I nodded off. In that hypnagogic region, scenes flickered on and off. In fairness to this review, I suffered it all once again. I didn't actually miss much; maybe some of the zombie swarm scenes.
A film for our time - mocking the viewer.
If it all looks familiar, then that's because it is largely a regurgitation of many scenes you've seen before. But is there anything of substance?
The first half hour sums up what happened after the end of the third film. Recall that Neo is fundamentally a program whose task is to save the Matrix from the destructive anomaly of the Agent Smith virus. Neo does achieve this goal but, as the Nth iteration of itself, how is it embedded into the new Matrix?
Well, Neo becomes Anderson again, the coder for a game version of The Matrix for people within the actual Matrix. Clever, or trite? Thus, the humans of this new Matrix live with this game-inspired hypothesis that they actually are in a Matrix. Sound familiar? The stress of feeling disconnected with reality is replaced by a careless acceptance of the possibility that reality is not really real.
At the same time, Agent Smith wasn't wholly defeated; indeed, the virus has become stronger without threatening the existence of the construct that supports it. The transubhumanist agenda also gets a large dose of promotion, as Zion has been decapitated into Io (or I/O?) and now works in cooperation with the machines.
Both Neo and Trinity end up in their own very important pods (VIPs). How Trinity is reconstructed is left to the Analyst to recount. Their special status means this time they are not flushed out of the machine sewage system, but instead are escorted to Io by the machines themselves.
The Architect has been replaced by The Analyst, who eventually divulges the true nature of this new iteration. Humans have no desire for truth or freedom; they like to believe simple things; the more insane the beliefs, the stronger their attachment - and the more energy they produce to run their enslavement camp.
The zombie swarm scenes show how humans can be turned into mindless lemmings launching themselves from their apartment windows as meat-bombs against the runaway heroes. The morphing of Neo into Duo is slow and somewhat implausible given the starting premises.
In the final scene, the Analyst goes further, saying that humans love the comfort of their slavery and the certainties of obedience.
He throws a challenge down to Neo and Trinity: go ahead, wake them up - if you can!
Obedience, somehow a cruel word. In a documentary about an Indian tribe, the chief was asked if he wasn't afraid if they didn't forbid the children dangerous things. Yes, he said, we are, but we are even more afraid that our children will become fearful children. That was very impressive.
When I was at school, two things interested me - the mind and physics - I haven't really changed much in 40+ years - hopefully sharper.
But for all the progress in physics, we seem to have lost our minds.
I think it is pathetic - a neural algo that has gone disastrously wrong.
And even such tribal chiefs, can they perceive that the tech is also designed to rob their children of their mind and spirit and energy?
That was tiring to watch … i wont do it again .
But so many messages though
I think the two speeches by the Analyst sum it all up nicely! ;-)
You're right, was tiring - not interesting or exciting - I found myself switching off eg "another 10 minutes of a scene from previous movie".
This is gonna end up being like Disney making Star Wars.
You have a choice: the red prison or the blue prison.
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It is a very interesting film.
I want to show complete film.
Where and how can I find it.
Please tell me sir!
I enjoyed the first Matrix, and then they deviated so hard from the first the rest were not enjoyable to me.
The first 3 kinda merge into one long narrative - didn't much enjoy the third one just for the overt Zion-ism and the tediously long battle scene at the end.
Some great characters, like the Merovingian - inexplicably brought back in M4 as a ranting hobo.
Indeed, the actual actors look so plain and boring in M4 that I'm unlikely to recall any of them... very soon.
After the way the first one ended, they drastically changed the implications in the second.
At the end of the first one, he was no longer able to be acted on in the Matrix, seeing it as it really was. Making him invincible to all the software programs (including agents).
Any followup movies would have been short lived as far as excursions into the Matrix was concerned. But it would have made sequels boring to make them solely take place in the dark "real" world that was where everything was "really" taking place.
An interesting twist would have been for him to become like a Buddha figure, able to train those who were ready to extricate themselves as he had, perhaps even add in an ability to enter and leave the Matrix without needing the phone, using instead ones own mind.
mmm... I don't think that's true - he was not omniscient - almost, but not quite.
There was still the Oracle ;-)
Agent Smith only becomes truly dangerous when he is reverse-infected by the Oracle.
Then Oracle-Smith and Neo need to play the virus/antivirus game.
Re Buddha-Neo, but you see the Wachis remain deeply embedded in the elite-cult - and M4 is a humanity deeply inside the Kali-Yuga. Also, even "outside" the matrix was still "inside", so there would have to hv=ave been some 2nd level enlightenment. :-)
Based solely on the first movie, it was implied he had broke the code. I watched the second and third grudgingly after I saw they had greatly minimized the accomplishment we were left believing had been made at the end of the first movie.
I find your mentioning of M4 being humanity deeply inside of Kali-Yuga interesting. Are they implying that the machines are a manifestation of the female principle as the series evolved? Or are you saying that the series degraded because here in real life we are imprisoned with the time of Kali?
I assumed from even the first film that the inside and outside were just the yin-yang of a larger construct. eg Neo fought off the sentinels outside the matrix; Trinity, we assume, really was dead, and yet is reconstructed... for cinematic effects, no doubt, and yet, has to make some vague sense.
As the Architect lucidly explains, Neo was not designed to save Zion - he was designed to save the Matrix from the most recent anomaly.
;-)