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The Matrix (1999) is a Very Good Movie
96 Plays1 year ago
Hope is fairly sleep deprived, and Ella brings her A-Game to the Pun War as our Neo-ologists try to recap one of the most iconic movies of all time, 1999's The Matrix. Will they manage to make it through the plot without getting distracted? Nope!
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The Matrix music, clips and dialogue are all copyright Warner Brothers and we own NONE of it.
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Transcript
Introduction and Nostalgia
00:00:00
Speaker
I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice. Tumbling down the rabbit hole. I'd like to share a revelation without that. Let me tell you why you're here. I'm gonna let you in on a little sleep.
00:00:30
Speaker
You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain. Like you feel it. Being the one is just like being in love. All I'm offering is the truth. Nothing. No one can tell you you're in love with just you know it. Do and do. All is the moment. Hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.
00:00:58
Speaker
My name is Trinity, and you better take your hands off of me. Welcome. It's a whole new format. This is fascinating. All right. The podcasting world. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome. I'm going to I'm going to reference Bill and Ted later, but just the opening of Bill and Ted. Hi, welcome to the future. Yeah. All averages are way up. Many golf scores are way down.
The Matrix 1999: Initial Impressions
00:01:25
Speaker
Morpheus should have said that.
00:01:29
Speaker
Is George Carlin's Rufus the more stoner version of Morpheus? I feel like they would have been friends. Morpheus is...
00:01:40
Speaker
stoned but on something on a completely different strain like whatever he's on like indica versus sativa do you think yeah i know murpheus i don't know he seems more like he's it's more like cocaine because he's always like okay i have this great idea because we're gonna do okay we got it we got it we got it um
00:02:02
Speaker
I think your cocaine uses this a little more manic than Morpheus, but yeah. Well, because he's been on it for so long, he knows he's not fazed by it anymore. Right.
00:02:16
Speaker
He's on that slow drip cocaine. Yes, yes. What a great start to this episode. Today we're talking about, today on this podcast where we talk about The Matrix, we are talking about The Matrix. That being the original 1999 film that kick started this whole thing.
00:02:36
Speaker
the whole thing god i'm so excited i love this movie so friggin this is our our recap i'm gonna do some recap episodes and then we i'm excited we're we're gonna do also like some commentary episodes right where it's where it's literally oh absolutely absolutely like this is our damn podcast we're gonna get into whatever but i did feel it
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, I felt it was more important to talk about the movies just as movies first. Yeah, just walk through the story. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, exactly. So that way we all know we're on the same page. And like we were saying before we hit record, if you took notes for this, I didn't because I've been rewatching this movie for 20 odd years now, as we established last episode.
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, beginning from your out of context fight scene compilation that you were that you were shown. I was sending you like snaps while I was rewatching it out of like imagine watching this scene with no context in your friend's basement.
Film Experience and Practical Effects
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, after getting murdered brutally for an hour in Golden Isle, Nintendo 64. Oh, wow. Oh, God, I have nightmares about Golden Isle. That's a whole other thing. Yeah. So The Matrix, 1999.
00:04:03
Speaker
So I watched this on, I popped in the DVD that I have of it for the first time. This is a DVD that I got at a record store for like $3. It's a used copy. Is it that classic like paper cardboard clam shell DVD pack? It is, and I'm really, I feel like it probably is a better for the environment, but it's, I just don't think, I don't know. I, there's, I have this copy of,
00:04:31
Speaker
Uh, Wally, which of course you talked about on high on cartoons. Um, it's not, it's not the criterion collection, Wally, but it's because of the films, because the film seems it's all about, like, you know, it's, it's all about, um, uh, you know, it's an eco-friendly package, right? Right. Right. It also means that there's no, as I recall, like there's no spindle, like the DVD is just kind of crammed into cardboard. And I'm like,
00:04:57
Speaker
The DVD's gonna get so scratched. I know, it's like, I actually, and I'm ashamed to say this, I sold my DVDs of the Matrix series years back at a trade. But the commercial said that the DVD would melt our faces off.
00:05:15
Speaker
and make out with our dad. The promise. The promise. But no, what's depressing is lately I've just turned into an absolute like film snob. So I have, you've seen it, the massive 4K steelbook box set. I mean, that's the best. I mean, it is the better. It's the superior version, like objective. I mean, I could kill a man with that box set. It's an impressive ass box set. And you should. And you should. You've heard it here first, folks.
00:05:38
Speaker
This is because of the binary. Wham! Yeah. But oh, and similarly, you know, soon to be probably removed from Max, Steven Universe, I have the giant complete series box set of Steven Universe and the movie and the follow up series. And there's so the way that this is packaged is there's this beautiful like, it's like a mini art book, all of these pages that
00:06:05
Speaker
Go over what's on each disc and there's an image representing like it's like the first half of season one and second and so on and so forth and
00:06:13
Speaker
And they're gorgeous and they list all the episodes and I'm like this this looks amazing, but Again, they're all very tight cardboard sleeves that the discs are crammed into and I literally I took them all out and I put them in actual like cases like cuz I can't Hey like they already don't have like an eternal life and as it is
00:06:38
Speaker
A friend of mine did almost the exact same thing with the the big criterion Godzilla box set because all the Godzilla movies between like the 50s and the 70s packaged into one big box set. But it's in this cheapo like paperback book thing that like will fall apart very easily. So he literally just took all the discs, stuck them into a Blu-ray disc boxes and then commissioned somebody to make official looking criterion art.
00:07:06
Speaker
for these boxes. I know that's taking it up. That is a step farther than I am willing to go because I am very lazy at heart. So like, yeah, I didn't. So I never watched the Matrix DVD before. I'd always I think I mean, the first time I'm
Plot Analysis and Character Impact
00:07:24
Speaker
sure I found it somewhere on the high seas and then, you know, HBO Max and whatnot.
00:07:29
Speaker
But as expected, the DVD menu of the original Matrix DVD absolutely fucks. It absolutely fucks. It's been years since I've seen it. Can you describe it for me, please? I mean, only in the sense that someone who had a near-death experience describes heaven. It only really flapped it.
00:07:50
Speaker
So I believe I think the first image was of like the bullet time and then of course it had all the digital like plays, special features set up and all that and it would do like this montage of all the cool sequences and yeah, no, it was just incredible. Beautiful. The other thing I noticed right off the bat about this particular copy of the film, this edit,
00:08:16
Speaker
Um, the color creating is intense in these, in these, like more than I remember seeing on any other version. Uh, the green of being in the matrix is so very green and the blue of the real world is so, so, so blue.
00:08:32
Speaker
Now, I was trying to pay attention to that because I've owned, let's see, I've watched these movies on the DVD. I'm pretty sure I've watched them on VHS, actually. Did all three of the originals come out on VHS? I guess they must have.
00:08:47
Speaker
Well, I was kind of going to save this for the Reloaded episode, but one of my biggest memories of the home video release of Matrix Reloaded is seeing dozens and dozens of unsold copies of the Matrix Reloaded in Espanol at Suncoast Video just being slowly reduced in price over time. So yes, they got a VHS release, but
00:09:12
Speaker
to what end. But I'm pretty sure I've seen these movies in every format. And I don't think I've seen them the same way in terms of, as you say, the color grading twice. Greens are greener, the blues are bluer. It's so weird. I was even toying around on this rewatch, especially during the sequence in the construct where that's all that pure white space where Morpheus is explaining
00:09:38
Speaker
the plot, essentially. Yeah, I was playing around with my projector settings trying to get it to be the whitest white, but still not completely wash out Keanu Reeves pale face. Oh God, it was rough. Yeah. I'm trying to calibrate your game system. Like, yeah. Yeah. It's like, okay, Keanu, can you hold up a color wheel for me, please? Great. Yeah. Thanks.
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah. I've also at this point, it's beginning, like I'm sure you hit this point very early on, but I'm getting to the point where I've seen it enough times that I am quoting it by heart, even like not like not important lines of just like, I think we can handle one little girl. No, Lieutenant, your men are already dead. Well, lines that are not particularly famous that I'm just like, Oh, I got it.
00:10:30
Speaker
No, I know exactly what you mean. I do the same damn thing all the time. Is this... I mean, for me, like I've said before on the previous episode, for me, it's more about the two sequels, really, than this first movie, which is embarrassing a little bit because this movie is fucking iconic and monumental. Yeah, I mean, it is a textbook perfect movie. It really is. Yeah. But it's just...
00:10:58
Speaker
the economy of storytelling in this movie there's not like a line wasted you get your there's so much information to be explained and they do it
00:11:09
Speaker
pretty elegantly all considering. And yes, and important, like, with visuals. They do it in a visual way. Yes. I think this is something that, again, we'll get into, but I think it's something that the sequels stumble with a little, or a lot, depending on what scene. I think this movie is a masterclass of how to dole out very dense information in a way that
00:11:35
Speaker
gets the audience on board and has them understand the stakes in order to get them excited and know who to root for and in what way, you know? And they're doing like a lot of technical jargon dumping as well, because this movie came out in 1999. So you have people saying, like Morpheus says, we were in the birth of AI, and they have to clarify artificial intelligence. Yeah, Neo just going like AI.
00:12:03
Speaker
Do you mean artificial until English, please? Yeah, right. Exactly. And I did cringe at that just because of like how I has been, you know, particularly annoying lately. I'm just like lately. Yeah. Good. It all started when when they made I make Squidward sing Frank Sinatra songs. Oh, God in heaven. I hate that. So friggin bad.
00:12:27
Speaker
I think those are like the one good use like I've seen things it's like like plankton sings my way and like you know what
00:12:35
Speaker
I'll give it to that one. Cause I feel like the actual voice actors of the SpongeBob characters could never be bothered to do that. Like they like. I'm sure if we gave them money, speaking of we're recording this during the, the, the, the, the writer's strike and the actor's strike, I double checked podcasts are cool. So we're safe. Also, I don't believe we belong to any guilds as far as I know.
00:12:59
Speaker
I'm a upsettingly non-union in my job. I'm a tradeswoman myself. Mmm, fair enough. But yeah, pay your writers, pay your actors.
Cultural Impact and Marketing
00:13:08
Speaker
Damn it. It's almost as though they do the thing that makes the money. It's almost like we're the means of production. Yeah, exactly. Wait, wait, wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, get ahead of ourselves. Oh, Jesus Christ.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, so yes, you're right about the technical jargon being present, but still relatively easy to understand. More or less, yeah. We can't really speak on it because we've seen this so many times. That and, like, I certainly was around in 1999, but I wasn't particularly paying attention to literally, again, any news besides Star Wars Episode I, The Phantom Menace.
00:13:52
Speaker
But they were like, they were like news broadcasts where the field reporters were going to the theater and trying to get people to explain the matrix and people are just stumbling over themselves trying to explain what they saw. That's because no one can tell you what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
00:14:13
Speaker
You know what? And I think that's genuinely like, I think I brought this up in the previous episode. We don't, there's not really any marketing campaigns like that anymore where it's all mystery, I feel like. They tried with Tomorrowland. When was that? Yeah. Yeah. They tried. They tried. God bless them. Was that 2013 or 15? Brad Bird's Tomorrowland was 2015. That was 2015. Ian Rand's Tomorrowland was 2015.
00:14:42
Speaker
I feel like I mean maybe maybe nope was a little bit of that like that mystery element but
00:14:52
Speaker
Nope. Definitely had the mystery element, but you did have the very tangible visual of a flying saucer to work with. Like we as a society, like when I saw the thing, we're finally back to like the day the earth stood still classic chrome dome flying saucer. I love it. And then it takes like four genre shifts.
