The Flop House - Episode #425 - The Matrix: Revolutions

Episode Date: May 25, 2024

We're going into the matrix this week, in honor of Dan and Elliott's contributions to an upcoming episode of the very funny The Novelizers podcast, where comedy writers "novelize" part of a blockbuster movie from the past -- Dan wrote a "chapter" of the original The Matrix (read by our friend John Hodgman!), and he and Elliott appear on the episode playing characters who worked behind the scenes on the movie. Look for that soon, but in the meantime, enjoy this flashback discussion of The Matrix: Revolutions, our fourth-favorite Matrix movie.See us LIVE in July in Boston!Wikipedia page for The Matrix: RevolutionsRecommended in this episode:Hundreds of Beavers (2022)I Saw the TV Glow (2024)Regrouping (1976)Head to factormeals.com/flop50 and use code flop50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month.

On this episode we discuss The Matrix Revolutions. The movie that makes you say, I kinda wish I hadn't eaten that pill. Hey everyone, welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy. Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin of the Flophouse. I sort of tried to surprise you by coming in like really fast. Yeah, super hot.

Take you off guard. Mm-hmm. So this is a slightly special episode in that we are talking about the Matrix Revolutions in part because I took part in this other podcast called The Novelizers, which has the comedic premise of it gets a bunch of comedy writers to novelize quote-unquote chapters of movies like a few minutes at a time and so mine on the matrix came out recently Elliot and I were on doing some improv as characters who worked on the matrix if you want to hear us do a sort of different thing than what we normally do. We played the people whose job it was to hold up

the Matrix actors when they did their stunts and then we would be computer edited out of the final film. But our job is as the almost human pillars, very hard work. Yeah, so I'm actually not sure whether we're coming out first or they're coming out first, but look for that. And I hope we figure it out in time. But, so we decided to tie in with that. We're gonna do the, probably the least favorite

of the Matrix movies generally. I would say, look, this is normally a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. This is miles above the normal Drek we talk about but it is a movie that Disappointed a lot of people who had sort of been invested in these movies So yeah, it's kind of an interesting one to talk about Pew the thing we could rationalize that otherwise well, you might have been burned at the stake for talking about the wrong kind of movie I mean, I feel like it'd be more appropriate if we got like kicked through a wall and then shot a bunch.

I mean, look, we will give our final. That would be our final Matrix-cushion, yeah. We will give our final judgments on the movie later on, where we sort of talk about how we personally feel, but I do think it's important to differentiate like the reasons we do different. We will do sometimes. Before we jump into the plot of the third Matrix movie,

do you guys have any particular feelings toward the Matrix series as a whole? Do you have any experiences you want to talk about? I know I initially was fairly resistant to the first Matrix movie because I was like, it felt like it was, at least for me, it felt like it was like a Western take on like, taking like wushu kung fu movies and like slapping it on this like techno rave club veneer. And so I didn't really give it much of a chance. And it wasn't until like years later when I became

a little more chill that I would watch The Matrix and I'm like, oh no, this is great. This is genuinely a classic. Featuring arguably, I would say one of the best villain performances of the last what, 30, 40 years? No, I mean, he's terrific, yes. One of the things I like the most about it. I came to The Matrix, not like late late,

but I saw it in a thing that used to exist, which is a second run movie theater, and mostly they're gone now, but for like a couple of bucks, I saw The Matrix. There's still one in Pasadena. If you ever wanna see a second run movie, Dan, just take a plane to Los Angeles. Exactly, a real money saver.

And the price break you get in the second run theater, it's almost worth it. It's the movies cost like $3 sometimes. Do you know how much movies cost nowadays when you add in your popcorn and your bagel bites and your cheese fritters and your FroZones? Yeah, your FroZones and your Incredibles. And your hat. Yeah, your dermis pill. And your, and your, and your hat.

Yeah, your dermisill. I mean, and your pain for an entire family of seven kids. So that's gonna, that just adds up. So go to the San Juan theater if you can. Yeah, worth the flight. The point of what I was saying was, I didn't see it so super late, but I did see it late enough

that it had been really built up for me. And I had also already seen the Wachowski sisters' first movie, Bound. Yeah, a Dan scene found. Not a surprise. But it was a movie that. He's seen certain scenes from Bound, Dan had seen multiple times.

No, it's a movie that I love and I, you know. Bound? Basically, to me the Matrix. B the matrix, I had the weird experience culturally of being like the matrix is a real step down is sort of kind of how I felt like I did like it but I think it was built up for me a lot and I think it's like now I'm gonna get people mad I think it's great but I think it it didn't hit me as hard as it hit a lot of people in the world, I guess. That is, that would enrage people,

your subjective experience of it. I have to, so I have two Matrix experiences that I wanna bring up. So I think the same reason that you were kinda like, blah, at first on the Matrix, was the thing I really liked about it, is I liked, I remember seeing it when it first came out and really liking this mix of elements,

that it was throwing all these things together. And I hadn't seen, you know, you just hadn't seen a movie that looked quite like this before. As much as I found all the sunglasses and leather jacket and rave stuff and leather pants, like that doesn't do it for me. I find that that's kind of ridiculous. But just the way it was put together,

I thought it was really cool. I remember the first time I saw it, the volume in the theater was way too high. So me and the person I was put together, I thought it was really cool. I remember the first time I saw it, the volume in the theater was way too high. So me and the person I was with, we were shielding our ears the entire time because it was so loud, because it's all gunshots. And even when he was clicking keyboard keys, it was too loud.

And the second time, and I wanted to see it again, and my dad had kept hearing about it. So we went to see it and we went to see maybe the worst screening of the Matrix you could be in. There was a crying baby in it. It was 9 p.m., the screening that starts. There was a baby there, the audience was really loud. And I just remember watching the movie

and then afterwards spending longer than the runtime of the movie, trying to explain to my dad what had happened in the movie that we had just watched. And he was like, so Neo's superpower is that he can be in The Matrix and in the real world. And I'm like, no he can be in the Matrix and in the real world. And I'm like, no, everyone's in the Matrix and in the real world. Like they're in the real world and they're hooked up into the Matrix.

But he's more connected to the Matrix. Okay, okay, I think I understand. So when he comes out of that pod, that's because he has like, the pod has given him special powers? No, that's no, they're all in pods. Everybody's in pods. Everybody's a battery in a pod. It was very hard for him to wrap his minds around it. His minds, his three minds, his conscious, subconscious,

and pan conscious. Oh, well, it's two bears and two wolves. And that's a lot of minds. That's a lot of minds, yeah. There's two giraffes in each of us, one really big and one really little. Oh, your dad's know his heart. I know his heart.

Right, okay. That's true, my dad, one really big and one really little. Oh, your dad's Noah's Ark. I know. Right. Okay. That's true. My dad, yeah, he was Noah's Ark. Now, that makes me want to see a line of biblical Transformers where it's like a guy who turns into Noah's Ark. There's a guy who turns into like the coat of many colors.

Yeah. Animals come out of his belly when he transforms. Yeah. Sounds great. But then I remember seeing the second movie and being so incredibly disappointed by it. Just feeling like it had taken the movie that I liked and either repeated elements or added in elements that I was not interested in.

Like all the Zion stuff and all the Council of Elders stuff and like was totally uninteresting to me. So my only pushback on that is that like, so I was kind of lukewarm on the first one, but I liked the second one a lot because though it does like give you stuff that you're not going to care about, it does it with like action sequences that are nuts, like stuff you have never seen before. That's true. That highway.

The highway sequence is so good. But even that those sequences are really good, but I feel like even though that was new stuff, it didn't feel as new as what I had seen in the first matrix. It wasn't as big a quantity. The same way, you know, once. I will say that as much as I was, my problem with the matrix compared to like being like really hyped up from loving bound is like,

I think bound is a screenplay without an ounce of fat on it. Like it really cooks along, whereas The Matrix, I think, kind of gets bogged down in some places, but visually, like imaginatively, it was sort of this amazing, mind-blowing thing to watch. And then- And then Homestead has two great, the first Matrix has two incredible villain performances with Hugo Weaving and Joey Pants.

But also like Lawrence Fisher is really good in that first one. It was the beginning of Keanu Reeves kind of, I think being understood as what he can bring to a movie as a performer. That the kind of blankness of him is an asset rather than something to be pushed against, you know? And Carrie Anne Moss is fine, you know?

And it's like- Oh, she is more than fine. Wow. She's, she's really good. Maybe it was because in Matrix Revolutions, I feel like she is not being used as well as she was used in the first The Matrix. That watching this, I was like, oh, I'm not,

like I remember really liking Carrie Anne Moss after that first movie and Memento. And then in this one being like, oh, she's like, she just seems very empty and blank here, but they all do in Matrix Revolution. Well, this movie loses our two main characters for a huge chunk of it, which is kind of the, I think the biggest problem it has.

I mean, like, well, the most obvious problem it has. I mean, they're bigger, like sort of structural things that we'll get into, but. Yeah. Should we get into what happens in this movie? Should we recap? So the first two Matrix movies, in case you haven't seen them,

I mean, go see the first one. There's like- I would argue you go see the second one too. Sure, I mean, why not? It's the future. There's like a computer world, the robots have taken over. Everyone's jacked into a computer world all the time.

And Keanu Reeves learns that- Remind anybody anything? Yeah, it really makes you think. And Keanu Reeves, he gets shown that the world he thinks is real is actually an illusion created by these computers. He takes a red pill, which allowed terrible people to have a metaphor for their shitty ideas many years later. And I do always get pleasure out of when someone on Twitter would be like would make a matrix reference to Describe being like a Trump supporter and one of the Wachowskis would be like you don't understand the movie stop watching it like they go to hell

and The and they're fighting machines and stuff and there's an evil program in the matrix that I guess works for the matrix And then he gets bigger than his britches in this one. And then in the second movie, they find a bunch of other. Yeah, you gotta take one of the britches. And the second one is just kind of like, there's more computer programs and more worlds or whatever. But it feels like it doesn't, by the end of the movie, Keanu Reeves' character Neo,

he's like, meets the guy who created, the program that created the Matrix, I guess. And it doesn't really lead to very much of anything Yeah, I mean it's it's the like the sci-fi staple of like you're not the first hero to go on this cycle You're one of many this cycles happen many times. Yeah, so it's futile for you to do anything you jerk And neo has genuine superpowers by this point, not just within the computer world, but in the real physical meat space as well. I know that we haven't gotten into

the movie we're actually talking about yet, but since we're sort of talking about- The Matrix New Year's resolutions, yeah. Yeah. I'm in this weird position of- Neo's like, this year I resolved to be a better Christ figure. I'm in this weird position of- Nio's like, this year I resolved to be a better Christ figure. I'm in this weird position of looking at these Matrix sequels and thinking that I respect them for sort of not going

the obvious sequel directions that these sorts of movies get. Like the sequels I think are interested in complicating the situation and undermining the mission or the reality that you thought was true of the mission in ways that a lot of sequels are just content to like give you more along the same story. So I admire that I think that these movies are up to something, but also I feel like

their biggest problem for me is like, The Matrix feels, even though it ends in a quote unquote, open-ended way, it feels like a real self-contained story. And these movies feel like they're trying to spin out ways to make it keep going. And the ways are interesting, like they're different than the most obvious ways, but they, I don't know, they feel like they don't need to be.

