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'The Matrix' Reboot: It's Finally Happened. Hollywood Has Run Out of All the Ideas (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: In our hearts, we all knew this day would come. Warner Bros. is planning a reboot of The Matrix just 18 years after the iconic sci-fi action film dazzled audiences around the world, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The Matrix films were lauded for their creativity, special effects, and distinct cyberpunk and manga influences. In total, the trilogy grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide. The Matrix will join other famous film properties -- Star Wars, Godzilla, Planet of the Apes, and Terminator among them -- receiving a recent franchise reboot or "reimagining." Others include RoboCop, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, and Jurassic Park. Meanwhile, reboots of Indiana Jones, Predator, Jumanji, and every superhero movie that's ever existed, are scheduled to hit theaters soon. And TV, for its part, is a dystopian wasteland of bland prequels to famous action movies. Hollywood relying on tentpole franchises, instead of taking risks on original ideas, is not new or surprising. But many believed that certain properties like The Matrix were off limits -- at least so soon after originally being made. It's clear now, though, that the major film studios can't afford to wait. They have no other ideas. This puts the studios in a precarious situation, because the once tried-and-true strategy of inundating cinemas with popular franchise extensions no longer looks as foolproof as it used to.
NOW you perceive the film industry has run out of ideas? In 2017? More likely, those who voted this to the front page just happen to be in the 35 to 40 year old zone where the banality of popular entertainment starts to become intuitively obvious even to those with no critical thinking skills. Not news. Status quo.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Maybe go with the original this time? Get William Gibson to adapt it for them?
The Animatrix was interesting.
If the Matrix just happens over and over again, isn't it basically okay for them to move to a different section of the timeline, roll the dice, and play again with totally different characters / monsters?
If the new movie features Neo, though, forget it.
I remember coming out of the theater after seeing #2 (The Matrix: Reloaded) and thinking, "Huh, not fully what I was hoping for, but that ending could herald interesting things. If Neo can affect reality after waking up then they must be in a layered Matrix. The idea of layered realities and never knowing which one is finally real could be a cool way to wrap up the series." Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine they'd take the route of Neo being future-Jesus who has completely unexplainable powers in the real world, and we're going to abandon any aspirations of science fiction and go headlong into pure fantasy.
It's hard to imagine how they could screw the story up even worse. Then again, as Douglas Adams said, "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
Too bad George Lucas never made Star Wars 1, 2 and 3. I still never understood why Spielberg only made two Indiana Jones movies, Ark and Crusade. I also expected to see a third Die Hard, but that never happened.
Hollywood can't help but do this now. It's all that's left to them.
Every film nowadays has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly thanks to Hollywood accounting practices. To invest that kind of money you have to be able to show the principals an expected return on that investment. You need to do market analysis and show that you have an audience large enough to get that return.
The only way to do that is to copy older blockbusters and assume the returns will be in the ballpark. Hence, reboots.
Look at Deadpool if you want to know about risk aversion. The studio did NOT want to make that movie. It was "risky". Imagine living in a world where you would think that a Deadpool movie was too risky. That's why they're going for The Matrix. The two sequels were garbage but still made bank. So they know that this reboot will too.
It's the beginning of the end for Hollywood, IMO. Their model can only support smash blockbusters, and now they're out of them.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It probably won't work (at least for people who saw the original) because it won't be the original. It won't have the novelty value of those cool action scenes, of bullet time, etc. It won't have Reeves, Fishburne, Moss, or Weaving. Chances are they've learned the wrong lessons (as already shown by the 2nd and 3rd movies) and instead of a good story we'll get endless boring overly-choreographed action scenes.
On the other hand, it's a chance to do it right - ditch the battery crap and make the humans enslaved so their unused brain capacity acts as processors for the machine network, making it more creative than any silicon-based system yet designed. Make Zion just another layer to capture those who 'escaped' the Matrix. Do more with the Architect (in fact, I'd have bits of the original trilogy on his wall displays...)
Then show the REAL real world at the end of it; the new Neo waking up into a more typical futuristic world, all shiny, bright sky... but all the 'people' walking around are machines. Make the machines afraid of humans waking up en-mass because it would lobotomize them. Make the humans concerned that if they all woke up, they'd simply starve to death if the robots didn't notice and strap them right back into the Matrix.
I thought it would lead to layered realities, and that it would expose that many people are perfectly content in the baseline Matrix, some people's minds rebel. These people are identified and hooked to a 2nd Matrix in which they are made aware of the baseline Matrix, can interact with it, pursue their hero fantasies each to their own level necessary (Neo needed to be the One, Trinity need to be in love with the One, Morpheus had to be the one to find the One...) and steered into the whole Zion mythos.
A few might, like Neo, once exposed to he baseline Matrix, realize that they could be in a 2nd-level Matrix and find themselves able to manipulate it as well. At that point a 3rd..N+1 level matrix would be unnecessary. Those unlucky few would just be lobotomized by the machines and put back in the soup. The effort to entertain the chosen ones with Matrix 2 is justified only by the notion that the undamaged brains allow more wetware computing power to be utilized (i.e., humans not just batteries).
