[froggo]

Just watched the fourth Matrix, by Lana Wachowski, and I thought it was the second best of all the matrix movies (my favourite being the second one because of the intensity of the highway scene)... and then I was curious about what Lana looks and talks like presently, having in the past heard about her transition, but never really giving it much thought. I watched her being interviewed on a youtube video and proceeded to the comments, and was really surprised to see just a massive wave of people talking about how much they disliked the fourth Matrix..... and I'm wondering... Do they dislike it, because they dislike the fact that she pleasantly and happily transitioned to become her true self, or do they genuinely dislike it based on the merits, or lack thereof, confined within the film itself? I thought there were great action sequences in this film, particularly the swarm scene, nor was I bored or confused by the first half of the film, I also greatly enjoyed the matriarchal slant of the film. I thought it was very touching and diversified the layers (matrices if you will) of the franchise. Is the lack of audience acceptance due to the film itself, and where the power shifts from the whole 'Jesus is the One crap' to 'Women can Run things better than men ever could'; or do you think the lack of acceptance has something to do with people's prejudiced lack of acceptance of Lana herself? They don't want to like the film because they don't want to like her?

[noemon]

I loved it.

[ness31]

Like all of the Matrix films, I need to watch it again…and possibly then again. I’m not yet not qualified to comment. But I read all the negative reviews too and wondered the same thing..

[ckaihatsu]

I'll suggest that it's probably because everything got shifted *way* forward on the timeline, away from the entire Matrix 'world' / timeframe that everyone took pains to wrap their heads around and get used-to.

The Matrix 4 world is *brand new* and doesn't neatly fit into *existing* Matrix trilogy lore.

Fortunately it *does* show where the 'geopolitics' went -- there's a *schism* in the machine world, with some helping people, and others holding-up the 'real-world' Matrix-hegemonic landscape of body-pods.

Neo & Trinity / Trinity & Neo may be able to now 'redecorate' The Matrix in their own image, but the Analyst / the 'suits', and new 'Smith' (Thomas Anderson's boss) are *still* one-step-ahead by being able to do 'stop motion' time, while Neo & Trinity obviously *can't*.

[Beren]

The Matrix (Vol. 1), made by the Wachowski Brothers, is a masterpiece, the rest...well...not that much. And Jupiter Ascending, made by the Wachowski Sisters, is especially shitty and unwatchable.

[Robert Urbanek]

Just finished watching The Matrix: Resurrections on a DVD from the library. It’s a convoluted retread of the Matrix story with a germ of a great idea: The Matrix trilogy is itself a part of the Matrix, but only as a series of video games, not movies.

If they had jumped down the ultimate rabbit hole —The Matrix movies are part of the illusion — we would have had the potential for a truly subversive film: Human history depicted as entirely fictional. Its characters are so extreme and grotesque they could only be the product of a twisted super programmer. Donald Trump isn’t real; he’s just a line of code. But they didn’t go there.

[ness31]

I watched it again recently too. I liked their depiction of his experience with deja vu. It was also very apt that Trinity was the one full of faith in their ability to fly. She really had Neos back there huh?

Ah, Neo and Trinity. The original power couple

[Fasces]

I think the Wachoski Sisters are just annoyed that their obvious trans-parable and red-pill metaphor original got completely co-opted by a right-wing culture that wants to exterminate them and set up IV as a fuck you to those people.

[ness31]

I think the Wachoski Sisters are just annoyed that their obvious trans-parable and red-pill metaphor original got completely co-opted by a right-wing culture that wants to exterminate them and set up IV as a fuck you to those people.

Was it really a trans-parable? Was it? How’d I miss that?

[Fasces]

The Matrix films are about being transgender, the trilogy's co-director says.

"That was the original intention but the world wasn't quite ready," says Lilly Wachowski, who came out as trans along with her sister Lana after the films came out.

Identity, self-image, and transformation are all themes present in The Matrix. The film follows Neo and his struggle with his identity within the Matrix. He has an inexplicable feeling that something in the world is wrong, but he can’t place what it is. He feels as though he is going crazy. This is similar to how trans people often feel just before coming out. Once Neo learns what the Matrix is and how it works, he can exist outside of its strict rules and become the self that he was always met to be, the chosen one. The movie embodies the idea that there is power in embracing what makes an individual unique.

While in the Matrix, bodies don’t matter. It is all about exploring what the mind is capable of outside of its physical form. The brain is what matters, as Morpheus says to Neo, “The body cannot live without the mind.”

In the original script of the film, the character Switch, a member of Morpheus’ crew, was supposed to change genders when they went into the Matrix. In the real world, they were male, but in the Matrix, they were female. This idea of residual self-image illustrates how transgender individuals see themselves, despite how it may not be how they are perceived by others in the real world.

They create identities within the Matrix that seem more real than their physical ones in the real world. The characters all choose new names in place of their given ones, and everyone dresses more and more androgynously as the film goes on. Agent Smith all throughout the film chooses to refer to Neo as ‘Mr. Anderson’ in place of his chosen name. In a scene close to the end of the film, where Agent Smith tries to kill Neo on a train platform, Neo definitively states “My name is Neo” before jumping out of the way of the oncoming train. This embodies the notion of how trans people may not always be referred to by their chosen names, and the frustration they might feel as a result of it.

"And then there’s the whole red pill, blue pill connection.

Not only is the pill literally Neo’s gateway to seeing the world as it is and the systems built to define and control his identity, but it’s also an apt metaphor for hormone therapy."

It also speaks about the red pill/blue pill dichotomy serving as a metaphor for estrogen hormone therapy, which Chu points out was literally a red pill in the 1990's.

[ness31]

Wow. If that’s what they were going for it didn’t quite work, did it? People have interpreted the matrix as being quite literal, more so than a metaphor.

What a delicious failure

[AFAIK]

It's a shame Switch didn't switch genders in the final film. The film was ahead of it's time so it to make lame concessions like 'humans are batteries' and 'no one changes identities when they go online'. The Wachoskis should have saved Switch for The Animatrix where they'd receive less push back.

[ckaihatsu]

The 'Matrix' would have had to have happened, regardless -- I'm surprised that there aren't *more* fictional treatments of the digital world that so many spend so many hours in (myself included).

Perhaps it's just a tech-update of Descartes, since he was a dualist and saw the mind and body as being separate.