No, then the first movie, what are the strengths of it? To me, the strengths are that feeling of, you don't know what's real and what's not real for a lot of it. Someone having the scales pulled from their eyes and seeing a new level of reality and these amazing kind of kung fu action sequences. And there's a lot of gun Fu stuff,

but this one, as we'll see, it spends so much time on an enormous gun battle between guys in mech armor and flying robots. And there's no reality warp aspect of it. And it's also the action in that sequence is not fun or interesting. It's just guns being fought, a guy yelling, knuckle up!

And then he yells knuckle up so many times and just firing these big guns things. And it takes forever. And I was like, okay, well this movie has really escaped the bonds that were making it interesting before. Feels like what, like asteroids or something? Like they're just shooting it at swarms of sentinels and you know, they're flying out.

And not the cool X-Men sentinels who are like, mutant, you have five seconds to stop being a mutant. I would argue that the Jeff D'Arro design of the Sentinels is pretty slick. Oh no, it's a great design. And I love that the Sentinels, the way they are with the tentacles, it mirrors the dreads that so many people in the Matrix, in the world of Zion seem to have. It is a cool design, I agree it's a cool design.

So anyway, it's just not as good as a big pink and purple man robot who can say, mutant, I'm going to shoot a tentacle out of my hand and wrap you in it so you can escape and blow me up. Oh no, a fastball special. Yeah, oh, you sliced me up, Wolverine. My one weakness. My one weakness, sharp knives.

Anyway, so let's start with the Matrix revolutions. Now that we've talked for a long time about it, let's talk about it. So we start out resuming in computer code and there's fractals and all these cities inside of a computer. And we see there's a bunch of serious guys. They're looking for some missing operatives. And Morpheus, Lawrence Fishburne, he wants to search the matrix for Neo, Keanu Reeves who's gone missing, even though Neo is not plugged in.

His body is in a coma and they can't find his soul and Morpheus believes it's somewhere in the matrix. And meanwhile, the machines, the sentient machine bad guys, they're on their way to Zion, the secret headquarters hideout of the humans, which is just a grimy industrial kind of like tunnel that everyone seems to live in. And it seems like if the future-

Oh, you're shaming their quarters, Ellie? It's a- It is one of those, like Joe Pantaleone in the first movie, he is a villain because he chooses the illusion of the matrix over the reality of living in long underpants in a tunnel. And it's like, I don't know, dude, it seems better. It seems better to live in a world

where you have the illusion of nature than to live in a grimy tunnel in the middle of nothing. Their clothes do seem to be mostly burlap, which I imagine is not the most comfortable thing to wear around. I have to assume that Newsy's is huge in the Matrix world. That's how that fashion trends really got started. So anyway...

They have access to much nicer clothes, but they want to wear the Newsy shit. Yeah. I mean, everyone in these movies, they either wear long leather dusters or they're wearing Newsy's clothes. Like, that's pretty much it. Those are the only options. The machines are on their way to Zion

and the Oracle wants to talk to Morpheus. We remember the Oracle, the elderly lady who tells the future or whatever. Meanwhile, Neo finds himself in the most crazy, tripped out, just you never imagine this type of space, an empty underground train station, tunnels and tunnels. The whole movie's fucking tunnels. And he's talking to a little girl named Sati

who says that she's going to go to the matrix, but thei who says that she's gonna go to the Matrix But the train man does not want Neo to go to the Matrix guys Looks like we've got another a new cool character coming up the train Yeah played by famous character actor Bruce Spence not mad about that Although I am mad that these scenes are in the movie at all because they're pointless They're very pointless and very yes, that is true I don't I kept expecting it to feel like it meant something, but I think it's just a way to get out of where they put

Neo at the end of the last movie. Yes, and at first it seems like a kind of a neat visual representation of a way station between programs, this kind of empty, semi-divine seeming subway station, but he's just there for a long time. He's just, if you want to see a movie where the hero is hanging around waiting for a train, then watch the beginning of Once Upon Time in the West

where three bad guys sit for like eight minutes waiting for a train and it is, you can't take your eyes off of it. I find it so incredibly captivating, but anyway. Well also, I'm probably, it's weird when I decide to get more literal minded about because often I'm just like- It is, you're very inconsistent. Whatever movie, I'll go, it's weird when I decide to get more literal minded about it, because often I'm just like. It is, you're very inconsistent.

Whatever movie, I'll go with it. But I do have more of a, I have a little. Wait a minute, a vacuum cleaner wouldn't pull her skirt and her shirt off, they're not connected. One or the other movie. And then you're like, oh, a giant gorilla that climbs off a skyscraper, yeah, I'll buy it, sure. Yum yum, give me some.

No, I find it harder to deal with these sort of like liminal spaces within the matrix where I understand why the matrix exists as it is, but why make the space between spaces to borrow a phrase from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, why make those like places you can walk through like you're in disclosure and you're like, you're getting a file by opening a filing cabinet

at the end of a long virtual like platform. Like it makes less sense to me. I think that it's very, giving them the benefit of that, I will say, I think it's very hard for the human mind to conceive of non-physical spaces where distance and physical presence don't exist. It reminds me of in like, Don't Worry Darling,

where the programs were all chasing after her to stop her from reaching this physical space. And it's like, well, they're all in a computer. So just kind of like, I don't know, move her or delete her or just, why is there a physical space? From place to place. Yeah, just move from, why do you have to run

from point A to point B when this is not a real physical space? And I think it's hard for our minds to avoid mapping our experience as physical beings onto this kind of cyber world where distance doesn't exist. Well, that's why I'm like, maybe just don't deal with that.

Because again, I understand it in the matrix where it's built for humans to interact. To be an illusion, yeah. But why build it this way for programs to do things? Just have them speak in their ones and zeros anyway. I think because humans are interested in people. Because this is a movie for people. And so the people are-

That was the slogan. Well, but it's the kind of thing that- A movie for people. Come in, have some breadsticks and watch The Matrix. When I was working on this TV show, House Broken, which was about animals, we would get notes sometimes where it's like, hmm, these animals are acting a little bit too much

like people here. And often it was like, yeah, because the show is for people. Like the show's not for animals. Like we're not trying to do an accurate rendition of how a cat thinks, you know? We're using a cat to illustrate human life and human emotions, because people watch this show.

And I think it's easy sometimes to forget that when people get too literal. Anyway. I wonder if like the people that made like Benji and Schick got those same notes. Like this dog is acting way too much like a human. This dog sounds too much like Chevy Chase right now. What's going on? And sometimes it is true that like we would do things where it's like, okay, this animal is acting way too much like a human. This dog sounds too much like Chevy Chase right now. What's going on?

Sometimes it is true that like we would do things where it's like, okay, this animal is acting with a sense of agency that a person would have, but a pet can't just leave their house that easily. But there are other times when it's like, hmm, what this animal is saying just seems like you're talking about human things using animal terms. Yeah, well, we are.

Welcome to the show. Welcome to human fiction. Anyway, so Morpheus and Trinity, they visit the Oracle. This is a different- Ellen slides him a copy of Animal Farm. Yeah. This is a different Oracle than in the previous movies or different actress,

but the idea is that the Oracle has changed form and they've written that into the script. But she says that Neo is trapped- I actually think this is a clever way to deal with the sad passing of an actor. Yes, I agree, I agree. Much better than like say the modern equivalent, which is like, nah, let's just do a CGI,

like let's do a digital version of that person. Stewart, Todd Vaziri might be listening right now. Well, Todd Vaziri, oh no, he's ending me out. He's constantly arguing for that. Yeah, no, but I agree with you. I like it more than trying to, or there was that Sopranos episode after Nancy Marchand died,

where they kind of stuck her head onto someone else's body and it's like, maybe you don't need this scene that badly. But I think this is a good way to deal with it. I mean, I like the idea that she has switched digital sins, skins rather, but like, digital sins. That sounds like a great showtime. Yeah, or like that's a great series where people, someone is like, I'm the web mistress.

Tell me, I seek the internet for the hottest stories. Why, here's one, let's jack into this tale. And then it's the same old story they always have. Larry, he wears a leisure suit. What in previous decades would have been a call-in sex line show then becomes. It's not like a Reddit page. No, sorry.

The thing I was originally saying before I misspoke was. What if there was a Reddit, this is the show I'll pitch to Cinemax, they still do these shows. It's called rslashsex and it's was a Reddit, this is the show I'll pitch to Cinemax, they still do these shows. It's called R slash Sex and it's just a Reddit page that launches into stories, you know. I'm sure R slash Sex is what. I'm sure it exists already, I don't know what it is.

I've never been there and don't want to go. You guys, have you checked out fear.com though, seriously? I'm too busy on D Snider's Strange Land. Yeah. No, I like the idea that she switched looks within the matrix. I find the reason for it to be pretty dumb, trying to cover for this idea.

The idea that her punishment was that she had to switch the way she looked or whatever. Yeah, I mean, it's just kind of like a hand wavy type explanation, which is fine. She says Neo is trapped in a world between this world and the machine world. And they've got to get to Neo before the train man does. The train man works for the Merovingian,

this rogue program. That's basically just a crime boss. It's like a French program. He's a French program. They also call him the Frenchman. He's a French program. He's made of French program. They also call him the Frenchman. He's a French program. He's made of leuns and le zeros.

You know? Oh. Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh,

eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, That's a hate crime. Yeah. So Neo, he meets Sati's family, their programs. They say the train man that works with a French man and he controls the transport between worlds. And Sati is a program without a purpose. And so she has been marked for deletion. And her father asked the Merovingian

to help him save her from being deleted. And he and Neo, they're both there because they love someone. And love is a theme that's gonna run half-assedly through the movie at different points. The character of Seraph, we all remember him, right? He used to work for the Merovingian, right? Originally supposed to be played by Jet Li, right?

Have you, there's that story where he was originally, they approached him, but part of the contract would be that they would be recording all of his moves and then digitally that Warner Brothers or whatever would digitally own them. And he's like, yeah, those are my moves. That's my like, that's my currency. Yeah, he said, I don't need to do that.

So I'm not going to do that, which I admire him enormously for that. You know, the Seraph, he Morpheus and Trinity onto a subway train and they find a homeless guy who has a gun, it's the train man. He refuses to help them and he runs off shooting back at them and shouting, I'm not quite sure why he's mad.

I'm not quite sure why they couldn't go, hey, wait, we wanna ask you for something. Like it's, anyway. I'm also not sure why the train man, like with his job, like why has he chosen to be this sort of crazed, like, I don't know. That's who he's programmed to be, I guess, that he's supposed to be like a vagrant.

Vincent Steevely and ghosts kind of. Yeah, yeah. And the train shows up at Neo Station and we've been led to this point to be like, uh-oh, if the train man finds Neo, this is gonna be bad. Cause the train man works for the Merovingian and the Merovingian has a price on Neo's head.

The train shows up at Neo Station and the train man goes, hey Neo, you're not going anywhere and punches him. And then Sati's family gets on the train and they leave. And I was like, oh, so that's the long awaited meetup between the train man and Neo, not really much of anything. It's a lot of time spent building up the train man, a character who appears, I think, in one more scene in the background at the Merovingian's Club, and then not again for the rest of the movie.

