game with or without us so we'd better just take on the job').
The second half of action-soup was, for me at least, boring and as far as I can tell nonsensical.
I think the movie would have done a lot better without trying to redo any of the gunplay/holodeck-type fantasy, and instead stuck to the more grounded storyline from the first half.
At this point we need commentary in the popular culture on reboots, there is enough grist in that mill for 2 hours at least.
This is also just a really good evolution from the central conflict of the first three films which is basically like "technology = bad, but we need it". This film shows us "technology can be bad, but we can work together with it to build something beautiful and brighter". Really good evolution there.
I think what ultimately sank the movie for a lot of fans was the Agent Smith actor was replaced. Too bad.
I find it very odd that people swear the themes wouldn't work today.
The corporate drone thing was specifically a reference to what life was like _for software developers_ in the late 90s. This looks a lot different now than it did then. For the average person, sure, your quip about amazon workers is quite apt. My point though is now we have all the same issues, but with a fake sort of "culture" icing pasted on top that makes a lot of things seem substantiative, real, and anti-corporate, when they in fact are not. Things are much subtler now. It also shows a lot of what we've lost -- "hacker" culture used to be integral to being a developer, hence Neo's "double life" as a software developer and a hacker.
These days people barely even pirate things anymore. There has been a mass acceptance of the status quo that is pervasive, dangerous, and wasn't present in the previous era. So while people wore suits back in the day, back in the day was also the wild west of tech. That has largely ended.
Another way of looking at it: in the 90s and early 00s, there was lots of sub-culture and counter-culture present, especially in the tech and "hacker" communities. These days, our corporate overlords have co-opted the term "hacker" and try to sound edgy and "counter-culture" by simply occupying the spaces legitimate counter-culture movements used to occupy (corporate sponsored hackathons, bug bounties, a lot of marketing stuff, etc). So this new matrix movie, for me, partially demonstrates the death of counter-culture, as it was in the late 90s and early 00s. These days you can be the equivalent of the old-school corporate drone by doing a bunch of seemingly edgy "counter-culture" things, and the corporations want it that way. They want you to feel edgy, while staying well within the parameters they designed.
We're not seeing the Analyst create a Brave New World type subtle insidious dystopia that's a better reflection of our modern world. We're either told point-blank ("We realized the more angry you get, the more energy you create" is good commentary on social media, but it's told and not shown), and the only hint of digital soma is the shot of Keanu in the elevator surrounded by today's mixed-up teens on their electronic gizmos.
There's no interesting subversion like say the idea that Bugs' new resistance might be misguided in its activities, that the concept of the red pill might be archaic. That it's wrong to be worshipful towards Neo. There's no presentation of the captive humans as craving this new Matrix, of wanting to stay blue-pilled; instead they're zombies who are mind-controlled. There's no challenge to the old message. It's just the same Matrix with a shabby Corporate Memphis reskin.
This movie literally uses the word "sheeple". It's all so hamfisted and half-baked. It is not clever social commentary.
WB's been in pre-production on a new Matrix for years now, and maybe she saw the opportunity to use it.
I had reservations about it, and I was surprised how much I liked it and how on board I was with it.
I mean, it's not perfect, the third act is soft and there are plot-holes you can drive a truck through, but that wasn't the point and once I settled that, I found myself really enjoying it.
I honestly think I'd have been more down on it trying to be just another "Matrix" film
On the other hand, she has said in interviews that she was motivated by a personal loss to reach out and try to make it. Not sure who actually initiated trying to get the movie made as I've heard both versions now.
It’s what a revival should be: it gives you a way to observe the original work from a radically different perspective, while still building on it. The only other revival that’s done it better has been Twin Peaks: The Return.
The writers made this part of the plot of the repeating inner world. Between that moment and the painful scenes of the game designers' cyclic rounds of buzzword bingo, I agree that the movie was at least trolling the WB executives.
In my mind that's undeniably true. The question I want to know is why was the rest of the movie so bad, was that also bad on purpose or just poor execution?