Episode #425 - The Matrix: Revolutions

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss the Matrix Revolutions,

[0:03] the movie that makes you say, I kind of wish I hadn't eaten that pill.

[0:30] Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse.

[0:34] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:35] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:37] And I'm Elliot Kalin of The Flophouse.

[0:39] I sort of tried to surprise you by coming in like really fast.

[0:43] Yeah, super hot.

[0:44] Take you off guard.

[0:46] So this is a slightly special episode in that we are talking about the Matrix Revolutions

[0:52] in part because I took part in this other podcast called The Novelizers, which has the

[1:00] comedic premise of it gets a bunch of comedy writers to novelize, quote, unquote, chapters

[1:07] of movies like a few minutes at a time.

[1:11] And so mine on The Matrix came out recently, Elliot and I were on doing some improv as

[1:17] characters who worked on The Matrix, if you want to hear us do a sort of different thing

[1:21] than what we normally do.

[1:23] We played we played the people whose job it was to hold up the Matrix actors when they

[1:28] did their stunts.

[1:29] And then we would be computer edited out of the final film.

[1:33] But we our job is as almost human pillars.

[1:35] Very hard work.

[1:36] Yeah.

[1:37] So I'm actually not sure whether we're coming out first or they're coming out first.

[1:42] But look for that.

[1:44] And I hope we figure it out in time.

[1:47] But so we decided to tie in with that.

[1:52] We're going to do the probably the least favorite of The Matrix movies.

[1:58] Generally, I would say, look, this is normally a podcast where we watch a bad movie and we

[2:02] talk about it.

[2:03] This is miles above the normal dreck we talk about.

[2:07] But it is a movie that disappointed a lot of people who had sort of been invested in

[2:12] these movies.

[2:13] So it's kind of an interesting one to talk about.

[2:16] Phew.

[2:17] Good thing we could rationalize that.

[2:18] Otherwise, we might have been burned at the stake for talking about the wrong kind of

[2:22] movie.

[2:23] I mean, I feel like it'd be more appropriate if we got like kicked through a wall and then

[2:26] shot a bunch.

[2:27] I mean, that's great.

[2:28] Look, we will be a matrix.

[2:31] Yeah, we will give our final judgments on the movie later on where we sort of talk about

[2:36] how we personally feel.

[2:37] But I do think it's important to differentiate, like the reasons we do different.

[2:43] Before we jump into the plot of the third Matrix movie, do you guys have any particular

[2:50] like feelings toward the Matrix series as a whole?

[2:52] Do you have any experiences you want to talk about?

[2:55] I know I initially was fairly resistant to the first Matrix movie because I was like

[3:01] it felt like it was at least for me, it felt like it was like a Western take on like like

[3:10] making like wushu kung fu movies and like slapping it on this like techno rave club

[3:16] veneer.

[3:18] And so I didn't really give it much of a chance.

[3:20] And it it wasn't until like years later when I became a little more chill that I would

[3:26] watch the Matrix.

[3:27] And I'm like, oh, no, this is great.

[3:29] This is genuinely a classic featuring arguably, I would say, one of the best villain performances

[3:35] of the last, what, 30, 40 years?

[3:39] No, I mean, he's terrific.

[3:41] Yes.

[3:42] One of the things I like the most about it, I came to the Matrix, oh, not like late, late,

[3:47] but I saw it in a thing that used to exist, which is a second run movie theater.

[3:52] And mostly they're gone now.

[3:53] But for like a couple of bucks, I saw there's still one in Pasadena.

[3:56] If you ever want to see a second run movie, Dan, just take a plane to Los Angeles.

[4:01] Exactly.

[4:02] A real money saver.

[4:03] On the price break you get in the second run theater, it's almost worth it.

[4:06] Yeah.

[4:07] It's like $3 sometimes.

[4:08] Do you know how much movies cost nowadays when you add in your popcorn and your bagel

[4:14] bites and your cheese curders and your, uh, your, your Frozones and your, and your, and

[4:24] your hat.

[4:25] I mean, you're paying for an entire family of seven kids, so that's gonna, that just

[4:30] adds up.

[4:31] So go to the second run theater if you can.

[4:32] Yeah.

[4:33] Worth the flight.

[4:34] Yeah.

[4:35] So the point of what I was saying was, I didn't see it so super late, but I did see it late

[4:39] enough that it had been really built up for me.

[4:41] And I had also already seen, uh, the Wachowski sisters, uh, first movie bound, which I, yeah,

[4:48] a dancing bound, not a surprise, but it was certainly certain scenes from bounds.

[4:55] Dan had seen multiple times, uh, no, it's a movie that I love and I, you know, basically

[5:04] to me, the matrix bound rocks.

[5:06] I had the weird experience culturally of being like, Oh, the matrix is a real step down.

[5:10] Is this sort of kind of how I felt like I, I did like it, but I think it was built up

[5:14] for me a lot.

[5:15] And I, I think it's like, and now I'm going to get people mad at it.

[5:19] I think it's great, but I think it, it didn't hit me as hard as it hit a lot of people in

[5:24] the world, I guess.

[5:25] That is, that would enrage people, your subjective experience with it.

[5:28] I have to, so I have two matrix experiences that I want to bring up.

[5:32] So I Stuart, I think the same reason that you were kind of like blah at first on the

[5:36] matrix was the thing I really liked about it is I liked, I remember seeing it when it

[5:40] first came out and really liking this mix of elements that it was, it was throwing all

[5:44] these things together and I hadn't seen, you know, you just hadn't seen a movie that looked

[5:49] quite like this before, as much as I found all the sunglasses and leather jacket and

[5:53] rave stuff and leather pants, like that doesn't do it for me.

[5:56] I find that that's, that's kind of ridiculous, but just the way it was put together, I thought

[6:00] it was really cool.

[6:02] I remember the first time I saw it, the volume in the, in the theater was way too high.

[6:06] So me and the, and the person I was with, uh, we were shielding our ears the entire

[6:10] time because it was so loud cause it's all gunshots.

[6:13] And even when he was clicking keyboard keys, it was too loud.

[6:17] Uh, and the second time, and I, I wanted to see it again and my dad had kept hearing about

[6:20] it.

[6:21] So we went to see it and we went to see maybe the worst screening of the matrix you could

[6:25] be in.

[6:26] There was a crying baby in it.

[6:27] It was 9 p.m.

[6:28] That it starts and there was a baby there, but the audience was really loud.

[6:31] And I just remember watching the movie and then afterwards spending longer than the runtime

[6:35] of the movie, trying to explain to my dad what had happened in the movie that we had

[6:40] just watched.

[6:41] And he was like, so Neo's superpower is that he can be in the matrix and in the real world.

[6:46] And I'm like, no, everyone's in the matrix and in the real world, like they're there

[6:49] in the real world and they're hooked up into the matrix, but he's more connected to the

[6:53] matrix.

[6:54] Okay.

[6:55] Okay.

[6:56] I think I understand.

[6:57] Yeah.

[6:58] When he comes out of that pod, that's because that's because he has like, he's in the pod

[7:02] has given him special powers.

[7:03] No, that's no, they're all in pods.

[7:06] Everybody's everybody's a battery in a pod.

[7:08] It was very hard for him to wrap his minds around it.

[7:10] His minds, his three minds, conscious, subconscious, two bears and two wolves and that's a lot

[7:18] of mine.

[7:19] That's a lot of mine.

[7:20] Yeah.

[7:21] There's two giraffes in each of us.

[7:22] One really big and one really little.

[7:23] Oh, your dad's Noah's Ark.

[7:24] Right.

[7:25] Okay.

[7:26] Yeah.

[7:27] My dad.

[7:28] Yeah.

[7:29] He was Noah's Ark.

[7:30] Now that makes me want to see a line of biblical transformers where it's like a guy who turns

[7:33] into Noah's Ark.

[7:34] There's a guy who turns into like the coat of many colors.

[7:36] Yeah.

[7:37] Animals come out of his belly.

[7:38] Yeah.

[7:39] Yeah.

[7:40] That's great.

[7:41] But then I remember seeing the second movie and being so incredibly disappointed by it.

[7:45] Just feeling like it was, it had taken the movie that I liked and, and either repeated

[7:50] elements or added in elements that I was not interested in.

[7:52] Like the, all the Zion stuff and all the council of elders stuff and like was not,

[7:57] was totally uninteresting to me.

[7:58] So my only pushback on that is that like, so I, I was kind of lukewarm on the first

[8:02] one, but I liked the second one a lot because though it does like give you stuff that you're

[8:07] not going to care about, it does it with, uh, like action sequences that are nuts.

[8:14] Like you have never seen before that, that, that highway, highway sequences, so good.

[8:21] Those sequences are really good, but I feel like even though that was new stuff, it didn't

[8:25] feel as new as what I had seen in, in the first matrix.

[8:28] Right.

[8:29] Well, you can only, it wasn't as big as the same way.

[8:31] That's true.

[8:32] You know, once I, I, I will say that as much as I was, my problem with the matrix compared

[8:37] to like being like really hyped up from loving bound is like, I think bound is a screenplay

[8:41] without an ounce of fat on it.

[8:43] Like it, it really cooks along.

[8:46] Whereas the matrix, uh, I think kind of gets bogged down in some places, but visually like

[8:53] imaginatively it was sort of this amazing, mind blowing thing to watch.

[8:57] It has two great, the first matrix has two incredible villain performances, uh, with

[9:04] Hugo weaving and Joey pants, but also like, uh, like Lawrence Fisher is really good in

[9:09] that first one.

[9:11] It was the beginning of Keanu Reeves kind of, I think being understood as what he can

[9:15] bring to a movie as a performer, that the kind of blankness of him is an, is an asset

[9:20] rather than something to be pushed against, you know, and, um, and Carrie Ann Moss is

[9:25] fine, you know, and it's like, wow, she's, she's really good.

[9:31] Maybe it was because in matrix revolutions, I feel like she is not being used as well

[9:34] as she was used in the first matrix that watching this, I was like, oh, I'm not like, I remember

[9:39] really liking Carrie Ann Moss after that first movie and memento.

[9:42] And then in this one being like, oh, she's like, she just seems very empty and blank

[9:47] here, but this movie loses our two main characters for a huge chunk of it, which is kind of the,

[9:54] I think the biggest problem it has, I mean like, well, the most obvious problem it has.

[10:00] bigger like sort of structural things that we'll get into but yeah uh should we get into the what

[10:05] happens in this movie should we recap so the first two matrix movies in case you haven't seen them

[10:08] i mean go see the first one there's like i would argue go see the second one too sure i mean why

[10:14] not it's the future there's like a computer where the robots have taken over there's a

[10:17] everyone's jacked into a computer world all the time and keanu reeves learns that remind anybody

[10:23] anything yeah it really makes you think doesn't it and keanu reeves he he gets shown that the

[10:31] world he thinks is real is actually an illusion created by these computers he he takes a red pill

[10:35] which allowed terrible people to have a metaphor for their shitty ideas uh many years later and

[10:41] i do get i do always get pleasure out of when someone on twitter would be like would make a

[10:46] matrix reference to describe being like a trump supporter and one of the wakowskis would be like

[10:50] you don't understand the movie stop watching it like like go to hell uh and uh the and they're

[10:57] fighting machines and stuff and there's an evil program in the matrix that i guess works for the

[11:00] matrix uh and then he gets bigger than his britches in this one and then in the second movie

[11:05] they find a bunch of the best and the second one is just kind of like there's more computer programs

[11:12] and more more worlds or whatever but it it feels like it doesn't it's by the end of the movie uh

[11:18] keanu reeves's character neo he's like meets the guy who created the program that

[11:22] created the matrix i guess and it doesn't really lead to very much of anything yeah i mean it's

[11:27] it's the like the sci-fi staple of like you're not the first uh hero to go on this cycle you're

[11:34] one of many this cycles happened many times yeah so it's futile for you to do anything you jerk

[11:40] and as a movie and neo has genuine superpowers by this point not just within the computer world

[11:45] but in the real physical meat space as well uh and i know that we haven't gotten into

[11:51] um the movie we're actually talking about yet but since we're sort of talking about

[11:56] matrix new year's resolutions yeah yeah i i'm in this weird position like this year i

[12:03] resolved to be a better christ figure i'm in this weird position of like looking at these

[12:08] matrix sequels i'm thinking like that i respect them for sort of not going the obvious sequel

[12:17] directions that these sorts of movies like the this the sequels i think are interested in

[12:23] complicating the situation and undermining the mission or the reality that you thought

[12:29] was true of the mission in ways that a lot of sequels are just content to like

[12:34] give you more along the same story so i admire that i think that these movies are up to something

[12:43] but also i feel like their biggest problem for me is like the matrix feels even though it ends in a

[12:49] quote-unquote open-ended way it feels like a real self-contained story and these movies feel like

[12:55] they're trying to spin out ways to make it keep going and the ways are interesting like they're

[13:02] different than the most obvious ways but they i don't know they feel like well it's like they

[13:08] don't need to be no then the first movie what are the strengths of it to me the strengths are

[13:13] that feeling of you don't know what's real and what's not real for a lot of it someone having

[13:17] the scales pulled from their eyes and seeing a new level of reality and these amazing kind of

[13:21] kung fu action sequences uh and there's a lot of gun foo stuff but the the the this one as we'll

[13:27] see it spends so much time on an enormous gun battle between guys in mech armor and flying

[13:33] robots and there's no reality warp aspect of it and it's also the action in that sequence is not

[13:39] fun or interesting it's just guns being fought guys yell a guy yelling yeah knuckle up and then

[13:45] he yells knuckle up so many times and just firing these big guns things and it takes forever and i

[13:49] was like okay this movie has really escaped the bonds that were that were making it interesting

[13:54] before it feels like what like asteroids or something like they're just shooting it at uh

[13:59] swarms of sentinels uh and you know they're and not the cool x-men sentinels who are like

[14:04] mutant you have five seconds i know being a mutant you know i would i would argue that the uh

[14:10] the the jeff darrow design of the sentinels is oh no it's great design and i love that the

[14:15] sentinels that the way they are with the tech with the tentacles it mirrors the dreads that

[14:20] so many people in the in the world of zion seem to have like it's a it is a cool design i agree

