Matrix Resurrections Review Thread

[Bohandas]

I’m no electrical engineer but I suspect the power usage for running something like the Matrix is vastly more than whatever they drain from the humans they’ve imprisoned…

Definitely. Just keeping the humans alive without the Matrix would use more power than the power plant could create.

Why do people still care about the people as energy thing? It's a cinema sins level meaningless complaint.

Because it's so blatantly nonsense it takes you out of the film. Much of the stuff in The Matrix looks plausible (at least on the surface*), but people as batteries (as well as the idea that dying in the matrix would make you die in real life, Neo's ability to interface with the machines psychically, and everything the Architect says**), is more the kind of blatant nonsense you'd get in a b-movie like Plan 9 From Outer Space or Ad Astra

And it's compounded by the fact that they were originally going to use an explanation that actually made sense, but for some reason they went with this

*There's a lot of additional things that don't make sense upon further consideration, but they aren;t as blatant, such as the oracle's ability to see the future, and the explanation for the resistence fighters' abilities, which seem to have a psychic or psychological angle, whereas realistically they should look morenlike breaking a game with exploits.

**Although the nonsensicality of the Architect's claims is somewhat mitigated by the fact that he is a self-proclaimed deceiver

[Dragonus45]

Because it's so blatantly nonsense it takes you out of the film.

If you say so sure, but your wrong.

[Vahnavoi]

Before you decide on any kind of take you need to answer the basic question the movie failed to answer:

I was asked what kind of a movie I would make given a specific premise and had zero reason to question it. Though I specifically noted my first take doesn't even need Neo, I don't find your question particularly dramatically relevant. It certainly isn't relevant to my second take.

The actual Resurrections movie does answer your question, mind you.

Spoiler: Actual movie details:

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The Analyst wants Neo and Trinity specifically because these two are part of a system to generate extra energy. Machines having trouble with meeting energy demands is established to be bad enough that it caused a machine civil war.

Humans don't need Neo. Some humans, namely Bugs, wants to find Neo, because she (and others) idolizes Neo and never found out what his ultimate fate was. Neo and Trinity were trapped in a loop for sixty years before Bugs managed to find one of them, mostly because of chance.

The stakes of the movie are that Bugs is jeopardizing the status quo by freeing Neo - the movie is exceedingly clear about that. You can complain about the implementation, but don't ignore what the movie tells you.

[Millstone85]

Spoiler

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Namely, why do we need Neo back specifically (beyond the meta-reasoning of "hey it's the guy you know!" nostalgia to get IRL butts in theater seats), and why do we need him right now?

Spoiler: Actual movie details:

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The stakes of the movie are that Bugs is jeopardizing the status quo by freeing Neo - the movie is exceedingly clear about that.

Yeah, it is almost as if the story sets the individual against the system, or something.

[Vahnavoi]

Or, to paraphrase something Bugs says in the movie:

"So, do you care more about plants than freeing minds?"

They could've done a LOT more with that angle than they did, but it's still there.

[Asmotherion]

I find it lacked the vibes of a Matrix movie. The Matrix was dark and gritty, this was a happy-go-lucky movie that was closer to a superhero movie than a Cyber Dystopia movie. I'm disapointed.

[Lurkmoar]

If you say so sure, but your wrong.

It was enough to break the suspension of disbelief. Morpheus' claims in the first film felt like a spoon fed lie and I was expecting the second film to rebut it and point out the machines were trying to PRESERVE human life. But the audience got what it got.

[BloodSquirrel]

Why do people still care about the people as energy thing? It's a cinema sins level meaningless complaint.

It comes down to a principle that I can best describe as "Don't draw undue attention toward your story's contrivances".

We can all accept that stories are often based on unrealistic or poorly-thought out premises. As long as the story lets us put a black box around those things we can play along and just accept whatever rules they create for the setting. Space magic lets people move things with their minds? Sure, whatever. A alien species somehow evolved such that exposure to a different kind of sun than existed in their home system gives them superpowers? Ok, fine. Human beings have somehow been turned into free energy machines? Great.

The problem is when a story starts doing things that invites us to ask questions about those things and relies on the internal logic behind them to function- even though there is none, and they're just silly nonsense.

It's easy enough to just accept that the reason why the machines created the matrix is silly when it isn't that important. We can just abstract it away as "Somehow that works, so the machines need the matrix, which is why they want to stop the humans from waking up". But then Resurrections has to go and draw attention to it. Despair somehow creates more power... because apparently the matrix doesn't just run on our thermal output, it runs on our feels. The movie openly invites scrutiny by making its plot rely not just on the motivation that the premise is there to create, but the mechanics of the premise, which fall apart as soon as you think about them. We were willing to forgive you for that bit of silliness, but here you are bringing it up again like you were our girlfriend and it was the time we forgot your birthday ten years ago.