It's a real... It felt like an episode of the Matrix TV show rather than, you know, a movie sequence. Yeah, that he's the monster of the week. Yeah, exactly. He's the blank man of the week. I don't mean blank man, the hilarious character, but I mean, you know, so many of the characters are just blank and man as their name. Seraph, Morpheus, and Trinity, they kill their way into the Merovingians club. First they go through the lobby where they have to fight some anti-gravity acrobat hitmen

who decide to fight on the ceiling for no particular reason. Which isn't enough to differentiate, like again, part of the thing that I liked about the second movie is that there seemed to be a genuine effort to be like, if we're gonna put action sequences in here, it's going to be different.

It's going to be something you haven't seen before. And I feel like this is one of many action sequences where I'm like, yeah, I kind of saw that. Yeah, it feels like they're kind of going through the motions. And it's one of those where like, the bad guys are on the ceiling, the good guys are on the floor, but it doesn't really affect what they're doing that much.

Cause they're just still kind of punching and kicking and shooting each other. It's just a lack of imagination in that moment. And it's hard to do yourself when you've made The Matrix, but still, they get into a leather rave where the Merovingian is there with Mistress Monica Bellucci who has nothing to do in this other than sit there with her boobs spilling out of her top And it feels like a real waste of Monica Bellucci So yeah, he's I mean that said

Put Monica Bellucci in every movie. I will never complain Well, I'm not gonna complain about seeing Monica Bellucci certainly not but it I will never complain. Well, I'm not going to complain about seeing Monica Bellucci, certainly not. But it's just, there's just a, you know, if that's all you're going to give her to do. Yeah, that's right. Well, I guess she got a paycheck out of it. That's fine. Maybe if she was only there for like one shooting day, but she's capable of so much more than just being background wallpaper.

Now, this leather club, it's not a leather club, but like a lot of people are wearing leather. It's pretty much a leather club. I mean, leathery rave. A leather club has a different kind of It has a different meaning to it. I mean, I kind of assumed that was what was going on here too, I mean, every place that you go to in the Matrix

or in Zion or anywhere is two steps away from just becoming an S&M club. Yeah. Just for a month or to be, or being the vampire Raven Blade where blood is just pouring out of the ceiling. Yeah. These outfits are more sort of like kind of the next step along like slightly sexier

than the our heroes leather outfits spectrum rather than being like bondage gear for the most part. But I guess what I'm saying is if it's supposed to be a super cool kind of almost a little intimidating super like club, it's gotta be more intense than the club from the Super Mario Brothers movie. When that the original one where that was one where I was like, this feels genuinely dangerous

for these characters to be in. This is weird for these kids characters to be in. I was bringing it up only because you've got me thinking about the clothes. I think that, I can't remember whether we talked about this on the show before and you were saying this, but the idea that no one in the Matrix, everyone when they go on this mission agrees,

okay, we're gonna do leather dusters and sunglasses. Little square or ovular sunglasses. Yeah, no one's like I want to be a cowboy Do me anything on these things like why is everybody it would be so it's like I feel like when you're in a virtual reality Space in the movies it is so often that you are either in leather 1930s suits or Like silver jumpsuits or whatever like Tron type stuff stuff. And it would be fun, you're right, if someone's like, well, why can't I just dress like Dracula?

Like, why can't I wear a furry suit? Like that's the stuff that- If we're gonna go on this mission where I'm doing clearly impossible things, let's make it really fun. Man, guys, you guys are asking to start a new RPG so badly. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I guess the thing is like,

the Matrix movies are still tied to an idea of like looking cool, which is a very, very kind of like cyberpunk type, type cool look or 90s rave culture look. But on the internet, I'll break it to you guys. I'll just go on a limb. The internet is not cool. The internet is maybe the least cool place that anything can be.

Interesting. And the internet is mostly people finding a place to... This exists on the internet. I mean, this podcast is the one cool thing. That's the thing, this one cool podcast. But it's the place where people can go to do the uncool stuff that they don't get to do in real life. Which is not, and I don't want to cast this version

to say things like being a Jedi or a furry or anything is not cool, because there's certainly a coolness to it in that you can be yourself, you know. But that's what I would want to see. I would want to see the Matrix where like, they're all in animal costumes, or they're all dressed as like, the characters they loved as kids, or something like that.

Or that everybody kind of gets to do their own thing. I mean. Yeah, exactly. For a movie that is so much ostensibly about individuality and not being part of a system, the fact that all the heroes dress the exact same way, act the exact same way, look, talk, behave the exact same way, act the exact same way, look, talk, behave the exact same way that fights that idea.

For sure. Yeah. To minimize the number of at replies, I just wanna say, I did just remember that in the second movie, there's like this implication that stuff like vampires and werewolves come out of like these sort of rogue programs in the matrix or like people doing whatever they want to do. But it is a different thing than just being like,

yeah, you're a big, funny Dracula guy running around. I want to be a cowboy. Well, I mean, people don't have to dress up like Dracula. I don't mean Dracula literally. I just mean other stuff, you know? I mean, they're not that far from Dracula's. I mean, when we would play Vampire of the Masquerade when I was in high school, all of, other stuff. I mean they're not that far from Dracula's. I mean when we would play Vampire the Masquerade when I was in high school,

all of our character descriptions were basically Matrix characters. Just a thing I remember. That makes sense. Okay, that's fair. Okay, so anyway, but to get back to what we were talking, I thought you were gonna say like to avoid our at replies, furries are great, because I'm not, again, I'm casting no aspersions on that.

No, no, no, you said that. Why are you talking shit? So anyway, they go to the club. They meet the Merovingian. Monica Bellucci is there, but she doesn't get to say anything. And he says, I'll trade you Neo for the eyes of the Oracle. And this seems like it's going to set up a sort of like, uh-oh, what are they going to do?

A little fetch quest or something? Yeah. But instead, Trinity just pulls out a gun and suddenly everyone has guns and she goes, give me Neo or everyone in this this room is gonna die from being shot by everybody else and the next scene is Trinity just getting out of a subway train at that train station and getting neo and it's like so that was what this was all Leading up to like it felt like such a it felt like such an anti-climax. Yeah, then this entire opening sequence It could have just been trimmed. They could have had Neo show up and be like,

wow, that was a crazy adventure we went on. Well, we don't really need to talk about it. Yeah, like you don't need all of this way to get him out of like the matrix coma he's in at the end of the second one. Like there's a quicker way. I mean, I do admire that like, they, in a certain way, even though all this is unnecessary, they don't extend it too much.

On the other hand. I mean, if they extended it further, it would be the movie, in which case I would be like, but that'd be cool. If they extended it more, and then cut a lot of that middle stuff where it's just tentacle things shooting at each other, then maybe that would be a better movie.

Maybe, it feels very weird. It feels like they feel like they need to service the existence of the Merovingian, a character who doesn't really play any real role from that point on. Like it's, I guess maybe that's my issue with this movie. It feels like The Matrix is super cool. The Matrix Reloaded, which I didn't love,

but it feels like it does open up the world quite a bit. And The Matrix Revolution is like, okay, we've got this whole world to play in. Uh, do you guys have any ideas what we could do in this world? We set up all these cool characters. Anyway, Trinity gets Neo. Before Neo leaves the Matrix, he visits the Oracle,

and they talk about Neo's power, and they've got to see this man-machine war end. They just need to see it end. It's the same kind of conversation they usually have where it's like, kind of cryptic, kind of information, kind of not. And she makes it clear that Agent Smith is Neo's opposite and soon Agent Smith will have the power

to destroy all the worlds. And meanwhile, Bane, one of the guys on the spaceship, he wakes up from his coma in Zion World. I didn't remember this guy's still- Did Batman put him in the coma? Yeah, yeah, he was the guy who, yeah. I picked up from context clues that he set off an EMP pulse in the last movie, but I didn't remember any of that

because I haven't seen that movie in a while. He was like, a fire rises. Well, Neo, you think perhaps you don't need to be in the Matrix, but maybe you do have to be in the Matrix. Bane, I don't understand. What's your philosophy in this world? Well, even in the Batman movie, it wasn't that really airtight an ideology. I'm in here cosplaying as a vampire.

Bleh, creatures of the night. It's always night here since there's big clouds over the sun. Remember, they talked about that in the first movie. Bleh. So one fun thing about this Bane guy. So are you Bane or are you Dracula? Well, it's kind of hard to say which character I am. Oh, wow.

Oh, God. It's, you know, I'm working, it's here in The Matrix. We can be any character we want. So I'm just jumping from character to character. Especially if their voices are a little similar. Man, he's like the fence now. It doesn't have to be similar. Yeah, see, yeah, here we are a little similar. Man, he's like the fence now. It doesn't have to be similar. Nya, say nya.

Here we are on the Matrix, nya. No getting him to bed tonight. So the thing about this name guy. Anyway, Goo Goo Gaga, Reborn as a Star Child, and we're back, okay. So Bane is a human who somehow got agent Smith inside his head. Yes. So, and I mean, we all have Hugo weaving inside our heads.

That guy, once he gets under your skin, he can't, he doesn't let go. Yeah. I do think it's fun watching this actor do a Hugo weaving impression. Yeah. Even to the point where he's doing it and Neo's like, who are you?

Well, that's the part that makes me crazy. who are you? And I'm like, what? He called you Mr. Anderson, dog. He's doing the thing. Only one person calls you Mr. Anderson. It's like, if a stranger just came up to me and was like, read to me, daddy, I'd be like, hmm, my child's mind might be in this other person's body,

because no one else calls me daddy or asks me to read to them. Well. Not for free, anyway. Yeah, not for free. Yeah, no, except to's my only fans where I read story books to people. I Think there's I think there's money in it. It's just it's it's work. You gotta dedicate yourself. Yeah. Yeah only fans jr It's called having trouble putting the kids to bed tired after a long day Just put them in front of only fans jr. Pay me a little a few extra tips and I'll read them their favorite storybook

That I do it in a sexy way. That's the only way to do things on OnlyFans. You're mixing up the missions. Well, yes, I think that any way that Elliot reads a book can be sexy. I think you've made it weird. The night that Max made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him wild thing and sent him to bed without any supper at all. Read it more like Kent Cottrell in Sex and the City. So kind of pretty sassy. Yeah.

Let the wild rumpus start. Yeah. It's where the wild things are that I'm reading. I skipped some words earlier. Yeah, that's fine. You ready? Dan looked aside like he was researching something. No, I thought you were moving along. Trying to consider how much more of where the wild things are to say in a sexy manner. With the magic trick of staring into all their eyes without blinking once. And they called him the wildest thing of all. Anyway, so.

So yeah, so we're talking. They're dealing with more. They're dealing with more like fallout from the end of the second movie. And for a movie that, I mean, this movie's only like just over two hours long. For some reason in my head, I built it up and I'm like, this four hour epic of Matrix scene is.

But I feel like they spend so much time just cleaning up everything, kind of from the end of the last movie, kind of without that much trouble. Yes, pretty easily. And then they spend, I mean, there's not a lot that happens in this movie. There's basically like four sequences, you could say.

Like there's not a lot going on, which is why it's funny that it's was so long, but honestly my I mean I guess this is a final judgment see thing to say but who cares that was like my main takeaway from this movie is it Felt like they thought they needed to make a trilogy But really they used most of it up in two movies and then they're like, oh shit Let's stretch this recipe, you know And like it it does feel like they had a lot of extra a lot of xanthan gum to make things, you know, and like it. It does feel like they added a lot of extra, a lot of xanthan gum to make things, you know, so things would like kind of stretch out more.