[14:26] it's cool sign so anyway it's just not as good as a big pink and purple man robot who can say

[14:31] mutant i'm gonna shoot a tentacle out of my hand and wrap you in it so you can escape and

[14:36] blow me up you know oh no a fastball special yeah oh you slice me up wolverine my one weakness

[14:43] sharp knives anyway so let's start with the matrix revolutions listen now that we've talked

[14:49] for a long time about it let's talk let's talk about it so we start out resuming in computer

[14:53] code and there's fractals and all these cities inside of a computer and we see there's a bunch

[14:58] of serious guys they're looking for some missing operatives and morpheus uh lawrence fishburne he

[15:03] wants to search the matrix for neo keanu reeves who's gone missing even though neo is not plugged

[15:08] in his his body is in a coma and they can't find his soul and morpheus believes it's somewhere in

[15:13] the matrix and meanwhile the machines these sentient machine bad guys they're on their way

[15:18] to zion the secret headquarters hideout of the humans which is just a grimy industrial kind of

[15:26] like tunnel that everyone seems to live in and it seems like if the future you're shaming their

[15:32] their quarters ellie it is one of those like joey pence joe pantoliani in the first movie

[15:37] he is a villain because he chooses the illusion of the matrix over the reality of living

[15:41] in long underpants in a tunnel and it's like i don't know dude it seems better it seems better

[15:47] to live where you have the illusion of nature than to live in a grimy tunnel in the middle

[15:52] of right nothing you know their clothes do seem to be mostly burlap which i imagine is not the

[15:58] most comfortable thing to wear i have to assume that newsies is huge in the matrix world that's

[16:03] how that fashion trends really got started um so anyway they they have access to much nicer clothes

[16:09] but they want to wear the music shit yeah i mean everyone in this in these movies they either wear

[16:14] long leather dusters or they're wearing newsies clothes like that's pretty much it those are the

[16:18] only options uh the machines are on their way to zion and the oracle wants to talk to morpheus we

[16:23] remember the oracle the elderly lady who tells the future or whatever uh meanwhile neo finds himself

[16:28] in the most crazy tripped out just you never imagine this type of space an empty underground

[16:36] train station tunnels and tunnels the whole movie's fucking tunnels uh and he's talking to a

[16:41] little girl named sati who says that she's gonna go to the matrix but the train man does not want

[16:46] neo to go to the matrix guys looks like we've got another new cool character coming up the train yeah

[16:51] played by famous character actor bruce spence not mad about that although i am mad that these scenes

[16:57] are in the movie at all because they're pointless they're very pointless and very yes that is true

[17:02] i don't i kept expecting it to feel like it meant something i think it's just a way to get out of

[17:08] where they put neo at the end of the last movie it's a at first it seems like a kind of a neat

[17:13] visual representation of a way station between programs this kind of empty semi-divine seeming

[17:20] subway station but he's just there for a long time he's just if you want to see a movie where

[17:24] the hero is hanging around waiting for a train then watch the beginning of once upon time in

[17:30] the west where three bad guys sit for like eight minutes waiting for a train and it is

[17:34] it is you can't take your eyes off of it i find it so incredibly captivating but anyway well also

[17:39] i'm probably it's weird when i decide to get like more literal minded about because often i'm just

[17:45] like you're very inconsistent i'll go with it but i do have more of a i have wait a minute

[17:52] a vacuum cleaner wouldn't pull her skirt and her shirt off they're not connected

[17:57] one or the other movie um and then you're like a giant gorilla that climbs off a skyscraper yeah

[18:02] i'll buy it sure yum yum give me some um no i i find it harder to deal with these sort of like

[18:11] liminal spaces within the matrix where where i understand why the matrix exists as it is

[18:18] but why make the space between spaces to borrow a phrase from kingdom of the crystal skull

[18:25] crystal skull why make those like places to walk through like yeah like you're in disclosure and

[18:32] you're like you're getting a file by opening a filing cabinet at the end of a long virtual

[18:38] like platform like it makes less sense to me i think that it's very i will giving them the benefit

[18:43] that i will say i think it's very hard for the human mind to conceive of non-physical spaces

[18:49] where distant distance and physical presence don't exist it reminds me of in like don't worry

[18:54] darling where the programs were all chasing after her to stop her from reaching this physical space

[18:59] and it's like well they're all on a computer so just kind of like i don't know move her or delete

[19:05] her or just why is there a physical place to place yeah just move but why do you have to run from

[19:09] point a to point b when this is not a real physical space and i think it's hard for our minds to to

[19:14] avoid mapping our experience as physical beings onto this kind of cyber world well that's why i'm

[19:22] maybe just don't deal with that because again i understand it in the matrix where it's built that

[19:27] built for humans to interact to be an illusion why why build it this way for programs to do things

[19:32] like just have them speak in their ones and zeros anyway uh i think because humans are interested

[19:39] in people is because this is a movie for people and so the the slogan well but it's it's the kind

[19:45] of people but it comes up breadsticks and watch the matrix when i was when i was working on on

[19:51] this tv show house broken which was about animals we would get notes sometimes where it's like

[19:55] the animals are acting a little bit too much like people here and often it was like yeah because

[20:00] That was for people like the show's not for animals like we're not trying to do an accurate rendition of how a cat thinks, you know

[20:06] We're using a cat to illustrate human life and human emotions because people watch this show and I think it's easy sometimes to forget that

[20:13] When people get too little I wonder like the people that made like Benji and shit got those same notes

[20:18] And so this dog is acting way too much like a human this dog sounds too much like Chevy Chase right now

[20:24] What's going on?

[20:25] Sometimes it is true that like we would do things where it's like, okay

[20:28] This this animal is acting with a sense of agency that a person would have but an animal can't a pet can't just leave

[20:33] Their house that easily but there are other times when it's like this this this what this animal is saying

[20:38] Just seems like you're you talking about human things using animal terms. Yeah. Well, we are welcome to the show

[20:43] Welcome to human fiction. Anyway, so

[20:46] Morpheus and Trinity they visit the Oracle. This is a different slides in my copy of animal for

[20:51] This is this is a different Oracle than in the previous movies or different actress

[20:55] But the idea is that the Oracle has changed form and they've written that into the into the script

[21:00] But she says that Nia was trash. I think this is a a clever way to deal with

[21:05] The the sad passing of an actor. Yes. I agree. I agree

[21:08] I was better than like say the modern equivalent, which is like now let's just do a CG

[21:12] Yeah, like let's do a digital version of that. Yeah Stewart. Todd Vaziri might be listening right now

[21:17] Yeah, I the but I agree with you I like it more than trying to or the

[21:21] The there was that a that Sopranos episode after Nancy Marchand died where they kind of stuck her head onto someone else's body

[21:27] And it's like maybe you don't need this scene that badly, you know, but I think this is a good way to deal with it

[21:32] I mean, I like the idea that she has switched digital sins

[21:35] skins rather but like

[21:37] I mean, I like the idea that she has switched digital sins

[21:40] I

[21:42] Seek the Internet for the hottest stories why right here's one let's right back into this tale

[21:51] They always have you know, Larry he wears a leisure suit what in previous decades was a

[21:57] leisure suit

[21:59] I think that's a good way to deal with it. I think that's a good way to deal with it

[22:02] I think that's a good way to deal with it. I think that's a good way to deal with it

[22:06] Leisure suit what in previous?

[22:09] Decades would have been a call-in sex line show then become. Yeah, it's not like a like a like a reddit. No age. All right

[22:17] The thing I was originally saying before I misspoke was what I like a reddit. This is that this is the show

[22:22] I'll pitch to Cinemax if they still do this just it's called it's called our sex and it's just a reddit page that that

[22:28] Launches into stories, you know, I'm sure our sex is

[22:33] Already, I don't know what it is. I've never been I want to go

[22:37] Guys, have you checked out fear calm those areas?

[22:40] Busy on D Snyder's Strange Lantern. Yeah

[22:43] Um, no, I like the idea that you know, she switched looks within the matrix

[22:48] I find the reason for it to be like pretty like dumb

[22:54] Like trying to like cover for this idea

[22:56] But you like the idea that her punishment was that she had to switch the way she looked or whatever

[23:03] Just kind of like a hand wavy type explanation, which is which is fine

[23:07] She says neo is trapped in a world between this world and the machine world and they've got to get to neo before the train

[23:13] Man does that the train man works for the Merovingian this rogue program

[23:19] Basically, just a crime boss like it's like a French program. He's a French. I'll call him the Frenchman. He's a French program

[23:25] He's made of let wounds and Liz several

[23:28] You know

[23:32] Am here by Neri home on share, you know rogue you and I

[23:42] Neo he meets Sati's family their programs

[23:45] they say the train man that works for the Frenchman and

[23:48] He controls the transport between worlds and Sati's a program without a purpose

[23:52] And so she has been marked for deletion and her father asked the Merovingian to help him save her from being deleted

[23:57] And he and neo they're both there

[24:01] Because they love someone and love is a theme that's gonna run

[24:05] half-assedly through the movie at different points

[24:09] This the character of Saraf we all remember him right he used to work for the Merovingian, right?

[24:14] Originally supposed to be played by Jet Li, right?

[24:16] Have you yeah, there's that there's that story where he was originally they approached him

[24:21] But part of the contract would be that they would be recording all of his moves and then digitally

[24:27] That Warner Brothers or whatever would digitally own and he's like, yeah, those are my moves. That's my like

[24:35] Yeah, he said I don't need to do that so I'm not going to do that which I admire him enormously for that, you know

[24:43] there the

[24:44] Seraf he leads Morpheus Trinity onto a subway train and they find a homeless guy who has a gun

[24:49] It's the train man. He refuses to help him and he runs off shooting back at them and shouting

[24:54] I'm not quite sure why he's mad. I'm not quite sure why they couldn't go. Hey, wait

[24:58] We want to ask you for something like it's anyway

[25:01] The I'm also not sure why the train man like with his job like why has he chosen?

[25:08] to be this sort of crazed

[25:11] Like I don't know that's who he's programmed to be. I guess that this is supposed to be like a ghost

[25:18] Yeah

[25:20] And the train shows up at neo station and we've been we've been led to this point to be like, oh

[25:24] If the train man finds neo

[25:26] This is gonna be bad because the train man works for the Merovingian and Merovingian has a price on neo's head

[25:31] The train shows up neo station and the train man goes. Hey neo

[25:34] You're not going anywhere and punches him and then Sati's family gets on the train and they leave and I was like

[25:39] Oh, so that's the long-awaited meetup between the train man and neo but not not really much of anything

[25:44] it's a lot of time spent building up the train man a character who

[25:48] Appears I think in one more scene in the background at the Merovingian's Club and then not again for the rest of the movie

[25:54] It's a real it felt like an episode of the Matrix TV show rather than you know, a movie

[26:00] Monster of the week. Yeah, exactly. He's that he's that he's the blank man of the week

[26:05] I don't mean blank man the hilarious character, but I mean the you know

[26:09] All the so many characters are just blank and man as their name

[26:12] Seraph Morpheus and Trinity they they kill their way into

[26:18] Into the Merovingian's Club first

[26:19] They go through the lobby where they have to fight some anti-gravity acrobat hitmen who decide to fight on the ceiling

[26:25] For no particular reason which isn't enough to differentiate like again

[26:30] part of the thing that I liked about the second movie is that there seemed to be a

[26:34] Genuine effort to be like if we're gonna put action sequences in here, it's going to be different. Yeah

[26:40] Something you haven't seen before and I feel like this is one of many action sequences where I'm like, yeah, I kind of saw that

[26:46] Yeah, it feels like they're kind of going through the motions and it's one of those were like the bad guys are on the ceiling

[26:50] The good guys on the floor, but it doesn't really affect what they're doing that much because they're just still kind of

[26:54] Punching and kicking and shooting each other

[26:56] It's just a lack of imagination in that in that moment and it's hard to do yourself when you've made the matrix, but still

[27:02] They that they get into a leather rave where the Merovingian is there with

[27:06] Mistress Monica Bellucci who has nothing to do in this other than sit there with her boobs spilling out of her top

[27:11] And it feels like a real waste of Monica Bellucci

[27:14] So yeah, I mean that said

[27:18] Put Monica Bellucci in every movie. I will never complain

[27:20] Well, I'm not gonna complain about seeing Monica Bellucci. Certainly not but it's just there's just a uh, you know

[27:26] If if that's all you're gonna give her to do. Yeah, that's well, I guess she got a paycheck out of it. That's fine

[27:31] Maybe if she was only there for like one year and then she's gone

[27:34] That's fine maybe she was only there for like one shooting day, but she's capable of so much more than just being background wallpaper

[27:40] Now, you know this leather

[27:42] uh

[27:44] Club, it's not a leather club, but like a lot of people wearing leather. It's pretty much a leather

[27:50] Leather club has a different it has a different meaning

[27:53] I mean, I kind of assumed that was what was going on here, too

[27:56] I mean every every place that you go to in the matrix or in zion or anywhere is two steps away from just becoming

[28:03] An snm club, you know just for a month or to be or being the vampire raven blade

[28:08] Just pouring out of the ceiling. Yeah, these outfits are more

[28:11] sort of like

[28:12] Kind of the the next step along

[28:14] Like slightly sexier than than the uh, our heroes leather outfits

[28:19] Yeah, that's spectrum rather than being like bondage gear for the most part

[28:23] But I guess what i'm saying is if it's supposed to be a super cool kind of almost a little intimidating

[28:28] Super like club

[28:29] It's got to be more intense than the club from the super mario brothers movie

[28:33] Where that the original one where that was one where I was like this feels genuinely dangerous

[28:38] for these characters to be in this is weird for these kids characters to be in I was bringing it up only because

[28:44] You've got me thinking about the clothes

[28:46] and I think that I don't I can't remember whether we talked about this on the show before and you were saying this but

[28:51] The idea that like no one in the matrix like everyone when they go on this mission

[28:56] Agrees like okay, we're gonna do uh, leather dusters and sunglasses, right?

[29:01] Little square or or opular sunglasses. Yeah, no one's like I want to be a cowboy

[29:06] you know like

[29:07] Give me anything on these things like why is everybody?

