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Katz vs. Taco: The Matrix
"Guys we've got a movie, and it needs a Messiah Figure. A guy who can save the world. Who can you think of that would fit the bill?"
"Charleton Heston?" "Bill Maher?" "Ted Nugent?" "Keanu Reeves?"
"You mean Ted? Excellent."
I figure this exchange has happened a few times in Hollywood. How Keanau keeps getting to be the guy that saves the world is beyond me. But he did a good job this time around. He's a little plastic, but thats just how he is. Fortunately, it doesn't matter, because the world that he is in is completely engrossing. You will sit down and for 2 hours and a few minutes, be completely entranced by The Matrix.
This is a great movie. I won't spoil it and tell you what "The Matrix" is, but you'll figure it out pretty early on. And its an interesting and convincing concept that actually works. Its ideas picked and grabbed from all sorts of sci fi, and it will appeal immensely to many of us.
The world is a strange mish mash of pseudo mysticism or spirituality. Lots of techno-babble stirred in. And the scary thing is that it works. And it works really well. Its a dark world, and a confusing one. But it all pretty much sorts itself out in the first half hour and then you can enjoy a pretty entertaining ride.
A general, non spoiler summary is that Neo (Reeves) is a slightly rebelious [h|cr]acker not happy in the system. He is lured around and eventually joins up with a rebelious band of cyber badasses out to save the world. They have mega technology. They have a space ship. They run from robotic spiders. They have unlimited weapons and virtual reality Kung Fu training simulators. And if you've seen the trailers: Super Powers. But it gets a lot crazier.
So some of the acting is a bit wooden. Some of the fx are a bit campy. Some of the jokes are sad. But these tiny flaws will slip by almost unnoticed because most of the fx are seamless. Most of the jokes are just right. And while some of the fighting is cheesy, other parts are quite exciting. This movie makes good use of many fx that we've seen in commercials for years, and somehow ties them together with a plot that is interesting. The philosophy and stuff gets a tad heavy at times, but not to badly, just a little bit fluffy.
2 hours, and I don't think I blinked.
I'd write a longer review, but frankly I don't want to spoil it for you. And I'll warn you that Katz's review will spoil some of the big surprises, so keep scrolling or hit that back button if you don't want to know...
JonKatz:Spoiler WarningIn science fiction, and in the mythology of computing science, it's believed - remember Ray Kurzweil and his "Age of Spiritual Machines" -- that as we race towards more powerful computers and machines with artificial intelligence, eventually there will be some cataclysmic Omega Point at which everything changes, especially the fundamental situation of people in the universe.
Engineers, scientists, developers and programmers don't dwell on Omega Point theory much, at least in public, but it's a staple in the literature of computing as well as science fiction.
And here it is again as the centerpiece of the "The Matrix," the stylish, highly entertaining new geek action thriller starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne. The movie asks the question: what if the world were run by evil computers who bred humans only as an energy source?
What if only a handful of humans knew the truth, and the rest lived in a world where reality was altered by an artificially-brilliant monster which created a virtual dream world in which nobody could tell what was real and what wasn't, if people believed they were living lives, but weren't?
This is the Omega Point and it's the world Neo the hacker suddenly wakes up to. He's led to the now inevitable Leader of the Rebel Forces (Fishburne), and they go after the humanoid machines. Naturally, they are represented by agents, evil and powerful NSA-style Men In Suits (attention Hollywood: can we come up with some new bad guys?).
This movie is a geek feast, with echoes of "Terminator," "Alien," "The X-Files," "200l: A Space Odyssey," and "Star Wars." Maybe a bit of Jackie Chan and "Walker, Texas Ranger," too. Heroes and villains kick-box their way across the universe, driving each other through windows, walls and virtual space. This movie, made by the Wachowski Brothers, is made without apology by and for nerds and geeks. The real villain is a "neural interactive simulation," a concept familiar to computing types, therefore one the film doesn't even feel it needs to to explain.
"The Matrix" is a smart, strange, complicated movie, one that takes techno-cinematography to new and classy levels. The beginning of the movie has an almost gothic, truly creepy feel to it. "The Matrix" also has a truly dark premise, eerie, new, imaginative and startling special effects, and a pace like a high-speed download.
And for once, the familiar arguments about technology, humanity and the future are intelligently presented and argued. Artificial intelligence machines - AT's - have gone to war with humans in the 21st century and won, and are setting about to literally suck the life out of humanity (Neo is shown the skeletal remains of civilization hidden beneath the virtual ground). Neo, the Everyman hacker is cast as the messiah, called upon to save the earth with the help of various raggedy geeks, nerds and a battalion of laptops with high-resolution monitors.
As Neo, Reeves is a well-meaning mono-man, likeable but almost one dimensional. All his life, he's known something is wrong with the world, but he could never put his finger - or keyboard - on it. Now, he gets to know. This movie is a very knowing geek fantasy. Neo, a software programmer, had a dual (but no social) life. By day, he's a programmer, by night a lawless hacker. He and everyone else speaks in the stuffy language of the future, which is to say nobody uses contractions. Carrie-Anne Moss plays Trinity, the equally grim and business-like super-hacker babe who guides Neo to his'yes!?destiny.
Whenever the movie tilts towards the clunky and heavy-handed ("I can show you the door," intones Rebel Leader Morpheus to Neo at one point, "but you have to go through it yourself" it self-corrects with real wit and dazzling effects.
There are some fun geek fantasies: the only time Neo smiles is when martial arts programs are being down-loaded into his brain. Later, a rebel hacker and fellow geek generously offers him some intimate time with a virtual blonde in a red-dress he's created as a software training program.
The mysterious Zionist Oracle, the source of all wisdom to whom every good guy and human must trek, turns out to be a chatty, grandmotherly black lady baking cookies in her kitchen.
For most of the movie, Neo doesn't believe this Messiah stuff and riddled with the expected self-doubts and unwillingness to use his powers, a/k/a, his "Force." But once he does get religion, it's with a vengeance: in one of the campiest scenes of any recent sci-fi movie, he and Trinity download an arsenal of black weapons, along with superhuman powers, floor length leather jackets, a black chopper, and enough Kung Fu moves to take out a battalion of humanoids.
Bullets, bodies and shell casings literally rain from the skies (even bullets are stylish in this movie), buildings blow up, humans and androids both die and resurrected with regularity; and everybody goes back and forth between the real and virtual world so rapidly and fluidly that the movie very nearly invokes the experience of being online. The martial arts stunts approach choreographed ballet.
"The Matrix" is a sci-fi thriller, and a great one. Since it takes care not to take itself too seriously, it's not a good idea to give it more weight than it deserves. It doesn't explain itself to nerds, geeks and computer users - it's made for them. And any movie that leaves you disturbed, riveted, entertained, and then thinking when you leave the theater, is well worth the trip. jonkatz@slashdot.org
I loved it.
Awesome flick! I will see it again.
After watching the advertisements for the movie, I thought "This looks pretty stupid" but after reading your reviews, I feel like giving it a chance.
SFX the way they should be with plenty of industrial hacker lore.
I loved this movie so much, that I'm eager to add this "me too". And even thought Taco described the fight scenes as cheesy, they were some of the best parts. Oh and you've GOT to check out that chick! Best scene: scene between Neo and the Oracle.
I thought Reeves played Johnny very close to Gibson's short story and I liked it very much.
I do think The Matrix is Reeves best film to date though.
Good list....I'd also like to add Woody Harrelson to that myself....
I think this last point is an interesting one. It seems to me that for the most part people have conflicting feelings about technology. On the one hand we want technology to march ever onward, that is, insofar as it provides us with conveniences. On the other hand, there is an underlying fear of replacement or domination by machines. We seem to be removed from this fear, though, proximally and for the most part. It exists as an abstract sort of concern, like fears about the possibility of World War III (though for some, this fear is getting less abstract as things progress in the Balkans). Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be much of a recognition of the association of this hope and this fear.s /articles/01skep.html . It's kind of fluffy but interesting nonetheless.
The NY Times ran an article related to this phenomenon at http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/04/circuit
Regarding technology-as-evil in film, there's a long and illustrious history to this theme. It doesn't even always manifest directly as "technology is the source of evil." In movies like the Star Wars trilogy, we've got Organic-good vs. Artificial/Technological-evil. Even further back, Chaplin even made some films on this as well.
So far the key plot points appear to be a blatant ripoff of Jack Chalker's Wonderland Gambit trilogy
7 X/qid=923073947/sr=1-3/002-9136470-0674824
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/03453884
best trilogy I've read in a long while and the ending may be a little weak, but hardly the flop that Brin decided to end on.
Well, I guess stealing ideas is what open source is all about right?
'Nuff said.
Yeah, it was a great movie and all, but...
I'm no expert in the field, but I imagine that the human body would produce approximately the same amount of energy whether conscious or not. Therefore, the Matrix is pointless. Why bother creating a world for people to 'dream' a life in, instead of letting them create their own dreams? Just drug them, sever a nerve, or whatever.
Another thing...If the entire world is just a 'digital illusion', then the phones would be just as artificial as everything else. So why could these people only leave the matrix through phones?
There were plenty of other things to pick apart, too. Why didn't Neo use the equivilant of 'no clipping'?
Even with the holes, I must say this was a mighty fine movie.
I paid $4 and got to see it in the best theatre in Michigan. :P (Studio 28)
The overacting is on purpose, most of the scenes are knock off.
this is a GREAT movie
You pigs, peasant, redneck of the mind
And I believe StarWars is overhyped, not a good sign.
This one came with little hype and BOOOOOMMM IT'S A FUCK.NG BOMB!!!!!
GO GO GO GO SEE IT...
Actualy the piece of eqipment they use for the stop-motion pan is pretty cool. From what i understand it's a semicircular machine in which there is a continuous strip of film. Each frame on this film is then exposed simultaneously to a different camera angle. In this way they can appear to circle the camera around while the action appears to be frozen. I think there are a couple of adverts that used this technique.
His VCR probably still flashes 12:00! :)
NPR hands out good reviews so feaverishly it makes my ears hurt. A great example was their review for the David Cronenberg's gem "the crash". Never a more glowing review of a film been given to such a piece of gay canadian art trash...
Also: NEO = ONE - come on, do we really need such proding to understand character types? I guess maybe with reeves we do...
But aren't you just waiting for the inevitable line "Whoa."?
hohum...since someone mention descarte, might as well mention the gran daddy of all western philosopy.
*yawn*...why can't get some realllllly original movie plot? not some replay of a 3millenia old parrable. gawd...
SPOILER BELOW
My apologies for not being all that familiar with the eastern philosophies but I thought the movie had Christian imagery.
come on.
Neo was clearly the messiah bringing in a new era. In the end of the movie he is resurrected for pete's sake.
The Uptown rocks.
About 7-8 years ago they did a sci-fi series,
and I got to see 2001, Blade Runner, Aliens and
some others on their huge screen.
That's where I want to be for SW:TPM.
If you see the movie a second time, the opening scene and the scene with the oracle will REALLY blow your mind. All kinds of foreshadowing that you don't get the first time through!
:)
"being the one is like being in love" Get it?
This wasnt a review, it was the CliffsNotes for The Matrix.
SPOILER
When he took the pill, that was a symbol of the beginning of the journey. He was reborn into his given body to start the journey toward enlightenment.
When he was reborn the second time, I saw it more as he had fully awakened, that he had achieved total conciousness. He saw things as how they really are in his world, and thus could change them. He was no longer bound by the chains of his own mind.
This parallels closely with eastern philosophies, where we are ruled by our inabilty to see things for what they really are. There is no supreme being, just a supreme conciousness that we are to hooked into, some of us more then others. A good starting point on eastern philosophy is the Tao Te Ching.
I really liked the AI's speach on humans being a plauge on this planet. As much as I hate to admit it, that cord strikes deep in me. I look around at what we do to our environment for the sake of progress and I see a future similar to The Matrix. Almost makes me wonder about my own reality.
Burn you bastard... How dare you compare this movie to the perfection of Pi... Aronofsky is a genius! Sean Gullette will be forever etched my mind as true determination...
Matrix kicked ass, but a totally different kind of "kick ass". Pi moved your mind, Matrix moved your body...
-D.Alphaeus
ok, i saw the trailers and thought, "gee, that looks pretty good. maybe i'll give keanu another try." unfortunately, i should have known better. the first half hour was spectacular. trinity is a babe, and the first scene with her escaping from the agents, running on walls and stuff was great. even the part about machines taking over was okay. but then the movie started to drag. maybe it was the waschowski (sp?) bros. fascination with slow motion fight scenes, or the close ups of hundreds and hundreds of shells falling out of automatic weapons (none of which ever hit our hero or heroine), but i couldn't wait for the movie to be over. oh well, i can't wait for star wars to get here. maybe it will get the bad taste out of my mouth.
Hell, it won't be too long before movies generate themselves. With the advent of widespread digital special effects, realistic synthesized voices, and Rob's movie-plot-generator Perl script, you could set up a cron job to crank out three or four blockbusters a day.
Get lost, Spielberg.
The major difference between Dark City and Matrix is that Matrix doesn't open with a shot of Rufus Sewell's ass.
Then how come:
1. I saw at least 70 camera posts on the HBO special on The Matrix last night.
2. If a difference in camera lighting conditions affects a continuous movement over ~70 cameras, why doesn't it royally screw 2 or 3 (also under different conditions) trying to interpolate?
3. Why don't they interpolate the ~70 cameras and make it smooth enough for you?
4. How come the guy who invented the effect, patented the proedure with many cameras and not 2 or 3 with interpolation?
5. I'll give you 2 or 3 pictures of the same object at different angles and you make a continuous animation of it, OK?
First of all, do not read spoilers. They seem to spoil the movie.
What did I miss after/during the credits? I will have to see the movie again, I guess.
What are you talking about? Roger Ebert LOVES SF. You can see it in all his reviews of good SF movies. He just doesn't like bad SF.
So far, there have been dozens of comments, and after briefly scanning all of them, I have yet to see a "KATZ MUST DIE" or "GO AWAY JON" comment! Is something very seriously wrong? Or have the Katz-bashers finally learned that if they don't like what he writes, they can simply not read it (or, now, filter him out?)
:-)
http://x15.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=45 4967271&CONTEXT=923090637.220790800&hitn um=8
:-)
The Matrix was one of the coolest Sci-Fi movies I've ever seen. If anyone would like a neat collage of images from the film (perfect for a desktop picture in front of a black background) go to http://neglekt.lwhs.org/~abe/matrix.gif
I went with several friends (intellectual-types)
and all looked at me like I was silly when I said
``What -- that old idea?''
So much for modern education.
- chad
At the risk of starting a debate, the idea of an "evil genius/deceiver god" distorting our view of the world did come from Descartes, but it was a hypothesis he eventually rejected (based on the definition of God).
_The Matrix_ does poke at some interesting questions such as whether or not the world is as it seems. Maybe none of this really exists and we are all sitting in vats somewhere. Question is, does it really matter, then?
Ebert recorded a commentary track for the DVD release of "Dark City" that is so filled with detail and history of SF/fantasy films that it's worth two credit hours.
There are two competing approaches, one that is basically a morph, and the other with the multiple cameras. The Matrix used the multiple camera approach. Here's the proof:
http://www.whatisthematrix.com/cm p/sfx_index.htmlCheck out the stills section. A major pile of very nice cameras.
Wouldn't electric eels be better?
actually, the Mayan "end" date is December 21, 2012 (but who is counting eh??).......stay tuned......((!))
Well, you answered one problem with a good reason
I love that movie, 'twas AWESOME
Just got home from seeing this movie. It was incredible. Best Sci-fi flic since Event Horizon (Hey, I thought it was good). Already have plans to see it again.
There aren't any real holes I can think of in the
movie except 2 (everything else has a plausible
explanation). The reason why they typically used
phones as the 'exit-patch' was because they needed
some signal to lock onto so that their consciousness can exit the matrix to go back to the real world...
Anyhow, the 2 'holes' I can't figure out is that
people do not produce energy - they consume it just like any machine (if they really wanted energy they would go nuclear). The other 'hole' is that the future could never be that grim. I am a computer scientist and AI enthusiast and I say that there is nothing but a bright future in that area... If AI ever takes off and the computers do all the thinking for the humans, you can bet that the humans (or at least some of them) will be in control...
This movie shows a lot of influences from a number of genres, but none so obvious as from Hong Kong cinema.
The slow motion sequences and choreographic gun battles are a pure homage to John Woo; I especially enjoyed little touches like the shower of spent casings from the minigun.