This kind of thing happens a lot- they'll be something that's just sort of a long-standing convention of the genre that everyone knows is kind of broken, but we're used enough to it that we don't think about it. But then someone who doesn't know what they're doing comes in and does something that messes with it, except they don't think about any of the implications that it runs on, and it winds up completely taking everybody out of the story.

[Vahnavoi]

Phooeye to that.

Yes, it's a shame they didn't establish, or rather, re-establish the idea that humans are required for processing or algorithmic power. However, Dragonus is right, it's a dead horse. Everyone knows that was the intent, everyone knows why it got replaced, you can just mentally swap the references to electric power with references to processing power and be done with it. Boom, done. The plot points in the new movie? They make as much sense from that viewpoint. More sense, in fact.

Spoiler: Actual movie details:

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When Neo tries to stop Trinity from being shot and is working through the Analyst's time stop, it can be interpreted as Neo hacking the Matrix into making himself more efficient (because that is what we know he does, since the first movie). And the Analyst being happy about that, as being because by analyzing what Neo does and how he does it, they can make the entire Matrix more efficient. It's not that the Matrix runs on feels, it's that feels are the motivation for people, specifically Neo and Trinity, to keep dancing the tango which is beneficial to the machines. But even without that speculative angle, the whole thing work with the existing metacommentary to point out how this cliched "hero tries to save their loved one" pattern keeps being repeated as driving motive of stories such as, well, the Matrix.

EDIT:

Also, since we're on that theme:

1) "humans as batteries" may fail from a thermodynamic perspective, but from a metaphorical perspective, it absolutely works. The Matrix is about humans being reduced from free-thinking individuals to mere parts of a machine, comparing them to batteries work just as well as the older "cog in the machine" metaphor.

2) Neo being able to wirelessly interface with machines at the end of Reloaded, does not require any additional fantastic notions. The movies repeatedly reference wireless communication technology, both in the Matrix and outside of it - we SEE sentinels open up their antennaes to get better reception! Neo explicitly has machine implants and, by end of Reloaded, explicitly IS a machine implant, him being able to wirelessly hack the real machines is a logical extension of his abilities. Harping on Neo's out-of-Matrix abilities is even less excusable today than it was when Reloaded and Revolutions came out. Wireless communications are ubiquitous now and augmented reality is a thing. Chances are good the device you are reading this on is capable of projecting fictional objects on reality you are viewing through it in real time. We have proof sketches and existing technology to let blind people see through cameras. Arguably, in reality self-aware artificial intelligence is more fantastic than anything Neo does outside the Matrix.

[BloodSquirrel]

However, Dragonus is right, it's a dead horse.

It's a dead horse that the movie decides to dissect right in front of us.

Pro tip: "You're wrong, your suspension of disbelief wasn't actually broken!" is never going to be the killer argument that you think it is.

[Vahnavoi]

I don't actually care about suspension of disbelief, especially not yours; see my edit, above.

[Millstone85]

Thermodynamics is the death of metaphor? or something?

"humans as batteries" may fail from a thermodynamic perspective, but from a metaphorical perspective, it absolutely works.

The things I look for in a work of fiction are worldbuilding, characters and plotlines, in that order. And here, to me, it feels like a keystone of worldbuilding has been sacrificed to metaphor.

But yes, sure, I can handwave it. The movie is driven by some new-age spirituality where energy and information are more-or-less interchangeable. And maybe someone could technobabble quantum mechanics somewhere in there.

Neo being able to wirelessly interface with machines at the end of Reloaded, does not require any additional fantastic notions. The movies repeatedly reference wireless communication technology, both in the Matrix and outside of it - we SEE sentinels open up their antennaes to get better reception! Neo explicitly has machine implants and, by end of Reloaded, explicitly IS a machine implant, him being able to wirelessly hack the real machines is a logical extension of his abilities.

This, yes, I completely agree. Never had a problem with it. Never saw it as proof of a second Matrix or whatever.

Now, a theory I may have to give up on is all the precognition, done by the Oracle through the original trilogy, by Neo in Reloaded and now by Trinity in Resurrections, being simply a matter of remembering previous loops.