00:15:14
Speaker
throughout the course in the movie, just to throw you off base. So you know what you're getting into? Getting into it, but as of about half an hour in, you have no idea. This is just pure goddamn mystery box. Yeah, and then I guess the knives out glass onion thing where they, uh, you can try to solve the mystery, except we're going to throw in some information in the third act that you couldn't possibly have known going in, just to make us seem smarter.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah, we are not going to tell this detective mystery linearly. Uh, linearly. Wow. I am exhausted and don't expect me to have pronounced too many words correctly tonight, kids. I don't expect anyone. Gotta be a fun one. English is a nightmare language. It really is, and I'm realizing more and more that I learned most of it by reading, so I don't know how to pronounce most of it. That's a fun discovery.
00:16:00
Speaker
So we open the Matrix, the film. Oh, thank God you're starting the film. Oh, we can get there. Village Roadshow Pictures. And we open on the word trans. You are correct. Yeah, the second word that we see in the film is trans. We get that digital rain coming down. God, I love the fucking code.
00:16:27
Speaker
Oh god, it's just so gorgeous. All I see is brunette, blonde, red head. I can't tell you. Then we see a brunette. We see Trinity, right? We do, yeah. This first opening sequence is just all focused in on Trinity and...
00:16:44
Speaker
the agents, really. Well, and also like, again, so telling that the Wachowskis are coming off of bound, which is, you know, just chicks in action, and then another chick in action, and neither film is it particularly, I mean, I hesitate to even use this term, because obviously they're women, but like, there's no quote unquote male gaze going on, because
00:17:11
Speaker
down does i mean it's kind of are i mean there is a little bit of that gaze i think going on but considering what we know because i mean you've got karianne moss in pvc like not even pvc pleather i don't even know what the fuck it is it looks painted on she looks incredible but um
00:17:35
Speaker
Yeah, you're right. You really can't call it male gaze, can you? It's like, are they sexualizing her or is she just Carrie Anne Moss? A question for the ages. A question for the ages. And respectively, Jennifer Tilly and the other actress from Bound. Oh god, I really need to see Bound. It's on my list. I'll get to it.
00:18:06
Speaker
But no, I mean, point being, it's that even this far into their second film, our action heroes are still women, exclusively. Being hunted specifically by a bunch of white men in suits, which is always a fun thing to just look at in The Matrix, an angry man in a suit.
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's also also very amusing to see like the the ordinary, you know, the day to day cops and then the agents show up. Yeah. So this entire opening, this entire opening sequence, it's the cops cornering Trinity in a hotel room, an abandoned. Destroy the heart of the heart of the city hotel. Yeah, this wrecked place. And she's apparently hacking and they've traced her call.
Home Release Formats and Nostalgia
00:18:59
Speaker
The police finder.
00:19:01
Speaker
Kick the door down. They go into fucking bullet time and it's magic! Holy shit!
00:19:06
Speaker
Um, it's just like, that's that initial camera turn with all those, all those digital cameras that they put in a row and then took a, an image of, uh, I love how they did that. They literally just took like a hundred and some still cameras and just photograph people in a big circle. I love the simplicity of that. I mean, it's, it's stop motion in a way. Yeah. Yeah. You're not wrong. I say simplicity. That was some complicated ass shit they pulled off, but.
00:19:34
Speaker
But it's, the answer to how they did it is probably simpler than most people think. It's more, you know what it is? It's more analog than the digital. The lack of CG going on. Yeah, absolutely. Which just frustrates me to no end. This was kind of like the very tail end of the big practical effects in Hollywood, I'd say the late 90s.
00:19:58
Speaker
Everything in here holds up well. Yeah, well, it's, we're going to get into this in the sequels, but all of a sudden when they start relying so heavily on CGI, the visuals just kind of plummet dramatically because the CGI... Yeah, not unlike, you know, certain Star Wars films maybe.
00:20:19
Speaker
God, well, that's my point. That's my point. Like two years before this, 1997, you have Starship Troopers, which blends the practical and the digital effects very, very well. Right, and then even before that, Jurassic Park, of course. Oh, Jurassic Park. Side note, saw that last night at The Man with the Philadelphia Orchestra. What an experience that was.
00:20:43
Speaker
God, just, we cried, it was great. But once Star Wars really hits, and George Lucas, well, Star Wars episode one hits in 99, and Lucas is making this big splash with all this CGI and Jar Jar, and entire environments and characters being completely fabricated out of nothingness, then all of a sudden, Hollywood starts to be in a CGI. Go Boongas and robots fighting on the Windows 95 background.
00:21:10
Speaker
God, wow, you're not wrong. The one thing I will say, as far as episode one goes, the sound design is perfect. Well, I mean for all of them. Yeah, then Bert is a god. Yeah. I mean, if I could get all cars, if a car, if I could get a car like startup noise to do the that the Falcon does.
00:21:37
Speaker
Oh, God. Isn't that the dream? Yeah. And then and again, there's and then there's information conveyed visually and through emotion where Trinity is just just just owning these cops, just completely just doesn't even they're not even on her radar. And then and then the agency take out and that first fight sequence like and then the agents show up and she is.
00:22:03
Speaker
on the back foot now. Yeah. And there was the moment where she's like looking up at the window. She's like, get up Trinity. Like she's, she's just, she has to like psych herself out. Like they, her and the agent both jump across the buildings. And I love this when I was watching it this time around.
00:22:19
Speaker
Both when Trinity jumps and then the Agent jumps, you get this really big dramatic whooshing sound effect. But then when the cops jump, there's like almost no sound effect at all. It's just like a breathy out of breath, out of shape cops just throwing themselves across a rooftop. Yeah, this movie very explicitly hates cops, which we love. Hell yeah. Like there's only a shot of a cop and on the line, like they are our enemies.
00:22:49
Speaker
it shows a shot of a cop like riding a traffic ticket like oh god but yeah and i think it's also again notably and when it comes to writing like action uh girl heroes uh i think when men write these characters uh they are two-dimensional infallible you know action babes
00:23:14
Speaker
Um,
Character Dynamics and Themes
00:23:15
Speaker
right. And Trinity is shown very quickly to be fallible, like to have fears, to like not want to fight this agent for whatever reason, um, to just turn tail and run and to have to talk herself into getting up. Yeah.
00:23:35
Speaker
God, and Carrie Ann Moss conveys all of those complicated emotions very, very well. She got those big old eyes. It's crazy. And make no mistake, it doesn't take away from her being a complete badass. Absolutely not. Which is an important distinction in this film.
00:23:54
Speaker
Oh God. So yeah, this entire opening sequence is all about this chase, which goes across a very like somewhat artificial looking rooftop. I'm sure it was like a studio, like soundstage shoot for this sequence, but it really does add to like the other worldliness of the environment. And the, again, artificial. I mean, it is literally artificial in the context. With their footsteps thundering across these metal roofs. Yeah.
00:24:23
Speaker
God, just absolutely gorgeous. And then, yeah, culminating at the phone booth, which is Trinity's way out.
00:24:38
Speaker
Seeing this scene, again, out of context, like even just the way I saw it, which was to see the action sequences alone out of context. But to see this sequence in a theater in 1999 with no explanation, must have been unreal. Where a freaking, what is it? It's a garbage truck or is it cement mixer? It's a big fucking truck. Yeah, I think it's like some kind of 18-wheeler.
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah. It like they, they execute this crazy, like 180 turn with it. Doesn't it? Well, it doesn't take over the body of the, is that the first time we see an agent take over a body? We not actually see the agents doing anything, particularly agentee this time around, besides just seeming to be like omnipresent. Oh, okay. We don't see any like digital shenanigans. I feel like that is the implication though. Now, once you find out that they can do that, I think.
00:25:32
Speaker
Once, yeah, once you realize it's like, Oh, this guy just possessed a garbage man. Why do I, I feel like, did I just Mandela effect this? I remember just like, like imagine just like trucker, like just going like break breaker, got a bogey on my arm and then he gets taken over by an agent.
00:25:53
Speaker
You're saying this out loud and now I'm just itching for agents to invade other movie franchises where you're just watching Smokey and the Bandit or something like that and for like a hot second, Smith has to take over Smokey.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah, well I would also I want the agent after he takes over the body of the truck driver to still have the trucker hat and then to pull on the horn cable. Okay, so what I'm getting is that the long term goal of the podcast is actually to pitch Warner Brothers a slice of life matrix comedy.
00:26:33
Speaker
Yes. Well, and they love because the space jam new legacy and that multi-versus game that came in when proves that they are, they're trying to develop some sort of shared universe with all their IP. Um, but not enough to, not the, not enough to put them all on a streaming service, but like, I think the connective tissue should be Smith. I think you should have Smith take over like, let's say Elmer Fudd's body or something.
00:26:58
Speaker
into the Smithaverse. I'm into it. I'm into it. I'm into it. Let's let's just get. Yeah, the climax scene is the guy ramming the fucking truck into a. Yeah. Please God keep us on topic. Holy shit. The big truck rams the fucking phone booth with Trinity inside of it. There's that great shot of her hand pressing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh God. Perfect. And because we don't know, we don't know what she's trying to do by picking up that phone. So we think.
00:27:27
Speaker
We think she's just dead. And then the agent comes down and realizes she's not in there. Yeah. The phone booth is smashed to hell. And what do they say? I've actually got the script pulled up. OK. Yeah. Yeah. So I found a copy PDF of the script. It was written exclusively just by Lana and Lily.
00:27:50
Speaker
You know what? It doesn't have a goddamn title page, unfortunately. I'm going to say this now. Well, how am I supposed to know what movie it is? Yeah. I'm going to say this now. The PDF copy of the script that I've got was actually downloaded off of the subreddit, The Matrix, r slash The Matrix. I don't know what that page is up to anymore. I'm no longer on Reddit, but oh well. Good for you. Somebody named May Cat.
00:28:17
Speaker
not seeing their pronouns or anything like that in the, uh, uh, little forward they've written, but they have very kindly uploaded a PDF copy of the matrix 1999 script, which belonged to Hugo weaving, which contains all of his notes for my God. Have I done told you about this? Yeah. Oh, let me double check. Let me spell that out for you.
00:28:45
Speaker
Uh, they wrote a lovely forward. Yes. Uh, M A E space C A T T. Uh, apparently they're online name from God. Yeah. Apparently they're online. Uh, their hacker name is the smiling shadow, which I love. Yeah. Thank you. Go check out their off matrix fan fiction, apparently on fanfiction.net. So that's exciting. Um, so I'm, uh, fanfiction.net there's, there's,
00:29:13
Speaker
They don't have any, uh, yeah, they don't have any titles listed for them. So then I guess it would just be the smiling shadow on fanfiction.net. I can't imagine it. I'll have to dig that up. Uh, once I, we got across from it together, who gave us this gift of the Hugo weaving matrix script. I know. Right. It's absolutely fabulous. And we're going to be getting into like, uh, playing agent Smith, of course, the villain. Right.
00:29:38
Speaker
And we're going to get into it like properly when we discuss, uh, Smith more in detail, but it's got all of his like.
00:29:45
Speaker
notes about the character and like during the sequence, he actually has scribbled on the back of one of the pages the map of like the shooting studio for this sequence where he's like, yeah, I was like, this is where shooting the city. This is the park. This is OK. But so they're saying a bunch of ominous stuff while the three agents are looking at this broken phone booth.