Yeah, maybe make two and a half movies rather than a full three. Yeah, can you do that? Can you just drop like. Half movies are very popular, Dan. You can just release that in theaters. Just drop like 30 minute movie. I mean, theaters would love it. They just get so many seatings.

Matrix epilogue, it's 40 minutes long. You put it in the theaters. It's in 4D, which means that like robot tentacles slap you in the face while you're watching it. Brilliant new idea. Yeah, so Sarah, he picks up Satie from the Oracle's apartment, but uh-oh, Agent Smith shows up with a bunch of other Agent Smiths,

and he turns the Oracle into another Agent Smith, who starts laughing. Agent Smith has the ability to just turn metrics people into Agent Smiths. And we're on the speak- Turn the world on with his smile. He does, the Yugo weaving smile, hell yeah buddy. So we're on this ship called the Hammer

and they're interrogating Bane, but then they locate another ship and they go to investigate it. Hey, it's Nyobi, Jada Pinkett Smith and her crew from the what, the Nebuchadnezzar? That was their ship, right? No, Nebuchadnezzar was- Oh no, it's the Logos? Yeah, Nebuchadnezzar, that was their ship, right? No, Nebuchadnezzar was- Oh no, it's the Logos?

Yeah, Nebuchadnezzar was Morpheus' ship that I think got destroyed. Maybe because I didn't care that much. I could not remember which ship was which. I know there's the Logos and the Hammer, and the Hammer is the one that the other guys are on, and Logos is Naomi's, I think. Yeah, this really points up the difficulty

of doing just this movie alone because it is so tied back to number two. Sorry. You just started thinking about poop. I did. It is in a certain way tied to number two in some fans' minds as well.

But yeah, it's hard to like, I'm not as familiar with what happened in the previous installment, so. So anyway, so I forgot these characters completely from the second movie. Again, it's been 20 years since I saw the second movie. So, but it's like, okay, these are more Zion freedom fighters. Everyone's either a robot, a Mr. Smith, or a Zion freedom fighter.

That's pretty much everybody. And the council in Zion with, you know, Professor Cornell West, they hear the news that in 12 hours, the Sentinels, the robots that work for the Matrix that are kind of like floating balls with a bunch of tentacles, they're like robot octopuses, right? They're gonna fly. Yeah, the Sentinels, yeah.

Yeah, they're gonna get to the city. And I do love that when they're like communicating with each other, one of their tentacles turns into a little radar dish. Yes, yeah. And they're gonna reach the city in 12 hours. Luckily, the army has a plan to fight back under, General Mifune has a plan to fight back,

which is just to shoot them. So anyway, when they show up, shoot them a bunch. The other characters, so the characters in, some of the other characters that I guess were also in the previous movie, they're disagreeing of whether to evacuate the city or to fight there's a character named Z whose boyfriend is on the Logos crew or the hammer crew I forget which and

They that's a Harold Perineau Yes and she's like if I have to I have to fight because otherwise I might not get to see him and there's this tea I Guess a guy they keep saying is a teenager, but he looks like he's like 28 years old and he wants to recruit. And they're like, you're too young to recruit. And I'm like, seriously, he looks like he should be mustered out at this point. Like, but and he's.

Yeah, check out Natalie Portman in that movie, the May December movie over here. He's like, oh, he looks old enough to party. I mean, he just doesn't look like a teenager. And they just call he doesn't have a name, this character. They just call him like the kid. Is that like Squirrel or Tadpole or something? He doesn't have like a cool little Matrix call sign that's also demeaning it?

But he manages to volunteer to fight. And the crew, he's gonna be in the support role of delivering ammunition. So the crew of the, they re-energized Naomi's ship and they're like, we gotta stop these machines at Zion. And Neo goes, I need a ship. I'm gonna go to the machine city where the Matrix lives because we're stealing from Empire Strikes Back right now

and I'm just gonna take a ship and leave the rebellion and go on my own mission. And they're like, no ship has ever been to the machine city before. And Naomi's like, you can take my ship. That's okay, I believe in you, I've faith in you. This is one of these scenes where like, I feel like there was, like Roger Ebert

would talk a lot about one of his least favorite types of characters was like the character that's in the movie just to be wrong about something. Yeah, and there's a lot of that in this. One captain who's just like arguing so much against Neil taking the ship and like, wow, man, you're really like turning around on this matrix messiah of yours.

Well, yeah, but also that- He wants to take one ship and do a thing. He's like, this is never gonna work. And then as we see in the rest of the movie, if they had another ship with them, wouldn't it have mattered? It might have made things harder for them later on. Certainly, like, yeah.

It's like, I've been, Charlene and I have been watching that Good Wife spinoff, El's Beth, and literally every single episode, El's Beth is like, well, I don't think this was a cut and dry suicide, and everybody else is like, what? Get out of here, idiot. Shut up, El's Beth. You're only right all the time.

If she does it six in a row, after a while, you have to start believing in this. I mean, unless they throw out like... At the very least, you have to give credence to the things that she's saying. Be like, well, I'm not sure you're right, but you've been right before. Unless there's like deleted Elzbeth episodes

that aren't on the Paramount Plus app where they're like, oh no, she fucked up again. I mean... Seven people died because Elzbeth had a theory. I mean, I guess it's believable from a detective laziness perspective, but it does get frustrating narratively. That's the second least believable thing about the show. The most unbelievable thing is that she is in New York

and her character's last name is Tassione, and everybody acts like that is the craziest name they've ever heard. Really? You went to fucking school the Vinnie Tassione, and everybody acts like that is the craziest name they've ever heard. But like, you went to fucking school the Vinny Tassione. I don't think it's that, but they make a joke about, I have a lot of support, they make a joke about Elizabeth a lot, and I'm like, I guess, I mean, if you've only ever heard-

That is an out of the ordinary name. Elizabeth, you're like, excuse me? But it is out of the ordinary, but it's not like, it's a name, it's a name that many people have had over the years, and so I don't know. Name another. I don't know, Ellsbeth Jones. You're right, you proved me wrong.

The famous Ellsbeth Jones. Name one more, Dan, can you name a third one? Ellsbeth Smith, I can do this all day. Oh, he did it again, he did it. Dan is unstoppable. Oh man, he can't be stopped. He's just, we're living Ellsbeth right now, where you're Ellsbeth, and I'm like, there's no way other people have that name, Elizabeth Smith. I can do this all day. Oh, he did it again. He did it. Dan is unstoppable. Oh man, he can't be stopped. We're living Elizabeth right now where you're Elizabeth

and I'm like, there's no way other people have that name and you're just disproving me left and right. I'm not saying it's not unusual. I'm saying it's not so unusual that like, the show can make a running gag out of it. They should be thinking. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense, Dan.

Just one more thing. Name another Elizabeth. Elizabeth Columbo. He did it, he did it, wow. Yeah, that was Mrs. Columbo's first name, Elzbeth. So back to the movie, Bane, he's still got an agent Smith in his head, he kills the medic on board the ship. Neo and Trinity, they have a love moment

where they affirm their trust in each other. She's gonna go with him on his mission, and they say goodbye to the rest of the crew. Uh-oh, as soon as they take off, Bane is on their ship. Oh no. He takes Trinity prisoner after a little bit of a fight. He gets the drop on Neo and he's like, human meat is weak.

We need to, I'm a computer program inside a human brain. And it takes Neo so long to realize that it's Agent Smith inside that head, you know? Yeah. I mean, obviously I feel like this is one of the, like, elements of the allegory of The Matrix that I, I mean, I feel like it's a little on the nose, but I also like it a lot that, like,

Agent Smith is this computer program who is so, like, he so detests the bod, like, and, like, the bodies that he's stuck with. Like, the idea that he's in this human body and he hates the smells and it doesn't, it doesn't behave the way he wants it. Oh, I like, I like he's stuck with. Like the idea that he's in this human body and he hates the smells and it doesn't, it doesn't behave the way he wants it. I like that aspect of it. I think that's all great.

Yeah. I think that's great. It reminds me, I just finished reading this book of short stories by Terry Bisson called Bears Discover Fire. And there's a story in it called, They're Made of Meat, I think, where these two aliens are talking about humans

and they're like, they can't be made of meat. Yeah, they are. It's all meat. Like we probed all the way through. It's meat all the way through. Well, so how do they talk? You know that sound when meat just kind of flaps against it? You know, that's them.

That's how they do it. It's just flapping meat. And it's a really fun short story. But I like that aspect of it, that he's like, I hate the physical sensation of being in a body, you know. All teenagers can relate to that, right? And so they fight and talk about allegory, Bane during the fight blinds Neo.

Uh-oh, will this maybe allow him a greater sight? Maybe greater wisdom, a la Odin, perhaps. Not a fan, not a fan of this. Because Neo can still see him, even though he is blind to the physical world, he can still see the soul inside machines or something, and Neo kills Bane. Anyway, Zion's prepping for the machine assault, Captain Maffoony gives a pump-up speech to an army of mech soldiers. I need your guys' opinions of these mech soldiers called APUs.

They're like gun versions of the power loader from aliens. That's exactly what they... I think they look ridiculous. What do you guys think? Well, yeah, they're... I mean... They're so jiggly. when they're shooting things. They're very jiggly around and wiggling around and also like fan men, you know, I feel like the the like robot suits the mech suits and like the avatar movies is such a clear like similar thing but uh

Improved upon also the one one has a giant robot-sized knife, which I think is cool. I, it's funny that you say that about the movement, Elliot. Like, I mean, to me, the look is pretty derivative, as you say, of like the loader in Aliens, but I liked the movement. I liked, I thought the movement was fun. Oh, okay.

It looks very silly to me. It just looks very like wiggly. And maybe that's part of like, this is kind of like thrown together stuff. And maybe they, I'm sure they did real tests on the physics of recoil and they would have it on, like they would have it on shock absorbing things rather than hard struts to absorb that recoil.

But it looks, it just, the way that, it looks like a bunch of toddlers and suspenders because of the, partly because of the way the ammo belts hang, just kind of waving guns in the air wildly, you know. And one of the design elements, like as you said, that it's thrown together, but you would think that they would be a little more unique or personalized.

Certainly they might place some kind of shielding over the pilot canopy, since the Sentinel's only attack is just like whipping you with their dreadlocks. It does seem a little poor thinking that there is absolutely no protection or shielding at all to the front of the, with the part of you that's facing the bad guy. But also, yeah, they, that they're,

I mean, it's the thing that they do so well in Aliens where like all their stuff is personalized. And it's a smaller group of people in that, but like you feel like, oh, this is their equipment that they use, and here it just feels like a repeated CGI figure that they've kind of cut pasted into rows. I would have been way more into fewer of these suits, but they're slightly more personalized and cool.

There's a lot of them, too. I was like, oh, this looks like a real army. I'm not that scared for them. I do think, though, that if this had been used judiciously, a lot of this stuff with- Or even Jewishly. I would've been okay with that. Yeah.

Sure. It's called Zion, you know, I don't know, anyway. The mech suits versus like tentacle, flying tentacle robots, like, there are cool images in that within the sequence. It just gets so drowned out because it goes on for so long. And like, there's not a lot of different stuff that happens. It's just more tentacle monsters swarming and being shot.

