Sfdebris.net

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/movi ... .html?_r=0

I'm not going to deny that the Matrix movies are flawed, but they are flawed gems to me, I still enjoy the first two quite a bit,
they're engaging and inspired and full of impressive action and fight sequences.

If they're going to go ahead and do this, can they atleast get a decent writer and director involved like Rian Johnson or Alex Garland?
It wouldn't necessarily have to be action-centric either, they could go in a different direction with the genre, story, tone and characters, focus more on the clever surreal and cosmic horror elements that were present in the first film.

Now that I think about it, this reboot does have potential if its done correctly and creatively and doesn't pander to the general public's and Warner bros executives views and expectations of a Matrix movie.

Maybe, in this day and age, they'll be able to go with the original purpose for the Matrix instead of what the executives forced the old writers to change it to. The concept of using the human brain for organic processors surely must be easier for general audiences to understand now than it would have been in the late nineties. There's no need to dumb it down to the nonsensical "humans as batteries" crap if they're getting a do-over.

I see this as potentially a good thing. The Matrix trilogy + the Animatrix are all great films, but it always felt like the Wachowskis had too inflexible a vision of what the Matrix could be in terms of story. That universe was perhaps the most fertile ground for expansion and development of any sci-fi franchise since Star Wars, and what did we get? 3 movies, 1 tie-in game, a short film collection, and some MMORPG.

I have conflicted feelings on the organic processor thing - it makes much more sense, but still, there's something powerful (pardon the pun) about human beings being used for something completely mindless; Morpheus holding up the battery and saying "so they can turn us into this" is a beautiful image. Scientifically garbage, sure, but still.

I'd actually love it if, in any future Matrix films, we didn't see the 'real' world at all - our heroes (presumably) find out that the Matrix isn't reality, but the only answer to "So, what is out there in the real world?" is "We don't know." Set the story within the Matrix, and keep it there; some of the Animatrix shorts did it. Maybe escaping is the final goal of the whole thing, not something that's already been done - maybe it's even just not relevant to the plotline, and it's more like getting on a boat heading west in Lord of the Rings: it's not the goal of the plot, it's something that happens after you're done with this world. Maybe the mysterious aloof guy who's seen the outside world isn't Morpheus, but Sutter Cane - the truth drove him insane and we have to stop him, or he'll bring the whole world crashing down.

I wonder if the live-action GitS movie is behind this?

Iirc didn't one of the latter films retcon it to Neo not being the only One and that there'd been earlier iterations with their own Ones, and that the whole thing was cyclical? If so, they could easily set it in one of those earlier itterations (or a later one); running with the idea of not seeing the outside world, could even have it be about the first humans that broke out and about how they did so, with one of the sequels being about how they adapted to the outside world (impressive feat considering they'd come out emaciated and most would probably lack survival skills if the simulation was kept as late 20th/early 21st century urban America).

Dînadan wrote:Iirc didn't one of the latter films retcon it to Neo not being the only One and that there'd been earlier iterations with their own Ones, and that the whole thing was cyclical? If so, they could easily set it in one of those earlier itterations (or a later one); running with the idea of not seeing the outside world, could even have it be about the first humans that broke out and about how they did so, with one of the sequels being about how they adapted to the outside world (impressive feat considering they'd come out emaciated and most would probably lack survival skills if the simulation was kept as late 20th/early 21st century urban America).

What about a future iteration? It's obvious that this cease fire between the humans and the machines at the end of Revolutions is only temporary. This would allow the writers even more flexibility with the world than a prequel would.

I thought about suggesting that but it's been so long since I've seen the films I couldn't remember if the Matrix was destroyed or not.

Wasn't the MMO supposed to be a canon continuation? The machines and the Merovingian started recruiting their own human agents and it turned into a 3-way war in the Matrix even though the real world was at peace, I think? I never payed it.

I don't mind reboots as a rule- in fact I think that they can often be a very good thing. Certainly I don't see much harm in them- either they're good, or they're bad, in which case its not as if they make the original work cease to exist.

I also think that they're a good way to allow a long-running franchise to actually have a conclusion to a story without killing the cash cow (see Batman- without reboots, it would be basically impossible to have a story like Nolan's trilogy or Batman Beyond, which actually gives Batman's story an ending of sorts). And to explore a concept in new ways without being weighed down by existing baggage or old mistakes. To the point that I feel that at least some franchises would benefit from being rebooted every five or ten years or so.

An obvious exception being Doctor Who, but that's because it has a ridiculously flexible and open-ended premise, with regular partial reboots built into the show. Which is probably why its outlived every other sf series ever.