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Okay, I lied, I have some Matrix thoughts.
I kind of hate The Hero's Journey because it's taken too seriously and literally by too many writers and readers. But, it's a good way to shorthand story stages. There is one stage of The Hero's Journey that I use to judge a lot of canons: The Fall. That part at seventy five to eighty percent of the way through the story where The Hero must lose everything. We see him stripped down. His powers lost, tools unmade, despair sets in. I tend to hate this phase even in canons I otherwise like.
I am a huge fan of obstacles and plot twists, but I hate it when a hero is knocked down for an obligatory story beat and also just so they can do a predictable 'aaaaaaaa' and suddenly overpower everything. Also, if a story beat breaks a story's themes or world building, it's usually this one.
Neo never does this in The Matrix. There are 2 'lowest point' moments in the trilogy. There is one in the first film, and there is one in the Sequels.
In the first film, he dies. Then Trinity revives him.
In the sequels, he winds up trapped, powerless and his struggles only lead to sight gags. Then Trinity rescues him.
He does not despair. He does not have a personal revelation showing that the power was in him all along. He doesn't come to an awakening. He doesn't suddenly know himself. He doesn't overpower the obstacle through sheer force of will. He falls, he waits, Trinity scrapes him off of the floor.
It's not his love for her that saves him, it's her love for him. It's not his energy, actions, emotion, self knowledge or suffering, it's hers. She suffers, has revelations, and goes hard.
This makes sense because the core thing about Neo is that he knows himself. Having him somehow reveal/discover his true nature in that moment of crisis would undercut the entire character.
tl:dr they inverted one point in Hero's Journey that I most often see people point to as 'necessary' and this pleases me. In The Sequels, that super serious moment was turned int jokes.
I'd been wanting to watch Curio's video The Matrix Sequels Are Good Actually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0VnYcMHuDc .(Sorry for the lack of a proper hyperlink but something is going nutty with HTML right now) Curio is very hit or miss on media criticisms. Some of their insights are great, some are so 101 I am boggled why they take so long to try to talk about them and sometimes they basically vlog their personal journey with a canon. I like them, their humor and editing is great. They have a massive Patreon following, though, so they've definitely got an audience.
They did a nearly 2 hour video on the Matrix Sequels with another trans person by the name of Sarah Zedig (not to be confused with Sarah Z... which I did for a second.) I found their takes interesting, but mostly don't agree with them. They go very hard on 'The Matrix is Capitalism' because in every canon they like the enemy is capitalism. They aren't completely wrong, but also not completely right. Their takes fail to account for the ending of the film, where Neo sees the beauty in The Machine City.
Smith cannot seem the beauty in anything human, it's gross, ugly and chokes him with stench. Any human but Neo would see The Machine City as the same sort of abomination. But Neo doesn't. If The Matrix is capitalism and the Machines running it are the 1%ers ... Neo's reaction would make the meaning of the film 'we need more financial regulation'. And, well, we do, but I doubt that's the intended meaning. I think it's a pitfall to simplify the move as an allegory of any one thing, and also it's important to realize that you can't have pure allegory and also perfect world building. These things will come into conflict. But, if the ending would completely contradict the allegory, that's not the meaning.
I enjoyed the video, but I could write paragraphs refuting some of their points. (I actually did write those paragraphs and deleted them. The short version is that no, I don't think Neo knows he's in a movie and I don't think the reason why the alt-right and others glommed onto this movie is some deep thing that requires knowledge of power structures and references to political philosophy texts. It's a next level power fantasy where killing people who haven't come around to your point of view is not only morally permissible, it's sometimes a moral imperative. Also, the film had no textual politics, so it was a mirror in which anyone could see their POV. I enjoy the film, but maybe that is one of the aspects they didn't think through enough. Not that they are, in the least, responsible for the people who latched onto it in odd ways, I mean more of a 'wow a lot of people took the opposite meaning from your fiction' way.)
While I disagree with a lot of their points, they've thought about the films a lot and it's a good starting point and their summaries are funny. I am still searching for a good video essay on the film. I clicked on a few that I clicked out of really fast.
I am curious is they do anything more with Cypher. He got shot back out of the Matrix at the end of the last film with the rest of humanity. He is going to have regrets.
If we look at The Matrix as a trans narrative, he's a detransitioner. A good chunk of detrans people (according to some sources it's most of them, but stats are always squishy when it comes to trans people) re-transition later in life and blame a lack of support for having left. Basically, trying life as trans, not having community support or acceptance, detransitioning and becoming beloved by TERFs, spouting TERF talking points ... and then restransitioning because it's the only way they can survive is a a thing that happens. I don't know The Wachowskis and their style well enough to know if they'd touch that topic with a ten foot pole. But he does fit a certain trans narrative. Was it intended? I don't know.
He is a bastard and a traitor, but I feel bad for Cypher. I think I did back in the day, too. He chose reality and the people around him got love, orgies and polycules. He's been out at least a decade, and he's alone, miserable and working a hard, key position to protect the community he's not part of. Add in him thinking his ship's captain might be having a religiously fueled mental break, and him going darkside ... it would be relatable if he didn't creep on Trinity or sell out the entire city of Zion.
I think what he did is unforgivable, so I am not all #JusticeForCypher or anything, but Cypher was the one element of the first film that put me off back in the day. Having someone on the crew who isn't liked is a recipe for problems. Something about how they put together that arc just didn't sit well with me. The canon added in the sequels makes Cypher being on the crew even stranger.
My reaction to Cypher is completely objective and I am no way me projecting my own experiences with being treated like trash by LGBTQ+ communities or my current lack of any community. Some acknowledgment that coming out isn't a fairy tale for everyone and LGBTQ+ communities can be excluding or downright shit would make the movies vibe better for me.
