Seriously though, more people should check out Speed Racer. It was tremendous, and very rewatchable, and great for kids, and the story was outstanding, and it had every necessary throwback to the original cartoon.
I hope I have the honor of being the first to let you know that you are, in fact, wrong and that the first Matrix rules. Irony has poisoned our culture and I'll take the excessive zeal of the Matrix over the shit-bit-per-minute that every action movie has these days.
Philosophically hollow or pretentious? Sure? Maybe? Every movie with an iota of philosophical content will have it's naysayers, spouting that "you don't really get Spinoza, free-will, Plato, philosophy... blah blah blah" and another side that claims it explains the world.
Moderate panic-attack that I came off as an asshole! Tongue-in-cheek is difficult... but I will have to attempt a Matrixesque crane kick, likely resulting in me blowing out my knee, if we meet due to your unsavory opinion!
This is one of the reasons Freddie’s take surprises me; The Matrix hearkens back to a time when it was okay for a movie about this kind of stuff to present itself entirely self-seriously and not have to break the fourth wall every ten minutes to assure you that it doesn’t *really* care about what it’s doing, which is a thing I get the sense Freddie normally hates as much as I do.
I completely agree with everything you write. I'm really sorry to learn that you meant it as tounge-in-cheek, because it is actually all literally correct.
I think the philosophy's hollow all around but I didn't mind the Matrix as much as something like Equilibrium. I can see why someone would like Blade more as an artifact of the period though.
Freddie, have you watched their earlier movie Bound? Even though I like The Matrix, I think I’ve gone back to rewatch Bound more. Just a fun, pulpy noir that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but with very assured direction and some solid performances.
I remember feeling the same way about the Architect scene. And getting mad that it was obviously intending to make it so the viewer was supposed to feel dumb if they didn't come away with some sort of profound understanding from the scene.
the trans thing is a bit annoying honestly. I know the sisters have encouraged it themselves, but it seems like a) some trans people are very eager to claim some important pop culture as their own and b) a bit of the thing where we project marginalized people's identities onto all the art they make, like any film by a woman is a "women's film". The Wachowski sisters were closeted when they made the movie, sorry. You don't make art about something like gender transition while you are closeted. It's probably not kind to say, but if you haven't even been able to admit your identity to yourself it's not going to magically project itself through your art. That sounds like fairy tale stuff to me.
Anyway it kinda seems like a cheesy masculine gamer movie no? I actually think it's more fitting to view it that way, as art made by people desperately trying to be masculine, than anything else.
A lot of Keanu's work is like that, and The Matrix just seems like the Form of his genre. He always kinda plays himself and we're always kinda smirking when he gets really serious because we know he's not that great of an actor.
The Wachowskis have stated that, in the original screenplay, Switch was going to be female in the real world and male inside the Matrix (or maybe vice versa), but they dropped this idea because they thought it would be too visually confusing. I do think both Wachowskis had been wrestling with their gender identities for a LONG time before coming out, so when they publicly state that The Matrix is a metaphor for transitioning I don't think they're just engaging in hindsight, or retrospectively applying their current worldview/lifestyle onto something they made prior to adopting either one.
Also I don't think that you can't make art about gender transition before coming out. Many artists find things working their way into their art which they hadn't consciously intended precisely because those things were bothering them at a more subconscious level. It's hardly surprising that so many of Stephen King's protagonists were alcoholics before he himself admitted that he was an alcoholic. Fight Club (the novel) is full of homoerotic tension and imagery, and Chuck Palahniuk wasn't able to admit that he was gay until after it was published. I'd say this sort of thing is the rule rather than the exception.
you may be right. I'm probably less familiar with the Wachowskis or the Matrix than the average person. I've only seen the headlines. Not entirely sure why but when someone comes out as LGBTQ and then we reframe their work as representative of that new identity something about it just doesn't feel right. Part of it is of course that out queer directors weren't getting a lot of work back in the day when the Matrix came out, so maybe I'm just resentful.