Yeah, it goes on for, it feels like it goes on for 17 hours. It's probably, but it really is probably like cutting between this and the kind of the hammer spaceship trying to outrun the Sentinels that are chasing it. This probably goes on for at least 35 minutes. Well, it would have been fun if like initially the human, the like mech suits actually were like beating the Sentinels

and then the Sentinels had to like bring in some kind of like super Sentinel or like a Nimrod or something. Something that escalates it. Yeah, but instead they have these big drilling machines and they shoot those and blow them up and then Z, the woman who stayed behind her. I'm really disappointed that Elliot didn't take my bait

to talk about Nimrod and the Super Sentinels. I talked about Sentinels. Okay, if you want to. All right, so let's talk about if these were the X-Men Sentinels that were coming through. One, they would be using their hands to pull open the hole that the drilling machine put through. Already cool, yeah.

If it's Nimrod, you know that they have the power to shape shift into a blue collar, what was it, a steel worker or something like that, or a guy who works on the docks and live with the family for some reason. Then you know Rachel Summers is gonna get in there, but which Rachel Summers is it? Is it the hero or is it the hound,

who's working for Ahab? There's just so much stuff. Then are they gonna have to open up a siege perilous in Zion? They'll go through the Siege Perilous, Colossus becomes a popular downtown New York painter. The comic book for a while, it kind of forgets it's a superhero book.

Yeah, sure. I just zone out for like a moment. For more see any episode of Cerebro. Anyway, X-Men 97 on Disney Plus now. Everybody loves X-Men 97 we should be talking about. Okay, we should be talking about it? We have to take our stand on it? I just started watching it.

It's a fun show. The animation looks great in it for the most part. But I just started watching it and I'm in the second episode and they're like, Magneto you're being arrested for your trial. And I'm like, oh, so maybe this is the story of the next couple episodes is the lead up to his trial.

And then he's gonna have the trial. We're gonna build up to it. Next scene, he's on trial. I'm like, wow, so maybe this is the story of the next couple episodes is the lead up to his trial. And then he's gonna have the trial. We're gonna build up to it. Next scene. He's on trial. I'm like, wow, they're moving fast on this show. This is done in one episode. Wow. Anyway, so, there's a big drilling machine. It opens up a hole. Sentinels pour through. Blast blast blast. The commander Maffoony shouts, knuckle up! A lot. And I don't know what knuckle up means. What does that mean, guys?? Like stick your fingers into the sentinels up to the knuckles? Like what does it mean?

Yeah. I think it's that you're supposed to make fists and then raise your hands up in the sky. Oh, I see. Okay. I get it. And Z and this friend of hers who was named Chara, who maybe she's in the previous ones also,

they managed to blast the big digging machine with a bazooka or something, but then there's another digging machine, it just goes on forever. Meanwhile, the hammer is trying to escape a swarm of Sentinels, there's lots of spinning and shooting and Jada Pickett Smith saying stuff like, "'80 degrees to starboard, 40% on shields, come on, come on!'

And then, and the commander whose job is to say no and not believe anybody being like, "'Oh, she's better at driving than I thought she'd be,' like that kind of stuff, because she's piloting the ship. And the sentinels tear off the radio antenna. This seems to be a problem, but it doesn't really seem to play into anything. It doesn't matter.

Anyway, the thing is the hammer, when it gets there, it can set off an EMP pulse that will stop the bots, but it will also shut down the dock's defenses. And the humans are having trouble opening the gate to get through, and the humans have to get the gate open for the ship and thankfully that teen recruit

in his mid twenties is able to get into one of the mechs and shoot the chain holding the gate shut, I guess, so that it opens and Z helps defend the recruit. She's suddenly character, no, Naomi crashes the hammer through the gate. They set off the EMP and they shut down all the machines and Zion's doc is now machine-less. And it's like, oh, they did it.

They saved the day. Link, the guy from the ship whose girlfriend is Z, they're reunited. And I might not say, can't help, but assume they were set up in the last movie. Because Z is just kind of dropped into the movie suddenly with no introduction or buildup. Anyway, the head of defense He's mad that EMP it fried all their defenses They just offered up the city on a silver platter and there's a new swarm of robots. I'm the head of defense

You got rid of my defenses. Yeah, I'm out of a job. What am I ahead of now? Nothing I'm just ahead and you don't want to mess with the head or you'll be dead. Oh man, thank you. They blow up part of Zion to stop the robots. Anyway, let's get to Neo and Trinity, the stars of the movie who we've barely seen in this film on their way to Machine City. So he's guiding her as she pilots the ship. Actually, that's all we see there.

In Zion, back in Zion now, the Sentinels are building something. I don't know what it is. The commander tells the council that they all have to go to the temple and they're gonna make their final stand against the machines there. Neo and Trinity, they're getting attacked

by the Machine City's defenses, but Neo blows them up with his mind. Uh-oh, but then more come. He's kind of knocking down Sentinels in his mind, but there's so many of them. Guys, if the machines are so like practical and efficient, why do they have so many like giant flying robots? Because like there's not that many humans around.

Like, why do they need so many defenses around machines? I mean, why does the US need so much defense, man? Good point, Dan. Good point. Let's Chapo trap us this a little bit. The amount of money we spend on defense defused properly for a universal basic income. I mean, my taxes, I don't want that. There's no reason to do it. No, that's true. I agree with you. I mean, I'm saying it as if I'm a crazy hippie, but I also agree with you.

But you do believe that. I mean, yes, we all believe that. There's no reason for the United States to build tanks nobody wants and planes nobody wants. Although, a lot of those armaments are now being used by Ukraine, so maybe that buildup wasn't such a bad thing, Dan. I guess you never know the end of the story. I guess you got me, man. I did. I got you. Anyway, no, I agree. But anyway, this is the maybe this is the heart of what I think is the emptiness

at the center of the Matrix, which is the Matrix is a computer program that wants to destroy humans or harness them as a source of energy. Right. Why? Yep. Like, why does the matrix want, what is the matrix going to do after it does that? Why does it exist and what's its goal? Like if it's, if it's truly a conscious thing, then it has goals and some kind of need, even if that need is just what's programmed to do. And what is it here? Because I don't, other than subjugate humanity

and make the world just be bad, I don't understand. I don't know. I mean, the matrix is nothing. But if it destroys it, well, you know, the machine mind that controls the matrix. Okay. But let's say these computer programs succeed in destroying humanity.

The machines win, the machine, human war. Then what? What do they do? Oh, because they're out of their batteries that wouldn't work anyways, what you're saying. But no, no, what I'm saying is why bother? Like, why are they fighting the humans in the first place? Like, why is this happening, basically?

That doesn't bother me because it's basically that these are sentient machines, machines became sentient, and then they have the same desire just to survive that other creatures do. And it's, you know, like they're purely, but you saw they have a goal beyond that, I think. Well, humans have a desire to survive,

and it means that sometimes we fight wars over resources, but it doesn't mean that every human is constantly on a war footing. But also we have desires beyond pure survival. So if the machine, what is the machine's desire beyond staying alive, staying alive, ah, ah, ah, staying alive? Like what is it? I'm saying I don't think it has to have one.

I mean like. So once it defeats the humans, what does it do? Just sit around forever? I think it's, I guess I'm saying this because I think it's making these sentinels. Yes, spark up a fucking fatty. I think it's making these sentinels because it's got a. I mean think about all the free time they would have then.

They could finally read those books and stuff. Read some books. Dan, they're computers. It then. They could finally read those books and stuff. Read some books. Damn, they're computers. It takes them a moment to read the books. That's true. I guess they're making, my point is, I think they're making the sentinels

because they just got to do something. They need something to do, you know? There's otherwise, it's just a big machine face that is like, we need nothing. Okay, what do you need nothing for? It was kind of called the giant, when the giant Like robot ships came flying out to stop neo and they start shooting at him. I'm like, oh shit

They're shooting guns and stuff at him. No, they're just shooting more sentinels It's all sentinels, but maybe and this is there's a if a sentient being desires more than than just mere survival Right like but survive like let's go to fucking Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. They're stuck on the safety and security stuff. They're trying to control it so they can do it. We don't see what the Roads do in their spare time. Well, I want to see a little bit of that. Even the humans at least.

I mean, that would be great. Raves every now and then. Honestly, yeah. To no rave what they want. And I think it's part of the issue that if the machines are just a program that has overstepped its bounds, then I buy it. But once the machines have a personality,

which they kind of do by the end of this movie, then you're like, it's the same way that Ultron, the Avengers villain, makes sense to me when he is a robot whose programming is all screwed up so he wants to destroy humans. What the Ultron in the Avengers movie, who's a wisecracker. I'm like, well, once the robot can say sarcastic quips, I have to assume there's more going on in it than just destroy all humans.

Yeah. But it's in that case, he's just parroting what his father taught him. I will say that's fair. Yeah. I will say Elliot that I do think that the fact that they give the machines these personalities opens the door to the movie ending the way it does, which is like each side recognizing the other's right to exist,

like trying to figure out some way of both living in harmony, because they have at that point made the robots, let's call them, even though that's not what they are, more human. Yeah, I think that's true too. But so anyway, the point is, the only way to escape them is to go up above the electro storm clouds

that were put in place in the past, and that shorts out all the sentinels, and they get a brief glimpse of that beautiful blue sky that's right above the clouds that no human has seen in untold generations. Planet Earth, baby. And Trinity's like, oh, it's so beautiful. And then their ship crashes back down

because it's out of power and Trinity suffers multiple impalings and tells Neo how much she loves him before she dies. And I think it is hard for me to see these characters as being in love. I feel like that is the thing the movie fails to communicate that they have emotions for each other because they're so focused on their goals

and they're so tough. Like they're so tough, unemotional the whole time that I'm like, if they aren't, I guess it happens a lot with characters in movies where it's like, other than kissing and having sex, I guess, how do they express this love to each other or watching each other's backs in a fight? But like the same way that it's hard for me to imagine famous couples just sitting watching TV and hanging out,

like a regular couple does, like what do these characters do in their spare time to show they love each other? I get it, like I had a similar feeling where I'm like, yeah, I don't know that these two have the sort of love for the ages that the movie needs us to believe that they have. I'm not feeling that from them. But at the same time, I also feel like,

well, I look around at my friends who are in love, I'm not like, wow, the chemistry is off the charts. Like, I'm just like, oh, they seem to like each other. You know, so. But these characters don't even seem to like each other. I guess they're so constantly cool, constantly focused on the mission tough, that they don't even seem to like being around each other very much. They don't get no pleasure from each other, it seems.

So the Matrix movies, it is a world, and maybe it's because it's a world of nonstop warfare, it is a world with a total lack of pleasure aside from raves. And that's the only way that anyone seems to get any joy out of the world. It's from raves. And that's the only way that anyone seems to get any joy out of the world. It's just raves. I mean, it's a Maslow's hierarchy of pleasures. Raves is right at the top. And what?

Raves and battling in the matrix. Yep, and that's it. Yeah. So the sentinels, they pause. Oh, so we haven't got there yet, sorry. She dies and the machines are getting deeper into Zion as Neo walks into the machine city, which to him is made out of lines of light, these kind of

lay lines of light, a latticework of light, and a giant spiky robot eyeball that looks like a sun to him. It rises up and allows him to speak his piece, and all these sentinels come together to make a big robot face that can, or a big, big face that can talk to him. It's like an old baby face. It's really funny. And he says...

