I'm not a movie person, so perhaps my comment is useless here. But haven't they done enough damage to this IP with Matrix Resurrections? Can this director potentially reverse the damage so to...
I'm not a movie person, so perhaps my comment is useless here. But haven't they done enough damage to this IP with Matrix Resurrections?
Can this director potentially reverse the damage so to speak? I ask because I'll probably watch it.
I don't know, Resurrection's reception was bad enough that it should have put the franchise on ice for a while. I'm pretty surprised that they're moving forward with developing this tbh.
I don't know, Resurrection's reception was bad enough that it should have put the franchise on ice for a while. I'm pretty surprised that they're moving forward with developing this tbh.
It probably did better than the internet believes. We don't have good public data, since the film released simultaneously in theaters and on Hobomax during COVID, so the box office numbers don't...
It probably did better than the internet believes. We don't have good public data, since the film released simultaneously in theaters and on Hobomax during COVID, so the box office numbers don't tell us much.
Even on the internet I've seen something of a bit of a re-assessment of Resurrections as deeply flawed but interesting rather than straight up terrible. Personally I thought it had a compelling first half that was let down by a disappointing latter half and action scenes that needed a little more time in the oven.
EDIT: The film sits at 63% on Rotten Tomatoes, both in critic and audience ratings, indicating either a mixed or polarizing reception rather than universal distaste.
Resurrections always had positive reception from a certain corner on the internet. It did good on HBOMAX, but it still had toxic word of mouth from general audiences. I think this is a case where...
Resurrections always had positive reception from a certain corner on the internet. It did good on HBOMAX, but it still had toxic word of mouth from general audiences.
I think this is a case where they're greenlighting a sequel in spite of the performance of the last film.
Drew Goddard is actually pretty good at subverting movie tropes and going meta, as evidenced by The Cabin in the Woods. So maybe it really is as simple as him having come up with a genuinely good...
Drew Goddard is actually pretty good at subverting movie tropes and going meta, as evidenced by The Cabin in the Woods. So maybe it really is as simple as him having come up with a genuinely good idea for how to move the Matrix story forward which also appealed to the Warner execs. And TBH, knowing that he's behind it now, I'm kind of excited to find out what his idea is too.
To be fair, Cabin in the Woods was the result of him and Jose Wheadon locking themselves in their hotel rooms and meeting over breakfast/lunch/dinner for three days. For all his partner's personal...
To be fair, Cabin in the Woods was the result of him and Jose Wheadon locking themselves in their hotel rooms and meeting over breakfast/lunch/dinner for three days. For all his partner's personal flaws, I can't say the movie's success came entirely from Goddard.
I think Resurrections falls into a similar category of those being discussed over here: The fans aren't always right. It's not the matrix follow up that a lot of people wanted, but also a viewer's...
I think Resurrections falls into a similar category of those being discussed over here: The fans aren't always right. It's not the matrix follow up that a lot of people wanted, but also a viewer's experience is definitely colored by their expectation going in to the film. I for one was very excited to experience a Matrix film which still included original cast on the big screen in a theater even though I knew it would not be the same experience as the original films. I think viewing a film recognizing that you can critique it based on its own merits completely changes the viewing experience. So as a sequel matrix movie it was just alright, but on its own and as a potential intro to the matrix for a new generation, I think it is a very fun film in its own right.
Hard to know where to draw the line when it looks like a franchise is getting milked for all it's worth, but I think there's still a lot of fun ideas that can be explored with something like the Matrix with the right creative team.
I for one welcome this news in that I think it will still be a very fun movie in its own right even if it's not what I might hope it will be. 😂 (Which let's be honest is always way to high a pedestal for sequel films).
It's worth noting that the Tomatometer is an average on binary measurements. The critic response is either positive or negative with no shades of grey, so if a movie has anything remotely...
It's worth noting that the Tomatometer is an average on binary measurements. The critic response is either positive or negative with no shades of grey, so if a movie has anything remotely interesting to say it's going to show up pretty well. So I would personally interpret 63% on that to be fairly poor for a film in a series that is well known for it's philosophical waxing.
That's why I said "mixed or polarizing". A lot of movies get a score in the 60s because they are just average. Some people gave them a 5/10 and others gave them a 6/10. Others score in that range...
