Beastro wrote: ↑Fri May 15, 2020 6:00 amFirst one is still great. I still enjoy it.
The sequels were unneeded, and worse, they tried to add twists that ruined a nice, archetypal story. That last bit is especially so, since we didn't need to see how things went after the end of the first film. That's the kinda thing that should be left to the audiences imagination as the flying Neo bullshit and working around his powers spoiled him.
The "great deception" thing is something thrown into the second that I feel is now the standard thing in too many stories. Even worse is how they added things, then got wobbly. I hated how in the second they showed Neo lightning the drone in the sewers, implying "reality" was just another layer of the Matrix, only to double down on it to avoid the problems that would arise from such a predicament (The humans lose because they can never tell if they're ever free) by having Neo be so awesome he can free his mind in reality in ways (admittedly, they avoided him doing such further antics in the third).
I'd very much argue, that Neo's outside influence on machines makes a hell of a lot of sense, if you dismiss the battery-theory and replace it by the "brains are the machine's wetware"-theory. Of course Neo is so special not just because he realizes his place in the Matrix-machine and can influence the software when directly connected, because this is pretty much what all the protagonists do to varying degrees of success (e.g. Morpheus and Trinity are very high level manipulators, while most everyone else displays a kind of bottom line), but humanity has been so long in the system, that their brains actually begin to adapt and reached a point, where some indivuals or maybe just this one individual for the moment, can connect without a cable.
This also works in context with Neo being an engineered being, because in order to make the reset of the Matrix ever so slightly more efficient, the machines tampered so much with this individual's genes, that they managed to flip a proverbial switch without realizing it.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
Beastro wrote: ↑Fri May 15, 2020 6:00 amFirst one is still great. I still enjoy it.
The sequels were unneeded, and worse, they tried to add twists that ruined a nice, archetypal story. That last bit is especially so, since we didn't need to see how things went after the end of the first film. That's the kinda thing that should be left to the audiences imagination as the flying Neo bullshit and working around his powers spoiled him.
The "great deception" thing is something thrown into the second that I feel is now the standard thing in too many stories. Even worse is how they added things, then got wobbly. I hated how in the second they showed Neo lightning the drone in the sewers, implying "reality" was just another layer of the Matrix, only to double down on it to avoid the problems that would arise from such a predicament (The humans lose because they can never tell if they're ever free) by having Neo be so awesome he can free his mind in reality in ways (admittedly, they avoided him doing such further antics in the third).
I'd very much argue, that Neo's outside influence on machines makes a hell of a lot of sense, if you dismiss the battery-theory and replace it by the "brains are the machine's wetware"-theory. Of course Neo is so special not just because he realizes his place in the Matrix-machine and can influence the software when directly connected, because this is pretty much what all the protagonists do to varying degrees of success (e.g. Morpheus and Trinity are very high level manipulators, while most everyone else displays a kind of bottom line), but humanity has been so long in the system, that their brains actually begin to adapt and reached a point, where some indivuals or maybe just this one individual for the moment, can connect without a cable.
This also works in context with Neo being an engineered being, because in order to make the reset of the Matrix ever so slightly more efficient, the machines tampered so much with this individual's genes, that they managed to flip a proverbial switch without realizing it.
The problem here is that to dismiss the fact that the machines are harvesting us for power is to dismiss a key plot point in the film.
If a film only works because you have to rewrite one of its core premises then that film does not work. As things stand, they had to rewrite the entire backstory and function of the One in order to make these needless sequels work, and y'know, I can see why they had to: Neo ends the first film as a god. He can disintegrate Agents, he can fly, he can bend matter, he can apparently stop trace programs and is about to show the redpills a ''world without boundaries or borders''. Clearly, if we kept this character for the sequels as opposed to the nerfed one we actually got, he would have been invincible. But that just goes to show how self-contained the first film was.
Whilst we are on the subject, we didn't need the cartoons either, where we learn the machines were abused slaves who wore trousers(?!) and looked like knock-off T-800's. It turns the story from ''we don't know who fired the first shot'' to ''these humans were assholes and deserved almost everything they got''.
clearspira wrote: ↑Sat May 16, 2020 10:55 amThe problem here is that to dismiss the fact that the machines are harvesting us for power is to dismiss a key plot point in the film.
