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The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

• senectus1 5y ago
  it was.... ok. watchable i guess. just don't go out of your way to watch it.
• nwellinghoff 5y ago
  Matrix Resurrections’ was like the remake of “Wake up” at the end of it. Not even close.
• romwell 5y ago
  Uh huh. Sure. There's a reason they call it Hollywood Accounting[1]. Not that Warner Brothers is new to this game either: >A Warner Bros. receipt was leaked online, showing that the hugely successful movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ended up with a $167 million loss on paper after grossing nearly $1 billion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
  • jgalt212 5y ago
    Dumb question: how is Hollywood accounting not fraud? I know there have numerous civil court cases over differences of "opinion" over incentive compensation calculations, but has anyone actually gone to jail?
    • sircastor 5y ago
      Part of the problem is that many of the people with a stake in the “higher profits” camp risk losing future opportunities. If you start to make a ruckus about contract profits you find yourself not employed by that studio, and you start to be looked over by other studios. It’s a shell game but everyone agrees to it so as to book another gig. The recent scuff-up between Scarlett Johannson and Disney was an example, and the rumors of Disney being unwilling and to work with her was the quod-pro-quo rearing it’s head.
    • chrisseaton 5y ago
      What would you charge them with? They claim the costs for things like licensing and services are legitimate. How do you prove they aren't? What is the correct charge for a licence or service except for what two companies agree?
    • gamblor956 5y ago
      Hollywood accounting doesn't change whether there are profits, it changes who records the profits. IP Holder the rights to a movie. Production Studio S to make the movie for a fee. Distributor D distributes the movie for a fee. Most people think that Production Studio S is the company that records the profits from the movie, but they generally don't see anything beyond their costs associated with actually making the film. In the old days, Production Studio S also got saddled with all the costs associated with the movie, including distribution costs paid to the distributor; now this is usually only the case for independently financed movies. Naive talent and investors, or independent film investors, make their profit sharing agreements with Production Studio S. IP Holder owns the rights to the movie, and generally is the one that records the profits to the movie. These days, this entity is rarely the same entity that made the movie, but for independent films, this entity is usually the same as the Production Studio S. If Distributor owns IP Holder, they will usually put expenses into this entity instead of Production Studio S because...sophisticated talent and investors make their profit sharing agreements with IP Holder (and Production Studio S won't see much income, so that's a moot point). Distributor can suck out the profits by increasing the fee charged to IP Holder for distribution services, which includes marketing. IP Holder sees a lot of expenses, and it may take years (or over a decade) to record a profit, so the highest-tier talent and investors make gross point profit sharing agreements, meaning that their profit share is based on the movie's pre-expense earnings rather than on net (post-expense) earnings (but only the highest tier talent and investors get to do this, see e.g., Sandra Bullock and Gravity). Note: when I was at a firm, my clients included both one of the big studios and a number of the smaller studios, so the above is a very simplified version of the accounting structuring.
  • dylan604 5y ago
    If there's no profits, there's no need to pay out all of those agreed residuals that they negotiated.
  • fishtoaster 5y ago
    Any reason to believe that this is an instance of Hollywood Accounting? At a glance, wikipedia says the film cost $190m, which seems reasonable for a film like this, and only received $124.5m in box office sales. Conversely, wikipedia lists Harry Potter OotP as a "150–200 million" budget on $942m in box office sales. It's certainly possible this is a case of Hollywood Accounting, but is there any particular reason we think it is, vs just a film losing a lot of money normally?
    • jeffwilcox 5y ago
      The long tail of box office receipts, especially internationally, is always interesting, as are licensing deals. Maybe they find a way to protect those with other subsidiaries.
    • blhack 5y ago
      How much did HBO pay for the streaming rights? I would have bought 3 tickets to this, but watched it on HBO instead.
      • cheschire 5y ago
        yep. i watched it at least 3 times on hbo as well. easily would've bought a couple tickets.
        • mraudiobook_com 5y ago
        • utopcell 5y ago
          same here
      • oliyoung 5y ago
        > How much did HBO pay for the streaming rights? They wouldn't -have paid- anything, HBO is owned by Warner too edit: ...they wouldn't have to have paid anything..