00:30:18
Speaker
And we'll need a search running and they say we have a name. The name is Neo. Who could it be? It's a classic smash cut to our unlikely protagonist.
00:30:37
Speaker
Unlikely in 1999, this was the first Kianusans that the world experienced after his rise and fall in
Exploration of Societal Themes
00:30:48
Speaker
the late 80s and early 90s.
00:30:50
Speaker
I just, I think I'm just a sucker for the truth of just like the villains are just like, now who is going to stop us? And then cut to just some schlub, just some guy. Here's, here's a dipshit asleep on his keyboard while automated web searches are running. Yeah.
00:31:11
Speaker
Oh God, listening to, uh, what massive attack. You're not my savior. Hey, it's almost like a lot of the music is communicating ideas. And then, uh, yeah, his room is very green. God in heaven.
00:31:28
Speaker
Now, the one thing I do truly appreciate, and I saw this last night in Jurassic Park, but they do that classic sci-fi trope of a computer monitor projecting the image. Yes, yeah, it's so brave. God, I love that so bad. I can't use that for real. Yeah, we cut to, from that sequence, Neo asleep on his keyboard, Keanu Reeves looking pastier and so, so green. So green.
00:31:58
Speaker
Little did, uh, in, well, right now known as, uh, Thomas A. Anderson, but better known as Neo in the hacker world. Uh, little does Neo know that his computer actually doubles as an alarm clock because it says wake up. Now, who do you think this is? Do you think this is Trinity talking to him or do you think it's Morpheus? I, because they, hmm. I'm pretty sure there's some line that eludes to, I think it's Morpheus.
00:32:28
Speaker
Well, it's, Neo says a little later at the, well, we'll get to the club, I guess, but Neo says- Oh yeah, yeah, he says you're in my computer. Trinity doesn't seem to confirm nor deny, so. But I think the messages are the way that Morpheus talks more than Trinity. Yeah, Morpheus likes to do his elusive double loop speeches, so. He knows that it sounds cool. I mean, I can't argue with that. It is cool as hell.
00:32:57
Speaker
Then we see his, uh, what he does for cash. He, uh, deals out illegal, uh, software stuff to, uh, to folks. Yeah. He's just got a hollowed out copy of a book. Um, what is it? Simulacra and simulation. There you go. Thank you. I, uh, hold on. Simulacra. Holding on. Um, by Jean, uh, Bob Baudrillard.
00:33:26
Speaker
I'm so sorry. That's probably not even right. Well, I'm sorry. It's French. It's it's French. So that's not even remotely how you pronounce it. John Baudrillard. Fair. OK, we'll take that. But he's just got a hollowed out copy of that book loaded with like floppy disks and mini. And I believe this book was required reading for the all the main actors on the piece.
00:33:55
Speaker
And- How'd you like that? You've got an acting gig. Here's your homework. Yeah, I think everyone had a hard time with it, except for Lawrence Fishburne, who plays Morpheus. And he was like, yeah, I get it. He was like, it's not that hard. Like- Oh, God. God. I love that that seems to be like a prerequisite for working with the Wachowskis. It's like, okay, you've got the job. Here's a four hardbacks due Tuesday.
00:34:24
Speaker
Yeah, it says the Wachowski's had Keanu Reeves read Simulac and simulation Kevin Kelly's out of control the new biology of machines social systems in the economic world and Dylan Evans ideas on evolutionary psychology before they even opened up the script. Carrie and most commented she had difficulty with this process. God in heaven. You know what that's
00:34:47
Speaker
That's extremely Trinity of her, I'll say that. It's like, I don't got time for this. Where's the action? Yeah, yeah, okay. Punch a computer, got it. Or are we gonna talk about the major revisited documentary? God, I don't think I've seen that since like 2002. Yeah, I'd be down to rewatch that, absolutely. It exists somewhere. But as far as the movie. Yeah, then we see these trans people at Dio's door. That's the best way I can describe them.
00:35:19
Speaker
Gender non-conforming at the very least. What does that one say? It's like it's the only way to fly. Yeah, he makes some sort of comment about like mescaline or something like that. Oh, mescaline, yeah. Yeah, that's just like, again, I like weed, but otherwise I don't know drugs. That's drug, right? Yeah, all right, pharmaceuticals.
00:35:42
Speaker
It's a spice, right? Rosemary? Right. Melange. Got it. Okay, cool. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's our Dune reference for the episode. Make no time for it. Cross it. I'm going to erase the Gaze Without a Dune reference. All right, good. 0.60. Just kidding. It never gets past zero. No, no.
00:36:02
Speaker
We don't even have extra numbers for that. I wouldn't want it any other way. But he's apparently selling illegal software to these these club life people. And I dimly recall reading somewhere that the program he's selling, this guy specifically is designed to erase parking tickets. Oh, yeah. That's a fun little trick. That's a useful program.
00:36:28
Speaker
But as we remember, his computer told him to follow the white rabbit. And this guy's companion has a white rabbit tattoo on her shoulder. What's his name? His name is Joy, and what's her name? Are they given names in the script? Yeah, let's... They're not said in the film, are they? I'm bouncing between that. It's Joy and Dejure.
00:36:57
Speaker
Oh my God. Sorry, in the script it's listed as Dejure parentheses girlfriend. This is my girlfriend of the day. I mean, that might be indicative of a relationship on a, yeah, that's fair, that's fair. But she's got a tattoo of a white rabbit and all of a sudden Neo is interested in joining them. Yeah, joining them at this,
00:37:26
Speaker
It's a kink club, right? Like it's definitely a kink club. It's gotta be a kink club. My favorite thing about The Matrix is that every film in the series has a scene at a BDSM club. I mean, I'm not arguing. Does resurrections have that? It must, because I remember thinking that.
00:37:53
Speaker
Are we Mandela affecting? Are we Mandela affecting a beauty? The kink cut. It's just the same exact movie, except for three shots. Four of the actors have like weird leather straps all over themselves. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that's the only difference. It's like the butthole cut for cats. Exactly. But they're playing drag how you wear buttholes.
00:38:31
Speaker
God almighty, man, this is an era of music that just passed me by happily. God, I love the Matrix soundtracks, but some of the music, I'm like, ah, I'm good. I'm good. Not a Rob Zombie head, eh? Yeah, I'll stick with A Might Be Giants. That works for me pretty well. Fair enough. Speaking of a movie referencing how people perceive reality differently,
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah, they're playing, uh, they're playing Dracula at the club.
00:38:59
Speaker
Anyway, he's approached by Trinity. Hooray! Trinity! Yay! And when we get the first major trans moment in the film, I suppose, of just, oh, you're Trinity? I thought you were a guy. Most guys do. Oh, God. I love that exchange. I mean, that's it right there. That's it. That's really it, yeah.
00:39:27
Speaker
Um, which every time you mentioned the name, by the way, just dear listener, anytime Ella mentions Trinity in any context, it's like, Oh yeah. The Trinity that cracked the IRSD base is like, that's like a verbal tick. You have, I think I have multiple, I know multiple people in my life who are named Trinity and one of them, one of whom we'll hopefully have on this podcast. Um, she's brought it up.
00:39:57
Speaker
And yeah, anytime I'm just like V Trinity that cracks the IRS debase. Okay. So when you say that, you're very specifically talking about this specific Trinity. Okay.
Symbolism and Metaphors
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah. Cool. I know too many Sean's. So there's no Sean in the matrix yet. That's we're going to release a t-shirt. There is no Sean. Ah, God damn. But she has a dire warning.
00:40:28
Speaker
She does. She does. Let me pull that up in the script. God, I'm saying this connection to Morpheus. Mm hmm. And as we saw on his computer earlier, he was searching for Morpheus, who we get that. Yeah, he's a he's a he's a very wanted man. Yeah. And this very erotic shot of a Trinity whispering into Neo's ear. That's a great shot. Yeah.
00:40:58
Speaker
Oh, God. And what is it? It's the script is a little off because it's the shooting script, not necessarily the finished film script. So I'm bouncing between a few sources here. I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone and why night after night you sit at your computer
00:41:27
Speaker
You're looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here.
00:41:51
Speaker
You know the question just as I did. I'm literally reading along with the movie at this point.
00:41:59
Speaker
The Wachowskis, you know, of course the Wachowskis, we talked about this last episode and we'll talk about it in my presentation on it. We're like, you know, obviously we were closeted when they made this, so not everything could be like explicit, but they kind of, even when they're trying to be subtle, I just don't think subtlety is a language they speak, which is great. That's an interesting take. Yeah. Resurrections is about as unsubtle. Well, I'd say resurrections and maybe Speed Racer, huh?
00:42:28
Speaker
No, nothing. There's no subtle Wachowski content to compare it to is the thing. Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay. So knowing what we know now, you can't not see it. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. They were as unsubtle as they could get while still technically being subtle. Missing their own red flags. Yes.
00:42:56
Speaker
But the question in this very specific case is, what is the Matrix? And of course, like the X-Files, the truth is out there. And then one of my favorite tropes in movies that has like loud buzzing music going, the thumping, the unce, unce, unce of the club music turns into the beeping of the alarm clock. Rude. And of course, he's late for work.
00:43:26
Speaker
God, he's late for work. The poor boy at Metacortex is the place's name? Yeah. Nonsensical late 90s high tech fuckery. I know. I know. What kind of stupid company would have meta in its name? I mean, a company named Meta? Come on. I didn't even put that together. That's almost as stupid as naming a social media site, X. Oh, God. Oh, I'm so mad. Oh, God.
00:43:55
Speaker
Oh, so Neo's boss, um, gives him a stern talking to about his tardiness and in the scene essentially has the same dialogue as, uh, uh, bringing it back to Brad Bird as Mr. Incredible's boss in the Incredibles. Oh my God, you're right. Company is like an enormous clock. It only works when all the little cogs mesh together. Like.
00:44:21
Speaker
Just thinking about how proud you are to be a dog in the system. Holy living Christ. You're saying the fucking dialogue from The Incredibles and I've got the movie just playing and it's syncing up perfectly. Exactly. This is worrying. Oh no. I think the boss is definitely like a one scene wonder kind of character. He's definitely very funny in that dark satire kind of way.
00:44:45
Speaker
It is it is very sharp contrast to the scene that immediately precedes it because it's very brightly lit. At least the version that I'm watching on HBO Max, which is probably the version that most people are watching it on. It's very white washed out. And as they're speaking and having this very like back to reality, quote unquote conversation, there is water.
00:45:08
Speaker
running down the window panes outside of the building that is being washed away by the window cleaners. As though something is being clarified and you can see better. The reality of the dream is being- Wiped away? Wiped away, yeah. God damn this movie, I forgot about it.
00:45:32
Speaker
Uh, so he apologizes to his boss. I'm sure we've all had those kinds of interactions where it's like, yes, sir. It won't happen again. I'm so sorry. Um, and then he's back at his cube.