They pretty much said that 'red pill blue pill' was an intentional metaphor for trans stuff. But I think they also took the tack that Outkast did with Bombs over Baghdad, which is to clarify what they intended, while also admitting that once art is out in the world anyone can make of it whatever they want to make of it.
Have to strongly endorse the Keanu comment. He is a terrible actor. He is always just being himself. He is a very attractive man but it is bizarre to me that he gets paid so much for being such a bad actor.
I disagree. Cheesy, masculine, gamer-culture cliche that also treats freshman level seminar philosophy questions as way more profound than they really are is the perfect "trans movie."
Rewatched this recently with my girlfriend, and I felt much the same way.
Part of the issue here is that much of the film's original shine (the color-grading, the special effects, the CYBER) just absolutely crumbles under the weight of its own culture-defining success (the endless parody fodder, the vaguely libertarian caricature of the agents, the creepy school shooter vibes).
I'm also surprised that last point doesn't get more play in contemporary discussions about this film. The Matrix released just a month or two before the Colombine shooting, and I don't know how anyone can legitimately enjoy the scene where Neo massacres a half-dozen rent-a-cops. Not implying causality here, but surely it's enough aesthetic correlation to leave a bitter taste in anyone's mouth?
I love that book. Neuromancer and Pale Fire are the two pieces of fiction which, when I find that someone appreciates either one, gives me a kind of affinity-by-proxy for the person. I admit that I can't tell whether you mean to recognize the book's literary achievement or take it down a notch based on the same criticisms Freddie levels at The Matrix. Either way, I'm glad to see it mentioned. That makes me happy.
O no...I meant that sometimes something that has been popularized (Matrix) has roots in something worth the track. And imagine writing PF in English when not his native language.
Thank you for clarifying about Neuromancer. I thought you meant that!
You're absolutely right. PF is an astonishing artistic miracle. These days I just pick it up and dip in anywhere. It's like listening to Mozart. There's no floor to the complexity and humor. How did he do it? It's impossible, yet there it is.
I can take or leave The Matrix. But the tone of this review is so obnoxiously hipster it makes me want to cancel my subscription. Eww shudder. Don’t write like this again.
If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. I don't write any way but the way I want to
And for the record "hipster" here means nothing. I don't think this movie is very good and I said so and it doesn't feel remotely contrarian to say so.
The Washington Post reviewer also didn't like Ted Lasso. The issue in both cases was a sense that their objections were based not on their own preferences but on a need to maintain a facade of cool/tribal affiliation.
An alternative example might be, let's say, a humanities professor at Barnard being a secret Disney World fanatic. A AirBnB in the Lake District for the summer? Totally OK. Camping in a national park? Totally fine. But Disney World? No way. Their peer group would be mortified so they either don't go or keep it more or less a secret.
Something like a third of FdB's articles are about problems created by social posturing, I think it is safe to give him the benefit of the doubt about whether he dislikes The Matrix because he wants to impress his peers and seem cool.
Without wading into this object-level discussion an iota, I'll just say that I think I do my best critiques when I'm noticing something in others that bothers me in myself. Or, you know, "takes one to know one".
OK but like I'm really specifically saying here that this doesn't seem remotely contrarian or provocative to me, it just seems like an existentially silly movie and I'm surprised it has so many defenders. That's my sincere take.
The tryhard dork and Hot Topic comments makes it seem like, at some level, your objection is based on a dislike of the people who like the movie and not the movie itself.
But that could just be me reading more into it than is warranted.
The only part I don't like is the part where you're like "I'm not being contrarian, everyone else is contrarian for disagreeing with my common sense!" But I've also been known to talk that way about movies everyone loves and I don't (The Lord of the Rings comes to mind), so whatever.
The definition of "contrarian" is "a person who opposes or rejects popular opinion". The Matrix has a rating of 8.7 on IMDB, 88%/85% on rottentomatoes. So: popular opinion is that it's a good movie. If you disagree, you are by definition a contrarian. Your feelings don't come into it.
