numb3r_5ev3n (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
numb3r_5ev3n) wrote2024-04-29 10:14 am
numb3r_5ev3n) wrote2024-04-29 10:14 am
Update, and The Matrix 25th anniversary.
Things have been really hard over the past few days. I've been cleaning up Booster's cage and effects. It's hard to see that empty cage, and realize he's not there anymore.
There's a glider rescue in Mineral Wells, TX that could possibly use his stuff. That's probably where it's going to end up. But for right now, I'm leaving it as a shrine to him and his predecessors.
I was supposed to see the Matrix on Friday night at The Violet Crown, a theater located in Dallas's Uptown/West Village district. I got dressed up and everything. I observed tradition by going out for a steak dinner beforehand.
And hey, look who was on the check folder thing!
And then made my way to the theater. And took this picture.
Except when I got there, it was canceled. There was no word on the website, no automatic refund, no email from the theater or anything. Not only that, but the teenaged employees seemed to have no idea there was even going to be a showing when I got there. Even after I showed them my ticket on my phone, I got a barrage of confused and concerned stares - like Early Onset Sundowning GenX Elder escaped the care home dressed in 1999 hacker duds, and was maybe about to go full Karen on them. ("Can you help me? I have a ticket to the Matrix at this theater tonight." "Sure you do. Come on, let's get you back to bed.")
Then the manager came out and told me "oh, we were going to do this tonight, but the home office canceled it because a film festival booked the whole theater tonight." He said he was disappointed too, because he'd never gotten to see it in the theater.
I got a refund, and three passes to a theater that I never go to normally, and will probably never go back to again.
(If anyone wants a free pass to the Violet Crown in Dallas, hit me up.)
At least I was able to find another showing on Sunday. It was at another theater (the Galaxy Grandscape) that I definitely will be going back to, because it's super close and super nice. I had no idea there was even another theater this close to where I live (I typically go to the Cinemark on Parker RD and the DNT, and this one is just a short distance away in the opposite direction.)
My PVC trenchcoat got some stares (hey, it's been raining pretty hard this week, and it's a perfectly serviceable raincoat after all.) And one middle aged Dad waiting next to me at the concession stand with his kids in tow saw me, and chuckled, "let me guess, you're here to see The Matrix too, right?" He'd brought them there to see it for the very first time.
And that, along with the reaction I got Friday night, has really driven home just how old we've all gotten: those of us who were young adults when it was first released, and blew everyone's minds.
And having recently rewatched the sequels, I am going to deliver a hot take: not only is Matrix Resurrections decent, it's better than either of the 2003 sequels, and it's on par with the first film.
The Wachowski Sisters have grown as storytellers and filmmakers over the past 25 years. The problem is that it feels like the vast majority of the moviegoing public just want the same thing over and over, as reliably as a McDonalds hamburger - and they want it to be as fresh and good as it was the first time they ever remember eating one. And this is their metric by which they are judging both the 2003 sequels and Resurrections, as well as entries in a bunch of other franchises (like Star Wars.) They don't want a new take on the story, or more worldbuilding at the expense of the fight scenes, etc. They want the same warmed-over meal that wowed them 25 years ago.
Matrix Resurrections is all about why this just isn't possible. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, a person never steps in the same river twice. They can't just keep getting that same hamburger over and over - and even if they did, it wouldn't hit the same as it did 25 years ago. And then they'd be complaining about that.
It's also about Gen X getting older - and there's nothing people hate more than being reminded of age and mortality. When Reddit threads started popping up about the 25th anniversary, some comments were full of genuine, seething hostility that anyone would even bring up the fact that it's been that long. As if that's a reality that any of us can escape.
The thing is, one of the reasons why The Matrix blew so many minds in 1999 was that it was a new and fresh take on the hypermasculine, musclebound action films of the 1980s and 90s up until that point. The kind of movies that Keanu Reeves himself had been typecast into doing at that point despite getting his start in Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure, and starring roles in other films like Little Buddha, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, and My Own Private Idaho. Nobody in 1999 was expecting The Matrix when it happened. It took people by surprise.
And in ten years, people are going to be re-evaluating it again, and asking "just why were people so angry at this movie?" Just like they did with Reloaded and Revolutions. And Speed Racer. And Cloud Atlas. (I give it a year or so before people give Jupiter Ascending another chance - but the main problem there is that Jupiter Ascending seems like a take on Flash Gordon, But For Teenage Girls - and there are few things that our current society despises more than teenage girls. But anyway.)
"But but but Lana made it suck on purpose just to stick it to Warner Brothers" no, she didn't. I mean, she was trying to stick it to Warner Brothers, sure. But it doesn't "suck." Not liking a movie doesn't necessarily make it a bad movie. It just didn't do what a lot of people wanted it to do. And they're just mad because Lana Wachowski didn't make them the exact same hamburger they had in 1999. (Imagine if she had. What if she had just made the same movie, from the ground up, with the same actors where possible? Talk about a movie that would be "trolling itself and its viewers!")