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • vmception 5y ago
    You don't need Hollywood accounting when the expenses exceed the revenue, you can still pocket the revenue for yourself though. You can just stagger things across tax years. Everyone should do themselves a favor and pay for a CPA firm (not just your friend that happens to be a CPA), learn some things just treat it as expensive education. Its very different doing exploratory stuff with a CPA, compared to needing a CPA last minute for a problem you already have. They have excerpts from journals they are subscribed to that can inspire you about things you didnt know.
    • sam0x17 5y ago
      You can also always take the time to _become_ a CPA. I've thought about it a few times.
      • trepanne 5y ago
        ...or take an intermediate position on buy vs build, and _marry_ a CPA. I've regretted it a few times, but on balance I'd recommend it.
        • pengaru 5y ago
          > ...or take an intermediate position on buy vs build, and _marry_ a CPA. I've regretted it a few times, but on balance I'd recommend it. Has the marriage concluded in divorce/death yet? Otherwise I'm not sure how much weight should be placed in that recommendation ;)
          • trepanne 5y ago
            Are there generally accepted marriage principles??
    • rdtwo 5y ago
      How do you do this and how much does it cost?
      • 5y ago
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • fullshark 5y ago
    > We can add The Matrix Resurrections to that list, too, with the HBO Max hybrid barely scraping past $100 million globally since hitting the big screen and streaming on December 22, not ideal when the sci-fi actioner’s budget is estimated to be hovering around the $190 million mark. Even with the fact that it was used to inspire people to sign for HBO max, I'm going to guess it's not a success if those two numbers are true. I don't know how much more legs it's got but rough rule of thumb is the films' grosses need to roughly double the film's budget to be a success.
  • StanislavPetrov 5y ago
    Hollywood Accounting is absolutely a real thing but that doesn't mean that movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make and promote don't routinely lose huge amounts of money when they bomb.
  • kingcharles 5y ago
    "I get these occasional letters from Lucasfilm saying that we regret to inform you that as Return of the Jedi has never gone into profit, we've got nothing to send you." https://www.slashfilm.com/503174/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-return-of-the-jedi-hasnt-made-a-profit/ https://www.slashfilm.com/503174/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader...
• babyshake 5y ago
  Space Jam: A New Legacy, The Suicide Squad, Tenet, the Matrix. Not a great run for WB.
  • lliamander 5y ago
    Did Tenet lose money? That was a great movie.
    • bpodgursky 5y ago
      Nolan took one for the team as a "first big post-lockdown blockbuster" opener and it didn't work amazingly. Lot of theaters were still closed, lot of people stayed home. Did OK given the circumstances but it wasn't a big financial win.
    • thatcherc 5y ago
      Lots! It made $363 million off a $200 million budget [1]. That's probably lower than the studio expected for such a big movie, but still a solid profit and especially good in today's post(?)-covid box office. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenet_(film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenet_(film)
      • xibalba 5y ago
        That figure is an estimate of the production budget only. In order to know the estimated gross profit, we'd have to have some sense of the promotional and distribution costs. For a tentpole like Tenet, those are usually pegged at pretty near the production budget. So, call it $400 million. In other words, its pretty unlikely the theatrical run yielded a profit.
      • azekai 5y ago
        A general rule of thumb is a movie needs to make back double its budget to recoup after-filming costs, like advertising, ect to start turning a profit. A $363 million return on a $200 million flick is not a good return.
• jsodw 5y ago
• superfamicom 5y ago
  I saw it, and enjoyed it for what it was. I will say that it very much felt like a few "Matrix" projects mashed-up together. I especially feel like the new characters could have stood on their own as a miniseries much better.
  • cwkoss 5y ago
    Yeah, I've seen a lot of online whining about it, but as someone who enjoyed the Matrix throughly in my teens, I thought it was a great film. Definitely wish the ambiguity of the first act was stretched a bit further though, that was my favorite part.
    • oneoff786 5y ago
      First act was by far the strongest point!