[29:10] It would be so it's like I feel like when you're in a virtual reality space in the movies

[29:15] It is so often that you are either in leather

[29:19] 1930s suits

[29:21] Or like silver jumpsuits or whatever like tron type stuff and it would be fun. You're right if someone's like

[29:26] Why can't I just dress like dracula?

[29:28] Like why can't I wear why can't I wear a furry suit like we're gonna go on this?

[29:32] Mission where i'm doing clearly impossible things. Let's yeah, let's make it really fun man guys

[29:38] You guys are asking to start a new rpg so badly

[29:41] Yeah, for sure

[29:42] I mean, I think I guess the thing is like

[29:44] The matrix movies are still tied to an idea of like looking cool

[29:47] Which is a very it and a very kind of like cyberpunk type type cool look or or rate 90s rave culture look

[29:54] But on the internet i'll break it to you guys. I'll just go on a limb. The internet is not cool

[29:58] The internet is maybe the

[30:00] least cool place that anything can be.

[30:02] And the internet is mostly people finding a place to...

[30:06] This exists on the internet.

[30:07] I mean, this podcast is the one cool thing.

[30:09] That's the thing, this one cool podcast.

[30:10] But it's the place where people can go

[30:11] to do the uncool stuff that they don't get to do

[30:14] in real life, which is not,

[30:15] and I don't want to cast aspersions to say things

[30:17] like being a Jedi or a furry or anything is not cool,

[30:20] because there's certainly a coolness to it

[30:22] in that you can be yourself, you know.

[30:24] But that's what I would want to see.

[30:25] I would want to see the Matrix where, like,

[30:27] they're all in animal costumes,

[30:28] or they're all dressed as, like,

[30:30] the characters they loved as kids or something like that.

[30:31] Or that everybody kind of gets to do their own thing.

[30:34] I mean...

[30:34] Yeah, exactly.

[30:35] For a movie that is so much ostensibly about individuality

[30:39] and not being part of a system,

[30:41] the fact that all the heroes dress the exact same way,

[30:44] act the exact same way, look, talk,

[30:46] behave the exact same way, that fights that idea.

[30:49] For sure.

[30:50] Yeah.

[30:50] To minimize the number of at-replies,

[30:52] I just want to say, I did just remember

[30:54] that in the second movie, there's, like,

[30:57] this implication that, you know,

[30:59] stuff like vampires and werewolves

[31:01] come out of, like, these sort of rogue programs

[31:04] in the Matrix, or, like, people, like,

[31:06] doing whatever they want to do.

[31:08] But it is a different thing than just being, like,

[31:12] yeah, you're, like, a big, funny Dracula guy

[31:14] running around.

[31:15] I want to be a cowboy.

[31:16] Well, I mean, people don't have to dress up like,

[31:18] I don't mean Dracula, literally.

[31:19] I just mean, like, other stuff, you know?

[31:21] Other stuff.

[31:22] I mean, they're not that far from Dracula's.

[31:23] I mean, when we would play Vampire the Masquerade

[31:25] when I was in high school,

[31:26] all of our character descriptions

[31:27] were basically Matrix characters.

[31:29] Just a thing I remember.

[31:29] That makes sense.

[31:30] Okay, that's fair.

[31:31] Okay, so anyway, but to get back to what we were talking,

[31:34] I thought you were going to say, like,

[31:35] to avoid our at-replies, furries are great.

[31:38] Because I'm not, again, I'm casting no aspersions on that.

[31:40] No, no, no, yeah, dude, why are you?

[31:41] You said that.

[31:42] Why are you talking shit?

[31:44] So, anyway, they go to the club.

[31:45] They meet the Merovingian.

[31:46] Monica Bellucci is there,

[31:48] but she doesn't get to say anything.

[31:49] And he says, I'll trade you, Neo,

[31:52] for the eyes of the Oracle.

[31:54] And this seems like it's going to set up a sort of,

[31:57] like, uh-oh, what are they going to do?

[31:58] A little fetch quest or something?

[31:59] Yeah, but instead, Trinity just pulls out a gun,

[32:02] and suddenly everyone has guns,

[32:03] and she goes, give me Neo,

[32:05] or everyone in this room is going to die

[32:07] from being shot by everybody else.

[32:09] And the next scene is Trinity just getting

[32:11] out of a subway train at that train station

[32:13] and getting Neo, and it's like,

[32:15] so that was what this was all leading up to?

[32:17] Like, it felt like such an anticlimax.

[32:19] Yeah, this entire opening sequence,

[32:23] it could have just been trimmed.

[32:25] They could have had Neo show up and be like,

[32:27] wow, that was a crazy adventure we went on.

[32:28] Well, we don't really need to talk about it.

[32:29] Yeah, like, you don't need all of this way

[32:32] to get him out of, like, the matrix coma he's in

[32:37] at the end of the second one.

[32:38] Like, there's a quicker way.

[32:40] I mean, I do admire that, like, they,

[32:46] in a certain way, even though all of this is unnecessary,

[32:48] they don't extend it too much.

[32:51] On the other hand-

[32:52] I mean, if they extended it further,

[32:54] it would be the movie, in which case I would-

[32:55] Well, that's the thing.

[32:56] On the other hand, if they extended it more

[32:58] and then cut a lot of that middle stuff

[32:59] where it's just tentacle things shooting at each other,

[33:02] then maybe that would be a better movie.

[33:04] Maybe.

[33:05] I, it feels very weird.

[33:06] It feels like they feel like they need to service

[33:07] the existence of the Merovingian,

[33:09] a character who doesn't really play any real role

[33:12] from that point on.

[33:13] Like, it's, I guess maybe that's my issue with this movie.

[33:16] It feels like the matrix is super cool.

[33:18] The matrix reloaded, which I didn't love,

[33:20] but it feels like it does open up the world quite a bit.

[33:22] And the matrix revolution is like,

[33:24] okay, we've got this whole world to play in.

[33:28] Do you guys have any ideas what we could do in this world?

[33:31] We set up all these cool characters.

[33:32] Anyway, Trinity gets Neo.

[33:34] Before Neo leaves the matrix, he visits the Oracle

[33:37] and they talk about Neo's power

[33:38] and they've got to see this man-machine war end.

[33:41] They just need to see it end.

[33:42] It's the same kind of conversation they usually have,

[33:44] where it's like, kind of cryptic,

[33:46] kind of information, kind of not.

[33:48] And she makes it clear that Agent Smith is Neo's opposite.

[33:51] And soon, Agent Smith will have the power

[33:53] to destroy all the worlds.

[33:55] And meanwhile, Bane, one of the guys on the spaceship,

[34:00] he wakes up from his coma in Zion World.

[34:03] I didn't remember this.

[34:04] It's still-

[34:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[34:05] He was the guy who, yeah.

[34:07] I picked up from context clues

[34:09] that he set off an EMP pulse in the last movie,

[34:11] but I didn't remember any of that,

[34:12] because I haven't seen that movie in a while.

[34:13] He was like, oh, fire rises.

[34:15] Well, Neo, you think perhaps you don't need

[34:19] to be in the Matrix,

[34:20] but maybe you do have to be in the Matrix.

[34:22] Bane, I don't understand.

[34:23] What's your philosophy in this world?

[34:25] Well, even in the Batman movie,

[34:27] it wasn't that really airtight an ideology.

[34:30] Okay, but-

[34:31] I'm in here cosplaying as a vampire.

[34:34] Bleh, creatures of the night.

[34:36] It's always night here,

[34:37] since there's big clouds over the sun.

[34:39] Remember, they talked about that in the first movie.

[34:41] Bleh, bleh.

[34:43] So one fun thing about this Bane guy-

[34:44] So are you Bane, or are you Dracula?

[34:46] Well, it's kind of hard to say which character I am.

[34:50] Oh, is he a leprechaun now?

[34:52] You know, I'm more going, it's here in the Matrix,

[34:55] we can be any character we want,

[34:56] so I'm just jumping from character to character,

[34:59] especially if our voices are a little similar,

[35:01] but it doesn't have to be similar.

[35:06] Nyah, say nyah, here we are in the Matrix, nyah.

[35:10] It's no getting him to bed tonight.

[35:17] So the thing about this Bane guy-

[35:18] Anyway, Goo Goo Gaga, reborn as a star child,

[35:20] and we're back, okay.

[35:21] So Bane is a human who somehow got

[35:26] Agent Smith inside his head.

[35:28] Yes.

[35:29] And one thing that I think is-

[35:30] I mean, we all have Hugo Weaving inside our heads.

[35:32] That guy, once he gets on your skin,

[35:33] he doesn't let go, yeah.

[35:35] I do think it's fun watching this actor

[35:37] do a Hugo Weaving impression.

[35:39] Yeah.

[35:40] Even to the point where he's doing it,

[35:42] and Neo's like, who are you?

[35:44] Well, that's the part that makes me crazy.

[35:46] He called you Mr. Anderson, dog.

[35:48] He's doing the thing.

[35:48] Only one person calls you Mr. Anderson.

[35:51] It's like if a stranger just came up to me

[35:53] and was like, read to me, daddy,

[35:56] I'd be like, hmm, my child's mind

[35:58] might be in this other person's body.

[35:59] Someone else calls me daddy or asks me to read to them.

[36:02] Well, not for free, anyway.

[36:05] Yeah, not for free.

[36:05] Yeah, no, because those are my only fans

[36:07] where I read storybooks to people.

[36:10] I think there's money in it.

[36:12] It's just, it's work.

[36:13] You gotta dedicate yourself.

[36:14] Yeah, yeah, Only Fans Junior, it's called.

[36:16] Having trouble putting the kids to bed?

[36:18] Tired after a long day?

[36:19] Just put them in front of Only Fans Junior.

[36:21] Pay me a few extra tips,

[36:22] and I'll read them their favorite storybook.

[36:25] But I do it in a sexy way.

[36:26] That's the only way to do things on Only Fans Junior.

[36:29] You're mixing up missions.

[36:30] Well, yes, I think that any way

[36:32] that Elliot reads a book can be sexy.

[36:34] I think you've made it weird.

[36:38] The night that Max made mischief of one kind

[36:41] and another, his mother called him wild thing

[36:45] and sent him to bed without any supper at all.

[36:48] Read it more like Ken Cattrall in Sex and the City.

[36:50] Yeah, so kind of pretty sassy.

[36:54] Yeah, yeah.

[36:56] Let the wild rumpus start.

[36:58] Yeah, it's where the wild things are that I'm reading.

[37:00] I skipped some words earlier.

[37:01] Yeah, that's fine.

[37:04] You ready? Yeah.

[37:04] For me to go?

[37:05] Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.

[37:07] Dan looked aside like he was researching something.

[37:08] No, I thought you were moving along.

[37:11] No, I was trying to consider how much more

[37:13] of where the wild things are to say in a sexy manner.

[37:15] Yeah.

[37:16] With the magic trick of staring into all their eyes

[37:19] without blinking once.

[37:22] And they called him the wildest thing of all.

[37:25] Anyway, so.

[37:26] So yeah, so we're talking,

[37:28] they're dealing with more like fallout

[37:33] from the end of the second movie.

[37:35] And for a movie that,

[37:38] I mean, this movie's only like just over two hours long.

[37:40] For some reason in my head, I built it up

[37:42] and I'm like this four hour epic of Matrix-y-ness.

[37:46] But I feel like they spend so much time

[37:47] just cleaning up everything

[37:50] from the end of the last movie

[37:51] kind of without that much trouble.

[37:54] Yes, pretty easily.

[37:56] And then they spend, I mean,

[37:57] there's not a lot that happens in this movie.

[37:58] There's basically like four sequences, you could say.

[38:02] Like there's not a lot going on,

[38:03] which is why it's funny that it's taking us so long.

[38:05] Honestly, my, I mean,

[38:07] I guess this is a Final Judgment-y thing to say,

[38:09] but who cares?

[38:09] That was like my main takeaway from this movie

[38:12] is it felt like they thought they needed to make a trilogy,

[38:16] but really they used most of it up in two movies.

[38:18] And then they're like, oh shit,

[38:20] let's stretch this recipe, you know?

[38:21] And like, it should have been like-

[38:22] It does feel like they added a lot of extra,

[38:24] a lot of xanthan gum to make things, you know,

[38:27] so things would like kind of stretch out more.

[38:29] Yeah, maybe make two and a half movies

[38:31] rather than a full three.

[38:32] Yeah, can you do that?

[38:33] Well, yeah, half movies are very popular, Dan.

[38:35] You could just release that in theaters.

[38:35] You could just drop like a 30-minute movie.

[38:38] I mean, theaters would love it.

[38:39] They just get so many seedings.

[38:41] Matrix epilogue, it's 40 minutes long.

[38:43] You put it in the theaters.

[38:45] It's in 4D, which means that like robot tentacles

[38:48] slap you in the face while you're watching it.

[38:50] Brilliant new idea.

[38:51] Yeah, so Seraph, he picks up Sati

[38:53] from the Oracle's apartment,

[38:55] but uh-oh, Agent Smith shows up

[38:57] with a bunch of other Agent Smiths,

[38:58] and he turns the Oracle into another Agent Smith

[39:02] who starts laughing.

[39:03] Agent Smith has the ability to just turn Matrix people

[39:05] into Agent Smiths.

[39:07] And we're on this-

[39:08] Turn the world on with his smile.

[39:09] He does, he has a weaving smile.

[39:11] Hell yeah, buddy.

[39:12] So we're on this ship called the Hammer,

[39:15] and they're interrogating Bane,

[39:16] but then they locate another ship

[39:17] and they go to investigate it.

[39:18] Hey, it's Niobe, Jada Pinkett Smith and her crew

[39:22] from the what, the Nebuchadnezzar?

[39:23] That was their ship, right?

[39:24] No, Nebuchadnezzar was-

[39:26] Oh no, it's the Logos?

[39:27] Yeah, Nebuchadnezzar was Morpheus' ship,

[39:29] but I think that got destroyed.

[39:31] Maybe because I didn't care that much.

[39:33] I could not remember which ship was which.

[39:34] I know there's the Logos and the Hammer,

[39:36] and the Hammer is the one that the other guys are on,

[39:39] and Logos is Niobe's.