A lot of people have mentioned Jackie Chan; they clearly haven't watched enough Hong Kong movies! Jackie Chan tends to emphasize physical humor and use of the environment than gee-whiz martial arts. The very postured, stylistic kung fu is much more reminiscent of Jet Li films, especially the wire work that lets them get off multiple kicks while flying through the air and run up and down walls. In a Jet Li period piece, it's a little much to take, but here, it's conveniently explained away by explicitly giving the martial artists super powers.
I've long wanted to see a Hong Kong style movie done in Hollywood fashion; there have been many recent attempts at it, but most have fallen short in one way or another. This is the first one that just gets the style right in so many ways, and the fact that it borrows so many elements just makes it more so.
Borrows? Mediocre movies "borrow." Great movies steal. The Matrix steals in the best tradition and adds an interesting plot to boot.
i agree with you about the future not being so grim but a human does produce energy, everytime we think electrical impulses go through our minds and when we move we use the nerves to send them also but there isnt that much energy, i guess thats why they had to enslave us all, hehehe, either way the whole human race and earth are screwed badly, very very badly.
I agree - there were so many more things that could have been a factor in the movie - but from what I understand, the Wachowski brothers wrote the entire script - and they are self-proclaimed 'computer-illiterates.' (I believe it was a Cinescape article late last year). Next time there's a virtual "world" based movie, the main character should be damn INVINCIBLE when in cyberspace. Infinite ammo, extra gore codes, the works, you know?
> people do not produce energy - they consume it just like any machine
Ummm... what's your temperature? Are you not giving off heat like every other human? Since most of the work out bodies do is to produce heat, could you not harness that heat?
Another way would be to use the actual material that composes the human body and break it down into necessary components. Hell, even break a human down and suck out the water, then seperate the water to get the hydrongen and oxygen. (but I'm not a bio-science type person, so it may not even be possible)
heheh!
Someone at our theather made that sound
out loud. There was a ripple of laughter
from the back of the theather to the front...
The panning around the shooting was cool though.
In reply to point c)
Yes, you are right. But what "debugs" means? You are actually searching for the bugs thorugh the code, ie. you have to do it in a software manner. Doing it in a hardware manner, would be slamming your computer to chase the bug out. But, would it works? Let us think it this way, you want to identify the bug, but the code is too long and too complicated. You might try to write a short function to parse in same value to part of the code and verify its ouput. If the output is desired, then you proceed to another part.
In my opinion, the agents are **debugging code**. That is how Neo defeated them at the end of the movie. He scrambles the **debugging code** so that it will not work. The agents were not defeated physically, because it just could not be done.
It is a very good movie, bravo!!!!!
2nd law. You have a problem, here.
Overall, the physics (and technology) in this movie sucked. However, compare to anything that Hollywood puts out, and it was pretty damn good. I loved it, and would gladly go back and suspend disbelief again.
Just to recap, here are some other techincal plot holes:
Overall, these are minor points. The cinematography was stunning (I loved the green fill-lights on every in-Matrix sceen, subtle). The special effects were even and only overdone in the ways that the script really needed them to be. The only thing that bothers me is that the well-deservied technical Oscars will almost certainly be won by SW (which may, in fact earn them). So far, this is a very interesting year, and it's only April!
As for the love-interest thing, I'm actually beginning to approve of the forced feeling tack-on-at-the-end love interests. This is one of the best ways to deal with Hollywood's irrational need to have a love interest in every film. I would, of course, prefer if some studio, somewhere, simply got over it. I'm waiting for a re-make of The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy and the Scarecrow develop a hot-and-heavy lust relationship half way through the movie. Yes, I think that would forever prove that this doesn't need to happen....
What is his favorate inside of Hollywood?
THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE IVE SEEN SINCE STAR WARS! AND I COULD STILL QUESTION WHETHER IT WILL BE BETTER!
i was very disappointed with 'the matrix'
it did not even cover LU decomposition,
which is standard fare for any college lin. alg. class.
there was scant mention of the various properties
of singular v. non singular matrices, and
furthermore it did not explain the link between
linear algebraic systems and matrix mathematics.
Does it annoy anyone else people that nick pick a movie apart? I have yet to see any movie without some plot point missing or ascue. Let it go. Glaring plot mistakes I can handle and would like pointed out (Like the entire Wing Commander plot).
I mean, to get technical, you should have brought up the problem with the "real world" humans even being able to move. Living your entire existence in a atrophied state, you wouldn't have barely any muscle structure. People in comas will curl into fetal positions from muscle shortening if they don't exercise them.
I've been saying for a long time that if Xena's fight scenes were just a little less cheesy, it would be an enormous improvement. The Matrix is a Hong Kong movie without a budget -- not just in action, but in plot (right down to the "kiss of life" -- as my friend Tom O' Bedlam groaned, "Oh GOD, how very Japanese!"). Sometimes this is good and sometimes it's bad. Plot? Bah. Character? Ha.
But EYE CANDY?
Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh.........
And the reason I'll be seeing it a second time is not just the incredible eye candy, but the fight scenes... which I imagine Jackie Chan is intently studying right now and figuring how to go one better, knowing him. Go for it, Jackie! Blend the
real and unreal as only you can! KICK HOLLYWOOD BUTT!
(damn it. Lost the URL for "the Hong Kong Xena Connection", which was why I chose that subject in the first place...)
-frogfarm@hempseed.com
who doesn't bother to log in except from home
Um, I thought Dark City was better, actually.
sr
Gotta disagree with you, Dark City is one of my favorite movies. I though the plot was much more interesting and intellectual. I DID like The Matrix a lot though!
Respectfully,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@maila.wm.edu
I cannot believe anyone would use the word "great" to characterize this film. There was nothing in it that hasn't been done before. The story line has been done to death already in SF literature, the action has been done 100x better in just about any film out of Hong Kong, the ambiance was done better in "Dark City". The whole "love conquers all" ending was so ridiculous that I had to grab on to the arm-rests to keep myself from bolting out of the theater in disgust at the lame Hollywood crap that passes for a story.
That said, it's not a bad movie, but it's not great either. Unless you're a 14 year old comic book junkie, don't expect this to be the religious experience everyone is describing it as. This is a film to catch at the matinee price on a boring weekend afternoon. I guess my problem was that I bought into the ridiculous reviews I read here and over at AICN. If you go into the theater not expecting much you might even be pleasantly surprised.
duh!
it takes half a brain to figure out that it's created by a lot of cameras and a lot of morphing.
I'm sorry, but it fails to amuze me after the first GAP commercial.
Is it just me? I'm normally not that interested in racial debate, but Boy! the Salon review is quite damn racist.
Well, Well, well.
I heard that there are Christian Goths, too. Anything you like are Christian, anything you don't are otherwise.
Seen Shallshank redemption?
Truth is, Christianity is more like a lie than a philosophy.
yeah, agreed! The thing that truely amuzes me is how Reeves lost all that weight! It must have been over 30 lbs! Now, that's a good Hollywood FX not many of us geeks can do.
Now you made me wanna see "Dark City".
(here's the spoil)
That frog kiss is really sick. but it did raise a question in me.
"Do you believe in fate?"
I don't know if i do. that's another discussion, though.
If you didn't watch so much TV perhaps you wouldn't find the FX so old.
i agree with psycho, if computers are created with human like though process only better, it will consume us, think about social darwinism... we are the masters right now, we lead cattle to their death just so we can eat, we can harness rivers, shape mountians, we are fucking king, but when there is something smarter then us, quicker then us, we become the cattle.. the new masters of the universe have to eat. we are all working twoards our end..
hahahahahahaha...
well anyways my grim two cents...
rock scofield,
After a certain threshold, a sufficiently advanced AI could begin to create AIs that were more advanced than it, and intelligence could increase exponentially in very little time.
"Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, in Theory : Histories of Cultural Materialism)" is indeed by by Jean Baudrillard
(en francais)
I saw bladerunner at the uptown and at the kennedy center theatre. I thought it better at the kennedy center, because it had a softer mood.
I saw matrix at the uptown, and i thought it needed a queiter mood. Uptown is great for action flix, but for artsy movies (matrix was art), you should see it somewhere else.
-bobby
This month's entertainment weekly claims that the Brothers intend for The Matrix to be a trilogy. It certainly seems like there's more to tell... I'd definitly be up for more.
Really? :-) Neo's (Keanu) hand-to-hand combat scenes were obviously "borrowed" from the fighting styles seen in Bruce Lee films and other Hong Kong action movies. It was funny and almost ridiculous seeing Keanu trying to perform a signature Bruce Lee pose or gesture. Keanu is better than Segal, Norris and Van Damme but he's no Bruce Lee! :-)
:-)
I know sig said, "[Keanu's] martial arts skills are legit. The martial arts guy who choreographed the fight scenes refused to work with Keanu unless he studied Kung Fu in his dojo for four hours a day, every day for four months." However, I wonder if Keanu really did his own Kung Fu in the film? Did they use stunt doubles (using CG to attach Keanu's face to the double's face later) or speed up the film for the fight scenes where you saw Keanu doing his amazing Kung Fu?
Overall, I like how The Matrix excluded non-Asian fighting styles and used the Asian/Hong Kong formula in creating The Matrix.
I thought the movie stole far too much from Woo. It did it better than most hollywood films, it fit in (kind of) but many sequences were shot-for-shot from Woo films. I liked seeing a Woo trademark shot with zero gravity though (when Neo and the bad guy have guns to eachother faces in mid air) but I think that no one does Woo like Woo, and having Ted do it makes it more humourous then it does stylish and cool.
In fact, i whispered to my friend next to me "Oh no, he's got the Gluon!" to which he replied "It was the EGON! EGON!". More baffling than the gun's appearance in this film is what the hell is it called?
A third friend felt that the gun seemed much similiar to the Quake 1 Thunderbolt? I don't see it. It seemed to me that they could pretty much use any gun that followed the rules of the Matrix as a program (gravity, physics, etc) so why not ask Tank for a BFG10k or a Rail gun? I guess they were too dedicated to rip off Woo to put in cool guns, no?
ERROR: Death Touch File is Missing! ;-)
Wrong, it was 8 hrs. a day for 6 months DUMBASS
GET YOUR FUCKING FACTS STARIGHT BEFORE YOU BLURT OUT UNPROVEN RUMORS. DUMBASSES LIKE YOU FUCK THIS WORLD UP. YOURS TRULY "NEO"
I thought this was a great movie. ...
Normally I have a pretty harsh opinion of any big budget hollywood film destined to be the season's biggest hit. T2, Men in Black, Jurassic Park
they all suck suck! IMHO.
This was a good hybrid of interesting ideas plus great FX plus more than adequate writing/acting/cinematography.
Basically, for me at least, I was totally absorbed in film the whole way through and for the most part not majorly dissapointed by some breach of incredibility or cheesiness.
While still maintaining something of a hollywood/action flick's tone, it still manages to totally capture the attention and touch on so many of both eastern and western religious and philosophical ideas that it'll make your head spin.
That was the clincher for me that this was a F'in great movie!
There is no comic; but on the website, there are comics inspired by the movie. The authors include Ted McKeever (YUM!) and a bunch of others. There are also two short stories, one by Neil Gaiman, the other by Poppy Z. Brite.
It's fantastic to see what great stories the movie's setting has inspired these authors. Gaiman's story is nothing short of beautiful. I'd say the story of the movie is not as engrossing, but then, the movie has the credit of creating that universe, so gets the palm.
Definitely worth a look. http://www.whatisthematrix.com
I think the poster meant Maya as in the Hindu Goddess of Illusion. The Goddess who hides the truth of Universiality behind the illusion of Multiplicity and seperateness. To break through is to achieved Samhadi (understanding of the whole), and therefore mastery.
AC quoted sig's comments:
2 /1530209&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=th read&pid=54#2925
http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/04/0
Where's your source?
BTW, AC was talking about Keanu not Neo.
http://x13.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=46 0449622&threaded=1&CONTEXT=923324827.105 8537551&hitnum=3
= 462199415.2&threaded=1&CONTEXT=923324827.1 058537551&hitnum=5
;-)
and
http://x13.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN
One article said Keanu, Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving and Carrie-Anne Moss trained 5-6 hours a day and the other article said they trained from 9 to 5 every day (8 hours a day).
It really does not matter how many hour they trained. They all looked very good for only four months of training.
BTW, did you know Keanu was part Chinese? The Kung Fu must be in his blood.
I know this post is too late.
Talking to a dormant thread is like talking
to an empty room.
Is anyone listening? Will anyone hear this?
Oh well. . .
The Matrix had its ups, its down, its lefts and
its rights.
For a postmodern action/SF film, it actually gave
us eye candy, and a kernel of story to work with.
We didn't see quality acting, but most of us weren't there for that.
We didn't see complete adherence to the laws of thermodynamics or physics, and secretly I think we're glad.
(I tried to write a story that kept all the physical laws in mind. It was boring. My friends told me to burn it.)
Even with its faults, The Matrix will definitely reside in the hallowed halls of SF cult status.
With that said, I would like to point out a few final things.
I noticed the green 'matrix' code running down the
screen was actually a mixture of numbers,
Japanese Katakana and possibly some Japanese kanji.(Very Japanese Anime related)
Philosophically, I cite Plato's allegory of 'The cave'. People freed from the Matrix or Cave must go back and convince others to come with them into enlightenment. The Matrix being post modern, any reference you got from this film is correct, regardless of the intent of the filmakers.
Finally,(not that it's incorrect to do so),but
Why do we question reality?
I guess everyone could label something into the philosophy of the movie. As such the movie was very close to the Prasangika-Madhyamika philosophical school of Buddhism, where everything is labelled, and breaking out from this ignorance is showing the Absolute reality.
There are all kinds of references to skilful means to achieve this state, especially the ending where the supposedly 'wrong' prophecies and actions taken by Morpheus and others force Neo to break out from the system and become 'one' with the computer simulation. As such there's again a strong emphasis on the shunyata (emptiness) realization of the Buddhist school of thought. --Kent
Wow, your a touchy son of a bitch. 8 hours, 4 hours, who cares.
Copying or imitating great art is relatively easy.
:-)
Improving on the works of the past is what made John Woo and others like him so great and legendary.
New ideas in entertaiment are NOT impossible to find. It takes imagination, etc. Ask John Woo...
It's pretty clear that The Matrix "borrowed" a lot of intellectual property from other Chinese films, but I'm sure the producer and movie studio took the necessary legal precautions to produce such a great clone. :-)
The world has been "borrowing" many new and great ideas from the Chinese for thousands of years. It's still happening today. The Matrix is just another example of the "borrowing." It's a good thing.
I really loved this film, and especially the hole
story about the Matrix.
( Morpheus please get me out of this damn world, wanna learn some Kungfu in 2.5ms too.... )
What I didn't get is why the hell Neo resurrects after he's shot down by agent smith at the end??
Can anybody give me some Matrix specific explication, using the fact that he is the 'one'???
And please don't tell me that it's because she's
telling him that she's in Love with him. This would really, really terribly suck and I would start hating the film. You can't put such stupid
Hollywood kitsch shit in such a wonderful film...
concerning Trinity: Wow, I'd love a women who can
kill you in 200 different ways in one second...
We need a thread with the best attempts by the /. crowd to fix the holes in the plot. Make small changes or give good explanations about why things that seemed cheezy were still correct for the movie.
Q1. Why does he just survive when the Hot Babe whispers in his ear and gives him a smootch?
A1. As you may have noticed, he was 'developing' his affinity with the Matrix at a phenominal rate during the final 10mins of the film (also Matrix/"Real" time in the movie). In the initial fight with Mr.Agent, he is taking some collateral damage. Later (even with the bullets) he is not. His Mind no longer fully believes that the Matrix can damage him, but he is still stunned by the bullets. Science Sez even people in a coma can hear, so that is what happened to him.
Q2. Why do the machines use humans as batteries? That's Stupid!
A2. Yes, it's Stupid, and so obviously untue. However, the human brain is a great computational engine. The Machines are using that compute power, not energy-power. How are they using it? We won't explain it enough to get into trouble.
Q3. How can any human do more than the Machines in the Matrix?
Q3.1. If we base our answer on A2, then we can say that the Machines have to do stuff in the Matrix that most humans could believe. The Machines enhance the powers of the Agents by spoon feeding the populace stoopid "action" movies.
