Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Matrix Resurrections

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

Happy New Year! We’re going back to the Matrix - which we last covered in 2016 (!!) - and we’re feeling pretty good about it! Seraph was a login screen, sure…but is “Tiffany” a .TIFF? Is Agent Smith just a virus? Are we taking crazy pills for liking this movie so much? Jack in and let’s fly, Blankies. Opening clip is from Howl's Moving Castle with David Ehrlich Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Breaking news! What? This is huge. I'm sorry. Matrix 4. Lana Wachowski directing. Yes! Keanu and Carrie-Anne Moss are in it.

What? I don't know what to tell you. What? Because they were denying it as of a week ago. A week ago. Just Lana, as we sort of have already figured out. Lily sort of made a retirement. Right, sort of split.

I gotta say, this is like... I'm freaking out. Lily sort of maybe retired. Right. Sort of split. I gotta say this is like I'm freaking out. This does not feel like surprising news. I feel like we all knew this was coming. No I knew it was coming

but I figured it was not going to be Wachowskis. Right. And no Keanu. And I thought if Wachowskis weren't doing it Keanu wouldn't do it. Yeah.

He'd been clear he wouldn't do it. Right. David Mitchell is a co-writer on it. The author of Cloud. Oh sure. Weird.

I'm so excited. David is yanking out his hair in both directions. I'm so happy. I'm genuinely so happy. I'm going to take a photo of this for posterity. The moment he learned. But back to Miyazaki. All right.

Anyone? Oh, boy. We don't deserve it. He's losing his mind. I'm so happy right now. He's beaming. Everyone's going to hate it. Can I take a photo? It's going to be great.

You can take as many photos of me as you want. Clank Jack with Griffin and David. Clank Jack with Griffin and David. To go back to where it all started Back to the podcast Mm-hmm. Yeah, right. Back to the podcast. Yeah. Right? I figured you'd do that. Of course.

Yeah. I'm searching my brain. I mean, I'm glad you didn't do an analyst monologue. Yeah. Because they're long. Sure. I feel like there's a I still know Kung Fu that's sort of the trailer line

turns out in my matrix the worse we treat you the more we manipulate you the more energy you produce it's nuts I've been setting productivity records every year since I took over

and the best part zero resistance people stay in their pods happier than podcasts and shit I should have just said people stay in their podcasts what the podcasts and shit. I should have just said people stay in their podcasts. What the fuck am I doing? I was literally about to say it's right there for you.

What the fuck am I doing? Pods, podcasts, you know. Look, I'm still having my coffee. Welcome to the Matrix. He's still having his coffee. I'm still plugging in. This is a coffee-obsessed movie right here. This is. Simulante.

There's coffee in like every frame of this movie. Go on. Go on. Hi. This is an episode people have been... I know. I'm feeling the burden a little bit. Me too.

I'm afraid of it. Can I say this? I'm a little scared. I've been stressed out about this episode. No, I'm actually not stressed out at all. I live in this shit. I fucking eat, sleep, and breathe this shit. It's fine.

We usually take one week off per year. We usually are dark on the final week of the year. Right. In terms of releasing. Yeah. Which is blank check. With Griffin and David. Right.

I'm Griffin. I'm David. Oh, talk about a throwback. It's not a throwback it's not a throwback it's like we this is became a thing like last year by by slow you zoom thing could have fit a fucking reloading

freeway chase in that pause between I'm Griffin and I'm David that's right now that would have been down that would have been exciting listen it's a podcast about filmography is directors who have massive success early on in their careers

and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they go back to the Matrix, baby. Back to the Matrix.

I can't do Groff. I can't either. I don't know what Groff is. I don't know what like you know. I don't know what, like, you know, what the germ of that. He's got a gentle voice. I think I wasn't too far off just because I think our speaking voices aren't...

Yeah, you're not that different. But wildly dissimilar in pitch. Does he have a... He's doing a thing in this. I need to watch this movie ten more times, I guess. How many times have you seen it now? Twice. Same. Cool.

Just two times. Yeah. A lady. This is special for me. I don't want to overlook. more times i guess how many times have you seen it now twice same cool okay two times yeah i this is this is special for me i don't want to overlook it's the same for me with any movie i love i rarely yeah when i was a teenager sure i might like you know watch a movie two times a week or three you know like over and over again but like these days i'm like you know is it time for me to watch spirited away or master and like some movie i love like i'm like yeah give know, is it time for me to watch Spirited Away or Mastering, or like some movie I love? Like,

I'm like, eh, give it a few more months. It's always got to be a little special. Well, David, here's a question for you.

How many times have you seen The Matrix Reloaded? I've probably seen The Matrix Reloaded like 10 times. Really? Yeah. Only that?

Yeah. I feel like when we started this podcast, you were like, I watch it a lot when I'm trying to go to sleep. You don't count those as full viewings? Yeah, maybe.

It's sort of funny to me to remember those days. Look, this is a throwback episode. I have not listened back to those episodes. I'll say this in a little bit. I mean, I have in my life. David, I thought I was going to re-listen before this, and I forgot to do it. But let's just say it up front.

I know I've already alluded to it this is our first blush review of matrix resurrections a film with a lot to process absolutely it's been a week a lot to process and a lot of online discourse and noise surrounding it which is maybe at a peak right now. Who knows? Yes. No, definitely. But we covered The Matrix very early on in this show. First year, we were a stupid Star Wars podcast.

And then we had the Blank Check premise of year two, and we did M. Night Shyamalan, and then we did the Wachowskis. Those were the two... Those were our first year. Where we were like this is an interesting premise to do with these two clear examples and then who knows what the fuck this show is after this or if they cancel us. You gonna cancel us

Ben? No I wasn't gonna cancel you but I mean you had to do well enough to have me convince my boss to keep making the show. Yes. David these days Zoomers complain about cancel culture. Real cancel culture

is the UCB podcast network with no ad sales saying you don't perform well enough. They never did, though. They were always nice to us, to their credit. David. You did,

you were the top performing show. There was a point in time right before we did the switch from Star Wars to Blank Check where they were like, sure, we'll give you a couple months. There was one meeting Wars to blank check where they were like, we'll give you, that's true.

There was a couple months. There was one meeting we had where it was kind of like, okay, like let's see how this reinvention goes. Right. Like we'll give it four months. That's true. I just want to say,

yes, those episodes, which posted April 28th and May 5th, 2016. Wow. So five years ago are respect. Almost six years ago, my friend. Yeah. Close five and a half. Far closer. Wow. So five years ago. Our respect. Almost six years ago, my friend.

Yeah. Close five and a half. Far closer. Yeah. Yeah. Are respectively an hour 50 and an hour 26. This is a big point. Now, especially with revolutions as we probably referenced on this podcast before we were on a time limit. Shannon O'Neill. Shannon O'Neill had booked the studio

and we maybe didn't know or she forgotten. She was the artistic director of the UCB. But she was also doing her podcast. Correct. And I think we recorded both episodes back to back. No. We did it Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or something like that. We did like the whole trilogy on consecutive days

or something like that. Yeah. And so Revolutions, people get mad to this day that that episode apparently doesn't have a box office game because we were so rushed how I think we spend you know we did our usual thing where we spend too much time talking about some stuff and then at the end we're like

and then also this happened you know like so yeah that's one reason I have not listened back in a while but those episodes are obviously fondly considered I will relisten before the commentary. I want to formally, fully announce again.

Right now, beginning of 2022, Year of Our Lord, on the Blank Check Patreon, we are doing the four Ghostbusters films. And then after that, we will be doing the four Matrix movies. We'll be going back to the Matrix. We'll be going back to the Matrix. So the point is

this is January and April we'll be doing a second slightly more distance view. May. Oh, no, sorry, March. March and April. Yes. April will be Resurrections. April will be Resurrections, but March 1st, March 21st, April 21st. And the original trilogy we'll revisit with episodes that are now

So get excited. We will we will be doing more Matrix talk if this is, you know, whatever. If this isn't enough. Well, I just bring it up because, much like you, I've been feeling the pressure of just like, this is an episode people have been waiting for

for years. This is the thing. Yeah. I think more than anything else we've done on the show, even like the Star Wars movies. No, it is. Because there's the moment

that Ben placed at the beginning of the episode and editing of you realizing in real time on the howl's moving castle episode you check your computer you see the news you go oh my god news oh my god and it was beyond so what's that that's 2019 yes is when it's announced because like it's not just how excited i was that that was happening. Lana Wachowski to make a new Matrix movie with Keanu and Carrie Ann Moss. That was the announcement, basically. But it was like, there had been two years of discussion and chatter of like, they're going to do a new Matrix movie. The Wachowskis won't be involved.

Maybe a reboot. Zach Penn to write. Michael B. Jordan possibly involved. The other element, of course, is Wachowski split up. Maybe they're never going to make any movie ever. Right. Signaling maybe they're not that

interested in making stuff right now. A lot of that. But then, yeah, just the sort of terminal bummer of like, oh, The Matrix has gotten to the credibility point where they want to bring it back.

Right. But it's going to be some weird boulderized thing. So just the pure excitement of that. The way you reacted, to bring it back right but it's gonna be some weird boulderized thing like so like just that the pure excitement of that the way you reacted i it was like did you just get the worst news of your life like did you because i'm like freaking out well it was like it you just went like blank i can't even explain it's like it's like looking at someone process shock in real time, you know?

Sure. Where you just went like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And you're like, what? And then you just sort of like said it.

It was wild that it was like, there had been no rumors. And then suddenly there was a full announcement. There had really been very nothing. Like Chad Stahelski had said one thing once about like, Lana has a pitch for matrix four that I love. And then had walked it back and been like well it's very theoretical

like that was the only time anyone even hinted it and we were just ready for the Zach Penn bummer news and then suddenly it was like Lana, Keanu Carrie Ann it's a sequel it's like right back to the Matrix Mitchell and what's his name co-writing David Mitchell co-writing with Alexander Hayden

and here's the release date. And you just... You say your great line. What do I say? It's going to be amazing and everyone's going to hate it. I was right! Look, I will say I actually think you were less right than I thought you were going to be.

I thought this was going to get like Jupiter ascending levels of backlash and i think there are more people who are on the wavelength of this movie than i would have expected all right that haven't been said when the trailer came out three four months ago was like holy shit i was like great is this gonna be a fucking home run is she gonna win everyone back and it's like the fact that she's like at like 60 or 70% positive and the other percentage I think is incredibly negative. Well, here's what I'll say.

All right, I'm going to say a few things. One, we're going to talk about the Rachel's Resurrections on this episode, obviously. Two, I'm very enthusiastic about this movie. People who listen to the show might know I'm very enthusiastic about this series. I'm a huge fan of the sequels, defender of the sequels, yada, yada, yada. yeah Griff you like this movie a lot I love very excited I would give it a

capital I'll love so get ready anyone listening for like a basically positive assessment of this movie if that blows your mind which some people online yes have indicated to me that it is mind blowing that I like this movie I'm sort of like apologies that's certainly the vibe you're going to be getting here ben i don't really know where you are oh i'm about to slam dunk on this fucking mill i actually didn't necessarily love it or it was just it was like so much to take in uh at the theater when griffin and i went sure i watched then last night and really locked in on the movie. Love it.

So yeah. Ben's more into it. So this will be a very positive episode. Yeah, that's fine. It ends. I turn to Ben. I go, well, that thing fucking rules. And Ben says, I don't know.

And I said, you don't know? And he was like, I actually, I don't know what that is. And to be clear, you were like, I don't even know if I'm saying like negative. I just actually don't even know if i'm saying like negative i just actually don't even know what that is yeah i really had no idea i'll say this yeah the movie got i would say you know a few a few very positive reviews mostly mildly positive to

mildly negative sure views and some like abjectly negative reviews about 64 on rotten tomatoes not the rotten tomatoes is really a metric of much but but still, you know, like, not a home run. But Revolutions was like 30-something. Well, Revolutions was greeted with disdain. Whereas Reloaded actually was sort of like a Phantom of Menace thing where it got pretty good reviews.

I was going to say Phantom Menace, Star Trek Into Darkness. Where the critics were like, yeah, it looks like a Star Wars slash Matrix Star Trek movie to me. Rise of Skywalker got fairly bad reviews, but better than it deserved. The first wave of people being like, yeah, it's not great, but it works. And then I feel like six weeks later, everyone's like, oh, this thing's fucking diarrhea. Well, that's what I'm saying. The reviews

from the critical community were all right. And then the backlash from the fan and genre film community was strong yes quickly with reloaded and so by revolution's time everyone's like fuck this same thing happened with pirates of the caribbean sequels yes for that the second one kind of got like lukewarmish yeah this is okay and then the third one was really slammed right and that's what's happening in my opinion probably with this with this, where it's like, there's definitely fans, there's definitely a lot of people

who really locked in with the movie, but I am sensing an emerging like, what the fuck are you talking about? You thought that was good? There's definitely a sort of like, am I taking crazy pills community, which is fine. Look, and this is another qualifier. That's what I kind of

want. I know we're throwing out a lot of that's what i kind of want i know we're throwing a lot of qualifiers but i think we're very aware of the fact that there are a lot of eyes and ears on us right now because of the history of the show because everyone knowing the investment but like let's not suck each other's dick like who cares you know but but yes but but i was stressed out about this i didn't sleep well last night i was re-watching shit i was just like fuck i can't you like, how are we gonna even do this episode? But all this to say,

especially in the last two years, when I've been losing my fucking mind because of the state of the world and being in isolation, what happened? I feel like there has been a recurring, incredibly vocal backlash to when I, especially with new release films that I love and I'm defending, try to intellectualize why people dislike it.

Sure. Which I think people view often as me sort of projecting. You're being a fucking coastal elite douchebag that people don't like talking down to audiences around the country maybe people just don't let people not enjoy things yes griffin right that's the thing uh i think i defend movies that i love especially when they're and you get a little too maybe or you you're saying like you're too heady about well why don't people like it i don't know people don't like right and i'll say look uh let me have my hyperbole i enjoy being overcranked right you have to remember that my role on the show is to be the fucking idiot comedy doofus uh but but but

beyond that i do think also uh we don't do a tremendous amount of new release films. And part of our sort of anthropological study of... We're usually hindsight. We're usually looking at stuff with hindsight. So I think there's a muscle in my brain that is trying to understand the reaction to a thing where when it's old and it came out a week ago, people are like, you're attacking me at a raw wound.

And especially when increasingly there are oddball movies by directors that we now feel very emotionally invested in that come out and that are treated with some level of disdain.

We really like defend them if we want to, right? And I think sometimes this is all I'll say. I'm going to try to and David fucking catch me

and stop me if I start doing the like, I think people don't like this because of this thing. Because I really want to stay away from that. I really just want to focus on what I love about this movie. Because I think this movie is very divisive. And I, in fact, unlike some other cases, fully understand every single reason why people would dislike this.

So I'm just going to focus on what worked for me. Okay. Okay. Was there more? There was. I feel like you were building to something and now I but I don't know I'm very

thrilled for one I'm not there's the Wachowski's made a movie called the Matrix in 1999 that was very very popular cultural landmark yes to this day they've not made a movie since that went over smooth they only make correct very big budget

movies correct uh but they've never released anything the reloaded is the closest to a movie that did really well with the critics and yeah in the box it's sour it's sour quickly so it would be really weird for resurrections to reverse that trend although it was you know there yeah there sort of a, is everything cresting where it's like everyone loves the Matrix again? And, you know, like, but no. I'm going to come back to that in half a second. I'm thrilled that it's a very divisive, perplexing movie that is prompting all kinds of debate. And, you know, that's what a Matrix sequel should be, in my opinion. It's going to be great and everyone's going to hate it.

The second part of the thing I was going to say just is I remember that my broken brain, the two point statement I was trying to make. The other side of the thing is I feel like very often, especially with these new releases, when you get to these responses that, as you describe, are are you taking crazy pills? It is impossible to like this movie. Are these guys putting me on? Right? I've gotten a lot of that recently where I'm like, have you heard me?

I'm very fond of these movies. Like, it's really not surprising that I like them. No, of course not. I mean, you had a tweet about your wife going, I'm happy that you like them. That's truly what she said

the second the movie ended. I was like, eh? And she was like, I'm glad you like it. And I was like, okay. Yeah, which, look, that's a very romantic statement. I find that speaks to the health of your marriage

and the loveliness of your partnership. Oh. That's a wonderful thing to a partner to say to another person. But I ask people, I will stay away from the fucking shit I do that annoys people. I ask people to grant us the understanding that

we're not fucking putting you on. We're not in the tank. We like the movie. Right. I wasn't sure Griffin would like it, but I thought he would. Look, there were ways I could. And I point to,

and I still need to watch it a second time, West Side Story, I wanted to be fucking like effusive about and I clearly liked it a lot but had hangups and I didn't pretend like I fucking love this movie and I feel like I will see people go like they clearly didn't like

this but they thought it'd be a bummer to shit on the movie so they like it and that that that's one of the few fan responses to our show that actually regularly pisses me off. Okay, okay. But don't worry about it. Let's let it come out.

Those are the two qualifying statements I want to throw out, okay? And just in case we do have to say, I don't know why, but just on the off chance that somebody new is checking out the show with this episode, we are going to spoil the movie.

We're going to spoil fucking everything about this show. If you don't want to spoil, then turn it off and see the movie and then you can listen. And that person of course saying this because it's a new year maybe this is a jumping in point for people. Yes is. Ben Huxley

the producer of the show. Producer Ben. Hey. The Ben Ducer, the poet laureate, the meatlover the tiebreaker, the fart detector, the finest film critic. That started a long time ago where Griffin gave me a bunch of nicknames and the bit is that he goes through and it takes a really long time white hot benny and it's like a completely sort of rail right mr positive mr haas and uh

close personal friend just goes on and on but fans seem to have liked it for some reason i know david's like shaking his hand it's like a 50 50 wishful ben uh what is that that was uh io uh debbie, that's right. Hosleywood. Hey. Because he was in Hollywood for the Dark Star episode. He also graduated to a series of tells over the course of different miniseries such as Producer Ben Kenobi, Kylo

Ben, Ben Night Shyamalan, Ben's Eight. At some point. That's his. asking me anything dot dot dot aly bens with a dollar sign just absurd and i would see people mr ben credible it's just like you know the health the hazliday public at benham of the ditch of the jersey yep stop making ben's with his so now he's doing yeah the miniseries names colon pig in the city ben hazley met sally dot dot dot the secret life of ben's with a z the great mouse fart detective. The Haas break kid.

Parentheses open to punch up. Ben's in the Haas. And I want to just say it now for the first time ever. Benscape from New Haas. That's what we're doing? Good. Good. And I just want to cite this as the first time that I finally have conceded and pulled up the blank check wiki and just read the list because I officially can no longer do it for me.

The reason we can't do it for memory is we don't do it every week anymore. And the reason we don't do it any week anymore, apart from the fact that it takes a long time, is that it just became so mortifying to do it in front of any guest I was not very, very close with. That's A. And B, it became so mortifying to start the chain for me and be like, what if I blink? Well, sure. You have the performance anxiety thing. Right.

But I just like, it would be one thing if it was like, it's the dope when I'm friends with. Right. Right. Oh, sure. Right.

Absolutely. Yes. Cause they get so like, I feel like that bitch especially gets so embarrassed. Yeah. But like, it's like, you know,

like Michael Cerveris, like some guy where it's like, like, it's like, you know, like Michael Cerveris, like some guy where it's like, God, it's so exciting that we have like a really fucking Tony award. When, you know, impressive, interesting person.

And then Griffin's like, you know, and I'm just like, Oh my God. And I don't want to tee it up, but we have a couple people coming on the podcast this year. Yeah. That,

that are bananas. Hopefully. I mean, let's not, let's not, but yes, yes yes i'm saying that because we just updated the spreadsheet with the new ads while you were doing that definitely we haven't jesus we have enough wild people booked that i feel comfortable saying we have a couple wild people coming because even if some of them drop out there are enough people on the spreadsheet right now who blow my mind to possibly be on the show that i imagine at least one or some of them drop out, there are enough people on the spreadsheet right now who blow my mind to possibly be on the show that I imagine at least one or two of them will. Super exciting.

We love it. The Matrix Resurrections. The Matrix Resurrections. Is a Lana Wachowski film. Lana Solo. For the first time, although Sense8 Season 2 is also Solo Lana. I want to dig into context here

because I do think Ben and I walked around for a while after seeing the movie. You saw it at the Williamsburg Cinema. We did. Omicron has been ravaging New York City. This movie was obviously available on HBO Max. I completely understand and support anyone who just does not want to go to a fucking theater right now. It's scary. But you and I agree. And perhaps we have biases here. one who just does not want to go to a fucking theater right now yeah it's scary you know but i

you and i agree and perhaps we have biases here but i do think i am able to impartially view this with a certain amount of logic i do think movies are a safer indoor activity than most public things i agree we don't need to talk especially because yeah like us we just found a screening where there were going to be five people in a big auditorium. We looked at the Fandango preview. We were like, this time, no one's there. The screen's big enough. I see the seats.