It's like a flying spiky baby. Yeah, and he says it's like the sun from face. It's really funny. It's like a flying spiky baby. Yeah. And he said, it's like the son from the Teletubbies, but like cyber, like the cyberpunk version of the son from the Teletubbies. He says, agent Smith is beyond the machine's control, but Neo can stop him in exchange for peace between the humans and machines. And this is one of the things where I'm like, okay, so agent Smith, I guess, is the big bad guy.

We've barely seen him in this movie. We don't really know what he's doing other than- I don't know, every time we see him, there's like a million of them, so that's not barely. That's true. I guess considering every time we see him, there's a thousand of him. It's as if he's in a lot more scenes than he is.

But it's one of those things where it feels like, it almost felt like the movie had evolved beyond Agent Smith because he seems so little by this point and it seems like we're getting beyond him. And when Neo's like, Agent Smith is gonna take over the Matrix and then he'll take over all reality and destroy it. And I'm like, well, Agent Smith hasn't really given me much

meaning to see this as a threat necessarily. Yeah, I mean, I get what it's going for. Because we've spent so much time shooting Sentinel bots with mechs, you know. Sure, but I get what it's going for. Like if he can endlessly duplicate himself, he is essentially, he's the computer virus in the Matrix now.

And in a way, it's kind of a smart screenwriting move, I feel like in the sense that like the Matrix, the world that has been created, the Matrix, the robots, it's so powerful that to shift it to like, okay, well there's an external threat. This is how we can come together because you need me. Like that makes sense.

But also feels like a device because we, you're right, we haven't spent so much time with Agent Smith. Well, it feels like, speaking of machines and gods, it feels like a Deus Ex Machina. That like, rather than defeating the machines and rather than taking the machines at their own level, there's something that there's an outside threat. Exactly, they can make peace about,

but it's very weird because it's like, it feels like this is a story about Neo and Agent Smith that for some reason has taken a long detour into the defense of Zion as if it's like the movie is, there's two different movies going on. Maybe that's my major problem with the movie. There's two different stories going on. There that's my major problem with the movie. There's two different stories going on. There's Neo's ascendance as a techno messiah

and his fight with the virus agent Smith. And there is the defense of Zion against waves of Sentinel robots and they don't really mesh together well. And the one that I'm more interested in is the Neo story. And we get so much less of that in this movie. I feel like if they had made, if they had spent less time on the defense of Zion

and instead tried to show that like people in Zion are like, or whatever, going up in ships to like log into the matrix to like rescue people, but it's getting harder and weirder because there's so many agent Smiths around. Like that was, I mean, that was ostensibly one of their main like goals, right? Was to like wake as many people up in the matrix Yeah, and I feel like when they're just trying to defend themselves from sentinels. It's less interesting

It's much less that were or tie those stories together sign filled it up have the two stories converge We're like make we've seen agent Smith can take over a person's mind Maybe they've woken someone else and they have Agent Smith in them and that's making it harder to defend Zion because you've got an Agent Smith running around in the meat world. Kind of what they did with the Bane guy. Kind of what they did with Bane,

but it never intersects with that other Zion storyline. And it feels like you've got parallel tracks going on. And it's very frustrating to me as a viewer who is not really interested in watching mechs shoot tendril robots forever. A little bit of that goes a long way. Anyway, as I get older, we've talked about this before on the podcast,

as I get older, certainly I'm less entertained by scenes of shooting violence. And certainly the idea of bullet casings just piling up around the feet of mech robots, it's like, yeah, I only really need to see maybe like four minutes of that as opposed to 40 minutes of it, you know. Anyway, so the robots agree. The Sentinels pause in their assault on Zion and Morpheus and Niobe are like Neo did it. He is a god king.

And the machines tendrils plug Neo into the Matrix, which has become overrun with an endless army of Agent Smiths that just stand around in the rain. That's all they do. It's very rainy and they just stand around in it. That's it. There's not a lot to do in the matrix. It seems like at least not right then.

No, I mean, it's all Smiths. There's nothing to do yet. Everyone else has, yeah, gone away. I mean, they say hell is other people, but if you're Agent Smith, hell is just hanging around with millions of yourself to stand in there. Oh, that should be the new phrase. That should be the new saying that everybody says. Yeah, it should be like, and not one of us thought to bring an umbrella.

And then he raises an eyebrow at the camera. Mr. Anderson, do you have an umbrella? And so Neo shows up, he confronts the one main Agent Smith. The Agent Smith's operate by ninja rules instead of all swarming Neo and killing him instantly. Just the one goes up against him. They swarmed him in the last movie. But there's so much more of them now.

I kind of also like that there's like, at this point all they have to do is six. I like Smith Prime. Yeah, this is Smith Prime. This is the Smith that took over the Oracle's body as we'll later find out. Which one went to Washington? That's a good question.

That was Mr. Smith, not Agent Smith. He wasn't an agent yet. And they're flying around, and this is like Hugo Weaving, and you're like, I guess he would have been a pretty good Sinestro, right? And they're like blasting each other through buildings and stuff and smashing into the ground. And rain is flying everywhere.

It's just, it feels like a, this feels like a retread, this whole fight to me. And there's no structure to it. It's just kind of like they're fighting and then they stop and they're fighting and then they stop again. There's one part where Agent Smith flies into a building and just kind of zooms around in the air in a circle and it looks so silly.

It was very funny. And Smith knocks Neo down, but Neo gets, he gets knocked down, but he gets up again. Nobody's gonna keep him down. He gets to his feet and Smith is like, why do you persist, Neo? Why do you keep doing this? Why love or this or freedom or peace?

And Neo goes, because I choose to. And there's like a theme of choice. What you choose to do in the consequences of the choice and making those choices that kind of runs through the movie, but there's also a strain of prophecy that runs through the movie and those, it's hard to reconcile those two things. They punch each other a lot more. It feels to me, maybe you guys feel differently. How did you feel this fight?

It felt endless to me and it felt anti-climactic to me. Yeah, I, here's, yes. I also- Aside from that one silly moment where he flies around the room and he- Yeah that was kind of like a balloon that just got, you know, that's losing its helium. There's nothing in this fight that's as cool as stuff in like one or two, you know, it's also done in the rain to make it as hard

to watch as possible. And after endless tentacle shooting, like I was just kind of done with, I mean like. It's numbing. It's a numbing movie. Yeah, I mean like look, the Wachowskis really know how to make a movie, like the action sequences are still like amazing compared to someone else

doing this stuff but I found these ones to be numbing because I just didn't care at this point. Yeah, I would so much rather be watching Speed Racer than this movie. Yeah, a great movie, yeah. It was like just colors and crazy things and yeah. So Smith knocks down Neo again and he kind of has deja vu and he quotes himself saying,

when everything that has a beginning has an end and he gets frightened for some reason, and he's like, it's a trick, this is all a trick. And if I think about it, I can probably figure out why this was happening, but it was not particularly clear to me why he suddenly, this was a moment of weakness for him. What was going on?

Tell me, tell me something about it. So Smith has absorbed Neo, but Neo's still hooked up to these things. I think that they're essentially frying Agent Smith through. But he hasn't absorbed Neo yet at that point. Well, because he has Oracle powers, but I feel like though he has the powers, he might not have the confidence of the Oracle.

Oh, you're saying about that. Sorry. So at that moment, the Oracle is almost pushing through him. Like he's saying it was a trick when the Oracle let him absorb sorry. So at that moment the Oracle is almost pushing through him. Like he says it was a trick when the Oracle let him absorb her. Okay, that makes sense. Because he punches Neo and he turns Neo into a Smith, but in the real world Neo's all wiggling and there's light bursting out of him and stuff. And in the Matrix the new Agent Smith that was Neo explodes, and all the other Smiths explode,

and Prime Smith explodes. Like they're able to isolate the code or something of Smith and wipe them all out. It looks like something out of the Keep, to be honest. The way that energy is just coming out of their eyes and mouths. I praise. I mean, the Keep has some cool stuff in it, but I don't think that's such a great movie either.

But in the physical world, Neo gets detached, turns out, and it seems he's dead. And the machine mind goes, it is done, and then descends away, and in Zion, the machines all go away, and the young recruit runs over to the crowd and goes, the war is over, as if he did it, as if he was the one who did it, and everyone cheers, and Morpheus,

he's like, I can't quite believe it. So you're saying, so what have you done to this war is over? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, and I do like that the machines like carry Neo's body on away on a little beer. All that part of me would have preferred if they were like just shoveling the meat into a pile, like uninterested. But instead they elevate him on this beer and he kind of is born into a sort of glowing lotus, you know, that represents.

A glotis. Yeah, a glotis, thank you. As it's known in Buddhist literature, a glotis. Yeah, instead of like dumping him into a reclamation tank or something where his body's broken down. Yeah, no. And then fed into the like the feeding tubes of other human batteries.

More meat for the plate back on the menu tonight boys I mean some like some like dystopia of human batteries where humans are eating humans like it's the cover of a fucking cattle decapitation record I love it this all sounds much better than what we got the and the matrix gets rebooted that little girl is still there with the Oracle and the Oracle is on a park bench and the architect comes over. Remember this guy? Or that's his name, right?

He's like an evil Colonel Sanders. Yes, and they have this brief conversation. Unlike the real Colonel Sanders, who I'm sure was super cool. Colonel from what side? He made bad fried chicken, or substandard fried chicken. Anyway, he dresses like a Confederate plantation owner, so he's substandard fried chicken. Anyway, there's a, but yeah, he dresses like a Confederate plantation owner, so he's probably a pretty awesome dude. Yeah.

And so the architects, they have one of these conversations where it's, you know, how long do you think this piece will last? As long as it can, thanks, great. Can we end the movie all of a sudden? And the Oracle tells the girl, I suspect we'll see Neo again someday. And she goes, did you know this would happen? And he goes, she goes, I suspect we'll see Neo again someday. And she goes, did you know this would happen?

And he goes, she goes, no, but I believed. And the little girl somehow makes the sunrise over Central Park as a tribute to Neo and the movie's over. Yeah, the movie's over. The movie's over in a blaze of I don't care anymore. We do see him again. Part four.

Which I haven't. Some sort of resurrection occurred. Which you guys were telling me the part four's not that bad. Yeah, I mean, it's different. I like it, yeah. I would say the action sequences are not as exciting as the rest of the series, but I think the other stuff is really interesting.

The story I felt was way more focused and interesting. Yeah, yeah. And it stays more human scale, which is what I was missing in this movie. In this one? Yeah. In this one, you mean you didn't like the human, the scale of giant mechs shooting, flying robots.

Also those sentinel robots, I always forget how big they're supposed to be because you usually see them from far away. So I think they're like six feet long, but they're really what, like 20, 30 feet. It's like, there are a lot of dinosaurs where I'm like, yeah, that dinosaur is about 10 feet long. And it turns out it's 40 feet long.

And I'm like, these dinosaurs are much bigger than I realized. When I meet dinosaurs. Why are you hanging out with these dinosaurs? You wish you knew, I'm not telling anybody. So scientists can't come and steal them or land developers can't turn into a theme park. Lost world.

Yeah. Okay, let's do our final judgments. Whether this was a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kinda like. You know, after all this, look, I still kinda like this movie. It's a work of, you know, more- Fiction.