      • colordrops 5y ago
        It was like two movies. The first act was amazing, and the second was just a marvel clone. They should have just stuck with the meta self-referential in-matrix story for the whole movie. Furthermore, they could have taken it even further and epxlored the idea of onion layers of reality, with magical realms, multiple dimensions a la spiderverse, etc
        • oneoff786 5y ago
          I don’t understand how they made the marketing scene with so much self awareness and then failed to capitalize on it. It’s a really great start. They pretty successfully deconstructed it. They could have played that note all the way to the end. They could also have triple down on matrix cliches awesomely to reconstruct it. But they fell is some shitty middle ground. Man, they could have called it matrix: reconstruction and then done literally that. Edit: I felt that while watching it. The scene where he enters the mirror and finds Neil Patrick Harris was a really compelling moment. I suspect there was a moment in the writing process where neo blue pills at that point instead. Sigh…
• sanguy 5y ago
• anm89 5y ago
  They killed the matrix with 2 and 3 being so terrible. that ship had sailed
  • monkeybutton 5y ago
    Its not like they redeemed themselves since 2 and 3 either; Jupiter Ascending was trash. What did people expect?
    • andrew_ 5y ago
      Jupiter Ascending is a guilty pleasure. I know it's bad, so when I'm in the mood to shut my brain off and it's available, I do watch it from time to time. It's got enough visuals and entertainment in it that it'll keep my attention for a bit. Plus, Mila.
    • NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
      TBH, I found a way to enjoy Jupiter Ascending by imagining that the Big Rich Family was a precursor to Dune. It's not perfect of course, but the worldbuilding part of that was fun to imagine as something pre-Butlarian-Jihad. The sheer extravagance at least was on par with the Harkonens. Beyond that, the plot of "reborn woman gets to be a planet-princess and then goes back to scrubbing toilets" was completely stupid. The Bureaucracy scene was funny though.
    • echelon 5y ago
      V for Vendetta is classic. Cloud Atlas is one of my favorite films of all time. It's incredibly divisive, but if you appreciate its deep symbolism and rich interwoven storytelling, it's beautiful. The wide dynamic range of genres it attempts to fit - romance, comedy, science fiction, murder mystery, spy thriller - is not only ambitious, but absolutely works to establish the symphony of it all. Resurrections surpasses the mediocre second and third Matrix films and manages to troll both the studio and the audience in a deliberately tongue in cheek, yet equally trippy way. It's clever for working with the tools they had.
      • 5y ago
• samspenc 5y ago
  Doesn't HBO Max streaming somewhat counteract the losses in the theater? When HBO & Warner Bros decided to release all their movies on big screen and streaming at the same time for 2021 (only), part of it was a play to increase their streaming app subscription base? I know that we got a family subscription to HBO Max for exactly this as the main reason. I would be interested in understanding how the increased revenue in HBO Max streaming subscriptions balances out against the one-time loss they had for big-budget releases in 2021.
  • matwood 5y ago
    Exactly. Box office numbers are going to become less and less important over time. Except for the few big special effect movies, most movies will move to streaming. Another wrinkle is the movie format itself is under attack. Dune for example should have been a weekly series. There just isn't enough time to do it right in a movie.
    • 908B64B197 5y ago
      > Dune for example should have been a weekly series The movie is a trailer for the books. It's as good as it could ever be, considering it was in the making for 40 years [0]. [0] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/dune-storyboards-denis-villeneuve-photos-1235052576/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/dune...
      • Apocryphon 5y ago
        Honestly, even as long as the movie was, I felt like they could've added another thirty minutes worth of material to make it an even three hours to flesh out the characters and add more clarity to some points made in the movie. The theatrical cut for The Fellowship of the Ring ran 178 minutes while ran a relatively paltry 156 - just twenty minutes could have pushed the movie lightyears ahead.
        • 908B64B197 5y ago
          Rumor is there's a lot that was left on the cutting board. Hours even.
• acchow 5y ago
  In comparison, Spiderman No Way Home is the 8th highest grossing film of all time. I haven't seen it yet, but some of my friends have said the two films are equally bad. It seems they both attempt to sell nostalgia, and one of them worked and one didn't
  • layer8 5y ago
    Haven’t seen either, but IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes reviews beg to differ that they are equally bad.