That's why I said "mixed or polarizing".
A lot of movies get a score in the 60s because they are just average. Some people gave them a 5/10 and others gave them a 6/10. Others score in that range because they are polarizing. People either love them or hate them, giving scores like 2/10 and 8/10. I think a lot of the best movies are also very polarizing, especially on release, so I'm not so quick to dismiss a movie for having an RT score in that range.
More than half of RT users finished that movie feeling more positive than negative about it, which I think contrasts against the sentiment generally seen on social media. It's also worth noting that the original film only has an 83%, a score which surprised me given how universally loved it seems to be.
Goddard has a great track record. The advantage here of him directing is that he's also writing. More writers have started to notice that they don't count, and will definitely see their scripts...
Goddard has a great track record. The advantage here of him directing is that he's also writing. More writers have started to notice that they don't count, and will definitely see their scripts butchered and rendered unrecognizable if they don't also take the director's chair. Because so, so, so many directors will read a project's script, sign on, and then immediately go "but I want to change ... everything."
The beauty of how a film crew works is you don't need to know jack shit about cameras or angles or lighting or editing or any of that to be a solid director. You can hire people who are experts in those things who will be glad to take charge and offer up solutions to consider.
The director being an expert at the visuals is actually a negative if they're not focused on a good story. And if their training has been mostly in lights and angles, that's not story. Or in how to bring relevant and/or meaningful performances out of actors. Two things I would argue are way more crucial to a great movie than simply being a technical superstar with the use of the camera.
Good, bad, whatever happens here, it's Goddard's story and he'll only have himself to blame if it turns out poorly. Assuming, of course, the studio doesn't chime in with something akin to "... and in the third act, they need to fight a giant spider."
I've never sat down and tried to piece together where I'd take another Matrix story. That's not really something I usually do, since it's basically a waste of time. They won't make anything cool I come up with, for example.
So I'm not sure what angle he's got, but I have faith in his storytelling skills since (again) he's established a great resume of excellent stories.
Some obvious ones that would be super easy to fuck up would be something like "Smith's backstory/prequel/origin" or something like that. Perhaps the same concept but with The Architect or The Oracle; just as trite, just as unnecessary, just as unlikely to be interesting. And the king of all stupid angles would be "here's the fall of humanity, the birth of The Matrix; watch as we show the last humans being hunted down and put in pods."
A lot of modern audiences don't seem to understand how "filling in the blanks" is an almost certain guarantee they won't like the fill. When a story leaves "something" open, the audience can put whatever they like in that hole. And whatever they come up with, they'll probably like it; they came up with it. When someone else fills it in for them, they start picking it apart. Comparing it to their solution. Disliking the differences. So an "origin" story is trudging uphill trying to drag a lot of weight (expectations) along as well.
Maybe Goddard will go meta with it. There's a group in The Matrix who are aware of the nature of reality, are aware that they're all just pod people plugged into a machine. But they don't want to "be free", to be unplugged. They're just some sort of third party who watches, tracks maybe, the goings on of the Zion Freedom Fighters and the Agents (along with the indie programs like Merovingian, etc).
I'm not sure where you'd go with that story, but it's a place to start one for sure. Maybe it would be a "what price reality" or "what definition of reality do we believe in" or something like that. Some conspiracy theorist who struggles with whether or not to side with Zion, or the Agents, or what the morality of doing either, or doing neither would be.
But I guess somewhere around 2028 we might find out what Goddard has in mind.
I've seen Resurrections and I remember none of it. There was a bit in a bathroom and a disjointed scene in a multi-level thingie. No idea what it was about or why. Good thing that "in the works"...
I've seen Resurrections and I remember none of it.
There was a bit in a bathroom and a disjointed scene in a multi-level thingie. No idea what it was about or why.
Good thing that "in the works" means exactly shit in the age of David Zazlav and his type. I care about movies only when I can actually watch them, up until that point they are a Schrödinger's experiment that may or may not exist based on the whims of executives.
Huh. I didn't realize so many people hated 4. I went expecting to hate it, expecting it would be yet another garbage nostalgia bait cash grab, but was pleasantly surprised by its interesting...
Huh. I didn't realize so many people hated 4. I went expecting to hate it, expecting it would be yet another garbage nostalgia bait cash grab, but was pleasantly surprised by its interesting narrative and take.
