Quote Originally Posted by Aedilred View Post
I think the words "if you want it to be good" can be taken as read as a suffix to the "you need to do x..."

Does anybody actually think the Architect scene in Reloaded was good? Do the directors? If so, that's concerning.

I have heard defences of the scene claiming that it's not as bad as people say, because while it's often talked about as if it's total gibberish the Architect does actually answer some questions. But, firstly "less bad" does not equal "good", and secondly, any relevant information delivered by the Architect is delivered so badly that the majority of viewers come away from that scene not taking any of it in.

While you can defend almost anything as artistic choice up to a point, not all artistic choices are good. If you're annoying and/or boring your audience to the point that they stop paying attention - as almost all viewers did during that scene - that's just straightforwardly bad storytelling, and by extension bad filmmaking too. If it's intentional, then that just means it's deliberately, rather than incidentally, bad.
It is inverting the Hero’s Journey Hollywood playbook where it is always tension but the hero still is triumphant at the low point of a story.

The world is broken, always has been, the creator of the world is a [censored] [censored] who is a condescending white man (not literally since he is a program / machine), who sees humans like ants who drive his perfect machine. You are not supposed to like him. Likewise learning the truth of things is not always some form of beauty, it can be depressing and other words. Nor can you punch your father , Attack and Dethrone God.

This is literally the Hero’s Journey (but now how it is usually told in Hollywood) , with the descent into the Underworld and crossing the threshold of the abyss. But when people talk about movies, 3 Act structures, etc they often want you to remain enchanted, to feel the magic. To play in the realm of absence/presence where your body and brain is excited even though part of your brain knows it is not real it is merely a movie.

It does so by making the truth of “The Matrix” feel like our world, our real world, so boring and banal like concrete. Death is coming and there is nothing Neo can do that can stop it.

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And that is the magic of the later scenes. The 3rd movie is about learning to continue and go on, to still fight and be heroic in a broken world. To still make choices for you are fighting for Zion, or for Trinity, or for Sati, or for (looks up the names) Kid, Mifune, Zee, and Charra.

I am of the opinion the 3rd movie is more moving to you the older you get, or if you struggled with various disabilities, and/or depression plus anxiety. While Matrix 1 and 2 is about being superhuman the scene starting with KFC man being a bad dad reminds you are human and that is okay, the world is broken like a broken phone screen, but if the phone still works take delight in that fact, for life is still worth living even with its imperfections. The world is not clean or elegant and that is okay.

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So yes I argue the Architect scene is good. You should not judge it as one scene all by itself (it is actually two scenes spanned over 7.5 minutes with a brief interlude where you see the plan is failing inside the green matrix), you should see why the directors are inserting a bitter pill to swallow. You may take the red or blue pill as choice, as an act of liberation, but the reality principle is always another pill you have to take afterwards the yin to the yang, and then you get to make another choice after that. Choices and Reality Principle, again and again, ad infinitum, “C’est la vie” as The Merovingian might say.