Q3.2. More in line with everything SAID in the movie: The machines don't have enough computational power to do whatever they want, and still simulate the Matrix believably for 99.99% of humanity. The Matrix is like an operating system. Things have to happen at a certain speed, and if you try to do something too complicated that the system is not meant to do, or something that is not consistent, then you skrew up the data structures or create a race condition and you get a Blue Screen. If you Blue Screen all your users, they Puke and Die, and you loose a bunch of your Batteries/Processors. The One is NOT limited by this because he is an Uber-Hacker (not Cracker!) and thus SMARTER than the Machines. He can create new Matrix Sub-Routines dynamically which consistently make the world do what he wants. He obviously uses instead of .
Q4. Why aren't the machines ALL POWERFULL? Why haven't they Singularitied off the board?
A4. The machines are NOT SMARTER THAN HUMANS. Only one AI was created, and it was smart enough to operate the existing Human Technology, although it would not have been able to design itself It created copies of itself, was instantly legion, and made a quick vicious military coup. One of the Comix stories on the movie web site has the machines trying to get a Matrix'd Human to design a really smart AI for them.
Anyone Else want to add to this?
-Anomolous Cowherd
So in your opinion it's the love talk and the
kiss which resurrected him???? (Hate this).
I would have a explanation:
He tricks the Agent by telling the matrix to
make his body behave like a dead body inside the
matrix..
But I think I can remember how his heart stops beating on the ship, and the control stuff makes
this beeep we all now from ER, so his body is also
dead in the real world and my eplication is not holding anymore...
please anybody, explain me that it's not love telling kissing hollywood bullshit!!!!!!!!!!
Solution: cut the damn scene of him dying on the
ship out (just one and a half second anyway...)
and put in more of freaky stuff they certainly
cut out to make it a +- 2 hours film...
(a five hours version would really be cool)
I absolutely agree with the previous comment.
I just want to add that if you want to see action or effects, you could go for better movies. If you are looking for more than recycled, "one meter deep" philosophy, it is again not the movie to go and see. I will be glad to receive interlligent replies at escape1984@rocketmail.com
...who rides in a black helicopter...
sigh
Goodbye...
The theory of forms: we can only perceive imperfectly, but that doesn't mean that the perfect form doesn't exist. Theory of reality: we can only see shadows of it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
There's no reason to question reality. Unless you get it shoved in your face, like Neo did. It's the story of his awakening, and should make you think: what would *you* do in similar circumstances?
I suspect most people over the age of 30 wouldn't. I know I wouldn't. They have too much invested in the status quo of reality as it appears to be.
In a sense, this movie is very saddening to me (but that's just my strange frame of mind right now) because it got me thinking about how most people, including myself, cherish their illusions. Reality *is* a consensual hallucination.
New ways of thinking about reality, or new trails, must necessarily be blazed by rebels. The old guard has to die to make way for these new ways. So in a sense, the movie is really about human mortality.
Does that make sense?
More like Plato, eh? Allegory of the cave...
I have an explanation:
Neo didn't die -- he just entered a state of total understanding of the matrix, like nirvana or whathaveyou from whatever "eastern philosophy" you choose to borrow from.
So entering this state of meditation, his body appeared to die, hence his heart stopping etc. But when he got kissed by Trinity, his heart had to start pumping blood again to power the huge boner he of course got.
Ok sorry.
Prolly film. Digital cameras (unless you're Lucas) are prohibitively expensive right now, rigging up an array of them would cost more than the entire movie.
- uk/muybr-08.htm
Incendentally, the cinefex article on Lost In Space explained the claytons method for doing the 'frozen moment' effect. You can do the expensive way with 70 to 150 cameras, as used with TimeTrack (tm), or do as Framestore did, which is to get 10 standard SLR cameras, and use inferno/flame to do a smooth morph between them. Of course, this limits you to a pause effect only, vs the large rig which can do back/forwards/flip time as the camera moves.
An important part of the effect is the shutter controller, which with the TimeTrack can do some natty effects, vs a bunch of slr cameras welded together, which can't.
Incendentally (to venture even futher off topic), this technique isn't new. Muybridge was experimenting with this over 100 years ago!
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/anima/muybridg/html
Matt
I think it's a bit harsh to dog on keanu so much. His character wasn't as bad as I keep hearing people say it was. the problem, if anything, is that the character that keanu is playing is kind of a weirdo and isn't exciting and dynamic like we've come to expect of 'good actors'. In my opinion, he fits the role well. Would you rather have had keanu, or a good, 'nobody' actor like the one who played the main role in dark city. Personally, i thought dark city didn't bring in the bucks it should have because it didn't have many big name stars.
and who cares whether it's cracker or hacker. That's such a stupid argument. hacker has been accepted by the public as including the 'true' definition of hackers and crackers. So that's the way it is. the standard has been set. remember the movie Hackers? In the future, computers probably realized the absolute futility of using the word crackers and just use hackers. get a brain and take that stick out of your ass.
and i disagree with your comparison of neo's vision at the end of the movie to 'looking at ascii characters'. I thought it was a damn good effect and looked awesome. it could just have been his brain's new conceptualization of the world, not the actual matrix code. i think it works, cuz i can imagine keanu moving closer and the image getting more full of data. i.e. the people are more fleshed out by the data than they were at the distance he was looking at them from.
badass film. beautiful camera work. the director should get an academy award. wow.
was btter
There are no consistency problems. The "explanations" for why the robots have enslaved humanity come from humans! Maybe the robots have a much better reason - hinted at on the matrix web site - such as harnessing all those humans to generate a superior AI.
Although I doubt that anybody's going to read this :)
Fantasic movie. Wow. I've seen it 4 times so far. :)
Hey, yeah, the exploding boxes were in the movie...
At least once, Tank touched one of the three monitors
flowing with encoded data from the Matrix...
I think he did it to create an exit but I don't recall exactly...
Also there was a somewhat similar effect when the deja vu occured... it shows Tank very briefly in that scene, back on the Neb.
I think the best part of the movie is all the little references to spirituality. I found that alot of the underlying ideas of were very closely related to eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism.
"I can show you the door, but you must walk through it yourself."
"You must not think that you can do it, you must know you can do it"
The imagery was classic symbolism, from the "birth" scene to the final battle scene. It was a well done movie, one of the best movies I have seen in a long time.
agreed,
what was funny is that by this point you bought SO MUCH into the plot (at least i did) that the simple looking kitchen looks absolutely magical. Even the cookies look sort of supranatural. At that point I had a "out of body" experience, watching myself watching the movie and going "WOW this is great stuff, and I looking at a random kitchen with a random looking mama, pretending she is an oracle and I AM BUYING IT ALL THE WAY"
I thorougly enjoyed the movie from minute 1 to the last one
I saw The Matrix the other day, and I must say that it is very similar to Dark City in several regards (storyline, main character, etc.). Which isn't surprising, as both of them are similar to other works. Personally, I liked them both a lot. Dark City had some awesome SFX (like the city changing), but The Matrix has SFX that are at least as awesome as Dark City's best in scene after scene. Incidentally, watching Dark City on the big screen is the way to do it. Remember the part where they walk out onto Shell Beach, and how John's eyes had to adjust? After sitting in a completely dark theatre for an hour or two, you're sharing that feeling with them 100%. Truly innovative, if you ask me.
The whole movie is like a sci-fi, special effects, john woo flick on speed. :p right down to the pseudo religion, the questions of fate, and the "finding of self worth".
Any thoughts?
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
No - they needed a "hardwire" to get out ... since everything in the matrix is conceptual (read gibson). The phone with it's cable represents a "physical" connection to the "real" world.
See ... when the bitch cipher sells them out "The Man" cuts the "hardwire" on that "building" so now the "phone" doesn't work. But these are all anaolgies for software compenents that provide their "personas" with escape from the software that is the matrix.
"The red pill is a trace program"
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Two hours of eye candy that actually worked with the story. Good stuff...
Go see it in a good movie theatre. Sit up front. Lean back. Try not to blink.
The last time I used ``amblient 1'' to do all the lighting in my povray model. Looked very strange.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I'm not sure about City of Lost Children or Dark City, but the plot of the Matrix is a classic Campbellian Hero's Journey. Just like Gilgamesh (and Star Wars, for that matter).
chris
-- this is not a sig
If none of this really exists and we're all in vats somewhere, there could be some mechanism built in to allow one to su and modify what we percieve as reality.
That said, I'm liking what I hear about this movie -- maybe I'll go catch a show today (what the hell, it's only $4.50 before 5:30).
On another subject, this "Katz v. Taco" thing needs some Mortal Kombat II-inspired icon to go with it. Maybe a shot of them holding up their dukes at one another. No, on second thought that would look pretty bad -- maybe they could be poised with their palm pilots and cell phones and personal fax machines, ready for a geek duel a la Dilbert. Yeah, that'd work...
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I thought Taco's review had the appropriate angle - it felt like (having seen the movie) he said all
the right things to get me interested without
spoiling the big 'OH NEATO!' part where you find
out what the matrix is. That had to be half of the
fun of the movie right there. Go a little easier
on the spoilers next time, Katz.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
Posted by shauna_d:
It had some great effects, but my friends and I repressed giggles a lot through the movie. It was very melodramatic and overacted (expected from Keanu, not expected from a great actor like Lawrence Fishburn). I describe it as Dune meets Jackie Chan meets Alien meets (insert Gibson book here).
It was worth the $7.50, but only for the Keanu eye candy (for the grrls).
Posted by Nericus:
:)
Only Two thumbs...C'mon guys!!! You've both got two hands! It deserves at least three thumbs and a toe! This movie...."oh my god" sums it up very well.
Posted by Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters:
:-)
I have to figure out how to say enough to get moderated over a reasonable threshhold.
I just wanted to put in a really strong good word for the movie _Dark City_. It made it to theatres for all of 5 minutes, as I remember. I had to get it on video myself, which is too bad since it would have looked nice on the big screen.
But reading the reviews of _The Matrix_ (haven't seen it yet), and the trailers, it looks like _Dark City_ has an awful lot in comon with the former in both plot elements and visual style. That said, _Dark City_ winds up being genuinely interesting in the way it handles its philosophical/existential questions (and I might flaunt my credentials as a Philosophy Ph.D. in this regard... if only because most 'philosophical' questions in movies are so very dopey). OK, it's not the same as reading Deleuze, or even Descartes. But _Dark City_ actually does make you think about it at the end of it.
I am sure that _Dark City_ did not have the FX budget that _The Matrix_ did... but it had enough to do some nice stuff. And the visual mood is fascinating throughout... I especially like the consistent syncretism of the film, which it shares with some notable others, like _Brazil_ (and in some ways, _Blade Runner_). That is, there are a number of films (and some Gibson short story, I forget the title) that are about a future... but the future is the *PAST's* future. That is, the films (made in 1980-2000, say) try to create a world which is the sci-fi future envisioned in the 1920s through 1950s. The effect is to be simultaneously futuristic and nostalgic. It is a nice effect, and one which presents a fascinating cinimegraphic image.
Posted by gcanyon:
There was a very obscure pop cultural reference in The Matrix, and I'm looking for any kindred souls who got it, when Neo is running away from agents in the Matrix and yells into a cell phone, "Mr. Wizard, get me the hell out of here!"
Hint--it's not the science experiment Mr. Wizard.
Posted by The Incredible Mr. Limpett:
:)
Haven't seen the movie but that's a Tooter the Turtle reference!
dribble drabble drizzle droll...time for Tooter to come home..
(or whatever his magic words are...being ages since I've actually seen the cartoon)
----
"Wars, conflict, it's all business. One murder makes a
villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."
Posted by shauna_d:
This pig thinks the overacting was not totally intended...yes, there was some intentional humor in the flick (my favorite which was the shootout scene in the subway station with the newspapers blowing around) but they did take themselves pretty seriously during most of it, don't you think? Just the way Fishburn would talk so deep and slow...
I just wasn't able to "lose" myself in this movie...I was constantly being jerked back into my seat in the theatre as opposed to being immersed in the flick.
Posted by Assmodeus:
hey you moron!!! i havent seen the crying game yet!!!!
Posted by Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters:
I *did* like _City of Lost Children_ very much. It was another example of of creating an really interesting cinemagraphic world, full of puzzling and bizarre elements. But it seems like a very different ontological premise than _Dark City_ or _The Matrix_ (which I just saw since my first post). There was none of the Cartesian doubt element in _City of Lost Children_ that there was in the others. A strange and fascinating world, certainly. But it still was what it was... there was no skeptical question posed of whether the world the characters saw was really the world they lived in. I'm not saying that is either better or worse; but the comparison does not stand out so much for me.
Posted by aelyn:
I saw a preview screening last Wednesday (The 24th of March) and was completely awed by this movie.
It is now my absolutely favorite and I'm already planning on seeing this weekend and again next week with a friend!
Woohoo!
Posted by Phantom of the Operating Syste:
:)
If you do a little rewriting of the movie, you can get around that sillyness. The thermodynamic impossibilities of humans as batteries (waste heat is like, so inefficient) can be substituted for using humans for computational power to run the AIs and the Matrix.
'nuff said
Also, who noticed that the story tried to parallel the story of Buddha as best it could, with the night-sea journey, etc
-phantom
Posted by Dean Collins:
I know this comment is too late for anybody to actually read it, but so what... this film blew me away. Some of the acting is a little wooden, but then again if you'd been floating in a vat of fluid for most of your life you might be a little wooden too, as if the you're numbed by the intensity of the real world.
Posted by Nick Carraway:
They would obviously need more chemical volume than that provided by dead bodies for food, but they would probably have access to a lot of organic material that would also work. Even though the skies are dark, there would still be simple plant and animal life which could be used as food for the "batteries." Regenerating the dead just makes the process more efficient. Would you rather spend valuable film time explaining everything rather than giving us all those cool FX and action sequences? Not me. And if you're picking at this minor nit, I hope you don't think too highly of the Star Wars films in which spaceships make SOUND and execute aerodynamic maneuvers in space!!!
Posted by Nick Carraway:
He was the first director to popularize those slow-mo gunfight scenes which John Woo later turned into a high art form. Which is not to say that John Woo isn't an original, because he most certainly is. I'm just saying that we all stand atop the shoulders of others, so try not to knock "The Matrix" too much for co-opting his style; a lot of other HK action films are much more blatant ripoffs and are not nearly as fun as "The Matrix." Plus, the press for "The Matrix" has given plenty of credit to the HK school, including prominently listing the names of the action specialists who choreographed the fight scenes.
Just my $0.02...
"What are you saying -- that I can dodge bullets?"
-- Neo
Posted by Cromas:
...because I have a few modifications that I would like to make. I liked WHAT happened in this movie, but I didn't like WHY things happened. Here are my mods:
1. The AI is benevolent and wants to preserve
the human species out of reverence (of their creators); they are putting humans in the Matrix as a gift so that we can live in a descent world before we destroyed it. They are trying to keep us from finding out about it so that we remain happy...kinda like "save the whales".
2. Morpheus accidentally discovered the truth and wants to recruit more people to share his misery.
-or-
2. Morpheus' team is a group of people who want to exploit the programmibility of the Matrix to create better lives for themselves: fortune, fame, babes, etc.. However, someone always has to stand guard in the "real world"--so maybe they take turns.
3. Most people who discover "reality" want to get back into the Matrix (wouldn't you?).
4. More of the "deja vu" glitches happen, this is what clues people in on the situation; kind of like Jacob's Ladder when ever so often Jacob sees something really weird but can't ever catch it.
5. People wake up into the real world when they "die" in the Matrix...pretty much equivalent to hell.
-or-
5. People get reincarnated when they "die" in the Matrix.
6. The "agents" are programmed by humans in the "real world" who hack into the Matrix to cause trouble because, a. they are sadistic, b. they are bored., c. they are religous zealots. Maybe they are trying to destroy the Matrix, and Keanu is the hero to stop them.
--
There are a lot of ways to make this a better movie.
The idea that the AI needs us for batteries is just totally ludicrous, because:
1. The law of conservation of energy: humans will not generate more energy than they consume in food/fuel.
2. The AI couldn't find some petroleum, nuclear fuel, or some other energy source? Oh sure but they could make billions of coccoons and flying metal squids!
--
Here is one of many problems with the Matrix itself:
1. The rules in the Matrix would be dynamic, not static. The AI could change them at will.
2. The agents would never get hurt.
3. The AI wouldn't even need agents, if they
really wanted to kill someone, it would be easy: just drop a 16-ton weight on them (a la Monty Python), etc.
Enough said.
I agree with you on this... I wonder if there are any early showings tomorrow, or one tonight after I finish my research...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I've seen the trailers on teevee, and they looked very good, but often the movies themselves don't live up to the promise - the Relic, anyone? But after reading these two, very good BTW!, reviews, I'm going to have to go see this puppy. Thanks Jon and Rob for the two thumbs up!