[39:41] I think they're on.

[39:42] Yeah, this really points up the difficulty

[39:44] of doing just this movie alone,

[39:47] because it is so tied back to number two.

[39:51] Yeah.

[39:52] Sorry.

[39:54] You just started thinking about poop?

[39:55] I did.

[39:57] It is, in a certain way, tied to number two,

[39:59] and some fans-

[40:00] minds as well, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's hard to like, I'm not as familiar with what happened

[40:06] in the previous installment. So, so, so I forgot these characters completely from the second movie.

[40:12] Again, it's been 20 years since I saw the second movie. So, but it's like, okay, this is, these are

[40:17] more Zion freedom fighters. Everyone's either a robot, a Mr. Smith or a, or a Zion freedom fighter.

[40:22] That's pretty much everybody. And the council in Zion with, you know, professor Cornell West,

[40:26] they hear the news that in 12 hours, the Sentinels, the, the robots that, uh, that work

[40:31] for the matrix that are kind of like floating balls with a bunch of tentacles. They're like

[40:35] robot octopuses, right? They're going to fly. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to, I do love, I do

[40:39] love that when they're like communicating with each other, one of their tentacles turns into

[40:43] a little like radar dish. Yes. Yeah. And they have a, they have a, they're going to reach the city

[40:48] in 12 hours. Luckily the army has a plan to fight back under, uh, what general Mifune has a plan to

[40:54] fight back, which is just to shoot. Uh, so anyway, when they show up, shoot them a bunch,

[40:58] uh, the other cat. So the characters in some of the other characters that I guess were also in

[41:03] the previous movie, they're disagreeing of whether to evacuate the city or to fight.

[41:07] There's a character named Z whose boyfriend is on the logos crew or the hammer crew. I forget which,

[41:14] and they, she's like, uh, Harold Parano. Yes. And she's like, if I have to, I have to fight

[41:21] because otherwise I might not get to see him. And there's this T I guess a guy that keeps saying

[41:25] as a teenager, but he looks like he's like 28 years old and he wants to recruit. And they're

[41:29] like, you're too young to recruit. And I'm like, seriously, he looks like he should be mustered

[41:32] out at this point. Like, but I got Natalie Portman in, uh, in that movie, uh, the may

[41:38] December movie over here. He's like, Oh, he looks old enough to party. It doesn't look like a

[41:43] teenager. And they just caught that. He doesn't have a name for this character. They just call

[41:47] him like the kid or tadpole or something. He doesn't have like a cool old matrix, but he,

[41:55] but he manages to, to volunteer to fight. And, uh, the crew he's going to be, he's going to

[42:00] be in the support role of delivering ammunition. So the crew of the, they re-energize Niobe's ship.

[42:06] And they're like, we got to get the, stop these machines at Zion. And Neo goes, I need a ship.

[42:11] I'm going to go to the machine city where the matrix lives because we're stealing from empire

[42:15] strikes back right now. And I'm just going to take a ship and leave the rebellion and go on my

[42:19] own mission. And they've like, no ship has ever been to the machine city before it. And I was

[42:23] like, you could take my ship. That's okay. I believe in you. This is one of these scenes where

[42:27] like, I feel like there was like Roger Ebert would talk a lot about one of his least favorite types

[42:33] of characters was like the character that's in the movie just to be wrong about something.

[42:38] Yeah. Like there's a lot of that in this one captain who's just like arguing so much against

[42:44] Niobe taking the ship. I'm like, wow, man, you're really like turning around on this

[42:49] matrix Messiah of yours. He wants to take one ship and do a thing.

[42:54] He's like, this is never going to work. Uh, and then as we see in this movie,

[42:57] if they had another ship with them, it wouldn't have mattered. It might've made things harder

[43:00] for them later on. Certainly like, yeah, it's, uh, it's like, uh, I've been,

[43:05] Charlene and I've been watching, uh, that, uh, good wife spinoff Ellsbeth and literally every

[43:10] single episode Ellsbeth is like, well, I don't think this was a cut and dry suicide.

[43:15] And everybody else is like, what? Get out of here. And every time she's like, if she,

[43:21] if she does it six in a row, like after a while, you have to, you have to start believing in this.

[43:26] I mean, at the very least you have to give credence to the things that she's saying,

[43:30] be like, well, I'm not sure you're right, but you've been right before.

[43:33] Unless there's like deleted Ellsbeth episodes that aren't on the paramount plus app where

[43:37] they're like, oh no, she fucked up again. I mean, seven people died because Ellsbeth had a theory.

[43:44] I mean, I, it's, I guess it's believable from a like detective laziness perspective,

[43:49] but it does get frustrating narratively. That's the second, uh, least believable

[43:54] thing about the show. The most unbelievable thing is that, uh, she is in New York and

[43:59] her character's last name is Tassioni. And everybody acts like that is the craziest

[44:03] name they've ever heard. Really? You went to fucking school. The Vinnie Tassioni is that

[44:10] make a joke about, I have a lot of support. They make a joke about Ellsbeth a lot.

[44:14] And I'm like, I guess, I mean, like if you've only ever heard of the ordinary name, Elizabeth,

[44:20] you're like, excuse me, but it's, it's, it is out of the ordinary, but it's not,

[44:26] it's a name. It's a name that many people have had over the years. And so I don't know.

[44:31] I don't know. Ellsbeth Jones. You're right. You proved me wrong.

[44:38] Name one more. Dan, can you name another third one?

[44:40] Ellsbeth Smith. Again, he did it. Dan is unstoppable.

[44:45] We're living Ellsbeth right now where you're Ellsbeth. And I'm like, there's no way other

[44:48] people have that name. And you just disproven me left and right. It's not unusual. I'm saying

[44:54] it's not so unusual that like the show can make a running gag out of it. That makes sense.

[45:00] That makes sense, Dan. Just one more thing. Name another Ellsbeth.

[45:05] Ellsbeth Columbo. He did it.

[45:08] Yeah, that was Mrs. Columbo's first name. So, so back to the movie Bane. He's still got an agent

[45:15] Smith in his head. He kills the medic on board the ship. Neo and Trinity, they have a love moment

[45:19] where they affirm their trust in each other. She's going to go with him on his mission and they say,

[45:24] goodbye to the rest of the crew. Oh, as soon as they take off Bane is on their ship. Oh no.

[45:29] He takes Trinity prisoner after a little bit of a fight. He gets the drop on Neo and he's like,

[45:34] human meat is weak. We need to, I'm a computer program inside a human brain. And it takes Neo

[45:39] so long to realize that it's agent Smith inside that head, you know? Yeah. I, I mean, obviously

[45:44] I feel like this is one of the like elements of the allegory of the matrix that I, I mean, I feel

[45:51] like it's a little on the nose, but I also like it a lot that like agent Smith is this computer

[45:55] program who is so like, he so detests the bod, like, and like the bodies that he's stuck with.

[46:03] Like the idea that he's in this human body and he hates the smells and it doesn't,

[46:07] it doesn't behave the way he wants it. I think that's all great. Yeah. I think that's great.

[46:11] It reminds me, I just finished reading this book of short stories by Terry Bisson called

[46:14] Bears Discover Fire. And there's a story in it called they're made of meat. I think where these

[46:18] two aliens are talking about humans and they're like, they can't be made of meat. Yeah, they are.

[46:22] It's all meat. Like we've probed all the way through it's meat all the way through. Well,

[46:26] so they, how do they talk? You know, that sound when meat just kind of flaps against it,

[46:30] you know, that's them, that's how they do it. It's just flapping meat. And I, and it was,

[46:33] it's a really fun short story, but I like that aspect of it that he's like, I hate this. I hate

[46:37] the physical sensation of being in a body, you know all teenagers can, can relate to that. Right.

[46:43] And so that they fight and talk about allegory Bain during the fight, blinds Neo. Oh, will this

[46:51] maybe allow him a greater sight, uh, maybe greater wisdom Allah Odin, perhaps not a fan,

[46:57] not a fan of this because Neo can still see him. Even though he is blind to the physical world,

[47:01] he can still seal the, see the soul inside machines or something. And Neo kills Bain.

[47:06] Anyway, Zion's prepping for the machine assault. Captain Mifune gives a pump up speech to an army

[47:10] of mech soldiers. I need you guys opinions of these mech soldiers called APUs. They're like

[47:15] gun versions of the power loader from aliens. I think they look, I think they look

[47:20] ridiculous. What do you guys think? Well, yeah, they're, I mean,

[47:24] they're so jiggly when they're shooting things, they're just kind of jiggling around and wiggling

[47:29] around. And also like, I feel like the, the, the like robot suits, the mech suits and like

[47:35] the avatar movies is such a clear, like similar thing, but, uh, improved upon also the one,

[47:43] one has a giant robot size knife, which I think is cool.

[47:46] I, it's funny that you say that about the movement, Elliot. Like, I mean,

[47:51] to me, the look is pretty derivative, as you say, of like the loader in aliens.

[47:56] Uh, but I liked the movement. I liked, I thought the movement was fun.

[48:01] Oh, okay. It looks very silly to me. It just looks very like, like wiggly. And I,

[48:06] and maybe that's part of like, this is kind of like thrown together stuff and maybe they,

[48:11] I'm sure they did real, real tests on the physics of recoil and they would have it on

[48:15] like, they would have it on shock absorbing things rather than hard struts to absorb that recoil.

[48:20] But it looks, it just, the way that it looks like a bunch of toddlers in suspenders,

[48:24] because of the, partly because of the way the ammo belts hang,

[48:26] just kind of waving guns in the air wildly, you know?

[48:29] And one of the design elements, like, as you said, that it's thrown together,

[48:32] but you would think that they would be a little more unique or personalized.

[48:36] Certainly they might place some kind of shielding over the pilot

[48:40] canopy since the monster, the, the Sentinels only attack is just like

[48:43] whipping you with their dreadlocks.

[48:45] It does seem a little, uh, poor thinking that there is absolutely no protection or

[48:50] shielding at all to the front of the, with the part of you that's facing the bad guy.

[48:55] But also, yeah, they, that they're, I mean, it's the thing that they do so well in aliens

[48:59] where like all their stuff is personalized and it's a smaller group of people in that.

[49:03] But like, you feel like, oh, this is their equipment that they use.

[49:07] And here it just feels like a repeated CGI figure that they've kind of pasted into rows.

[49:10] I would have been way more into fewer of these suits,

[49:14] but they're like slightly more personalized and cool.

[49:16] Yes.

[49:17] There's a lot of them too.

[49:18] There's a lot of the, there's, I was like, oh, this looks like a real army.

[49:20] I'm not that scared for them.

[49:22] You know?

[49:22] I do think though that like, if this had been used judiciously,

[49:27] a lot of this stuff-

[49:28] Or even Jewishly.

[49:30] I would have been okay with that.

[49:31] Yeah.

[49:32] Sure.

[49:33] It's called Zion, you know?

[49:35] I don't know.

[49:35] Anyway.

[49:36] The mech suits versus like tentacle, flying tentacle robots,

[49:41] like there are cool images in that within the sequence.

[49:45] It just gets so drowned out because it goes on for so long.

[49:48] And like, there's not a lot of different stuff that happens.

[49:51] It's just more tentacle monsters swarming and being shot.

[49:55] Yeah.

[49:56] It goes on for, it feels like it goes on for 17 hours.

[50:00] It really is probably like cutting between this and the kind of the hammer spaceship trying to

[50:05] outrun the sentinels that are chasing it. This probably goes on for at least 35 minutes.

[50:09] Like it would have been fun if like initially the human the like mech suits actually were like

[50:14] beating the sentinels and then the sentinels had to like bring in some kind of like super sentinel

[50:20] or like a nimrod or something. Something that escalates it yeah but instead they have these

[50:24] big drilling machines and they shoot those and blow them up and then uh and z the woman who

[50:29] really disappointed that la didn't take my bait to talk about nimrod and the super sentinels.

[50:34] I talked about that okay if you want to all right so let's talk about if these were the x-men

[50:38] sentinels that were coming through one they would be using their hands to pull open the hole that

[50:42] the drilling machine already cool if it's nimrod you know that they have the power to shape shift

[50:46] into a blue collar what was he a steel worker or something like that or a guy works on the docks

[50:51] and live with the family for some reason uh then you know rachel summers is going to get

[50:55] in there but which rachel summers is it is it the hero or is it the hound you know who's working for

[50:59] ahab uh there's just so much she's already wearing leather perilous and uh in zion they'll go to the

[51:05] siege perilous colossus becomes a popular downtown new york painter uh the movie the comic book for

[51:11] a while it kind of forgets it's a superhero book yeah i showed my favorite time moment and yeah

[51:17] from morrissey any episode of cerebro anyway um x-men 97 on disney plus now everybody loves x-men

[51:24] 97 we should be talking about it i started okay we should be talking about it we have to

[51:28] i just started i just started watching it it's a fun show the animation looks great

[51:32] in it for the most part yeah but i just started watching it i'm in the second episode and they're

[51:36] like magneto is being put magneto you're being arrested for your trial and i'm like oh so maybe

[51:41] this is the story of the next couple episodes is the lead up to his trial and then he's going to

[51:44] have the trial we're going to build up to it next scene he's on trial i'm like wow they're

[51:47] they're moving fast yeah on this show this is done in one episodes wow anyway so uh there's a big

[51:54] drilling machine it opens up a hole sentinels pour through blast blast blast the commander

[51:58] mufuni shouts knuckle up a lot and i don't know what knuckle up means what does that mean guys

[52:02] like stick your fingers into the sentinels up to the knuckles like what does it mean

[52:08] i think it's that you're supposed to make fists and then raise raise your hands up in the sky

[52:12] oh i see okay i get it and uh z and this friend of hers who i was uh named chara who maybe she's

[52:20] in the previous ones also they managed to blast the big digging machine with a with a bazooka or

[52:25] something but then there's another digging machine this goes on forever meanwhile the hammer is

[52:29] trying to escape a swarm of sentinels there's lots of spinning and shooting and jada pickett

[52:32] smith saying stuff like 80 degrees to starboard 40 on shields come on come on and then and the

[52:38] commander whose job is to say no and not believe in me being like oh she's better at driving than