Was it amazing? No. Was it enjoyable? Yes. Was it intriguing? Yes. I'm honestly shocked by how much people are hating on it here.
Now I only think it worked because of the meta-neas of it, and the amount of time that has passed since the trilogy came out. Could they succeed in another story after 4? That seems unlikely, but 4 also seemed unlikely.
So I'll wait and see. Plus I love Drew Goddards work. So I'll wait and see how it turns out before I judge it.
I also ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected, much more than even the previous Matrix sequels. I don't think people expected or knew what to do with a movie that was so meta and so...
I also ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected, much more than even the previous Matrix sequels. I don't think people expected or knew what to do with a movie that was so meta and so on-the-nose with how much it hated itself. I've never seen anything like it before and I don't think we'll see a movie like it ever again.
That whole "We're going to make this with or without you" conversation was one of my favourite scenes in recent years because that was the real conversation WB execs had with the Watchowskis. I remember first watching the movie without knowing this, and it felt out of place... but only when it's still so early in the movie that you don't realize how meta it is. Finding out that was almost verbatim with what they were told in real life by WB really helped put the entire movie in perspective. They were so upset about it, they put it in the movie and framed the whole movie as something made out of spite. You could feel their anger through the movie. And the story paralleled that very well, while still delivering better emotional catharsis and resolution than all of Revelations did.
The elaborate fight scenes while an antagonist rants about how useless sequels are is one of the weirdest things I think I've ever seen. I really enjoyed it. And, in the end, I thought it had a better and more enjoyable story than the back half of the original trilogy anyway. The series was already so far gone, this icebath of a sequel actually served as a decent revival to undo some of the drek while also commenting on expectations.
I don't think Matrix Ressurection was ever going to be a huge success, and it really seemed like they knew that and leaned hard into it. It's one of the most experimental and spiteful things I've ever seen, like a controlled implosion focused on spurning which ever jackass WB exec threatened the Wachowskis. I know a lot of people wanted a straight, sincere sequel to the Matrix but I think that would have ended up being another forgettable, boring entry that would have disappointed even more people. The Wachowskis haven't exactly been batting 1.000 in their career but the anger behind this one was so palpable, you can't help but feel that there was real passion behind it, especially compared to how cold and dispassionate Reloaded and Revelations ended up feeling.
Completely agree. It was good because it wasn't trying to be that generic sequel continuation. If it had been generic sequel nostalgia bait it would've been terrible but since they went...
Completely agree. It was good because it wasn't trying to be that generic sequel continuation. If it had been generic sequel nostalgia bait it would've been terrible but since they went experimental/meta with it, since they actually had something to say (even if that something is Fuck you WB) that's what made it good.
I didn't watch 4 (I didn't even know it existed actually), but I think people take their movies/tv shows/books/whatever entertainment too seriously sometimes. Something can have bad writing, bad...
I didn't watch 4 (I didn't even know it existed actually), but I think people take their movies/tv shows/books/whatever entertainment too seriously sometimes. Something can have bad writing, bad acting, and a bad plot and still be enjoyable to watch.
I've watched quite a fair share of bad media that I enjoyed because I could laugh, or just sit back and turn my brain off for an hour or two. Not everything needs to be a thought provoking story. Sometimes I just want to see good guys shoot at bad guys.
Well I think Matrix 4 was the opposite of that actually. It had an interesting story that made you think and had something to say and while there was some shooting at bad guys, that wasn't the...
Well I think Matrix 4 was the opposite of that actually. It had an interesting story that made you think and had something to say and while there was some shooting at bad guys, that wasn't the focus of the film, as it shouldn't be for what theyre trying to do.
This is exactly how I'm still able to still watch the Fast and Furious movies. I just want to see how much more ridiculous each one gets and then I have a blast watching them and laughing at the...
This is exactly how I'm still able to still watch the Fast and Furious movies. I just want to see how much more ridiculous each one gets and then I have a blast watching them and laughing at the ridiculousness.
Because the last one wasn't terrible and tongue-in-cheek enough to say it shouldn't have been made in the first place that they should just go ahead and make another?
Because the last one wasn't terrible and tongue-in-cheek enough to say it shouldn't have been made in the first place that they should just go ahead and make another?