I watched Blade and the Matrix (somehow) on VHS a year after they came out and I also was 14 so it was perfect timing to take in “everything is an illusion, also look how cool this is”. It was very cool to me, a 14-year old.
I enjoyed The Matrix as a kid, never watched the sequels, and have not rewatched The Matrix since then, so I have no strong opinion on it. But I do want to defend, in abstract, the idea of a movie having themes without clear takeaways.
I think it's okay for a movie (or any work of art) to explore a theme without necessarily having a single, specific thing to say about that theme. In fact, I think this is a mature approach to theme in a story. It therefore doesn't necessarily seem muddled to me that The Matrix might have different characters expressing conflicting perspectives on free will - the point might just be to have a discussion on it, not express a canonical statement on what free will is, or whether it's something we possess.
Didn't feel like a like was strong enough for how good a comment this was. Completely agree. Typically I prefer art that doesn't come down one way or the other, particularly on an issue as complex as "do we have free will?"
This is a totally fair point, but I also believe this particular movie would have been more satisfying if the writers had arrived at an answer. Some works are just studies of different types of characters, but The Matrix is so ambitious and dramatic that I want there to be some big point at the end.
I don't think being open-ended is the problem so much as The Matrix asks its questions in a really sloppy way and never articulates the conflict very clearly. I just watched the movie last week for like the tenth time and I still can't figure out what the Oracle's whole deal is with "The One" and how much of it is theater vs. actual predestination.
Its been a while, but I thought it was because the Matrix is ultimately revealed to be a cyclical, iterative thing, and while the Architect is the one who builds each iteration, the Oracle is the one in charge of the storytelling structure that fuels each cycle. She selects the One, and gives him the narrative that he's special, but in a specific way. Basically she frames the story so that the only possible outcome is always cyclical and allows for the survival of the Matrix. I assume its some metaphor for how a lot of seemingly revolutionary paradigms peddled by powerful storytellers within the Hollywood structure are ultimately self-defeating, and deliberately so, like something Mark Fisher would point out.
Yeah, that makes sense. I think your narrowing of the critique makes it stronger here - it's not about whether the movie has specific answers, it's more about whether the perspectives presented offer new and interesting insights that change how we think about the theme.
My problem with the first Matrix film is that its twist ending violates the First Law of Thermodynamics (e.g. conservation of energy): you can't get more energy out of a system than is initially in the system. According to the twist ending of the film, the computers are using humans as batteries to power their machinery. But physics says thumbs-down on that. The computers would have to put more energy into keeping the humans alive in their little pods than they could get back out from them, so they would run out of energy very quickly. You can't create energy from nothing. I could never get past that scientific flaw to enjoy the film, even though Keanu Reeves does look good in his black sunglasses.
There’s a web comic floating around somewhere that actually addresses this head on.
The laws of thermodynamics you learned were learned within the Matrix- you actually have no idea what laws of physics apply in the Real World.
Which should be existentially terrifying, given that you are totally out of touch with even the basic rules of the Universe, and not only cannot trust a single assumption you grew up with your whole life, and also cannot even reliably perceive the blind spots you know for a fact that you must have.
Or rather, it would be existentially terrifying if only they’d meant it to be anything more than a throw away line to cover for a script change.
I've never understood the concept of "conditions necessary/conducive to life" that we measure on distant planets, and decide whether there can be life there (usually not). Our own experience with "life" is strictly limited to what we observe on Earth. How does our knowledge of conditions necessary for life here on Earth mean we know what's required for life throughout the entire universe? Isn't it conceivable that some other form of life, galaxies away, thrives in super-cold and dry terrain and loves breathing sulfuric acid, or doesn't breathe at all?
I think there's some reasonable thinking about this – and in depth – and part of a sketch of what you're asking has to do with the _limited_ variety of various 'complex' chemistries available. Carbon really is special, chemically, in being able to form SO many varieties of different molecules. I think the second-best alternative is silicon (?), but it's a pale contender for such a central chemical element.