[Bohandas]

Phooeye to that.2) Neo being able to wirelessly interface with machines at the end of Reloaded, does not require any additional fantastic notions. The movies repeatedly reference wireless communication technology, both in the Matrix and outside of it - we SEE sentinels open up their antennaes to get better reception! Neo explicitly has machine implants and, by end of Reloaded, explicitly IS a machine implant, him being able to wirelessly hack the real machines is a logical extension of his abilities. Harping on Neo's out-of-Matrix abilities is even less excusable today than it was when Reloaded and Revolutions came out. Wireless communications are ubiquitous now and augmented reality is a thing. Chances are good the device you are reading this on is capable of projecting fictional objects on reality you are viewing through it in real time. We have proof sketches and existing technology to let blind people see through cameras. Arguably, in reality self-aware artificial intelligence is more fantastic than anything Neo does outside the Matrix.

I suppose that's a possible answer, but that begs a further question, if the machines could predict Neo's whole life exactly to know that he'd need all these things, why not just delete Agent Smith proactively and be done with it?

EDIT:
Or did they just pack his head full of every gizmo they had?

EDIT:
And how'd they ever let him into Zion with his head packed full with non-standard machine implants? Even inside the Matrix they checked him for machine listening devices. But they'll let him into Zion with a long-range wireless transceiver in his head? That seems like an obvious trap.

The movie is driven by some new-age spirituality where energy and information are more-or-less interchangeable.

Like I said, B-movie nonsense. Like solaranite.

[Dr.Samurai]

Phooeye to that.

Yes, it's a shame they didn't establish, or rather, re-establish the idea that humans are required for processing or algorithmic power. However, Dragonus is right, it's a dead horse. Everyone knows that was the intent, everyone knows why it got replaced, you can just mentally swap the references to electric power with references to processing power and be done with it. Boom, done. The plot points in the new movie? They make as much sense from that viewpoint. More sense, in fact.

I agree that it was a dead horse. I never gave it much care, because it wasn't really the point of the trilogy.

But after all these years, we are wondering how is Neo still alive? How is Trinity back? Are they back in the Matrix? How did that happen? Why did that happen?

And the answer well... resurrects that dead horse. And that dead horse never made sense, and in Resurrections it makes even less sense with the "physical proximity plus proximity in the Matrix equals lots of energy".

In a movie that lacks strong elements, basing it on this very weak premise is a problem. Though perhaps not for you, admittedly.

Spoiler

Show

Spoiler: Actual movie details:

Show

When Neo tries to stop Trinity from being shot and is working through the Analyst's time stop, it can be interpreted as Neo hacking the Matrix into making himself more efficient (because that is what we know he does, since the first movie). And the Analyst being happy about that, as being because by analyzing what Neo does and how he does it, they can make the entire Matrix more efficient. It's not that the Matrix runs on feels, it's that feels are the motivation for people, specifically Neo and Trinity, to keep dancing the tango which is beneficial to the machines. But even without that speculative angle, the whole thing work with the existing metacommentary to point out how this cliched "hero tries to save their loved one" pattern keeps being repeated as driving motive of stories such as, well, the Matrix.

Yes, what a terrible thing to base our stories on, people have the grit/competence/courage/power to lift themselves up/oppose tyranny/save their loved ones.

Call it a cliche but... I much prefer that over Neo bumbling through two and a half hours of movie. Every time he's on screen he has a worried or apologetic look on his face, and in the end doesn't muster up the ability to save himself or Trinity. Wow. What an amazing story and character.

If Trinity is to be the one to ascend and save them... then she should be the focus of the movie. There is very little story to Trinity in this movie. She simply gains super powers at the end. Contrast this to the "cliche" story in the first movie, where Neo is on a journey and eventually becomes the One.

1) "humans as batteries" may fail from a thermodynamic perspective, but from a metaphorical perspective, it absolutely works. The Matrix is about humans being reduced from free-thinking individuals to mere parts of a machine, comparing them to batteries work just as well as the older "cog in the machine" metaphor.

This is possible to do without them being batteries of course.

2) Neo being able to wirelessly interface with machines at the end of Reloaded, does not require any additional fantastic notions. The movies repeatedly reference wireless communication technology, both in the Matrix and outside of it - we SEE sentinels open up their antennaes to get better reception! Neo explicitly has machine implants and, by end of Reloaded, explicitly IS a machine implant, him being able to wirelessly hack the real machines is a logical extension of his abilities. Harping on Neo's out-of-Matrix abilities is even less excusable today than it was when Reloaded and Revolutions came out. Wireless communications are ubiquitous now and augmented reality is a thing. Chances are good the device you are reading this on is capable of projecting fictional objects on reality you are viewing through it in real time. We have proof sketches and existing technology to let blind people see through cameras. Arguably, in reality self-aware artificial intelligence is more fantastic than anything Neo does outside the Matrix.