We sat up front, David, Griff style. Way up close. Everyone's different. Everyone lives in different places. Everyone's allowed to do it. David's one of these people, like my father, who wants to sit as close to the exit as possible. I like aisle, back aisle. Back aisle corner. Where people are like, well, the screen's not filling like aisle back aisle back people like well the screen's

not filling your face and i'm like the screen's very big i can see the whole screen it's right there right and i want to not remember that anything exists other than the screen right all i need from a cinema experience is you know darkness good projection bright and i asked for total immersion right you know no one's looking at their phones blah blah you know like that's all like i i will say i saw this saw this film at the Lincoln Square IMAX. Did I tell you what happened? No. And that was like, kind of, you know, it was like a slightly edgy time.

You were texting me, though, being stressed out about getting there earlier, early enough that you could get your seat. There's a particular seat I like at the Lincoln Square IMAX right at the back because it's a secret bathroom there's a secret bathroom not that I went to the bathroom during this movie but you know I am a famous famous peer you know famous it's probably one of the movie three or four things you're most famous

yeah Esther Zuckerman friend of the show loves to anytime I don't pee during a screening be like damn you liked it like yeah you didn't you didn't take a break with my dad the test used to be a movie was really good based on how little he slept through it sure right when he would take us to fucking movies and go like yeah it was just an edgy you know all the cases were going up you're starting to hear about people yes you know what and so i was i remember i was a little anxious about that but i was also anxious about i want to see my movie of course this. This screening, by the way,

there were not a lot of people there. Yeah. I expected like, you know, kind of a rocking full house, which I had just gotten at Spider-Man for the press. Yes. And this one,

for whatever reason, I mean, it's a very big theater, that theater. So maybe that's why it felt sparse, but it was like, you know, but Spider-Man,

Spider-Man today, just, just became Sony's highest grossing film of all time. In nine days, ten days? Whatever. Something insane. Oh, no. The stat I saw is that it just outgrossed Rise of Skywalker.

Sure. Which was the highest grossing film the last two years. Since, right. Because it was the last sort of pre-COVID blockbuster. It was the highest grossing film in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. Yeah. Right? So, it's now the highest grossing film in three years, including even the rest of the 2019 box office.

And it surpassed Rise of Skywalker's number in 12 days. It's very successful. Then it took Rise of Skywalker 91 days to get to. It's very successful. It's a fairly fun... ...theater experience that I had seeing that movie. It is. I enjoyed that movie.

It is. But it also, people have, look, people are reporting on the fact that this movie is bombing at the box office and I think that is

completely impossible to judge based on it being on HBO Max at the same day at the time of a spike over the holidays when people are staying at home. And people are like, well, Spider-Man is doing well. Well, Spider-Man is not like any other movie that has come out in the last two years.

In terms of the audience reaction it's getting. I think it's great. For better or worse, the thing that drives people leaving their home and going to a theater these days is not wanting to be spoiled. Yeah, exclusivity. Right, exactly. But the X factor with Spider-Man is I don't want to have to avoid

the internet because there are all these things that I know are going to get spoiled for me. And I think if Spider-Man were available on Disney Plus at the same day, it would have made a tremendous amount of money, but a lot of people would have gone health risk. I'm going to stay home and watch it. And with Matrix, that became a very easy

decision to stay at home and watch it. We can talk about that in the box office game. This is what I want to say. Okay, go ahead. Ben and I took the walk back from the theater to the train station, and I... Ben was, as we said, saying, I truly don't know what to

make of that. I don't even know if I dislike that. I don't even understand what that is. And I was like, Ben, I want to give you a lot of context because I do think the context on this movie is incredibly important. This is a movie that is so much about itself, which is the thing that some people find annoying, right? But this is a movie that is about the exact place this filmmaker is in at that point in their life. It's about where this series stands in the cultural mind at this moment, about where she wants to be as a filmmaker, about the prospect of having to make this film. It's about all of these things. So as you said, the Wachowskis

are screenwriters who write a spec script called The Matrix, which they sort of, it has that classic first screenplay thing, even though it wasn't literally their first screenplay. But a lot of what they had done before that was like for higher writing jobs, this sort of stuff, right? They'd written Ectokid for a Marvel imprint. They wrote Assassins, but it got heavily rewritten, all this sort of shit. But they were like this is our big fucking swing right and by their own admission was one of those things where it's like we put every single idea we had into this one script we put everything we liked into one movie it's like make write a script as if you never get to make another script ever again everything in

their lives up until this point in time. They pitch it to Warner Brothers. Famously, the Warner Brothers executives go, I don't think we understand it. We can tell that this is something big, but we don't get it. Would you mind explaining it to us again after they had read it? But it gets acquired,

and there were years of, will this get made or not? Because it was risky. They were just like, does this make any sense? We don't want anyone else to have this. There's a version of this as a blockbuster. They really want to direct it. Warner Brothers was very scared about that. Untested.

They go off. They make Bound essentially as an audition film to prove that they could direct a movie even though it's a small film. Once they see that, they go, these guys know where to place the camera, right? part of it saying guys misgendering i meant in a gender neutral term but obviously it's more sensitive when we're talking about the okay okay yeah that's all everything you're saying is true i'm going to take over a little bit yeah okay there's two you know

just to clarify lorenzo de bonaventura and joel silver were crucial in getting the movie made lorenzo de bonaventura who was the head of of Warner Brothers at the time and was a big-ass dork and, for better or worse, is one of the people who is probably responsible for culture shifting that much in that direction at a blockbuster level.

And, you know, the way they finally get the movie approved is the storyboarding. This had, like, a 600-page storyboard book that they present, which is basically the whole movie. Jeff Darrow, the comic book artist.

Right. And Steve Skouros worked on that. And, like, that was where they finally did it it was made cheaply for like i mean gonna go cheaply for like 65 million dollars but one of these movies that was sort of a forebear of how these blockbusters are made now where it's like you can watch the entire film before we've shot an inch of film the storyboards are so deliberate we're so specific about what the effects are going to be the shots are going to be the timing of everything and they send war brothers they shoot the first sequence they send it to warner brothers trinity you know the cold open up the movie is and warner brothers is like looks great we can relax exactly you're on your own and then obviously the movie was a

huge hit the movie the matrix is it's been very interesting watching people re-watch all the matrices yes right some people who probably have not in a long time and pretty much the universal reaction to the first matrix is damn like movies used to look like this like blockbusters like it is such it is still amazing to me and to people, I think, just like how like sort of like flawless and I don't know, enduring it is. Like, I mean, it's almost a boring movie to talk about, but it's also such a complicated movie to talk about. They re-released the film. They remastered IMAX. And they also released it in normal size screens. And I dragged my sister, Rami Newman, to see it because she had never seen it. normal size screens. Yeah. And I dragged Passing Featured Guest,

my sister, Romney Newman, to see it because she had never seen it. She was one years old when the first Matrix came out. Yeah, it was 1999, right. Which is a bizarre thing

to think about. That someone can be quote unquote an adult. Well, it's a 22, 23 year old movie now. Correct. Yeah. Right.

And she's about to turn 24. So I took her to see it and she knew almost nothing about it. Sure. She actually Right. And she's about to turn 24. So I took her to see it and she knew almost nothing about it. Sure. She actually has avoided the cultural osmosis of the Matrix. She's not into sci-fi. This is nerdy boy shit. Right. In her mind. All she

knew was that I had quote unquote some trans take on it. And before it started I was like I need you to understand this isn't a take. This is the reality of these filmmakers and what's happened to them the 25 years since. Right. and before it started I was like I need you to understand this isn't a take this is the reality of okay these filmmakers and what's happened to them

the 25 years since right um but I was very curious like is she just gonna shut down or is this movie as sort of like universally undeniable

as I think it is and it is she just went like yeah holy shit and it was also wild to see someone whose entire life

has pretty much happened post Matrix be able to pinpoint things. Like, I was trying to contextualize for her a little bit, like, you'd understand, no one had synthesized all these things before. These were things that existed, but not in the mainstream

and not together. When you're combining sort of, like, club culture and anime and martial arts films and, like, deep, hard sci-fi theory and short story. All this sort of shit. Coding. Video games.

Video games. Yeah. All these things. And she was like, the fashion in that movie is incredible. And I was like, yeah. It still fucking is. It is. You look at the Met Gala any year and at least 50% of people look like they're from the Matrix.

Still, almost 25 years. Sequels have incredible fashion. Later. But this is the funny thing. So I'm talking about this with her, right? And then she's like, so then what happened after this? She asked the questions that are so funny that are just the questions you cannot help but ask after watching that movie even this decades later, right? She went like, wow. Okay. A, i finally get keanu reeves right sure she was like yeah this is undeniable i see the whole

thing now right uh and interesting to watch now at a time when i feel like he's finally earned universal credibility he's no longer the butt of some jokes or whatever right he had a win people used to be like, he usually sucks, but he's effective here. Now I feel like people are like, Keanu rolls. Question number two. What happened to the woman who played Trinity?

Sure. You watch that movie and you go, why have I not known this person as a movie star my entire lifetime? I'm like, she did other stuff. She works. She's around. Her being back for fucking matrix 4 is crazy and and romley goes like so wait what are the matrix sequels the fourth is like the first 120 years and i go romley that everyone hated him and she went how is that possible are they really different which i thought

was such a funny response. Sure. She was like, I just watched this thing. This fucking is undeniable. The ending is so good. They made two more of them and people were angry. And I was like, yeah. And she was like, are they not the same?

Yeah. My short answer I gave her was like, it was, the expectations were so high. They shot them at the same time. Cutting edge special effects. Budget so high. And the two movies pretty much deconstruct and def shot them at the same time. Cutting edge special effects. Budget so high. And the two movies pretty much deconstruct and deflate everything that the first movie. They do.

And I think they're very intellectual. They don't have the same sort of clear emotional sort of awakening through line that made it easy for anyone to get into the first film. They go deep into the lore. Yes. David loves them. And Romley was like, of course he does. They're, they're,

it's too complicated to talk about the sequels right now. I can't do it. Um, but, uh, but yeah, but they're, yeah,

they, they, they, they, it makes sense that they were not popular. I didn't like them when I saw them. That was the question I was going to ask. I was,

I was, no, we talked about this. I, I was annoyed about Reloaded. I was so hyped. I was 17 years, we talked about this. I was annoyed about Reloaded. I was so hyped. I was 17 years old. Yes.

And like, I remember, yeah, I was very intrigued by the architect scene, which I remember. I do remember even at the time I was like, hmm, okay. And I was definitely not like, I went to see Revolutions. I wasn't like, fuck that.

Like, which a lot of people were, because like, Revolutions made half as much money. But I i did not i did not go right i basically saw it for the show yeah yeah all those years ago like i hadn't even seen the third one that's how like i think little interest i had had did you even i think you did watch the third one for the show i did maybe i think you did eventually it's kind of back in the day when we were like, Ben, you can skip this one if you don't want to. But let's say,

I mean, like, there was at least a $150 million domestic drop-off between two and three. And as you said, Rotten Tomatoes, it went from like,

Reloaded gets 78% or even higher. I can look it up. Resurrections gets like 34.es, it went from like Reloaded gets 78% or even higher. I can look it up. Resurrections gets like 34. Like it was like all the anger of people like a couple months later sitting on Reloaded feeling irritated. And I also feel like it was a little bit like after Phantom Menace came out where people were like, okay, that didn't rip the way I wanted it to, but maybe the third one will

make sense of it. And then I think when people felt like the third one didn't give the way I wanted it to, but maybe the third one will make sense of it. And then I think when people felt like the third one didn't give them what they wanted, they were like, now I hate reloaded twice. The third one is also right. It's probably the most challenging in that. Like it's sort of takes a lot of the lead characters off the board for a lot

of the movie. It's mostly set in the real world, which has a much more depressing aesthetic than the matrix. It's got the sort of machine versus humans war, i think some people dig but it's very and it's very anime but it's not as cool as bullet time and martial arts and all that and like so that's part of it uh they're all great they rule they're amazing but there's no way they would they rule because they're very very very challenging and they are very, you know, not more of the same. And as you already said,

and as I said to Romley, explaining shit to her after this, I'm like, and then every movie they make after that bombs. They keep making movies that are visually challenging and interesting and innovative. And they keep making movies that are genre films. Yeah. Speed Racer is probably the least sci-fi

but even that is very sci-fi and obviously is a cartoon adaptation i mean i took her to see speed racer when she was a child and the look on her face when she was like so then what happens after the matrix sequels and i was like they made speed racer they sure did she could not believe and cloud atlas and you know it's sort of it's sci-fi but also a million other things jupiter sending is more i think what people wanted from them in theory it's like hey they're doing like a sort of straightforward sci-fi movie and then these people see it and they're like i don't like this it's goofy it's silly it's a fairy tale um right it felt like Jupiter Ascending was the end of the line and then it was like now Netflix is backing up the Brinks truck this feels like a pivot in culture that certainly has intensified

since that moment right where it's like Netflix is going to lure in the filmmakers who are starting to get reined in at the studios and let them do whatever the fuck they want and sense8 is absolutely a whatever the fuck they want show definitely uh but was an early example of netflix going like never mind you know they can't start for the second season they let me do a finale movie it was so expensive it wasn't breakout enough for them right um definitely cult popular, you know, and sort of builds season two is kind of like season one sort of a slow thing and season two is more

delivers more. For 20 years I feel like, and we defend their movies and other people like some of them, you know, of course, there is just that thing. The general public consensus is like, why can't they just make the matrix again? And I don't think anyone was at that moment in time asking him to do the matrix for,

but it was like, why can't you do that sort of thing again? Why have you never, ever replicated that feeling again? And the sequels are like the same, but they didn't make me feel the way that the matrix did. And everything you've made since then feels like it's running as far away from the Matrix as possible.

I guess so. We've talked about this. Listen back to our episodes. And of course, over that same period of time, there is two transitions, there is a shifting identity for both of them. It's all this stuff that ends up,

of course, informing the text of the phone but like you know cloud atlas and we've talked about this cloud atlas and jupiter sending are both about you know uh humankind being used as like food or energy yeah which is what the matrix is about right you know every every version like they do consciousness shifting and like and consciousness shifting like and lana talks so much about like you know how the movies are kind of about love conquering all right like all right you know that's like a thing they keep going back to that's the thing in this movie that's the thing in their lives you know they they have it's just that i don't know look

this movie the matrix resurrections opens you know or like the first act of this movie is about partly about people interrogating like what is it people liked about the matrix what is yes what is it we should be delivering with a new matrix like what what do people want out of the matrix what did people want at the time what has changed uh and it's very funny and to me inspiring and interesting to see the movie do that i guess guess to some people it's annoying. Obviously it's very self-reflective. This is the last thing I want to set up. Is that

by all accounts, it may be starting five years after Revolutions. Every year, Warner Brothers circles back to them and goes, just by the way, if you ever wanted to make another Matrix, blank check whatever you want. And they keep on going, no by the way, if you ever wanted to make another Matrix, blank check, whatever you want.

Right? And they keep on going, no, thank you. No, thank you. Sure. They always reject any talk of Fourth Matrix. But it was one of those things, even with the curled response to the sequels, where it's just like, well, if a franchise is worth over a billion dollars, they're never going to let it lay dormant for too long.

Because every film they made after that was still at Warner Brothers. Much like Christopher Nolan, it was like, we're not going to do anything. We're not going to go above them because we don't want to sever this relationship. Right? But after Jupiter Ascending,

which is just the final flop, I think for the first time, Warner Brothers is like, we don't necessarily need to worry about pissing them off that much. So they keep on saying to them, would you want to make a Matrix? Would you want a Matrix? No, no, no.

And when Zach Penn comes to them for some fucking meeting of some sort and goes, by the way, have you guys ever thought about bringing back the Matrix? Warner Brothers is interested for the first time. And he just goes like, I don't know, this thing's laying dormant. The green and the jackets and the fighting there's something zach penn to his credit i suppose is very enthusiastic about the world of the matrix he's just like this world is so good you can't leave it so he wanted right to do something right and then there were rumors that michael b jordan had basically visited warner brothers and they were kind of like like here's a spread of like things you could do Jordan franchise.

What's the thing that interests you? Maybe he had expressed some interest in a matrix thing, maybe playing a Morpheus type or maybe not. Like, I don't know. It was never a script. And it sounds like the kind of exact blue sky pitching that you watch happen in this movie where they were just like,

Michael B. Jordan, he's black. Morpheus is black. Is it? He's young. Morpheus. Is he Morpheus is black is it he's young morpheus is he morpheus's grandson i don't know put a pin in that exactly there had been so many rumors and zach pan had talked about has talked about it more about like he really wanted to just expand

quote-unquote expand the universe i'm not going to remake i'm not going to reboot i will leave neon trinity dead it just feels like this is a universe in which there are other stories worth telling he loved he worked on ready player one a good movie I'm not a huge fan of Zach Penn no offense me neither I'm also not a huge fan of ready player one well ready player one is great but he has certainly worked on movies that I like like you know he he has a story you can see career superhero movies a lot of the x-men movies he wrote the first draft of the avengers which was supposedly thrown in the garbage he wrote you know he's written a silly sure but he said

like ready player one that's a movie that's set in a very matrixy world it's set in a virtual world like i love that that's the moment when this starts getting some traction sure but then it doesn't happen because what happened was Warner Brothers went to fucking Lana Wachowski and Lily, I think, both. They went to both of them. They did their annual check-in. They go, hey, it's that time of the year. Yeah, exactly.

By the way, this is the last offer because otherwise we're going to go ahead with this guy. I mean, I don't... Look, this is all rumor and conjecture. I don't think it was entirely rumor and conjecture I don't think it was it was entire it was also like can we have your blessing because they needed

or they really wanted her blessing their blessing whatever you know someone to be like one of the Wachowskis to be like we don't want to do any more matrixes but hey there's a world for people to plan if they want to and they explicitly did not want to do that.

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Now on stage. Book at Mirvish.com. But rumor and conjecture, a thing that you and I heard directly, not from people who were in the room but was that you know it was sort of the final check-in of like if you want to do it we let you do it otherwise can we get your blessing to do other things at this period of time right uh li Lily had transitioned, which happened years after Lana. Yeah. And when she transitions and comes out publicly about that,

she also steps away from Sense8. She's not really involved in Season 2 of Sense8. Right. And even Season 1 was far more Lana than Lily, by most accounts. They had a big facility. They had the production company. They shut it down.

They sell the facility. Yeah. There's sort of, like you said, there was kind of the rumor of like, are they just done? Are they done? Was there a falling out with them?

Movies, whatever. Are they going to do separate thing? Who knows? Yeah. Um, they circle back to the two of them in the year leading up to that. Both of their parents die. Ron and Lynn Wachowski, they circle back to the two of them.

In the year leading up to that, both of their parents die. Ron and Lynn Wachowski, who this movie is dedicated to. Mm-hmm. And they lose a close friend. A close friend of Lana's died. Yeah.

Yes. Lana said that in her grief, being unconsolable, and being in this position where it's like, who would I want to talk to about my grief? The three people who just died. I don't know who to turn to. I don't know how to process this. This is so overwhelming. She started

thinking about Neo and Trinity a lot. Yes, the idea of having Neo and Trinity back was a great comfort. She said this in... Lana doesn't give a lot of interviews. No. But she has said that in whatever interviews she's given her there's this speech they did at that uh berlin yeah international writers conference or whatever

it's called that i'll make sure we tweet out that i sent to ben because i think it's very revealing in a lot of ways but but i think it literally just started as i started thinking about these characters as a comfort i wanted to spend spend time with them. In my mind. The idea of having them alive. Because obviously. Spoiler alert. At the end of Revolutions. They die. Right.

Dead. But I even think. Before it. Congealing into an actual story pitch. Well she says she had the story immediately. But I don't know. Yeah. It was just that.

In her mind. These characters come to her. And then the story comes to her. But I think a lot of this movie is about the solace of characters we love, right? It's like, because it is interrogating. I think people think, I once again understand all the reasons that people could dislike this movie. But a thing I push back on is the notion I see in some places that this movie is a cynical exercise

and that this movie is arguing that it doesn't need to exist. I think this movie is interrogating its reasons for existing. Right, right, right. And I think it's having some fun with the idea in culture that these things all need to be rebooted

or revived or whatever. But I think it is a very earnest, passionate film about like, you know, the machines have rebuilt these two fucking dead characters, right? And characters that weren't just dead but were like decimated,

blinded, rebar through the chest, all this shit. And you have these two machines being like, we're gonna rebuild them and make them even prettier than they were before. Right? And let them age but only like a sexy amount of age sure relative to how much time has passed in the film and to some degree that's like the cynical thing of and we've complained about this a lot in different movies sequels where it's like the first movie and so perfectly this character had good closure they evolved to this point and then the sequel kind

of resets them or revives them in a way that is depressing where you're just like, let them have their peace. Right? Yeah. Let them enjoy this.

Yes. It's depressing that, for example, Agent K gets deneuralized, that Robocop retreats back into his robot instincts, all these sorts of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you have this thing that feels like this sort of cynical, gross exercise. These robots are bringing Neo and Trinity back to life. They won't even let them stay dead because they need to use their love to power the universe.