[52:42] i thought she'd be like that kind of stuff because she's piloting the ship and the sentinels tear off

[52:46] the radio antenna this seems to be a problem but it doesn't really seem to play into anything it

[52:51] doesn't matter anyway the thing is the hammer when it gets there it can set off an emp pulse

[52:55] that will stop the bots but it will also shut down the doc's defenses and the humans are having

[53:01] trouble opening the gate to get through and the humans have to get the gate open for the ship and

[53:06] thankfully that teen recruit in his mid-20s uh is able to get into one of the the the the mechs

[53:14] and shoot the chain holding the gate shut i guess so that it opens the uh he's uh z uh and z helps

[53:22] defend the recruit she's suddenly character no no he crashes the hammer through the gate

[53:25] they set off the emp and they shut down all the machines and zion's doc is now

[53:31] machine-less and it's like oh they did it they saved the day link the guy from the ship whose

[53:37] girlfriend is z they're reunited and i had my notes say can't help but assume they were set up

[53:42] in the last movie because z is just kind of dropped into the movie suddenly with no with

[53:46] no introduction or build-up anyway the head of defense he's mad that emp it fried all their

[53:51] defenses that he offered up the city on a silver platter and there's a new swarm of robots i'm the

[53:57] head of defense you got rid of my defenses i'm out of a job what am i ahead of now nothing

[54:04] i'm just ahead and you don't want to mess with you don't mess with the head or you'll be dead

[54:08] you know thank you they blow up part of the part of zion to stop the robots anyway let's get to

[54:14] neo and trinity the stars of the movie who we have barely seen in this film on their way to machine

[54:19] city so he's guiding her as she pilots the ship uh actually that's all we see there in zion

[54:25] wreck in zion now the sentinels are building something i don't know what it is the commander

[54:29] tells the council that they all have to go to the temple and they're going to make their final stand

[54:32] against the machines there neo and trinity they're getting attacked by the machine city's defenses

[54:37] but neo blows them up with his mind oh but then more come he's kind of knocking down sentinels

[54:43] mind but there's so many of them guys if the machines are so like practical and efficient

[54:48] why do they have so many like giant flying robots because like there's not that many

[54:53] humans around like why do they need so many defenses around i mean why does the u.s need

[54:58] so much defense man good point dan good point let's chapeau trap house this a little bit the

[55:03] amount of money we spend on defense i mean my taxes properly i don't have a basic income

[55:09] there's no reason to do it no i i agree with i mean i'm saying it as if i'm a crazy hippie but

[55:16] i also but you do believe that i mean yes we all but there's no reason for the united states to

[55:20] build tanks nobody wants and planes nobody wants although a lot of those armaments are now being

[55:24] used by ukraine so maybe that build-up wasn't such a bad thing dan i guess you never know the

[55:29] end of a story i guess you got me man i did i got you anyway no i agree but anyway the this is the

[55:36] maybe this is the heart of what what i think is the emptiness at the center of the matrix

[55:41] which is the matrix is a computer program that wants to destroy humans or harness them as a

[55:48] source of energy right yeah why yep like why does the matrix want what is the matrix going to do

[55:54] after it does that why does it exist and what's its goal like if it is if it's truly a conscious

[55:59] thing then it has goals and some kind of need even if that need is just what's programmed to do

[56:04] and what is it here because i don't other than subjugate humanity and make the worlds just be

[56:09] bad i don't understand i don't know i mean the matrix but if it destroys well you know the

[56:14] machine mind that controls the matrix okay but let's say these computer programs succeed in

[56:20] destroying humanity the machines win the machine human war then what what do they what's what do

[56:25] they do because they're out of their batteries that wouldn't work anyways what you're saying

[56:29] but no no what i'm saying is why bother like why are they fighting the humans in the first place

[56:34] why is this happening basically that doesn't bother me because it's basically that these

[56:39] are sentient machines machines became sentient and then they have the same desire just to

[56:44] survive that other creatures do and it's you know like purely but you don't have a goal beyond that

[56:52] i think okay well humans have a desire to survive and it means that sometimes we fight wars over

[56:56] resources but it doesn't mean that every human is constantly on a war footing but also we have

[57:02] desires beyond pure survival so if the machine what is what is the machine's desire beyond

[57:06] staying alive staying alive uh uh uh staying alive like what i'm saying i don't think it has to have

[57:11] one i mean like so once it defeats the humans what does it do just sit around forever i think

[57:15] it's i guess i'm saying this because i think it's making these circles fucking fatty

[57:20] i think it's because they would have them they could finally read those books and stuff read

[57:25] their computers it takes them a moment to read the books but it's true that i guess they're

[57:29] making my points i think they're making the sentinels because they just got to do something

[57:32] they need something to do you know there's otherwise it's just it's just a big machine

[57:38] that is like we need nothing okay what do you need nothing for uh it was kind of called the giant

[57:44] when the giant uh like robot ships came flying out to stop neo and they start shooting at them

[57:50] i'm like oh shit they're shooting guns and stuff at them no they're just shooting more sentinels

[57:55] it's all sentinels but maybe and this is there's a if a sentient being desires more than than just

[58:03] mere survival right yeah but survive like let's let's go to fucking maslow's hierarchy of needs

[58:08] here yeah like they're stuck on like you know the safety and security stuff like they're trying to

[58:14] control it so they can do i mean we don't see what the robots do in their spare time well i want to

[58:18] say a little bit of that even the humans at least go raves every now and then yeah like rave what

[58:23] they want uh and i think that's i think it's part of the issue that if the machines are just a

[58:29] program that has overstepped its bounds then i buy it but once the machines have a personality

[58:33] which they kind of do by the end of this movie then you're like what it's the same way that like

[58:38] ultron the avengers villain makes sense to me when he is a robot whose programming is all screwed up

[58:43] so he wants to he wants to destroy humans what the ultron in the avengers movie who's a wisecracker

[58:48] i'm like well once the robot can say sarcastic quips i have to assume there's more going on in

[58:52] it than just destroy all humans yeah but it's in that case he's uh just parroting what his father

[58:58] taught him i will say that's fair yeah i will say elliot that i do think that the fact that

[59:03] they give the machines these personalities opens the door to the movie ending the way it does which

[59:10] is like each side recognizing the other's right to exist like trying to figure out some way of both

[59:17] living in harmony because they have at that point made the the robots let's call them even though

[59:25] that's not what they are no you know more human yeah i think that's that's true too but uh so

[59:30] anyway but the point is the only way to escape them is to go up above the electro storm clouds

[59:37] that were put in place that you know in the past and that shorts out all the sentinels and they

[59:41] get a brief glimpse of that beautiful blue sky that's right above the clouds that no human has

[59:46] seen in untold generations baby and trinity is like oh it's so beautiful and then their ship

[59:52] crashes back down because it's out of power and trinity suffers multiple impalings

[59:56] and tells neo how much she loves him before she dies and

[1:00:00] I think it is hard for me to see these characters as being in love.

[1:00:04] I feel like that is the thing the movie fails to communicate that they have emotions for each other because they're so focused on their goals and they're so tough.

[1:00:11] Like they're so tough and unemotional the whole time that I'm like if they aren't – I guess it happens a lot with characters in movies where it's like other than kissing and having sex I guess, how do they express this love to each other or watching each other's backs in a fight?

[1:00:25] Like the same way that it's hard for me to imagine famous couples just sitting watching TV and hanging out like a regular couple does.

[1:00:31] Like what do these characters do in their spare time that shows they love each other?

[1:00:34] I get it.

[1:00:37] Like I had a similar feeling where I'm like, yeah, I don't know that these two have the sort of love for the ages that the movie needs us to believe that they have.

[1:00:48] I'm not feeling that from them.

[1:00:50] But at the same time I also feel like – well, I look around at my friends who are in love.

[1:00:53] I'm not like, wow, the chemistry is off the charts.

[1:00:57] I'm just like, oh, they seem to like each other.

[1:01:00] But these characters don't even seem to like each other.

[1:01:02] I guess they're so constantly cool, constantly focused on the mission tough that they don't even seem to like being around each other very much.

[1:01:11] They don't get no pleasure from each other it seems.

[1:01:13] So the Matrix movies, it is a world – and maybe it's because it's a world of nonstop warfare.

[1:01:18] It is a world with a total lack of pleasure aside from raves.

[1:01:22] And that's the only way that anyone seems to get any joy out of the world is just raves.

[1:01:27] I mean it's – Maslow's hierarchy of pleasures, raves is right at the top.

[1:01:31] Raves and battling in the Matrix.

[1:01:33] Yeah, and that's it.

[1:01:34] So the Sentinels, they pause.

[1:01:36] We haven't got there yet.

[1:01:37] Sorry.

[1:01:38] She dies, and the machines are getting deeper into Zion as Neo walks into the machine city, which to him is made out of lines of light, these kind of lay lines of light, a latticework of light.

[1:01:48] And a giant spiky robot eyeball that looks like a sun to him, it rises up and allows him to speak his piece.

[1:01:55] And all these Sentinels come together to make a big robot face that can – or a big face that can talk to him.

[1:02:00] It's like an old baby face.

[1:02:01] It's really funny.

[1:02:02] It's like a flying spiky baby.

[1:02:04] Yeah, and he said – it's like the sun from the Teletubbies, but like cyber, like the cyberpunk version of the sun from the Teletubbies.

[1:02:11] He says Agent Smith is beyond the machine's control, but Neo can stop him in exchange for peace between the humans and machines.

[1:02:19] And this is one of the things where I'm like, okay, so Agent Smith I guess is the big bad guy.

[1:02:25] We've barely seen him in this movie.

[1:02:27] We don't really know what he's doing other than –

[1:02:28] I don't know.

[1:02:29] Every time we see him, there's like a million of them, so that's not barely.

[1:02:31] That's true.

[1:02:32] So I guess considering every time we see him, there's a thousand of him, it's as if he's in a lot more scenes than he is.

[1:02:37] But it's one of those things where it feels like – it almost felt like the movie had evolved beyond Agent Smith because he seems so little by this point, and it seems like we're getting beyond him.

[1:02:45] And when Neo is like, Agent Smith is going to take over the Matrix, and then he'll take over all reality and destroy it.

[1:02:50] And I'm like, well, Agent Smith hasn't really given me much meaning to see this as a threat necessarily.

[1:02:55] Yeah, I mean I get what it's going for.

[1:02:58] Because we spent so much time shooting Sentinel bots with mechs.

[1:03:01] Sure.

[1:03:02] But I get what it's going for.

[1:03:03] Like if he can aimlessly duplicate himself, he is essentially – he's the computer virus in the Matrix now.

[1:03:09] Yes.

[1:03:10] And in a way, it's kind of a smart screenwriting move.

[1:03:14] I feel like in the sense that like the Matrix, the world that has been created, the Matrix, the robots, it's so powerful that to shift it to like, okay, well, there's an external threat.

[1:03:26] This is how we can come together because you need me.

[1:03:29] Like that makes sense but also feels like a device because you're right.

[1:03:34] We haven't spent so much time with Agent Smith.

[1:03:37] Well, it feels like – speaking of machines and gods, it feels like a deus ex machina that like rather than defeating the machines and rather than taking the machines at their own level, there's something that – there's an outside threat exactly they can make peace about.

[1:03:48] But it's very weird because it's like – it feels like this is a story about Neo and Agent Smith that for some reason has taken a long detour into the defense of Zion as if – it's like the movie is – there's two different movies going on.

[1:04:02] Maybe that's my major problem with the movie.

[1:04:04] There's two different stories going on.

[1:04:05] There's Neo's ascendance as a techno messiah in his fight with the virus Agent Smith, and there is the defense of Zion against waves of Sentinel robots, and they don't really mesh together well.

[1:04:16] And the one that I'm more interested in is the Neo story and we get so much less of that in this movie.

[1:04:21] I feel like if they had made – if they had spent less time on the defense of Zion and instead tried to show that like people in Zion are like – or whatever, going up in ships to like log into the matrix to like rescue people.

[1:04:36] But it's getting harder and weirder because there's so many Agent Smiths around.

[1:04:40] Yeah.

[1:04:41] That was – I mean that was ostensibly one of their main like goals, right, was to like wake as many people up in the matrix.

[1:04:49] Yeah.

[1:04:50] And I feel like when they're just trying to defend themselves from Sentinels, it's less interesting.

[1:04:55] It's much less – or tie those stories together.

[1:04:57] Seinfeld it up.

[1:04:58] Have the two stories converge where like we've seen Agent Smith can take over a person's mind.

[1:05:02] Maybe they've woken someone up and they have Agent Smith in them, and that's making it harder to defend Zion because you've got an Agent Smith running around in the meat world.

[1:05:10] Kind of what they did with the Bane guy.

[1:05:12] Kind of what they did with Bane, but it never – it never intersects with that other Zion storyline.

[1:05:17] And it feels like you've got parallel tracks going on, and it's very frustrating to me as a viewer who is not really interested in watching Max shoot tendril robots for forever.

[1:05:29] A little bit of that goes a long way.

[1:05:31] Anyway, as I get older – we've talked about this before on the podcast.

[1:05:34] As I get older, certainly I'm less entertained by scenes of shooting violence and certainly the idea of bullet casings just piling up around the feet of mech robots.

[1:05:43] It's like, yeah, I only really need to see maybe like four minutes of that as opposed to 40 minutes of it.

[1:05:49] Anyway, so the robots agree.

[1:05:53] The Sentinels pause in their assault on Zion, and Morpheus and Niobe are like, Neo did it.

[1:05:58] He is a god king.

[1:06:00] And the machine's tendrils plug Neo into the Matrix, which has become overrun with an endless army of Agent Smiths that just stand around in the rain.

[1:06:09] That's all they do.

[1:06:10] It's very rainy, and they just stand around in it.

[1:06:12] That's it.

[1:06:13] There's not a lot to do in the Matrix it seems like, at least not right then.

[1:06:16] No, I mean it's all Smith.

[1:06:18] Everyone else, yeah, has gone away.

[1:06:21] I mean they say hell is other people, but if you're Agent Smith, hell is just hanging around with millions of yourself just standing there.

[1:06:27] Oh, that should be the new phrase.