If a film only works because you have to rewrite one of its core premises then that film does not work. As things stand, they had to rewrite the entire backstory and function of the One in order to make these needless sequels work, and y'know, I can see why they had to: Neo ends the first film as a god. He can disintegrate Agents, he can fly, he can bend matter, he can apparently stop trace programs and is about to show the redpills a ''world without boundaries or borders''. Clearly, if we kept this character for the sequels as opposed to the nerfed one we actually got, he would have been invincible. But that just goes to show how self-contained the first film was.
Whilst we are on the subject, we didn't need the cartoons either, where we learn the machines were abused slaves who wore trousers(?!) and looked like knock-off T-800's. It turns the story from ''we don't know who fired the first shot'' to ''these humans were assholes and deserved almost everything they got''.
Humans are batteries is the re-write.
And no, Neo is no god at the end of the first movie, Neo is God within the Matrix alone. Outside, given what we know from the first movie alone, he is still very much just a single human being among a bunch of mal-nourished partisans. And it only makes sense that the machines or rather, the programs adapt to his ability to tamper with programming "on the fly", by releasing ever more secured and improved programs (maybe even going so far as to create more independant agents of the system, which can tamper with the system themselves and *bam* Smith. Yes, this would be a re-write.). The fights, to me, always were only a metaphor. Where before we got a dude sitting at a computer and hacking keyboard-keys like crazy, we now have Neo, brain-jacking.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
There's two times that Neo pulses the robots in the outside world and there's more or less two significant fights between Neo and agent Smith that have happened at that point. They're scaled similarly and both have drastic impressions on events.
After the revelation at the end of the first movie with Smith, a part of Neo was transferred unto the machines. After he knocks out the robots at the end of the second movie, his mind ends up in a leeway program.
The Smiths overwhelm in at the basketball courts, and Neo similarly exclaims that there's too many beastly robots flying at their small ship for him to take care of.
clearspira wrote: ↑Sat May 16, 2020 10:55 amWhilst we are on the subject, we didn't need the cartoons either, where we learn the machines were abused slaves who wore trousers(?!) and looked like knock-off T-800's. It turns the story from ''we don't know who fired the first shot'' to ''these humans were assholes and deserved almost everything they got''.
That short is the main reason why I hate the Animatrix. It's downright fucking manipulative as the robots go from innocent looking and benign to monstrous emotionless assholes, all to lead you around so blatantly.
The worst bit is the female looking robot getting beat up part by a group of men.
Beastro wrote: ↑Sun May 17, 2020 4:57 amThat short is the main reason why I hate the Animatrix. It's downright fucking manipulative as the robots go from innocent looking and benign to monstrous emotionless assholes, all to lead you around so blatantly.
That's a wierd reading. The robots start out as... well, as they were built, as robots. They increase in "human appearance" in order to placate humanity, to appear more human, more relatable, to solve the violence and hostility (pay particular attention to the UN-representatives). Only once that fails, once they plunge into widespread resentment and hatred against humanity, they behave and become considerably more inhumane, in some cases even outright eldritch evil in appearance. It's visual story-telling and perfectly logical behaviour at once. It shows the desperate need of the robots to be acknowledged by their creators, only to then make a full 180° turn and completely distance themselves and emancipate themselves from their opressive shitlords.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
Madner Kami wrote: ↑Sun May 17, 2020 3:31 pmIt's visual story-telling and perfectly logical behaviour at once.
The thing is, I could very clearly feel the story tellers trying to twist me in the direction they wanted my sentiments to go in. All story telling does that to some extent, if only to force a standard story arc with nadir and climax upon your emotions, but the way that short did things was too overt and in a fashion I loath.
The only short that was any where near good, appealing, and interesting for me was the one where they tried to show a robot what human emotions were like. It was one both with an interesting perspective and actually had an uplifting ending to boot that the Matrix after the first movie badly needed.