Hell yeah. And I think that's a thing that makes some people go like, so they're acknowledging this is gross that they brought them back. And it's like, no, but the whole point of the movie is also that like,

two things can be true at the same time. It's nice to be back. And they, at the end of the movie, they thank the analysts things can be true at the same time it's nice to be back and they they at the end of the movie they thank the analysts for giving them a second chance right and lana herself is acknowledging i always thought it was gross to revive these characters but in my greatest moment of grief i found so much comfort in thinking about them and their love beyond that look i love the original trilogy of movies i love love the ending. Yeah. I think the ending is great. The ending does end with the Oracle saying like, I think we'll see Neo again. That's literally the last line is like,

I think he'll be back someday. And it does also Trinity, you know, dies. I've always found Trinity's death in, you know, it's a very emotionally compelling, obviously.

And like, it's sort of plot wise has to happen because neo has to want to die you know he has to accept his sacrifice and it would make less sense if trinity is just kind of like waiting in the car being like go figure it out with the machines and then get right back here you know so but i don't think trinity's death is like so dramatically necessary that bringing her back is some like spit in the face oh sure i you know bringing them back is fine i think the neo-death was one that people felt more prickly about because of the whole sort of uh uh messiah arc of him that it's like he needs to have the sacrifice

and bringing him back i I agree with you. The Sions are always coming back. Shrug. But the other thing that you have to acknowledge is just in the last 10, 15 years, the Legacy sequel has become this fucking thing. Yeah, that's sort of 20 years on, your faves are back. But you talk about

how like, Legacy is this weird movie that's sort of 20 years on, your faves are back. But you talk about how like Legacy is this weird movie that's sort of the forebear of what all studio franchise thinking becomes. Where it's like,

what if you don't reboot it? Right. You actually make a sequel that acknowledges the passage of time that is referential. Update it. You have a new generation

and an old generation coexisting. But like, and it tries to thread the needle of like, let's make a movie for kids and an old generation coexisting but like and it tries to thread the needle of like let's make a movie for a 12 year old who's never seen tron that will they will enjoy but it also their dad who loved tron will be like oh my god flynn's back and you have to be really deep and respectful of the lore but you also need to have it be a launching pad for a new thing and then this is like Jason Segel Muppets Star Wars Force Awakens

Ghostbusters Afterlife all these fucking things right so pervasive to now even especially yeah it's very pervasive to me sometimes i'm like why are all of my friends who really like movies talking like studio executives all of a sudden and thinking that way and having which is another thing this mind is commenting all of a sudden yes which i just i i find really strange because like as a someone who just wants to be entertained and likes movies i don't go into uh watching something and thinking about that and look throwing bricks in a glass house right obviously this is what we do on the

show and it's what we fucking made our bones doing and it's the core of our friendship david you and i sure but it is interesting seeing more and more i feel like with every year uh uh the mainstream culture talking about things in terms that you and i think of where it's like the general public is very aware of studio maneuvering of ip it is it's much more aware. That's why you can make a Spider-Man No Way Home or whatever. You can make a movie that is... Oh my god, the Fox rights are going to go back to Disney so they can put X-Men in there. No, no, that's true.

It's crazy that people are now very locked into that. People who you don't think of as following the film industry saying, well, the problem with the Disney Star Wars movies obviously is they didn't have a Feige who was overseeing the whole series and one director. That whole intellectualization of the business maneuvering behind the stories and the value of the stories. These are all things that she's commenting on.

At the same time that she's commenting on where she feels about her own career, her own life, this thing that she created, that also has, like, many things that become so seismic, developed reputations completely out of her control, and she's reckoning with all of that, too. What does the Matrix mean to people 25 years later? What good has come out of it? What bad has come out of it? Why do people want to go back to that? Is that a bad impulse?

Is that a weak impulse to just want to tread things? Or is there value? Not just the Matrix. Nostalgia in general? Is that a positive, negative force? we or whatever how is that a force in our life why can't we generate i sit down and see this movie yeah i think it's where i'm at everyone it's one of those things where like there's a few critics around me who are kind of like oh david's excited like you know like you know everyone else is kind of like tweets of people taking photos of your masked face. My masked face. I walk into the theater.

I walked into the lobby with my dear friend, Esther Zuckerman. The great Esther Zuckerman. You were wearing all latex, correct? And I walked up to a press check-in table. There's always a table where you check in. Sure. And I walk in and it's Lauren. Shout out, Lauren. A friend of mine. And I walk in and it's Lauren. Shout out, Lauren.

A friend of mine. And I'm like, Lauren? Michaels? Lauren. L-A-U-W. You are, yeah. Lauren.

Oh, Lauren. Michaels? Yeah, okay. And I'm like, hey, Lauren. And she's like, hey, David. Okay. I don't see you on the list, but I'll just write your name down.

And I'm like, yeah. And I'm like, Lauren works for Universal. I don't know what's going on here. And she's like, and it's in like theater 12, you know, it's in like a crappy theater, you know, like not I assumed it was playing an IMAX and I was like, and I walk away and I'm like, wait, Lauren, you're not Matrix, right? And she's like, sing

to. Yeah. And I was like, just imagining a world where I go and sit down and I'm like, so excited for the Matrix and then sing to. Right. Like I had like, so excited for the magic. So that's seeing too. Right. Like I took first, what in my days, you run frantically from one screen to another,

you miss the first two minutes. You never get over it. Anyway. And then I was like, Oh, that's fine. Hunted around and eventually water brothers somewhere else. Um,

I'm very nervous. I was very excited for this movie. I had heard from some people at the junket screening that it was bad. Uh-huh. And I was kind of encouraged by that in a way where I'm like, ooh, interesting. And you heard from some friends I'd heard from some people that it was good. Like Emma had seen it.

And even more specifically, I think you're going to love it, David. And I'd heard from, I talked to one person who was like, oh yeah, it's great. And then I was like, oh yeah, some people don't like it. And he was like, people don't like it? Like someone who was like, oh yeah, it's great. You know, and then I was like, oh yeah, you know, some people don't like it. And he was like, people don't like it? Like, people, like someone who was so like into it that was like, oh wait, it's not going over? We're like, you know, like, but, and I was like, okay.

Let's also say, I feel like I spent more time tracking fan theories on this than you did. Like I fucking joined the Matrix subreddit and was reading everyone's breakdowns, what they thought the movie was going to be. You were more trying to stay pure with this. I rewatched the trailer obsessively. I was like, I really did down. Yeah.

And you and I, for the last four months since that trailer came out, text a lot, just going like, do you have any idea what the fuck this movie is? Like there was something thrilling to the fact that it was so hard to piece together what this film was even going to be. Let's say,

compared to something like No Way Home, where both of us went and said, I think I know what the basic shape of this film is going to be. I pretty much know what the last act's going to be. Kind of. They've been trying to keep it under lock and key, and it's like, I think I can predict what's going to happen. I was sort of pleased by how little I knew about No Way Home. But anyway, I could make

guesses in my mind. Did he find a way home? Or should we not spoil it? It's actually a really difficult answer. We're not going to spoil it. Honestly, he kind of does and doesn't. Yeah, anyway. But this film, we'd look at the trailer, we'd be like, I don't understand how this and that

and how does that all piece together? What is this movie? What is the story? What's the vibe? It was exciting. My big, it wasn't even a fear, but my big thought was like, this movie will probably

not be too heavy on matrix lore be too heavy on the sequels sure it might try to reset to the cultural memory of the first film both because right like not everyone is up to date with them and because like you know it seems to be more emotional like from the very little i'm getting like you know it's about neo and and Trinity and like it's about their rebirth and like it doesn't need to and I had heard from one person who'd seen it like someone else had asked him like do I need to rewatch the sequels and he was like no

we know Niobe's in it we know Mervin's in it I knew that it's true but I was still kind of like and then so I watched this movie that had that somehow in my opinion is a very clever and aware take on revivals and sort of you know nostalgia and bringing things back is so exciting and deep and thrilling to a matrix nerd like me and how it delves into the lore expands yeah very much addresses the sequels

and like builds on them yeah and like you know certainly does not try and kind of like wipe those away or whatever absolutely not which it would have been very easy for them to easy to do with this premise very easy and is a very kind of swoony more sort of new late wachowski kind of romance you know like love conquers all this movie is so of a piece with their last four films more so very much so and but not in a way where it feels like dramatically insanely different from the matrix but it does feel different and let's say i i i'm not trying to intellectualize this. I'm just saying the thing I've seen people say. And to be clear, including

very good friends of mine whose opinions I respect who I've had very civil conversations with about what we do or do not like about this movie. Right? Right. And a lot of them just say, and I think this is beyond valid, I'm just missing the filmmaking style

of the first three Matrixes. Definitely. This movie looks very different. It has a very different visual language. The action sequences, which we will talk about, are very different, right? Definitely.

The vibe of it, the tone of it, all of this sort of shit is more in line with the last three Wachowski projects, I would say, with Jupiter Ascending, with Cloud Atlas,

with Sense8 in particular. I think this movie is very much of a piece with Sense8. And I think Sense8 being some sort of, not a final form, but like Lana has talked about this, and to speak to the difference in style, right? As you said, Matrix was sold on this incredibly dense, precise...

Storyboarded to hell. Storyboarded to hell. Previs. The whole movie's figured out. They're executing what's in their mind's eye with like Hitchcockian precision, right? The actors have to move within a centimeter of the timing of this and this and that.

Sense8, which was shot by John Tull, who shot their last two movies. He shot their half of Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending. Speed Racer was Tattersall.

And before that, Bill Pope. The great Bill Pope. The great Bill Pope did their first four movies. Very distinctive look. Bill Pope. He rules. He did Alita. He did Very distinctive look. Bill Pope. He rules.

He did Alita. He did Shang-Chi this year. He rules. He's my favorite. He's kind of in the Marvel world right now. Regular guy and, right, did the Spider-Man movies for Sam Raimi, or the sequels. But they have different artistic collaborators now. Tom Ticker's doing the score instead of Don Davis, all this sort of shit.

But she's talked about how, and I think they've been moving more and more into this style since 8, they didn't do rehearsals. They didn't have blocking. They wanted to shoot it more documentary style. They wanted to give actors freedom and authorship over the scenes. She wanted to be surprised by things that were happening.

Evolve things on the day. More collaborative in that sense with performance. Use more natural lighting. sense with performance use more natural lighting you know things become warmer and more glowing and held off the cuff improvisational apparently you know like this is what i've been hearing like like what jonathan groff said like she was like you know what take your socks off yeah i see you as a no socks guy like and that was like on set as they're starting to film. Like,

but like no storyboard. No, no rehearsals. Very emotional is how she's putting it. Like, you know, very emotion led. They don't even do blocking rehearsals.

It's like actors show up. You have your thing. We haven't talked about this. I want to see what you have and let's roll. First take first glass, which for people who don't know, you show up on set. Everyone's drinking their coffee.

The actors have their script pages. You run through the thing like eight times while a bunch of different crew people go like, maybe I'd put the mic there and the lights here and this and that. And very often you decide the next 20 shots you're going to do in order based on what the actors and the director figure out. Send people away. You do your makeup. Two hours later, you come back. You do everything as it was planned, right? The evolution happens in that rehearsal process, maybe.

And then it's pretty fucking locked in because now we've set up equipment here and there. This was like, let's just set this up where it's lit in a way, and this speaks to why the movie looks so different as well, aside from the narrative reasons why it has a very different color palette, is a lot of natural lighting

so that actors are not locked into, you have to stand here because the light's there. Or we can't move the camera this way because then you'll see this equipment. We want that sort of freedom. Which leads to very often, you need more coverage. Yep.

And that coverage is looser or... The action in this movie is, I think, almost getting a bad rap. I don't think it's that bad. Like, it's kind of... I don't know. Like, I think it's of a piece with the film. That's sort of my main take on it.

But it is certainly not like the other Matrix movies. Even people don't like the burly brawl in the sequels. They don't like the Smith-Neo fight. But those are cutting-edge sequences. Those are are like let us push everything we've got to the absolute limit and you know in the sequels i would say maybe they reach their limit and you can see the limits like you know highway chase is the best sequence of the well that highway just is incredible that totally worked but like you know the smith yes fights and stuff like where sometimes you're like, okay, they were 95% of the way there,

and now I can, in this shot, sort of see, it looks janky. But even for the things that don't hold up well. Nothing in this movie feels that way. No, even for the things that don't hold up well, tech-wise, in those two sequences, or just over-conceptualized or whatever, there is a precision and a clarity of action that I think people are more critical

of the action of this movie. In a way, I understand because I fall into this as well. The action is the weakest aspect of this film. Definitely. Inarguably. Yeah. And I think part of that is

there's perhaps a mild indifference from Lana that's not... Or whatever. It's just not the priority anymore to make really, really insane action or whatever. I don know which the sequels i was watching uh matrix revisited which was the matrix was the best-selling dvd of all time and it was so successful they put out another dvd that was essentially just it was more special features yeah right there's not a lot of special features on the original disc but yes it's just it's like an in-depth it's like a feature

length documentary about making the movie right but but also them in the early stages of the sequels and it was sort of bridging the gap of the excitement right and so i was re-watching that and it's like all this footage they kept from the early days of developing the first matrix but you're also seeing the earliest glimpses of them doing six months of stunt rehearsal for two and three before they started filming. Keanu's 57. You know, he does the John Wicks. So it's not like he's not doing that kind of shit anymore. It's a different type of action.

But it 100% is. It's not martial art. And he can't, right, he can't do, like, the shit they did. And you can read, Bilga Ibiri has this incredible piece he reposted

talking to Chad Stahelski who makes the John Wicks who is Keanu Stuntable who plays Chad in this movie. Handsome Chad. His credit is handsome Chad. He is. And he's a handsome guy. Yeah. Talking about like how unusual it was at the time for a Hollywood movie to have individual

combat like as the centerpiece of your action. Like you know because like in the schwarzenegger center in that era it's more like punch you know like it was not like a 10 minute hand-to-hand fight sequence are not fighters in that way no i mean because that's not their vibe right and so like but the work they had to fucking do like to get all that that's what you watch this revisited thing it is crazy when you realize how much work they did for the first movie and for the sequels

it maybe even doubled, right? So, not excusing all of this, but things I think people should understand about how this movie ends up the way it does, right? The actors are older. They don't have Ping, who choreographed

the first three films working on this. Who knows if they tried to hire him and he said no or they didn't even reach out. It feels to me like she didn't want to make as much of a martial arts movie. That's just not what this movie is. Right. I also think this

is the first film we've seen her do without Lily. And Lily was less involved in Sense8 and not involved at all in season two. And this is very much of a piece of Sense8. And it's like some of those things that people are missing from the visual dynamic of this movie might have been more Lily things. I don't know. That's pure conjecture on my part. This is the thing.

But it's a different DP, John To john toll who then they filmed like six weeks two months of this movie in san francisco a lot of the exterior stuff like the building shit at the beginning the end of the movie uh the simulate shit whatever and then covet hits and they shut down for like nine months yeah lana's like we might never finish this movie I might just abandon it they come back John Tull's not available so the camera operator who had worked with them on their last four or five films but also

regular Ridley Scott collaborator an incredible steadicam operator becomes the DP of the movie so that's like another evolution in yeah right and they're filming the film under difficult circumstances at a time where they weren't sure if they were going to be able to film it again it's very hard to do those sorts of uh action sequences and stunt

rehearsals and all that sort of shit it's just this is the film we have right yeah i'm satisfied it's not trying to impress you with the kung fu or the cutting edge effects, visual language of the fight sequences. I think it is understandable to be aggressively frustrated with the fact that the movie isn't delivering on that level. I think because other action has gotten so muddy, we're lacking the sort of tactility of a Matrix fight, even when it was CGI augmented. Or at least the clarity, the visual precision of it. That people were like, fuck yes, here we go. Lana's coming back. She's gonna

school everyone. She's gonna show them how it's done. So when a new Matrix comes out and you're like, fuck, Shang-Chi kind of delivered better on that one front with Bill Pope than Matrix did, I think that bums people out. Which makes sense.

Whatever, man. That's fine. Makes sense. The action is... But my defense of the action is it's maybe... Is what I said. It's kind of of a piece.

Yeah, I agree. You know, I don't think it's completely insane. Look, it's like you fall into this territory with this film. It's sort of... We talked about this

with Total Recall when we did a Verhoeven series years film. It's sort of, we talked about this with Total Recall when we did a Verhoeven series years ago. There's a way in which that movie is critic-proof because anything that's shitty or nonsensical in it, you can go, well, it's all in his head. It doesn't make any fucking sense. Right. And in the same way, because this movie is so self-referential

about its own existence, you can go like, well, the point is it's like the way modern reboots are right which i think a part of the when people say that like are you taking crazy pills how can you think this thing is good they go like are you just excusing everything that's bad in this movie by saying no but it's supposed to be bad on purpose which we're not saying i'm not i'm not people can think whatever they want about people can think whatever they want that's the biggest i mean the action works for me fine but it's not incredible the action is can think whatever they want about this movie people can think whatever they want that's the biggest the action works for me fine

but it's not incredible I think Bugs has some good action there's some fun stuff Bugs has some really great stuff the opening sequence

is the best which is the thing that's most directly emulating the style of the virtual matrix right I think the Smith

bathroom fight's pretty decent in terms of hand-to-hand combat but it's all you know it's all you know it's more piecemeal it's not reinventing the wheel cover really what i'm trying to say is that those all three really did kind of reinvent the wheel every time the sequels maybe a little less so but

they really were innovative in ways that people remember and don't remember and she's maybe focusing on the other three wheels now hey man, man. The Matrix Resurrections. Let's talk about it. How long have we been going? About, yeah, over an hour. Okay. We got to talk about the movie. Like, scene by scene. The cold open of the movie is, of course, I said the code open for a reason.

It's those green letters. The rainfall. Right? Yeah, it's the same as ever. Warner Brothers, Village Roadshow, you know. You know, the theme you remember, the code dropping into Matrix, Resurrections comes up. Much like a corpse being revived, right?

Like something rising from the grave. Is the first line of this movie literally, this feels familiar? Yeah, and it's, you know, we're seeing a call being true it's it's like it's it's how you open it's a restaging of the trinity scene and then we get the reveal of this isn't trinity who is this right so you've got this great character whose name is bugs like the bunny i mean kind of the audience surrogate of the movie yes uh especially in the first chunk okay by just ray you're sam flynn right, someone who's a fan of The Matrix.

You're Walter. Metatextually, like, you know, is looking for Neo, sort of reveres him, blah, blah, blah. Played by Jessica Henwick. Which, just to be clear, by the three examples I just cited, is already its own trope now.

It really has become such a trope. And this character is both fulfilling that and commenting on it at the same time. Do you like Jessica Henwick? Forky was like, who, I know this person

and I was like, right, because you watched every episode of Iron Fist. You mean, you didn't even like it and you watched it because she was in that

and never watched Iron Fist. I didn't either. I remember the take being like, she's the good one. Right. She was Colin Wing. Right. She was, she was an X-Wing pilot in Force Awakens.

Yeah, but she's not in the sequels. Because they didn't communicate to Rian Johnson that she was still alive. He thought she had died. Right. And she's, in fact, in Knives Out, too, which is funny. She was in On the Rocks, which I thought she was very good. That's the first time she stood out to me. You know, that is a movie that I saw.

Yeah. And I couldn't really tell you that she's in it. She plays the woman. she stood out to me. You know, that is a movie that I saw. Yeah. And I couldn't really tell you that she's... She plays the woman... No, I know. I know who she plays. There's only five characters. Right.

By default, I don't know who she plays. And she has, like, a really good scene at the end of the movie. Yeah. And I was like, who is this person? This person kind of stands out.

And I looked up, and I was like, oh, this is that action lady that everyone likes. She's very... This is that lady that everyone said was good on Iron Fist

who keeps on ending up on casting wish lists. She was also named... She was Nyiria Sand in Game of Thrones. She's one of the sand snakes. And those characters are big in the books and were maybe the most sort of egregiously botched element of the show. They had this sort of vibe in the show where the show, like you could tell they were kind of like,

yeah, we have to do them to some extent because we know they're important, but we really don't care. So they would just kind of show up and show like you could tell they were kind of like yeah we have to do them to some extent because we know they're important but we really don't care like so they would just kind of show up and be like we are sexy warriors see you later you know and then they all like die horribly it's interesting it felt very it's she's in this zone where it's like she keeps on being like failed parts of nerd franchises everyone's like but she's good there has to be the right jessica henwick thing at some point. She's great in this. They wanted her,

I believe, to play the sister in Shang-Chi. They did. She was the first choice. And this, both scripts are under lock and key and secret. And both projects went,

if you audition for one, you can't do the other. You could screen test for one or the other. She picked this. But if you take the other, you're out of consideration and you're not even

guaranteed the job. She picked this. Because I think take the other, you're out of consideration and you're not even guaranteed the job. She picked this. Because I think... She's... Well, whatever. She's perfect for this movie. She was. And here are things I like about her.

Her name is Bugs. You like that she's called Bugs after the bunny. Yes. You like that. Like the things you use to listen to people and also like the bunny.