Water also has a super special property which could, as kind of a 'brute fact' about existence in our universe, turn out to be crucial – namely that its solid form is _less_ dense than its liquid form and thus, when water freezes, it floats on top of any remaining un-frozen water (and shielding the water from further freezing somewhat).
As to life that "thrives in super-cold", there is an 'absolute' _coldest_ temperature and the universe itself is mostly _just_ above it. The problem with 'cold' is that it's equivalent to 'no free energy to do physics work', i.e. no energy for chemistry and life-sized physics (e.g. moving around, copying molecules) to happen.
As for alternative atmospheres, our own current atmosphere on Earth was the _product_ (and partly cause) of one of the worst major extinction events in its history – way way worse than anything we'll be able to 'pull off' for many many years to come.
The thing the 'astrobiologists' are looking for is evidence _of_ life-like chemistry, i.e. microbe poop.
I'm a little fuzzy as I haven't been able to comment, or even read, anyone's posts lately (i.e. including Freddie's), but I think you've asked several really good questions that I've enjoyed answering – thanks for that!
Apparently the original idea was that the computers were using the humans' brains to run their code, so the people were CPUs rather than batteries. But it took too many lines to explain, while batteries could be explained easily and include the Duracell product placement
Argghhh that makes so much more sense, the whole premise looks better in this light. Especially if "being in the Matrix" is just what it feels like from the inside to execute that code. But I wonder if it would really take that much more time to explain given the audience has already bought into the idea of brains running non-native software.
> given the audience has already bought into the idea of brains running non-native software.
I don't think people _had_ bought into this then like they have now. They could understand 'the Matrix' as something like virtual reality, or a dream (or Hell, or Heaven), but not as 'a simulation performed in a distributed fashion using human brains as raw computronium'.
Were they using them as batteries or generators? I always thought they were using them as generators - calories and oxygen would go in and electricity and metabolic waste would come out.
I like the head-canon that the "batteries" thing is a little white lie. That the machines are in a Three-Laws-of-Robotics balancing act where they are trying to preserve humanity after humanity has trashed the planet. The most workable solution is pods + a consensual hallucination of the situation immediately pre-planet-trashing. Those who prefer the redpill lifestyle are going to be really depressed if they think the situation is the fault of their species, so the machines tell a little white lie about who's responsible for the situation, and since the redpill people are all about drama and struggle, the machines wrassle with them from time to time. This head-canon is absurd but it makes the movie like .1% more fun for me so I go with it.
Trying to figure out a sensible, and coherent, explanation of art works that aren't already clear (and correct) on their own is something I really enjoy!
Point of order: that's explained pretty early on in the film, it's not a "twist ending". And you are right that it makes no sense at all scientifically. The film makers should have had a decent science advisor (or they did have one, and ignored what she told them, as happens in a LOT of science fiction film). But we waive that point. We do not press it. We look over it.
The meme response, as someone else mentioned, to a version of the story where Neo raises your same objection to Morpheus, is "Where did you learn those supposed laws of thermodynamics Neo?".
I don't really agree that The Matrix is bad, but I do agree that Blade rules and is way more rewatchable. This may be a common hipsterism on social media (I don't go there anymore), a la "Did Hard is a Christmas movie," but for my money Blade is the best Marvel movie by far.
This is, in fact, a common hipsterism. Although thankfully not as prevalent as the terrible "Die Hard is my favorite Christmas movie" bit which is stupid because a) people have been beating that into the ground for 15 years and b) Gremlins is right there people!
Both false.
That's as may be, but Dredd still didn't release first.
Seriously though, more people should check out Speed Racer. It was tremendous, and very rewatchable, and great for kids, and the story was outstanding, and it had every necessary throwback to the original cartoon.
I think it's great!
I hope I have the honor of being the first to let you know that you are, in fact, wrong and that the first Matrix rules. Irony has poisoned our culture and I'll take the excessive zeal of the Matrix over the shit-bit-per-minute that every action movie has these days.
Philosophically hollow or pretentious? Sure? Maybe? Every movie with an iota of philosophical content will have it's naysayers, spouting that "you don't really get Spinoza, free-will, Plato, philosophy... blah blah blah" and another side that claims it explains the world.