Personal, well, like, you know, for blockbusters, like, you know, the Matrix movies feels more interesting and personal than most. But I do find it really boring for huge swaths of it, especially compared to the other ones. And I also, I, geez, I spaced out. If you guys go and if I think of what I wanted to say, I'll. Sure, I'm gonna say, I think this fills the space

between kind of a bad, bad movie and a movie I kinda like. I don't think it is good, bad. I don't think it is fun to laugh at or goof on. I think some of it works and some of it doesn't. I like it more now than I did when it first came out, which I think part of it is that as an adult, I am learning to, I'm much more interested in like earnest entertainment.

It is earnest, it's not ironic, which is funny because the matrix- I was so expecting you guys to do some Jim Varney bits on me. I set it up so easy. Being earnest, I was going a little more highbrow than Jim Varney. Yeah, I was thinking about Ernest Lubitsch. Just slightly. No, but I, okay, because The Matrix goes to camp.

Anyway, so we did that. So I learned that like... For a movie that is like so intense on being cool, it does not feel ironic. It doesn't feel ironic or cynical, which is refreshing. Yeah. Yeah, and it's cool to like stuff, guys. Did you know that? It's cool to like stuff.

It is cool to like stuff. I mean, I do like that it's not a quippy movie. There's not a level of irony between you and the film. But this is, for me, I agree with you, Stu. That's kind of the ranking where I put it, except I really didn't like it. And it feels like, what Dan was saying about the Matrix movie is feeling personal for the Wachowskis,

and it feels like the first two feel personal to me, and this one feels like, I wouldn't be surprised if I was found out later, this is the movie where the studio took it away from them and they weren't really involved in it. It feels like someone else trying to make a Matrix movie. Yeah, I have no idea about that, but I mean, it could have been sort of my pressure to like wrap it up. It might be that, I mean, I have no idea about that, but I mean, I it could have been pressure to like wrap it up

You know it might be that I mean I would be surprised if after two huge blockbusters The studio said we're taking this away from you But yeah, maybe there was maybe there was pressure on them to have like a wrap-up conclusion ending and I feel like it was There was certainly under a time crunch right? Yes, I do release relatively short that yes through It's always a mistake to announce the release date of your movie before you've made it. Don't do that. I remember what I was gonna say before was just that like,

you know, in the course of this, I feel like I've said a lot of like very nitpicky things about the workings of this world or whatever. And like the thing is, to be honest, if the movie was working, I wouldn't think about any of that stuff. Or I would have my more frequent attitude of, yeah, but it's a movie.

Like that's part of the deal, man. Just go with it. Check your brain at the door, dude. No, not check your brain at the door. It's just in the cold brain. The willing suspension of disbelief. And there's also like the willingness to take a narrative, you know, at its word,

to go with where it wants to go. But the more that something isn't sort of, I don't know, it's pure sense just entertaining or feels like it's working narratively, the easier it is to start picking these knits. Well, if you are captured by the characters and captivated by the feeling of the movie, then it doesn't really matter

if the plot holds together super tightly or if the logic of the world is super tight. It doesn't matter because it's affecting you. It's casting its spell on you. But when it's a movie like this where the characters feel kind of like you're not engaging with them and the things they're doing are not captivating you

or surprising you or enthralling you, then it's a lot easier to get caught up in the, in the nuts and bolts, you know, and how they don't connect fully. Yeah. There's so many movies where people are like, what about this loophole? And I'm like, I mean, I don't care because I'm having fun the whole time I'm watching the movie or because I'm falling in love with these characters or whatever. Like it doesn't matter to me that it's not a tight, tightly constructed puzzle box, you know, but, but this one, it kind of fails on that first level.

Yeah. Let me actually, I'll put it this way. After my dad and I walked out of the first matrix, he did not really understand the mechanics of what he had been watching, but he knew he had seen something cool. Like he was like, that was a cool movie. I just didn't understand it. And this is not a, this movie fails to reach that cool, so I don't need to understand it level, you know?

Yeah. The Flophouse, the podcast you're listening to is sponsored in part by factor. Warmer, sunnier days are calling. I can hear them now. They're calling me down through the window and I'm being told that I should fuel up for them with factors no-

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Well done. Well done. We have some a little bit of live show news as this episode comes out the day this episode comes out. It is the day after our Oxford shows, our first ever England shows were yesterday as of this release date of this episode. Thanks so much to everyone who came. I'm sure we had a great time. I'm sure the shows were amazing. I'm sure everybody's arms are tired

from hoisting us up and carrying us around town in celebration. It was such a surprise, but a pleasant one that King Charles was there and knighted each of us at the end of the show for our services to the British Empire by bringing comedy to it. So you can't go to that show anymore. Sorry, it happened yesterday. But let's say you want to go to a show in not old England, but New England.

That's right. We're doing a show in July in Boston, Massachusetts on July 26th. That's right. That's how they say it. That's how they say it. That's my heavy Boston accent. I won't even try anymore. Okay, so July 26th will be in Boston.

We're doing an all new show. It's going to be great at WBUR City Space and we're going to do something really fun there. We don't know exactly what it is yet because we've been so busy prepping for these England shows that we haven't had time to figure out our New England show yet. But we will. I think we'll probably talk about a movie. Yeah. Oh yeah.

That sounds good. We'll probably each deliver a presentation of hilarity, of jokes and information. Then we'll talk about a movie and then we'll take questions from the audience. It's going to be so fun. If you want to go there, and I think you do, go to flophousepodcast.com slash events or

flophousepodcast.com slash event slash the dash flop dash house dash live dash in dash Boston. I say just go to flophousepodcast.com slash events. Yeah, and you'll see the link right there for info and ticks and it'll take you right to the ticket page. We're very excited about it. We haven't been in Boston in years. It's been years since we performed in Boston. And the last time we were there,

the city gave us such a warm welcome. Their arms got tired carrying us around. King Charles was there and knighted us afterwards for a service to Massachusetts. We were baptized in donkeys. We said, he wasn't even King yet at the time. That's the thing. He was going through a kind of psychic break.

But anyway, it was really fun. So we're really looking forward to doing it again. That's July 26th. Pick up your tickets now, because these tickets, they go fast. Tickets go pretty fast. You might want to stop and smell the roses and buy some. In 1979, singer Miki Matsubara cut Stay With Me, a love song that hit big in her home country of Japan.

The song has almost half a billion plays on streaming apps. But Miki Matsubara didn't get to enjoy all that renewed interest. She died in 2004. In fact, she had burned all of her music and she literally asked everyone she knew to forget her. I'm Christian Duenas. I'm Yosuke Kitazawa. On our new podcast, Primer, we celebrate unforgettable music from outside the English-speaking world,

starting with Japanese city pop. We'll cover Miki's work and others in conversation with Devendra VanHardt, Umi, Dane Funk, and more. Get Primer on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Fleming. And I'm Jordan Morris. We're real comedy writers. And real friends. And real fucking cheapskates. We say why subscribe to expensive streaming services

when you can stream tons of insane movies online for free? As long as you're fine with 25 randomly inserted super loud car insurance commercials. On our new podcast, Free With Ads, we review streaming movies from the darkest corner of the internet's bargain bin. From the good to the weird to the holy shit look at John Claude Van Damme's big ol' butt. Free With Ads, a free podcast about free movies that's worth the price of admission. Every Tuesday on MaximumFun.org or your favorite pod spot. Hey, why don't we take a couple letters from listeners?

Where should we take them, Daniel? Like you the listener. Take them, I will take them. Take them to the river. Don't drop them in the water. Now that letter's wet now. It's ink is running, can't read it. Take the letter out.

Billy Big Mouth Bass with Elliot Singh. Hang it on a clothesline. So that I can buy it from my enemies. Let it get dry. So we can read the letters. Oh, okay. Cool. Um, the words are kind of runny.

I think it says dear floaters, but it's probably floppers. Like I said, that's pretty runny. What does it really say? Like this at all. This is from Samantha Lasting with Held who writes, hello from Mexico, I've been listening. Samantha who? Perfect. That was a show everybody.

Perfect joke for those who remember that show. That was not. Those unlike me who remember that show. Hello from Mexico, I've been listening to the podcast for years now and just the other day I saw Tubi was available on my Amazon stick, so I thought I would try it out after hearing about it in your podcast.

Tooby, it's time you sponsor the Flophouse. It certainly is, Tooby. I was happy to see they had Whose Line Is It Anyway, a show I remember fondly from my teenage years. Imagine my surprise when I realized Tooby didn't have the episodes with Drew Carey as a host, but even older episodes from when the show was shot in England in the early 90s.

It makes me feel very old that the show that she watched as a teenager was the Drew Carey version and not the Clive Anderson British version that I watched as a teenager. Yeah, it was all over Comedy Central. It's on Comedy Central all the time, yeah. It's where I first was introduced to the comedy of Greg Proops.

And I never looked back. You're married now. Have you ever- Yeah, me and the Proopster, yeah. Have you ever discovered older episodes or older versions of media that you like? Maybe discovering a movie you like is actually a remake of a much older one,

Samantha Last Day Withheld. Part of the reason I wanted to do this because something jumped to my mind right away, which was my dad, who was a big. How your dad is a remake of his dad. Yeah, I mean, kind of that's how it works. Did you have the same name? And when you were born, he did devour you,

and then your mom had to trick him into devouring his stone too, I don't know what that name. And when you were born, he did devour you. And then your mom had to trick him into devouring a stone to get him to barf you up. We've all seen the pictures in the McCoy photo album of his dad being handed the stone in Dan's swaddling clothes. Anyway, like many people who were alive during the eighties, he had a fondness for Mr. Burt Reynolds. Anyway, like many people who were alive during the 80s, he had a fondness for Mr. Burt Reynolds. And so my first encounter with the front page

slash His Girl Friday whole thing was through switching channels, a movie by Ted Kochoff who did First Blood, Waking Fright, and also Weekend at Bernie's, a man with a very strange checkered directorial career. He did this remake of- I mean, Waking Fright and Weekend at Bernie's, they're kind of two sides of the same coin in some ways.

Yeah, it's true. But this is a version of His Girl Friday, which is itself a rewritten version of the front page. But, and it's set in the modern world of cable news, and it's got Burt Reynolds, it's got Kathleen Turner, Christopher Reeves is in the Ralph Bellamy role. And look, it does not have a great reputation, I think mostly because it's not His Girl Friday,

but it's kind of fun. It's a funny movie, like the stars are all charming, but I saw that way before I ever saw His Girl Friday and I'm like, oh, this is a remake of that. And I don't think most people even remember that switching channels exists today. Check it out on Tubi. Yeah, I do have something.

I am like the perfect age to have loved the soundtrack for the movie, The Crow. Anybody remember The Crow soundtrack? Sure, yeah. Big deal. Was attached to the movie The Crow. Back in the 90s, movies had soundtracks. Now I get it. Yeah.

Now I get it. Makes a lot of sense, right? Yeah. And when you watch the movie, they'd play at least some of the songs that are on that soundtrack. Some of them are just kind of like inspired by the vibes. Sometimes very few, yeah.

Sometimes very few. Often it would be music. Sometimes the soundtrack is better than the movie itself. That's true, often it would say music from and inspired by the need to put out a soundtrack for, and then the name than the movie itself. That's true. Often it would say music from and inspired by the need to put out a soundtrack for, and then the name of the movie. Yeah. And the 90s had some good ones.