That's what she says. She has a line like that. There's also the scene where Neo wakes up in the real world for the first time in this movie and he's being operated on in the slab line like that. There's also the scene where Neo wakes up in the real world for the first time in this movie and he's being operated on

in the slab and she goes, what's up doc? To the doctor. Great. One million comedy points. I'm a big fan of Bugs' fashion.

I think the pants in the opening sequence rule. Her glasses? Do you like her glasses? Love the line in the middle. Right. There's the line in the middle

like of the bridge of the arms that extends in front of the lenses totally yeah great i would say one of the standout uh characters as far as fashion and this is a another big thing is that i think part of what people were hoping for in a return to the matrix was like man the matrix is so fucking cool these people are so steely and badass and unflappable and sexy and confident and bugs is a lot more uh emotional open childlike vulnerable than matrix characters we've seen before that's true bugs is yes it's true, is a different... And she kind of acknowledges that. And in this early scene,

she sort of also acknowledges, like, jokingly, like, the silliness of the binary choice of the pills, which we'll get into. Already this movie's deflating shit. She's not like Trinity, where Trinity is, like, bucking an icicle. Like, so cool. And, like, it's not thataryann moss doesn't play the vulnerability

like she's afraid of the agency you know but still like she's just like the most badass and bugs is jokier and they're not jokey in a way that no bother me at all like yeah exactly not i don't think this really ever ventured into they fly now territory. I saw some complaints with some of the dialogue and I was sort of like maybe there's a moment or two where it gets cutesy but anyway. And I will talk around spoilers here for this other movie that we're not talking about today

but you and I were text exchanging after No Way Home and complaining about the fact that they comedically deflate some of the legacy characters they bring back in a way that is very of a piece with the MCU

and their sense of humor which is we're going to make the joke about the thing before you can. We're going to deflate it so you're not. This thing that Marvel's weaponized developed through Downey Jr.'s improvs and Favreau and Whedon and now perfected to a point is like we're doing the Mad Magazine parody of ourselves while also doing the real movie. So you can't say that we're not in on the joke.

And it feels very defensive. And it is a thing that even if I laugh at the joke when it happens, five seconds later, very often I go, bad taste in my mouth. You sold out the integrity a little bit. Whereas I feel like the comedic deflations that this movie does through to like morpheus going like blah blah blah and things like that that's true that's it yeah i don't i don't think to me do not read as like insulting or derivative derogatory towards the original movies and the fans experiences of them i think it's more talking about the process of things getting repeated over and over

and over again it's sort of like how do you possibly repeat something that is so painted into people's brains without it feeling silly anyway Bugs is that's why I love

she's watching essentially what looks like a kind of like fan made version of the matrix and your brain's breaking already this is basically it but the actors are different and like there's something a little different actor are they trying to make me think this is the same person and she's saying

why would they use old code like right and you're like why is she she's seen this multiple times like the logic of it is so confusing. And then, what's this character's name who's like the new? What's his name? Zeke. His name is Sequoia.

They call him Zeke. They call him Zeke, which sort of sounds like Zeke, but it's Zeke, S-E-Q. Sure. That's why I kept on that. He's played by Toby Onwumere. Who's on season two of Sense8. Who is the replacement for Amal Abdi, I mean. Van Damme.

Yeah. Right. And he's Kephas right in Sense8 but he is like so much fun he's physically showing up in space but because of the way the matrix has evolved right he's not just on the phone he can like digitally

sort of video conference improvement rules I think it's so cool the hacker is finally he's in the space i know i love the original movies but it is amazing when you watch them like how how much of the footage in those sequences are cutting to either marcus shong or carol perrineau in a chair looking at screens going like holy shit what are you okay you know he's doing it it's it's kind of helpful to just

sort of happen there it helps oh man um yeah so he's there it's uh it's cool and it's kind of helpful to just sort of happen there. It helps. Oh man. Um, yeah, he's there. It's, uh, it's cool and it's fun, but, but this is like, we are in, you're in back to the future part two territory where you're like, we're watching characters, watch the first movie and comment on it and try to change it or exist around it.

Um, so we are in a modal is what we learn. They mentioned this. You must've, is this the first time you pop a boner when they say the word modal? Not to be gross. But no, but it is, this is like some fucking

serif as a login screen shit. That, look, absolutely. I was very excited that they were expanding. Right, the sort of computer logic of the movie. So we're in a modal,

which as far as I know in programming, it's really just a term for like a window in a window. Like it's just like a sort of program in a program. But they specifically have it mean here like this is like a training

sim for programs. It's like a demo. It's like something where it has very limited parameters. It's really seems to be sort of like a city block. It's basically the first scene of the Matrix although it's a little off. And you have a Trinity and and you have some agents,

and you have some cops. Now, all the agents we've seen have always been incredibly patrician-looking, clean-cut white dudes. One of the agents is Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who we know in this movie is not going to be just playing an agent. Right, and you're just like, agents don't look like that. Sure.

They're always white they always have the hair split to the side what if i didn't know that he was like say i'm walking in blind sure i might see that and be like sure there could be a black agent who cares right like you know of course he could like 20 years his performance is already different his energy is different as he walks in he's doing agent smith even when he's saying the lines. But there is something sort of arch about it. And you're like, hmm. Different than the arch that is part of the de rigueur style. I am locked in.

I am watching this and I'm like, absolutely. I know what's going on. And I watched this with my wife last night on HBO. And she was like, what the fuck is going on? I also feel like so much of the marketing. The marketing kind of centered the Morpheus of it all more than the Bugs of it all, where Bugs is kind of more key to the movie. Obviously, because he's got the aesthetic that's

very recognizable. He's sort of dressed like Morpheus. And he's this new fucking rising star. The dude fucking rules. I love him. It's funny that he has this Candyman in the same year. Which are both this sort of legacy is he replacing the guy or is he playing a different version of the guy that's true um and

he also with dr manhattan of course uh where it's almost a similar thing where it's you know is he or is he the same is he a simulation or simulacrum uh which is one of the many things this film is dealing with but um the mystery of the morpheus how's this fit in why isn't it lawrence fishburne why is it a younger guy is that just some in joke about the fact that they want to do the michael b jordan movie what is this the film like reveals its hand like six minutes in she gets in the room with him that is now they're in the set as if you're on a warner brothers studio first he pops her into the key call back to my boy I turned to Ben that's a lot of maker sorry

master I got a shout out at one point on the blank dough texture with the dough boys. I think Mitch was talking about the reloaded or something or someone brought up the key maker Mitch did this thing where he was like I'm watching Matrix Reloaded right now. I actually like this. I think it's pretty good. You were like

Mitch. Do you know what you're saying to me? Right. I was like, Duncan, he started. I mean, I wasn't about... Do you guys like this? And then there was just sort of some question about the Keymaker. I was like, Keymaker's basically a root kit. I just sort of texted that. And then like 20 minutes later, Weiger was like,

it's crazy how he just said this as if anyone would know what he's talking about. That's an explanation. You alluded to it. Love to see the, yeah, he goes into the whatever, locksmith, you know, empty, and he takes her into first a white corridor with doors, which we know in the Matrix is basically like programming

represented, like it's sort of like liminal state, blank screen. It's C colon dash. Like it's just sort of like, it's just sort of like, you know. David, it's good right. Colon dash. Like, it's just sort of like the, it's just sort of like, you know, it's good to hear you saying this shit again. It's just the,

the, it's the desktop. It's the, it's from where you can go anywhere else. And they go into, yes, this set that is Thomas Anderson's room, right.

His shitty studio apartment. Like it's part of the line queue for a matrix ride. Exactly. He's got his tag, his work tag from medical. She. And she calls it out. She's like, this is the room. Right. This is where Neo is like born.

Right. And she's like, what's your fucking deal? Something weird is going on here. And she explains that she, when she was a blue pill, her moment of awakening was she was being a window washer. I guess that was her job. And she saw Neo jumping off a building. Now, he was not in the form of Neo, but she made connection with him

and she saw the real him. In the moment that he's jumping, she, right, sees his true form. She sees Neo. Now, do you know this story about Lana? I don't. What story?

I believe it was when she did, it was at the GLAAD Awards or something like that, when she won some Trailblazer like career award. It was one of the first times she sort of publicly spoke post-transition because she had always been very secret about her privately and there have been rumors about her for a long time and she did this very emotional speech about

why she felt like i need to come forward for my community to create an example for other kids who were like me right and dealing with this sort of gender dysphoria and all that and she said that when she was a very young child uh she was uh suicidal she had an experience where she was suicidal when she was about the age of 12 and she had a plan to i believe jump off a building and when she was walking to do that she saw an old man and he locked eyes with her and they stood there in silence looking at each other for like 15 seconds and something in that exchange stopped her from doing it so that i don't know if this guy could read what was going on with me or not. And he would never think about it.

But that man saved my life. Right. And it's literally the thing she's replicating here. Which is fascinating because, of course, the idea is. You know, I talked to some people. Just the idea of being seen in that moment keeps you alive. But also it's what jolts her out of her reverie. Yes.

But. And by the way, Lana's talked about, I think one of the things that sort of triggered that suicide was that when she was at school and they would like divide people into lines of boys and girls that she would feel instinctually drawn to go to the girls line and then people would call her out on it. And then it,

this is all part of the, the thing. Yeah. She's, she sees him jump, but of course he doesn't jump. Like, this is the thing that she also perceives. He tries to jump, but of course he doesn't jump. This is the thing that she also perceives. He tries to jump, but the

program just freezes and he is just snapped back to wherever they want him. I feel like people... Jumping off a building is very crucial in The Matrix. It is how you prove you have kind of woken up to The Matrix.

That's a jump program. He jumps, and falls. He's not quite there yet. Anyway. And this movie is all about the fucking jump. A lot of jumping. It builds to, we're going to actually take the leap. So that's Bugs.

And Morpheus' thing, I guess, is he lives in... Bugs is talking about her awakening from the Matrix. Correct. He doesn't even live in the Matrix. He lives in this little box but he like talks about like i also realized like i live in a computer program right i have my mirror moment right but i'm a program i understand that i'm a program i've been positioned as an agent but i see that my true destiny is i am more i'm morpheus and i have to find neo which is sort of basically like his core programming of i'm just i'm Morpheus and I have to find Neo, which is sort of basically like his core programming of I'm Morpheus and Morpheus wants to find Neo. This movie is going does so fucking hard. You're telling me that Morpheus is now a computer program who was an agent who recognizes I am the second coming of the guy who recognizes the second coming of the Messiah.

And to be clear, what's happening is that Neo, who knows in some way that he's still stuck in a matrix is making a morpheus to get him out because he knows like well that's how i get out of the matrix morpheus finds me right so maybe if i make a morpheus program one yeah he'll come find me like you know and it's you know it's half delusion but also well but it's not clear either because i want to say in my first viewing yeah i at this point up into the movie have no idea what is going on i don't know i'm like and obviously it's one of those sort of shocking cold open things that movies always do where they're like we'll catch up later but here you know yeah here's some action i cannot parse what's happening

because she is visiting yes the matrix but then a program in the matrix and that but it's not she's not even she's in like a program inside the matrix yeah so it's so the second primary character we meet has three identities upended within the span of one minute of dialogue where he goes i'm a program and an agent and morpheus right and she gives him the red and blue pill that's insane she does the sort the sort of, you know, what do you want? Can I sidebar for one second to bring up Ben's confusion? This is an on-topic sidebar. Go ahead.

There's the thing I find very interesting about the first Matrix, and it's just sort of impeccable, undeniable power, right? That like 30 minutes into this movie, where the the first matrix you forget how long it takes before they drop yeah it's it's a it's a pretty slow build too right you are a battery right yeah it took about half an hour before romley turned to me and gave me the look and was like am i and i was like you're not supposed to understand anything yet sure and it's a very hard trick to pull off to watch a movie like that where you're engrossed and you're on board despite the fact that you have no idea

what the fuck is going on and the film takes about 45 minutes to explain itself to you. This movie is doing the opposite, which is explaining a lot to you up front and hoping you will eventually be able to process it all. Put it together.

Yeah. Right. That's true. It does. And I am eagerly like cramming the info it's giving me into my mouth but some people are maybe like well i don't like what i think it's very understandable to be sort of like yeah what's the difference between this and the matrix what's the difference between this

matrix and old mate i just can't see the walls i can't see the parameters i don't fucking blue pill that's why well i do take a blue pill every day. Viagra. So after this, and right to me, but I'm like, oh, I'm very intrigued where I'm like,

wait, oh, you know, she gives the pills and he, there's this again, deflation of the pills or who fucking gives a shit

the choice and illusion. Well, I think it's important and interesting that Lana Wachowski wants to say, like, perhaps a binary choice

is a bit simplistic. i think it's funny on multiple levels that she's especially when red pillows and ideas become this right yeah that we're getting one of many things this movie's talking about yeah but uh but as she says like look when you're getting offered the pills you probably already know what you want you know like you know at that at that point it's really like you know what's neo gonna do be like yeah i do feel like something's really wrong with the world and i don't understand my place in it but you know, at that point, it's really like, you know, what's Neo going to do? Be like, yeah, I do feel like something's really wrong with the world and I don't understand my place in it. But you know what? Like, I'm not going to sign any more documents here.

I'm going to go. I know we're about halfway in the movie, but I'm good. It just plays out. It's kind of boring, whatever. So 10 minutes in, we finally get to Thomas Anderson. Right. So then we've had this one glimpse of Keanu in Bugs' memory. Now we're with Thomas Anderson.

The first act of the movie is him. He's a computer programmer, computer game programmer. He's in office, filled with Matrix memorabilia. He literally has the McFarlane action figures. He's got the toys, squids, Trinity. The statue of the Smith getting punched, which I think was a crew gift that everyone had from the sequels. He's got a Game of the Year award, too.

He's got, you know. You're like, oh, okay, Neo's a fucking nerd now. Right, he's a Silicon Valley guy. He's living in San Francisco. Beautiful views. But he's in an office that's obsessed with his past. Sure. And he is. The cultural shadow of the one thing he created.

He's working on a new game called Binary, but he is the famous programmer of a trilogy of games called The Matrix. And he feels like one of these guys. I don't know if I can say

a specific example where it's like, here's someone who is so foundational to the creative firmament of this company or this property or whatever it is,

but they maybe kind of lost it and they haven't been able to replicate it and we keep them on payroll, A, out of respect, and B, out of the hope of what if they fucking figured it out again and delivered another home run, right? Right.

But he's just sort of noodling on shit. Keanu, I feel like, is in this movie kind of playing sad Keanu meme, right? Because John Wick has become this new gravitas version of Keanu. There's that period that everyone forgets about between like Matrix sequels and John Wick.

When he starts to dip out where like his prominent cultural role was a photo of him sitting on a bench, eating a sandwich and being like, what the fuck is up with this guy? He looks sad, sad Keanu. He says he was just hungry. He looks like a bum. Yeah, he looks kind of like a bum, yeah.

But also, Keanu, like, had horribly tragic things happen to him in his life at that period of time. What? Not then. What happened then? I mean, his girlfriend died a long time ago. That was way before.

It was after the Matrix sequels. Well, yeah, but no, that photo is not that old. The sad Keanu. I'm saying in the 15 year span. Okay, sure. But he's hungry. I don't want to project too much on that photo because he has been very anti-projecting on that photo.

I'm not projecting on the photo. I'm just saying. I was hungry. I'm just saying there is a tragicness to Keanu that I think this film is foregrounding. Right? He's playing very broken. I really like his performance.

His performance in this film is excellent. I think it's excellent. Especially in the first chunk where he has the most acting to do. Then he's more, you know. I say this as someone who really feels like he has lost a substantial amount of identity in the last two years in isolation

on top of mental stability and all of that this performance really really fucking resonated with me his sort of unmoored quality and i do think you talk about the awakening aspect of the matrix right like the this world feels wrong see the strings whatever right but so much of that and it's tied to the wachowskis and they're on journey of discovery and whatever is like i feel wrong i recognize that things around me feel weird but it's like there's a form i should be taking that i'm not yet he's just playing it not too like dramatically like there's a little bit of humor to what he's doing numb he's right got that thing where he's sort of like overly medicated and he's sort of in a bubble.

A little foggy. Foggy. Right. And like everyone around him in the movie. Treats him like a child because they're worried. A little bit treating like Excelli. Try to kill himself again. But also kind of like is dialed to 100.

It's very crucial in this movie that the first act of the movie is, and you really notice in a rewatch, very loud. Everything is loud. The dialogue, you know, people are chattering all the time. The energy of performance. The energy of performance is very up, but also there's a lot of music, there's a lot of flashing lights, you know. A lot of colors.

Wachowski really wants that moment where Niobe is like, do you remember this? Yeah. And it's quiet to really hit. And it really works in a theater, in my opinion. I agree. It's really, silence in a theater is so powerful because everyone's kind of like, is she going

to say something? You know, like everyone's kind of like hanging to see what she's going to do. But when people, you know, are disappointed that the movie doesn't look like The Matrix, doesn't have the green tint, the precision, all that sort of stuff, which is fair. It's a fucking rad aesthetic. I understand wanting to see that again.

It's also part of the text of this film that it's like, the Matrix has changed. Our notion of what computers could do in artificial intelligence and virtual reality and all that stuff used to be more clinical, right? It used to be cold and precise. The internet used to be a freaking database. Right. In 1999, when the Matrix is made made the internet is like a resource more than anything like to the extent that it has discourse it's so tiny and it's like little tiny communities of people who know how to be

all these concepts are banal now and so much of technology is trying to figure out ways to virtually replicate banalities in in so many ways right you look at the fucking zuckerberg metaverse video and it's like what he's pitching of like in metaverse you get to hang out in a rainbow place and you can talk to each other it's a way to virtually have a conversation through virtual avatars it's no longer this sort of like badass fucking thing the world of the first 45 minutes of this movie is very metaverse right it's like it's but it's very i really just think she's really trying to just talk about how it feels to be online right now which is what what obviously the big analyst monologue is about as well like brands having casual twitter accounts where they're like they're like

you know you put your whole pussy into this right that's like the fucking you know double character feels like that right all these jude uh who is played by i want to because i didn't know that actor um andrew lewis caldwell okay do you know him no he was you know he's he's doing what the movie wants obviously which is this i guess he's, he's doing what the movie wants, obviously, which is this. I guess he's mostly, he's on iZombie, apparently. Okay. You know, but he's like. Big.

He's really big, and he's also like, kind of like a parody of not just a Matrix fan, but just like a genre fan, right? Where he's just, you know, but also kind of like, oh, I know, I know, I know. Too much, too much. And also, wait, this kind of action movie comic relief character that exists today who mostly exists to deflate shit and be like what the fuck uh exactly when he sticks out he doesn't seem real he doesn't seem like a real fucking person he doesn't none of it feels quite real i love it it's a different type of artificiality than we're used to things have to feel wrong in a different way i said this in my review but 1999,

it's the idea of the end of history, right? Where it's like, is it over? Have we just... It's pre-911. Has America just kind of become what it is and we'll just make money and have our jobs and nothing more is going to happen?

We've kind of reached this peak and then, of course course 9-11 happens and everything is completely different after you but like there's this moment in the late 90s where that's the existential horror right fight club is about that american beauty is about that like you know a lot of those movies from right around the matrix is very much about and this is about a certain numbness i do think the fact that this movie its its premise, was born out of grief is very important because I do think this movie is about depression in a lot, a lot, a lot of ways.

Whereas the first movie is sort of about identity, right? And figuring out who you're supposed to be. It's about that, but it is about existential despair. But there's a numbness. Like, this world is real. There's a numbness to Neo world is real like there's a numbness to neo and tom anderson in this movie both in the simulation as much as things feel wrong it's like i don't know maybe i'm just dead inside now well right and he does just kind of like it was like what was the fucking point of any of this in the first movie neo is like there has to be more like

that's why i'm searching because like this can't be it yeah right and in this movie he's like well i guess it wasn't that because they tell me that's me right so i guess i'll just fucking you know and he's i love that he's successful like in the first movie he's a little you know cog in a machine right he's just like a he's a little he's dilbert he goes to his cubicle and his boss takes the pills right but no but i'm saying he takes a shit oh oh in this movie he's not a cock he's the fucking king of the world and everyone's waiting on him and he's just kind of like i don't enjoy this he's in a lana wachowski position where people are going what's the new matrix and it's just like i don't know what the fuck to do with myself he kind of gets what joey

pants's character wants yeah he that's that a lot of people had theories on that of like is he now like you know mr reagan like is he literally what uh joe you know cypher was asking for like he got inserted in because he wanted to be rich and famous i want to be i want to be someone important like an actor but not remember anything and i don't want to be rich and obviously he eats a steak i was gonna say you have a fucking steak shot you know they it's all i feel like it's all basically just sort of referential it's not like supposed but you know like that's all right that white rabbit sequent rules i think the remix of the song it's so fucking effective thing with the song is so clever where it's like it's using the original song right but then it has those things where

instead of hitting the chorus it just kind of stops for a minute and go just sort of repeats that you know and the sound stop the vocal stop for a second and you're just like he's fucking stuck on a treadmill like he is depression this is never any yeah it's but it's a specific kind of depression where the world is loud rather than quiet right or like the world is bright and assaultive rather than dead. Look, that is how I felt in isolation. Being alone, quiet in the apartment and feeling like the entire world was screaming at me. Not me in particular,

but the entire world was screaming, which it was in so many ways. The internet is very loud. The internet is loud. The state of the world is loud. And even just, there was a thing that was a recurring problem i had in the worst of lockdown when i was not seeing anybody leaving my house i was not really uh socializing outside of doing

fucking live streams and podcast episodes otherwise i would never even speak out loud most days right i was sort of stuck in this rut of like this montage of what you're seeing him do, the routines where it's like, how do I change up my day? I make fucking coffee. You know, I take a shit. And then the repetition of the pills over and over again. I had a problem at the worst, the peak of, you know, 12 months into lockdown or whatever, where my medication I take nightly for depression, anxiety. I could never remember whether or not I had taken the pills already. Yeah, the old, did I wash my hair today or not?