... That's all my brain has right now.
I kind of hate The Hero's Journey because it's taken too seriously and literally by too many writers and readers. But, it's a good way to shorthand story stages. There is one stage of The Hero's Journey that I use to judge a lot of canons: The Fall. That part at seventy five to eighty percent of the way through the story where The Hero must lose everything. We see him stripped down. His powers lost, tools unmade, despair sets in. I tend to hate this phase even in canons I otherwise like.
I am a huge fan of obstacles and plot twists, but I hate it when a hero is knocked down for an obligatory story beat and also just so they can do a predictable 'aaaaaaaa' and suddenly overpower everything. Also, if a story beat breaks a story's themes or world building, it's usually this one.
Neo never does this in The Matrix. There are 2 'lowest point' moments in the trilogy. There is one in the first film, and there is one in the Sequels.
In the first film, he dies. Then Trinity revives him.
In the sequels, he winds up trapped, powerless and his struggles only lead to sight gags. Then Trinity rescues him.
He does not despair. He does not have a personal revelation showing that the power was in him all along. He doesn't come to an awakening. He doesn't suddenly know himself. He doesn't overpower the obstacle through sheer force of will. He falls, he waits, Trinity scrapes him off of the floor.
It's not his love for her that saves him, it's her love for him. It's not his energy, actions, emotion, self knowledge or suffering, it's hers. She suffers, has revelations, and goes hard.
This makes sense because the core thing about Neo is that he knows himself. Having him somehow reveal/discover his true nature in that moment of crisis would undercut the entire character.
tl:dr they inverted one point in Hero's Journey that I most often see people point to as 'necessary' and this pleases me. In The Sequels, that super serious moment was turned int jokes.
I'd been wanting to watch Curio's video The Matrix Sequels Are Good Actually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0VnYcMHuDc .(Sorry for the lack of a proper hyperlink but something is going nutty with HTML right now) Curio is very hit or miss on media criticisms. Some of their insights are great, some are so 101 I am boggled why they take so long to try to talk about them and sometimes they basically vlog their personal journey with a canon. I like them, their humor and editing is great. They have a massive Patreon following, though, so they've definitely got an audience.
They did a nearly 2 hour video on the Matrix Sequels with another trans person by the name of Sarah Zedig (not to be confused with Sarah Z... which I did for a second.) I found their takes interesting, but mostly don't agree with them. They go very hard on 'The Matrix is Capitalism' because in every canon they like the enemy is capitalism. They aren't completely wrong, but also not completely right. Their takes fail to account for the ending of the film, where Neo sees the beauty in The Machine City.
Smith cannot seem the beauty in anything human, it's gross, ugly and chokes him with stench. Any human but Neo would see The Machine City as the same sort of abomination. But Neo doesn't. If The Matrix is capitalism and the Machines running it are the 1%ers ... Neo's reaction would make the meaning of the film 'we need more financial regulation'. And, well, we do, but I doubt that's the intended meaning. I think it's a pitfall to simplify the move as an allegory of any one thing, and also it's important to realize that you can't have pure allegory and also perfect world building. These things will come into conflict. But, if the ending would completely contradict the allegory, that's not the meaning.
I enjoyed the video, but I could write paragraphs refuting some of their points. (I actually did write those paragraphs and deleted them. The short version is that no, I don't think Neo knows he's in a movie and I don't think the reason why the alt-right and others glommed onto this movie is some deep thing that requires knowledge of power structures and references to political philosophy texts. It's a next level power fantasy where killing people who haven't come around to your point of view is not only morally permissible, it's sometimes a moral imperative. Also, the film had no textual politics, so it was a mirror in which anyone could see their POV. I enjoy the film, but maybe that is one of the aspects they didn't think through enough. Not that they are, in the least, responsible for the people who latched onto it in odd ways, I mean more of a 'wow a lot of people took the opposite meaning from your fiction' way.)
While I disagree with a lot of their points, they've thought about the films a lot and it's a good starting point and their summaries are funny. I am still searching for a good video essay on the film. I clicked on a few that I clicked out of really fast.
I am curious is they do anything more with Cypher. He got shot back out of the Matrix at the end of the last film with the rest of humanity. He is going to have regrets.
If we look at The Matrix as a trans narrative, he's a detransitioner. A good chunk of detrans people (according to some sources it's most of them, but stats are always squishy when it comes to trans people) re-transition later in life and blame a lack of support for having left. Basically, trying life as trans, not having community support or acceptance, detransitioning and becoming beloved by TERFs, spouting TERF talking points ... and then restransitioning because it's the only way they can survive is a a thing that happens. I don't know The Wachowskis and their style well enough to know if they'd touch that topic with a ten foot pole. But he does fit a certain trans narrative. Was it intended? I don't know.
He is a bastard and a traitor, but I feel bad for Cypher. I think I did back in the day, too. He chose reality and the people around him got love, orgies and polycules. He's been out at least a decade, and he's alone, miserable and working a hard, key position to protect the community he's not part of. Add in him thinking his ship's captain might be having a religiously fueled mental break, and him going darkside ... it would be relatable if he didn't creep on Trinity or sell out the entire city of Zion.
I think what he did is unforgivable, so I am not all #JusticeForCypher or anything, but Cypher was the one element of the first film that put me off back in the day. Having someone on the crew who isn't liked is a recipe for problems. Something about how they put together that arc just didn't sit well with me. The canon added in the sequels makes Cypher being on the crew even stranger.
My reaction to Cypher is completely objective and I am no way me projecting my own experiences with being treated like trash by LGBTQ+ communities or my current lack of any community. Some acknowledgment that coming out isn't a fairy tale for everyone and LGBTQ+ communities can be excluding or downright shit would make the movies vibe better for me.
... That's all my brain has right now.