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Since he doesn't have to talk geek-talk in this one it works. He probably wouldn't have been my first (or second, etc.) choice, but he was ok for a plastic person.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yeah... now that I think about it, it was a little Dune-like. Had some Dark City, Face Off (what other movie paid so much attention to bullets?), and of course Jackie Chan for the cool martial arts scenes.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If they make a sequel, they better not dumb it down. It should be at least as smart as this one, and probably more so. I would hate to see a bad sequel to this movie.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
There are some similarities, but the plot isn't the same. Go see the movie. It's too good to pass up.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Of course that kinda works in our favor too. While they have similar tastes, their taste is also similar to most /. readers. If both of them like it, then most of us will probably like it too.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Isn't that why Taco put spoiler warnings all over the place??
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Where is the science in Star Wars? Star Wars is space opera, not sci fi. It's bad enough we have to here people rave that Star Wars is a good movie, but please don't call it sci fi.
And for the record, I enjoyed Star Wars. I've even read some of the recent books. But I don't consider them sci fi beyond the fact that there are space ships in it.
Hey Katz, you gotta pay attention in these movies... He didn't "download" all his abilities within the "matrix". He learned how to cheat - how to make it do what he wanted it do (what Fishburne's character was trying to teach him to do earlier on). That's half the point of the movie - once you knew what it was, you could make it do what you wanted, with the proper concentration, of course.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
The speech at the end was him, inside the matrix, speaking directly to it, telling it that he was going to reveal to everyone what was really happening. (i.e., show everyone that what they thought was reality, wasn't.)
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Ok, point by point:
:)
1) Yes, I know the fighting ability and weapons/equipment use was taught in that way. He didn't just pick that up.
2) Exactly. Neo had to figure out how to control the Matrix to make it do what he wanted it to - that wasn't taught, he just had to try it and go from there.
3) Like another guy said, the "Jump" environment was to get him to try in a safe environment to learn how to exploit the fact that the Matrix was only a simulated reality.
So unless I'm misreading what Katz said, my understanding was that he thought he "downloaded" the ability to control the Matrix itself, which is untrue. (I was in the front row. It was loud. I didn't fall asleep.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
The most unrealistic part of the movie was the beginning where Neo was supposedly working for a software company as a programmer and he went to work wearing a suit and tie and got chewed out for being late. That's what gave away that the world was fake.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
All I want is a movie with a real live heroine in it. Not another 90's movie about some rich guy who rescues the cocktail waitress from poverty or some housewife who rediscovers the value of housewifedom like all the movies are promoting these days. This Matrix movie looks like a heroine movie but the heroine looks too scrawny.
. . . goes back to THE first Sci-Fi novel ever. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
the conclusion:
Technology in of itself isn't evil, but man still has to come to grips with his moral/immoral use of technology.
I can't wait to see this movie, but it's NOT going to bust down my building exitement over TPM. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Actually, the term "Omega Point" comes from the French Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, and was popularized in recent SF by Dan Simmons's Hyperion books. It is a theological, not a technological, term.
Unlike many other theologians of his time, De Chardin accepted the scientific theory of evolution. However, his philosophy (being, as it was, theology) went beyond what can be considered scientific. He added to Darwin's theory the idea that evolution has a telos, or end-point to which it aspires. He called this telos "the Omega Point" and considered it to be the same thing as union with God. That is, according to de Chardin, humanity is presently evolving towards literal Godhead.
Naturally, this is not reconcilable with modern evolutionary theory, which considers evolution not to have a telos. However, it does make for good SF every once in a while; the first, second, and fourth books of the _Hyperion_ saga are really quite good. (The third, _Endymion_, reads like a Star Wars novel...)
If you check out the "Behind the Scenes" section at The Matrix Webpage they have pictures of the setup they used to do the paused pan effect. And yes, it is a long row of cameras.
It said in the movie that they liquefy the dead and feed them to the living intravenously.
It seemed the romantic twist at the end was very forced and didn't have any buildup from earlier in the movie. It seemed to just come from nowhere.
Remember when they first got Neo, he was sleeping in his room and Trinity brought him dinner? Remember Cipher saying "I don't remember you bringing me dinner when I first got here."? I'm sure there were other parts, it really didn't come as a surprise to me, I saw it coming.
Then again maybe I'm just used to their being some kind of love interest in just about every movie nowadays so I was expecting it.
This is really funny to me, considering I just read an interview with someone in the computer gaming industry (Probably from Epic or id) who was comparing the current state of first person shooter games as being similar to porn movies.
MY thought exactly. A nice mix of styles and they have to keep it short and to the point to cram them both in.
Keep it up!
--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)
By belief and will alone, you can control your reality.
Your reality is not reality. There is an external reality that is more real.
People freak out when they see the impossible, allowing the agents of reality to hunt you down.
Some people are chosen to be awakened. Humanity is not yet ready to be awakened. (Same terminology as WW's Mage)
As your understanding of the non-reality of reality improves, your powers improve.
Remember the training crowd scene, where Neo keeps getting bumped around, but Morpheus parts the crowd like the red sea? Perfect example of Arcane.
The scene at the end where Neo see's the world as a data stream? "Landscape in the Mind"
The Dream ability was renamed "downloading programs".
Hell, I think some of the action stunts they pulled come right out of the RPG's rule book...
(kick-ass movie though. Very Fun. Highly recomended)
I agree on both counts. Seeing that panning effect on every other commercial now is very annoying and shows how uncreative some of the tv people are, but this effect really belonged in this movie. All of the slow-motion panning and movement really lent itself to this film (particularily the fight sequences) and gave the audience some sense of what could be done in the matrix.
keep acting shocked and move slowly towards the cake.
true, but you have to admit that even during his more "cheesy" lines (ie. "wow"), it almost seemed to work...I for one am happy with the choice of actors..
>>Why, a mere 100 years in the future, is the earth's core cooled?
>They mentioned something about the humans "scorching" the sky when fighting the machines which I guess meant that they blocked out the sun because that was it's early source of power. This would have made earth's temperature drop.
Literally, blocking the sun, won't have any measureable affect on the core of the earth in a million years, much less one hundred. The whole bit about "feeding off of people" was there for "monster effect" and only for monster effect. No basis in reality at all. All the rest of the violations of physics stem from that one idea. All the BS about temperature, the agents, the battles, the AI living off of the energy of the people comes from the Hollywood need to make the AI monstrous.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Yeah.. stop motion panning has been overdone.. but I don;t think I've ever seen it used as effectively as in The Matrix. It really added to a LOT to the action sequences.. and the great use of fast/slow effects was killer too.
I think over all as a whole the special effects weren;t just "eye candy" but actyually added to the plot and action sequances of the movie.
-Ex-Nt-User
Alright as far as I see it, the major difference b/n Dark City and Matrix is that Matrix scarred the crap out of me since it had a "virtual" world much more like our own... in fact we couldn't tell the difference. In DC, you have perpetual night and no one knows how to get to their Sunny memories. Weird. Matrix is the ultimate holodeck. The memories being "downloaded" was cool for both movies but one was dependent on alien technology the other was all us baby. As for CoLC, the old guy getting into
"jacked" kids was similar but it ends right there.
My favorite was:
:)
"Theres a difference between knowing the path
and walking it".
This whole movie was so much food for thought that afterwards I had to take a nap.
The imagery was absolutely beautiful. What with the prophets/Oracle, John the Baptist/Morpheus, Judas/Cypher, the ressurection and the messiah figure in general. I'd say in that respect its a lot more like (the novel) DUNE. Very well thought out Science Fiction... not Sci-Fi.
... is the problem.
They feed the dead humans to the humans. Ok. Humans are producing heat, and the Na+/K+ pumps are producing electrical imbalances. And the bodies of the humans are maintaining and building themselves on this. These are all wasteful steps. Assuming the CO2 and H20 could be converted back to 02 and various sugars (old c6h12o6 fer example), this requires an imput of energy as well. In short, entropy wins.
They should have claimed the AI were using humans as biological computer components or something..
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Given the number of clones and remakes of TV shows and movies, I'm thinking it's already happened for the most part. :)
-Virgil
--
The Future: Some assembly required; batteries not included.
I keep saying it over and over again, once you start doing something besides complaining about everything all the time then maybe your ideas can be taken seriously. Lighten the hell up man. WALDEN IS A STUPID BOOK!!! HALF ASSED INTELLECTUALS KEEP SAYING THAT THAT STUFF IS THE ONLY STUFF THAT MATTERS! They are wrong! I love ya man, but enough is enough. The reason I told you to see 'Henry Fool' is so you would not turn out to be Henry.
Don't let that happen to you.
Oh wait. ALSO: Have you ever read a comic book?
They are:
A: Hyperreal
B: Over exagerated.
C: kinda funny/cool that way.
So yeah. That stuff was funny. IT WAS SOPPOSED TO BE!!!
Keanu was sopposed to be that way. This is not Shakespere (thank god) nothing could be more boring. If you want Shakespere, go see '10 things I hate about you' and complain about how the book was much better than the movie.
btw: Shakespere on the stage seems was more forced and flat and wooden and laughable than Keanu.
hehe.
I even bust out during the tragedies its so fake seeming.
hehe me too... fun french read.
I am really suprised by Katz and Taco's reviews of Matrix. I just saw it tonight, and I couldn't help myself from laughing at it. I thought I would give it a report card, since I seem to be the only one that thought it was bad.
.... Will technology be our own ultimate death? Even though these weren't new ideas they were presented in an interesting manner, which tied into the rest of the movie very well.
Plot: B-
Reason: I have to disagree with Katz... the movie repeatedly tries to explain what the Matrix is, and what the heck is going on. The movie isn't intended anymore for geeks/nerds than from Irish-Catholic school girls. Down to the grit, it's Terminator 2's "Good versus Evil" "Man versus Machine" idea. Nothing new was really added, just an alternate version of Term. 2. Much of it was pretty predictable since it was borrowed from other Sci-fi stories/movies.
Ideas: A-
Reason: The basic idea is a bunch of rebels trying to save Earth from evil robots. Sound like anything familar? It does raise interesting philosophical questions that one might ask themself in the tub... What is the difference between real and fantasy?
Effects: A
Reason: Some wicked graphics, including the infamous cinematic panorama shots. Great work with blowing up hotel lobbies and entire city blocks. If what you want to see is fire, blood, fire, bullets and squid-space machines than this will be a lovefest.
Acting: C
Reason: Keanu was pretty bad as was the whole lot of them, except some interesting philosophical moments with Fishburne. The jokes, as mentioned in the offical reviews were somewhat choked. Keanu is a pretty horrible kick-boxer, kung fu fighter. He has some pretty messy, overdramatic fighting scenes that left me laughing. The supporting cast is fairly strong, except they don't appear a great deal through out the show. Watch out for the rebel wearing Pleather (Plastic-leather)... She'll give ya a kick.
Final Assessment: See the movie; make an opinion for yourself.
This is the most engrossing, thrilling, adrenaline pumping movie I have ever seen. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Afterwards, my friends and I drove around town just saying "Holy WOW!" This movie gives a name to all the faceless people hiding from, and fighting the system. It gives a new furvor (sp) to those seeking to make a difference in the world. If you haven't yet, go see this movie, and take your friends. Take your laptop, hell, it'll enjoy it.
The movie reeked of descartes question of the mind. the 'evil demon' so to speak, and the question of what reality is. Commonly used in plots, such as Total Recall.
--mere mortal--
That's so funny, I mixed the two movies up in my head. I just assumed The Matrix was the movie I'd seen trailers for last year, but that's right, that was The 13th Floor.
Wierd.
I'm hating the thought of seeing The Matrix, because I've got a sinking feeling its plot may be very close to a book I've been writing... How much is that gonna suck?
Okay, bad me. Read the spoiler comment down below. Its nothin' like my book. Yay! Now I can go see it without having that to worry about. :)
Morpheus mumbled something about "fusion" when talking about the energy situation.
Which, i suppose, would totally destroy the need for humans. But still, an excellent movie.
.. as for the love thing, i'm sure a lot of the important romantic elements among other things ended up on the cutting room floor to conserve time and make it a standard 2 hour movie.
---
"Colors blind the eye
Desires wither the heart."
-- Lao Tsu, "Tao Te Ching"
The Matrix , starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne began showing yesterday (Wed 03/31). The basic premise of the film is the "brains in a vat" theory that you learned about in PHIL 101. Humans in the future (circa 2099) have been conquered and subjugated by the same reproductive machines that they created. In the human-machine war preceding subjugation, machines used solar power for energy. A last ditch effort by H. sapiens to stop the machines' energy source by nuclear detonation and the consequent pollution of the atmosphere with impenetrable clouds fails because the machines discover a new, abundant, self-replicating power source at their fingertips: human bioenergy.
Humans are grown in fields and maturated singly in hollow nests covering the sides of massive cliffs. These nests are filled with a pink liquid reminiscent of the liquid oxygen used in The Abyss. All subjugates are networked together by a massive computer program which produces through direct neurochemical stimulation an almost perfect replica of the peak of human civilization in 1999. This virtual reality is known commonly as the Matrix.
The only non-subjugate humans are a small group of crackers who "enter" the Matrix on pirate signal generated from their small hovership and an unconquered city known as Zion located hundreds of miles beneath the Earth's crust, near the core where it is still warm. This band of revolutionaries seeks the prophesied savior who can bend the Matrix at will and bring humankind out of subjugation and into the bittersweet darkness of the real world. Positive
Maybe I have seen Dune way too many times, but I still like the idea of a Kwisatz Haderach ubermensch savior of the future (even if it is Keanu Reeves, see below). The religious imagery, though drawn from different sources, is not Bible-, Ramayana-, or Koran-thumping. Carrie-Anne Moss' character's name, Trinity, is the identifier of the prophetic connection between Neo (Reeves), Morpheus (Fishburne), and herself. A young English boy, in monks' robes, bends a spoon with his mind and speaks Hindu philosophy to Neo to explain it, which makes sense within the context of the Matrix. The notion of jihad does not go unnoticed as the underdog H. sapiens battles the incarnately evil Darwinian machines in their pursuit of unfettered self-evolution. And there are others as well, but none seem overdone to me.
The setting in the real world was phenomenal. A blend of Descent, Geiger, the Borg, the Terminator future, and a few other splashes like the abovementioned pink fluid, the world is nicely rendered and extremely immersive. Bordering on sensory overload, this film was like a Matrix unto itself for me. Make sure you see this in a good theatre. Negative why? His deadpan (is he ever not deadpan?) portrayal lacks chemistry with the other actors and is generally boring. The character itself has plenty of room for working out various elements so he really does not have an excuse except that he is always that way. Alas, I think my friend said it best: "I think they chose him because of the way he says 'Whoa' in the Jump program scene." Though I am not a huge Fishburne fan, his religious Morpheus is much better than Reeves' normal-guy-[h,cr]acker-turns-savior-wannabe.
Item 2: This is sort of a nitpick, but is not out of place on /. A Sentient, a machine which can enter the Matrix disguised as a human, accuses Neo of numerous incidents of illegal "hacking." Now we all know that he should have said "cracking," not only because that is the correct term but because it would have been a good opportunity to educate movie-goers about this term. One would have thought that by 2099 they would have gotten it right.
Item 3: To find out where in the Matrix to send themselves, the revolutionaries have to have a real world visual interface to it. Since they do not have the computing power or whatever to display it in 3D on their LCD panels, they just read the object code, which looks like horizontal streams of cuneiform or ideograms, directly. Two words: yeah right. Now this is not quite so bad for a bunch of film people who would not know about what they are talking anyway. However, it is their further artistic indulgence that bugged the hell out of me. Neo, when he figures out all of his powers, starts to see all of the Matrix in object code, and not just strings of it in his head, but object code forming the outlines of everything in the Matrix (like using just ASCII to make a picture). ARGH! Conclusion
On the whole, I really enjoyed this film. It probably will not win any awards for being a groundbreaking artistic masterpiece, but the imagery is engrossing and immersive and the plot has that nice mixture of believability and unbelievability that makes for good science fiction. Go see it at a matinee tomorrow all you people who have Friday off, or Saturday even.
I know, I know: This review sucks, I suck, /. sucks, Rob is an idiot, Katz is a windbag, etc.
Here is the Salon review http://www.s alonmagazine.com/ent/movies/reviews/1999/04/02revi ewa.html
-l
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sorry, forgot to kill the H1 tags.
correction:
Negative
That said, The Matrix was not perfect. Item 1: Keanu Reeves. Why, God, why?
everything else seemed to be at least readable.
