3 ms·

I'm not saying things aren't worse, I'm saying they are worse in a different way. The suit wearing corporate drone software developer in a cubicle isn't a thing

I'm not saying things aren't worse, I'm saying they are worse in a different way. The suit wearing corporate drone software developer in a cubicle isn't a thing anymore. Now it's a t-shirt wearing bearded fair-trade coffee lover attending daily standups, writing articles on medium, and inventing yet another frontend javascript framework in their free time. The corporate drone thing was specifically a reference to what life was like _for software developers_ in the late 90s. This looks a lot different now than it did then. For the average person, sure, your quip about amazon workers is quite apt. My point though is now we have all the same issues, but with a fake sort of "culture" icing pasted on top that makes a lot of things seem substantiative, real, and anti-corporate, when they in fact are not. Things are much subtler now. It also shows a lot of what we've lost -- "hacker" culture used to be integral to being a developer, hence Neo's "double life" as a software developer and a hacker. These days people barely even pirate things anymore. There has been a mass acceptance of the status quo that is pervasive, dangerous, and wasn't present in the previous era. So while people wore suits back in the day, back in the day was also the wild west of tech. That has largely ended. Another way of looking at it: in the 90s and early 00s, there was lots of sub-culture and counter-culture present, especially in the tech and "hacker" communities. These days, our corporate overlords have co-opted the term "hacker" and try to sound edgy and "counter-culture" by simply occupying the spaces legitimate counter-culture movements used to occupy (corporate sponsored hackathons, bug bounties, a lot of marketing stuff, etc). So this new matrix movie, for me, partially demonstrates the death of counter-culture, as it was in the late 90s and early 00s. These days you can be the equivalent of the old-school corporate drone by doing a bunch of seemingly edgy "counter-culture" things, and the corporations want it that way. They want you to feel edgy, while staying well within the parameters they designed.

Apocryphon 5y ago
The problem with this new film is that it teases at this sort of social commentary at the beginning and fails to follow up on it in the rest of the film. Besides "swarm mode" (just awful unsubtle naming convention) and "new bullet time that's so uber that Neo can't defeat it!" there's not a ton different about this new version of the Matrix from the other. We're not seeing the Analyst create a Brave New World type subtle insidious dystopia that's a better reflection of our modern world. We're either told point-blank ("We realized the more angry you get, the more energy you create" is good commentary on social media, but it's told and not shown), and the only hint of digital soma is the shot of Keanu in the elevator surrounded by today's mixed-up teens on their electronic gizmos. There's no interesting subversion like say the idea that Bugs' new resistance might be misguided in its activities, that the concept of the red pill might be archaic. That it's wrong to be worshipful towards Neo. There's no presentation of the captive humans as craving this new Matrix, of wanting to stay blue-pilled; instead they're zombies who are mind-controlled. There's no challenge to the old message. It's just the same Matrix with a shabby Corporate Memphis reskin. This movie literally uses the word "sheeple". It's all so hamfisted and half-baked. It is not clever social commentary.

Apocryphon 5y ago

The problem with this new film is that it teases at this sort of social commentary at the beginning and fails to follow up on it in the rest of the film. Besides "swarm mode" (just awful unsubtle naming convention) and "new bullet time that's so uber that Neo can't defeat it!" there's not a ton different about this new version of the Matrix from the other. We're not seeing the Analyst create a Brave New World type subtle insidious dystopia that's a better reflection of our modern world. We're either told point-blank ("We realized the more angry you get, the more energy you create" is good commentary on social media, but it's told and not shown), and the only hint of digital soma is the shot of Keanu in the elevator surrounded by today's mixed-up teens on their electronic gizmos. There's no interesting subversion like say the idea that Bugs' new resistance might be misguided in its activities, that the concept of the red pill might be archaic. That it's wrong to be worshipful towards Neo. There's no presentation of the captive humans as craving this new Matrix, of wanting to stay blue-pilled; instead they're zombies who are mind-controlled. There's no challenge to the old message. It's just the same Matrix with a shabby Corporate Memphis reskin. This movie literally uses the word "sheeple". It's all so hamfisted and half-baked. It is not clever social commentary.