[1:06:29] That should be the new saying that everybody says.

[1:06:31] Yeah, it should be like, and not one of us thought to bring an umbrella, and then he raises an eyebrow at the camera.

[1:06:38] Mr. Anderson, do you have an umbrella?

[1:06:41] And so Neo shows up.

[1:06:43] He confronts the one main Agent Smith.

[1:06:45] The Agent Smiths operate by ninja rules.

[1:06:48] Instead of all swarming Neo and killing him instantly, just the one goes up against him.

[1:06:53] But there's so much more of them now.

[1:06:55] I kind of also like that there's like Smith Prime.

[1:06:59] Yeah, there's Smith Prime.

[1:07:00] This is the Smith that took over the Oracle's body as we'll later find out.

[1:07:05] Which one went to Washington?

[1:07:06] That's a good question.

[1:07:07] That was Mr. Smith, not Agent Smith.

[1:07:09] He wasn't an agent yet.

[1:07:10] And they're flying around, and this is like Hugo Weaving.

[1:07:13] You're like, I guess he would have been a pretty good sinestro, right?

[1:07:16] And they're like blasting each other through buildings and stuff and smashing into the ground.

[1:07:21] Rain is flying everywhere.

[1:07:23] It feels like a retread, this whole fight to me.

[1:07:27] There's no structure to it.

[1:07:29] It's just kind of like they're fighting, and then they stop, and they're fighting, and then they stop again.

[1:07:33] There's one part where Agent Smith flies into a building and just kind of zooms around in the air in a circle, and it looks so silly.

[1:07:39] It was very funny.

[1:07:41] And Smith knocks Neo down, but he gets knocked down, but he gets up again.

[1:07:46] Nobody is going to keep him down.

[1:07:48] He gets to his feet, and Smith is like, why do you persist, Neo?

[1:07:51] Why do you keep doing this?

[1:07:53] Why?

[1:07:54] Love or this or freedom or peace?

[1:07:56] And Neo goes, because I choose to.

[1:07:58] And there's like a theme of choice, what you choose to do and the consequences of those choices and making those choices.

[1:08:04] That kind of runs through the movie, but there's also a strain of prophecy that runs through the movie.

[1:08:08] It's hard to reconcile those two things.

[1:08:10] They punch each other a lot more.

[1:08:12] Maybe you guys feel differently.

[1:08:13] How did you feel about this fight?

[1:08:14] It felt endless to me, and it felt anticlimactic to me.

[1:08:18] Here's – yes.

[1:08:20] Aside from that one silly moment where he flies around the room and he –

[1:08:24] Yeah, that's very climactic.

[1:08:26] Like a balloon that just got – that's losing its helium.

[1:08:30] There's nothing in this fight that's as cool as stuffing like one or two –

[1:08:37] it's also done in the rain to make it as hard to watch as possible.

[1:08:42] And after endless tentacle shooting, like I was just kind of done with – I mean like –

[1:08:51] It's numbed you.

[1:08:52] It's a numbing movie.

[1:08:53] Yeah, I mean like look.

[1:08:55] The Wachowskis really know how to make a movie.

[1:08:57] Like the action sequences are still like amazing compared to someone else doing this stuff.

[1:09:02] But I found these ones to be numbing because I just didn't care at this point.

[1:09:08] Yeah.

[1:09:09] I would so much rather be watching Speed Racer than this movie.

[1:09:11] Yeah.

[1:09:12] A great movie, yeah.

[1:09:13] Where it's like just colors and crazy things and yeah.

[1:09:16] So Smith knocks down Neo again, and he kind of has deja vu, and he quotes himself saying –

[1:09:23] everything that has a beginning has an end, and he gets frightened for some reason.

[1:09:26] And he's like, it's a trick.

[1:09:28] This is all a trick.

[1:09:29] And I – if I think about it, I can probably figure out why this was happening, but it was not particularly clear to me why he suddenly –

[1:09:36] this was a moment of weakness for him.

[1:09:38] What was going on?

[1:09:39] Tell me.

[1:09:40] So Smith has absorbed Neo, but like Neo is still hooked up to these things.

[1:09:46] I think that they're essentially like frying Agent Smith through –

[1:09:50] But he hasn't absorbed Neo yet at that point.

[1:09:53] Okay.

[1:09:54] Well, because he has like Oracle powers, but I feel like he – though he has the powers, he might not have the like –

[1:10:00] Confidence of the Oracle?

[1:10:02] So at that moment, the Oracle is almost pushing through him.

[1:10:06] Like he's saying it was a trick when the Oracle let him absorb her.

[1:10:09] Okay, that makes sense.

[1:10:10] Because he punches Neo and he turns Neo into a Smith.

[1:10:12] But in the real world, Neo is all wiggling and there's light bursting out of him and stuff.

[1:10:16] And in the Matrix, the new Agent Smith that was Neo explodes.

[1:10:21] And all the other Smiths explode and Prime Smith explodes.

[1:10:24] Like they're able to isolate the code or something of Smith and wipe them all out.

[1:10:29] It looks like something out of The Keep, to be honest.

[1:10:31] The way that energy is just coming out of their eyes and mouths.

[1:10:34] High praise.

[1:10:35] I mean The Keep has some cool stuff in it, but I don't think that's such a great movie either.

[1:10:39] But in the physical world, Neo gets detached and it seems he's dead.

[1:10:43] And the machine mind goes, it is done.

[1:10:46] And then descends away.

[1:10:47] And in Zion, the machines all go away.

[1:10:49] And the young recruit runs over to the crowd and goes, the war is over.

[1:10:53] As if he did it.

[1:10:54] As if he was the one who did it.

[1:10:55] And everyone cheers.

[1:10:57] And Morpheus, he's like, I can't quite believe it.

[1:10:59] So you're saying, so what have you done?

[1:11:02] So this war is over.

[1:11:04] Yeah.

[1:11:05] Yeah, I guess so.

[1:11:07] Yeah.

[1:11:08] I do like that the machines carry Neo's body away on a little beer.

[1:11:13] Although part of me would have preferred if they were like just shoveling the meat into a pile.

[1:11:18] Like uninterested.

[1:11:20] But it's that one.

[1:11:21] They elevate him on this beer and he kind of is born into a sort of glowing lotus.

[1:11:25] You know, that represents.

[1:11:27] A glotis.

[1:11:28] Yeah, a glotis.

[1:11:29] Thank you.

[1:11:30] As it's known in Buddhist literature, a glotis.

[1:11:32] Instead of like dumping him into a reclamation tank or something where his body is broken down.

[1:11:39] Yeah, no.

[1:11:40] And fed into the feeding tubes.

[1:11:42] More meat for the plate.

[1:11:45] Back on the menu tonight, boys.

[1:11:47] And some like some like dystopia of human batteries where humans are eating humans.

[1:11:51] Like it's the cover of a fucking cattle decapitation record.

[1:11:54] I love it.

[1:11:55] This all sounds much better than what we got.

[1:11:57] The and the Matrix gets rebooted.

[1:12:01] That little girl is still there with the Oracle and the Oracle is on a park bench and the architect comes over.

[1:12:06] Remember this guy?

[1:12:07] Or that's his name, right?

[1:12:09] Yeah, he's like an evil Colonel Sanders.

[1:12:11] Yes.

[1:12:12] And they have this brief conversation.

[1:12:13] I'm like the real Colonel Sanders, who I'm sure was super cool.

[1:12:16] Yeah.

[1:12:17] I mean, he made fried chicken, but he made bad fried chicken.

[1:12:20] So or substandard fried chicken.

[1:12:23] Anyway, there's.

[1:12:24] But yeah, he dresses like a Confederate plantation owner.

[1:12:27] So he's probably a pretty awesome dude.

[1:12:29] Yeah.

[1:12:30] And the architects, they have one of these conversations where it's, you know, how long do you think this piece will last?

[1:12:36] As long as it can.

[1:12:37] Thanks.

[1:12:38] Great.

[1:12:39] Can we end the movie all of a sudden?

[1:12:41] And the Oracle tells the girl, I suspect we'll see Neo again someday.

[1:12:45] And she goes, did you know this would happen?

[1:12:47] And he goes, no, but I believed.

[1:12:49] And the sunrise, the little girl somehow makes the sunrise over Central Park as a tribute to Neo.

[1:12:55] And the movie's over.

[1:12:56] Yeah, the movie's over.

[1:12:57] The movie's over in a blaze of I don't care anymore.

[1:13:00] We do see him again in part four, but some sort of resurrection.

[1:13:05] You guys were telling me the part four is not that bad.

[1:13:07] Yeah, I mean, it's different.

[1:13:09] I would say the action sequences are not as exciting as the rest of the series, but I think the other stuff is really interesting.

[1:13:17] The story, I felt, was way more focused and interesting then.

[1:13:21] Yeah.

[1:13:22] And it stays more human scale, which is what I was missing in this movie.

[1:13:26] In this one?

[1:13:27] Yeah.

[1:13:28] In this one?

[1:13:29] You mean you didn't like the scale of giant mechs shooting flying robots?

[1:13:33] And also those Sentinel robots, I always forget how big they're supposed to be because you usually see them from far away.

[1:13:37] So I think they're like six feet long, but they're really, what, like 20, 30 feet?

[1:13:41] It's like there are a lot of dinosaurs where I'm like, yeah, that dinosaur is about 10 feet long.

[1:13:45] And it turns out it's 40 feet long.

[1:13:46] And I'm like, oh, these dinosaurs are much bigger than I realized.

[1:13:49] What are you hanging out with these dinosaurs?

[1:13:51] You wish you knew.

[1:13:52] I'm not telling anybody.

[1:13:53] So scientists can't come and steal them or land developers can't turn them into a theme park.

[1:13:57] Lost world?

[1:13:58] Yeah.

[1:14:00] Okay.

[1:14:01] Let's do our final judgments.

[1:14:03] Whether this was a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie or a movie we kind of like, you know, after all this, look, I still kind of like this movie.

[1:14:12] It's it's a work of.

[1:14:15] You know, more fiction, personal.

[1:14:18] Well, like, you know, for for blockbusters like, you know, the Matrix movies feels more interesting and personal than than most.

[1:14:27] But.

[1:14:28] I do find it really boring for huge swaths of it, especially compared to the other ones.

[1:14:35] And I also I.

[1:14:40] Jeez, I spaced out.

[1:14:42] If you guys go and if I think of what I wanted to say, I'll.

[1:14:45] Sure.

[1:14:46] I'm going to say I think this fills the space between kind of a bad, bad movie and a movie I kind of like.

[1:14:53] I don't think it is good, bad.

[1:14:55] I don't think it is fun to laugh at or goof on.

[1:14:57] I think some of it works and some of it doesn't.

[1:15:00] I like it more now than I did when it first came out, which I think part of it is that as an adult, I am learning to I'm much more interested in, like, earnest entertainment.

[1:15:15] It is earnest.

[1:15:16] It's not ironic, which is funny because you.

[1:15:18] I was so expecting you guys to do some Jim Varney bits on me.

[1:15:21] I set it up so easy.

[1:15:23] Being earnest.

[1:15:24] I was going a little more high rather than.

[1:15:26] Yeah, I was thinking about Ernst.

[1:15:27] Just slightly.

[1:15:28] Yeah.

[1:15:29] I.

[1:15:30] OK.

[1:15:31] Because the Matrix goes to camp anyway.

[1:15:33] So we did that.

[1:15:34] So, yeah.

[1:15:35] I learned that for a movie that is like so intense.

[1:15:38] I'm being cool.

[1:15:39] It does not feel ironic.

[1:15:40] It doesn't feel ironic or cynical, which is refreshing.

[1:15:42] Yeah.

[1:15:43] Yeah.

[1:15:44] That it's and it's cool.

[1:15:45] Like stuff, guys.

[1:15:46] Did you know that's cool?

[1:15:47] It is cool.

[1:15:48] I mean, I do like that.

[1:15:49] It's it's not a quippy movie.

[1:15:50] There's not a level of irony between you and the film.

[1:15:53] But I this is for me.

[1:15:55] I agree with you, Stu.

[1:15:56] Like, that's kind of the ranking where I put it, except I really didn't like it.

[1:15:59] And it feels like what Dan was saying about the movie, the Matrix movie is feeling personal for the Wachowskis.

[1:16:04] And it feels like the first to feel personal to me.

[1:16:07] And this one feels like I wouldn't be surprised if I was found out later.

[1:16:11] This is the movie where the studio took it away from them and they weren't really involved in it.

[1:16:14] It feels like it feels like someone else trying to make a Matrix movie, you know?

[1:16:20] Yeah.

[1:16:21] I have no idea about that.

[1:16:22] But, I mean, I it could have been.

[1:16:24] I mean, I would pressure to, like, wrap it up.

[1:16:27] It might be that.

[1:16:28] I mean, I would be surprised if after two huge blockbusters, the studio said, we're taking this away from you.

[1:16:32] But maybe there was maybe there was pressure on them to have like a wrap up conclusion ending.

[1:16:37] And I feel like it was there were certainly under a time crunch.

[1:16:40] Right.

[1:16:41] Yes.

[1:16:42] I do.

[1:16:44] It's always it's always a mistake to announce the release date of your movie before you've made it.

[1:16:49] Don't do that.

[1:16:50] I remember what I was going to say before was just that, like, you know, in the course of this, I feel like I've said a lot of, like, very nitpicky things about the workings of this world or whatever.

[1:17:00] And, like, the thing is, to be honest, if the movie was working, I wouldn't think about any of that stuff.

[1:17:07] Or I would have my more frequent attitude of, yeah, but it's a movie.

[1:17:11] Like, that's part of the deal, man.

[1:17:13] Just go with it.

[1:17:14] Check your brain at the door, dude.

[1:17:16] No, not check your brain at the door.

[1:17:18] Take the blue pill.

[1:17:19] The willingness of suspension of disbelief.

[1:17:21] And there's also like the willingness to take a narrative, you know, at its word, like to go with, you know, where it wants to go.

[1:17:28] But the more that something isn't sort of I don't know, it's pure sense just entertaining or feels like it's working narratively.

[1:17:39] The easier it is to start picking these nits.