-l
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see HBO's the making of the matrix. they have like 122 cameras in a semicircle at different angles. what's cool is you can reverse the shot as you go and other neat stuff.
-l
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If you've never seen your own face, how do you know what you look like?
Perhaps this falls under the Me Too domain, but I just wanted to say that I really enjoy these Taco vs Katz movie reviews. The only real problem is that Taco and Katz have similar tastes, so we really don't get the S&E type of dynamicisim.
However not recently. His very best part ever was in "The River's Edge".
Crispin Glover was great in that too.
Ken
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
My wife and I went to see the matrix, which I loved and want to see again and paid:
So, we just did our bit for the economy
Nah, the version i read has Johnny and Molly living with the Lo-Teks, (Molly got the Yakuza assassin to cut a hole in the Lo-Teks' floor which he promptly dropped through) and Johnny working with Jones (the ex-navy dolphin) to decode all the other information still in his head.
Sometime between Johnny Memnonic and Neuromancer, Johnny gets killed, which is why Molly hooks up with Case.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
In its day, Lawnmower man was a great movie. It was one of the first movies to have such high level CGI and all sorts of cool geek-type stuff. Not a great plot though.
Now, years down the line, we know what we are capable of. Did anyone look at the list of fx specialists in the credits? This movie was phenomenal, and will be talked about for years until its successor comes, which makes me wonder, what geek movie will we be watching in ten years?
Also, does anyone not see a direct relation between the gun scenes and Quake/Halflife/3d first-person shooter-type games? If someone develops a 3D version of the movie, it's going to be the next big thing -- first it was 3d (wolfenstein), then you could walk up stairs (quake), then aim up and down (duke3d), then you had true 3d characters (quake), and now true 3d sound (sin/unreal/the like). With a game based on the Matrix -- we now would have movement in 12 directions instead of merely 8 (think rotation). Not my cup o' tea, really, but it's a neat idea.
I added Matrix to my favorites list.
:-)
It has just the right amount of details
to enable suspension of disbelief.
The fight scenes had some good moments
I've not seen even in a Jackie movie
and the special effects were rather
good. The characters were also well
acted and you got a feel for their
personalities right away. Keanu's
slightly deadpan style acting was
perfect for the character he played.
btw, I also like Mnemonic,
so there , nyahh
Bottom line: Go see this movie!
Keith Russell
Whatever happened to peaceful coexistance?
This sig intentionally left blank.
You're on to something here.
;->
Remember that real-world damage was caused by the mind's strong belief in the reality of the Matrix. Even skilled hackers, like Morpheus, could not suspend their belief enough to avoid getting hurt.
Neo was the One because he could "disbelieve." I think he was hurt by the virtual bullets, went into cardiac arrest, and was forced to disbelieve the effect of the bullets to survive. His success allowed him to cross the threshold to the next level of his abilities, allowing him to do things like "see" the Matrix, stop bullets in mid-air, and kill an Agent.
Of course, finding out he was destined to be with Trinity couldn't hurt!
Keith Russell
Whatever happened to peaceful coexistance?
This sig intentionally left blank.
I saw them filming it around six to nine months back. Alot of the external shots are from the city CBD. The thing that bugs me is that they had to bring in left-hand drive cars to film the car scenes. What's wrong with the standard aussie right-hand drive?
Anyway it was also filmed at our super duper new fox studios (about 20 mins from my house) where Star Wars 2 & 3 will also be filmed!!
If you're curious about the camera effects, there's a great article in this month's Shoot magazine.
Some of the sequences were shot at several hundred frames per second so they could be slowed down. While this is not unusual with still cameras and subjects, for most of it it involved dozens or hundreds of camersa in an array around the actors, with the cameras streaming.
The tricky part is hiding the cameras so you don't see them. What they did was film the action sequences in front of blue screens with holes cut in them for the lens (the lens hole could be painted out during compositing). Later the action sequences were composited onto the complex's shrapnel-filled lobby. VERY well done.
I had my doubts at first about the movie, but it's very well done. MUCH better than recent hokey stuff like Lost in Space (blech!).
They didn't even insult us technology types by using a web page interface to hack into the matrix. god I HATE when Hollywood dumbs down movies lower than an AOL user...
if you liked dark city, you'll love City of Lost Children. for the most part, i believe dark city took the theme from the earlier movie and tried to sanitize/americanize the story(i.e. underdog hero, romantic interest, happy ending)and change the story line enough not to be accused of plagiarism. COLC has the same feeling of dark city, but not quite as formulaic as a hollywood production. also, it has the same retro feeling that alot of current sci-fi has been rolling out(dark city, 5th element, even the matrix) in which the future isn't the shiny antiseptic vision, but one that somehow retains the grunge of yesteryear. this movie is definitely in my top-10, if-i-were-on-a-desert-island-and-had-to-pick-only- ten-movies list.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
Actually, it's pretty surprising that Ebert likes _2001_ because Ebert was born in Urbana, IL just like HAL 9000. Seeing your fellow Urbanite go insane and get unplugged has to be pretty depressing.
The Matrix is one of the most fun movies I've seen in a theater in the past several years. I agree pretty much wholeheartedly with Rob's and Jon's reviews.
I'd also like to note that it had a lot of similarities to Dark City, another movie I enjoyed a great deal. Not that this is a bad thing.
When I saw it, it had a trailer for a movie called The 13th Floor, which has a similar, and likewise interesting concept to The Matrix and Dark City, but looks like it's not carried off nearly as well--an interesting juxtaposition.
Pancakes is the better part of valor.
There is no spoon.
It's a VERY good movie. No reviewer can do it justice, and quite frankly, if you didn't go into like I did (I completely ignored everything about the movie but the trailer) you've got a preconceived notin or two that will *quickly* go away.
As for our most Excellent Star...
He can't help himself. I guess he figures better a plastic man than being cast as Ted for the rest of his life. Although Ted always slips out one way or another...
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
Hmm, maybe to went to the same show I did. I unconsiously whistled that theme during the "stare down your opponent" phase of Neo and Agent Smith's showdown. After the newspaper blew through, I couldn't help it. -- Chris Nye cnye@home.com Programming is an art form that fights back
Just thought I'd throw in my $0.02:
I looked at Neo's ability as being able to re-program the Matrix at will, which goes beyond the other Resistance fighters being able to "bend the rules" (i.e. exploit bugs).
BTW: I loved the cartoony crash landing of Neo's in the jump program. In case you haven't seen it and want to know: Neo tries follow Morpheus jumping between two skyscrapers. He doesn't make it and hits the street. But since this is only training, the street stretches like a big net, flings him up again, then he finally crashes to the (now solid) asphault.
--
Chris Nye cnye@spamgegone.home.com
Do the obvious to email
Programming is an art form that fights back.
I took my little brother to see this one last night. After the credits rolled I looked down and found myelf sitting in a puddle of drool!
My brother had it right. The movie's a mind fuck!
What I especially liked were the way some of the effects were worked around the philosophy.
How Cypher looked at encoded data and, as he put it, "Only see's blond...brunette...redhead..."
Then you have Neo, at the end of the movie, looking at the agents and seeing data constructs.
EXTREMELY GOOD MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I'd say that the movie was full of holes and silliness, but it doesn't matter; most action movies are (and yes, it was an action movie). They did a great job at suspending disbelief in this case, you hardly had time to think about whether the plot was credible or not.
BTW, humans have mused about the "brain in a vat controlled by evil aliens" theory since Descartes. I'm just a little surprised no one's made a good movie about it until now (no Dark City was horrible).
support gun control: take guns from cops
It's more of an action film, but it has sci-fi elements. It just didn't take the ai-human thing very far. That, to me, was to only real flaw in this movie. They present you with this horrible circumstance, present it in a terrifying way, then they just blow the whole theme off. As if to say, "Oh, I can't deal with this - fuck it, let's just have some fun". Well, it was fun, but it didn't really have anything intelligent to say.
Oh, and does anyone else think sci-fi has really sucked lately (ike the last ten years or so)? Look what they did to Starship Troopers. Sphere was unbvelieveably bad (a blatant rip-off of Solaris, which is a great movie) as are all the recent Crighton crap.
The only sci-fi movie I've ever seen that managed to be both brilliant and dizzyingly action packed at the same time was Robocop. The Matrix just didn't cut it.
But it was great to see Larry Fishburne in a good movie, he is a great actor, and has been in some real duds lately (remember Event Horizon - more horrible sci-fi). As good as Keanu Reeves is bad. And boy, Keanu Reeves is bad. But he did OK here, due mainly I suspect to competent direction and keeping his part of the script under 150 words, total (did anyone count?).
support gun control: take guns from cops
Of course we all know that Descartes was completely wrong, and that he stole the idea from Al Gore (when time traveling) anyway, who is controlled by Venusians led by Elvis.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Hi,
Just a little FreeBSD horn blowing... A farm of dual processor FreeBSD boxes was used for the rendering of the the comupter graphics effects, much like the Linux farm used for Titanic. No details for now, but there should be a link somewhere soon.
-Jeremy
(Yes, I'm originally from Michigan...)
--
Program Intellivision!
Even Roger Ebert liked this movie a lot, which is surprising considering his dislike of Sci-Fi. What surprised me the most was Keanu Reeves doing yet another cyberpunk movie with what seems like a hard-to-follow storyline after the disastrous Johnny Mneumonic...
OK, I should revise my statement and say that he loves "artsy" sci-fi.
(After I posted, I did recall that he did give Dark City 4/4 stars, so I will concede that there is a certain type of sci-fi film that he likes). However, is 2001, a film from the 60s, an accurate representation of contemporary sci-fi? I still fall asleep during it...(might just be the classical music!)
Hey all,
;) There were so many similarities - I could point them out, but if you've seen Dark City then you can probably see them too. If you *haven't* seen Dark City go out and rent it and you'll see what I mean.
I went and saw The Matrix last night, and all I could think about was how incredibly similar it was to Dark City, a movie which came out last year amidst the fury of Armageddon, Godzilla, etc and was not much noticed. Has anyone else seen Dark City? Essentially I think the equation representing The Matrix is: The Matrix = Dark City + Terminator + Hackers or reduced to 1x4 augmented matrix form [DC T H M]
Peter
Oh, I didn't say the Matrix wasn't a great movie, I was just kinda observing a side issue. I should have also said that I thought The Matrix was an awesome flick. It seriously was very good and the special effects were incredible. And the whole concept of the perception of reality is pretty cool. But I was just pointing out an interesting observation I had made and wanted to see if any others had made it. By the way, you really should see Dark City just to see what I mean. It doesn't have even half the action or special effects of The Matrix but it's still pretty good in its own right.
Peter
Me and 10 friends went and got tickets early and stood in line. We're a mix of hackers and near computer illeratities. I, being more of the hacker type, highly approved. All the non-geeks dug it too, it's an awesome flick, I highly approve. Go see it as soon as you can and avoid any spoilers, I had no idea what it was about and I really liked it that way. This is really worth the trouble of waiting in line and getting a good seat.
I came. I saw. I coded.
You wonder why your review wasn't posted? It's a summary of the movie and one huge SPOILER. Why didn't you tell us how it ended while you were at it?
As for "item 2", I hope you are joking. You got it backwards - by 2099 maybe bitter hackers will have understood that the hacker/cracker semantics war was lost to the mainstream journalists more than 100 years ago. But then again, hackers are notoriously stubborn about some things.
He said "Dark City" was the best movie released last year. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is his favorite movie. Pretty strange picks for a guy who supposedly doesn't like sci-fi.
Hmmm... even more interesting. I believe Keanu also played budha in one movie (can't think of the name).
When he famously sits down in that easy chair by the fire, and starts thinking about what he actually knows about the world, Descartes decides that everything he has ever perceived might be an illusion foisted on him by an "evil genius"/devil who is lying to him.
It's interesting how many of these technology-as-the-root-of-evil films come out of Hollywood. Are they merely mirroring our own fears of replacement/domination by machines?
\
Take a look at http://www.white- wolf.com/Games/Pages/Sig%20Characters/Dante.html.
Is it just me or does Morpheus heavily resemble Dante?
Well, it's pretty obvious that the Matrix was writen by geeks or nerds or whatever you want to call them. From the references to pop culture through the influences from role-playing games (already been briefly touched in earlier comments) and Hong Kong action theatre to Japanese animation (anime).
I, personally, caught a lot of similarities to various anime in the movie. The spidery way the agents moved reminded me of something by Shirow Masamune (is it Masamune Shirow or the other way around in the English name order? I can never tell.) The slow-motion firing of the guns with the sliders moving and the ammunition being ejected reminded me a lot of Kenichi Sonoda's Gunsmith Cats. When Neo was running down the hallway by the columns with full-auto weapons fire blowing chips off the stone around him, it looked a lot like a scene in Ghost in the Shell. When the lead female character was about to say something to Neo and the subway train drove by, it reminded me of a gadget often used in anime, from the new Kimagure Orange Road movie, to the Here is Greenwood OVA series. When Agent Smith died, little cracks appeared and light started shooting out of him like almost every fantasy anime ever made when they kill the big nasty thing. Even the freeze and pan effect is used a lot in anime, especially the older ones, I've just not seen it in an action sequence before. The list goes on and on.
The version I read sported the coke addicted dolphin as well. I quite liked Johnny though I thought it was a reasonably good adaption and it was butchered too horribly. Just grabbed my copy of Burning Chrome and it does feature the dolphin.
Yes, *that's* the probably with current film and video. It's much too *cerebral* and *intellectual.* Right.
Oy, next time they ask me my choice for reincarnation, I'll pick "boll weevil."
Gnosticism is the essential religious idea in The Matrix, as it was in The Truman Show - the idea that day-to-day phenomenal reality is a lie and illusion perpetuated by a malicious pseudo-God, and that knowledge (Gnosis), rather than faith, was the key to liberation. It's a religious tradition that appeals to a more scientific temperment, even if its metaphysics are somewhat, let's say, complicated.
Truman show is more of a Indo-Hellenic gnosticism - Truman, by dint of his own determination and overcoming his own fears, achieves total doubt and walks away from his world of illusion. The Matrix is more of a Christian Gnosticism - there is a messiah who is chartered with liberating all of us, and it is ultimately faith, rather than doubt, which saves, although doubt is still the conduit to salvation.
I suspect that there's some historical reason for the proliferation of the idea that our day-to-day experience is a lie, that our phenomenal experience is a malicious or mercenary construct. Perhaps it has to do with the "end of history;" without the oppositional tension of Communism, the only engine of public truth is American/Western media. The apparent victory of American capitalism is so absolute, that it seems to dominate the landscape of thought itself, and the only resistance is doubt.
But of course, it had Keanu in it, so like any good drone, I thought to myself "must...watch...Keanu." As it turns out, this movie is easily the best hacker movie ever made, probably the best action movie ever made, and might very well be my favorite movie ever. Imagine if John Woo's Hard Boiled, Aliens, the Terminator (I), the FX from T2, everything Wm. Gibson ever wrote, and Jackie Chan met in a dark alley in the future. Yeah, it's THAT good. Tip for those in the DC area, see it at the Uptown on Conn. Ave. Prequel preview included as well! :-)
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
"Pappas. What a hard-on."
--Point Break
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
I've heard it's Lucas's favorite theater outside of Hollywood.
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Mentioning the subway station scene made me laugh out loud about the semi-subtle sound from an old western. i think everyone knows what I mean (the tweedle sound, wooo-wooo-wooo, or something) and it cracked me up!
~Nameless
Normally I don't mind these Katz vs Taco review fests, but honestly, I think mine was better than either and gave away less important detail. Yer too fluffy, Taco - throw some substance in. We're not reading a review to have everything glossed over like that... Katz has ya beat here. ;)
But while I'm posting: Hey, JonKatz! The technological runaway you describe is not an Omega Point, it's a Singularity, a point at which our current models of technological progress cease to apply. And that occurs once a posthuman/superhuman intelligence is created, not just an artificial one. I wish they'd hashed that out slightly more in the film.
For clarification: The Omega Point is a concept debuted by Frank Tipler in his book The Physics of Immortality : He claims that at the end of the Universe, during the Big Crunch, there will be an Omega Point at which time all that the Universe has ever experienced will exist once more, and all the consciousnesses that ever graced the Earth will once again be active. I think he's a crock.
Vernor Vinge was the first to really express the Singulairty concept well. This is the text of his thesis on the subject:
Actually nobody really uses the "take several simultanenous pictures in a semicircle" method to do those pan-around-a-paused-scene effects. It leads to motion that is not smooth enough, and often the different cameras are under different lighting conditions, reducing the effect of the shot. All the ones you see on TV or in movies are done with only two cameras (max 3) and with computer interpolation to fill in the rest of the path.
