"Show, don't tell." We should have gotten flashbacks?
The scene was showing us that the Architect doesn't get people, quite effectively. But the Oracle saying he doesn't understand is telling. Also, the monitors showed us how Neo reacted before. And of course the whole scene recalls Morpheus giving that boring blue pill, red pill speech. As in, Neo has to make a life determining choice. If the first movie had only known that you're supposed to show, not tell, we wouldn't haven't gotten more of this stuff in the sequel.
They say one picture is worth a thousands words. But it's also true that a thousand words is worth a million pictures. This isn't transitive, as a mathematician might say, but it's still true. The problem with the the first movie is the number of times it shows, but still doesn't tell. You don't know why Neo comes back to life. If Keanu Reeves sold you the characters, you still liked the show, but that wasn't good movie making. The sequel shows and tells.
Anyone who thinks Lost is good character drama might be expected to believe that real people don't talk about anything other than their feelings, but however can anyone who hangs around a bbs not have noticed that people can go on about all sorts of things, at great length?
It may be that some people just feel (can't call it think, can we?) that explanations are just not as much fun. Some of us differ. For instance, the Oracle is the same character in both movies but when the sequel explains that she is a program we can understand, therefore appreciate. She's not as cool in the first movie because she makes no sense, she's the key player and we don't know why she's doing anything or how she's doing it. How can that be cooler?
Samuel Walters' pot of pasta metaphor is suggestive, except for the error of seeing the taste of excess salt. The correct metaphor is that The Matrix is a pot of pasta, the sequel is another pot of the same pasta. Some people like the pasta in both pots, while other people insist that only the pasta in the first pot is any good. Most everybody who swears the pasta in the second pot is different talks about something that is in the first pot!
The Lensman for example talks about how uncool the fights in the sequel were. The problem is, the fights in the first movie got to be boring. I know this for a fact, I watched and got bored. On the few occasions I've rewatched the trilogy, I've fast forwarded in the first movie.
Not only do I prefer Dark City to The Matrix, I prefer The Thirteenth Floor to The Matrix. It's the sequels that make things more interesting because they make more sense. The nonsense about energy from people makes perfect sense as a false belief propagated deliberately to confuse resistance, for example.
I am not at all certain as to how you know that the movie doesn't just leave us in a "reality" that is just as much a simulation as the movie Matrix is. Neo's conversations in the train station are quite ambiguous as to what "reality" is being referred to. Also, blue sparks do not make anything fly in the real world, do they?
Myasischev, Nebuchadnezzar was the Babylonian king whose dreams Daniel was interpreting. According to the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar also went mad and ate grass for seven years. The name is suggestive of someone receiving true interpretation of dreams, resistant to the message, even to the point of madness, yet in the end helpless to defeat the future foretold. (One of the dreams was the finger writing on the wall "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.") I think the philosophy of The Matrix is gibberish (philisophical materialism for me, all the way, baby,) but it is really there, it is really thought out, and it does give the sequel an interest the first movie could never sustain on its own.
The scene was showing us that the Architect doesn't get people, quite effectively. But the Oracle saying he doesn't understand is telling. Also, the monitors showed us how Neo reacted before. And of course the whole scene recalls Morpheus giving that boring blue pill, red pill speech. As in, Neo has to make a life determining choice. If the first movie had only known that you're supposed to show, not tell, we wouldn't haven't gotten more of this stuff in the sequel.
They say one picture is worth a thousands words. But it's also true that a thousand words is worth a million pictures. This isn't transitive, as a mathematician might say, but it's still true. The problem with the the first movie is the number of times it shows, but still doesn't tell. You don't know why Neo comes back to life. If Keanu Reeves sold you the characters, you still liked the show, but that wasn't good movie making. The sequel shows and tells.
Anyone who thinks Lost is good character drama might be expected to believe that real people don't talk about anything other than their feelings, but however can anyone who hangs around a bbs not have noticed that people can go on about all sorts of things, at great length?
It may be that some people just feel (can't call it think, can we?) that explanations are just not as much fun. Some of us differ. For instance, the Oracle is the same character in both movies but when the sequel explains that she is a program we can understand, therefore appreciate. She's not as cool in the first movie because she makes no sense, she's the key player and we don't know why she's doing anything or how she's doing it. How can that be cooler?
Samuel Walters' pot of pasta metaphor is suggestive, except for the error of seeing the taste of excess salt. The correct metaphor is that The Matrix is a pot of pasta, the sequel is another pot of the same pasta. Some people like the pasta in both pots, while other people insist that only the pasta in the first pot is any good. Most everybody who swears the pasta in the second pot is different talks about something that is in the first pot!
The Lensman for example talks about how uncool the fights in the sequel were. The problem is, the fights in the first movie got to be boring. I know this for a fact, I watched and got bored. On the few occasions I've rewatched the trilogy, I've fast forwarded in the first movie.
Not only do I prefer Dark City to The Matrix, I prefer The Thirteenth Floor to The Matrix. It's the sequels that make things more interesting because they make more sense. The nonsense about energy from people makes perfect sense as a false belief propagated deliberately to confuse resistance, for example.
I am not at all certain as to how you know that the movie doesn't just leave us in a "reality" that is just as much a simulation as the movie Matrix is. Neo's conversations in the train station are quite ambiguous as to what "reality" is being referred to. Also, blue sparks do not make anything fly in the real world, do they?
Myasischev, Nebuchadnezzar was the Babylonian king whose dreams Daniel was interpreting. According to the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar also went mad and ate grass for seven years. The name is suggestive of someone receiving true interpretation of dreams, resistant to the message, even to the point of madness, yet in the end helpless to defeat the future foretold. (One of the dreams was the finger writing on the wall "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.") I think the philosophy of The Matrix is gibberish (philisophical materialism for me, all the way, baby,) but it is really there, it is really thought out, and it does give the sequel an interest the first movie could never sustain on its own.