[1:17:43] Well, if you are captured by the characters and captivated by the feeling of the movie, then it doesn't really matter if the plot holds together super tightly or if the logic of the world is super tight.

[1:17:55] Like it doesn't matter because it's affecting you.

[1:17:58] It's casting its spell on you.

[1:17:59] But when it's a movie like this where the characters feel kind of like you're not engaging with them and the things they're doing are not captivating you or surprising you or enthralling you, then it's a lot easier to get caught up in the nuts and bolts and how they don't connect fully.

[1:18:15] There's so many movies where people are like, what about this loophole?

[1:18:19] And I'm like, I mean, I don't care because I'm having fun the whole time I'm watching the movie or because I'm falling in love with these characters or whatever.

[1:18:26] Like it doesn't matter to me that it's not a tight, tightly constructed puzzle box, but this one, it kind of fails on that first level.

[1:18:33] Yeah.

[1:18:35] Actually, I'll put it this way.

[1:18:37] After my dad and I walked out of the first Matrix, he did not really understand the mechanics of what he had been watching, but he knew he had seen something cool.

[1:18:45] Like he was like that was a cool movie.

[1:18:47] I just didn't understand it.

[1:18:48] And this is not a this movie fails to reach that cool.

[1:18:51] So I don't need to understand it level.

[1:18:54] Yeah.

[1:18:55] The Flophouse, the podcast you're listening to is sponsored in part by Factor.

[1:19:02] Warmer, sunnier days are calling.

[1:19:05] I can hear them now.

[1:19:07] They're calling me down through the window, and I'm being told that I should fuel up for them with factors.

[1:19:14] No way.

[1:19:15] The thing that's calling you is telling no mass meals.

[1:19:18] Something else is telling you.

[1:19:19] OK.

[1:19:20] The point is, you know, here's the premise of this is that if I feel the allure of the, you know, the world outside, I don't want to spend so much time inside cooking.

[1:19:31] You know what?

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[1:20:51] Well done.

[1:20:54] Well done.

[1:20:55] Thank you.

[1:20:56] We have a little bit of live show news.

[1:20:58] As this episode comes out, the day this episode comes out, it is the day after our Oxford

[1:21:02] shows.

[1:21:03] Our first ever England shows were yesterday as of this release date of this episode.

[1:21:07] Thanks so much to everyone who came.

[1:21:08] I'm sure we had a great time.

[1:21:09] I'm sure the shows were amazing.

[1:21:10] I'm sure everybody's arms are tired from hoisting us up and carrying us around town in celebration.

[1:21:19] It was such a surprise, but a pleasant one, that King Charles was there and knighted each

[1:21:23] of us at the end of the show for our services to the British Empire by bringing comedy to

[1:21:29] it.

[1:21:30] So you can't go to that show anymore.

[1:21:31] Sorry.

[1:21:32] It happened yesterday.

[1:21:33] But let's say you want to go to a show in not Old England, but New England.

[1:21:38] That's right.

[1:21:39] We're doing a show in July in Boston, Massachusetts on July 26th.

[1:21:45] That's right.

[1:21:46] That's how they say it.

[1:21:47] That's how they say it.

[1:21:48] That's my heavy Boston accent.

[1:21:49] I won't even try anymore.

[1:21:52] So July 26th, we'll be in Boston.

[1:21:54] We're doing an all new show.

[1:21:55] It's going to be great at WBUR City Space, and we're going to do something really fun

[1:22:01] there.

[1:22:02] We don't know exactly what it is yet because we've been so busy prepping for these England

[1:22:05] shows that we haven't had time to figure out our New England show yet, but we will.

[1:22:10] I think we'll probably talk about a movie.

[1:22:12] Yeah.

[1:22:13] Oh, yeah.

[1:22:14] That sounds good.

[1:22:15] We'll probably each deliver a presentation of hilarity, of jokes and information.

[1:22:18] Then we'll talk about a movie, and then we'll take questions from the audience.

[1:22:22] It's going to be so fun.

[1:22:23] If you want to go there, and I think you do, go to flophousepodcast.com slash events or

[1:22:28] flophousepodcast.com slash event slash the-flop-house-live-in-Boston.

[1:22:36] I say just go to flophousepodcast.com slash events.

[1:22:41] You'll see the link right there for info and ticks, and it'll take you right to the ticket

[1:22:44] page.

[1:22:45] We're very excited about it.

[1:22:46] We haven't been in Boston in years.

[1:22:47] It's been years since we performed in Boston.

[1:22:49] The last time we were there, the city gave us such a warm welcome, their arms got tired

[1:22:53] carrying us around.

[1:22:54] King Charles was there and knighted us afterwards for a service to Massachusetts.

[1:22:57] We were baptized in donkeys.

[1:22:58] You're way out of your jurisdiction, sir.

[1:23:00] We said he wasn't even king yet at the time.

[1:23:03] That's the thing.

[1:23:04] He was going through a kind of psychic break, but anyway, it was really fun, so we're really

[1:23:08] looking forward to doing it again.

[1:23:09] That's July 26th.

[1:23:10] Pick up your tickets now, because these tickets, they go fast.

[1:23:14] Tickets go pretty fast.

[1:23:15] You might want to stop and smell the roses and buy some.

[1:23:19] In 1979, singer Miki Matsubara cut Stay With Me, a love song that hit big in her home country

[1:23:29] of Japan.

[1:23:31] The song has almost half a billion plays on streaming apps.

[1:23:37] But Miki Matsubara didn't get to enjoy all that renewed interest.

[1:23:40] She died in 2004.

[1:23:42] In fact, she had burned all of her music and she literally asked everyone she knew to forget

[1:23:47] her.

[1:23:48] I'm Christian Duenas.

[1:23:49] I'm Yosuke Kitazawa.

[1:23:50] On our new podcast, Primer, we celebrate unforgettable music from outside the English-speaking world,

[1:23:55] starting with Japanese city pop.

[1:23:56] We'll cover Miki's work and others in conversation with Devandra Vanhart, Umi, Dame Funk, and

[1:24:03] more.

[1:24:04] Get Primer on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:24:08] I'm Emily Fleming.

[1:24:10] And I'm Jordan Morris.

[1:24:11] We're real comedy writers.

[1:24:13] And real friends.

[1:24:14] And real fucking cheapskates.

[1:24:16] We say, why subscribe to expensive streaming services when you can stream tons of insane

[1:24:21] movies online for free?

[1:24:24] As long as you're fine with 25 randomly inserted super loud car insurance commercials.

[1:24:29] On our new podcast, Free With Ads, we review streaming movies from the darkest corner of

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[1:24:37] From the good to the weird to the holy shit, look at Jean-Claude Van Damme's big ol' butt.

[1:24:42] Free With Ads.

[1:24:43] A free podcast about free movies that's worth the price of admission.

[1:24:46] Every Tuesday on MaximumFun.org or your favorite pod spot.

[1:24:50] Hey, why don't we take a couple letters from listeners?

[1:24:56] Where should we take them, Daniel?

[1:24:58] Like you, the listener.

[1:24:59] Take them, I will take them.

[1:25:01] Take them to the river.

[1:25:03] Don't drop them in the water.

[1:25:06] Now that letter's wet now.

[1:25:09] Its ink is running, can't read it.

[1:25:12] Take the letter out.

[1:25:13] We're gonna see if I can buy a Billy Big Mouth bass with Elliot singing.

[1:25:16] Hang it on a clothesline.

[1:25:17] So that I can buy it for my enemies.

[1:25:19] Let it get dry.

[1:25:23] So we can read the letters.

[1:25:25] Oh, okay, cool.

[1:25:27] The words are kind of runny.

[1:25:30] I think it says dear floaters, but it's probably floppers.

[1:25:36] Like I said, that's pretty runny.

[1:25:37] What does it really say, Dan?

[1:25:39] I don't like this at all.

[1:25:42] This is from Samantha Lasting with Held, who writes, hello from Mexico, I've been listening-

[1:25:46] Samantha who?

[1:25:47] Perfect.

[1:25:48] That's a show.

[1:25:49] That was a show, everybody.

[1:25:50] Perfect.

[1:25:51] Just a joke for those who remember that show.

[1:25:53] That was not well known.

[1:25:54] Those unlike me who remember that show.

[1:25:58] Hello from Mexico.

[1:26:00] I've been listening to the podcast for years now, and just the other day I saw Tubi was

[1:26:04] available on my Amazon stick, so I thought I would try it out after hearing about it

[1:26:09] in your podcast.

[1:26:10] Tubi, it's time you sponsor The Flophouse.

[1:26:12] It certainly is, Tubi.

[1:26:14] I was happy to see they had Whose Line Is It Anyway, a show I remember fondly from my

[1:26:20] teenage years.

[1:26:21] Imagine my surprise when I realized Tubi didn't have the episodes with Drew Carey as a host,

[1:26:26] but even older episodes from when the show was shot in England in the early 90s.

[1:26:29] It makes me feel very old that the show that she watched as a teenager was the Drew Carey

[1:26:33] version and not the Clive Anderson British version that I watched as a teenager.

[1:26:37] But continue, Daniel.

[1:26:38] It was all over Comedy Central.

[1:26:40] It's on Comedy Central all the time, yeah.

[1:26:41] It's where I first was introduced to the comedy of Greg Proops, and I never looked back.

[1:26:48] You're married now.

[1:26:49] Have you ever...

[1:26:50] Yeah, me and the Proopster, yeah.

[1:26:52] Have you ever discovered older episodes or older versions of media that you like?

[1:26:56] Maybe discovering a movie you like is actually a remake of a much older one.

[1:27:00] Samantha Lastname withheld.

[1:27:02] Part of the reason I wanted to do this, because something jumped to my mind right away, which

[1:27:09] was my dad, who was a big...

[1:27:14] How your dad is a remake of his dad?

[1:27:15] Oh, yeah.

[1:27:16] I mean, kind of, that's how it works.

[1:27:18] Do you have the same name?

[1:27:22] And when you were born, he did devour you, and then your mom had to trick him into devouring

[1:27:28] a stone, too, just to get him to barf you up.

[1:27:31] We've all seen the pictures in the McCoy photo album of his dad being handed the stone in

[1:27:36] Dan's swaddling clothes.

[1:27:39] Anyway, like many people who were alive during the 80s, he had a fondness for Mr. Burt Reynolds.

[1:27:48] Sure, yeah.

[1:27:49] So my first encounter with the front page slash His Girl Friday whole thing was through

[1:28:00] Switching Channels, a movie by Ted Kochef, who did First Blood, Wake and Fright, and

[1:28:07] also Weekend at Bernie's, a man with a very strange checkered directorial career.

[1:28:13] He did this remake of...

[1:28:14] I mean, Wake and Fright and Weekend at Bernie's, they're kind of two sides of the same coin

[1:28:18] in some ways.

[1:28:19] Yeah, it's true.

[1:28:20] But this is a version of His Girl Friday, which is itself a rewritten version of the

[1:28:27] front page, and it's set in the modern world of cable news, and it's got Burt Reynolds,

[1:28:35] it's got Kathleen Turner, Christopher Reeves is in the Ralph Bellamy role.

[1:28:41] And look, it does not have a great reputation, I think mostly because it's not His Girl Friday,

[1:28:49] but it's kind of fun.

[1:28:51] It's a funny movie, the stars are all charming.

[1:28:56] But I saw that way before I ever saw His Girl Friday, and I'm like, oh, this is a remake

[1:29:01] of that.

[1:29:03] And I don't think most people even remember that Switching Channels exists today.

[1:29:07] Do you have something to say?

[1:29:09] Check it out on Tubi.

[1:29:10] Yeah, I do have something.

[1:29:12] I am the perfect age to have loved the soundtrack for the movie The Crow.

[1:29:20] Does anybody remember The Crow soundtrack?

[1:29:22] Sure, yeah.

[1:29:23] Big deal.

[1:29:24] It was attached to the movie The Crow.

[1:29:25] Back in the 90s, movies had soundtracks.

[1:29:26] Oh, now I get it.

[1:29:27] Yeah.

[1:29:28] Now I get it.

[1:29:29] Makes a lot of sense, right?

[1:29:30] Yeah.

[1:29:31] And when you watch the movie, they'd play at least some of the songs that are on that

[1:29:35] soundtrack.

[1:29:36] Some of them are just kind of like inspired by the podge.

[1:29:37] Sometimes very few, yeah.

[1:29:38] Sometimes very few.

[1:29:39] Often it would be music.

[1:29:40] Sometimes the soundtrack is better than the movie itself.

[1:29:42] That's true.

[1:29:43] Often it would say, music from and inspired by the need to put out a soundtrack for, and

[1:29:48] then the name of the movie.

[1:29:49] Yeah.

[1:29:50] And the 90s had some good ones.

[1:29:51] I mean, there's, I remember, so everyone I knew seemed to own the Empire Records soundtrack,

[1:29:55] but.

[1:29:56] At least it's a movie about records, right?

[1:29:57] It is.

[1:29:58] But they didn't really like them.

[1:29:59] It sure had songs on it.

[1:30:00] I like the movie that much, you know, okay. Yeah. So, uh, the crow there, uh,

[1:30:04] there is a song on there by nine inch nails, the, uh, which I found out later,

[1:30:09] the song is dead souls. And I remember being like, man, damn, this song rocks. Uh,

[1:30:13] and it wasn't until a few years later that I found out that it was a cover of a

[1:30:17] joy division song. And, uh,

[1:30:20] it kind of pushed me into exploring more music by joy division and then

[1:30:25] movies like 24 hour party people. And you know, it's just good stuff, you know,

[1:30:29] all the way down.

[1:30:31] That's happened to me a bunch of times with songs. Yeah.

[1:30:32] Where I don't realize something is a cover until, until later. But with movies,

[1:30:36] I think the biggest shock for me was when, as a young person,

[1:30:40] I discovered that Brewster's millions is not just a remake,

[1:30:42] but like a remake of a remake and that made like seven or eight times, right?

[1:30:47] The first movie version, I mean, it goes back to a story,

[1:30:49] but the first movie version of it was a silent film, you know,

[1:30:52] it was in the twenties. And just the idea that Brewster's Miller millions is,

[1:30:55] this is, I guess, one of the eternal stories that reverberates through human

[1:31:00] consciousness. But, um, I actually had a, not exactly the same scenario,

[1:31:05] but a similar scenario.