  • andrew_ 5y ago
    I enjoyed Resurrections. It was the kind of lighter Matrix I was craving. IMHO No Way Home was boring and tried to do too much. I didn't enjoy the Maguire or Garfield Spiderman movies, so them being in it and old villains reappearing didn't do much for me. Willam DaFoe is always a welcome addition to any movie, however. There were some bright spots that I hope they build upon, and I'm looking forward to more in the Dr Strange universe. Aside from that, it was underwhelming, in direct contrast to Far From Home.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      No Way Home seemed like it was doing the "let's reexamine the legacy of a long-established superhero IP" thing that Into the Spider-Verse already did three years ago.
      • andrew_ 5y ago
        And Spiderverse did a much better job at story telling.
  • celim307 5y ago
    Spider-Man I thought was a well done blockbuster. First half drags a little but the climax and second half are pretty solid with an emotional scene and great chemistry If you like Spider-Man or marvel you’ll enjoy it
  • 5y ago
• trynewideas 5y ago
  Notable: It doesn't open in China until Jan. 14.
• sydthrowaway 5y ago
  This movie had to be a troll. The ending cover song of RATM's "Wake Up" was just something else.
  • cheschire 5y ago
    So at first I dismissed your comment and moved on. But then I realized... maybe this was a troll? If WB really did try to strong arm her into making another one, this feels like the perfect response. "Sure, I'll make another one..." and then proceeds to make sure they never make a 5th. On the other hand, she has said in interviews that she was motivated by a personal loss to reach out and try to make it. Not sure who actually initiated trying to get the movie made as I've heard both versions now.
    • parrellel 5y ago
      Both can definitely be true. The movie can be trolling Warner Bros and be trying to say something personally valuable to the director.
    • ascagnel_ 5y ago
      I’ve heard a different version: that the Wachowskis were told the reboot would be going ahead with or without them. The movie feels like a very personal “screw you, executives”, in that it denies catharsis to some of the most popular parts of the first movie and at the same time makes some very, very clear statements that echo what Lana Wachowski has said in the past. It’s what a revival should be: it gives you a way to observe the original work from a radically different perspective, while still building on it. The only other revival that’s done it better has been Twin Peaks: The Return.
      • brandmeyer 5y ago
        > the Wachowskis were told the reboot would be going ahead with or without them. The writers made this part of the plot of the repeating inner world. Between that moment and the painful scenes of the game designers' cyclic rounds of buzzword bingo, I agree that the movie was at least trolling the WB executives.
• fallingmeat 5y ago
  Resurrections was like someone saying, “Hey remember that awesome movie we made in the 90’s? Yeah that was so great…” Axiom: You can only see The Matrix for the first time, once.
  • jerf 5y ago
    Unfortunately, no one can be re-told what the Matrix is.
    • WithinReason 5y ago
      I watched that trailer so many times... The video file was 15 MB, very high quality for the time. Could only run it at around 5 fps.
  • dekhn 5y ago
    I just watched ghostbusters: afterlife and it was very similar, except 1980s. Procedurally generated fan service.
  • vmception 5y ago
    It made $124m so far, its not really an indictment about its quality they just spent too much more making it.
  • elpakal 5y ago
    I feel like they did pretty good with this one though, it is THE MATRIX after all and nothing can ever live up to the first watch of the first movie. I actually laughed several times and that was new. > I still know kung fu
  • js2 5y ago
    I saw Dark City first, so I wasn't able to see The Matrix for the first time even once. :-)
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      It's no The Thirteenth Floor
• akomtu 5y ago
  What was the story in this sequel? The original matrix was about "techno-buddhism" and even character names were carefully chosen, e.g. Sati who could cross the boundary. It wasnt about green characters on the screen and black leather suits, and people felt that, even if they werent familiar with this philosophy.
  • oneoff786 5y ago
    The first act seemed to revolve around this feeling that the inability to accept artificial / inauthentic nature of things has grown into a source of anxiety and personal struggle whereas the original trilogy offered it as an opportunity and advantage. I thought it was a pretty solid take. The second and third acts were mangled by a lot of unnecessary throwbacks.
• didibus 5y ago
  I don't understand how they do the math with streaming. In a way, you can say that everyone who is an HBO subscriber has already paid for the Matrix Resurrections. Obviously you don't have to watch it immediately, since it's now part of the streaming service catalogue, so unlike a movie theater where all people who intend to see the movie must watch it before it leaves the cinema, all HBO max subscriber can just think: cool new matrix, I should watch that eventually, and continue being happy subscriber even if they don't watch it yet (like me). So for me, this is building a catalogue. I'm sure they have things like immediate conversion, how many subbed and The Matrix Resurrection was their first thing they watched, etc. But basically, I think it's a very different formula, and it's probably a lot harder to figure out what success means and how important The Matrix Resurrection is to HBO Max's growth and continued subs.
  • csours 5y ago
    I'm not sure how anyone does the math with streaming. Netflix is still able to raise money for production though.
  • 3minus1 5y ago
    I agree it's interesting. It seems like they lose money when an HBO subscriber would have bought a ticket but streams it instead. On the other hand they make a lot of money if someone signs up for HBO to see the Matrix, and ends up continuing their subscription for months/years.
  • maxerickson 5y ago
    It's available for a while, not part of the catalog. I looked it up, it's available for a month for ad-free subscribers. It'll probably be available again in a year or two also of course.
  • js2 5y ago
    To add to the complicated accounting, I have AT&T as my ISP ($70/mo for 1Gbps symmetric service) and one day last year or two they just started throwing in access to HBO Max.
  • wmf 5y ago
• stuaxo 5y ago
  Given Hollywood accounting I don't trust this one bit, and I haven't even seen this film - I might not for a few years, but it just sounds like nonsense.
  • dylan604 5y ago
    You could also read the title with the unwritten "as planned" to the end of the title. With losses comes write offs.
• wslh 5y ago
  Sidenote: I think Pig from 2021[1] is the best movie of the COVID era. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11003218/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11003218/
• buscoquadnary 5y ago
  I'll just throw out but I felt I was actually watching 3 different movies stacked one on top of another the first was some sort of meta-comedy about bad sequels and reboots then it went into some sort of shaky cam action film then it turned into some sort of zombie film. Having watched it I still don't think I could really explain it to someone else.
  • jevoten 5y ago
    They'd have to see it for themself?
  • wonderwonder 5y ago
    really did turn into world war z at the end and not in a good way.
    • philistine 5y ago
      It turned into the scenes they cut from the third act of World War Z before they reshot it in a laboratory with Doctor Who at the WHO.
• TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  Not surprised. The Movie was an utter trash cash grab hollywood sellout "look how meta and cool I am" let's shit on the original. If you liked it I'd love to know why?
  • aidog 5y ago
    The meta aspect was a bit tedious at first, but I did enjoy how the story was set up. Neo trapped for years and years? Genius. NPH in the perfect role. It opened early in Japan, so I watched it last month, without trailers or anything. It's best to not expect anything, then it should be perfectly enjoyable.
  • oliyoung 5y ago
    tldr, Resurrections is to Matrix what Last Jedi was to Star Wars. You're either in or you're out on it. ---- I think people have fallen into two camps, and it depends how you saw the first film. I loved Matrix, not for the wire-fu, gunplay and special effects, but for all the subtext and "simulacra and simulation" of it all. It was film that very cleverly pulled together a lot concepts that had been done in 90s cinema about depersonification, reality and identity and presented them in an incredibly unique way. If you liked Matrix for the wire-fu gunplay, Resurrections isn't your film, it does spend most of its time "shitting on the original" but that was the point. It's a deconstruction of "genre cinema" rebooting/remaking their successes to re-engage and revive a franchise.
    • TrispusAttucks 5y ago
      I enjoyed the Matrix for the philosophical subtext. The gunplay and FX were just a great bonus and I still didn't enjoy Resurrections.
  • tunesmith 5y ago
    I think most people that viscerally hate it came in with strong expectations. On its own I found it quite interesting. On the matrix reddit there are two "blue pill, red pill" threads that split apart the people that like it and don't, and for the people who like it there are some long essays explaining why, that I found heartfelt and well-reasoned. I have a theory that if people really liked Cloud Atlas and Sense8, they're more apt to like Resurrections.