00:45:43
Speaker
He's got a big old, he's got a big old cubicle. There's that whole meme of like the three 1999 office cubicle movies like this and Fight Club and Office Space. I was going to suggest at some point we should do a triple feature. We should do those. And Charlie said that she'd be very down to join us for that. Fuck yes. I've never seen any of the other two. Fight Club, Fight Club I've not seen in gotta be like
00:46:10
Speaker
12 years or so. I personally wonder if that holds up at all. Because the last time I really thought about it, it came across as incredibly fascist. But I'm trying to figure out is that like satire fascism? Is it really siding with fascism? Is it making a mockery of these, these angry men with nowhere to put their rage? And then office space is just
00:46:35
Speaker
in a red stapler. I don't know. I only know the meme of the, eh, that'd be great if you could. Oh my God. Oh, oh. Well, we're going to talk about 1999, I think at some point anyway, but I have the box office for that year pulled up. Here I'm from. And it is, it's a fascinating array of movies. I'll say that. The line, the line, you believe it's the year 1999. It's such a funny line now.
00:47:02
Speaker
I wish. Also, something I noticed on this rewatch is when the delivery person comes to Neo's Cube and says, Thomas Anderson, there's this very noticeably resigned line read for Neo. I'm just like, yeah, that's me. He doesn't feel like that's him. That's not really him. That's my government name. I get that. Yeah.
00:47:34
Speaker
Yeah. God damn. Yeah. I mean, you know, I get very exciting sequence where you know, what is it like? Okey a phone. It's it's it's not even a Nokia. I think they especially made this particular phone for this movie because you have to talk about it. We're going to talk about the Nokia phone in the next episode on reloaded because I have been watching those things on eBay for years. But he rips open a FedEx package.
00:48:01
Speaker
outslides a cell phone, it immediately starts ringing. Oh, no, it is a Nokia. My apologies. But it is not one I believe that was made commercially available. And it like has a spring loaded mouthpiece. It's got a spring loaded mouthpiece that just pops open. It's the coolest thing. He answers it. And who's on the other line?
00:48:27
Speaker
is Morpheus. It's Morpheus! That's exciting! And he's like playing The Sims with Neo essentially where it's like he can see what Neo is doing and tells them the exact time to dart in and out of the cubes because the agents are here and they're looking for him.
00:48:43
Speaker
Do you think he's got like a top-down view, like a bird's-eye view of Neo? Like he's playing Neo's life like a Legend of Zelda? I mean, that would be incredible. I know the real answer would be that he's just watching the code, like they all do, because they can't visually see the matrix. They can only see it through code. Right.
Neo's Journey and Training
00:49:06
Speaker
I understand what you're saying. I want to believe that they somehow rigged up a system for Morpheus to watch this like a video game. Okay.
00:49:12
Speaker
So now I have a pitch for you real fast. So the Matrix, as we know, is because of all these freedom fighters and the people on the side of the humans, essentially, the ones that are not plugged in, they're all pretty much hacker nerds, right?
00:49:29
Speaker
So you'd think that all of these hacker nerds would have had some familiarity maybe with video games at some point. So do you think they have like a drop-down menu of default views they can cycle through as they're watching people in the Matrix? Like here's the floor plan, here's third person.
00:49:51
Speaker
Yeah, except their except, of course, their their game culture awareness would end in 1999 once everything started going to shit for humanity. So. Right. That's why I mean specifically like a legend. Like a link to the past, the game game. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, no, it would be great for GoldenEye because isn't GoldenEye about a lot of stealth and you got to kind of sneak around people.
00:50:16
Speaker
I'm going to be completely real. I didn't own an Nintendo 64, so I never played GoldenEye properly. I only got my ass beaten multiplayer on a regular basis. I see. All my friends had N64s and they were much better at it than I was. So I spent most of my time in video games getting murdered brutally.
00:50:33
Speaker
Speaking of getting brutally murdered, Morpheus tasks Neo with climbing out onto the scaffolding outside of the office building, and we get this very vertigo-inducing shot of Neo dropping code. Oh, God! I think I... It's... I think I told you. I got a little too high on a recent rewatch, and I was curious, hey, is this gonna trigger my vertigo? It triggered my vertigo, so...
00:50:58
Speaker
Uh-oh. That shot of the phone falling. In line with the hero's journey, as we sort of alluded to earlier, this would be the initial refusal of the call to adventure. I mean, it's literally a call to adventure on a phone. Literally. And Neo says, like, I'm an innocent guy. I didn't do anything. I don't deserve this. And he just walks back in and turns himself in, essentially, to the agents. There is a great shot of him being handcuffed and put into a cop car.
00:51:27
Speaker
by the agents in the rear view mirror of Trinity's motorcycle. Yes. Love that because there's that brief shot where Trinity sees Smith look over at her and it is heart stopping. Ah, love it.
00:51:42
Speaker
And then we see the shot that gets reused in future movies, I suppose, of the zoom out on like the security cameras, right? Yes. In the interrogation room. A bunch of CRT monitors and we zoom in on the one and it's Neo in a
00:51:59
Speaker
an interrogation room. Is it all the same image or is it all different images? It's all the same image. I'm looking at it now. It's fairly brief. You see about nine or 12 peas. And then can it be assumed that maybe this is, I mean, I don't know if they were thinking this when they wrote the first film, but maybe we can assume that it's from the POV of a character that we'll meet later. I like to think it's from the POV of our good friend Larry, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My Will Ferrell's Larry, yeah.
00:52:30
Speaker
ergo yes I'm just gonna have to isolate whole that entire like absolutely a 10-minute clip and just use that as sound drops because holy so uh concordantly agent Smith walks in and and kind of grills neo about and again we had another
00:52:53
Speaker
This is maybe my favorite very trans line slash moment in the film of just sure seems you've been living two lives. One of them is Thomas A. Anderson, respectable software programmer and the other is a hacker named Neo. One of these lives has a future and one of them does not.
00:53:12
Speaker
You're logging into chat rooms and pretending to be a girl, Mr. Anderson. Something I definitely didn't not do in the late 80s, late 90s. The start of Agent Smith constantly dead naming Neo with a name that is Anderson, Andrew, Andrew meaning man, and then Mr. being man, and then son being man. He's just calling him man, man, man.
00:53:43
Speaker
You pointed that out to me, and I can't believe I missed that. That's just... That's... God damn. Unfucking real. And it's all being delivered by Hugo Weaving wearing these freaky little frameless rectangular sunglasses and an earpiece that runs into his collar. So weird. I wanna cosplay Smith so bad, but those glasses are so specific. I will have to find them like...
00:54:09
Speaker
Okay, I'm gonna take a look at my clock. Let's give ourselves about two minutes to gush about Agent Smith. Is that safe? Okay, what do you love about Smith Best? Do you have a favorite Smith line, actually? In this first film, probably later when he's interrogating Morpheus, his whole speech of just, I hate this place. It's the smell.
00:54:36
Speaker
God it's fucking perfect. Yeah. I really like mine delivery. It's just I really. Oh, it's what he's an. I believe he's an Australian actor. He is an Australian actor. Yeah. And he's doing and they filmed in Australia. Yeah. And he's doing the greatest.
00:54:56
Speaker
Worst American accent of all time. His diction is- Well, the accent is great. It's more just- It's amazing, but his diction is too perfect for an American. I don't think I've met an American that speaks like this. Well, it's perfect. I mean, he sounds mechanical. He sounds like a machine's idea of like a Ben Stein stuffy government type, you know? God, you're not wrong. Shit.
00:55:23
Speaker
Ah, God, I love Agent Smith so much. He's so angry all the time. Yeah. And you help your landlady carry out your garbage.
00:55:36
Speaker
Yeah. Big shout out. Poor Neo's passport expires on September 11th. Uh-oh. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can look this up online. It's like, uh-oh. Oh, no. Well, I mean, the good news is that in the world of The Matrix, there probably was no 9-11. The bad news is that every building in the world also got 9-11 in The Matrix. Well, you know what? Speaking of, I noticed this on my rewatch.
00:56:03
Speaker
A little later, when Morphe is explaining the plot to Neo, you see a shot of New York City and the towers are still there. They're kind of fucked up, but they're still there. Yeah, well, the machines didn't remember exactly what they looked like.
00:56:24
Speaker
Oh, you mean like in the in the present day? In the present day shots of like them on the surface of the the the actual real world earth. Yeah. Yeah. Towers are still very much. That's what I'm saying. Like there was no nine eleven, but every other building also got completely fucked. So yeah. Yeah, that's fair.
00:56:44
Speaker
Um so uh we get um we had a fantastic line of uh Neo just you know wants to get out of here doesn't he's not interesting cooperating with pigs which good on you and just says how about I give you the finger and you give me my phone call hey which is also interesting because who is he going to call because he doesn't really go sorry
00:57:11
Speaker
Yeah, yes, of course. But as far as we know, he doesn't really have like friends or necessarily like connections that he knows personally. Yeah, we get no that little bit in his apartment is the only insight we get into the life of Thomas Anderson. Really? Right. Does he have friends? Will anybody miss him when he's gone? Yeah. Or maybe he was just going to use that moment to try to escape or something or
00:57:38
Speaker
Or maybe, I don't know, could he somehow, did he know Morpheus's number? Morpheus, you gotta get me out of here. I will say, as he's flipping off Agent Smith, Smith just goes, while looking deadpan at the finger, he just goes, hmm. Yeah, yeah, he just stares at the finger. Well, that won't do at all. And then he decides to take Neo's mouth away.
00:58:09
Speaker
the freakiest fucking thing ever. Holy shit. It's so well done. It's so well done. I love it. Unable to speak. And his mouth molds shut like Play-Doh. And it's our first inkling. I think that's the first inkling, right? That the agents are
00:58:26
Speaker
or have some kind of powers that we don't. Well, we saw the one agent do the same jump Trinity does in that opening fight sequence. So we know something's up, but we certainly don't know to the extent. It's the first thing beyond acrobatics. It's the first reality warp. Definitely the first reality warp, yeah. And of course, the thing that disturbs me, the now thing does not disturb me, the robot shrimp going into the belly button.
00:58:55
Speaker
Ah, freaked me out. Right. So like he fucking, his mouth goes away and Smith pulls out of like a cigarette case, this like little wiry doodad thing that develops. A robot crawdad. Yeah. Like that's a great way to say it. Robot crawdad. I hate that. Crobot.
00:59:20
Speaker
And then it develops like mucus membrane around it and turns into a freaky goddamn little shrimp monster that just crawls into his belly button. It's the weirdest. Ah, yep. Don't like it at all. Not at all. Not at all. But, um, yeah. And then.
00:59:44
Speaker
How does he get from there to? It gets just cuts. It's played like it was all a dream. He just wakes up in bed. He's clutching his belly button. He gropes at his mouth. It's raining outside. Yeah. You don't know what the fuck's going on. And then the phone rings. Mm hmm. And who's on the phone? It's Morpheus again. And now he knows where to go.
01:00:09
Speaker
And it gets into this. I love movie rain because it's so excessive. Like it's just so much rain in movies. Oh, God, I really think they're leaning into the rain. Well, I mean, this movie is also extremely cyberpunk, which like begs the use of rain. Really? I don't know if you have seen Blade Runner. Yeah. But especially with the theme of.
01:00:35
Speaker
dress well that's not cyberpunk but yeah you know what you're right this movie could use a t-rex why are we talking about this movie zero stars zero stars no t-rex zero stars it's can't buy this name by the same coin though Jurassic Park has no agent Smith is you're out of ten
01:00:56
Speaker
You're right, you're right. I'll tell you what, it does have Laura Dern. Anyway, so Neo gets in a car meeting, Neo is standing underneath a bridge to meet a car filled with people that he met on the internet. The worst advice. What a mood, what a mood. The worst advice you could get from somebody in 1999. Hi, I know you from the internet. It's early in the morning. Where are your friends from online? Yeah, take these drugs. Here's a gun.