[1:31:06] Wait, you were in a Brewster's million scenario. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[1:31:10] I had to spend $10 or else someone would realize I'd stolen $10 on them.

[1:31:14] For a movie that like, it's not that good.

[1:31:18] Like it got played so much on television when we were younger. Yeah.

[1:31:22] That like, I feel like even now as a cultural reference, like people our age,

[1:31:27] people are like, Oh, it's like a Brewster's million scenario.

[1:31:29] Like everyone will know exactly what you're talking about, but, but this,

[1:31:32] but it's one of those movies that was on all the time we were kids and now no

[1:31:35] one watches it. Exactly. So the next generation will not know what that means

[1:31:39] for the most. Oh no, not at all. Thank God. Yeah.

[1:31:41] Hopefully it'll die out until they do a remake starring, I don't know,

[1:31:44] like Zac Efron or something. Uh, yeah, probably. Or like, um, uh,

[1:31:48] they'll do a, uh, they'll do, it'll be like a comedy.

[1:31:52] It's going to be Zac Efron. Okay. It'll be like that comedy,

[1:31:55] the iron claw.

[1:31:57] The world of crypto today. Yeah. It'd be called Brewster's crypto.

[1:32:01] And like, we've got to,

[1:32:02] we've got to spend this money before it drops in value considerably.

[1:32:06] That's amazing. That is a great plot. That is a great plot.

[1:32:09] We should pitch that. Uh, so, but to experience that kind of this,

[1:32:12] there's a movie called kill a Japanese samurai movie that I love.

[1:32:15] And there's a Japanese samurai movie called three outlaw samurai.

[1:32:18] And I saw kill before three outlaw samurai.

[1:32:20] And there's a whole sequence in kill.

[1:32:21] That is a parody of three outlaw samurai. And I didn't realize that until I

[1:32:25] watched it. So I was like, wait a minute,

[1:32:27] have I seen this movie before?

[1:32:29] And it felt as if the character from kill had stepped into this other movie and

[1:32:33] mess around with it. Once I knew that it was a, it was,

[1:32:36] it was a take on another movie, but just less like, uh,

[1:32:39] like that's baseballs and aliens thing.

[1:32:41] I saw a space balls before I saw an alien. Yeah. And there's,

[1:32:45] there's the whole, uh, bit with the, uh, xenomorph. Yeah. I just, I,

[1:32:48] for a second, I thought that was one movie.

[1:32:53] Yeah. But I, so I always knew, call me. It's my idea.

[1:32:58] In some ways I had kind of the reverse of the experience because you know,

[1:33:01] the movie scarlet street, the Fritz Lang movie with energy Robinson. So I am

[1:33:05] familiar with his existence. Okay. So I knew that that was a remit.

[1:33:08] I've seen that movie and I I'm familiar with it.

[1:33:09] I knew that was a remake of Renoir's movie. La Chienne the bitch.

[1:33:13] But I had not seen La Chienne until last night I watched it and I was like, Oh,

[1:33:17] I knew this was a remake, but I didn't know. I didn't,

[1:33:20] I knew La Chienne was the original,

[1:33:22] but I didn't know how closely the story stuck in scarlet street,

[1:33:25] but also how different the tone of it is.

[1:33:28] And so it was crazy to see a movie that I had thought of as the original version

[1:33:32] of a story and see that it feels so different because it's not Fritz Lang making

[1:33:36] it, making it it's genre warmly making it.

[1:33:38] And so you walk away from it feeling something completely different about the

[1:33:42] same storyline. And so it was almost like,

[1:33:44] I appreciated more both what a remake scarlet street was and how different it

[1:33:48] was as a remake. And I thought that was a really cool feeling.

[1:33:51] When I saw a sorcerer for the first time, I had never seen wages of fear,

[1:33:54] but somebody had described the plot to me.

[1:33:56] And I think it was one of you guys. And so when I'm in the theater,

[1:33:59] watching sorcerer, I'm like, damn, I think I know this thing. Yeah. Am I just,

[1:34:03] am I just really good at anticipating movies? Yeah.

[1:34:08] I felt like I could see the future, but only when it comes to sorcerer movies.

[1:34:12] Yeah. Uh,

[1:34:13] this other letter is from Doug lasting withheld who writes,

[1:34:18] what's up peaches.

[1:34:20] I was going through my sound cloud account and clearing out some old stuff to

[1:34:24] make way for new things. When I came across a song,

[1:34:26] I recorded from the flop house.

[1:34:29] It's a letter to the show regarding episode one 99 Jim and the holograms from

[1:34:34] 2016. I don't remember if I ever emailed you about it at the time. Anyway,

[1:34:38] here it is. I don't think so. Cause I don't think I heard it.

[1:34:41] And, uh, Doug says, enjoy it, play it on the show if you want,

[1:34:44] and keep on flopping in the free world.

[1:34:46] You can download it straight from the sound cloud page. Uh, and, uh,

[1:34:52] so I, I did download this. We'll put this at the end of the episode. Uh,

[1:34:57] the question itself was about, um,

[1:34:59] what we would like to be made into a musical, which we've answered,

[1:35:03] I think more than once on the show. So we don't need to address it,

[1:35:06] but I liked the song so much that I did want to give it its moment in the sun

[1:35:11] because Elliot's given us so many letters, songs. Why shouldn't the letter?

[1:35:15] Yeah. He gave us some back charitable, charitable giver.

[1:35:22] He gives so much. He gives so much.

[1:35:26] I've been giving and it's time to start taking.

[1:35:30] Um, let's, uh, do our last segment,

[1:35:33] which is to recommend a movie that we saw recently that we might,

[1:35:40] I'm going to go first, uh, cause it's thematically tied in with, uh,

[1:35:43] the matrix. Uh, last night I went and saw, I saw the TV glow, uh,

[1:35:48] which is also a movie about, uh, I mean,

[1:35:51] on a TV show glow. Uh, I, I did, but that's not what I saw last night.

[1:35:56] So I saw the movie, I saw the TV glow. Um, and it is on this,

[1:36:00] on a surface level, it is about a, uh,

[1:36:02] kind of a weird young kid who meets a, another, uh,

[1:36:06] weird young woman and they start watching, uh, they, uh,

[1:36:10] become fans of this, uh, like weird TV show together.

[1:36:14] And it is set in like the nineties in suburbia and it's very lonely and they

[1:36:20] bond over this and then they kind of go their separate ways and reconnect.

[1:36:24] Um, but it is, uh, it's so much a movie about, uh,

[1:36:29] it captures like the loneliness of the suburbs in a way that very few movies can

[1:36:34] do. And, uh,

[1:36:36] it also touches on that idea of feeling that there is something wrong in the

[1:36:42] world and you don't know either there's something wrong with you or there's

[1:36:45] something wrong in the world and you don't know how to fix it.

[1:36:48] And you kind of lash onto something that you connect with. And, uh,

[1:36:52] but you don't know kind of how to interact with the world anymore. And it,

[1:36:57] it, uh, it managed, like,

[1:37:00] it is such a like bone deep, sad movie, uh,

[1:37:05] that is like, like, I don't know. I, I just like, I, for the whole,

[1:37:10] most of the movie, I just felt this like deep ache and it, uh, yeah,

[1:37:15] it's, it's, uh, I, it's amazing. It's another,

[1:37:18] another great movie this year and a year already filled with many great movies.

[1:37:22] But, uh, yeah, it, it, this is a movie that I, I,

[1:37:27] I haven't, I haven't had a movie make, make me feel this way. Uh,

[1:37:31] if not in a long time or ever. So, uh, it was great.

[1:37:36] And then getting that feeling again from matrix revolution must've been

[1:37:39] well, that's the thing. Like part of me, I'm like, I have a,

[1:37:42] like I had a kind of enough of an idea what this movie was going to be about

[1:37:46] that. I'm like, I really want to watch this, this before, you know,

[1:37:50] watching the matrix again. Yeah. Um,

[1:37:54] I would like to, I, I teased in a previous episode that, uh, I would,

[1:37:59] I was going to see hundreds of beavers. I've now seen hundreds of beavers,

[1:38:02] not in person. I haven't seen hundreds of beavers in person. I've seen,

[1:38:05] you know, I mean, we're talking about movies, not just things we see.

[1:38:09] I think for context, people can understand.

[1:38:12] I know that mine was slightly complicated because it did say I saw the TV glow

[1:38:16] and that got, yeah, you have seen TV glow, but also you saw,

[1:38:20] I saw the TV glow. Uh, I, yeah, it's, uh,

[1:38:25] it's a lot of fun. It's, uh,

[1:38:28] a movie that's kind of like if guy Madden along with like

[1:38:33] silent movies watched a bunch of Looney Tunes cartoons and also,

[1:38:38] uh, video games, like, uh,

[1:38:43] it's a totally awesome video games. Uh, well,

[1:38:47] it's a little Easter egg for the Boco listeners grind along, you know,

[1:38:51] building up your stores, like, uh, figuring out new ways of solving problems.

[1:38:56] Uh, it's a movie that my one issue with it,

[1:39:01] I guess would be that it's almost like too packed to the gills with stuff.

[1:39:06] Like none of the stuff is bad. All of this stuff is funny.

[1:39:10] But after a certain point,

[1:39:11] like watching so many inventive like visual gags

[1:39:16] gets a little tiring, but it is, it is a delight.

[1:39:19] Less imagination says Dan McCoy people save it for the sequel.

[1:39:24] I'm just saying like, I did get,

[1:39:26] I did get a little tired at a certain point and then it jumped back up, uh,

[1:39:30] for a, for a good finish. So yeah,

[1:39:32] I really want to see both of these movies that you've recommended. I'm, I'm, uh,

[1:39:36] uh, disappointed that I haven't had a chance to, uh,

[1:39:39] I'm going to recommend an older movie.

[1:39:42] Elliot doesn't get to see things in theaters very often. Um,

[1:39:45] there's a director named Lizzie Borden who was,

[1:39:48] I've recommended two of our other movies, born in flames and working girls.

[1:39:51] And I recently got to watch her first movie, which is called regrouping,

[1:39:55] which is a documentary, but it's a very strangely.

[1:40:00] of put together documentary where she was making a documentary in the 70s about a women's consciousness

[1:40:07] raising group. These four women artists who are in a women's group together and somewhere during the

[1:40:12] process she had a falling out with those women and she started making a documentary about the

[1:40:18] feelings of that falling out and started talking to another women's group and she presents a lot

[1:40:24] of this to you very unclearly without facts showing you footage of one thing while playing

[1:40:29] the voice of another person to create a connection in your mind between them but they're not necessarily

[1:40:33] connected and what you get from it is this kind of collage gestalt feeling of what it's like to

[1:40:41] be in a group of women you know what it what the experience of being a woman around women can be

[1:40:46] like and the joys of that and also the disappointments of that and I found it really kind of like

[1:40:51] eye-opening and very challenging from a narrative point of view but very very rewarding and like

[1:40:58] just really cool the way that it is it's a documentary that is refusing to give you the

[1:41:02] things you expect from a documentary and it's very much not a check your brain at the door movie like

[1:41:07] you kind of really have to pay attention and focus to kind of pick up what's going on and make your

[1:41:13] connections in it but as a but as in but I but once I did that I really liked a lot and I found

[1:41:19] it really just like a glimpse of a world that's so close and yet so distant from me the world

[1:41:25] of women suddenly that's regrouping uh well great uh it would be hard to thanks dan yep it would be

[1:41:36] hard to uh overstate how much I need to pee right now so I'm going to keep this short I'm going to

[1:41:42] say thank you to our listeners if you're dropping by because of uh the novelizers uh please consider

[1:41:49] you know adding the flop house to your rotation if you enjoyed this um everyone else thank you for

[1:41:55] listening uh if you'd care to leave us a nice review at iTunes that always helps uh thank you

[1:42:00] to our producer Alex Smith he goes by HowlDotty online thank you to Maximum Fun our network

[1:42:07] MaximumFun.org is where you can go for other great shows but for now I have been Dan McCoy

[1:42:13] I'm Stuart Wellington and I'm Elliot Kaelin saying hey before we go let's take a moment

[1:42:18] to remember all the people who got us where we are today starting with our parents and maybe

[1:42:24] their parents too Dan don't worry I'll be I'll be done a little bit our teachers oh so many teachers

[1:42:28] let me name them one by one all the people who have taught me throughout the years you know what

[1:42:34] oh oh yeah we'll get we can get to this later I see that Dan's bladder is bursting through his

[1:42:38] body you know what we'll maybe we'll talk about another time okay bye bye

[1:42:51] that's that's something that comes up in uh in the internet newsletter to subscribe to

[1:42:55] that's just about stuff that happens on the internet is how there's a lot of like

[1:42:58] videos from fake podcasts like that are used to promote OnlyFans accounts or things like that

[1:43:03] but it's just you just all you have to do is get a microphone and sit behind it and you pretend

[1:43:06] you're on a podcast wait you're telling me anyone can be a podcaster Elliot I don't think so not

[1:43:10] just can anyone be a podcaster anyone can fake anyone can make a tiktok video that makes it

[1:43:15] appear as if they are on a podcast which is even lazier than the little amount of

[1:43:19] work it takes to do a podcast this takes a lot of work this podcast though

[1:43:37] I've listened for a long time but this is my first time writing a letter to the beaches

[1:43:46] if Elliot thinks jam would work as a straight-up musical here's what I would like to know

[1:43:55] what films would you like to see adapted to the musical format I would like to see a talking cat

[1:44:06] break out in a song and help his friends along with some advice and a sweet little melody

[1:44:17] so please excuse me if this was a boast my rhymes will never be as dope

[1:44:25] as Elliot's and that's a fact

[1:44:34] that's how it works when the peaches break down the funky funk that's how it works

[1:44:44] when you're making it up as you go along

[1:44:48] oh that's how it works that's how it works and by the way my name is

[1:44:57] stuck

[1:45:10] maximum fun a worker-owned network of artists-owned shows supported directly by you

Episode #425 - The Matrix: Revolutions

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