The old sort of, yeah, that weird feeling. But it would be like, I have it in my nightstand next to my bed. I get into bed. And you'd be like, did I do it yet? Or did I just do it? Did I just do this? This is familiar. I could not remember if I had done it 30 seconds ago

or if I was replaying a memory from the night before. Because you're just doing the same shit every day. So this movie's starting to hit me really hard at this point. Like I'm just like, fuck, this is speaking to the way I've been feeling for the last two years. This atrophy of this character who's in a position where it's like, look, I'm in a tremendous amount of privilege. I can't say my life

sucks. That's the whole, that's what I think is so clever about making him a superstar. Nothing's wrong, nothing's bad. Right. Is like everyone's fawning all over him and he's just sort of like, clever about making him a superstar. Right. Is like everyone's fawning all over him and he's just sort of like. I feel dead inside. And everyone's like, look, if you have a next thing, come up with it. If not, do whatever you want. And he keeps on noodling.

You talk about how he creates the modal because he's hoping that Morpheus will come and speak to him. I also read it. I don't think these are mutually exclusive things as much like Lana being just driven in her grief to go back to those characters. He was like, I want Morpheus kicking around somewhere. Yeah, right, right, right, right. Those were the good old days.

Yeah, me and Morpheus. That's when we were figuring stuff out. That's when there was growth, when there was progress, when there was some self-discovery. He believes that he just created Morpheus as a fictional character. It's like, look, I probably shouldn't make a fourth game. That's like fucking with my legacy. But it'd be nice to just have a program running on my computer where I

can look in the sets there and you have that opening sequence and Morpheus is there. It's the memory palace of like, fuck, right, this is why nostalgia exists. We talk a lot about it being a poison, especially as we're recycling the same pop culture over and over again. But there clearly is some value to it. If we use it deliberately in these things that stick to us so much that we cannot give up, there has to be power in returning to these characters. We can't just redo the same sequence over and over again.

But if something has been able to last for 25 years, and it's a thing you can return to that gives you joy or comfort or clarity on your own sense of existence, then is it cheap to go back to that? And I say no if you're doing something new. At the same time, right in all this that we're talking about, there is a scene where he is summoned to talk to his boss, the money man, who's played by jonathan groff who is smith yes and who very it's right at the start of the movie has this line of like well warner brothers our parent company is demanding

we make a fourth matrix and they'll do it without us i know you said you were done after the trilogy. Right. And then like the sort of specificness of like, they can do it without us. And Neo's like, I thought that wasn't possible. And he's like, well, I was, you know,

I've read many takes from people who tap out at that exact. Yes. They're like, the movie is telling me that it shouldn't exist and that they're being forced to make this movie a gunpoint. Truly. And now I am like, yeah,

where am I again where am i who is neo he i knew him to have died yeah now he's back but what is this reality again i have no i cannot figure out where the fuck i am right and so the movie's like very much like throwing a cold bath on you with this stuff and like i, I, whereas I was just like, that's so funny one that it's in the movie. It's funny that Warner brothers is like, yeah, sure. Whatever.

Fucking throw us under the bus. Who cares? Um, but to that, like, that's like, you know, Smith,

Smith. So Smith is part of Neo. I get, you know, we have to talk. We'll talk so complicated. And Smith is the person that people ask me the most questions about. Yeah.

I've seen the movie where they're like, I't understand his role in here but like he's neo's bad side he's neo's most fatalistic most cold-eyed most cynical side in this movie right so like when he's saying that stuff he's not saying that is the thesis of the movie no but he's certainly expressing the like look there's a bit of a rock and a hard place situation here. Do you want to make another Matrix or do you want, you know, faceless executives to make it? Well, I think there's another thing going on, David. Go ahead. Which is Agent Smith has now been reborn in the body of the studio executive. Right?

The executive. I wouldn't even say studio because he's also really giving like tech bro. Like, you know, right. Like he's like, whereas Smith in 1999 performance, he's a G man. Obviously he's the, you know,

this guy in a suit who's supposed to look anonymous with sunglasses. And now it's like, right. So shoes, no socks, kind of simpering kind of corporate speak, you know, all that personality though,

too. Lots of, but like a personality that kind of puts you on edge for you like is this guy like a total phony like wait does he care about anything but that's performance i think an incredible textually right and you get to this point later in the movie where smith keeps on talking about like how inextricably tied they are right right that it like they used to think that they were rivals and they exist in opposition to each other

and in fact, they need each other to balance out. It's like, this yin and yang thing, as you said, it's sort of shadow self,

whatever. I, I think this character, the use of it, all of that, that is, it's stated literally and directly.

Mm-hmm. It's not a subtle movie. Compare it to someone like Royalton in Speed Racer who is the evil money man saying you have to race this way you gotta do it this way and if you don't I'll crush you

I will mount the forces of capitalism and that is the movie they make right after getting to make two hugely expensive sequels where they get away with everything they fucking want listen to our Speed Racer episode because of course that movie ends with them being like Art can triumph over commerce commerce of course the movie was yeah and and she's you know always talked about interviews like one of the reasons she stepped away and it seemed like they maybe neither of them would ever make a movie again was like i got so

tired with the business aspect of the thing with the executives with answering to all these questions and all this sort of shit she is a filmmaker who aside from her first movie has gotten to traffic in incredible budgets absolutely right it always works on a huge scale and goes i'm telling stories that are this expansive that i'm asking to be put thousands of screens and all that and i do think this movie is reckoning with i want i you know i think of myself as this precious sensitive artist but i've also chosen a medium that requires a tremendous amount of capital support and a lot of people yeah and i am forever beholden to these people there's always gonna be i used to think of smith as a binary villain right now i realize he's part of the

balance of me getting to do the thing i want to do right i i just i i can think of this guy as the impediment to my creative unfiltered brilliance but it's like doesn't matter it doesn't never going away never going away you're not you're not right you're never going to be able to yeah i have to i have to learn how to create some sort of balance in a work relationship with this person otherwise it's not going to happen and the changing of smith to a creative executive but also smith to less of a literal villain and more of an uneasy ally is so telling i agree with that now textually yes i do think it is the most complex smith has always been the most complicated element of the matrix if you dig into it and i guess i can get more into this in the commentaries but like this thing i I found rewatching the first movie,

singing in the theater for the first time, being able to give it more focus recently. I saw it in theaters in 1999 after buying a ticket to she's all that. I bought a ticket to 10 things I hate about you. And then I saw 10 things I hate about you. And I said, why would I see that gun movie? But,

um, the thing I, look, I knew it before, but it hit me so much harder is this idea that it's like smith as a program is this aberration for some reason he's developing his own inner conscious thoughts and his distaste of humanity he has a personality that should not have developed he's not supposed to be so angry he's like like an error. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? All of that's complicated.

We should acknowledge the original plan was for this to be Hugo Weaving. Well, the way this movie works, you can absolutely see the original actors playing both roles, but it doesn't really matter that much to have new actors play the roles, and it's in some ways kind of exciting.

Part of me wonders if I would have preferred the version with Hugo Weaving. I think what Jonathan Groff is doing is great, but I think the rush of much like seeing Thomas Anderson being like, what's going on here? Why is Neo acting like this? To see Hugo Weaving look different, have such a different vibe and be like, well, you know, Warner Brothers like playing Hollywood asshole would have give it such an uneasy power. i love hugo weaving yeah and i would love to see hugo weaving in this movie it's now come out in interviews with like

james mcteague and some of the other people who worked on the movie uh mitchell did an interview recently that that that was the the plan as written because i wasn't sure after seeing it like was i knew hugoaving was in talks, and then there was a scheduling problem, and then he's not in it now. I was like, was he going to play him at some state or some form? Yeah, he was just going to play this role. The original idea was he was going to be Smith the whole time.

Yeah, he was just going to be Smith. I'm sure it'd be great. He was in a play. I think COVID really messed with it, too. Yes. Anyway, he's not in it. I think Groff is fantastic. And I think as part

of the 20 years on plus you know like let's consider the internet and the experience being online now i think groff is a great groff and neil petrick harris are both great expressions of those feelings i think they're great um uh you know we're seeing um the shots of the original movie and we are cut and i feel like especially that's like they're introducing they're i mean they're hammering it over your head that this is smith right and it's a different actor it's not seeing his opening line is him saying hugo weaving's line intercut they do not hide for one second that he is smith he is smith to the extent that people are like wait is he Smith this movie is is there a sort of a

double reverse here like much like reveal why are they telling me so much more than I can even process right out of the game what's going on but like just to talk about Smith for a second yeah as you say in the first movie he is the villain but there is this sort of undercurrent of like

why is he more emotional about this and why none of the other program characters are emotional at all and he has the monologue where he takes off his earpiece

and he takes off the glass your disease your cancer you know and then he's destroyed and then the idea in the second and third movies he's no longer an agent

he cannot move through programs he can't you know copy himself into people right but he now has this new thing where he spreads like a virus he's liberated he's he's his own thing and i have always struggled so much with the idea because like the whole reason that neo gets to pull off his grand truce at the

end of revolutions is that smith has taken over the matrix and so neo can go in there and deal with smith in return you're gonna you're gonna be peaceful we're gonna stop the war sure that's the deal he makes with the machine and the idea is like neo is the sixth one like it's a thing that happens over and over again it's built in there'll be a one he'll hit the end of the program he'll see the architect the architect will be like you got to go back to the beginning you're gonna rebuild zion you know and then he's always like okay i don't want humanity to die so i'll do that right and instead of course neopix trinity and that's why the movie continues rather than ends right yeah everyone's on board with this

yes this is yeah yeah so i guess that's like i was always like why is there a smith is that part of it like is there always going to be like a sort of villain agent in this movie or in the sequels in the matrix like you know why why does smith become so powerful and i but here no you said what you want to say and then i have my answer like you know part of it is just like well these movies especially the sequels are as much about like they are giving you hints the programs are evolving in weird ways too it's not just that the one is behaving differently yeah programs are doing weird things these two programs made a child for no reason like you know like you know there's all kind of yeah smith yeah he he's he's angry and he's weird like you know he we don't know why he behaves this way

he's a glitch too there's all this glitching going on so like that's why he's so tied to neo right like as neo behaves unusually smith behaves on you He's the one of programs in a weird way. He's the aberration. And I always freaked out because I was always like, if there are many ones, why are we never hearing about other Smiths? But I think the idea is partly just like, well, even if that was a thing, Neo, or sorry, the one hitting the end of the program, meeting the architect, rebooting it, would just solve that problem

so it wouldn't be a thing. And instead, Neo not solving that problem problem he proliferates and it becomes a problem so here's my take David yeah and I didn't know you had all this frustration no it's not frustration it's just like David is now furiously rubbering his thighs the way that

Neo does in this movie when he's talking to his therapist yes right well those I feel like in those sequences the therapist is trying to do the thing of like, you're real, you're like, try to, you know.

But David is truly doing those hand gestures unconsciously while talking about the Smith of it all. And this speaks to this movie. As much as the first three Matrixes were, and especially because

the Wachowskis barely did press, didn't explain themselves, made themselves elusive, made this mythology so dense and so cool and all this shit, right? Mm-hmm. That, like, you're sitting there trying to connect the pieces of, like, why, why, why? And I always interpreted the Smith thing as, like, well, we could just have a new agent, we could have a new villain, we could have some other program act this way, so we don't

have to explain why this one is so special but man look at that performance that guy gave in the first movie stupid not to do that again sure and so much like the fucking sentinels reviving trinity and neo it's like i guess we have to figure out why it's still the same guy from the first movie yeah because the public wants this guy yeah it's right. I mean, the analyst's take is certainly right. You could have hired

anyone else to play any other new weird agent who has his own power and not have to deal with the why he was, how it coincides with the first movie. But it is that thing.

At some point, you are somewhat beholden to the demands of not just what the people controlling the purse strings want, but what the public wants. All true.

Borderline paralyzed Thomas Anderson in this movie. Textually. Yes. The way Smith puts it is like, I'm like, he's like a chain around Neo. And he doesn't know either.

Like, Smith does not know that he is Agent Smith until that moment where he sees the gun and he reawakens and he says, Mr. You know, like that.

Before then, he is locked into this as Neo. And look, I love the movie. Yeah. And I like all its tonal goofiness. I think it was maybe a mistake to have an unbroken four minute sequence where Smith sings Fleetwood Mac's the chain to Neo. Should have,

well, he should have done that. What a great singer. Jonathan Groff. What's that song in frozen to out of the woods? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

He killed. Reindeers are better than people. So. Yeah. At the end of this first act, Neo is liberated. First, there's sort of a abortive effort where Morpheus tries to do the red pill, blue pill in a bathroom. Look, I know we're focusing on the first 40 minutes a lot, but. No, we're not.

We're just moving. You also have the Trinity meeting in the coffee shop. That's true. We should, of course, acknowledge. Trinity's there. She's called Tiffany. It's a little joke about.tiff files. I don't know if anyone picked up on that. .tiff files?

Yeah, the artwork. That's why when she says later in the movie, the analyst, Tiffany, he's like, it was a private joke. It's a joke about.tiff files. But also, she says her parents were Audrey Hepburn fans. Yeah, breakfast and stuff. also just it sounds like Trinity there's Trinity Tiffany he knows he feels connected to her

but she's this married woman who he doesn't even know what's going on she also is like playing she's very good at playing the kind of like half aware, half like confused. Sort of like, I do know you.

This is a genuine criticism I have of the movie and one of the few. Okay. I don't know how they solve this based on the way the story is structured.

I do think it is possibly the movie's detriment that she isn't in the middle hour pretty much at all. Because she's so fucking good in this. She's great. And the two of them together on screen is so good.

It just has that feeling of just like fuck, here are two people who clearly have a lot of respect for each other, a lot of love, have spent have been in the trenches together, have gone through so much, have aged into this kind of very easy, effortless gravitas on screen. And

yeah, I don't know. Just from the first scene there, I just feel this kind of very easy, effortless gravitas on screen. And, yeah, I don't know. Just from the first scene there, I just feel a charge of putting the two of them together, which is a thing this movie is talking about. Right? It is. If we put these two pods next to each other, electricity is just created. They're like magnets. If you put them both together, they'll just snap together.

It's too much. The tension. Keep that tension going. I mean, he refers to it as something else, right? He has a different metaphor, but it's the same idea. Right. He sings Fleetwood Mac's toss. No, fuck. Now I have to remember what. He says they're like a toss.

Okay. While you're looking that up, one little thing I noticed on my rewatch last night was the little moments of the reflections where you're seeing that both Tiffany and Neo have different skins. They have different appearances in the physical world. Which are fun, just little

Easter eggs. And those reflections in a cute little thing are played by Neo's reflection is played by Carrie Ann Moss' real husband and Trinity's reflection is played by Carrie Ann Moss's real husband and Tiffany Trinity's reflection is played by James McTeague

who's the first assistant director's wife and was the director of V for Vendetta right one of the closest collaborators right so which is yes you never get a full body shot in that kind of way

you're not doing the like heaven can wait sort of uh wonder woman 1984 thing where you cut back and forth between the two actors it's always these sort of glimpsed obscured reflections he knows he looks different right you see them at little moments and also this movie is just fucking all in on mirrors for obvious reason it doubles down on the alice in Wonderland. That obviously mirrors are crucial. But also mirrors become the transportation system in a way fully

replacing phones of the first movie. Right. They are no longer going to hard lines. They go through mirrors. Portals they call them. Which that shit's all there in the original trilogy but obviously in the original trilogy the mirror shot is but it's not it. Alice stuff is there.

Here, it's just overwhelming. Yeah. But yeah, so Morpheus attempts, but you know, he's still getting used to the role. Well, the other thing is just, we've had this Christina Ricci with the best agent in Hollywood

getting very high billing. I assume that stuff was cut out. But this montage of, as we said, like... Very funny montage of them focus grouping said, like... Very funny montage of them focus grouping the matrix. People trying to quantify

what was it that... What do I like about it? Is it the action? Is it the WTF-ness? Is it that it was so different? Is it that it was... Yeah.

Which speaks to these things where it's like, you can't replicate these things. Tough to replicate. As much as you can talk about the decision-making process that went into making

the first thing work, it's hard to synthesize it i like the one guy in the group who's like i never liked it i thought it was shitty right there's that one guy who's just like i just want action boom and then repeating that them repeating the same dialogue and they're like that guy he was wearing like the goofiest hats like he goes through three different outfit changes well it's very funny it's just so disconcerting it's disconcerting but i feel like it's also like it's just the the feeling of being having the same conversation so you know over and over year after year day after day whatever right

like it's sort of like i don't know about uh lana wachowski if she's been in a lot of pitch meetings over like okay but could matrix 4 be you know like and it's just kind of always the same like what do we love about the first one bullet time we love but I also think it's an internal monologue thing of like how do I go back to the how is there another one of these how do we how do we make it different do I need to one up bullet

time or do I need to do bullet time again or do I have to run away from both impulses Freema Ajaman of course is one of the people in this boardroom, one of like eight Sensei cast members. A lot of Sensei cast members in this movie. Love to see them. Yeah.

And of course, there are also these scenes with Neil Patrick Harris as Neo's blue glasses frame wearing psychiatrist, the analyst, who is very much like, look, you're just, you're not crazy, but you're projecting, blah, blah, blah, you know, all that stuff. There's something to, in terms of just the difference of vibe of what this new Matrix is like, that Smith and the Analyst, the two main protagonists in this film, are both played by openly gay men in Hollywood who are pretty traditionally handsome

and have overabundance of Broadway experience. Very much so. Are like great singers, can be like very clean, all-ages entertainer performers. You know?

It's an interesting energy that they're bringing versus like someone like hugo weaving uh absolutely ego we can of course can do anything there's a softness to both of them that they both are certainly very capable of adding menace to that this is the whole thing with neil patrick harris as much as he you know he's i think he's very good in this movie like using what people don't like about him or what people find off you know yes putting about him as like a weapon like which I

also think he does very well in gone that's my he's a good actor like I think the movie is consciously using the fact that these are like two incredibly woke likable progressive guys and being like is there something too clean about these guys upsetting how cute and adorable and lovable they are yeah now i just want to say because i think

we should keep moving along just we only have two more hours right now right seriously but to speak to just my first viewing experience let's just now say that we're we're watching you know you're watching along to this movie again and Neo is like kind of this like like wimpish kind of dork and he's in therapy and I'm just like what the fuck is going on and now I'm like literally watching

this hero like kind of complain to his therapist right it's we're 45 minutes into the movie I everything that's turning you off I'm like yep yep yep yep yep yep you don't like that i mean i've now come around to it because that character is really interesting and i want to get to the second part of the movie because of all the new shit that we're about to start talking morpheus comes to there's a failed uh you know wake up neo moment where right morpheus it's just too loose he's still getting used to it.

He, he can't even dress properly for the matrix. He's like, so freed up in the fact that he's like, I don't have to be a Smith anymore. Right. He's wearing really bright clothes. As,

as Ben would say, he's throwing fits. Oh yeah, absolutely. Uh, and he's stepping out of a bathroom stall and he's trying to do Morpheus dialogue. And then he's like,

ah, too much. Right. I don't know. So so that doesn't work there's this big shootout that's where smith wakes up in the office this whole sequence so well he's really funny really funny like really funny at being offered the pills and being like having the reaction of like i can't be doing this to myself again you know that's of course what his fear is it's like oh god i'm slipping into the the matrix is real reverie again like you know he has a look when smith is pointing the gun to his head that looks like a dog that's confused yeah right where it's not even like he's afraid for his life or that he wants to he's just genuinely kind of like perplexed by everything going on around him and

then you have the sequence a thing that i think this film visualizes really well and it doesn doesn't do it in an incredibly complicated way, but I've talked about this before in the podcast. One of the side effects at the most extreme of my states of anxiety or depression, things I've struggled with my entire life, is I can have disassociative episodes where your sense of time and personhood and your existence within your own body essentially. I would describe it as my brain pushes the eject button. And I have a hard time differentiating between what is in my head and what's actually happening. I need to just lie down and close my eyes and listen to music

until I feel placed again. And the transition between the gunfight into just now he's in the therapist's office is very often what that feels like for me. Where it's like I have the moment before I can start to feel my brain getting loose and then there's the moment where I feel like things have settled

and the stuff in between I'm like I don't totally know if that happened or not. And that's the trick they're pulling. It's like yes they're doing the Matrix thing of like, you see the cat, deja vu. They're actually just reworking the programming

and they're just like, okay, fucking shut it down, put him in the analyst's office, we're going to reset his brain a little bit. I also just want to say, the bullet time,

quote unquote, in this movie, which people are like, it doesn't look cool anymore, the bullet time really, really fucking feels like how it feels in the present when I'm having a disassociated relationship. cool anymore the bullet time really really fucking feels like how it feels in the present when i'm having a disassociative i think bullet time looks cool

um but we'll talk about where it's like i know what you're saying i hear what you're saying yeah um anyway uh shit i i lost my train of thought it's okay so anyway uh so he but he whatever he the reset back to the room things are going wrong never mind whatever right and then he gets re how do they even get him out in the end like oh well he's he's gonna go throw himself off a building again right and that's where bugs make right he goes bugs gets a bunch of okay more gets liquored up morpheus is how we found you but maybe morpheus is not ready for prime time for right right so bugs bugs is the one she has the white rabbit on her arm. She's making the appeal of like, you spoke to me unknowingly.