Moderate panic-attack that I came off as an asshole! Tongue-in-cheek is difficult... but I will have to attempt a Matrixesque crane kick, likely resulting in me blowing out my knee, if we meet due to your unsavory opinion!
This is one of the reasons Freddie’s take surprises me; The Matrix hearkens back to a time when it was okay for a movie about this kind of stuff to present itself entirely self-seriously and not have to break the fourth wall every ten minutes to assure you that it doesn’t *really* care about what it’s doing, which is a thing I get the sense Freddie normally hates as much as I do.
I completely agree with everything you write. I'm really sorry to learn that you meant it as tounge-in-cheek, because it is actually all literally correct.
Freddie, this is the day you truly spoke truth to power
I think the philosophy's hollow all around but I didn't mind the Matrix as much as something like Equilibrium. I can see why someone would like Blade more as an artifact of the period though.
Freddie, have you watched their earlier movie Bound? Even though I like The Matrix, I think I’ve gone back to rewatch Bound more. Just a fun, pulpy noir that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but with very assured direction and some solid performances.
I remember feeling the same way about the Architect scene. And getting mad that it was obviously intending to make it so the viewer was supposed to feel dumb if they didn't come away with some sort of profound understanding from the scene.
the trans thing is a bit annoying honestly. I know the sisters have encouraged it themselves, but it seems like a) some trans people are very eager to claim some important pop culture as their own and b) a bit of the thing where we project marginalized people's identities onto all the art they make, like any film by a woman is a "women's film". The Wachowski sisters were closeted when they made the movie, sorry. You don't make art about something like gender transition while you are closeted. It's probably not kind to say, but if you haven't even been able to admit your identity to yourself it's not going to magically project itself through your art. That sounds like fairy tale stuff to me.
Anyway it kinda seems like a cheesy masculine gamer movie no? I actually think it's more fitting to view it that way, as art made by people desperately trying to be masculine, than anything else.
A lot of Keanu's work is like that, and The Matrix just seems like the Form of his genre. He always kinda plays himself and we're always kinda smirking when he gets really serious because we know he's not that great of an actor.
The Wachowskis have stated that, in the original screenplay, Switch was going to be female in the real world and male inside the Matrix (or maybe vice versa), but they dropped this idea because they thought it would be too visually confusing. I do think both Wachowskis had been wrestling with their gender identities for a LONG time before coming out, so when they publicly state that The Matrix is a metaphor for transitioning I don't think they're just engaging in hindsight, or retrospectively applying their current worldview/lifestyle onto something they made prior to adopting either one.
Also I don't think that you can't make art about gender transition before coming out. Many artists find things working their way into their art which they hadn't consciously intended precisely because those things were bothering them at a more subconscious level. It's hardly surprising that so many of Stephen King's protagonists were alcoholics before he himself admitted that he was an alcoholic. Fight Club (the novel) is full of homoerotic tension and imagery, and Chuck Palahniuk wasn't able to admit that he was gay until after it was published. I'd say this sort of thing is the rule rather than the exception.
you may be right. I'm probably less familiar with the Wachowskis or the Matrix than the average person. I've only seen the headlines. Not entirely sure why but when someone comes out as LGBTQ and then we reframe their work as representative of that new identity something about it just doesn't feel right. Part of it is of course that out queer directors weren't getting a lot of work back in the day when the Matrix came out, so maybe I'm just resentful.
They pretty much said that 'red pill blue pill' was an intentional metaphor for trans stuff. But I think they also took the tack that Outkast did with Bombs over Baghdad, which is to clarify what they intended, while also admitting that once art is out in the world anyone can make of it whatever they want to make of it.
Have to strongly endorse the Keanu comment. He is a terrible actor. He is always just being himself. He is a very attractive man but it is bizarre to me that he gets paid so much for being such a bad actor.
I disagree. Cheesy, masculine, gamer-culture cliche that also treats freshman level seminar philosophy questions as way more profound than they really are is the perfect "trans movie."