Well normally the question is "did it make money", at which point if the answer is yes they'll milk it for all it's worth. But 4 certainly didn't make back its budget at the box office, so I...
Well normally the question is "did it make money", at which point if the answer is yes they'll milk it for all it's worth.
But 4 certainly didn't make back its budget at the box office, so I wonder if there's some sales/streaming deals that are boosting it enough they'd fund a 5th.
If they've got a good idea for a new movie, then why not? I generally don't think creatives should just bow to the hate trains that often shunt into town and which are often completely overblown....
If they've got a good idea for a new movie, then why not? I generally don't think creatives should just bow to the hate trains that often shunt into town and which are often completely overblown. They should believe in their vision and commit to it.
But if they're just going to do something formulaic and try to milk the franchise for every dollar they can get with minimum effort, then I'm not interested. I didn't hate Resurrections and it had some good ideas, but it became horribly cheesy towards the end and really petered out.
I was under the impression that Resurrection was only made to put the final word on the franchise out and if it was going to be rebooted for nostalgia farming that at least it would be by the...
I was under the impression that Resurrection was only made to put the final word on the franchise out and if it was going to be rebooted for nostalgia farming that at least it would be by the creators hand. So either the suits and brain trust are behind this 100% or it's one of those cases where EP is a formality.
I'm not a movie person, so perhaps my comment is useless here. But haven't they done enough damage to this IP with Matrix Resurrections?
Can this director potentially reverse the damage so to speak? I ask because I'll probably watch it.
Have you seen The Animatrix? Other direction in the series is really fresh when done right.
I wish they left it at The Matrix and The Animatrix. Two perfect experiences.
Yup, I even have the DVD! Well, it's somewhere around here. Loved it!
The Animatrix is the only good thing that ever came out of franchise-ing the Matrix.
I don't know, Resurrection's reception was bad enough that it should have put the franchise on ice for a while. I'm pretty surprised that they're moving forward with developing this tbh.
It probably did better than the internet believes. We don't have good public data, since the film released simultaneously in theaters and on Hobomax during COVID, so the box office numbers don't tell us much.
Even on the internet I've seen something of a bit of a re-assessment of Resurrections as deeply flawed but interesting rather than straight up terrible. Personally I thought it had a compelling first half that was let down by a disappointing latter half and action scenes that needed a little more time in the oven.
EDIT: The film sits at 63% on Rotten Tomatoes, both in critic and audience ratings, indicating either a mixed or polarizing reception rather than universal distaste.
Resurrections always had positive reception from a certain corner on the internet. It did good on HBOMAX, but it still had toxic word of mouth from general audiences.
I think this is a case where they're greenlighting a sequel in spite of the performance of the last film.
Drew Goddard is actually pretty good at subverting movie tropes and going meta, as evidenced by The Cabin in the Woods. So maybe it really is as simple as him having come up with a genuinely good idea for how to move the Matrix story forward which also appealed to the Warner execs. And TBH, knowing that he's behind it now, I'm kind of excited to find out what his idea is too.
cc: @JCPhoenix
To be fair, Cabin in the Woods was the result of him and Jose Wheadon locking themselves in their hotel rooms and meeting over breakfast/lunch/dinner for three days. For all his partner's personal flaws, I can't say the movie's success came entirely from Goddard.
I think Resurrections falls into a similar category of those being discussed over here: The fans aren't always right. It's not the matrix follow up that a lot of people wanted, but also a viewer's experience is definitely colored by their expectation going in to the film. I for one was very excited to experience a Matrix film which still included original cast on the big screen in a theater even though I knew it would not be the same experience as the original films. I think viewing a film recognizing that you can critique it based on its own merits completely changes the viewing experience. So as a sequel matrix movie it was just alright, but on its own and as a potential intro to the matrix for a new generation, I think it is a very fun film in its own right.
Hard to know where to draw the line when it looks like a franchise is getting milked for all it's worth, but I think there's still a lot of fun ideas that can be explored with something like the Matrix with the right creative team.
I for one welcome this news in that I think it will still be a very fun movie in its own right even if it's not what I might hope it will be. 😂 (Which let's be honest is always way to high a pedestal for sequel films).