01:01:28
Speaker
Yeah. Like immediately point a gun at him. Yes. Switch immediately pulls a gun on him. I love switch. God, switch kind of fucking rules. Switch was originally intended to appear as one as like, I forget if it was like a man in the matrix and a woman in the real world or the other way around. And again, we can read it probably a little bit more into the Wachowskis on this. I believe it was.
01:01:56
Speaker
a male in the real world and a female in the matrix. But the studio decided that that would be too confusing to audiences.
01:02:06
Speaker
But the friend I was watching this with, when I explained that, she was like, oh, I thought that is how it is in the movie. Because they still very much code a Switch differently. I think Switch wears something resembling a binder in some shots. Yeah.
01:02:27
Speaker
And I want to say they, because I have no idea what Switch's pronouns are. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. But no, it also helps that there's no access to like haircare products or or or anything like that in the real world. I mean, I don't know. Some of them are looking pretty coiffed in the in the in the real world. But but. Switch is also, I think, the only one who wears white primarily.
01:02:56
Speaker
with a bleach hair too. It's a good look. It is a great and fantastic look. And his, um, who else is in that car? It's switch. Uh, APOC, APOC, who gets little to no characterization. I always thought their name was APOC, like E-P-O-C-H, like a span of time. Oh, I see what you're saying. Like apocalypse. Yeah.
01:03:22
Speaker
Which I guess is technically more badass of an online so like I just love that in this movie all the heroes names are like Your your runescape name right like just XX underscore Demon Slayer 45 XX like underscore
01:03:39
Speaker
Speaking of which, all of these characters must have jumped on their usernames very early to get something as choice as Neo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to meet a hero who's just like, yeah, sorry. My name is, uh, my name is Asian blaster, uh, underscore, underscore 99. Like, yeah. 420. Yeah. Winky face. You know, you can just call me that for short, but it was taken when I, when I logged in for the first time.
01:04:09
Speaker
But they pull out what looks to be like almost like a piece of equipment from the Ghostbusters. It's like if the Ghostbusters designed a vacuum cleaner and they slap it on Neo's belly button. Yeah. And they siphon out the fucking the fucking shrimp thing. Yeah. God, I hate the shrimp. He says, Jesus Christ, that thing was real.
01:04:33
Speaker
Yes and no, Neo, yes and no. Well, it's real in the sense that it happened to you, but it's not in the sense that nothing here is. Yeah. Except us, but. Real enough for government work. Yeah, yeah. Oh, God. That's pretty much what the matrix is. We pull up to the rainiest building in the universe.
01:04:57
Speaker
Yes. Then we go into the tallest, the highest room of the tallest floor. And Morpheus is staring badassly out the window and then turns around and got with the thunder and lightning. Yeah, he times his line perfectly with the thunder and lightning intentional. Like I think you can tell just by the grin he makes that he planned that. Oh, he planned that out perfectly. He is he is a bitch that lives for the drama. I mean, his outfit alone.
01:05:27
Speaker
Can we just agree right now that like Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus is the coolest person ever to exist? Quite possibly.
01:05:37
Speaker
I'm pretty sure there's a solid argument for that. He's just so cool. He's cool, but he's also such a dork, but I think that makes him cooler. The dorkiness, I feel like he gets to it later, certainly. Yes, yeah. But in this game, he's pure cool. It's just the coolest fucking thing you've ever seen. Then he gives the
01:06:01
Speaker
coolest fucking speech in the world to Nino. That's the splinter in your mind, yep. Oh god. Well, you know you can't explain, but you know that something's off about the world, you know? We should do an entire episode on just this sequence, quite honestly. Yeah. Because there's so much to fucking unpack from like a trans perspective in particular. Yeah, I know.
01:06:26
Speaker
The key point of the scene is that Morpheus, of course, presents Neo with two pills, one red and one blue. The blue pill will simply wake him up in his bed like nothing happened. The red pill, on the other hand, will show him how deep the rabbit hole goes. He's making various allusions to, of course, the white rabbit, and now he says, I suppose you're feeling a bit like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.
01:06:52
Speaker
And fun fact about that red pill, pre-marin was the commonly prescribed HRT pill for trans women at this time, and it's red. It's a red pill. That's exciting, which is even, it's ironic now that estradiol is a blue pill. Yeah, it's like a bluish green, yeah. Mildly frustrating, but there it is, I guess.
01:07:14
Speaker
And nobody ever did anything nefarious with that information and iconography ever again. And there was no need to make an entire podcast about reclaiming said iconography. Hey, that's the title of the show. I should do a shot. Hey, take a pill.
01:07:34
Speaker
Yes. No, that's sublingual. That's going to make me speaking even weirder. Yeah. Don't take podcasts while taking your sublingual way. Yeah. Don't podcast in HRT. But also do what Neo does and take your pills with water, girlies.
01:07:50
Speaker
I'm glad that they show that I'm glad that it's not just because I think there's a there's a really funny robot chicken sketch of of Neo taking the pill and it's it's a massive pill and he's just he's having a really hard time like I'm sorry I have a really hard time taking pills yeah like a chewable like tablet and then he like chokes on it and dies
01:08:12
Speaker
It's like a chewable Flintstones vitamin. Yeah, do you have a gummy blue red dough? You take the Barney, you wake up. You take the Fred. You take the Wilma, and I show you how yabba-dabba-deep this bedrock. Oh, motherfucker! I hate that. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah.
01:08:40
Speaker
I owe you like a dinner for that show. Shit. That's amazing. Oh, there's also a great, um, I think it's a UCB thing. Uh, the characters welcome YouTube channel has a great skit, uh, which we can link below called like Morpheus forgot the pills. And it's just Morpheus kind of like, if you drink the skim milk, you'll wake up in your bed. But if you drink the 2% milk,
01:09:05
Speaker
He's just having to do space work with things on hand. That's fucking incredible. Ah, goddamn. To cut to the chase. The dial-up noises I love when he's glitching out of this reality and then going down the rabbit hole.
01:09:23
Speaker
glitching through the mirror. That's such a cool. The mirror warping is such a simple effect to pull off in CGI at this point because that was like the first major CGI to be done at this level.
01:09:40
Speaker
Pardon me, I want to say in like 1992 for Terminator 2 Judgment Day. Yeah, that's right. Right. So it's a fairly simplistic trick to pull off with just the mirror, but then it comes off in goo on his fingers and is just spreading up his whole body. Any aging that it has nowadays still works because it's all in this manufactured reality anyway.
01:10:05
Speaker
Right, it's supposed to be artificial, regardless. Yeah. And it crawls up his neck and then it goes down his throat and his scream turns into the modem noises. Everything's going into his orifices today, like his belly button, his mouth. Well, now we're getting into the one shot that confused me the most when I saw this movie for the quote unquote first time, seeing these sequences like out of context and out of order, because we would,
01:10:33
Speaker
In order to get to the next scene, you would have to hit the next button. So you would see this three-second POV shot of Neo's naked torso suspended in a vat of goo surrounded by cables attached directly to his body. In order to get to the next action sequence. Yeah, with like this...
01:10:58
Speaker
I didn't even get to the gooey baby man, I just saw the POV weird gross shot and I'm like what the fuck is this? And then it gets even weirder because it pulls up to him clawing his way out of like this gooey sack filled with cables and he's got feeding tubes and he's the shot that he has to pull the fading tube out. Maybe with Animatrix as an exception I feel like this is
01:11:23
Speaker
the most horror that The Matrix gets. Oh, this this leans into the horror. The design. Looking at the all of the stacks of human pods and realizing that like all that everything has just been this his whole life. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, these all of these thousands of humans are in these pods like next to him and around him and below him and above him. The
01:11:53
Speaker
The biomechanical design of this, the robot world that we're in now, I know it leans a bit more towards like insectoid, especially with like the robots themselves, but it's extremely HR Giger or HR Geiger. I forget exactly how you pronounce it, but the guy who designed the xenomorph aliens in Alien, but instead of.
01:12:17
Speaker
dicks and vaginas its insects and thank god it's insects and not dicks and vaginas because I don't think I could have taken another goddamn phallic monster uh uh uh yeah don't take that one out of context kids but what if I took like a a penis and made it black and then it beat you over the head with lasers gave it
01:12:43
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, God. And what if what if it had more teeth inside of those teeth? It's the worst. But. No, it was my school. Neo is fully detached. All of the plugs pop off him and he gets flushed.
01:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, I really want there to just be a comical cartoon flush sound effect at that scene. Look, we know the Wachowskis have a sense of humor about these things. In the burly brawl, you hear the fucking bowling pins getting knocked over. Bowling pins, yeah. Fucking amazing. Oh, but not before one of the robots controlling this whole thing catches him awake and tries to strangle him back into position. Well, yeah, it removes the plug from the back of his neck.
01:13:34
Speaker
Which is just, you see the length of a spike that was poking into his head. Jesus. Okay, wait. I think this part always confused me. Is that big robot that crawls up a friend or a foe? Is it programmed by the heroes? What I have understood, because we know that the robot that fulfills this function in resurrections is a heroic,
01:13:58
Speaker
Yeah, but that's, you know, there's kind of a whole new world order in that. Right. But in this movie specifically, if I'm remembering my lore correctly, because again, this is decades of me just reading horse shit online. If I'm wearing correctly, there's nothing else online to read. Right. The effect of the red pill is one that disrupts your, as Morpheus says, input output carrier signal and
01:14:25
Speaker
From what I understand, that basically means that you register as dead and disconnected from the matrix. So this is essentially like a maintenance robot coming over and unplugging the garbage, and then they flush the garbage. So that then they can liquefy the dead to feed to the living. Okay, that makes sense. It also, that also explains why
01:14:51
Speaker
The Matrix does not detect them when they plug back in because they. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So well, at that point also, they're on like a different network carrier. Yeah. But yeah, different server. Fucking credible. And then Neo is picked up in a claw machine game. Yeah. Oh.
01:15:18
Speaker
You get that great shot of him leaning over, of a Morpheus leaning over, welcome to the real world. And then you get all of these disturbing shots that I don't like to watch. I really don't like Neo pulling that apparatus out of his wrist. Oh God. I mean, I will say that's convenient from like a perspective of like getting blood work done and everything. Yeah, but it still looks like it hurts.
01:15:41
Speaker
It definitely hurts. The design of this movie, again, it's just sublime. And then another absolutely raw line of why do my eyes hurt? You've never used them before.
01:15:56
Speaker
And then we get the sequence. Morpheus explains it all. Morpheus explains you heard a cholisserie. Oh, shit. Yeah, I'll try and remember to drop that in as a sound clip. Son of a bitch. Morpheus explains that Neo believed that the year was 1999. It's actually closer to 2199. It's the far, far future next Sunday AD. And
01:16:23
Speaker
than that mankind waged war on AI, or rather AI waged war on mankind, or whoever started it.
01:16:31
Speaker
mankind blotted out the sky to try to depower the the solar-powered robots. They needed another form of power. Then they realized, hey, you know what generates its own electricity? The human brain. And so they hooked all humans up into this artificial reality called the matrix so that they could harness their brain activity and turn
01:16:54
Speaker
a human being into this. He holds up- Holding up a Duracell copper top battery. A Duracell with the logo covered and it's such a fucking good image. That's what I'm talking about when they're in the construct.
