Hacker Cinema
The Matrix Resurrections
2021 · Film · 148 min
Part of The Matrix Collection
Directed by Lana Wachowski
Science FictionActionAdventure
Plagued by strange memories, Neo's life takes an unexpected turn when he finds himself back inside the Matrix.
2 positive9 negative1 mixed7 neutralfrom 19 commenters
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19 comments on Hacker News
For me only we have 3 Jurassic Park movies. The rest are like the joke in The Matrix resurrections : Capitalism grinding stuff to make more money.
> And, of course, they never even bothered to make sequels to The Matrix.
The fascinating thing about the two Matrix sequels is that they still tried. There are fascinating action sequences and visual effects in both.
In comparison, most modern movies (not just sequels, movies in general) are Matrix 4: empty, lazy, uncaring https://dmitriid.com/matrix-resurrections
“The Matrix Resurrections” was released Dec 22, 2021 (during Covid) with only $10.7m US opening, $37.7m US gross and $157m worldwide (cinema) gross against a reported budget of $190m. So it certainly seems like WB's switch to simultaneous streaming+cinematic release lost them a packet (although it got so-so reviews so maybe it wouldn't have done great ordinarily anyway).
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt10838180/
Matrix Resurrections had a super trippy premise, which was in line with the original film. The first half of the movie was momentously expectation-breaking mind fuckery, and I immensely enjoyed it. (I wish I had shut the film off after the reveal.)
The action sequences and set pieces were absolutely lackluster and downright boring despite the film's budget. (Not sure if this is due to the age of the actors - the John Wick series seems to have figured this out just fine.)
Most damning of all, the story arc, character arcs, and final resolution were phoned in and utterly forgettable. It's tragic, given the ludicrously audacious start of the film. The setup was there, but there was no investment beyond the trick premise.
Lana swung for the fences but struck out. It felt like an M. Night Shyamalan letdown.
Wonder how it's possible.
> "The breach of contract lawsuit against Warner Bros. came after the studio introduced “The Matrix Resurrections” in December 2021 on its HBO Max streaming service the same day the film was released in movie theaters. Village Roadshow complained that the Burbank studio’s pivot away from an exclusive theatrical release had destroyed the value of a key franchise."
-- how is that true? Did they lose that much box office money on Matrix Resurrections that cashflow or lack of revenues made them collapse?
> “A confluence of macro-economic factors have weighed heavily on the company’s balance sheet,”
-- Now we're getting somewhere. An unbalanced budget? What might have caused it I wonder? Would they have a worse time than the other studios or have less cash reserves etc?
A shame the article doesn't give many answers. Would love to know.
Unrelated.
- The dispute was after the movie released.
- Only one of the Wachowskis could be convinced to come back.
- WB had tried and failed at least once getting a new Matrix movie off the ground after Revolutions without the Wachowskis.
- The Matrix Resurrections features the line "[Warner Bros. are] going to do it with or without us."
More background: https://ew.com/movies/matrix-resurrections-scene-doing-sequel-without-wachowskis/
I have a handful of "regulars" that I watch repeatedly. Most of them are at the point now that I've seen them so many times that they can work as "background noise" when I'm coding or doing something else. IOW, I can turn the volume down fairly low and it serves a purpose, but I'm so familiar with the story already that I'm not likely to get drawn into actually paying attention to the movie (as opposed to whatever I'm working on) unless I'm at a point where I need a break anyway.
Some of the ones that are on that list for me:
The Matrix
The Matrix Resurrections
The Social Network
Inception
Sneakers
Hackers
Antitrust
Rad
Tron: Legacy
Vision Quest
Rocky (really the entire Rocky franchise)
The Karate Kid
Kickboxer
Bloodsport
Hard To Kill
Above The Law
Exactly. Why they gave up on the human collective neural net movie plot and replaced it with the human batteries one is beyond me. It makes no sense, humans make terrible batteries.
If the machines from the Matrix needed to use some mammals as batteries, why not just use cows instead of humans? They'd be much more complacent with living in the Matrix, grazing on virtual fields, and less likely to wise up and try to escape and rebel against the machines since they're not very intelligent and the machines would need a lot less processing power to simulate a realistic cow world than the world in 1999 for humans.
To wit, if someone has access to a lot of GPU compute, could you please use gen-AI to re-make the Matrix but with the characters as cows, I'd pay to watch it. Would definitely beat Matrix Resurrections or whatever that cash grab turd was called.