It's worth noting that the Tomatometer is an average on binary measurements. The critic response is either positive or negative with no shades of grey, so if a movie has anything remotely interesting to say it's going to show up pretty well. So I would personally interpret 63% on that to be fairly poor for a film in a series that is well known for it's philosophical waxing.
That's why I said "mixed or polarizing".
A lot of movies get a score in the 60s because they are just average. Some people gave them a 5/10 and others gave them a 6/10. Others score in that range because they are polarizing. People either love them or hate them, giving scores like 2/10 and 8/10. I think a lot of the best movies are also very polarizing, especially on release, so I'm not so quick to dismiss a movie for having an RT score in that range.
More than half of RT users finished that movie feeling more positive than negative about it, which I think contrasts against the sentiment generally seen on social media. It's also worth noting that the original film only has an 83%, a score which surprised me given how universally loved it seems to be.
That's a lot better than its predecessor. Revelations has a 34%, it is by far the worst reviewed movie in the series.
Goddard has a great track record. The advantage here of him directing is that he's also writing. More writers have started to notice that they don't count, and will definitely see their scripts butchered and rendered unrecognizable if they don't also take the director's chair. Because so, so, so many directors will read a project's script, sign on, and then immediately go "but I want to change ... everything."
The beauty of how a film crew works is you don't need to know jack shit about cameras or angles or lighting or editing or any of that to be a solid director. You can hire people who are experts in those things who will be glad to take charge and offer up solutions to consider.
The director being an expert at the visuals is actually a negative if they're not focused on a good story. And if their training has been mostly in lights and angles, that's not story. Or in how to bring relevant and/or meaningful performances out of actors. Two things I would argue are way more crucial to a great movie than simply being a technical superstar with the use of the camera.
Good, bad, whatever happens here, it's Goddard's story and he'll only have himself to blame if it turns out poorly. Assuming, of course, the studio doesn't chime in with something akin to "... and in the third act, they need to fight a giant spider."
I've never sat down and tried to piece together where I'd take another Matrix story. That's not really something I usually do, since it's basically a waste of time. They won't make anything cool I come up with, for example.
So I'm not sure what angle he's got, but I have faith in his storytelling skills since (again) he's established a great resume of excellent stories.
Some obvious ones that would be super easy to fuck up would be something like "Smith's backstory/prequel/origin" or something like that. Perhaps the same concept but with The Architect or The Oracle; just as trite, just as unnecessary, just as unlikely to be interesting. And the king of all stupid angles would be "here's the fall of humanity, the birth of The Matrix; watch as we show the last humans being hunted down and put in pods."
A lot of modern audiences don't seem to understand how "filling in the blanks" is an almost certain guarantee they won't like the fill. When a story leaves "something" open, the audience can put whatever they like in that hole. And whatever they come up with, they'll probably like it; they came up with it. When someone else fills it in for them, they start picking it apart. Comparing it to their solution. Disliking the differences. So an "origin" story is trudging uphill trying to drag a lot of weight (expectations) along as well.
Maybe Goddard will go meta with it. There's a group in The Matrix who are aware of the nature of reality, are aware that they're all just pod people plugged into a machine. But they don't want to "be free", to be unplugged. They're just some sort of third party who watches, tracks maybe, the goings on of the Zion Freedom Fighters and the Agents (along with the indie programs like Merovingian, etc).
I'm not sure where you'd go with that story, but it's a place to start one for sure. Maybe it would be a "what price reality" or "what definition of reality do we believe in" or something like that. Some conspiracy theorist who struggles with whether or not to side with Zion, or the Agents, or what the morality of doing either, or doing neither would be.
But I guess somewhere around 2028 we might find out what Goddard has in mind.
They've done enough damage to it with Matrix Reloaded. But yea, Resurrections was an unbearable, tacky trainwreck of a movie.
I've seen Resurrections and I remember none of it.
There was a bit in a bathroom and a disjointed scene in a multi-level thingie. No idea what it was about or why.
Good thing that "in the works" means exactly shit in the age of David Zazlav and his type. I care about movies only when I can actually watch them, up until that point they are a Schrödinger's experiment that may or may not exist based on the whims of executives.
Huh. I didn't realize so many people hated 4. I went expecting to hate it, expecting it would be yet another garbage nostalgia bait cash grab, but was pleasantly surprised by its interesting narrative and take.