01:17:11
Speaker
It's communicating dense, dense information in such a snappy visual way that you get it. And then you understand what you're up against. Yeah. So you're, you're bouncing back and forth constantly between these like horrifying shots of like the machines harvesting human baby pods.
01:17:30
Speaker
Oh, God, to to to destroy buildings and then it cuts back into like Neo and Morpheus in a white room looking at a 1950s TV residual self image.
01:17:45
Speaker
Uh, you get so much techno babble in this. Now I'm going to say this right now. I took a class in college in like 2004 called science fiction, literature of the 21st century of the 20th century, whatever the class was fucking called. Been 20 years. Don't know what to tell you. Um,
01:18:03
Speaker
but he would show us clips of movies that he would explain is science fiction. And he showed us like the opening 20 minutes of The Matrix. That's not the science fiction. That's just the weird, interesting, intriguing setup. This sequence right here where Morpheus is actually explaining everything is the science fiction. This is the actual techno battle horse shit that you need to know to understand the rest of the movie.
01:18:32
Speaker
Yeah, and then from here it's just kind of several sequences of Morpheus teaching Neo things. I mean, he introduced them to the rest of the crew of their ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, named after the biblical king, and one of many, many biblical religious references in the series.
01:18:51
Speaker
I don't know. My favorite genuinely might be mouse. Mouse is a fantastic like little kind of little shit. I would say of a character like he is a horny little shit. It's a horny little shit. But he also like he genuinely makes some good points. He's like, how did the machines know what tasty we tasted like? And is that why everything tastes like chicken? Like, could they not perfectly replicate chicken? Oh, mighty. Wouldn't that be jarring to finally get out into the real world and like
01:19:19
Speaker
not have to relearn what everything tastes like. Yeah, exactly. That would suck. God damn. Like, well, I mean, I imagine people who like recovered from COVID have to do the same thing. Yeah. Wow. You're not wrong. Shit. Um, we live in the society. Then we also meet, um, tank and dozer who are brothers, right?
01:19:41
Speaker
Yes. And they were born of flesh and blood. They were not made by the machines. They were born in Zion, which is the human's capital city in the last human city. Last human city. Yeah, that's true. That's their that's their strongholds. And I really like again,
01:19:58
Speaker
have these really clever ways of expositing of just like, what is Zion? Well, when we win the war, Zion is where the party will be. Like, that's a great way of describing it. You bounce from Morpheus explaining everything in like the most dramatic gravitas sort of way, and then you get to Tank, who is much more down to earth, much more like
01:20:21
Speaker
Human really not only have they were they not born in the matrix, but they can't go into the matrix They don't have the plugins. They don't have the ports in their head. Yeah, but they of course are hackers so they are they're the operators they operate going in and out of the matrix and the constructs from the outside and
01:20:42
Speaker
the designated guy in the chair, the guy in the God port guy in the chair, the designated driver for the matrix designated driver. Yeah, no ports for you. All right. You're driving tonight.
01:21:00
Speaker
Yeah, I love that the concept of downloading new skills into your brain so fucking cool. I'm just like, he learns all the martial arts, you can look up anything you need to know, you can just download it, right in your brain, like
01:21:13
Speaker
I also do love the contrast of these two sequences, because again, you go from Morpheus explaining the most horrifying thing in the universe. And then Morpheus saying, I think you are our Messiah, the one. No pressure. Yeah, he explains to Neo that when we were first freed, it was this guy, the one that freed us. And when he died, he promised to return. And I believe you are. Second coming, perhaps?
01:21:44
Speaker
Or maybe a fifth or sixth coming, depending on who you are. Well, maybe. But who is counting at this point? But we bounce from the horror and the suddenly messianic bent this took.
01:21:59
Speaker
And then you want to learn kung fu? Yeah. And then Tang teaches him how to fucking fight and it kicks ass. Yeah. I love just the the training scene is great. Just stop trying to hit me and hit me is such a good line. Oh, God.
01:22:14
Speaker
And then of course it's the jump program where Neo fails to reap buildings in a single bound. You see Neo in the fight sequence start to accept what's going on and he starts being able to bend reality, but clearly not enough.
01:22:31
Speaker
And it's such a cool concept too of like it ties it back to the whole roots of computers and techno punk and stuff of like computers are built on rules, but rules can be bent and even broken and that's hacking. You can hack anything. Like computers are math, but you can work around it.
01:22:50
Speaker
Right. And the whole idea is that you have to free your mind. You have to hack your own brain essentially. Yeah. To reprogram how you think. Unlearn what you've learned. Yeah. Yeah. Reprogram how you think about reality. Yeah.
01:23:04
Speaker
Um, and then he says, free your mind. And then he jumps from one skyscraper to the other. We get the greatest line in the film. I'm sure you've seen the gif of that shot of him saying free your mind. And then it cuts to a guy trying to jump off a shed and just slamming into the side. It's, it's kind of ruined that shot for me a little bit because it's so fucking funny. But we do get the greatest line in the whole franchise, which is, whoa.
Agent Threat and Real-World Dangers
01:23:36
Speaker
What's Keanu Reeves? You gotta have a whoa. You gotta have a whoa.
01:23:41
Speaker
Yeah. And then there's literally a Keanu Reeves. Whoa. They worked it into Toy Story four, for God's sakes. Yeah, that they did. And then it's the I think my favorite scene of these like training sequences is the definitely the the one where they are in like the construct of the city. And he's just kind of talking about like, you know, we're trying to free all these people, but when they're plugged in, they're dependent on the system. They're going to defend the system.
01:24:09
Speaker
It's I call this the club. Yeah, I call this the clubs to death sequence because the song playing is called clubs to death. And it's yeah, it's Neo and Morpheus walking through an incredibly crowded busy street of people going against them. Essentially, they're going up the street looking like repeated NPCs in a video game almost as though they cast twins exclusively for the shooting. Boy, how did they cast a shitload of twins for this scene? Yeah.
01:24:40
Speaker
It's also where we really get into the dirt of the truth about the agents, that they are sentient programs that can take over any brain in the matrix to be anywhere and be anyone. It's so fucking cleverly done too, because it's like Neo is distracted by a woman in a red dress. And she is distracting. I'll give her that, yeah. Absolutely distracting.
01:25:06
Speaker
Um, but then when, uh, uh, Morpheus says, look again, and he turns back. Um, and then I'm like, hubba hubba, even better. Well, now I'm really distracted. Um, side note, this is also a portion of the script. Um,
01:25:25
Speaker
that Hugo Weaving felt necessary to draw big squiggly lines next to these lines that Morpheus has explaining the purpose of the agents. That makes sense. He's not technically in this scene, but it's like, oh, this is a better understanding of my character. It also just the haunting line of just like no one has ever gone up against an agent and lived. You see one of these guys, you run. Morpheus believes in you to essentially be God and is still telling him like, you can't beat this guy.
01:25:53
Speaker
That's a hell of a thing to put on a kid, you know? That's rough. And also just again, a hard, a fucking hard line of just, you're saying I can dodge bullets? No. I'm saying when the time comes, you won't need to.
01:26:08
Speaker
Ah, God, perfect. But also importantly, they're establishing that the agents can basically possess any of these people that are still plugged in, which is essentially the justification of being able to shoot people with abandon. This is where we get that close up of the cop saying like, these people are our enemies.
01:26:33
Speaker
I was literally just looking at the screenshot. Yeah, it's kind of amazing. You see, Neo, some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses. In fact, most of those that work forces are the same. Whoops.
01:26:46
Speaker
In fact, all of those that were forces. God damn. And then we get the squiddy, right? The squid attack. Then we get the info dump on the next threat. So now we've got the threat. We've got the threat established inside of the matrix, which is the agents. And now we have the threat of the real world, which is the sentinels.
01:27:13
Speaker
They're all constructs of the Matrix to protect itself, of the machines that run the Matrix need these safeguards to keep everything in line. And yes, the one for the real world is the Sentinels, which are these robot squiddy guys. And I always laugh at this line because it says, a killing machine designed for one thing, search and destroy. I always say,
01:27:35
Speaker
That's two things. That is two things. That's fair. And then I always think of a killing machine designed for one thing, killing. Well, you did say it's a killing machine. That's true. That's true. I do love the design of the Sentinels. Again, very insectoid, just like a dozen or so tentacles, these metal steel cables coming off their back.
01:28:03
Speaker
Sorry. Oh, no, they they seem to swim through the air. Yeah. Like you see the Nebuchadnezzar and it's on like these big like electric pads that keep it hovering, which is fascinating design, which they have to turn off. Right. But the senators don't seem to have any external means of locomotion. They're just swimming through the air. It's gorgeous.
01:28:27
Speaker
And again, notably they take great care to show that they have to turn off all their electronics before they release the EMP pulse. Another piece of tech ephemera that they have to define for late 90s audiences. What's an EMP? Electromagnetic pulse.
01:28:48
Speaker
There's a James Bond movie where like the newest check on the block was GPS. And like the first five minutes of that movie are them just, we've got, we've got you on our global positioning system and it's a Bond movie. So everybody's saying it with pure addiction, global positioning system. Fabulous. Fabulous. Um, but the sentinels are terrifying. Yep.
01:29:24
Speaker
They got out of there just in the nick of time. Side note, I do love that Morpheus puts on a little hat for this sequence. He just pulls on a beanie. It's his sailor hat. He's like spotting in a white whale. I'm aware that my dome is reflective. I better cover that up. Oh yeah, that's true. That could give them away real easy.
01:29:40
Speaker
They're so terrifying, and I hate them, and I love them with their many eyes.
01:29:46
Speaker
Oh god, so after this we talked with uh with cypher a bit, right? Joey pants playing cypher who is Such a scumbag already like he's because he's already talking about how he just ogles women in the matrix and then Yep, it gives neo a drink of just this rancid motor oil like
01:30:08
Speaker
Well, this, this, this is the scene where we established that you don't even like, you can't decode the matrix really. So you're just looking at these screens of this digital rain falling. And also that you can't, uh, can't unring a bell. You know, he's, he's expressing regret over in being in this reality, we're asked to eat slop all the time. We're having dark and cold and gray. And he doesn't seem to respect Murphy's very much. Um, he really doesn't. He seems to have buyer's remorse really.
01:30:37
Speaker
He's also got the evilest little goatee mustache combo I think I've ever seen. But on some level who can blame him? Because they take great care to show how much this world sucks. They really do. The liquor is disgusting.
01:30:54
Speaker
The scene where Neo pops, as Cypher puts it, and just is so overwhelmed with all the information and the dystopia that he vomits into the grate of the floor. He's so visceral. But then Cypher says, well, why hasn't he taken Neo to see the Oracle yet? And then we finally do meet the Oracle. Well, that's the next, I believe the next sequence. We first have the steak dinner.
01:31:24
Speaker
Is that it? Oh yes. Yeah, it cuts right from Cypher being alone in the hacking bay to the steak dinner. He apparently plugs himself into the matrix. Yeah. Yeah, he apparently plugs himself into the matrix, and then he has a lovely dinner with Agent Smith. I want to say, like, the check comes and Cypher just kind of pushes it toward Smith. Smith pulls out his wallet for grudgingly.
01:31:55
Speaker
I thought we'd go Dutch this time. Hey, I'm the one giving you the information. Essentially they crack a deal where Cypher is selling out Morpheus and selling out Zion and the humans in return for getting plugged back into the Matrix.