Everyone needs a hobby! :D
A year ago, when the fourth movie's trailers premiered, I wrote a script to slice the glyphs out of the video, and then identified the new ones and redrew them as best as I could.
I missed a couple "punctuation marks" but the Resurrections version of the effect was live _ten days before_ the fourth film came out!
Lately some behind-the-scenes footage hit the web, and I was able to improve those glyphs them substantially, release a font, etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/matrix/comments/wvg7bn/progress_shots_improved_matrix_resurrections/
Yep. And Resurrections, which takes place in a recreation of 2021 (or thereabouts), allows for using cellphones to exit. They even make a point of pointing that out in the film. I think within the context of the movies, they made it very difficult for anything to "age poorly" like that because it's all meant to be a representation of a very specific point in time.
I caught this at the Brooklyn Alamo a few weeks back. After finishing it, I left the theater thinking it was the movie "The Matrix: Resurrections" should have been.
Sure thing, I get that. There are around 1500 people listed as being involved in the making of the matrix resurrections. That is a lot of people. But I'd bet that the vast majority of them did not work on it full time, for over 6 months each:
From Wikipedia:
> Filming started in February 2020 but was halted the next month by the COVID-19 pandemic. Wachowski toyed with the possibility of shelving the project and leaving the film unfinished, but the cast insisted that she finish it. Filming resumed in August 2020, concluding three months later.
I am happy to admit I don't really know what I am talking about. All my info is either a quick google and some gut feelings around projects. Happy to be told otherwise by someone with experience in the industry, or with references.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_Resurrections
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt10838180/fullcredits
More money isn't just new subscriptions, it's also revenue from existing subscriptions (which can be cancelled any time).
By this logic, platforms will never need new content ever in order to keep existing subscribers happy.
It's not just new subscriptions, it's also retention: do people stay subscribed to platform X because movies like The Matrix Resurrections are on the platform?
It'd be rather hard to measure for a single film, it's the aggregate of platform content that dictates retention, I would think.
If the answer is yes, then the platforms will continue to pay companies like WB to film "box office bombs".
> We can add The Matrix Resurrections to that list, too, with the HBO Max hybrid barely scraping past $100 million globally since hitting the big screen and streaming on December 22, not ideal when the sci-fi actioner’s budget is estimated to be hovering around the $190 million mark.
Even with the fact that it was used to inspire people to sign for HBO max, I'm going to guess it's not a success if those two numbers are true. I don't know how much more legs it's got but rough rule of thumb is the films' grosses need to roughly double the film's budget to be a success.
I don't understand how they do the math with streaming.
In a way, you can say that everyone who is an HBO subscriber has already paid for the Matrix Resurrections. Obviously you don't have to watch it immediately, since it's now part of the streaming service catalogue, so unlike a movie theater where all people who intend to see the movie must watch it before it leaves the cinema, all HBO max subscriber can just think: cool new matrix, I should watch that eventually, and continue being happy subscriber even if they don't watch it yet (like me).
So for me, this is building a catalogue. I'm sure they have things like immediate conversion, how many subbed and The Matrix Resurrection was their first thing they watched, etc.
But basically, I think it's a very different formula, and it's probably a lot harder to figure out what success means and how important The Matrix Resurrection is to HBO Max's growth and continued subs.
I'm confused by this statement. I agree Matrix Resurrections is worth watching, it's quite good. But I'm also a fan of the other 4 films (Matrix, Reloaded, Revelations, Animatrix). Many people I've talked about the films with agree.
Personally, I found Revelations to be some what weaker than the rest, but they all form a pretty compelling and enjoyable series.
Matrix Resurrections is worth watching, but it won't please people who are fans of anything beyond the original film.
The Matrix Resurrections is the worst sequel.
- Shaky camera cinematography, not used before.
- Iconic color correction is not used.
- Without Yuen Woo-ping, Kung-fu fighting scenes are poorly executed. He is a Hong Kong martial arts choreographer and film director who worked in Hong Kong action cinema, and directed all fighting scenes in all previous Matrix movies, but not this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNCLUd3Htos
- Weak soundtrack.
There isn't a lot of choice, is there? At least not out of mainstream movies. I only saw Dune and Matrix Resurrections. Dune was okay, not amazing by any means, and it's also half a movie. Resurrections was garbage in every possible way.
Last Night in Soho looks interesting, I guess? I haven't seen it yet but I like Edgar Wright's movies.