It doesn't seem to me that Neo is "interfacing" with the sentinels so much as destroying them. If Neo is hacking them, why not reprogram them and have them serve the humans? Why just destroy them? Why does he speak about it in a way that isn't simply "I'm interfacing with them through their wireless communication..."? Instead it seems more spiritual or supernatural, "... I can feel them..."

Same when he fights Bane, "I can see you..." even though he has no eyes. Bane is in a flesh and blood body; where is the machine interface that allows Neo to "see" Smith?

[Bohandas]

However, Dragonus is right, it's a dead horse.

So is the Matrix series but we're still talking about it.

Everyone knows that was the intent, everyone knows why it got replaced

It was something to do with a really stupid studio executive who thought the power thing made more sense, wasn't it? That doesn't explain it never being retconned. Have they still got the same peabrain telling them what to do and and unwilling to admit being wrong a quarter of a century later?

[BloodSquirrel]

I don't actually care about suspension of disbelief, especially not yours; see my edit, above.

Ah, the "Screw you!" school of critical analysis.

[Millstone85]

If Neo is hacking them, why not reprogram them and have them serve the humans? Why just destroy them?

That ought to be way more complicated than making them crash, and Neo had only just discovered his new ability.

Also, later on, when he and Trinity are flying toward the machine city, we see Neo struggling against the spirit of a sentinel, so they do offer some resistance.

Bane is in a flesh and blood body; where is the machine interface that allows Neo to "see" Smith?

Bane also has implants.

It was something to do with a really stupid studio executive who thought the power thing made more sense, wasn't it?

Worse. The executive thought the audience would be too stupid to understand the processing-power thing.

[Dr.Samurai]

Neo is a hacker. Why wouldn't he speak clearly in hacker lingo if this is what he is doing?

And what implants are you referring to?

[Traab]

Oh goody, so a philosophers stone scenario.

[Millstone85]

And what implants are you referring to?

The ones that let people connect to the Matrix.

Bane is effectively a cyborg, just like Neo and everyone else who was once part of the system.

[Dr.Samurai]

The ones that let people connect to the Matrix.

Bane is effectively a cyborg, just like Neo and everyone else who was once part of the system.

So the suggestion is that this port, where everyone has to get hard-jacked into the Matrix, allows for wireless communication, and therefore allows for Neo to hack other machines at a distance? Was this suggested in the movie, that everyone is a transmitter/receiver? I don't recall this.

[Bohandas]

Bane also has implants.

Why would they be broadcasting anything? That's not how the Matrix works. We're shown again and again that the interface is through a wired connection.

EDIT:
Unless there's some kind of seperate tracking implant, but we're never shown one outside of the Matrix. And even if there was one you'd think they've remove it after they got you out

Oh goody, so a philosophers stone scenario.

IIRC that one was more of a racism thing, that Americans were too stupid to understand it.

[Millstone85]

So the suggestion is that this port, where everyone has to get hard-jacked into the Matrix, allows for wireless communication, and therefore allows for Neo to hack other machines at a distance?

Yes, that's the interpretation.

Was this suggested in the movie, that everyone is a transmitter/receiver? I don't recall this.

That's not how the Matrix works.

Well, no, but it may be how the Source works.

When Neo went through that glowing door in Reloaded, it brought him close the machine hivemind, the Source. Then the Architect told him that "though the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human", hinting that they tried to make him more machine than he already was.

Part of this would be Neo's neck port, or whatever inner metal junk it works with, getting reconfigured. Bane's own implants would have gone through a similar change when Smith fried his brain.

[Bohandas]

Yes, that's the interpretation.

Well, no, but it may be how the Source works.

When Neo went through that glowing door in Reloaded, it brought him close the machine hivemind, the Source. Then the Architect told him that "though the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human", hinting that they tried to make him more machine than he already was.

Part of this would be Neo's neck port, or whatever inner metal junk it works with, getting reconfigured. Bane's own implants would have gone through a similar change when Smith fried his brain.

When did Smith have time to do surgery to install a new port? And WHY?

Neo could have been given a non-standard port in the clone tanks, but how and why would Bane have one

[Dr.Samurai]

Yes, that's the interpretation.

Well, no, but it may be how the Source works.

When Neo went through that glowing door in Reloaded, it brought him close the machine hivemind, the Source. Then the Architect told him that "though the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human", hinting that they tried to make him more machine than he already was.