Rewatched this recently with my girlfriend, and I felt much the same way.
Part of the issue here is that much of the film's original shine (the color-grading, the special effects, the CYBER) just absolutely crumbles under the weight of its own culture-defining success (the endless parody fodder, the vaguely libertarian caricature of the agents, the creepy school shooter vibes).
I'm also surprised that last point doesn't get more play in contemporary discussions about this film. The Matrix released just a month or two before the Colombine shooting, and I don't know how anyone can legitimately enjoy the scene where Neo massacres a half-dozen rent-a-cops. Not implying causality here, but surely it's enough aesthetic correlation to leave a bitter taste in anyone's mouth?
Columbine looms so large in that scene for me every time I see it. I think it must for everyone of a certain age.
I don't think of Columbine, but I can't help seeing a 'terrorist attack' when I watch that scene now!
It might help sales of Neuromancer.
I love that book. Neuromancer and Pale Fire are the two pieces of fiction which, when I find that someone appreciates either one, gives me a kind of affinity-by-proxy for the person. I admit that I can't tell whether you mean to recognize the book's literary achievement or take it down a notch based on the same criticisms Freddie levels at The Matrix. Either way, I'm glad to see it mentioned. That makes me happy.
O no...I meant that sometimes something that has been popularized (Matrix) has roots in something worth the track. And imagine writing PF in English when not his native language.
Thank you for clarifying about Neuromancer. I thought you meant that!
You're absolutely right. PF is an astonishing artistic miracle. These days I just pick it up and dip in anywhere. It's like listening to Mozart. There's no floor to the complexity and humor. How did he do it? It's impossible, yet there it is.
I can take or leave The Matrix. But the tone of this review is so obnoxiously hipster it makes me want to cancel my subscription. Eww shudder. Don’t write like this again.
If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. I don't write any way but the way I want to
And for the record "hipster" here means nothing. I don't think this movie is very good and I said so and it doesn't feel remotely contrarian to say so.
https://www.gawker.com/culture/let-people-enjoy-this-essay
https://unherd.com/2021/09/the-dying-art-of-the-hatchet-job/
The Washington Post reviewer also didn't like Ted Lasso. The issue in both cases was a sense that their objections were based not on their own preferences but on a need to maintain a facade of cool/tribal affiliation.
An alternative example might be, let's say, a humanities professor at Barnard being a secret Disney World fanatic. A AirBnB in the Lake District for the summer? Totally OK. Camping in a national park? Totally fine. But Disney World? No way. Their peer group would be mortified so they either don't go or keep it more or less a secret.
Something like a third of FdB's articles are about problems created by social posturing, I think it is safe to give him the benefit of the doubt about whether he dislikes The Matrix because he wants to impress his peers and seem cool.
Without wading into this object-level discussion an iota, I'll just say that I think I do my best critiques when I'm noticing something in others that bothers me in myself. Or, you know, "takes one to know one".
OK but like I'm really specifically saying here that this doesn't seem remotely contrarian or provocative to me, it just seems like an existentially silly movie and I'm surprised it has so many defenders. That's my sincere take.
The tryhard dork and Hot Topic comments makes it seem like, at some level, your objection is based on a dislike of the people who like the movie and not the movie itself.
But that could just be me reading more into it than is warranted.
Just offering some constructive feedback from a paying and loyal reader.
Your first comment didn't come across as 'constructive feedback'.
The only part I don't like is the part where you're like "I'm not being contrarian, everyone else is contrarian for disagreeing with my common sense!" But I've also been known to talk that way about movies everyone loves and I don't (The Lord of the Rings comes to mind), so whatever.
The definition of "contrarian" is "a person who opposes or rejects popular opinion". The Matrix has a rating of 8.7 on IMDB, 88%/85% on rottentomatoes. So: popular opinion is that it's a good movie. If you disagree, you are by definition a contrarian. Your feelings don't come into it.