You woke me up. You know, come on. You know this isn't going to work. Like in your heart of hearts. Like you know that just fucking getting drunk and jumping off a building. You know they're not going to let you do that. They're just going to put you right back on the treadmill.

Also, Lana is wrestling with bad fandom and the amount of people who have misinterpreted her film. Right? Especially as time goes on. And even just a month after Matrix came out, everyone was blaming Columbine on the Matrix. Down to today, the Red Pill movement. All these fucking things that were out of her control.

I saw someone tweet, and I'm sorry I'm not giving them credit here because I forget who it was. But like, Lana Wachowski made The Matrix. Everyone's been misinterpreting it for 25 years and she has decided to not be subtle at all since then. When people talk about her movies being too loud

or blunt or obvious or earnest or goofy or whatever, it's just like I think there's this fear of I don't want to be misinterpreted ever again because people keep on turning the matrix into their own bullshit. I want to yell at the camera what I'm thinking.

Right. Absolutely. Sure, sure. And I think Bugs is this antidote to that where she's like, I know you're worried about what this thing you made is

and what it caused and whether it's worth going back to that or not. I'm someone whose life you genuinely saved and it spoke to me and I understood it. Right. And doesn't that counterweight the thing a little bit?

Isn't it worth saying what you want to say if even one person can actually be positively affected by it? Because you can't control the other people out there who are going to fucking do whatever they do. And it's this other thing I love about the movie, which is when Neo wakes up and he's just like, I solved the whole Matrix thing.

What the fuck is this? Oh, sure. Well, what he feels like. None of this was worth it. And she's like, everything changed and also it didn't. It's both at the same time.

I guess so. Everything did change though. He's wrong. He is wrong. He feels emotionally that nothing has changed because the world looks the same but he's wrong everything did but this is the point everything's changes and nothing changes at the same time okay so now can you i think in the world in our real world i think that is often i understand what you're saying i understand

okay i'm too deep in the matrix to to agree with you but so now can you talk about is it symbionts what are they referred to the robot race? That's what they call it. Yeah, but they're machines. They're machines. But they don't want to be called that anymore because I guess that's a baby. Right. And this whole idea of the two sides. Right, right.

Where it's like, okay, in the old days, there was the machine city and there was the, you know, the free humans. Right. Right, right, right. And now there are still kind of two sides, it seems, but it's more just sort of a, you know, a pro-matrix and anti-matrix. And like, so now machines are living with humans. Programs have figured out how to live in the real world by turning into ball-bearing people. Right, the binary was one has to...

Flesh versus metal, you know, right. Win. We have to exist in opposition to each other. And it's like, versus metal, you know, right? Win. We have to exist in opposition to each other. Right. And it's like, as you said, it could be warring ideologies

without the lines being divided by species, as it were. Right. And we meet those three characters and what I think is so amazing is they're basically, they're introducing them, they risk their lives

to save him. When Neo is... The robots have life, they have consciousness. Right. When Neo is spirited away they're introducing them they risk their lives right one of them to save him when the robots are are have life they have consciousness right when neo is spirited away from his pod that's one of them one of these sibebe sibebe sibebe uh is right is sort of sticking the his neck out i guess and i don't know if it was just my interpretation but i'm watching it and i'm like this is such an echo of his first awakening sequence right in the first movie right he's unplugged he's in the red uh pod you know this movie's been doing echoes before but they're usually twisted and then intercut with the original for comparison and this just feels

like you're doing the same scene again and i'm watching it and plot wise going how did bugs and the crew fuck this up so badly he's waking up in the pod and he's getting like surrounded by these robots sure how do they not have someone there for him so the twist of no the robots who you're used to are the threat and then they have to pull the plug and flush them out and send them down the tube yep are actually here to protect their hands are here to help the second they land back on the ship, you look back at these robots who, five minutes ago, seemed like threats. They look like the squid. They're

somewhat squiddy. They've got red eyes. And you're like, the nobility of what they just did. Hell yeah. As you said, the risk. You guys are cute. Luminate, right? That's one. Which one is Luminate? Luminate's the little guy. The little one with the right little one which also feels like a funny commentary on kind of like just put a little cute character in the fucking movie

octocles obviously has multiple arms yeah yeah uh and then um and then i feel like there's another well it's a baby well the fourth one is naobis the butterfly that's right the one who looks like the abyss aliens right what's so helpful about this for me is it just it also kind of i feel like answers the question a little bit that you don't get necessarily i feel like i might be wrong on the franchise of course david you would correct me but it's like this whole thing of like all right well what are the robots doing on the planet itself like okay the matrix they designed it's this program it's running humans are in it but what the fuck are the robots doing on the planet other than just they live their life but what is their

life see i agree with that it's just a bunch of fucking towers of like power and then what what's the point of staying up because they're not just robots they're artificial intelligence right this is the thing that's baked into it so you the first three movies never interrogate really and i'm not saying this is a flaw. The Animatrix does, but the movies don't. The Animatrix does. Agree. The first three movies do not really interrogate the internal life of the robots who are so desperate to stay alive and remain dominant.

I disagree. And I'm now going to talk. I'm not saying that it's a flaw, but I like that this movie sets up the idea of like there are robots who could go like, huh, maybe this life doesn't make that much sense. Maybe we want to help people. They're not just drones. Absolutely. But here's what we see in the first three movies. We see two kinds of beings.

We see squids, which are drones. Those are, it seems, relatively non-autonomous. The sentence. The sentence. Okay. Where they're just, they're basically living weapons. Right. But then we see computer programs

in the matrix such as ramachandra who made a child sati like that and like that is going on in the sequels where there is these hints that like there are programs that don't want to just do what they're supposed to do right you know it feels so good explore to have david explaining the matrix like well we're to do it on the commentary. Explore emotion or whatever. That's so much of the sequels. And also there are programs like the Merovingian and the Exiles who have fully pieced out of the Matrix.

They have to live in the Matrix, but they live outside of its walls. They're doing their own thing. They have a fucking sex club. Agreed. That's fun. Now we don't see life in the machines. That's what we're talking about.

But that's because that is inscrutable in those movies. We never get to it. I like that it becomes scrutable. Well, a little bit. You see them in IO. Not in... Just FYI. The Machine City, as we all know, the main Machine City because we've all watched the Animatrix, is called what?

What's it called? I forget. It's called Zero One. Which, of course, is binary for the first binary character. So, IO is one zero. IO Adebri. You know, IO. Yeah, no, it's good. It's funny. I like it.

But we don't see what's going on in the Machines. But they have a Machine City. We know that. I know. Hovercrafts. We know they built those. That's why they're flying them around. I'm not trying to backhand the first three movies, but this was a development that I love. It's a great development.

Instead of them just being bugs. Right. This is the whole thing. They have personality. This is the whole thing. End of the Matrix revolutions. This is what I was so worried about. Like, is he really?

I think, you know, are we really going to? Is Neo's sacrifice gonna the first order problem as I would call it where it's like is it the pressing that the thing just happened again it's literally just

Rebels versus Empire again their victory was nothing the cycle repeats they blow up a fucking planet immediately it's the problem with a lot of these legacy sequels is you undo whatever

catharsis in this movie the stakes are really never we have to stop the machines of really never we have to stop the machines of course or we have to destroy well I mean we have to stop the matrix we have to stop the matrix is uh people in fact pointedly not the stakes pointedly out of their way to say we don't want to fucking get involved with that again because what we learned has happened so yes neo is liberated he's taken to this new city, Io.

And he meets Naomi, who is now very old because 60 years have passed. And she's played by Jada Pinkett Smith. And there she is. Right. And it's fine. It looks okay. Whatever. The makeup?

Yeah, I don't know. I think it looks good. She looks okay. I think it looks good. I think it looks good. Sure. And she tells him, like, look, post you. Yes, the machines left.

They stopped attacking us. But then we realized that there was some kind of machine civil war. There was some internal conflict. The Oracle disappeared. The Matrix completely changed. And that's a whole mess that we are not that interested in. Because we've got our city here. We are all living in harmony.

You know, man, machine, program. We've got a cool bio sky. Everything changes and nothing changes. You died thinking you were going to radically change the firmament of everything forever. And what we've noted is, here are the positive things that came out of your change. Here's how things retreated back. So we just decided, we'll just do this over here. We don't have to bother ourselves with that.

I mean, obviously, it seems Bugs is more the type like we should be you know getting into the matrix and pulling people out because she's the new lead of our franchise she isn't right and she's she's looking at a new trilogy like we went through all i did that shit it's you know because the whole thing is video game i did two movies we shot them all at the same time i'm exhausted at the end of revolutions neo's truce is not you will turn the matrix up but it is anyone who doesn't want to be in the matrix because some people just unconsciously don't you gotta give them the choice rap rather than we have to go fucking get them and it's a whole you know conflict you just get them out yeah and what this movie sort of addresses is what would that cause

in the world of the machines a power power crisis. You're losing people. Yeah. So like, that is why eventually it sounds like the architect has been defeated or supplanted or deleted or whatever by this new guy. Who's kind of like, you know, I know how to juice up the matrix even with less people.

And it's by like, you know, one having Neo and Trinity power, but two, like having it be this like hyper emotional aggressive nightmare kind of play you know like he talks about how like you guys are making more energy when you sleep just because you're so freaked out you know all that yeah so right which is like how twitter now yes uses an algorithm to organize your feed to prioritize the posts that are getting

most controversial. Right. It's same with Facebook. Same with how, right. Where it's like, well, there's the most discussion and it's like, well, it's all fucking people yelling at each other.

Like they're all going crazy. What these artificial intelligence programs are designed to look for is like, it seems like there's some friction happening. And it's post, right. And then that, so that's why I can go on Twitter and be like, my dick is so big.

And everyone who doesn't agree with me is a nazi and twitter's like very controversial take does everyone want to see it you know like rather than me being like i'm dicks regular and if you don't agree i don't mind right twitter be like well no one wants to see you david a sane person would leave that for the alt but but the the matrix doesn't like the alt it doesn't benefit from the alt it wants people fighting out in public on main. Get the people going. Is that what Will Ferrell says? Anyway.

I mean, it's the same with all of the, you know, Instagram. It's they're all. Yes. They know human psychology. It's manipulating humans. Right. In this way that I don't even think we can ever really probably fully understand the perspective of the AI, these programs, right? Again, thinking in the way of Matrix, think about them as people, as things.

The important thing to underline is we've figured out a way to train AI to be able to recognize potential conflict. Yeah. That in and of itself is a mindfuck. Really? That a computer program can go like, hmm, this post will make people upset. Yeah. So, that's the thing. Neo, of course, never...

He knew in making that deal. Like, it's not like you're going to turn off the Matrix. I know you guys need it to live. You guys literally need... It makes your power. And your power is how you exist. But he also wants a... But I don't want it to be a fucking war anymore.

And it's not. It's a tidy end of third movie victory in his mind. In his mind. I mean, like, everyone watching the movie is like, wait, what did he do? Right. This is my point. So when he wakes up and he's like, I thought I left this place. Well, anyway.

Balanced. I like that Bugs has to say to him, like, no, it worked. And he's like, I don't think it worked. I never should have woken up. It's a fucking mess. Right. You still look good. It speaks to the depression.

And it's sort of the wind rises thing of like, why am I bothering making these planes if people are going to fucking... That was the other movie I kept on thinking about in the second half of this film. Is the wind rises struggle of like, I work so much. I care so much.

I try to communicate this thing. And then people are going to use it in a way I can't control. Is it even fucking worth the effort? are we going to say uh fuck wait um there's all right well i'll say there is the crucial scene that i already referenced where naobi presents him with silence and he's like oh yeah that is powerful uh and now i mean can i say that is just good filmmaking i agree it's i think one of the cornerstones of filmmaking the filmmakers too often today forget and then i think franchise filmmaking with its massive amount of oversight will often smooth out is like the most power

you can have in your arsenal is um restraint Removing elements strategically. You know? Whether it's like you withhold something for a long period of time. In the basic grammar of what you have at your disposal as a technical filmmaker, it's that simple where it's just like, you don't realize that the movie's been

inundating you with so much noise for an hour that the second it gives you silence it feels like a hundred million dollar special effect in the way that great filmmakers can use color you know to specifically trigger things without you really recognizing it so um again my first viewing i'm like at this point now bummed because the hero basically is finding out that like well actually the world's kind of nuanced it's not just good versus evil and it's like things are complicated and there's like actually kind of this like political sort of ecosystem and you know like it's like i almost like kind of was like but i just wanted the first matrix like that's what i

did i was like bummed i was was like, oh my God, really? Like, come on. Now it's getting more complicated. Do you remember what- It's not this clean, just like, basically what the new Star Wars-

Give me the shot. Give me the shot. I haven't seen a Star Wars movie. I wanted, I said to Griffin, I was like, I kind of wanted steak. It took me-

That was the line I was hoping you'd repeat. It took me a second viewing to actually start to be like, well, wait, actually, I do fucking like this. I wanted the steak. he kept on saying as we walked to the train station i just wanted the steak i don't know if that makes me basic and i was like ben but they're doing this and this he's like i understand it but i just it would have been great to sit down in a theater

and to see the matrix and see people do kung fu and leather and be badass right right right and it's like i can understand everything she was trying to do, but it would have been nice to eat a steak right now. And it's the fucking cipher argument. But I don't even think I did it. I had to try. I had to really try. It took unlocking it

the second time. Yeah, I mean, like, there's this, you know, we sort of skipped over, but there's the Neo's sort of wake up moment post being unplugged is the goes to the dojo with morpheus and you're like okay they're gonna do the fight again and they don't it's more morpheus kind of showing off and neo being like i don't want to fight anymore i did that. And then his way of expressing himself like, martially now is like a Hadouken. Like, it's just this sort of like

primal scream thing where he just kind of like, you know, like that's all he can do now. Neo never uses a gun the entire movie. Doesn't he? Another very deliberate. Doesn't, I mean he has one fight with Smith, but apart from that, it's not really you know, he's not really, you know,

he's not really doing Kung Fu anymore. He doesn't fly until the end of the movie. You know, he's not like... That joke of when he tries to... So good. It's just because the jump and then falling right back down. I mean, he's just...

He is just such a good physical actor. He is. He is a good physical actor. But, but, but, but, you know, it gets to, obviously, you love the Matrix sequels. You have done a job converting us to the Matrix sequels and recognizing that. We'll see what we see.

I rewatched recently and I, look, I don't love them as much as the first movie or you, but I don't love them as much as I love you is what I'm trying to say there in that unclear sentence structure. That's fine. But, but I, I certainly like, I like them a lot more than I used to. Sure. I appreciate them fully and feel like I quote unquote get them now. But it's one of these things. I think this is important to bring up because it gets into this problem that we constantly have of in culture,

like fans feeling like, why didn't you give me the exact movie I want to see? Right. I'm not talking about this movie in particular, but a larger thing as like fan culture has become a bigger thing. And, uh, I will not name him cause I don't need to give power to it,

but there's a bad YouTuber that I watch sometimes, uh, just to make myself angry, who talks like, quote unquote, narcissistic filmmakers who get hired to make a new entry in a franchise and use it to say whatever they want to say or tell whatever story they want to tell rather than preserving the franchise and giving us what we've already seen before. And he says it's like a negative. Like, this is not your story. You shouldn't get to tell this. Give us the thing we already want. Don't change the recipe for the Big Mac. Give me another Big Mac. You're a narcissist if you're using it to say something else. Right. Matrix Resurrections is obviously the original person coming back to it. But when I look at like the Matrix subreddit, and by the way, I've seen

people on the subreddit who dislike the movie, who have done some of the most thoughtful, positive analysis of the film that I've seen. You mean our subreddit or the Matrix subreddit? R slash Matrix. Oh, sure. The Matrix. Yeah. There are people who are just like, what the fuck? She ruined the Matrix. And they also are sort of taking it as a personal affront.

Like, it feels like the movie is mocking me for even wanting to see The Matrix. But there are also people who are like, look, I don't like it, but here's everything she's doing. And it's like incredible analysis I've read by people who are very generous with like, it's not for me,

but I do think textually this film is very interesting. But there is that balance, right? Of how much do you need to give people what they want? How much are they going to be upset if it's not the thing they have in their mind's eye versus challenging them with something new that's an expansion or different direction of, or what have you. And

an issue that the matrix equals found themselves in is that the end of the first movie, Neo is fucking Superman now, right? Sure. Everyone watches that. And the promise of the first movie neo is fucking superman now right sure yeah everyone watches that he's all powerful and the promise of it you go like oh fuck and then the sequels are he can do anything and then you get to the sequels and in many ways that's a little dramatically inert of course he's unkillable and neo is in so many ways kind of passive and stoic and unknowable in reloaded particular I think Revolutions does a better job of humanizing him again. Well, he's

brought low. Right, exactly. But they have to spend a whole movie bringing him low and deflating him. And it's like the problem that people have with Star Wars sequels and Luke Skywalker where it's like if Luke is everything you wanted him to be in your mind's eye then the movie has nowhere to go. All of this to say

it is funny that for. All of this to say, it is funny that for so much of this film, Neo's power is he just kind of holds his hand up and goes like, just stop. Well, this is what I'm trying to say. I know I gave a lot of wind-up to it, but that was the point I wanted to make. Okay, but I do want to point out that The Matrix Reloaded,

one of the great works of art of the 21st century, is about how when you become the fucking Messiah, when you become Luke Skywalker unlocked, that is just, you know, and every Messiah in history is just a way of,

it's just a form of control. Of course. That's the whole point of the narrative. It's like, Neo can now do anything and he's like, I can do anything

and he reaches the end and the guy's like, yeah, I wrote that you can do anything. You can't do anything. You're going to do one thing, which is do what you're supposed to do reload the matrix for me right and of course the brilliance is that i don't trust the mainstream media it's a form of control it's a lie instead i read everything on facebook and i follow that to the letter and that's i'm a free

thinker you know it's like everything is a system of control as you said yeah people need structure and they need rules and they need control so even if they reject the thing that's put upon them they find some new structure to invest everything into and I do think that like yes reloaded those action sequences which are very good like one of the reasons I think the burly brawl

is not as fucking awesome as I thought it was going to be I think it's good I agree but like when you watch Revisited. It has no ending. It's like he just leaves. Rewatching the Revisited documentary reminded me how much for a year the hype was you're not going to believe this fucking fight. If you thought

bullet time was cool, this burly brawl thing is going to blow your fucking mind. Sure. Yeah. And the fight, yes, it does deflate a little bit. And part of it is just like well, I know he can do anything now. So you can watch the coolest special effects and the most complicated choreography. But there's less of a tension. And so in this movie, one of the reasons why you get the sense that Lana's clearly not even prioritizing action sequences here.

It's not even that they're not as good. It's that it's not the point. Is that anytime there could be a big action sequence, Neo kind of holds up his hand and goes, like, no. I don't want to deal with it anymore. It's defensive. He's now defensive. I'm not even going to do

the show of it anymore. Now, to get back to the plot, Naomi, you know, I think in the movie it makes total sense that she is just like, I don't want you to go rescue Trinity.

I don't want you to mess anything up. Everything is nice here. we're living in harmony like she becomes kind of a scold like i think the movie is fine at this like because i think you kind of know in her heart of hearts like now she's you know part of her wants neo to you know to do the thing right but like it's sort of now it'll be so cool yeah joe my brother was saying But, like, it's sort of, Niobe's so cool. Yeah. My brother was saying, he's just like,

it's sort of annoying that she's like the Harry Lennox, you know, in the sequels, character of like, you stay grounded, all of you, you know, space pilots, you know. I have a comment in defense of that

and then a question. I think it's, I mean, I think you might find annoying. I feel like Niobe's kind of playing like the elder statesman, 87- term senator. Absolutely. Who used to be a political radical.

And now she's like, can't things just kind. Yeah, I support you. Bugs is like AOC. I support you, Bugs. And it's like, can you just calm down and stay quiet? She's not even being safe. But certainly, yeah, just kind of like it's better to not like fuck things up. I'm a career politician now.