But none of us are even the same people we were in 1999. And in many cases, that's a good thing.
Current Mood:
There's a glider rescue in Mineral Wells, TX that could possibly use his stuff. That's probably where it's going to end up. But for right now, I'm leaving it as a shrine to him and his predecessors.
I was supposed to see the Matrix on Friday night at The Violet Crown, a theater located in Dallas's Uptown/West Village district. I got dressed up and everything. I observed tradition by going out for a steak dinner beforehand.
And hey, look who was on the check folder thing!
And then made my way to the theater. And took this picture.
Except when I got there, it was canceled. There was no word on the website, no automatic refund, no email from the theater or anything. Not only that, but the teenaged employees seemed to have no idea there was even going to be a showing when I got there. Even after I showed them my ticket on my phone, I got a barrage of confused and concerned stares - like Early Onset Sundowning GenX Elder escaped the care home dressed in 1999 hacker duds, and was maybe about to go full Karen on them. ("Can you help me? I have a ticket to the Matrix at this theater tonight." "Sure you do. Come on, let's get you back to bed.")
Then the manager came out and told me "oh, we were going to do this tonight, but the home office canceled it because a film festival booked the whole theater tonight." He said he was disappointed too, because he'd never gotten to see it in the theater.
I got a refund, and three passes to a theater that I never go to normally, and will probably never go back to again.
(If anyone wants a free pass to the Violet Crown in Dallas, hit me up.)
At least I was able to find another showing on Sunday. It was at another theater (the Galaxy Grandscape) that I definitely will be going back to, because it's super close and super nice. I had no idea there was even another theater this close to where I live (I typically go to the Cinemark on Parker RD and the DNT, and this one is just a short distance away in the opposite direction.)
My PVC trenchcoat got some stares (hey, it's been raining pretty hard this week, and it's a perfectly serviceable raincoat after all.) And one middle aged Dad waiting next to me at the concession stand with his kids in tow saw me, and chuckled, "let me guess, you're here to see The Matrix too, right?" He'd brought them there to see it for the very first time.
And that, along with the reaction I got Friday night, has really driven home just how old we've all gotten: those of us who were young adults when it was first released, and blew everyone's minds.
And having recently rewatched the sequels, I am going to deliver a hot take: not only is Matrix Resurrections decent, it's better than either of the 2003 sequels, and it's on par with the first film.
The Wachowski Sisters have grown as storytellers and filmmakers over the past 25 years. The problem is that it feels like the vast majority of the moviegoing public just want the same thing over and over, as reliably as a McDonalds hamburger - and they want it to be as fresh and good as it was the first time they ever remember eating one. And this is their metric by which they are judging both the 2003 sequels and Resurrections, as well as entries in a bunch of other franchises (like Star Wars.) They don't want a new take on the story, or more worldbuilding at the expense of the fight scenes, etc. They want the same warmed-over meal that wowed them 25 years ago.
Matrix Resurrections is all about why this just isn't possible. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, a person never steps in the same river twice. They can't just keep getting that same hamburger over and over - and even if they did, it wouldn't hit the same as it did 25 years ago. And then they'd be complaining about that.
It's also about Gen X getting older - and there's nothing people hate more than being reminded of age and mortality. When Reddit threads started popping up about the 25th anniversary, some comments were full of genuine, seething hostility that anyone would even bring up the fact that it's been that long. As if that's a reality that any of us can escape.
The thing is, one of the reasons why The Matrix blew so many minds in 1999 was that it was a new and fresh take on the hypermasculine, musclebound action films of the 1980s and 90s up until that point. The kind of movies that Keanu Reeves himself had been typecast into doing at that point despite getting his start in Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure, and starring roles in other films like Little Buddha, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, and My Own Private Idaho. Nobody in 1999 was expecting The Matrix when it happened. It took people by surprise.
And in ten years, people are going to be re-evaluating it again, and asking "just why were people so angry at this movie?" Just like they did with Reloaded and Revolutions. And Speed Racer. And Cloud Atlas. (I give it a year or so before people give Jupiter Ascending another chance - but the main problem there is that Jupiter Ascending seems like a take on Flash Gordon, But For Teenage Girls - and there are few things that our current society despises more than teenage girls. But anyway.)
"But but but Lana made it suck on purpose just to stick it to Warner Brothers" no, she didn't. I mean, she was trying to stick it to Warner Brothers, sure. But it doesn't "suck." Not liking a movie doesn't necessarily make it a bad movie. It just didn't do what a lot of people wanted it to do. And they're just mad because Lana Wachowski didn't make them the exact same hamburger they had in 1999. (Imagine if she had. What if she had just made the same movie, from the ground up, with the same actors where possible? Talk about a movie that would be "trolling itself and its viewers!")
But none of us are even the same people we were in 1999. And in many cases, that's a good thing.
Current Mood: