Making it Good: The Matrix
Gods do I hate this movie. Everything about it is so damned stupid. The villain is a moron. The supposed computer programmer lead barely understands even the concepts of hax and cheat codes. And the reality altering rebels are soooo unimiginative. Add on the Love Conquers All ending and never have I have been so dissapointed by a movie hyped by so many...
So to fix that (and we're not going to worry about the sequels and cartoons and video games and every other piece of media you actually needed to experiance to make the story make a damned bit of sense) first we'll change the basic VR set-up. Their is still a Master Program. It still keeps the majority of humanity living in a VR world with their bodies living and dieing in tubes. And why does it do this? No one knows. Its a vast computer AI. Its motivations are so far removed from humanity its fairly pointless to even try...
So the VR world. Instead of putting humans in some faux 90s Earth, instead they get to be living in the 12th Century AD. The Master Program is God, the Smith Programs are its Clergy and the Outsider humans are Wizards. In fact the first half of the movie comes off ENTIRELY as some kind of LoTR/fantasy type movie. Neo (and no that won't be his name. Who is named New?) seems to be the typical Chosen One/Arthur type, Morpheus is his Merlin and so on. All the standard Hero's Journey Stuff from King Arthur to Star Wars...
And then half-way thru the movie, after a big spectacular FX battle between Wizards and Clergy, Chosen Kid gets inducted to the Real World. Where he promptly Freaks. The. Fuck. Out. You now get a fairly rushed montage sequence showing the Outsiders putting the poor kid's brain back together. This is when the reveal that this movie is more CyberPunk/Apoclyptica SF than Tolkien Fantasy. And the Kid is still pretty well screwed-up mentally, but he's holding on because he's fallen for Trinity...
After that we go with the meeting the Oracle and the kids who show abilities to warp the VR world WITHOUT knowing they're in VR. Traitor human, capture of Morpheus, many deaths, assault on stronghold of evil, etc etc etc. Final Big Boss battle where the One/Kid tears the local program to pieces saving Trinity and his friends...
Wakes up back on the ship with the survivors heading for humanity's last city. Shots of the Program (still in 12th Century mode) where God is rebuilding the destroyed area. And where you see Elrond Smith rebuild himself, say something crypic and creepy and wander off as a new Rogue Program...
Roll credits...
So to fix that (and we're not going to worry about the sequels and cartoons and video games and every other piece of media you actually needed to experiance to make the story make a damned bit of sense) first we'll change the basic VR set-up. Their is still a Master Program. It still keeps the majority of humanity living in a VR world with their bodies living and dieing in tubes. And why does it do this? No one knows. Its a vast computer AI. Its motivations are so far removed from humanity its fairly pointless to even try...
So the VR world. Instead of putting humans in some faux 90s Earth, instead they get to be living in the 12th Century AD. The Master Program is God, the Smith Programs are its Clergy and the Outsider humans are Wizards. In fact the first half of the movie comes off ENTIRELY as some kind of LoTR/fantasy type movie. Neo (and no that won't be his name. Who is named New?) seems to be the typical Chosen One/Arthur type, Morpheus is his Merlin and so on. All the standard Hero's Journey Stuff from King Arthur to Star Wars...
And then half-way thru the movie, after a big spectacular FX battle between Wizards and Clergy, Chosen Kid gets inducted to the Real World. Where he promptly Freaks. The. Fuck. Out. You now get a fairly rushed montage sequence showing the Outsiders putting the poor kid's brain back together. This is when the reveal that this movie is more CyberPunk/Apoclyptica SF than Tolkien Fantasy. And the Kid is still pretty well screwed-up mentally, but he's holding on because he's fallen for Trinity...
After that we go with the meeting the Oracle and the kids who show abilities to warp the VR world WITHOUT knowing they're in VR. Traitor human, capture of Morpheus, many deaths, assault on stronghold of evil, etc etc etc. Final Big Boss battle where the One/Kid tears the local program to pieces saving Trinity and his friends...
Wakes up back on the ship with the survivors heading for humanity's last city. Shots of the Program (still in 12th Century mode) where God is rebuilding the destroyed area. And where you see Elrond Smith rebuild himself, say something crypic and creepy and wander off as a new Rogue Program...
Roll credits...