Part of this would be Neo's neck port, or whatever inner metal junk it works with, getting reconfigured. Bane's own implants would have gone through a similar change when Smith fried his brain.

I take that to mean that in Neo becoming the One, his consciousness has been altered, but he is still human. After all, he now sees the code of the Matrix and can dodge bullets and hack the Matrix. But I did not take that to mean that he is now transmitting signals in the real world from his skull port.

The Architect is saying "Yeah, you're special and you defeat Agents now but... don't think you're playing on my level and will understand everything I'm about to tell you."

[Millstone85]

When did Smith have time to do surgery to install a new port? And WHY?

Same implants, new parameters.

Neo could have been given a non-standard port in the clone tanks, but how and why would Bane have one

The One is an anomaly that repeatedly emerges from the system. Yes, the machines may have designed that specific field fetus to become the vessel of that anomaly, but I don't think that's the case. Instead, their problem is that any connected human could become the One. This time around, it ended up being Thomas Anderson, but it could have been anyone else, including Bane.

So all ports get hidden features to drive the One back to the Source.

I take that to mean that in Neo becoming the One, his consciousness has been altered, but he is still human. After all, he now sees the code of the Matrix and can dodge bullets and hack the Matrix.

No, I think he was referring to the transition that just happened. The one that then let Neo see the yellow code of the Source and stop sentinels.

[Vahnavoi]

@Dr. Samurai: recognizing something as a cliche is not the same as calling a thing bad. The love between Neo and Trinity is never really treated as a negative in the movies, expect by particularly cynical villains. As far as Trinity not getting enough focus, I agree, as noted in my first post to this thread.

@Bohandas: Reloaded and Revolutions very heavily emphasize Zion's own reliance on machinery and it's part of the reveal in Reloaded that not only have there been multiple cycles of this happening, the machines have been actively manipulating these cycles to yield the outcome they want. All of the tech people use to interact with the Matrix, comes from the same party that made the Matrix!

Nobody actually foresees the future. Pay attention to what the Oracle actually says. Even in the original movie, she very clearly invokes the concept of self-fulfilling prophecies. She is manipulating events by giving people just the information she needs them to have in order for them to do the right things. She very specifically calls out that the Architect is sort of bad at this. I've talked about this in another thread in detail lately, but since finding it would be harder than retyping things: we have a clear visual representation of the Architect searching through multiple possible futures, the screens with multiple Neos. That is how he sees the world, as a massive list of possibilities. But, only one of these really comes to pass. He can't tell which one, because he doesn't get people. He is not above manipulating people himself and hedging his bets, but as seen on screen, he loses this game agains the Oracle - Neo escapes the cycle he's set up. The new villain in the new movie continues and combines both of these trends.

[Bohandas]

As an aside, am I the only one who thinks that the heroes' powers in the Matrix ought to look more like one of those speedrun videos that uses exploits? Because that's basically how their powers work, isn't it?

It ought to look less like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qhZEAIzZGU

and more like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUt840BUOYA

or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9gxFkOz2_4

[Ramza00]

It's a dead horse that the movie decides to dissect right in front of us.

Pro tip: "You're wrong, your suspension of disbelief wasn't actually broken!" is never going to be the killer argument that you think it is.

That is actually a theme of the matrix, dysphoria, uncanny valley, whatever magic word we call it will cause part of your brain to reject the matrix and break the simulation even if another part of your brain wants to stay inside the matrix.

I feel we should examine more the minds that were freed because they could not accept the matrix, vs the minds that were freed because Zion / Io captains thought they had a moral duty to free people.

Likewise per Cypher Morpheus got 5 pre Neo “the one candidates” killed when they fought Agents. What does this mean from the eyes of the people in the story and the nature of life, uncanny valley, etc.

[Vahnavoi]

As additional comment to Bohandas, pay attention to what the hovercraft do. People plug into the chair, but the ships don't plug into anything as any kind of rule. They receive and broadcast signals over radio, which is why they can do this while in motion, as seen in Flight of the Osiris, the Animatrix intro to Reloaded. The Sentinels can find them via following their broadcast signal. And, in Revolutions, we see the machines can see Neo and resist his hacking attempts - we have visual representation of this, in a projection of a sentinel dashing through Neo. Neo doesn't arbitrarily reprogram machines because he can't. Stopping that one sentinel and making some bombs explode prematurely, are the shown limits of his ability.

EDIT: the first Matrix also implies the Sentinels can receive messages wirelessly from the Matrix. They're also implied to be physical equivalents of Agents, an idea which was later used in Matrix Online.