• pelagicAustral 5y ago
  I couldn't get past the first 10 minutes of this film... what a waste.
• darkerside 5y ago
  The choreography in this movie was incredibly lazy.
  • Apocryphon 5y ago
    Yeah. As confusing or bad the writing and dialogue in this movie got, that was never new to the franchise, the sequels had plenty of that. But what doomed this one was the lack of good action, some of it was truly bad. I understand that Lana is much older now and likely doesn't want to do the "hire a comic book artist to storyboard each scene in excruciating detail to make it perfect" ordeal anymore, the stars are much older and not as action-capable as they used to be, and that the pandemic probably troubled the production terribly. But the action scenes look incomprehensible at times (the train), with utterly mediocre CGI (the lake house), just horrid angles and motion (the finale at night). I would've rather they had just cut out all of that and turned this into a mystery or psychological thriller, instead of trying to force action scenes that just look embarrassingly bad.
    • sydthrowaway 5y ago
      The real reason is the original fight choreographer from HK cinema is missing.
  • the_doctah 5y ago
    The sad part is, when re-watching Matrix recently, I realized how amazing the choreography and the quality of the edits actually was.
• titzer 5y ago
  I saw it twice. I honestly cannot tell if Lana Wachowski hates the Matrix or not. There was this meta montage of "oh we have to make a sequel to the Matrix because the suits wanted it, everybody pile on stupid crap", which was obviously a middle finger to...someone. I laughed out loud at how over the top that blatant F-U was...but given that the movie proceeded to then actually crap on every single thing that was awesome about the first Matrix (hey, Trinity is a literally a soccer Mom now? Morpheus is the most newly freed mind and completely unimportant? Smith is completely unintimidating? It's inexplicably set in 2020, not 1999 that was supposed to be the peak of human civilization?) Did she honestly ruin it on purpose?
  • oliyoung 5y ago
    > I honestly cannot tell if Lana Wachowski hates the Matrix or not. The movies and the production of them? Yes. The concept and story? No. > Did she honestly ruin it on purpose? Yes. I think she did.
    • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      What kind of person would take something of their own and ruin it like that? Tons of people loved the matrix, just let it be.
      • oliyoung 5y ago
        Plenty of people. Part of the act of creation can be it's destruction https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/oct/14/banksy-auction-record-shredded-painting-love-is-in-the-bin https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/oct/14/banksy-...
      • abathur 5y ago
        Assuming the dialog can be believed: they either had to participate in the reboot, or let WB reboot it without them.
        • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
• sandworm101 5y ago
  Hollywood accounting isn't evil. It just operates from a not-wallstreet perspective. Did Keanu Reeves take home a paycheck? Did the director? Were all the union techs paid? Were all the contract animation and sound studios paid? The film made everyone plenty of money. That investors got screwed doesnt really phase the people who actually make movies. Never, ever, invest in a movie. You will have better luck with lottery tickets.
• tomohawk 5y ago
  "There can be only one" Applies to The Matrix at least as much as it applies to the movie it came from.
  • redisman 5y ago
    Loved the original but I already thought the two other movies were garbage so I have very low expectations for this..reboot?
• 101008 5y ago
  Not sure if it applies to this particular link, but WeGotThisCovered is probably the worst website ever, full of clickbait. 90% (or more) of their news are clickbait straight lies, they don't care that's a lie as long as it is clickable and people comment it on Facebook. My favourite example is this one: https://wegotthiscovered.com/?s=emma+watson+reportedly&submit= https://wegotthiscovered.com/?s=emma+watson+reportedly&submi... They add "reportedly" just to any article that's 100% invented by them. Emma Watson was never approached to do any Harry Potter film, there were no talks to do them, etc, etc, etc. And I put that example because that's the one I am more familiar with (I am very deep in the Harry Potter fandom), but I have seen reports by them from all franchises with clear lies.
  • brightball 5y ago
    Fwiw, my wife and I just watched the 2 hour Potter 20 years later thing that came out on HBO Max. She actually talks about coming in to audition. The only person they mention going to get is DR himself.