I mean, I remember, so everyone I knew seemed to own the Empire Records soundtrack, but- At least that's a movie about records, right? It should have songs on it. But they didn't really like the movie that much. Oh, okay, yeah. So, The Crow, there is a song on there by Nine Inch Nails, which I found out later, the song is Dead Souls,

and I remember being like, man, damn, this song rocks. And it wasn't until a few years later that I found out that it was a cover of a Joy Division song, and it kind of pushed me into exploring more music by Joy Division, and then movies like 24 Hour Party People and you know, it's just good stuff. You know, it's just good stuff all the way down.

That's happened to me a bunch of times with songs, yeah, where I don't realize something is a cover until later. But with movies, I think the biggest shock for me was when as a young person I discovered that Brewster's Millions is not just a remake, but like a remake of a remake. Yes, it's been made like seven or eight times, right? The first movie version, I mean,ions is not just a remake, but like a remake of a remake. And that- It's been made like seven or eight times, right?

The first movie version, I mean, it goes back to a story, but the first movie version of it was a silent film. You know, it was in the 20s. And just the idea that Brewster's Millions is this, is I guess one of the eternal- Time has tail, yeah. Eternal stories that reverberates through human consciousness.

But I actually had a, not exactly the same scenario, but a similar scenario. Wait, you were in a Brewster's Million scenario? Yeah, exactly, yeah. I had to spend $10 or else someone would realize I had stolen $10 from them. For a movie that is not that good, it got played so much on television when we were younger

that I feel like even now, as a cultural reference, like people our age, people are like, oh, it's like a Brewster's Million scenario. Like everyone will know exactly what you're talking about. But it's one of those movies that was on all the time when we were kids and now no one watches it. Exactly. So the next generation will not know what that means.

Oh no, not at all. Thank God, yeah, hopefully it'll die out until they do a remake starring, I don't know, like Zac Efron or something. Yeah, probably, or like, they'll do a, they'll do, it'll be like a- It's a comedy, it's gonna be Zac Efron. Okay, it'll be Zac Efron.

But in the world of- You like that comedy, The Iron Claw? The world of crypto today. What family that happened to? Yeah, it'll be called Brewster's Crypto and like, we've gotta spend this money before it drops in value That's amazing There's a great plot. There's a great lot. We should pitch that so but to experience that account like this

There's a movie called kill a Japanese samurai movie that I love and there's a Japanese samurai movie called three outlaw samurai and I saw kill before three outlaw samurai and there's a whole sequence and kill that is a parody of Three outlaw samurai and I didn't realize that until I watched it. So I was like, wait a minute, have I seen this movie before? And it felt as if the character from Kill had stepped into this other movie and messed around with it once I knew that it was a take on another movie. But just last night... It's like that's baseballs and aliens thing.

I saw a space ball before I saw an alien. And there's the whole bit with the xenomorph. For a second I thought that was one movie. Spaceballs and Aliens. But I always knew... How he would call me. It's my idea, officially, TM. In some ways I had kind of the reverse of the experience because, you know the movie

Scarlet Street, the Fritz Lang movie with energy Robinson. I am familiar with his existence. Okay. So I knew that that was a remake. I've seen that movie and I'm familiar with it. I knew that was a remake of Renoir's movie Lashien the bitch, but I had not seen Lashien until last night. I watched it and I was like, Oh, I knew this was a remake, but I didn't know.

I didn't I knew Lashien was the original, but I didn't know how closely the story stuck in Scarlet Street, but also how different the tone of it is. And so it was crazy to see a movie that I had thought of as the original version of a story and see that it feels so different because it's not Fritz Lang making it, it's Jean-Renaud making it. And so you walk away from it feeling something

completely different about the same storyline. And so it was almost like I appreciated more both what a remake Scarlet Street was and how different it was as a remake. And I thought that was a really cool feeling. When I saw Sorcerer for the first time, I had never seen Wages of Fear, but somebody had described the plot to me

and I think it was one of you guys. And so when I'm in the theater watching Sorcerer, I'm like, damn, I think I know this thing. Am I just really good at anticipating movies? Yeah. It's like I can see the future, but only when it comes to sorcerer. Am I really good at movies?

Yeah. This other letter is from Doug Lasting with Held, who writes, what's up peaches? I was going through my SoundCloud account and clearing out some old stuff to make way for new things when I came across a song I recorded for the Flophouse. It's a letter to the show regarding episode 199, Jim and the Holograms from 2016.

I don't remember if I ever emailed you about it at the time. Anyway, here it is. I don't think so, because I don't think I heard it. Andy, Dex says, enjoy it, play it in the show if you want, and keep on flopping in the free world. You can download it straight from the SoundCloud page. And so I did download this. We'll put this at the end of the episode.

The question itself was about what we would like to be made into a musical, which we've answered, I think more than once on the show. So we don't need to address it, but I like the song so much, but I did want to give it its moment in the sun, because Elliot's given us so many letter songs. Why shouldn't a letter give a song back?

Oh, yeah. A charitable giver, Elliot. He's given. He gives so much. He gives so much to us. I've been giving and it's time to start taking. Let's do our last segment, which is to recommend a movie that we saw.

Yeah, let's do it. Recently that we might. I'm gonna go first, because it's thematically tied in with The Matrix. Last night I went and saw I Saw the TV Glow, which is also a movie about, I mean, on its surface. You didn't see the TV show Glow? I did, but that's not what I saw last night. So I saw the movie I Saw the TV Glow, and it is on a service level.

It is about a kind of a weird young kid who meets a another weird young woman and they start watching, they become fans of this like weird TV show together. And it is set in like the 90s in suburbia and it's very lonely and they bond over this and then they kind of go their separate ways and reconnect. But it's so much a movie about, it captures like the loneliness of the suburbs

in a way that very few movies can do. And it also touches on that idea of feeling that there is something wrong in the world and you don't know, either there's something wrong with you or there's something wrong in the world and you don't know how to fix it and you kind of latch onto something that you connect with and, but you don't know kind of how to interact with the world anymore. And it, it managed, like, it is such a like bone deep,

sad movie that is like, like, is such a like bone deep, sad movie that is like, like, I don't know. I just like, I, for the whole, most of the movie, I just felt this like deep ache and it, yeah, it's, it's amazing. It's another great movie this year and a year already filled with many great movies. But yeah, this is a movie that I haven't had a movie make me feel this way, if not in a long time or ever.

So it was great. And then getting that feeling again from Matrix Revolution must have been really strange. Well, that's the thing, like part of me, I'm like, I had kind of enough of an idea what this movie was going to be about that I the thing, part of me, I'm like, I had kind of enough of an idea what this movie was gonna be about, that I'm like, I really wanna watch this before watching The Matrix again.

Yeah. I would like to, I teased in a previous episode that I was going to see hundreds of beavers, I've now seen hundreds of beavers, not in person, I haven't seen hundreds of beavers in person, I've seen, you knowvers, not in person. I haven't seen hundreds of beavers in person. I've seen, you know, maybe three or four. I mean, we're talking about movies and not just things we see in the world, right? Yeah, I think for context people can understand it's a movie called Hundreds of Beavers.

I know that mine was slightly complicated because it did say, I saw the TV glow and that got really confused. Yeah. You have seen the TV glow, but also you saw, I saw the TV glow. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's a movie that's kind of like, if Guy Madden along with like silent movies watched a bunch of Looney Tunes cartoons

and also video games. Totally awesome video games? the Boko listeners grind along you know building up your stores like figuring out new ways of solving problems it's a movie that my one issue with it I guess would be that it's almost like two pack to the gills with stuff. Like, none of the stuff is bad. All the stuff is funny. But after a certain point, like,

watching so many inventive, like, visual gags gets a little tiring, but it is a delight. Especially if you see it with people. Less imagination, says Dan McCoy. People. Save it for the sequel. I'm just saying, like get I did get a little tired at a certain point that Jump back up for it for a good finish. So yeah, I really want to see both of these movies that you've recommended. I'm I'm

Disappointed that I haven't had a chance to I'm gonna recommend an older movie Elliot doesn't get to see things in theaters very often I'm going to recommend an older movie. Elliot doesn't get to see things in theaters very often. There's a director named Lizzie Borden, who I've recommended two of her other movies, Born in Flames and Working Girls. And I recently got to watch her first movie, which is called Regrouping, which is a documentary,

but it's a very strangely kind of put together documentary where she was making a documentary in the 70s about a women's consciousness raising group. These four women artists who are in a women's group together and somewhere during the process she had a falling out with those women and she started making a documentary about the feelings of that falling out and started talking to another women's group and she presents a lot of this to you very unclearly, without facts, showing you footage of one thing while playing the voice of another person

to create a connection in your mind between them, but they're not necessarily connected. And what you get from it is this kind of collage, distal feeling of what it's like to be in a group of women. What the experience of being a woman around women can be like, and the joys of that and also the disappointments of that.

And I found it really kind of like eye-opening and very challenging from a narrative point of view, but very, very rewarding and like just really cool the way that it is. It's a documentary that is refusing to give you the things you expect from a documentary. And it's very much not a check your brain at the door movie. Like you kind of really have to pay attention

and focus to kind of pick up what's going on and make your connections in it. But as a, but as in, but once I did that, I really liked a lot and I found it really just like a glimpse of a world that's so close and yet so distant from me, the world of women. So anyway, that's regrouping. Well, great.

It would be hard to- Thanks, Dan. It would be hard to overstate how much I need to pee right now, so I'm gonna keep this short. I'm gonna say thank you to our listeners. If you're dropping by because of the novelizers, please consider adding the Flophouse to your rotation if you enjoyed this.

Everyone else, thank you for listening. If you'd care to leave us a nice review at iTunes, that always helps. Thank you to our producer, Alex Smith. He goes by HowlDawdy online. Thank you to MaximumFun, our network, MaximumFun.org is where you can go for other great shows. But for now, I have been Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin saying, hey, before we go, let's take a moment to remember all the people who got us where we are today. Starting with our parents and maybe their parents too. Dan, don't worry, I'll be done in a little bit. Our teachers, oh, so many teachers. Let me name them one by one.

All the people who have taught me throughout the years. Oh, you know what? We can get to this later. I see that Dan's bladder is bursting through his body. You know what? Maybe we'll talk about it another time. Okay. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. That's something that comes up in the internet newsletter that subscribe to that's just about stuff that happens on the internet is how there's a lot of like videos from fake podcasts, like that are used to only fans accounts or things like that. But it's just, you just all you have to do is get a microphone and sit behind it and you pretend you're on a podcast. Wait, you're telling me anyone can be a podcaster Elliot?

I don't think so. Not just can anyone be a podcaster. We went to school for this. Anyone can fake, anyone can make a TikTok video that makes it appear as if they are on a podcast, which is even lazier than the little amount of work it takes to do a podcast. This takes a lot of work. This podcast though. But this is my first time writing a letter to the peaches If Elliot thinks Jam would work as a straight-up musical

Here's what I would like to know What films would you like to see adapted to the musical format? I would like to see a talking cat Break out in a song and help his friends along With some advice and a sweet little melody So please excuse me if this was a voice I suppose my rhymes will never be as dope as Elliot's and that's a fact Jack, that's how it works When the peaches lay down a funky funk, that's how it works When you're making it up as you're going on That's how it works, that's how it works And by the way, my name is Doug Last name with hell, my name is

Last name with hell, my name is Last name with hell