Neo getting a big needle in his brain may have been an unpleasant ending. Perhaps once the battle of Zion happened, the 3rd movie would end with a "reset" back to Neo first waking up in Scene 1 of the first matrix. They can just keep Groundhog Daying the hell out of Zion.
NOW you perceive the film industry has run out of ideas? In 2017?
Well, let's see here.
They started making a movies of video games, such as "Doom", which had very thin plots.
Then they started making movies of video games that had no discernable plot, such as "PacMan".
Then they started making movies of *board* games, such as "Battleship".
(Monopoly (the movie) is apparently in production.)
Battleship? Really?
I'm sure the studios still have a lot of ground to cover. I anxiously look forward to "solitaire, the movie" in the next year or two.
2 was okay. The ending of 2 makes it completely obvious that the "real world" is yet another Matrix that Neo can control, and earlier parts of 2 hinted at this, but the third movie never explores that storyline. It would have been far more interesting to discover that all the humans were dead, and that the AIs were trying to recreate humans by tricking "baby AIs" into thinking they're human, and waking them from various stages of reality into freshly created fleshy bodies.
Sorry some idiot modded you to -1.
I would honestly love to see Disney show some real balls with the Star Wars franchise and do the following:
From that, write a new story, with believable characters, to show the downfall of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. I mean, as emo as Kylo Ren is, the conflict within him is totally believable. He's an interesting character. This is what Anakin should have been in the prequels. Not "Yippee!" and "I hate sand."
What is really interesting about all this retread garbage is why is it happening, why has all creativity left tinsil town. Could it possibly be because of rampant nepotism, you know the ugly, rich and greedy marrying the shallow, pretty and stupid and producing generations of incompetence, who lack all creative ability but are guaranteed employment in management roles. Those individuals spending substantial portions of the companies budgets on public relations bullshit and marketing just to make themselves as individuals look good (weird crap like spending advertising budgets on package cinema tickets bundled with junk food to inflate gross revenues even though nett revenues shrink as a result but it ensures mummies little darling looks good in front of the board). Acting so bad they have to pay animators to touch up films to give hereditary actors realistic emotions, as for autotune for singers so post set animation for actors (hugely more expensive but daddies little princess must be a star). Then there are rumours of even weirder sicker stuff, that bonds the psychopathic elite (I suppose that would be the elite of perves) togethor.
There seems to be the expectation that no matter how shite the stuff they produce, marketing will save them or that is the delusion they share within the endless narcissist party circle. The psychological elements behind the failures are more interesting than the content they produce.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Starship troopers is a fantastic movie. And a fairly good adaptation of the original work. Sure its not *just* about the political side. Which is good, cus that would be a fucking boring movie. But its all there if you look. Just like iRobot. But of course you "fans" will like NOTHING. There is no version in the entire multiverse of all possible versions of any of these movies that you wouldn't pan as "not true to the original material". Or crticiq it with some other glib and antioriginal comment like "Michael bay Humrfff" Or JJ or what ever wreaked it. I personally look forward to all the horse shit you "fans" will be peddling with ghost in the shell.
Hollywood demands that authors of original works sign one-sided contracts that obligate them to give up their publishing and copyrights in exchange for a cut of the net profits. The problem with "net profits" is that Hollywood uses "Hollywood Accounting" tricks to turn profits into a loss and deprive authors of royalty payments. There's a REASON why established actors demand payment UP FRONT.
Some authors have sought legal relief and won, but the process is prohibitively expensive enough to discourage litigation - and Hollywood knows it. The authors may have had their day in court but they have lost control of their original material forever, as those contracts are sealed in iron-clad concrete that the control freak entertainment industry refuses to give up.
The problem isn't the lack of new ideas. The true problem is that authors have been screwed by Hollywood for so long that they refuse to sell their original works that could be made into a movie or TV show. Hollywood can't find authors willing to sell them new ideas, so they re-hash existing ones in their control into re-makes, sequels, prequels, baby versions, et al all in a formulaic process. Small wonder that there is little original material coming out of Hollywood anymore. How many more damn re-makes of "King Kong" does the world need?
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
You forgot about the Jedi. The original trilogy was "twilight of the samurai" stuff -- the jedi were faded and forgotten. If the prequel trilogy had happened, people in the original trilogy wouldn't be as scornful and dismissive as they were. Remember, according to Leia, Obi-Wan's job title in the Clone Wars was "general". To the Republic, he was a soldier. I want a prequel trilogy where Obi-Wan is in his prime, fighting as an officer, and being mocked by his squad for his "superstitions", but slowly winning them over to the point where a young infantryman named Skywalker asks to be trained; perhaps he even takes on a second apprentice who gets killed (as is wont to happen in wartimes). Anyway, I want to see a soldier in uniform constructing his own lightsaber and seeing the horror of death around him, and trying to use his powers to stop the killing, and criticising Obi-Wan for not doing the same, but being dragged into a web of violence and anger. I want to see Obi-Wan using the Force primarily to heal and anaesthetise. I don't want people doing Jedi Knight-inspired "Force dashes".
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'