I watched Blade and the Matrix (somehow) on VHS a year after they came out and I also was 14 so it was perfect timing to take in “everything is an illusion, also look how cool this is”. It was very cool to me, a 14-year old.
I enjoyed The Matrix as a kid, never watched the sequels, and have not rewatched The Matrix since then, so I have no strong opinion on it. But I do want to defend, in abstract, the idea of a movie having themes without clear takeaways.
I think it's okay for a movie (or any work of art) to explore a theme without necessarily having a single, specific thing to say about that theme. In fact, I think this is a mature approach to theme in a story. It therefore doesn't necessarily seem muddled to me that The Matrix might have different characters expressing conflicting perspectives on free will - the point might just be to have a discussion on it, not express a canonical statement on what free will is, or whether it's something we possess.
Didn't feel like a like was strong enough for how good a comment this was. Completely agree. Typically I prefer art that doesn't come down one way or the other, particularly on an issue as complex as "do we have free will?"
This is a totally fair point, but I also believe this particular movie would have been more satisfying if the writers had arrived at an answer. Some works are just studies of different types of characters, but The Matrix is so ambitious and dramatic that I want there to be some big point at the end.
I don't think being open-ended is the problem so much as The Matrix asks its questions in a really sloppy way and never articulates the conflict very clearly. I just watched the movie last week for like the tenth time and I still can't figure out what the Oracle's whole deal is with "The One" and how much of it is theater vs. actual predestination.
Why does the Architect say that he is the father of the Matrix and the Oracle is the mother? In what sense?
That's not in the movie you're critiquing.
Its been a while, but I thought it was because the Matrix is ultimately revealed to be a cyclical, iterative thing, and while the Architect is the one who builds each iteration, the Oracle is the one in charge of the storytelling structure that fuels each cycle. She selects the One, and gives him the narrative that he's special, but in a specific way. Basically she frames the story so that the only possible outcome is always cyclical and allows for the survival of the Matrix. I assume its some metaphor for how a lot of seemingly revolutionary paradigms peddled by powerful storytellers within the Hollywood structure are ultimately self-defeating, and deliberately so, like something Mark Fisher would point out.
Yeah, that makes sense. I think your narrowing of the critique makes it stronger here - it's not about whether the movie has specific answers, it's more about whether the perspectives presented offer new and interesting insights that change how we think about the theme.
My problem with the first Matrix film is that its twist ending violates the First Law of Thermodynamics (e.g. conservation of energy): you can't get more energy out of a system than is initially in the system. According to the twist ending of the film, the computers are using humans as batteries to power their machinery. But physics says thumbs-down on that. The computers would have to put more energy into keeping the humans alive in their little pods than they could get back out from them, so they would run out of energy very quickly. You can't create energy from nothing. I could never get past that scientific flaw to enjoy the film, even though Keanu Reeves does look good in his black sunglasses.
That's not the ending, it's like the twist first quarter.
There’s a web comic floating around somewhere that actually addresses this head on.
The laws of thermodynamics you learned were learned within the Matrix- you actually have no idea what laws of physics apply in the Real World.
Which should be existentially terrifying, given that you are totally out of touch with even the basic rules of the Universe, and not only cannot trust a single assumption you grew up with your whole life, and also cannot even reliably perceive the blind spots you know for a fact that you must have.
Or rather, it would be existentially terrifying if only they’d meant it to be anything more than a throw away line to cover for a script change.
I've never understood the concept of "conditions necessary/conducive to life" that we measure on distant planets, and decide whether there can be life there (usually not). Our own experience with "life" is strictly limited to what we observe on Earth. How does our knowledge of conditions necessary for life here on Earth mean we know what's required for life throughout the entire universe? Isn't it conceivable that some other form of life, galaxies away, thrives in super-cold and dry terrain and loves breathing sulfuric acid, or doesn't breathe at all?
Yes, this point is well understood and much discussed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry
This was great. Thank you.
I think there's some reasonable thinking about this – and in depth – and part of a sketch of what you're asking has to do with the _limited_ variety of various 'complex' chemistries available. Carbon really is special, chemically, in being able to form SO many varieties of different molecules. I think the second-best alternative is silicon (?), but it's a pale contender for such a central chemical element.