01:32:14
Speaker
Yeah. And also the reveal that his name is Mr. Reagan and he wants to be somebody important, like an actor in The Matrix. Yeah. Yeah. And then Reagan betrays a bunch of queer people, huh? Yeah, that it does. That it does. Who led a big strike for the unions in the 60s and then who busted unions in the 80s? Mr. Reagan. Mr. Reagan.
01:32:38
Speaker
that that's his Matrix given name is so good. So again, again, he's don't know subtlety. He's got that key line to ignorance is bliss. Yeah, where he says like, I know it's all fake that the matrix is just telling my brain that the steak is juicy and delicious, but
01:32:57
Speaker
It is a good-looking steak. He doesn't care at this point. And again, I get it. They show what brought him to that point, I think. They effectively show us what could bring a person to do something like that. And he also, notably, I think he says, I don't want to remember anything. So I think it shows that he has some level of remorse, I think, over what he's doing. Yeah. Yeah.
01:33:22
Speaker
And he's gonna go through with it anyway, because in the next sequence, uh, well, first we get some fun talking about tasty wheat and chicken. Yeah. And, and, and mouse's masturbation habits. Um, I mean, yeah, yes. The, the little fucker. I hope they wipe. He offers, he's, they call him a digital pimp because he offers room alone with the woman in the red.
01:33:48
Speaker
God in heaven, I hope they sanitize those seats, those barbershop seats that they set them up in the Matrix for. No, they don't. Ugh, grody. Ugh, I hate that. But the idea is that they're... Oh, no, no, there's no good news.
01:34:07
Speaker
gross sometimes ignorance is bliss I can sometimes I'm you know what I'm good the matrix to take Neo to see the Oracle and we get the fantastic hacker line of we're in
01:34:23
Speaker
That's true. Oh my God. That shot of like the camera circling the phone, that's ringing and then they're just all there behind the phone. Standing like an ant Levoitz photo shoot, by the way. It fucking slaps. So then they go to the apartment building. Morpheus shows Neo the door and Neo is the one who has to walk through it.
01:34:50
Speaker
And it's very convenient because he doesn't have to actually open it for himself. Yes. He's sat in a waiting room with a bunch of child prodigies who I guess are all potentially the one, the savior.
Rescue Mission and Neo's Transformation
01:35:05
Speaker
because they're all practicing. I don't think there are potentials as in potentially the one. I think there are potentials to unplug from the matrix properly because there is a line earlier in the movie about how they typically don't wake up or unplug adult binds after they've hit a certain name. But clearly then these but clearly these they know the kids and everyone in that room, they clearly know that it's a matrix. They know that it's not real, right?
01:35:32
Speaker
I would hope so by this point. I mean- Because if you're venting a spoon with your mind, you're probably going to realize the spoon ain't real. Yeah, yeah. You do get, I mean, in Reloaded, you get, apparently, the spoon boy is out and about in Zion because he sends Neo a message of a spoon. Yeah, I honestly didn't realize that child is so perfectly gender ambiguous, I feel.
01:36:01
Speaker
Yeah, right? Weird ass accent that you would get from an English kid trying to do an American accent or vice versa. That is no spoon. Perfectly shaved head. Yeah. Ambiguous robes. Is the kid wearing a pillowcase? I can't tell. It's almost like the spoon vending thing just reminds me of imagine them just doing the rubber pencil trick of just like, look, you can make the pencil. Oh my god.
01:36:33
Speaker
So we meet the oracle and surprise, she's just a nice old lady. She's a nice old lady in a weird 1970s decorated green and orange kitchen. And then, of course, being in the matrix, she has Neo accept cookies before continuing.
01:37:01
Speaker
Goddamn, it's such a solid programmer joke. And don't worry about the vase. He breaks the vase. I'm sorry. Now for the real mindfuck, would you have broken? Yeah, I had anything. What's really going to bake your noodle later on? Let's make your noodle. Yeah. Yeah. What a great phrase. And they talk about fate and destiny and stuff like that. And the ultimate question of is Neo the one the Oracle says, no.
01:37:33
Speaker
Yeah. She goes through like the whole dog and pony show of like inspecting his teeth and having him say, ah, which I think is so cute. Yeah. Right. After chain smoking, by the way, because the Oracle is, of course, a further reference to Alice in Wonderland. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chain smoking green and orange caterpillar. And there are signs says know thyself.
01:37:56
Speaker
Oh God, I need that as a tattoo. That's down the line. I mean, I think know thyself is like her version of live, laugh, love. It's Latin. It means know thyself. Actually, it means live, laugh, love, but I'm too embarrassed to admit that. Oh, that's good. And we get another trans ass line of the being the one is like being in love. You don't no one can tell you you're in love. You just know it through and through balls to bones.
01:38:25
Speaker
Yeah, I did make sure another great phrase. I did make sure when I was cutting together our intro for this series, I had to include the phrase balls to bones. It's so fucking good. And then so Neo kind of was also told that at one point he's going to have to make a decision between his own life or Morpheus's life.
01:38:49
Speaker
Yeah. At some point in the future. Yeah, within the next 10 minutes. Morpheus essentially. And Morpheus does not let Neo tell him this because what the oracle said is for you and for you alone. Mm-hmm. Because earlier, Neo asks Trinity what the oracle told her when she saw the oracle and she can't say, or she doesn't say, rather.
01:39:14
Speaker
I wanna say she's about to say something and then she gets cut off by Morpheus, the ultimate cock block. This is the girl cock block, yeah. The girl cock block, my apologies. I mean, same gif, same gif. Some boys have cocks, believe it or not.
01:39:36
Speaker
Oh god. Well, that just happened. It's dead in its tracks. No, yeah, sorry. I spent today at the beach, and of course, a beach day for any trans girl is just like, all right, what am I doing about this situation today? False to bones. That's what it fucking is, isn't it? I just found my first one-piece bathing suit today. Say, hey, here you go, nice. Lasts for like 700 episodes. It's a really long anime.
01:40:07
Speaker
We still got a lot of pod to get through here. We're only like halfway through the movie. Come on, let's speedrun the rest of the movie. It's mostly action from here on out. It is, it is. We can speedrun this ship. Yeah, the sequence I like to call God damn you, Cypher, which is the summary of Gravity Falls.
01:40:30
Speaker
That's Mystery Shack Lookback, available now on the finest podcast. God damn you, Cypher. That's when Cypher pulls the rug out from under them and, well, I mean, even before that, they're meeting. Yeah, well, first, they're back in the hotel thing and everybody dies in sequence.
01:40:52
Speaker
No, but even before that, they're making their way through and then Neo sees the glitch in the matrix, which is a data gap. And then they realize that the agents or the matrix rather has changed something to prevent their escape, which means that they know they're there.
01:41:08
Speaker
And then they realize they have no way out and they have to get out through the wall of the bathroom. So they're all climbing down very precariously as the cops are outside. And then Cypher just happens to sneeze on some dust and alerts them to their presence behind the wall, leading to Morpheus getting captured.
01:41:28
Speaker
In one of the coolest ways possible, because he does burst out from the wall. Yeah, he does, like the Kool-Aid man. Which is kicky. Oh, yeah. I really want to get a little bit deeper. I mean, Lawrence Fish were going to do the Kool-Aid man.
01:41:44
Speaker
God, I mean, he he approaches Kool-Aid man status in the John Wick movies, because he's playing as essentially a hobo king. But he's like up his operatic game, and he's just wearing filthy rags. It rules.
01:42:02
Speaker
Um, so then we get, yeah, they rushed back to the telephone to try to get themselves all out of the matrix, only to realize that Cypher has beaten them out of the matrix because he picks up instead of tank. He has blasted tank and dozer with this blaster gun thing. I don't, I don't really know what it's supposed to be.
01:42:20
Speaker
The gun has a name. I honestly forget. I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does. It's basically it throws a streak of plasma lightning, not unlike a Ghostbusters proton, which kicks ass. And he just goes on this whole monologue as he's one by one unplugging all the bodies from the matrix, killing them because
01:42:44
Speaker
Like as we established earlier in the training montage, you die in the matrix, you die for real because your mind makes it real. And severed from the matrix without a clean way out, you're dead.
01:43:00
Speaker
So, who goes first? I believe it's Apoc. Apoc goes first, and then he says, if you have anything you want to say to Switch, I would say it now. And then we get, not like this. Not like this. Not like this. One of my favorite memes online. How do you nod? Not like this. Not like this. Not like this. Hey, I can't really... Hey, can you teach me how to tie my shoes? Not like this. Not like this.
01:43:29
Speaker
Terrible, terrible, terrible.
01:43:31
Speaker
Yeah, and then he goes on this whole rant about like, so if it's really fate and destiny that this guy is the one that he's going to save us, then shouldn't something stop me from unplugging him and killing him right now? What's going to stop me? Nothing. There's nothing that can stop me. And then, of course, Tank, right, gets up and still alive and kills Cypher with the plasma gun, which is funny because going back to the the bake your noodle thing, if Cypher had not gone on that tangent about fate,
01:44:01
Speaker
He could have just killed Neo. Yeah, he would have had time. So it's like, it leaves it open of like, was it really, you know, destiny or, or, or what, you know? Oh, God.
01:44:18
Speaker
But then they get out and the crew is thinned down significantly. Morpheus is captured. Morpheus is captured. He's being interrogated by the agents. They're going to try to get him to give up the location of Zion so they can destroy the humans once and for all. And Neo won't let that happen. He will not let that happen because he's a good boy.
01:44:47
Speaker
Um, and also, but even at Trinity says like Trinity is like, now that Morpheus is gone, I am in command and I'm telling you, we are not doing this. Like Morpheus would not want us all to, to, to sacrifice ourselves. Right. Like, is that, is that what she says? It's only like that. Oh, I believe so. Hang on. I'm skipping around resistant to the idea of going back into the matrix to rescue Morpheus. Right.
01:45:17
Speaker
I believe so. Yeah, I'm skipping around throughout the movie. My apologies. You'd think I'd have this better memorized scene so many goddamn times. Yeah, that's right. Neo tells her, okay, no, you're wrong. I'm not the one. The oracle told me so. And Trinity says, no, you have to be.
01:45:44
Speaker
Because she
Conclusion and Future Implications
01:45:46
Speaker
won't say why. Because she cannot explain why. Oh God. The acting in this scene is so beautiful. She's got those big beautiful eyes and he's got those big sad eyes. Ah, heartbreaking. So Neo starts doing it anyway and then Trinity asserts her authority as the ranking officer on the ship and she's gonna be coming along too. And Neo goes, yes mommy.
01:46:15
Speaker
It does take on that bit of a dynamic here. And we cut from them hacking and hacking and hacking to. They're going to need guns. Lots of guns. Lots of guns. They're going to stock up on their arsenal.
01:46:30
Speaker
Well, we also get like three separate monologues from Agent Smith during this sequence. Well, it's the first time we get to see Smith as Smith and not as one of the agents because he notably unplugs his earpiece. He disconnects himself from the rest of his guys. During the third monologue, yeah.
01:46:52
Speaker
He explains in the first leg of this monologue that the first matrix was essentially a heaven and people wouldn't accept it because it was too perfect. So they redesigned the matrix to look more like our world. Then we made the second one which was sort of a haunted house vibe. We don't have to talk about that one yet.
01:47:13
Speaker
And the third matrix was six flags. And then the second monologue is essentially calling humans cancer and we are the cure. And then the third monologue is, do you want to know what I hate about this place?