I remember I used to be hungry and try to fuck shit up yeah we don't need to fuck shit up anymore right yeah here's my question for you and I don't know if I have an answer but it's a question do you think this

movie would be better or worse if at this point when they get to IO yeah and there was the elder statesman who was running the city it was old Lawrencerence fishburne no that'd be much worse because it would make no sense that he would never ever say no to neo he'd be very pro-neo okay yeah because like the whole morpheus is like whatever we neo wants to do i am an accolade of neo like right uh whereas naomi as she says in the sequels and if she says in this

movie she's like i never totally believed in your whole yeah you know i was always skeptical as as this movie says like post and you know once the truce happens morpheus became the president because he was right like you know like he was and you know yeah if it's morpheus he'd be like neo it's so good to see you and you'd be like i gotta go get trinity he'd be like i know you do and i'll see you later he just would not be an obstacle i love Jada Pinkett. I think she's a very underrated actor. We've called her out a lot on the show because we've had the good fortune

of being able to cover a lot of movies she's good in. Because we want to be on the red table. It's time that she bring us to the table. Yeah. But David's sitting at a brown table right now. Bent at a glass table. This is where I get sort of excited by how thorny this text is

in an interesting way I understand every creative decision and I still walk away from it and I go yeah but fuck I wish they figured out a way to get Hugo Weaving and Laurence Fishburne in it there's this part of me that's still like I just want to see my old friends I think Jonathan Groff's performance is great I like that they're breaking new ground but part of me

is just like yeah but what if it was Hugo Weaving? Remember when Hugo Weaving did the thing? I think the movie would work with that. I mean, Fishburne would be playing Morpheus, and it would be instead this sort of weird performance of like, oh, he's doing sort of a Morpheus Smith at first. That's odd. And obviously he looks different.

He's older. He's, you know. I think he would fit into the movie just fine. Oh, this is what I was thinking, though, is like, could you do... I know what you're saying. No. The answer to that is no, in my opinion.

Because what I got excited and I couldn't crack it is, is there a good way to make this movie in which Yahya Abdul-Mateen does play young program agent Morpheus, and there is some version... No. No. You can't do that. No.

No. No. No. Look, that's that. No. No. No. No. Look, that's why I posed it as a question. It wasn't a pitch. It was a question. But. Could you have your cake and eat it too?

Isn't Spider-Man kind of what that is? It's so much more complicated than that. Yeah, we can't get into that. All right. Sorry. Sorry. I won't even. Okay.

So they go back to the Matrix. Yes. They, upon entering the Matrix, are greeted by Smith, who is now liberated again, mentally, essentially. And basically has the take of like, look, I know you and I used to fight.

I now recognize we're kind of just, you know, part of the same petri dish here. I kind of just need you to stay out of the Matrix. I don't hate you. Right. I don't even think about you, bro. I live in the matrix. I don't hate you. Right. Cause like, I don't even think about you, bro. I live in the matrix. I can't have you fucking up the matrix. I would perhaps like,

maybe I'll take it over. I hate the analyst. That guy like locked me down. And Neo is basically like, look, I don't want to fight you either. I'm here to get Trinity. You know,

like, and he's like, nah, but if you get Trinity, things aren't going to, well, so I guess we have to fight. And then of course there are also some exiles, some monster people.

Yes. And there's our old pal, the Merovingian. So are these guys all supposed to be vampires? Whatever. Yeah, they're his crew. They're like the remnants of his... They're like the sad remainder of his monster crew. Are they werewolves?

Are they... Well, they're supposed to be everything. Frankensteins. Are they a couple of Frankensteins? Yeah, they have let themselves go that's the whole point but why their programs well but the matrix like the merovingian is from an old matrix right that's the idea and he's found his way he's established himself in the in the sequels he's got his club and he's he's the guy sometimes code gets dusty but but the Matrix has been rebooted again. And he has survived, but now, yeah,

he's just like, you know, a hobo. Do you know what I viewed it as? When you're trying to transfer files from like a really old computer to a newer computer and you're like, it doesn't even understand.

Griff, that's really good. That's exactly what it is. Yes. He's your weird app. Like when they made Toy Story 3, they were like, well, we did all the work. We already built all these characters. And they were like well we did all the work we already built all these characters and they were like we cannot transfer the model of woody

into a present-day computer it's impossible you have to rebuild it from your apps like some of your apps suddenly are sort of like right we're just we don't exist anymore sorry we don't work with this no one's updating us anymore merovingian's on a floppy disk and he's showing up and he's like free me from this floppy but he's also like everything suckspy disk and he's showing up and he's like, free me from these floppy. But he's also like, everything sucks now. You know, he's just there. He's doing a monologue about how Facebook is annoying and how culture is in

the toilet. It's going full Fisher King. He's so good. It was so lovely to see him. I squealed with delight. What a good year for Lambert Wilson. David, I don't want you to spoil anything.

Is there any way Lambert Wilson does not get a supporting actor nod from you? I don't know. I gotta think about it. Between the two performances? No. And being so in your wheelhouse, I'm like...

I mean, this is such a silly scene. It's so great. But I'm saying, look, you would nominate him for Benedetta, but this performance kind of boosts him in the Bernthal conversation where you're like,

he gave like three good performances. He did. Alright, okay. I mean, I know someone in this movie is on my ballot, that's for sure. But, uh, love all that. But again, the action is fine. This is the Smith-Neo fight, which I actually think

the action there is pretty solid. It's just that it ends much like a lot of these fights with a shrug well you just blast him away because you know you can't kill smith again he's right kill that's not gonna work you know that's not a thing anymore fight anymore um call back to the you know the franchise in general really it's just when they they go into the matrix and they all look cool yeah they've all got and they all have their their outfits and they have that kind of just moment where you get to like take it in they look so fucking

cool I get so excited you know anytime they do it in any of the movies but this one in particular is fucking good man what's the name of the actor from Sense8 who has the crazy hair braids and the tattoos her name is and the character name the character's name is Lexi

okay she's played by Erendira Ibarra Right, who was the Beard girlfriend of the gay actor Right, and then Brian J. Smith Plays Berg Who is the sort of, he was the cop in Sensei But he's the sort of like

Neo-olid, he's like a big neo-dork Right, and then you have Max Remelt, who I love Who of course has great penis wonderful penis and sensei he's the german guy i think the first time we got written up in pod mass and the av club it was the quote about like this actor there's a thing about him that's really good his penis he's and that was our quote of the week he's a really good actor yeah i really like rex from l and i love seeing i like his look with the the blonde hair and this yeah and i love his penis he's got a great he's got a great day um

those are the main ones i'm right of the crew i feel like the pilot is his name right uh i think he might be had sensei actors in this overall. So yeah, so post that, is it, so you know, post the Smith fight, that's the, they go find Trinity. It is telling that this is the hardest section of the movie to recount because this is the section

that is also the most action driven, which is a little muddier. The movie's been. But it's also just kind of like, it moves fairly quickly because then the next scene is him going to see Trinity in her bike shop. She's fucking in a fucking Def Leppard video

practically with sparks going and she's bending over a bike. Let's also call out, part of the question's been when he wakes up, he's like, there was another pod right there. It's Trinity. And they're like, are you sure? He's like, I know it. I feel it. And she needs to wake up. And they're like, what if she doesn't? They look at her and she's a blue pill. She doesn't want to. And he's like, she needs to wake up. And they're like, what if she doesn't? They look at her and she's a blue pill. She doesn't

want to. And he's like, well, what about me? And they're like, you were like that too. Right. It was a comfortable existence. But so when he goes to see her, that's when the analyst shows up, throws on the bullet time filter, essentially slows Neo down, slows everything down. Let's also acknowledge they have

the two coffee dates, right? And then the second one she comes to him with the information of like, so you're that game guy and I looked at the game a little bit. I told my husband

I thought it looked like me. And he laughed. Right. And I wish I had kicked him across the room. Right. She's so fucking good in that scene. She's really great in that scene.

But I like that at first you're like, well yeah, of course you would look at the game and go that person looks like me. This is creepy. But then when you get the reflection you remember like she literally, yeah, of course you would look at the game and go, that person looks like me. This is creepy. But then when you get the reflection,

you remember, like, she literally doesn't look like that at all. There's something triggering in her brain that looks like me to her husband. He's like, you have blonde hair.

You're crazy. You're built like this. There's no facial structure resemblance. But we're seeing the version of her that does look like her in the game. I love this.

I don't know if, I assume Neo is seeing Trinity as, as she is too. Not her. That's how I, I saw him sort of taking it. Obviously they're playing anyway. Um,

but yeah. And which is why she feels comfortable saying that to him. Cause he recognizes like, yes, you do look like the person in the game. And, but this is where the analyst sort of just explains everything we've been talking about,

how this new matrix is predicated on emotion, on stories, on like you know, fiction over fact, on desire and fear. Kicks Neo into another disassociative episode where he's moving in slow motion. And it's just clever, reversible. Overstimulation. I like how it looks. I think it's really, yeah, I like the weird juddery overstimulation of it. I like the way

Neil Patrick Harris plays it. Once again it feels like an anxiety attack to me. Definitely. Being paralyzed. Absolutely. And, you know, and also, I'm also just like freaking out on the lore. I'm just like so happy that they're like, yes, they're explaining how this new Matrix works, right? Where the architect went, how this guy is different.

This guy, to me, is an evil oracle. Like, it's not so much that he's, obviously he's the architect and that he's like running the the program but he's an evil oracle in that like he was also designed to understand humans well they also said there was no order oracle in this new matrix he's fulfilling both roles at the same time well the oracle's gone but like right because the merovingian was the previous architect my read no my read tweeted this recently we can talk about this in the commentaries when i read on the merovingjun is he is the Oracle of Matrix 2. The Oracle, not the Architect, sorry.

I think he's the Oracle because I think that's why he's obsessed with getting the Oracle's eyes. But that's a different discussion. Okay. But yeah, no, but like the Oracle's whole point in the Matrix movies is that she's a program who's designed to understand people and understand what motivates them

and that's how they create the matrix is to serve that. And he is the same. He gets people, but he gets how to push their buttons, how to aggravate them, how to stir them up. So he's sort of like a nigga oracle. He's also, he's kind of a good therapist. Like there was a version of me that was worried where I'm like, is she going to come in with some anti-theorgy? Oh, like, yeah, right. Because he's the villain.

And it's like, no, the point is his power is that he actually does understand people's psychology right yes yes absolutely and he's not just lying to this it's it's so good that the villain of this movie is not another super powered agent who you are going to have a fight with right and it's more like the big test in this movie at the end is a conversation is a conversation is that he needs to truly win trinity over to waking up yeah and the analyst is like okay yeah if you can do that what can i but also if he can't do it then neo doesn't even want he wants to bloom he wants to go back now better than nothing right you say this speech also if you're reading between the lines definitely

is like i think a moment where people who didn't like this movie right are feeling attacked because he's like kind of being like you're a fucking idiot i think this is a one like he's talking about like i've seen people say this directly but it is like this feels like this movie is calling me an idiot yes for wanting to see the movie i wanted to right right so not only am i not getting that movie but the movie's mocking me and then on top of that when they read which i think is a misread the perception that she doesn't even want to be making this movie well that i think is not true right right that's the thing i think is fundamentally mystery but i understand being pissed off that the movie is both withholding from you

what you want and seemingly mocking you for not. Ultimate troll, man. Fucking made a movie, dude. Didn't even fucking want to do it, man. But like, I mean, I'll say. I do see people saying that. Did you like it?

This whole movie's a fucking troll. Don't worry about other people. Well, let's move on. Let's move on from other people. Sorry. It's okay. No, it's fine. But beyond the fact that we've been running for so long.

Sorry, you started to hear an echo. We were under a bridge. Oh, very good very good i will say i watched this with my with my wife last night this final sequence where yes neo makes the emotional people to trinity that connected with her okay you know that moment of like you know the cops are gonna like take him in trinity says to chad like i wish you'd stop fucking calling me then you know like all that i would imagine any time the two of them are on screen at the same time that probably connected with forky right because it's such a clear emotional win but the uh you know sort of uh heisty element of the final action sequence where it's like okay like

morpheus and bugs are gonna go to the to the pod, and they're going to kind of switch Trinity out surreptitiously by using Bugs, you know. And Sati shows up, played by Priyanka Chopra. You know. And is like, I'm Sati. Well, it's pretty brief. But they have, like, a council of Elrond around, like, a fucking... What?

No, I said my wife's name. It's fine. You know, Forky's just like, I don't know who this is. And I'm like, oh, it's Sati. They have a council bell run around like a wishing well in the middle of the woods. Yeah, right. Could you quickly surmise that? Because I'd like to see-

Sati is- Explain just kind of though what we learn in that moment. I wasn't 100% clear on how it connects. Sati is the daughter of, she's in the Matrix Revolution. She's the daughter of two programs that made a baby for no reason. A program that has no function. Right. It's implied that she can in the matrix revolution she's the daughter of two programs that made a baby for no reason a program that has no function right a subplot it's implied that she can control the

weather um but it's a sub because once um smith can copies over her he changes the weather and she makes a sunrise for neo but it's implied like the rainbows in the sky that are the analyst mocks yeah um but you know it's it's it's a subplot in revolutions that this crew that oracle is kind of helping this strange new program that's sort of created out of love to survive right and so now that's her grown-up like so she's now she's sort of playing the role of the oracle in this movie this sort of helpful advisor you know um which i look she's an actor i've had almost no opinions until this point yeah i think she's good but I've had almost no opinions on up until this point. Yeah.

I think she's good, but has never really jumped out for how famous she is. Yes, she's a very good white tiger. Right. But outside of that, never really much of an impression on me. And I was sort of like, huh, that's an interesting casting choice. She's very in the pocket in this. She is really good at the sort of matrix, very casually rolling off, but with the right level of pomp and circumstance

i mean this is like dense fucking dialogue it is it is dense it's a lot and yeah and so right what she has a lot of her dad who was a program create you know was helped helped create these like pods that neo is in so he felt great guilt which over this resurrection that he did not want love okay well so but and this is a thing i don't think they're never i'm gonna you're gonna have an answer for but she has a physical she like is like a floating fucking manatee robot manatee no that's sort of like that's like that machine that that's a different that's naobi's right that machine. That's a different, that's Niobe's robot friend. That machine is sort of a liaison.

But it's projecting her. It does project her. So what, all I'm saying is that her dad was a physical. No, he was a program. But then how did he make the pot? The visual language of this is confusing. Yeah. In the sequence where they're unpacking.

So was he a robot that had a body? No, no, He programmed it. Don't worry about it. It's not about, like, little hammer and nails. He does not exist in a physical, tangible form in the real world. Okay. But, like, his programming then sent a sentinel out to fucking build the thing, if that makes sense. Right.

You know, he was involved in the invention of this technology. Because you see robots building the things. It does. I had the exact same confusion point of is that supposed to be what he looks like? Now this is a question I heard people throw out. I don't know if you have an answer for this, David. Why has Sati aged?

I don't know. Why is Neo only 20 years older when he's 60 years older? I don't know. Because they rebuilt them so well. No, I think it's partly just like you kind of hit your age and then that's it. You hit grown up hood and then that's that's the age you are, but I don't fucking know. I don't know.

I know. I just mean program that out because she's a program. Shouldn't she stay a little girl? No, but she doesn't want. I don't know. She can be whatever she wants. I don't know. So her father makes these pots. Sure. He felt great guilt about that. He no longer exists. He was like purged by the analyst or

whatever but you know yeah deleted that's why she you know wants to help so that means though that also in the last version of the matrix they knew that they were gonna reset it okay so it does connect in right i don't know if they knew that they just knew that they could build technology could like bring humans back to life okay they're just fucking doing shit over there you know we don't know what they're doing and the machine cities they're advancing their technology of harnessing energy from humans sure right well no i like that

it's like literally like the heart of the franchise is the thing that keeps this beating right absolutely this whole system and it's like that it's powered by nostalgia baby right let me get too close because then they'll figure it out so you gotta kind of just glance off each other and that's enough heat to keep everyone really excited. I love that.

And this is the thing I said to Ben. The reason I think this movie and emotionally works so much better than reloaded and revolutions for me is that she finally figured out a way to have her cake and eat it too and do another Awakening story. Which has always been the most potent aspect of the Matrix. Absolutely. In a universal way, right?

And that's the thing. So their Awakening, I think, that works. Yes. Forky was so checked out about the sort of like, you know, alright, let's plug Bugs in. Right. But of course, when you get to Trini making the decision,, you know, all right, let's plug bugs in. Right. Plugger, you know,

but I, I dig all that. Trinity making this decision. I'm sure she was right back in it at that moment. That stuff's great. And then of course, I think the final sequence is fairly effective because it's kind of creepy. Like the weird bot bomb thing of like,

love that when the analyst is like, okay, I'm cooked. Trinity has woken up. There's also this very misogynistic streak the analyst that also feels you know metatextual right yep uh where he's just incredibly derisive of women well there's the bug scene where she's talking about i'm gonna misquote this doesn't she have the thing where she's like i understand the feeling if you do a thing and then you lose

all control of it and everyone's gonna misinterpret it i don't remember that in the thing where she's like i understand the feeling if you do a thing and then you lose all control of it and everyone's going to misinterpret it i don't remember that in the scene where she wakes up you know there's a scene where it almost feels like it is lana saying sure right this is how i process the guilt of people using this misusing the right sure well we'll address that in the commentary when it's happening we'll get to it but the analyst right yeah he he activates his final thing which is basically just turn everyone, like turn on all the bots and have them just fucking suicide. That's what I was going to say. We're using the language of suicide again,

which is a big part of this film. But it is. And beyond that, so the suicide imagery is very potent, but yeah, and then them sort of crashing, turning into code. But I'm saying it's like, the final challenge is people killing themselves

and weaponizing their fallen bodies to attack you. And the way around that is, can we go to a higher building and jump off of it? And of course, the jump is crucial in the first movie. Again, you know, like that is the moment of awakening partly is the jump. But the other thing also, I just love the idea. You know, it's like being swarmed with at-replies or whatever. You know, like just all these people, you know, like swarming you. It's cool.

All the new design. I love all this. Like, just all these people, you know, like, swarming you. It's cool. All the new design. I love all this. And the explanation of the skins. And it just feels so contemporary and makes sense really quickly. I think it's great. Again, the action is samey in the way of, like, as you say, Neo's really just doing the one thing. Right.

Just defensive. He's just shielding. Trinity's driving a motorcycle. But, you know, they're really on the run. Now, this is maybe my favorite idea that this movie introduces to the lore

and it's a basic one what's that? the end of the first Matrix yeah when Neo has died after being told that he's not the one he knows that

in the back of his head the entire time Trinity says to his dead body you have to be the one you have to be because I'm I'm falling in love with I'm supposed to fall in love

with the one and I'm in love with you and he comes back to life and even people love them gives them a kiss there that's the thing where some people will spotlight is like that's a little fucking corny sure right very corny but i think what this movie is recontextualizing is neo was never the one because there is not a one the power was in the two of them right they're they're they're intrinsic and i mean i'm gonna monologue on this i've seen people say oh this movie rewrites it makes it so trinity is the one now and it's like no it's not the whole point is there are two sides the

power comes from the two of them being together literally the power that runs this entire fucking city it's it's the oracle's whole gambit is is the union. It's not just liberating Neo. It's the two of them together. He doesn't have power without her and vice versa. And the first movie, the first trilogy rather, prioritized showing off his awesome power. He has the, right, he has these superpowers. He has the prime power.

The visualization. So he can fly around. But that's part of why he doesn't do badass shit that much in this movie because you want in the final 20 minutes, Trinity to fucking whip around on a motorcycle. fly fly do the awesome shit that jump is done in real life right like they did a million times it's like this crazy wire is one of the pre-pandemic things they shot when i think they had less restrictions on how they could film right and uh and the the visual is so funny and like maybe again people find that a bit of a sort of deflated balloon thing

where it's like it's not like soaring it's that she's just hovering and he's like are you doing this like but i love that i love it and it's sort of looks like the sims it's a little bit it's so goofy in a good way it's looney tunes in a movie with a character named bugs who says what's up well and also it's about warn Brothers and when they attack the analyst like you know when they're like knocking his jaw off and shit like that that's kind of cartoony too you know I should mention right we should mention like not just it's not

just Neo and Trini waking up Smith shows up and attacks the analyst and I've seen a lot of people being like I don't get this I don't get why Smith's involved right like you know like just from a plot perspective and to me it's like he hates the analyst right he is negative Like, I don't get this. I don't get why Smith's involved. Yeah. Like, you know, like, just from a plot perspective. And to me, it's like, he hates the analyst, right?

He is negative. So, like, Neo is his ally in that moment. But he also just, like, um, fuck, I had this. You know, he, but, like, he needs... Metaphorically, the analyst is almost like a film critic. Smith is, like, the studio head. And Neo and Trinity are the artists. Right.

Wow. Maybe. Yeah. I don't know. Well, that's interesting. Why several metaphors? Well,

I just see, I always just took it as Smith was just, he's like a virus and virus. It's just destroyed. That's part of it. And it's like, maybe there's some revenge to it, but to me,

it just feels like his, his point is to do that. But he doesn't attack Neo. He is kind of just like, well, we're not allies anymore. But, you know, be on your merry way. I'll be seeing you. I'll be seeing you. Yeah. And he vanishes.