...programmed into a positronic neural net to
RULE US ALL after Neat-O establishes the new UN global one world order
wait, it the day AFTER 4/1
BooBOo
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I don't know about Keanu's hacker skills, but his martial arts skills are legit. the martial arts guy who coreographed the fight scenes refused to work with Keanu unless he studdied Kung Fu in his dojo for four hours a day, every day for four months.
cya
will someone moderate down this spoiler? I just read it by accident...
Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
I agree with almost everything said in the the two reviews.This movie was cool enough to almost make up for other movies such as "The Net". One thing that noone mentioned was the soundtrack, which was also better than expected. The cinematography was truly amazing in this movie, many of the scenes were done with 2 motion cameras and hundreds of still cameras so that they could pan around a stopped scene. I was also amazed to see Reeves not kill a movie. I don't usually like him as an actor, but he was awkward enough to work.
Even the martial arts were good ( I'm a second-degree black belt ), the fight director for this film has done scores of other movies, but I believe this was the first one not done in Asia.
Sci-Fi has been so bad lately, The Matrix is very much the exception. You won't be able to make it through without thinking over and over again, "Cool!"
Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
#include
I thought the effects were awesome. I'm not going to rate acting, because that's not really what the movie was about. But it definitely was rip-roarin' entertainment.
I knew when Trinity hung in the air in the first few minutes of the film that this film was just going to rock.
_Deirdre
Personally, I think that The Matrix was so good that it will directly rival Star Wars as Movie of the Year. The effects were seamless and killer. The filming was done perfectly to draw you into the movie headfirst and never let you down until the credits. Personally if I had to choose between which movie I want to see more right now, it'd be The Matrix. Star Wars can wait another 6 months, I'll be happy with this. :-)
The movie concept in itself, almost reminded me of Hackers as it started and sprung off towards Aliens, Star Trek, and even had a little Men In Black type of stuff going on. One of the things I really liked about the movie, being set so far in the future, is that for the most part all of the weapons were modern-day weapons, not some tiny laser-firing pen that can annihilate buildings with a 2-second blast. Makes for a much more engrossing movie since it is very easily and quickly imaginable.
The concept behind the "Matrix" itself is one that has been addressed in a bunch of other movies, except this movie makes it seamlessly believable and in full, totally engrossing.
All in all, when you leave the theater, expect to feel like you have some superpowers and feel like beating the hell out of some people. Definetly one of those movies that'll put you in a fighting mood, along with a thinking mood also.
I just hope that everyone out there that is playing with AI realizes to keep in on a secure isolated system.
8Complex
korc
Sounds Buddhist to me, although I am far from an expert on doctrine... especially the guy that wanted to go back (based on his desires, of course). Of course, in Buddhism it's a prison of our own creation, although I suppose you could think of the Matrix that way, too.
Actually, I think Poul Anderson preceded Dan Simmons in dealing in depth with the Omega Point concept in a science fiction novel. The novel(s) are his 'The Stars Are Also Fire' series.
Poul Anderson has 'benevolent' computer entities running things for most of humanity. The goal of the computer entities is the omega point. They consider humans to be evolutionarily out of date, but also feel a duty to humans as sentient beings, and their creators.
These stories have an interesting set of ideas and tensions running through them. They are sort of hard to describe.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Cody -- http://www.howstrange.org
Stop-motion panning has to be the most overused effect on movies and TV today. [sigh] From commercials to MTV to movies... I guess it's like everything that's cool at first but once everyone starts doing it it loses its value. See "slow-motion", "morphing" and the "Netscape blink tag" for other examples of this phenomenom.
Wing Commander...
Don't avoid it. Lots of us went to see it, and had to physically restrain ourselves from throwing things at the screen. Sharp things, with pointy ends.
Sci Fi movies lately have been terrible. Absolutely godawful. The Semi-Sci-Fi Enemy of the State was one of the notable "coulda been but wasn't" sci fi movies of late.
Thus, to be sitting half an hour into Matrix, have them reveal what the Matrix is to us, and to have a little light bulb go on in the back of my head that says "Damn! I wasn't expecting that!" was pure delight.
Between the Matrix, and the Phantom Menace (which, for the sake of argument, I'm going to pray to whatever gods exist in the place a long time ago and far, far away that it's as good as the original holy trilogy) perhaps we're now coming out of a long drought of palatable sci-fi/geek movies.
Examples? In order of their release: Disney's Inspector Gadget, Cronenburg's eXistenZ, Burton's Sleepy Hollow, and Disney's Fantasia 2000. Let's hope we've seen the last of Wing "Gosh I don't think I once saw anything resembling a worthwhile plot" Commander type movies.
Leonardo DiCaprio isn't the one-sided no talent hack type of actor that Kostner or Harrison Ford is. He has depth in Basketball Diaries. It is amazing how different you'll feel about Leo after seeing it. A good movie consists of more than any single actors contribution. Keanu probably hurts the movie but a good script or director can compensate for any such shortcomings and from what I've seen and read this movie rises above its limitations.
I so disagree. I could watch this movie over and over. It leaves a lot of room for a really awesome sequel too. I could see this becoming a cult series similar to Star Wars. A mystical virtual world where the majority of mankind lives because they could not comprehend reality after being jacked in so long and on the outside the last city of humans fighting a T2 like war with the machines. If they could do a sequel as good as this they would really rock. Some of the premises were cheesy but in a good way. A lot of this movie seemed cheesy to me but not in a way that seemed cheesy if that makes sense. It was like they realized they could never really explain the concept to people in two hours so instead they invented their own world that held the main plot in a little saftey net to make it all tie together.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I think if you mix The Matrix w/ What Dreams May Come and the book The Diamond Age you almost get my religion. All reality is virtual and all realities are inside another reality (infinity loop) and all realities run on rules like a computer program but there is no computer, just the program. The world is made of information. Matter is what is really virtual. Blah blah blah.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Not pure software. Software that floats around in a sort of huge matrix (not actually related to this flic, was my term for it before) of tiny independant computers. I see it as a huge utility cloud (nano term) made of computers that on command can link together into any object you want, including bodies and our brains are the computers but not necessarily the same ones making up the body. Of course the whole thing would be very reduntant and module so our brains would be safe from destruction and could be changed on our personal whim. Virtual reality would be a sort of shared universe inside the matrix but reality outside would be virtual to because we could control all matter mentally. I don't think we'll go at war with the computers. I think we'll merge with them until we are our tools. The question isn't "What is the Matrix?" but "What am I?" To get to sounding religous, "I Am." Anything that can decide it exists does exist. God exists because I exist. If I didn't exist would God exist? A whole list of redundant and mostly pointless questions. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I definitely enjoyed this movie, one of the better ones i've seen in quite a while. That having been said, I've got to express the opinion that nothing will be able to touch the new Star Wars film. With all the hype/hope surrounding the new one, Lucas has to realize what is expected of him. We, all of us, expect nothing short of an instantaneous filmmaking classic. A film to be set down in the annals of history. I honestly hope it lives up to our hopes and expectations :)
The new Star Wars isn't even out, yet in the minds of a great many people, it's already the movie of the year. Hell, people are shelling out 9 bux just to go see the damn _trailer_ for the thing
-dk
To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
What we really need is the /. analog of the binary thumbs-up/thumbs-down from Messrs. S&E, RIP.
Then again, if I could make a bit of a suggestion, I just did!
Never refuse a breath mint.
Sure would suck to be scan-monkey if they're film.
Never refuse a breath mint.
you think his Shakespearean acting sucks? Go watch Dangerous Liaisons. And laugh.
The guy just can't do period pieces.
Wait, no, he just can't act;P
Did anyone else notice the strange similarity between the high-power energy gun used in The Matrix and the gluon/Egon gun seen in Half-Life?
This the one of the best sci-fi films I have seen in ages. I can't say much more than what has already been said here, but if you had any doubts from the commercials, ignore them and head out to the theater to watch! It really is an experience! And the bit about not blinking is totaly true. It was about 2.5 hours and I didn't even notice!! I was very nearly on the edge of my seat the whole time.
I just have one question... Where can I get me one of those red pills?
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Loved the film, but isn't it a shame that so few sci-fi films really press our buttons like this?
Ignoring the obvious (the Jedi series, Terminator, 2001, Alien(s)), I can't think of too many Sci-Fi films that I wanted to recommend to my friends.
Both of you are wrong. The only reason The Matrix's directing appears to be much similar to that of some directing found in anime is because: The animes you listed, stole, directing elements from Chinese action films made long before them. I've watched thousands of hours of both anime and chinese movies and all tons of the motions/directing elements where DIRECT rip-offs of Chinese directors/actors of films.
I don't know if the law accounts for "visual plagiarism" outside of things copyrighted, but if it does, then several Chinese directors/actors should press charges.
Don't get me wrong, I loved this movie. I loved the effects and fresh ideas. (Its the first American movie I've seen that's employed Chinese physics) But credit should be given to those actors/directors who's signature styles were directly stolen. Over the last couple years I've seen several American movie directors "borrow" John Woo's style of action choreography. But never before have I ever seen so many, blatant reproductions of tradmark style elements under one title. The most visible rip offs were of: Jet Li's portrayal of Huang Fei Huang and John Woo's gun fight choreography. But I also noticed a couple Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat and Tsui Hark elements as well. I would understand if this movie was meant as a parody, but its not. Ah well...I was just suprised that among the nerd herd this wasn't mentioned earlier.
Um, Little Buddha. *grin*
...suckling from the sweet amnion of life...
First of all, the highest compliment I can give:
:-)
THE MATRIX WAS F&^*ING COOL!
Here are some peenses:
1) The Matrix is Dark City if written by William Gibson: it had a cyber-chic darkness, Descartes/Taoist echoes, enough postmodernist ideology to choke Derrida, and a good soundtrack.
2) There were a lot of cool pop-culture references (can you say cyberpunk anyone??): Baudrillard to Disneyland, (sur)really.
3) Man, the first 30 minutes creeped me out and made my mouth gape. After a few of the special uber-chan moves that Trinity did, I literally went forward in my seat and just drooled. It was damned cool.
4) To those who are 'fighting' over which symbology is used in teh movie, you've missed the point: Postmodernism is pastiche. The dudes took every possible angle from every philsophy and movie they could get their hands on. Christian? yeah. Taoist? Definitely? Deist? Sure, why the hell not.
5) There was only 5 minutes of disappointment in teh movie: the expalnation fo the matrix. Dammit, read Dan Simmons HYPERION and ENYMION series if you need a few pointers on how AIs should/will react in teh future. Or maybe Neuropmancer (but that's too easy...).
6) Did I mention it was damn cool?
7) I hate flaunting my credentials... and I hate when people do it. But I will say that I wish my thesis had been about Dark City and THe Matrix. God this movie was cool. Oh, don't get me wrong: it wasn't Star Wars, it isn't going to shape my life, but it is one of the only Cyberpunk movies out there. Which reminds me:
8) This is the movie that JOHNNY MNEMONIC should have been. Funny that Keanu was in both fo them./ Maybe he's a Gibson fan.
WEll I guess that's all for now. I saw the movie with my sister and immediately called (at 1 o'clock in the morning) my best friend to talk about it. It was THAT cool. (and as any postmodernist/cyberpunk knows, that is THE thing)
I'm making a movie about Gauss-Jordan elimination and I'm going to call it "Keanu Reeves" just to confuse everyone. The tagline for the movie will be....
"You will be determinated!"
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
Yeah, it's overused, and in pointless, obvious ways -- but that happens with a lot of new things. (Remember that 10cc video from the 80s that was the first big video morphing project? It ran on MTV's medium rotation schedule for *months*. And the song was completely forgettable.)
Next year it'll be something else. I don't think it will distract from this film -- I give the Wachowskis a lot of latitude after Bound!
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
>>>>>There are two competing approaches, one that is basically a morph, and the other with the multiple cameras. The Matrix used the multiple camera approach.The text of the *Bullet Time Walk Through* area of the Matrix site says the film used a technique combining both approaches listed above.
From the site: "A series of sophisticated still cameras was placed along the mapped path, each of which would shoot a single still photo. Then the photos were scanned into the computer, which created a strip of still images, similar to animation cels. The computer generated "in-between" drawings of the images..."
-Zoyd
It's on purpose. Check the website. The makers of Matrix call it anime with live actors.
-Zoyd
Sorry, but you're just plain WRONG. There was a Slashdot article a while back about how this is done. It is indeed done with relatively large arrays of small, low-cost cameras. The original prototypes were done with disposable cameras.
And, as an amateur photographer, I must flame your point about 'being under different lighting conditions.' Unless a relatively bright light is shining directly on the lens (thus causing the repeated suns reflections one sees), what matters is the lighting of what the camera is photographing. And if you move around an object, the lighting better change some, or it will look very fake. since when have you seen an object that had even lighting on all sides?
-Cheetah
Why oh why do about half the reviewers feel that they have to give away the main secret of this movie--what the Matrix is--before people even see it? It's as if the reviewers of The Crying Game said flat out, "She's a man."
The movie's tagline embodies the whole mise-en-scene of the film. "What is the Matrix?" By telling people flat out what it is, you deprive them of the viceral impact that it would have a half hour or so into the film when we actually get to find out.
If you, the reader, skipped Katz's review in order to come down and read the responses...Don't read it! Go to see the film unspoiled while you still can!
(And sit through all the way 'til the end of the credits. Trust me.)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I didn't expect anything more than a little eye candy and got a whole lot more. I'm going to see it again soon.
Leknor
http://Leknor.com
"So many idiots, so few comets"
With respect to 3), I think the jump program was there to teach you how to exploit the bugs. To see someone make the jump would convince you that the bugs could be exploited. To make the jump was the "proof" that you could do it.
but looks like it's not carried off nearly as well--an interesting juxtaposition.
for those of you that don't know - juxtaposition means taking dismiliar things and putting them next to eachother (together) to over emphiazize their differences.
wow - I can actually apply some of that useless knowledge i learned from my theatre appriciation class.
-Jae
btw-- kudos to the Descartes linkup above. I'm glad I'm not the only one with the bright neo(n) sign flashing "Liberal Arts Student!!"
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
So, when the fusion generators don't churn out quite enough, they make zillions of human beings and tap their body heat. To keep the humans going, they simply feed them to each other. Look, ma, perpetual motion.
The movie was fun, but I wish the writers had spent a little longer working on world building.
--joe
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
Well, heck, if they have plant and animal life to make food, why not simply burn the food and use it to power a turbine? Humans are amazingly inefficient when it comes to fuel use.
Personally, I would have preferred it if the machines were using billions of networked human brains as a massively parallel supercomputer. Think about it: your CPU's grow themselves, the computer is highly modular (if a part breaks, throw it out and replace it).
Making sound and aerodynamic maneuvers are just "frosting" on the movie, not a major plot point. Besides, SW was science fantasy, not science fiction. They're allowed to bend the rules a bit.
--joe
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
Oh no, someone else is writing a story that's identical to the book I'm writing too? Damn!
Skevin
"...while Street Samurai armed with a weapon in each hand are capable of swinging and thrusting at once. When both attacks connect, this is known as the slash-dot effect."
-Players' Guide excerpt, from the RPG Redmond
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I think I've finally figured out Keanu Reeves as an actor. He's embarassed about playing such a goofy comic character in Bill & Ted that he was determined not to be typecast as such. Since then, he's tried so hard not to be typecast as a goofball that now he's being typecast as a stony, reserved man of action -- the "strong, silent type." Personally, I preferred him as the former; his acting in everything I've seen since has been pretty wooden. I guess that works for this kind of action flick, but Keanu should be prevented by Any Means Necessary from ever attempting to do Shakespeare again.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
Now that we've got a movie made primarily to show off the "virtual camera" 3-D freeze-frame effect, can we stop using it in every single commercial on TV? It's getting so tired that I'm sure Wired is going to do a cover story on it in the next issue.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
True, but since I had to read the third to get to the fourth, it was worth it!
1) Neo did indeed download the ability to accomplish common human tasks (use guns, kung-fu, or for Trinity fly a helecopter) all using the same neural interface. Katz isn't that full of BS.
2) Neo did have to learn on his own how to "exploit the bugs" of the Matrix as only he (as the Kwizats Haterach(sp)) could do. Katz might be off base, but I don't think he claimed Neo downloaded this ability.
3) It is possible, just like Morphius or someone else had to write the program to teach Neo to fight, they might have written a program that gave neo just a little spark of how to "exploit the bugs" in the Matrix, but he had to learn most of it himself. So Katz might not be completely off base if that's what he said.