Was it amazing? No. Was it enjoyable? Yes. Was it intriguing? Yes. I'm honestly shocked by how much people are hating on it here.
Now I only think it worked because of the meta-neas of it, and the amount of time that has passed since the trilogy came out. Could they succeed in another story after 4? That seems unlikely, but 4 also seemed unlikely.
So I'll wait and see. Plus I love Drew Goddards work. So I'll wait and see how it turns out before I judge it.
I also ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected, much more than even the previous Matrix sequels. I don't think people expected or knew what to do with a movie that was so meta and so on-the-nose with how much it hated itself. I've never seen anything like it before and I don't think we'll see a movie like it ever again.
That whole "We're going to make this with or without you" conversation was one of my favourite scenes in recent years because that was the real conversation WB execs had with the Watchowskis. I remember first watching the movie without knowing this, and it felt out of place... but only when it's still so early in the movie that you don't realize how meta it is. Finding out that was almost verbatim with what they were told in real life by WB really helped put the entire movie in perspective. They were so upset about it, they put it in the movie and framed the whole movie as something made out of spite. You could feel their anger through the movie. And the story paralleled that very well, while still delivering better emotional catharsis and resolution than all of Revelations did.
The elaborate fight scenes while an antagonist rants about how useless sequels are is one of the weirdest things I think I've ever seen. I really enjoyed it. And, in the end, I thought it had a better and more enjoyable story than the back half of the original trilogy anyway. The series was already so far gone, this icebath of a sequel actually served as a decent revival to undo some of the drek while also commenting on expectations.
I don't think Matrix Ressurection was ever going to be a huge success, and it really seemed like they knew that and leaned hard into it. It's one of the most experimental and spiteful things I've ever seen, like a controlled implosion focused on spurning which ever jackass WB exec threatened the Wachowskis. I know a lot of people wanted a straight, sincere sequel to the Matrix but I think that would have ended up being another forgettable, boring entry that would have disappointed even more people. The Wachowskis haven't exactly been batting 1.000 in their career but the anger behind this one was so palpable, you can't help but feel that there was real passion behind it, especially compared to how cold and dispassionate Reloaded and Revelations ended up feeling.
Completely agree. It was good because it wasn't trying to be that generic sequel continuation. If it had been generic sequel nostalgia bait it would've been terrible but since they went experimental/meta with it, since they actually had something to say (even if that something is Fuck you WB) that's what made it good.
I didn't watch 4 (I didn't even know it existed actually), but I think people take their movies/tv shows/books/whatever entertainment too seriously sometimes. Something can have bad writing, bad acting, and a bad plot and still be enjoyable to watch.
I've watched quite a fair share of bad media that I enjoyed because I could laugh, or just sit back and turn my brain off for an hour or two. Not everything needs to be a thought provoking story. Sometimes I just want to see good guys shoot at bad guys.
Well I think Matrix 4 was the opposite of that actually. It had an interesting story that made you think and had something to say and while there was some shooting at bad guys, that wasn't the focus of the film, as it shouldn't be for what theyre trying to do.
A Matrix 5 that was more like a Linklater film? I would be totally into that
My Dinner with Neo
This is exactly how I'm still able to still watch the Fast and Furious movies. I just want to see how much more ridiculous each one gets and then I have a blast watching them and laughing at the ridiculousness.
Because the last one wasn't terrible and tongue-in-cheek enough to say it shouldn't have been made in the first place that they should just go ahead and make another?
Well normally the question is "did it make money", at which point if the answer is yes they'll milk it for all it's worth.
But 4 certainly didn't make back its budget at the box office, so I wonder if there's some sales/streaming deals that are boosting it enough they'd fund a 5th.
If they've got a good idea for a new movie, then why not? I generally don't think creatives should just bow to the hate trains that often shunt into town and which are often completely overblown. They should believe in their vision and commit to it.
But if they're just going to do something formulaic and try to milk the franchise for every dollar they can get with minimum effort, then I'm not interested. I didn't hate Resurrections and it had some good ideas, but it became horribly cheesy towards the end and really petered out.
I was under the impression that Resurrection was only made to put the final word on the franchise out and if it was going to be rebooted for nostalgia farming that at least it would be by the creators hand. So either the suits and brain trust are behind this 100% or it's one of those cases where EP is a formality.
I think XKCD is relevant here.