    • 101008 5y ago
      Emma Watson auditioned for the original Harry Potter films, they are talking about making her audition again for a remake (!)
  • kayxspre 5y ago
    At one point, many of my entertainment news in my Google feed came from WGTC, and 95% of the time, what they presented in the article simply doesn't match the given impression of its title (a clickbait, so to speak), or simply came from not-so-reliable source. I eventually have to tell Google I don't want to hear from this source again. Same goes to Alternative Nation (a music site), but it's worse than WGTC. It uses GoDaddy firewall to block access from my country. Not that I'm willing to put effort to get in, though, as it's as terrible as WGTC.
• boxmonster 5y ago
  The Matrix is a 'trans metaphor', Lilly Wachowski says. "That was the original intention but the world wasn't quite ready," says Lilly Wachowski, who came out as trans along with her sister Lana after the films came out. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435 https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435 That killed my interest in it because I didn't want to see a message movie. I liked the earlier movies because of the Science Fiction and people like Elon Musk asking "Are we living in a simulation?". That's fun. I also watch movies to escape into a couple hours of enjoyable fantasy and get away from daily issues. I couldn't watch "Don't Look Up" for the same reason.
  • Spivak 5y ago
    That quote is talking about the first movie. The original one. Neo’s story is a cleverly hidden but also extremely thin metaphor about a trans woman finding herself. That scene with the red and blue pills is literally Neo choosing estrogen over antidepressants. “Mr. Anderson” with that iconic over the top emphasis on the mister is Neo getting deadnamed. Neo has this feeling that the world is wrong (gender dysphoria) and finds the truth in online chat rooms and in a bar full of people who wear full leather outfits (a crude stand-in for the LGBT community). I could keep doing this for every part of the movie but you get the picture. And it’s all canon.
    • boxmonster 5y ago
      I know but this article is from 7 August 2020 so I got the impression, given the climate of the day, for this Matrix to be even more about it. There are movies built around a social issue like Philedelphia or Leaving Las Vegas, but I think the filmmaker needs to use gritty realism. Trying to steer The Matrix Science Fiction movies in that direction about trans I thought would probably be a disaster.
    • the_doctah 5y ago
  • npunt 5y ago
    Nothing wrong with taking away what you want from art, but uh.. you're exactly describing the 'blue pill' (the comforts of escapism), so there is some irony in that with regard to the Matrix in particular. That's one of the reasons the original was so smart; it worked on multiple levels, letting you have your cake (escapism/fantasy/action movie) and eat it too (the message that makes you think long after seeing it).
• EZ-Cheeze 5y ago
  I think the saying "set and setting" applies to movies as much as it does to psychedelics. I was hyped to watch it, I was nicely toasted, I watched it as soon as it came out, and it did everything right in my book. For starters, it grabbed me from the get-go: the shot of a SWAT operator's foot stepping into a puddle was totally gorgeous. Everything else that happened was interesting as hell - a program being evolved in a simulated environment, an agent realizing he's Morpheus, Jessica Henwick being totally gorgeous and speaking in a soft honey voice. If the first moments of a film charm you, you are much more predisposed to like it. Other things I loved without getting too specific: +bullet time rewind +Trinity's fresh eyes after nearly dying +the ballet of the helicopters +Sati +Sati's wink +the design of the Anomaleum +holding hands in the sky +army in a coffee shop +the music when the dojo gets initiated +the view from the prison cell +bathroom stall encounter of grandeur and hilarity! I'm sure I'm missing twice as much amazing things but these are just off the top of my head.
  • liamwire 5y ago
    I’m absolutely with you here. I walked into it having intentionally avoided the trailers, and treating the whole existence as a thrown-bone, a “here’s one last throwback to something truly special, in a time when we could all use some familiarity,” while remaining self-aware, and tongue-in-cheek. It knew what it was, looked that right in the face, and said ‘don’t take it too seriously.’ And I didn’t, and it was great.
    • the_doctah 5y ago
      >one last throwback If only. Alas, I doubt it.
      • mbg721 5y ago
        Now come on, how many times can we do "The Brady Bunch meet The Matrix"??
  • the_doctah 5y ago
    >an agent realizing he's Morpheus This is not "amazing" it's hack writing and made no sense. Unfortunately that set the tone for the rest of the movie.