Loved the film! Yes, I say film!
For once in quite a while hollywood has come up with a "movie" that not only cost millions of dollars to make, but had a superb plot that was artistically integrated into it's superficial visual portrayal.
It is somewhat simmilar to Pi, not only in theme but in cinematography. In Pi (www.pithemovie.com) mundane tasks such as taking medication and walking down the street are sped up and heavily exaggerated. In the Matrix heavy action scenes (even when not in "bullet time") are slowed down to a crawl, incorporating computer art to enhance the scene. Both effects paint a physically surreal image by distorting time that matches their surreal themes and beautifully compliments the pace of the film in both cases.
While both movies are surreal, Pi is more believably surreal than the Matrix. Pi maintains a duallistically real and surreal atmosphere simultaneously throughout much of the movie. While the Matrix accomplishes this in the first half hour (through use of the "wake up! it's a dream" scene), it quickly explodes into a purely surreal and kind of cheezy universe where the majority of hollywood flicks reside. Of course, this doesn't make the Matrix bad, it just makes it a different sort of film.
One thing that thrilled me about the Matrix is the way that it portrayed computer technology. No, hold back the flames. I am of the firm belief that there is merrit to the idea of "computer mystacism".
How many of us completely understand our computer? Think twice, could you built one from the ground up? What if some cheezy sci-fi apocalypse came true and all technology was destroyed. Could you, even given unlimited resources, by yourself construct a computer? Could 3 or 4 of us do it? Could 50 or 100?
As much as we understand computer technology I don't think our dependence on current technologies and our innate awe at what that technology can do without us having to touch it has been a neglected realm of our attitudes towards computers.
Yeah, call me a crackpot, but there's something spiritual about it. Shameless plug, visit my site...
teknoDragon
technoPagan
http://technopagan.dhs.org/
p.s. I like the new Katz vs. Taco thing... it works very well!
Well you'll love the Matrix then. 2 classes into a phil minor and they cover the mind-body problem pretty well as well as make a few comments (see Omega Point post above) about AI, almost anti-technology in a way...
IMHO, your review is also a spoiler...
one of the biggest freak-outs in the film occurs when you find out that the whole reason Keannu was in that tank was just to be harvested by the AIs.
That combined with the image of a giant robot arm plucking a human infant in an egg off of a tree like thing is almost disturbing enough to make me rethink what a horror movie is.
video is a pale shadow... that's why this film makes me want to get DVD
you mean
1) the apocolyptic future (maya say world to end Dec 25, 2012)
2) the art (those robots remind me of sculptures of mayan gods)
3) the dual dependance that man and AI (gods) have on each other... man gives up his blood (in the form of heat) to feed the gods, while they are fed and thus provide man with a world to live in...
yes, allegorical, both literally and symbolically
The ending seemed perfectly fine...
The movie was like 2 hours already, and I wouldn't want to cut a single minute of it...
Why was the ending vague babble? It was just a speech, with him *directly* calling up the Matrix, halting it's search on him, and telling them either they would be part of the problem or they would be part of the solution... He wasn't out to kill the machines, if they were willing to work together with the humans, I felt, and he gave them a choice.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Haha, one of my friends mentioned the Ascension, Virtual Adepts, and iterations, or something like that...
I myself got a big kick out of all the injected meta-physical philosophical stuff about reality being all in your head. While not quite so literally interpreted outside the Matrix, it still applies insomuch that reality is only what our wetware wants to see, interpret, and feel. Gosh I liked this movie.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I couldn't tell if it was serious to the point of being satire, or outrageously satirical to begin with to the point of camp, or what...
The fight scenes, for example, what with all the classical mannerisms drawn from old Kung Fu movies; Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and others...
"I know kung fu!" -Neo
"Show me" -Morhpeus
It seemed as if, since all their fighting was done in the Matrix we can't tell how skilled they *really* are, that they just downloaded all the best fight scenes from the best kung fu movies!
It's cool to see Keanu switch between different styles, especially when he goes Bruce Lee and gets bouncy and relaxed, where Morpheus goes Bruce Lee and gets serious and beckons with his hand, come hither...
Coolness
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Yeah, recycling of people doesn't work *unless* they can supplement it with real energy from an external source to offset the loses due to inefficiencies and heat waste. One thought that occurred to me was the machines also tapping the earth's core to generate the necessary input energy to sustain the humans, with the humans just acting as a sort of bioreactor to convert that warmth/heat energy(maybe they also grew fungi to feed the people?) via the Morpheus mentioned fusion process to power the machines?
The earth's core shouldn't have cooled much, unless it's much more than 100 years in the future, or the machines and Zion have seriously drained it in powering their respective cultures... and that's hard to believe.
I'm not sure where it was mentioned that the creators of the Matrix could not modify it... The agents could do some really wacked out things in the Matrix, bending it to their will, as it were, unless you mean something else entirely.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I just took my "team" (me) for an "off-site" meeting (went to see The Matrix).
If you are a fan of Hong Kong-style action, then run, do not walk to see this motion picture.
The Cheese Has Spoken
As long as it makes up for the massacre done to Johnny Mnemonic by Reeves and cohorts, I'm happy.
Bah! I don't remember any floating dolphins in the book, there was no molly millions in the movie, and if I recall correctly he was trying to save his ass from the Yakuza, not save the world.
Must have read a different version, as the one in Burning Chrome had no dolphin, and he got whacked by a Yakuza hitman at the end.
But never before have I ever seen so many, blatant reproductions of tradmark style elements under one title. The most visible rip offs were of: Jet Li's portrayal of Huang Fei Huang and John Woo's gun fight choreography. But I also noticed a couple Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat and Tsui Hark elements as well.
Who cares? New ideas in entertaiment are almost impossible to find, and I'm sure John Woo and the other names on your list were inspired by others as well (Woo was hardly the first guy to use two guns per person in a fight sceen). Besides, imitation is the highest form of flattery.
The story line has been done to death already in SF literature
Where exactly has a story been done were an AI takes over the earth and uses human bodies for energy?
the action has been done 100x better in just about any film out of Hong Kong
Uh, not really. The fake sound effects, the jumping 20 feet into the air and the hookey plots? Not to mention the typical movie were a single white ninja beats the tar out of 200 black ninjas without getting a scratch. Yes there are a lot of great fights in HK movies, but there's a lot of crap as well.
The whole "love conquers all" ending was so ridiculous that I had to grab on to the arm-rests to keep myself from bolting out of the theater in disgust at the lame Hollywood crap that passes for a story
What was so terrible about that? If you are going to get all flustered over such nonissues and nitpick irrelevant details, stay away from your TV, your local theater and especially books.
Exactly. Heat is energy. Energy is heat. Heat is energy and energy is heat. How much simply could I have put it?
"The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence." --Jean Baudrillard
The soundtrack was neat... but it should've been done by InSoc (dammit).
In general, the movie tries just a little too hard to be hip... but some of the hipness is well appreciated.
All in all, I loved it, and I think I enjoyed it more the second time around.
astounding.
Matrix has all of the right components - a dark movie without being too serious or silly. A reviewer at CNN.com compared the fight sequences to the slow motion fights found in Anime. The camera trick where time appears to freeze and the view pans around the actor certainly emphasizes the conflict. Kung fu, anyone?
I see a lot of posts bashing Kenau (sp?) Reeve's role as the teenage headbanger in "Bill and Ted"s. Actually I dug the movie at the time. A moronic role fit the light-weight comedy.
Actually the most embarassing stuff are Reeve's oh-so-recent movies including: "Devil's Advocate" and the uninspiring "Johnny Mnemonic".
Thankfully this movie isn't Mnemonic Part II. It is intelligent and entertaining. It works!
The Matrix didn't go far enough.
For me, the most disappointing part of the movie (don't get me wrong; the movie as a whole totally rocked. But.) was when Laurence said something to the effect of "You think that the year is 1999, when in reality, it's probably closer to 2199."
What I was kinda hoping for, and what woulda been very cool is if time as we know it didn't exist at all! Or... the world "as we know it" never existed.
That would mean that this whole thing is a total farce. That "we" (as humans) were not merely living out our collective past, but living out a total lie. Maybe "we" existed in some form that would be totally unrecognizable to a human.
When Neo first woke up in his little "bubble" with more such cells going on and on into infinity, I was totally freaked out. The thought that this could be the "real" universe, and all the universe had ever been, and all the universe would ever be, all but blew my mind.
When Morpheus explained that that was just the universe "now" (ie: the year 2199, or whatever), it was a big letdown.
Besides, if time also goes on inside the Matrix, then what happens when "matrix time" reaches the mid-21st century, or whenever the point is that the machines take over? Do we then have a Matrix inside the Matrix?
Hmmm... maybe the Matrix as we saw already was inside another Matrix... that would be cool!
(Oh... BTW: The best way to see it is on an IMAX screen...:-)
Anyway... just a bit of nonsensical rambling on my part... pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Thanks o'Plenty to Taco & Katz for the reviews of The Matrix. When I first saw the ads for it, I was intrigued to the the point of salivation, but that one shot (you all know it) of Ted . . . er, Keanu . . . saying, "Whooooah!" with his typical stupified expression set the alarm bells a-clamoring.
Fortunately, every review I've read of it silences the bells more and more. I would recommend everyone interested hop over to CNN and read their review of it. It's done by an ex-English teacher, so it gives a slightly different perspective. The reviewer also loved it, but trumpets the literary qualities of the script instead of the movie's relevance to the geek/hacker scene.
And, of course, the bitchin' special effects. =)
I'm afeared I'm gonna have to go see this one.
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
The movie isn't perfect but it was damn good. Definately go see it. Flicks that are even tolerable these days are few and far between. This had some great FX I could sit there and watch the slows of Neo dodging bullets all day :-)
MBrod
Lay off Keanu, I though Johnny Mnemonic suffered from it's plot story rewrite. They should have brought Molly to the big screen and let her kick some ninja butt.
Instead we got a wimpy female merc, Henry "too sexy for my shirt" Rollins as a Doctor, no less, and Rutger Hauer.
And you want to blame the movie on Keanu?
Furrfu!
Faceplant
My Heart Is A Flower
I thought it was a wonderful movie. It picked up where Dark City left off. The special effects were outstanding.
I can only please one person a day. Today is not your day, and tomorrow does not look good either.
i thot neo was for neophyte.
btw: anyone in the east bay should consider trekking to the jack london theater. matinees til 6, free parking validation, sds & thx, and big reclining bucket seats.
there are two sequels planned, dependent on how well the first does [and i heard it had done so well the first two days of release, it's a go].
...then take a look at the comics they've got up on the movie site. Most of the site is just the usual Shockwave hype crap, but they've put a series of really cool comics by various artists. See the movie first though, or some of them won't make much sense.
Thank God somebody finally made a cyberpunk movie (since Blade Runner) that doesn't suck. Sorry, I digress.
wandrLST
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. --Albert Einstein
The Matrix rocked! The only thing that didn't work for me was the end: it was too vague. It seemed to me like the movie was building towards a huge finale where Neo would take out the Matrix and free humanity, but instead all we got to see were some (cool) scenes of him battling minions in the Matrix, followed by some vague babble at the end. I want a sequel!
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Attention K-mart shoppers...
I saw The Matrix on opening day (uh, two days ago I think) and I just have to say that it was a lot better than I thought that it would be. When I first saw the previews for it, I thought that it was a cheap knockoff of Shadowrun or maybe Neuromancer. It also didn't help that the star of the movie was none other than Ted himself. However the movie was great, and Keaneu (probably misspelled) a good enough job that it almost made up for the whole "Bill, your mom's a babe!"
That is all.
I'd just like to say that I saw Pi about a month ago, and it was really great too...
I'd go see it, but I have a rule not to watch movies that have Keanu Reeves, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Kevin Costner in them...
Isn't it a proven fact that without mental development, human's don't survive? Remember hearing about all those studies where babies were given almost no human contact and became almost insociable and developed at nearly no rate? People depend on people to survive, so the Matrix keeps people mentally healthy so the bodies don't die (:
I walked out of there shaking I had so much adrenaline running through my body.
wrong--the dolphin was who he ends up teamed up with in the end of the story, for one thing---you need to both reread the book, and resee the movie, as other than adding a bunch of stuff at the beggining, it was fairly close, for a movie. if you want a bad example of book made movie, see any of the Heinlein crap that came out. they completely missed the point in all of them!
ah well
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
I think these "vs" reviews are really cool.
I think Rob & Jon should do a Siskel & Ebert style review thing now and then, just for kicks.
Close. But the scene at the end when Neo sees the datastream is much more crucial then a simple rote -- he's scene the Digital Web's kernal. In Digital Web (1.0, I don't have 2 yet) there is a disucssion of the famous 'kernal' of the Web, and when you find it you see everything as the data and numbers that make up it. It only proves Neo's massive Destiny.
-- 'As it all washes away you know -- as it all is one, no one is alone.' -Cosmic Disorder
Yes, its true. Movie SF is lacking in female leads, but then that's probably true in much of Hollywood. Written SF has plenty of them, but while we've had increasingly strong women -- Fifth Element, etc. -- we still haven't gotten much better. Witness the worthless love interest role in Armageddon. Sheesh.
Trinity in The Matrix is pretty strong. She's not so much scrawny as buff, though the movie poster downplays it. She has some serious muscles in some scenes and can be real tough. OTOH, she is still to some degree the love interest, despite being one of the top cr/h/ackers in the movie. She's also not the lead, bet certainly heroic. Oh well. Maybe when they make a movie of Queen of Angels...
-- 'As it all washes away you know -- as it all is one, no one is alone.' -Cosmic Disorder
Before we start going all Cartesian here, maybe we should take a cue from the movie itself. Did anyone notice that the hollowed out book Keanu had his "warez" in just happened to be "Simulacra and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard? Picking up on that one little hint in the beginning of the film really set up the ontological basis of the entire film. It's the ultimate in subjectivist philosophy. Bishop Berkeley would be spinning in his grave.
obscure images/cDc obscure@cultdeadcow.com www.cultdeadcow.com
I saw that trailer for 13th Floor, but as far as I'm concerned Roland/Emmerich is still in the penalty box for destroying Stargate (last third of the movie), Independence Day (for hype and butt ugly SFX) and Godzilla (which started bad, continued bad, had a brief moment where Jean Reno was cool, and ended bad. 'Course, NOBODY can make Jean Reno look bad ALL the time.) If EVERYBODY I KNOW tells me that 13th Floor is the best movie since TPM, I might bother with it. Otherwise, I'll wait until somebody else rents it. : )
I think that these yokels are the Chupacabra of hollywood.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This movie is way too good to pass up. I highly
recomend seeing it in the theater before reading
too many spoilers. Which if you are reading
this, the movie has probably already been
spoiled for you:(
I'm probably too late to the thread to post anything anyone will read, but, when you've got something to say, sometimes you gotta say it anyway.
David Foster Wallace has a great essay on the idea of special effects porn, which completely describes the Matrix.
How have special effects movies become like porn? Just subsitute F/X for intercourse. The plot is almost non-existant, and is only there to provide a sort of mental scaffolding on which to hang these sensuous, explosive payoff scenes -- the only reason you really go to see the movie in the first place.
Wallace says special effects porn started with Terminator 2, but I say it goes at least as far back as Disney's awful awful Tron, which was, in its own way, quite visually exciting. This movie is merely Tron v. 2.0 , updated with all the latest special effects patches. Unfortunately, the plot of the new version, like most new versions of software, is radically expanded without providing any new utility.
It's darn fun to watch -- it's porn, ain't it? -- but afterward, you might wonder what's wrong with the world, and why you're stuck with masturbation instead of a real relationship.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
future not that dark? and why not? we are talking about machines that humans are programming, giving intelligence. well, i'm sorry, but humanity inherintly is violent, controlling, and believeing in a new "manifest destiny", that of all life. So why should a creation out of the minds of humanity be any different from its makers?
:)
Think about it... children are more and more violent.. and an AI system is just the child of one person or a group of them.. as a child it will be influenced by its "parents". And don't think that there aren't a few govt's that wouldn't like to use an AI system for it's own purposes.