Water also has a super special property which could, as kind of a 'brute fact' about existence in our universe, turn out to be crucial – namely that its solid form is _less_ dense than its liquid form and thus, when water freezes, it floats on top of any remaining un-frozen water (and shielding the water from further freezing somewhat).
As to life that "thrives in super-cold", there is an 'absolute' _coldest_ temperature and the universe itself is mostly _just_ above it. The problem with 'cold' is that it's equivalent to 'no free energy to do physics work', i.e. no energy for chemistry and life-sized physics (e.g. moving around, copying molecules) to happen.
As for alternative atmospheres, our own current atmosphere on Earth was the _product_ (and partly cause) of one of the worst major extinction events in its history – way way worse than anything we'll be able to 'pull off' for many many years to come.
The thing the 'astrobiologists' are looking for is evidence _of_ life-like chemistry, i.e. microbe poop.
I enjoyed and appreciate this explanation.
Thanks!
I'm a little fuzzy as I haven't been able to comment, or even read, anyone's posts lately (i.e. including Freddie's), but I think you've asked several really good questions that I've enjoyed answering – thanks for that!
Apparently the original idea was that the computers were using the humans' brains to run their code, so the people were CPUs rather than batteries. But it took too many lines to explain, while batteries could be explained easily and include the Duracell product placement
I've heard this but have never seen a citation. I think it might just be an internet urban legend.
Argghhh that makes so much more sense, the whole premise looks better in this light. Especially if "being in the Matrix" is just what it feels like from the inside to execute that code. But I wonder if it would really take that much more time to explain given the audience has already bought into the idea of brains running non-native software.
> given the audience has already bought into the idea of brains running non-native software.
I don't think people _had_ bought into this then like they have now. They could understand 'the Matrix' as something like virtual reality, or a dream (or Hell, or Heaven), but not as 'a simulation performed in a distributed fashion using human brains as raw computronium'.
That would be awful if true.
Were they using them as batteries or generators? I always thought they were using them as generators - calories and oxygen would go in and electricity and metabolic waste would come out.
I like the head-canon that the "batteries" thing is a little white lie. That the machines are in a Three-Laws-of-Robotics balancing act where they are trying to preserve humanity after humanity has trashed the planet. The most workable solution is pods + a consensual hallucination of the situation immediately pre-planet-trashing. Those who prefer the redpill lifestyle are going to be really depressed if they think the situation is the fault of their species, so the machines tell a little white lie about who's responsible for the situation, and since the redpill people are all about drama and struggle, the machines wrassle with them from time to time. This head-canon is absurd but it makes the movie like .1% more fun for me so I go with it.
I've never heard that before. It's fantastic!
Trying to figure out a sensible, and coherent, explanation of art works that aren't already clear (and correct) on their own is something I really enjoy!
Physics also says 'thumbs down' on electric hovercraft.
Point of order: that's explained pretty early on in the film, it's not a "twist ending". And you are right that it makes no sense at all scientifically. The film makers should have had a decent science advisor (or they did have one, and ignored what she told them, as happens in a LOT of science fiction film). But we waive that point. We do not press it. We look over it.
I see others made similar points below.
The meme response, as someone else mentioned, to a version of the story where Neo raises your same objection to Morpheus, is "Where did you learn those supposed laws of thermodynamics Neo?".
A completely throwaway take: The Matrix trilogy was my generation's Jesus Christ Superstar
I don't really agree that The Matrix is bad, but I do agree that Blade rules and is way more rewatchable. This may be a common hipsterism on social media (I don't go there anymore), a la "Did Hard is a Christmas movie," but for my money Blade is the best Marvel movie by far.
This is, in fact, a common hipsterism. Although thankfully not as prevalent as the terrible "Die Hard is my favorite Christmas movie" bit which is stupid because a) people have been beating that into the ground for 15 years and b) Gremlins is right there people!