• utopcell 5y ago
  HBO Max subscribers were up 4.4 million in Q4 2021, probably a good chunk of that due to Matrix 4.
  • wonderwonder 5y ago
    I subscribed to Max for Dune and the Matrix and then yesterday I dropped it and got Hulu.
• mattacular 5y ago
  I thought it was pretty good. Was only really disappointed that there weren't more groundbreakingly cool action sequences along the lines of what we got in 1 and 2. It's actually refreshing that it didn't do nonstop fan service like most reboots of hugely popular franchises. I respect the choices she made a lot.
• donohoe 5y ago
  I had hoped they'd have learned the lesson of the sequels and this would be a good movie. However after 10 minutes it was clear this was going to be bad and I let all hopes of medium expectations fade. In that sense 'it was meh', and I am sorry I risked seeing it at the theater. I think it did poorly because the movie was just plain bad, and the omicron variant is reaching a peek just as movies theaters were getting people to come back.
• jarjoura 5y ago
  I actually quite liked the expansion on the lore and mythology of the movie. Also the new blue-haired actress lit up every scene she was in. More of her please! I just couldn't understand how someone who was as much as a perfectionist when it came to groundbreaking movie making would poop out something so unpolished and cheap looking. The lighting was uninspired, the choreography was lazy, the camera work was exceptionally amateur, and shaky-cam, really?! When I saw the bus scene from Shang-Chi, that was the level of work and detail I was expecting when they were on that Tokyo train.
• Animats 5y ago
  Forget the movie. It's the Unreal Engine 5 game demo that's interesting.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ
  • imbnwa 5y ago
    This. Good Gods, this better be a full game set in the first movie's green tint
• arrakis2021 5y ago
  Those who actually enjoy the matrix originals https://www.matrixresolutions.com/ https://www.matrixresolutions.com/
• ankurdhama 5y ago
  It seems that people expectations with this movie was that it will try to expand on or answers some of the questions that the last 3 movies raised, instead it turns out to be giving just a happy ending to Neo and Trinity characters.
• ffhhj 5y ago
  This movie is basically a conmemorative sequel with pets and zombies. It feels like a wink to Disney. I'd have peferred them to explain how Neo was able to use the "force" against the machines, see their energy while blind, and who's the Zero. Expected a replica of Neo to be used by the machines or something in the lines of "don't be evil" becomes evil, as a critique to modern tech.
• trembonator 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• nunez 5y ago
  I mean, it was a bad movie. So I'm not terribly surprised.
• Markoff 5y ago
  It's trash movie deserving to lose money, I wish I could get returned time wasted on this crap. I mean 2nd and 3rd movie were bad, but this is whole lotta other level. I think the IMDb rating 5.7/10 speaks volumes why it's crashing.
• dgreensp 5y ago
  > For every Spider-Man: No Way Home, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, No Time to Die, Dune, or Fast & Furious 9 that brings in big bucks, there’s a Space Jam: A New Legacy, The Suicide Squad, Tenet, or Raya and the Last Dragon that fails to turn a single penny of profit in theaters. Tenet made plenty of money in worldwide box office sales, not counting DVD/Blu-Ray or streaming: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Tenet-(2020) https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Tenet-(2020) "worldwide box office is 1.8 times production budget" Raya (budget $100m) also made money in theaters alone (worldwide box office $116m) despite being released in March 2021. Phew, I was going to be sad for a moment that Raya was some kind of failure, as if being included in a list that contained the new Space Jam movie wasn't bad enough. Whoever wrote this article doesn't seem to know what they are talking about.
• vegai_ 5y ago
  By what I've heard about it in various chat boards and RLM, this movie seems very interesting to me. Much more so than a "Matrix 1 remake" could have been. I tried to watch it in cinema, but unfortunately all the good theaters were fully booked. Waiting for the HBO release next month.
• nokya 5y ago
  I started watching it a few days ago. I kind of expected it would not be "as good" but honestly did not expect it to be so... strange. Surprisingly, I haven't finished it yet. But I will. We never know, maybe it turns out to be a good surprise by the end.