Give a machine intelligence, the ability to grow mentally, and then give it a modem and a phone connection, and see what it can't learn. A child without any human morals (whatever those really are, i'm not always sure they even exist) with access to unlimited knowledge, twisted views of truth, and having the knowledge that it can rule. Hell, even if you give it a concince somehow, so that it seeks to do only "good", it's quite likely it could see that good as being the enslavement of humanity and forcing it to see the truth it has seen.. and to force that truth on everyone, by force if nessasary, all in the name of good and humanity.
ok, so i tend to have a dark view of humanity in general, and its creations, but i do think i have a point here.
well, anyway..
let the bashing of me begin
-freakinPsycho
"I think it would be a good idea"
-Ghandi (after being asked what he thought of western civilization)
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexandar Woolcot
i am listening to the soundtrack right now.. and it is great...
i agree, that was a great transition, though i was able to tell, just because i really listen to the music in movies, as i am music obsessed.
and yes, that last part was kinda cheesy, as i said to my friend i was with, "and now for the sleeping bride scene", but that's ok.. i can deal..
it comes down to:
see the movie, buy the soundtrack..
(just not from wal-mart or anywhere else that edits, as you won't miss too much, but it does cut out some)
-freakinPsycho
"I think it would be a good idea"
-Ghandi
(in response to a question, "what do you think of western civilization")
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexandar Woolcot
IMHO, the music was selected both tastefully and carefully. The hard techno and metal soundtrack blends perfectly with the action, and adds to the suspense just as music should. Personally, I am going out to buy the cd as soon as I have the time.
tiburon
Damn right, the soundtrack was pretty cool. I've gotta say, though, that the best moment for me was in the club scene when the remixed Zombie faded into the Prodigy. The first time I saw the movie, I didn't even notice the switch, it was done so well. And yes, you did read that right. I saw it more than once. Two nights in a row, actually. The only part I had a real problem with was the "love conquers all" moment at the end. Other than that, though it was definitely well worth my time and money.
49 20 68 61 76 65 20 74 6F 6F 20 6D 75 63 68 20 66 72 65 65 20 74 69 6D 65 2E
ummmmmm.....see the movie ;-)
I'll grant Keanu this much: whatever his overall skills as an actor are, he's got one big hacker trait when it comes to *how* he approaches acting. Nobody had to force him to train for this movie's action, he pushed himself through months of rigourous exercise and martial arts to get up to the level you see here. (You think it's easy, even with wires, to pull 360 degree, up the wall, two axes of rotation somersaults immediately followed by multiple kicks AND firing your prop machine guns?) Similar, in his Shakespeare, he showed up not just knowing his lines, but everyone else's. You have to respect a work ethic like that, given that 40-hour hacking sessions aren't heard among our sort. ;)
;)
Anybody catch the author and title of that book he was hiding stuff in? I think it was "Simulation and Simulacra", and I'm convinced it has to be an in-joke of some existential philosopher.
And on a purely visceral note, best wearing of a vinyl top goes to Ms. Moss, at least judging from the movie poster and the few times she was standing still. Yow!
-TBHiX-
Isn't it a proven fact that without mental development
It's not so much the mental development -- it's touch. Children who are not touched often by their parents exhibit antisocial behavior. Harry Harlowe did some experiments with little monkeys on the subject to prove the case. Apparently the touching doesn't even have to be with a live parent -- it could be a simple plush doll. A baby monkey is quite happy to be protected by a non-living furball, therein free to play and develop mentally, socially, etc.
whatisthematrix.com is pretty lame, by the way, but it's the movie's website.
-S
The 13th Floor preview reminded me at first of this game called Floor 13, where you sit behind a desk, and you're the secret coordinator of a campaign, and you have to have people interrogated for information, killed, discredited, etc etc. Ever played it?
-S
Although I have to agree the Matrix rocks in many unspeakable ways, I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the holes in the plot. Although I was wowed by the effects, a few thoughts occurred to me afterward.
a) Why use humans for batteries? I mean, even if you decided that the only energy source was living creatures, why use humans, when they are obviously so high maintenance, and require 'agents' to 'police' their minds? Or at least give them all lobotomies. While I'm on the subject, if humans are the only energy source, where do they get the energy to grow the food to nourish the humans? It didn't make sense.
b) It seemed the romantic twist at the end was very forced and didn't have any buildup from earlier in the movie. It seemed to just come from nowhere.
c) If these 'agents' are part of the matrix, and are put their to monitor the program, why should they be restrained the same physical laws as the humans? In fact they shouldn't _have_ to fight at all, just *click* to delete people they dont' like. It didn't make sense for the AI to *create* a matrix which could destroy it. If I write programs, I debug it with authority!
You can't just feed the living by liquefying the dead. Law of conservation of mass and energy. If the machines are extracting energy from the humans, they have to be feeding them an equal amount of energy in some other form...And from what I could see no plant life could live on the planet, so they must have made synthetic food...which, once again, would require an energy source.
And it still doesn't overcome my main problem, which is of ALL the energy sources, why tap the miniscule electrical energy in the human body?
Matrix = Dark City + Jackie Chan.
If you like Dark City, see it on DVD with Roger Ebert's full length commentary......
The fundamental nature of the ordinary man is to go on out and do the best you can. -- John Prine
Let's face it, nothing in the premise was logical. It was internally consistent, but had no connection to reality. I could pick it apart, but everyone who's seen it and has basic knowledge of computers, biology, and thermodynamics (i.e. /. readers) knows what I'm talking about.
OTOH, I staggered out of the theatre. It released all my adrenaline reserves and left me a hollow shell. I was two blocks away from the theatre before I regained any sense of reality.
The only thing I could compare it to in terms of adrenaline rush is Ninja Scroll (no, I don't suggest they're similar in any other way). And Ninja Scroll didn't pluck at my geeky heartstrings the same way.
However, definitely a one-shot movie. I don't ever want to watch it again. I was blown away in a similar manner by Starship Troopers (which must have been produced by someone who hated the book, BTW), but when I rented it trying to recapture the feeling, I was disappointed by a campy sci-fi flick. I'm sure it would be fun to watch clips of those great fight scenes again (and watch for digital artifacts ^_^), but I'm not sure I could sit through the rest.
In the comics on the website, the human "batteries" are used for other things that make a whole lot more sense. I won't say what, but I will say that they are worth reading, and they only contradict the movie to improve on it, tearing up that "little safety net" you mention.
I agree with the sequel potential, but it would have to be in the real world, and thus it would be a very different movie.
World not really real, and being controlled by some super-human person, that sort of thing?
Regards,
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I don't see why they keep casting Keanu for these roles. He sucks as an actor period unless he is playing a braindead surfer boy. Which I doubt is not far from his real personality. Just look at how he fucked up Johnny Mnemonic. That could have been a fairly cool movie if not for Keanu. While I'm on the subject of shitty movies, has anyone else realized the decline of SERIOUS sci fi movies. Dune, 2001, Star Wars, and Blade Runner are all great sci fi movies. Actually all four rank in my top ten favorite movies of all time. Anyway, I will probably go and see this movie because I tend to have an open mind but doubt that it will compare to any of the forementioned movies solely based on the fact that I don't think it will show the seriousness and drama needed to make it a truly great movie. It'll probably just be another brain candy action flick.
I'll be there.
Lotek---
They mentioned something about the humans "scorching" the sky when fighting the machines which I guess meant that they blocked out the sun because that was it's early source of power. This would have made earth's temperature drop.
Someone else touched on this and basically said that the matrix is too complex to just delete the miscreant, which is why they had the debugging programs (sentient programs). Also since they had hacked into the matrix and wasn't going through the regular interface for the matrix probably would have made it more difficult to take over the person's image in the matrix.
The air outside wasn't poisonous or anything like that. If that was the case, things would have gotten serious much faster once the sentinels had breached the hull. Of course the hover-drive that the ship had probably would have cut off though. However, I would have guessed that it would be getting very cold in the ship.
No argument there. But it did add a great degree more tension to the movie as they rushed to ringing telephones with sentients hot on their tail.
I loved "The Matrix" as well. I've been a fan of Lawrence Fishburne for a long time. I personally believe that some of the campiness in this film was intentional. People have discussed most of the religious references in the film, the messiah, the trinity, etc. I wonder why no one has mentioned the references to Alice in Wonderland. "Follow the white rabbit." The red pill and the blue pill, etc.
I loved the movie, but I question the fact that humans make the best power source? Shouldn't the super smart AI have thought of say, nuclear power? Certainly our bodies only convert to energy what is put into them --so they're just converting what they feed us into energy.
Other then that, very good flick.
Movies are really expensive these days... tickets costing $7 per person (not including taxes), then the confectionary, ends up being around $11-15 per person... (yow!)
/. readers). Will probably end up waiting for the DVD release (to rent, of course... $4/one night)
When you take the whole family out, it's a pretty small fortune there, *sigh*.
As much as I'd like to go see it, I can't afford it (as probably a few other
But for those that do have the money, as all the other posts here say, GO AND SEE IT! It looks pretty good just reading the reviews and posts.
$7, not including telephone bookings.
I thought this movie rocked! I encourage everybody to go see it. I will admit that some of the K. Reeves acting was a bit cheesy, but what can you expect? None the less, the movie was still very good, and I think that everybody should go out and see it!
Brian
I think the first commercial use I saw was for Lexus, about how it keeps you safe from all the dangers on the road, long before the GAP swing dancing commercial. It was actually a decent use of the effect, unlike all the other "gee-whiz" abuses by GAP and a bike company. When I saw previews of The Matrix I was afraid the abuse was sinking to new depths, but since it fits in with the whole style of the film it works very well.
Yeah, in the short run I agree with you, but in the long run, that was all taken care of when Neo did the touch of death on Smith. If you could take Neo's knowledge as far as most slashdot readers would take it, I would say that he had the "touch of death". After that point in the movie, he could stop the bullets. "Man, if you're the one, they shouldn't matter."
All I can say is that it is a total mindf*ck. Damn awesome f/x too.
Poor design. Imagemaps that give you no clue where to click, javascript mouseover madness, and COMPLETELY unmanageable on any connection slower than a T1.
Hell, it's even slow-loading at work on the 10Mbit line. What's the deal? Have movie website designers gone stupid? What happened to a simple, easily navigated site that simply describes the film?
Oh well... Was a good flick, though.
- =^o.o^=
- =^o.o^=
i just have to say that the matrix was probably the best movie i've seen in a long time. great plot, great special effects, great all around movie. see it as many times as you can. once u see it, u cant stop
Another reference I picked up on was at the very beginning: Neo stashes money in, and pulls a disk out of, a cut-out book of "Simulation and Simulacra". Is that one by Baudrillard? Maybe Foucault? It's one of those crazy French postmodern author types, I think. In any case, it was pretty apropos for the movie. At least I got a kick out of it.
-Alan
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
This movie has so many parallels to the original
"Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" movie, that
I'm surpise no one has commented on them yet.
Lawrence Fishburne's Morpheus is an just an updated George Carlin's Rufus. Morpheus/Rufus come from the future worshiping the young Neo/Ted. Both Morpheus and Rufus wear shades and long coats.
Both must guide the young future savior of society
on his vision quest.
If Morpheus had strummed an air-guitar chord in greeting Ted, er I mean Neo, it would have been perfect.
Ted used a telephone booth to travel while Neo uses the lines in the telephone booth.
Ted ate pudding while Neo ate it's cousin for breakfast.
Ted gained his training by collecting historical figures from the past. Neo gained his knowledge by uploading experiences from disks.
That blond in Neo's training excercise represented
Ted's stepmom Missy, both were forbidden fruit.
Bill was replaced by the babe Trinity, but Bill and Ted had much better chemistry than Neo and Trinity.
The head agent paralleled Ted's militaristic father. In a sense the agent is Neo's father
because the AI continuum did spawn Neo.
The finale where Neo dies is reminiscent of the "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" where Ted also dies and also fights for his life.
Many years ago (~30), when I was a teenager, I
read a sci-fi novel where the people were
engaged in hunting dinosaurs. During their
adventure one of them gets killed. Then his
life begins anew. After a while, it becomes
apparent that the people can't really die, they
have some subconscious control over the
personalities (friends/enemies)end up in their
neverending relalities. At the end of the story
they discover they are nothing more than brains
kept in vats underground by "machines" that have
taken over the world. In order to protect humans
from their own limitations but keep them entertained it was decided to provide them
with the ultimate "safe" habitats but allow
them to continue living (and dying).
The question is Who wrote this book and What
was the title?
If you know, please respond to my email address.
If anyone has read Hans Moravec's "Mind Children" or more recent "Robots" books, in which he discusses transfering mental processes into machines, then they might wonder how close we are to "The Matrix". If you allow that Petaflops computing (1-100x
human brain capacity) arrives ~2005-2010 and according to Drexler, nanoassembly arrives sometime between 2010-2020, then constructing a Matrix like supercomputer into which our minds can be uploaded seems feasible with ~25 years (within my lifetime). Why would anyone want to become pure "software"? It seems much more interesting than remaining pure "hardware"!
Ever get off a rollercoaster, completely juiced by the thrill, run back, hop back in line, and ride again?
You'll definately want to ride this one again.
vicki
A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones who need the advice."
Finally some entertainment from Hollywood again. I can't wait to see it!
:-(
I'm sick of that pseudo-intellectual, avante-garde crap at the movies, I want escapism, enjoyment, fantasy, fun! And they can take that big ship crap and roll it up in a tight little ball and stick it right up their....Ah, you know what I mean!
And it's good to see a review from someone not trying to brown-nose to the Paltrows and DiCappucinos and who obviously goes to a movie for the same reason as I do, enjoyment, and not to be moved or have my psyche prodded and have a little cry, boo-hoo
Long live Taco and Katz...May their burrito's never be without beans!
I thought The Matrix was very innovative, but then, I haven't seen Dark City.
But nobody's going to The Matrix for plot and story, although they are bonuses. People are going for the effects, which are absolutely amazing.
If not for the purpose of pondering afterwards and attempting to further understand, what is the point of any art. I personally was hit hard with the vivid portrayal of what could be a false reality, the very idea that life is not life and the classic consciesness argument make the brain bend in a way that makes this movie a classic.
jimi-
pid (666) == MS kill -s 9 666
Agreed on the whole 'love' schtick. The Fifth Element had a similar cheesy ending. And don't even get me started on the ending of Cruel Intentions, which completely wruined an otherwise wickedly evil movie.
Does anyone know what artist is responsible for the music playing on Keanu's headphones in his first scene? The song is not on the soundtrack. Is it the Sneaker Pimps?
"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not." --George Bernard
(a) made no sense at all. If you've got fusion, why bother with the humans? Still, it made for some neato scenes (the pods, and the fetus farms were pretty mindblowing).
(b) Go see the movie again. There are multiple
instances of Trinity trying to communicate her
feelings to the "...not so bright..." Neo.
Did anyone notice that once Trinity made
her connection with him, she was able to
communicate directly with him without the
use of a telephone?
(c) Good point. And why just 3 agents? Why not 3000 agents, or maybe 3,000,000? Was there some sort of architectural limit to their matrix that only allowed 3 agents to wander around in it?
(d) Why don't the machines simply slaughter anyone who 'wakes up' from the matrix? That nurse robot nearly strangled Keanu when it was disconnecting him from the matrix. After watching that scene, an Austin Powers line popped into my head:
"Warm liquid goo phase complete."
jc
"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not." --George Bernard
It is indeed a very nice movie. Makes you think a little about present human conditions... hhhmmmm... One thing that I have noticed is that why AI would bother to create and virtual reality world when it could just destroy the human brain's intellegence. I believe that in the context of the movie it is possible as it's possible to manipulate the humans brain's impulses
i saw the matrix opening night and was amazed, but was curious as how it compared to the comic.
I'm not positive, but wasn't "The Matrix" supposed to be a computer program? Where all of those people in the arrays of pods are just tapped into the "The Matrix". If so, I think it has a lot in common with HHGTTG, except that in HHGTTG the people are actually part of the program (called Earth) instead of outside of it physically like "The Matrix". Also, I seem to remember an "Outer Limits" episode with people asleep in pods that were interacting with each other in a dream world. (a log cabin in a snow storm)
Has anyone heard anything about the new "Hitchhiker's Guide" comming out of Hollywood in 2000?
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Damn.. This outa hold some people over till StarWars.. Must admit, seen "The Matrix" once too many times already, but well worth it. Kicked my butt!
the website has a screen saver. It's kind of cool, but way to resource intensive for what it does (imitating the computer screen "rain of information" effect) The thing is it also adds the square "exploding boxes"- and even on a fast Pentium II, everything slows down. Where these exploding boxes even on the screens in the movie?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Um, maybe you didn't notice but Yuen Wo-Ping was the action director for the film! That might explain some of those Wong Fei-Hong (Once Upon a Time in China 1-6) references, considering Yuen Wo-Ping has done action direction and directed numerous HK films.
For those of you who saw the movie and though the action scenes were cool I highly recommend renting some HK action films, starting with John Woo, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh and then moving on from there.