I don't know. We'll talk about it more in the comment. I have to think about Smith more. I just this final MPph monologue is just such good shit eating little torp bullshit it is he's great and it's it is the arrogance of like a self-important reddit post or something you know oh there's like a there's something about where he talks about the productivity yeah the output right and you understand like kind of just like again the machine world right and why this matrix why it's operational and like you know that they're he's producing enough energy

and that you know that even it's like there's like board meetings and stakeholders in the robot world like i don't know all that like stuff i really locked in on right i guess yeah he just doesn't want the analyst to regain control. He's pro-Neo in that way. He wants to destroy the Analysts. So, enemy of his enemy is a friend. And then, yeah, he's just sort of like, yeah, well, I'll see you.

I don't need to fight you anymore. We already did that. I know that's not going to work out for me. I just love how much of this movie is, we already did that, in an era where so many of these franchises are like we obviously have to hit the six big beats i mean obviously they do fight in the movie i'm not saying it completely ignores it but even you know like the same way that morpheus gives the speech and then goes blah blah blah i don't

know i fuck this up like every time they set up the thing that they're going to repeat they also deflate in a way that i love and but i me too i don't i'm not getting off on the deflation in this way of like, ha, the movie is smart. Like, I find it very funny and self-aware and like, cute and clever,

but also like, the emotion of the characters has never gone from me, so I'm never not invested. That's the thing. I don't think it sells out the integrity of the characters, and I think in fact,

it is showing a humanity to them struggling to live up to these things and like once again this movie ends with you know not haha we win you know matrix deleted he the analyst is still there yeah like why are you still here and he's like look i'm the only one who knows how this fucking place works so they're not getting rid of me yet and they're like okay well we're gonna do whatever we want And if that messes with you, you know, sorry. Thanks for bringing us back, I guess.

And they fly off in love. Lady pisses on stage singing, wake up. 10 out of 10. I'm fucking cheering. Ben looks at me and says, I don't know what's going on. And then there's a post-credit scene about cats. Yes. Yes.

Okay. So we stayed in the theater and then there was one couple in the back row. And we like stand up after the cat thing, right? I was like, I'm wondering if there's anything. It's not like that's usually a Wachowski move, right? But I'm wondering if there's anything. We stay for that scene. I'm like giggling to myself.

We get up, we turn around. There's the couple in the back row. There's that moment of kinship you sometimes have with another person in a movie theater, right? Yeah. And the guy goes, so we waited through all of that for that. And I just yelled back, worth it. And we walked out of the theater.

I guess the cat thing is cute. I love that the end is just like, we are going to be free. Like, and, and just like, let's do our thing, do our thing. Right.

Let everyone do whatever the fuck they want. Yeah. You know, he's like, wow, I've still got all these ideas. And they're like, okay,

well, let me put it better. I don't have any power over it. Let everyone do what makes them happy. Like that's there. If you're not fucking with other people in their life. That's the thing, right?

I mean, that's, and I've always thought that. Which is so much about the individualism of these films. And I, I think talking about identity and all these things for a movie by trans woman, it's like the triumph

over online is like he's like, well, I know how to push your buttons and like, yeah, well, you don't have any power over us. Right. You know, we're just going to do fly around. I just want to feel good about myself and people, you know, I was talking to be with the people I love who's very enthusiastic as we were leaving and he was

like I would love to see another one like I think that's such an interesting ending like I think there's so much you know yeah potential to and I'm not sure I get that I'm like I don't really know where it could go from here but also I feel both ways at the same time and you know if Lana Wachowski

wants to make another one which I feel like I'm getting the message that she doesn't right now. That's what it sounds like. James McTeague's the one who's been doing interviews and he's kind of like, there's no plans for more. There was no pitch. Right, and Warner Brothers has been like,

we'd love more Matrix, but I don't know if they still feel that way after it's sort of lukewarm at the box office. I don't know. But I've read quotes in the last 48 hours where they're like, this is the second biggest HBO Max thing we've had all year.

It's done better than almost all the other blockbusters we put up there. Sure. We're very much in the business of doing more Matrix if she wants to. Right. I think they are not deterred by the box office performance at all. No, it's sort of meaningless to them. It's kind of meaningless to them. The only one that really mattered was Dune,

and that was just because the overperformance was so pronounced with that one. But everything else... It was also the weird legendary of that whole thing. Legendary pictures, the entertainment company and the funding, financing deal and that, whatever. Can I just say, corny, sap, Griffin shit, and

I've been trying to figure out how to formulate this point for the last week, and I don't know if I'm going to execute it right now. Talking to Kevin T. Porter, the great Kevin T. Porter, friend of the show, past and future guest, one of the great people. And was talking about just the horrible depression I've been feeling. And a lot of what I've been struggling with recently is, and now it's a whole other thing now that there's a whole new surge and a new wave and a fear of are we repeating ourselves as the cycle gonna go back to you know is the matrix resetting right is that uh i spent like 18 months in lockdown between uh the worst of lockdown and my health problems i had where i really was not seeing people right you know i saw less than 10 people for like 18 months. I live alone and

most of my socialization, as I said, was a form of performance. Sure. Which really disconnected me from a sense of self. Yeah.

And you and I have talked about this a lot, but, you know, I'm very happy and relieved when people say like, I think you guys

kept up the quality and the show was still good during the worst of it. Because you and I have talked about that it really felt for a lot of that like we were doing an impression of ourselves a little bit yeah right you said to me not take words out of your mouth that like that was the moment where you realized that you're more of a performer than you thought you were because the show before had always been a conversation and behavioral and you were aware of the fact that you had to turn something on right to make the show feel like the way it used to right right and especially because i had no life outside of my performance

and my work as it were i a little bit i feel like thomas anderson at the beginning of this movie i was just like if i'm left alone i have no idea who the fuck i am anymore i have too much time alone with my own head questioning what feels wrong in the state of the world and whether any of this is fixable. And it's no longer that like sort of, that matrixy, everything feels wrong and I don't understand how this could ever be good again. And that I had a couple months of just kind of manic excitement post-surgery. Lockdowns were easing up. Vaccinations were good. I was like, I'm invincible. I can fucking do anything.

And then the last handful of months have been like the whiplash a little bit of everything catching up to me and how much I haven't processed. Right? And just saying to Kevin, I feel weird because I still feel like i'm doing an impression of myself most of the time okay and he said to me is there any time when you do feel like you're actually yourself again and there were two answers that came to me one was when i go to see a movie you love to see the movies as odd as it is people don't think of it as a social act in that kind of way no when i'm able to sit there full range of vision obscure my own thoughts hyper focus on someone else's life fictional i feel normal again i'm outside of my own brain right right and it's the behavior i didn't have in the worst of this where so many things feel tainted by the pandemic because i had to do them so many times during the pandemic. Okay.

Not the pandemic. So, and the second thing I said was doing the fucking podcast in person. Right. Right. It really is. And when we have to go back

and do Zoom episodes now and increasingly we'll probably do some more. We'll do some. I do feel that same anxiety and when people like have complaints about things

that happen in episodes which are valid, I'm like, yeah, I know. I agree. I hate myself, too. I can't. I'm fucking struggling to do this. But when we do an episode in person, I feel like a fucking human being again, and it doesn't feel like a performance. And I did think about the whole central thing in this movie of the charge of Trinity and Neo being in the same space.

thing in this movie of the charge of Trinity and Neo being in the same space. Both the pods being in close proximity to each other and also needing to find each other within the simulation. And it is this like Wachowski thing of love conquers all, you know, that their movies

have increasingly become about. But it also is like, and to view this as a movie that was brainstormed out of grief right grieving for lost loved ones yeah yeah uh that then is interrupted by a pandemic when everyone's separated true and i'm sure the movie gets reconceptualized in her head even if not rewritten the meaning the thoughts the feelings behind things get changed when you come back to it nine months later and you're making this movie in an uncertain world.

The idea, especially in a franchise that is all about us living these digital existences, this is what fucking matters. And I'm gesturing to sitting here in a room with the two of you guys. It's the whole fucking thing that matters to me

and it's the thing that despite the fact that this conversation is being recorded and it seems like a performance versus the conversations i have in private this this is the thing this is the one social interpersonal thing post-pandemic when i feel a complete restored sense of self we will stop recording i'll go out i'll wander the streets'll be like, who the fuck am I again? I'm trying to get it back. I'm trying to get it back. I don't know. I remain very confused

about everything. But, all that hit me hard. And it did just underline this thing for me that I had just verbalized for the first time like two days earlier

of like, this is when I feel it's Trinity and Neil shaking hands in the coffee shop and it's like, huh, this is something.

What do you think, Ben? Final thoughts. Whatever that is for whoever you are in your life. I was, I was. See that subtle sort of hint I'm throwing out there. How long have we been gone? There's a thing David does when I start going on like an emotional tangent over analyzing my own life about something where I can see him being like, good. Okay. minutes to work on taxes it's not it's more I haven't eaten food in

very long time either I forgot to get a fucking bagel today yeah so I'm really struggling with that but uh okay but I'll be quick okay something that I feel like we didn't touch upon that I want to mention and it ties into my final thoughts is the strawberry production of vegetation. It's a big thing Niobe is sort of pointing out in IO. We're fucking growing shit here. How do we know that tasty

wheat is tasty wheat? The program might have got it fucked up. What tasty wheat used to taste like 500 years ago. And bugs at one point is like fuck your fucking strawberries dude yeah like hero time right and so the first time i saw the movie i was like yeah bugs you're fucking right yeah the second time it was that was like i feel like this moment that really i think think encapsulated, um, me being able to actually really enjoy this movie. Yeah. And that it's,

this movie is going to age well, like this movie is very thinking ahead, big picture. I agree. And I really showed him the movie for the first time was he apparently said 20 years ago, you predicted the next 20 years. I'm watching this movie.

I feel like you are predicting what the next 20 years from here on out are gonna be so it's so like uh forward thinking and um and i think yeah like having your character be more interested in making food right and having comforts and then then also, you know, think about the first movie of how the character betrays them because he wants those comforts. Like it is kind of, it's this very simple kind of like,

But these things aren't binary anymore. Yeah. And also, strawberries fucking rule. Like that's what we fight for. You should be able to enjoy the best things in life. And life isn't fucking,

we're all heroes and villains like and it's like sometimes things are really simple and also sometimes things are super nuanced and and it isn't just the fucking myth this mythology the first matrix is so cambellian and it's influenced the following two decades with so many movies being so burdened with this one narrative and so on being all conquering and it's all these things that i think she looks at not just sociologically the way people misinterpret the matrix but the way other filmmakers

have ripped it off focusing on the wrong elements and being like it's not the one it's two it's not us versus them there's crossover it is it makes sense to want to eat the fucking steak it does all these things are like these lines are blurred.

I don't want these things to be reduced. I don't know. I think it's really good. It's a really special film. Yeah, I don't know. That's it. That's all I got. Great. Let's play the box office game. Did you want to say...

Do you want to do a 20 minute? No. Thumbs up? Yeah. Did you want to do a thumbs up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The box office game, number one. I forgot to mention that when they're in the real world, the programs become ball bearings, which I love. I said that.

I said ball bearings. Check the record. I shouted out the ball bearings. It's funny that the second half of the movie, Morpheus is like, yeah, don't really worry about me. I'm just going to walk around as a naked ball bearing man. Yeah, I mean, he has less to do in the second, which is probably why I'm all,

which is one reason I'm less frustrated by the lack of Fishburne, because, you know, Morpheus is not, he's the catalyst. Look, I'm not frustrated by the lack of Fishburne. I just always. I love Lauren Fishburne.

I'd love to see him. A helping thing. Number one at the box office on Christmas Eve 2021. Was Spider-Man No Way Home. Yep. Making $84 million in its second weekend. And that's just the weekend, obviously. All these days are days off in a way, so it's sort of a weird weekend.

Yeah, we both saw it. You know, it's enjoyable. I don't know. Look, it's kind of, it is in so many ways the opposite of this movie but i also think it is the version of that that at least is functional and entertaining it's very it's very watchable i think it's one of the sweatiest movies i've ever seen story-wise the the way they have to twist themselves into knots to pull off all the things they want to do yeah but look it at least is basically effective as entertainment hugely

i think it's hugely effective i get it i get it here's the thing i'm gonna say very quickly walk talking around a spoiler yeah i think it's very interesting that there is a character in that movie who is able to accomplish things that uh superheroes in the marvel cinematic universe have spent entire films learning how to do. Okay. And he becomes as good at that guy pretty much at doing them almost immediately. And no one has accused him of being a Mary Sue. That's a fair point.

Right? Yeah, well. I've not heard one person say that. I just want to throw that out. Okay. I speak obliquely, but if you've seen the film, I think you know what I'm talking about. Sure.

Well, it's one of the film's many sweaty story cutting corner things. But whatever. Number two at the box office. Number two at the box office is Sing 2, which I think people looked at as some sort of like, fuck, Matrix bombed so hard, Sing 2 beat it. A, Sing 1 was so goddamn huge. People forget it was fucking humongous. Definitely.

I mean, 270 domestic? Sure. Sing. La la la. Huge. Also, Sing 2, not on Peac. 270 domestic? Sure. Sing. La la la. Huge. Also, Sing 2, not on Peacock,

right? No. So pure theatrical release. Of course it's going to do that. Sing 2's doing great. It's a family movie. Bono's in it apparently? I don't know.

Yeah. Matrix clashes with Spider-Man in terms of audience. Sing 2's got its own lane. I have no idea how The Matrix is doing. I don't think... I don't either.

I don't think it's doing... Sing 2'm just saying, Sing 2 beating Matrix at the box office is reflective of nothing. That's not embarrassing. Number three is the most. The whole thing with box office, nothing is embarrassing right now. Who cares? Movies are doing well, badly. I'm excited the West Side Story is finally holding, but

obviously it's not making much money. It jumped week to week this week. Really? Yeah. Which is interesting. And obviously the next week is sort of interesting at the box office, but there's also a pandemic

and there's one demographic going to theaters more than others and blah, blah, blah. I agree with you on all of this and I view everything in that way. An overperformance is exciting, but an underperformance isn't really indicative of anything. My fear is always is the industry is incredibly reactionary and scared.

And I worry about them panicking and making rash decisions. But they're also, they're also always behind. You have to remember Warner Brothers already committed to the next year being theater only because everyone got mad at them about the last thing. And so we'll see how next year. But now it's 45 days. That's what it should be.

That's what it's going to just be from now on. After 45 days, something is free, quote unquote, on a streaming site. It's fucking, you know, Fourth at the Box Office is a prequel. Fourth at the Box Office is a prequel that's called The king king's man haven't seen

it neither have i uh some people like it others don't the most divisive movie of the year some people like it others do not uh a true just i don't know whatever something we got to put it out please just king's man anyone anyone they quietly sat on the shelf for like as long as new mutants but no one was talking about it because no one gave a shit number five the box office it's an inspirational true story drama it's called about a quarterback American blank

underdog story American underdog the Kurt Warner story yeah Zachary Levi is Kurt Warner LA Rams quarterback maybe St. Louis Rams back then I can't remember inspirational faith-based got an A plus cinema score. Matrix got a B minus. Yeah.

West Side Story is number six. A Journal for Jordan. Number seven. Talk about a movie that doesn't exist. Crazy. What would call a future film that time forgot? Yeah. Licorice Pizza expanding slowly to 700 something screens doing very well continue

to have very normal conversations about uh incanto ghostbusters afterlife which seems to be topping out in 120 well it's still making money and look talk about 45 days that movie came out mid-november it will be on digital for rental in three days. Can't wait to see it. Nightmare Alley. Bustin's going to make you feel really bad, man. Nightmare Alley, a film I'm confounded by. Yeah, well, dude, I'll throw up someday. That's right.

I guess we've got to wait until he makes another good movie. And then you got Gucci still chugging its way to $50 million. One of the few box office performances that I find a little bit encouraging because it's actually just a star driven drama. Doing well. Get some buzz. Young people want to see it. Yeah. And that's the box office.

This has been The Matrix. How long is our running time, Ben Hosley? Well, with ads, I think this might be... There's only two ads this week. The Matrix, how long is our running time, Ben Hosley? Well, with ads, I think this might be... There's only two ads this week. Oh, interesting. But they're each going to be half an hour long?

No, we already recorded them. They're short. So then I'll say that I'm going to guess that this is about three hours and 20 minutes. Great. So people will be happy with that, right? They'll be thrilled. Look, we're going to do another episode on The Matrix Resurrections in a few months. We're going to do 10 more hours

in the matrix so much more matrix chat I'll get very nerdy about it I promise I think we have done this film justice I do too I think this is what people want out of this episode and if it wasn't you know what I'm sorry David is sipping an empty glass of water it's fully empty there's not even

drop in there he tried to see if he tilted it back and forth maybe there was one final drop he could use to sit in his thirst. And it's making him even angrier because now he's thirsty on top of hungry and I'm still talking. He's closed the laptop. David has closed the laptop. A thing that almost never happened.

David walks down the street with an open laptop holding it out. I do not. It's one arm. I do not. The laptop is never closed. Unlike the balcony. Alright, well then we really should wrap things up. So then quickly I'll just say for any of those fans out there who may be interested

in hearing our Marvel commentary series that we started out with on Patreon back in 2019, we will start throughout this year making those available on the day they originally were published so that means we will be beginning with

Iron Man right so for those who don't know on Patreon we release new episodes on the 1st the 11th and the 21st and starting this year there will

be a new episode on the 1st 11th and 21st but also on patreon.com slash blank check if you go there we will be making public the link for whatever episode

came out on that date exactly three years earlier. And that's going to be our model going forward. So we're releasing episodes from behind the paywall after three years. Yeah, they're fun.

Marvel commentary episodes. You can watch along at home. Ghostbusters on Patreon right now, starting now. And we got a mailbag episode on January 11th. That's right. And then in February and March,

we're going to be doing episodes on Top of the Lake. I know we said we'd never do TV again, but we're in line. Yep. And then, yeah, as we said, Matrix commentary is coming up after that. Thank you all for listening. Hell yeah.

Big, big new year for Blank Check. Can't think of a better way to start it out. People were really... Doing the goodbye and then you stopped. Keep going. I want to tell you a thing that I've been thinking about recently. Gotta keep going. Goodbye.

No, I think, David, you're saying people will be happy with this episode. I think the fact that for the first time in a year, we made them wait more than seven days. For any episode, let alone an episode on a movie that is so tied into our history and that everyone is talking about. I hope people were satisfied by it, and if not,

we'll talk about it for another two and a half hours. Yeah, exactly. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe and go to patreon.com

slash blank check for all the stuff I mentioned. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media, AJ McKeon, Alex Barron for our editing, Pat Reynolds, and Joe Bowen

for our artwork, Lee Montgomery and the Great American Novel for the theme song. You can listen to their new album, Extremely Loud and Crevely online. A way to describe Matrix Resurrections. Yeah, definitely.

Wherever albums are found. Go to our Shopify page for merch. Come in soon. We've priced the previous topical shirts, Talkin' the Walk 2020 and the 5th Anniversary shirt, we priced them to move. They're on deep discount because we've got to get through that inventory, but also coming soon.

Can I say it here? Our commemorative 2021 item for Talking the Walk is not a shirt. It is, in fact, a spatula that we are naming the Spreadmaster. It is a blank check themed spatula. That's right. I naming the Spreadmaster. It is a blank check themed spatula. That's right. I'm the Spreadmaster. But also this is the Spreadmaster. It's a blank check purple

Spreadmaster spatula. Yes. Coming soon. Along with Chipcoin. That's right. And other stupid shit we're going to make because I'm a dork. That's right. Ben's doing stuff too. Merchandise Spotlight. They didn't make toys for this movie. It's insane. I fucking hate it. Why can't I buy the robots? All right, David, you should go pee. I gotta pee.

Yeah. No, it's okay. And as always, why haven't they made merchandise? I'm going to harp on this while David's peeing. Griff, well, because the movie is examining the toxic parts of this business. I understand. And the opening of the movie where Tom Anderson's in an office surrounded is examining the toxic parts of this um

I understand and the opening of the movie where Tom Anderson's in an office surrounded by the fucking tchotchkes

that I buy is supposed to be the unfulfilling part of his life but I also look at that scene and I go well yeah

you got the McFarlane toys trendy figure right there in the Morpheus why aren't you giving me new versions of McFarlane's

still in business he could just do it again and they have a new articulation system because back then they were pretty much just doing statues and nerd hummels

as people like to call them colloquially and now digital sculpting advancements four films expanded palette I want a Bugs I'd like a Sebebe

Illuminate Octocles yeah well um Old Naove if you wish really hard Abebe, Luminate, Octocles. Yeah. Well, Old Naiobe. If you wish really hard, maybe it'll come true.

Throw in Fitzmore fans. Yeah. I just don't see this happening, unfortunately. But maybe I'm wrong. I hope it does. This doesn't strike me as the movie for the kiddies

who are then going to want to get toys. I'm talking about a collector audience here, an adult collector audience. McFarlane toys, it's an attitude. Oh, okay. Well, I also now have to leave. Ben is leaving my own apartment. Own apartment.

Left here ranting about fucking baby toys.