01:47:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's Smith leveling with Morpheus. That's what he takes off the earpiece. Yeah, he takes off the glasses. I hate this place. And it's a humanizing moment for Smith, really, even though he's so fucking good. You really start to see the the cool, calm, collected facade really snap. And that's why he is particularly determined to do this because if they can win, then
01:47:54
Speaker
he won't need to stay in the Matrix. The only reason he's there is to beat these freedom fighters and he wants out. I love Smith so much. He's such an angry little fucker. And then we of course get our fighter for the Smith Assode. And then we cut to from Smith being crazy to the fight sequence of the movie.
01:48:22
Speaker
Oh yeah, just killing all of these cops. These real people plugged into the Matrix all die. Yeah, yeah. And it's, this is the sequence that like made people like sit up and like pay attention to the Matrix. When people, like, it's, they mock it even in a resurrection, Reclamations. That's our show, Resurrections. God damn this naming convention that we have bought into.
01:48:50
Speaker
But it's like, what do you think of when you think of The Matrix? Guns, lots of guns, bullet time, the lobby shootout sequence. And also, I mean, I think it's the thing that made people so nervous about The Matrix and the post Columbine. Well, yeah, there was there was what? A 20 day window between this movie being released and the Columbine shooting happening.
01:49:12
Speaker
And of course, everybody likes to blame The Matrix and violence in video games or movies or whatever when the sad reality is that these idiots had that planned for months before The Matrix came out. The trench coat crossover thing is just sad coincidence, unfortunately.
01:49:32
Speaker
You'll also notice that Neo never carries a gun for the rest of the series after this. Oh, he doesn't need to as we find out. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, they were able to infiltrate, you know, because Smith took the earpiece off, Smith was not alerted to the fact that there are infiltrators in the building and everything kind of goes shit from there. With the elevator sequence, I love so much. It's all so well choreographed and so not worth describing in audio form. Just watch the movie.
01:49:57
Speaker
Yeah, seriously, we could describe the lobby shootout sequence in The Matrix, but we're gonna just say it's the lobby shootout sequence in The Matrix. You probably know what it fucking looks like by this point. Ditto with the helicopter scene and the bullet time rooftop scene. I mean, they're all...
01:50:14
Speaker
we can certainly get into describing and nerding out over those sequences when like when we talk about like our commentaries or talking about the special effects and shit like that because essentially they they're so frustratingly much to get into about these movies long action sequence yeah they rescue Morpheus it kicks ass they got activate the sprinklers in the room to create this really cool water
01:50:38
Speaker
The shot of the agents standing underneath the sprinklers suddenly going off. Always going around. Perfect. Always perfect. Let's see. Morpheus and Trinity and Neo all run under to a subway station, right? That's where the phone is. Abandon subway station with a payphone. Sure, why not?
01:51:03
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, sure. Hey, it's the late 90s. We can put pay phones wherever Morpheus gets out first. It's the first time we see actually somebody escaping from the matrix from this point of view, which I love the effect of Morpheus like ghosting.
01:51:22
Speaker
it's such a cool effect and then he escapes and neo just barely because a nearby nearby guy just hanging out in the subway station an unhoused version taken over by an agent by Smith actually
01:51:40
Speaker
and stops Neo before he can leave and they have the greatest big scene in the movie. Oh god. Homemade in the greatest scene in the movie, which is goodbye, Mr. Anderson. My name is Neo, shy of me using all the skills that he learned from Morpheus.
01:52:01
Speaker
Yep, yep. He kills Agent Smith with a train. It rules. Then he makes his way to the location of another phone. But in the real world, there's a ticking clock because the Sentinels are attacking and they can't. Yes. So they need to unplug Neo. They can't unplug Neo before he's out or he'll die. But they need to unplug him before they unleash the EMP or he'll die. Right. Uh oh.
01:52:29
Speaker
So he's gotta get out of there, but then he's cornered by the agents. So what is he gonna do?
01:52:37
Speaker
die. Yeah. Yeah. He just gets, there's a thrilling fight sequence, which I adore, which again, a chase sequence, sorry, which we can get into later. But yeah, Neo fucking dies. Smith shoots him like seven or eight times in the chest. And then Trinity finally confesses the reason that how she knew that he was the one, which is that the Oracle told her that she would fall in love with the one and that she's in love with Neo.
01:53:07
Speaker
And we have this beautiful reverse Sleeping Beauty moment where she kisses him and he is revived. Yeah. He wakes up into the kiss. He is the one. He uses his the one powers. He stands back up. The agents all shoot at him a whole bunch. He stops those bullets. He just goes, no. He holds up his hand and they all fall to the ground. He can dodge bullets, but now he doesn't need to.
01:53:37
Speaker
It's so fucking good. Oh God, I love it. The effect of the bullets stopping in midair.
01:53:45
Speaker
And then that final little punch out with Smith, where he's literally blocking. Yeah, he's blocking Smith's attacks literally single-handedly, like with a hand behind his back. He kicks the shit out of Smith, and then he jumps into Smith. The power of love, baby. I love that it's love that does it. It's so good. The power of love explodes cops.
01:54:20
Speaker
That shot of his face just exploding. It's just sublime. So he gets out just in time, just in time for them to blast away the- The EMP. The Sentinel, yeah. Yep. And it's great. And Neo and Trinity make out a little bit more. And then we're- It's a pretty swift wrap up from there, because then it's just the ending sequence, right? It's literally just that phone call, a call back to the beginning of the movie, where it says, call trans, uh, uh, uh. Mm-hmm.
01:54:34
Speaker
That's the important thing that we need to take away from that. That's the takeaway of The Matrix. It's the real lesson. The more you know.
01:54:49
Speaker
Uh, it comes up carrier anomaly and, uh, it's Neo full, uh, matrix garb and, uh, he's joined. He's waking the other people up now.
01:55:00
Speaker
Yeah, and let's see if I can pull it up in the script because I do love these final lines that Neo has at the end of the script. It's very much addressed through the viewer, I think, in this epilogue. Let's see if I can find the actual line because it's kind of hidden in the script.
01:55:25
Speaker
Oh, nope, it's different dialogue in the script than it is in the movie. That's upsetting. So I'm just gonna read along with the subtitles, kids. I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this was going to end. I came to tell you how it's going to begin.
01:55:54
Speaker
I'm going to hang up this phone and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible.
01:56:12
Speaker
Uh, and then, uh, where we go from there is a choice I leave to you. It's so good. And, uh, again, yeah, just read- And then he Superman, he Superman flies into the sky and we smash cut to the credits with Wake Up by Rage Against the Machine. Fuck yeah we do. And, uh, film.
01:56:28
Speaker
Fuck, yeah, we do. Again, just even reading that dialogue out loud in 2023 as a trans woman, like, oh, shit. All right. It fucking rips. But yeah, that's that is The Matrix. What is the matrix that kept in about the runtime of The Matrix?
01:56:51
Speaker
The Matrix Recapped. I think that's the title of the episode. It's just going to get more ridiculous from here. The Matrix Reloaded Recapped. The Matrix Revolutions Recapped. Matrix Repentated. What is the Matrix.com password? Stake. Wait, what? You remember at the very tail end of the credits.
01:57:17
Speaker
the original website for The Matrix, whatismatrix.com and you could enter the password that you got from watching this movie. I didn't know it plugged in like that. Yeah, you would enter, you would go to whatismatrix.com. Does it tell you the password? It does, the final frame of the movie after like all of the copyrights and yeah, yeah. So what did it lead you to?
01:57:42
Speaker
Uh, I, I don't think I was there in 1999 to, to learn this stuff. If I'm remembering correctly, it's like supplementary materials and trailers. And what is the matrix.com password steak? I'm going to send you a photo of that because it fucking slaps, but you could download like wallpapers and screen savers. Um, and they started publishing comics and stuff on the website that were supplementary stories to the matrix.
01:58:12
Speaker
which I have the great big collected volume of which we're going to be cracking open in a future episode. Very exciting. But that is The Matrix 1999. We did it. Yeah, we did it. Yeah. So this is about the runtime of the movie.
01:58:33
Speaker
Yes. Thank you for listening. Have yourself a nice, juicy, delicious steak or some tasty wheat or some chicken. A dealer's choice. Or if you're vegan. Yeah. I guess the tasty wheat, if you're vegan or some of the, some of Morpheus's famous slop or some of, uh, of Cypher's, uh, family style motor oil.
01:58:57
Speaker
Gross. This is why there's no Matrix land at theme parks at Universal. Good fucking luck, Warner Brothers. Yeah. But we actually have social medias now. Did we want to promote those? I know Harry Potter sucks shit compared to Matrix in terms of politics, but I agree it makes for a much more fun theme park experience than the Matrix. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of hard to argue.
01:59:27
Speaker
Magical Wizard Land is a little bit more theme park friendly. The machines are all trying to kill us. Plug this into the back of your neck. Here's your goo. Here's the robot shrimp that's going to crawl on your belly button. You can have a plushie of it. Enjoy the horrors. Pose with an agent who never smiles.
01:59:51
Speaker
Yeah. Let's let. Yeah. Let's plug. Let's plug all of our all of our stuff. So we have. Yes. At Matrix Queer Pod on the socials, I believe. Thank you for setting that up, by the way. Yeah, of course. Presently, it only houses our our artwork. Yeah. Which again, thank you for doing that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Hey, the fucking pill headphones inspired choice, my friend. Well, thank you. Thank you.
02:00:22
Speaker
But yeah, Matrix Queer Pod on Instagram and I guess what's now known as X, formerly Twitter. Is it called X now? I haven't logged on in a few days. Oh, Jesus Christ. And what about as for me? I'm at Drama Without Ref on said platforms and you.
02:00:41
Speaker
And I am at Hope Lickner on, um, let's see, what am I officially on these days? Uh, uh, technically Twitter, although I know, um, Instagram and Tumblr. If you want to see me talk about gay shit a lot, Tumblr, as it turns out, is pretty fricking gay, which is delightful. Yeah, who knew? You can find us in the matrix.
02:01:08
Speaker
And I did think, I think I had a sign off, a proper sign off to pitch to you for the end of the show. And I think it's the sign off that is at the end of the credits for the Matrix of Resurrection. Steak. Yeah, and as always, eat your steak. So long and thanks for all the steak. Jesus Christ. No, the,
02:01:36
Speaker
I think they should be like a short about what happened to Cypher after, after it all. Actually, wait, no, he died. Nevermind. Yeah, he died. I'm like, that's rather what would have happened. It's a short, short. No, I'm thinking like an animatrix two or something where we show like what would have happened if the deal had gone through, if Cypher had really sold them out and what his life would be like. Yeah. Now streaming on Disney plus the matrix. What if, uh,
02:02:04
Speaker
But no, the line that I am thinking of is love is the genesis of everything, which I think that's good. I think this first film touches on that quite well. Does, doesn't it? Literally saves the day, doesn't it? We'll see you next time. You'll hear us next time. We won't see you at all. We record these in advance. Yeah, this is a one way street, so yeah.
02:02:32
Speaker
Yeah, so buckle up. Buckle up, Dorothy. Kansas is going bye bye. Yeah, buckle up because the next time we're going to talk the matrix fucking reloaded and that is not straightforward at all at all. Oh, yeah, that's the thing I forgot to mention that Cypher is the only one who makes a Wizard of Oz reference instead of a an Alice reference. That's an excellent point. Yeah.
02:02:59
Speaker
Anyway, goodbye.