[HN Gopher] A deleted subplot from "The Matrix" contradicts its ...
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A deleted subplot from "The Matrix" contradicts its sequels
Author : georgecmu
Score : 77 points
Date : 2022-01-04 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| RalfWausE wrote:
| The weird thing is: I think i remember seeing this sublot when i
| first saw the matrix on some bootlegged VHS... perhaps some
| mandela effect thing..
| cwillu wrote:
| Trinity told Cypher her part of the prophecy ("The Oracle told
| me that I would fall in love, and that that man, the man who I
| loved would be The One."), and Cypher thought he was in love
| with Trinity, which is why Cypher teases her about it: in the
| dialogue that opens the movie ("You like him, don't you? You
| like watching him.", "You don't, do you?"), and again when neo
| is recovering on the ship ("I don't remember you bringing me
| dinner. There is something about him, isn't there?"), and
| finally when he betrays them ("You know, for a long time, I
| thought I was in love with you.", "all I want is a little yes
| or no. Look into his eyes, those big pretty eyes. Tell me. Yes
| or no?").
| jerf wrote:
| While I am generally inclined to believe the first film stands
| alone and the later films had at most vague hopes and dreams
| about where to go if it was successful, I also think this
| overstates the case a bit. If Morpheus was wrong about 5 previous
| "The Ones" in the Matrix, that changes his character and Cypher's
| character in the first movie, sure, but it doesn't have much
| effect on the subsequent stories.
|
| If you watch carefully, you can penetrate Laurence Fishburne's
| incredible screen presence by the end of the second movie to
| notice that Morpheus is a naive tool, quite a while before the
| character figures it out himself. (In fact, I find him a bit
| cringe to watch in the third movie because by then it's obvious
| that almost every word out of his mouth is unjustified by
| reality, and he is only right by coincidence. I don't mean the
| bad accidental sort of cringe, it's deliberate, and it works
| fine. Legit character choice.) It doesn't change the overarching
| story _that_ much to make it possible to derive that in the first
| movie. It would just change the first movie.
|
| I'm not sure accommodating this revelation would _require_ any
| changes in the second and third movie. You _could_ add a
| conversation where Neo confronts Morpheus more directly, but it
| wouldn 't be _obligatory_.
|
| My guess is that the reality is the same for them as it is for a
| lot of us. How many times have you worked on a project, either
| personally or at work, and come up with hopes and dreams about
| what Phase 2 will look like? Tons of times for me. But even when
| I stick with the design we hoped and dreamed about (which is
| basically the task I'm working on right now at work), there's
| still a lot between those hopes and dreams and running code. I
| bet there was at least thoughts about future plans, but there's a
| lot between hopes and dreams and a functioning script, let alone
| actual movies.
| kemayo wrote:
| This article seems to be saying that two entirely separate plot
| concepts are incompatible, and I just don't see it.
|
| 1. Morpheus has found other people he believes to be "the One"
| before. He was wrong, and they died or otherwise didn't pan out.
| (I'm fairly sure this is still referenced in the movie? Just not
| the specific deleted scenes that the article mentions.)
|
| 2. There is a larger cycle of "the One" resetting Zion as part of
| the machines' system of control. This has happened a bunch of
| times now.
|
| These are different things. They have nothing to do with each
| other. They are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually
| supporting.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| The fact that there were five predecessors in the shooting
| script, and five predecessors in _Reloaded_ / _Revolutions_ ,
| very strongly suggests that they lifted and reworked that plot
| from the first movie, for reuse in the sequels.
|
| From a narrative point of view, it would be confusing as hell
| to have five predecessors in _this_ iteration of the matrix, as
| well as five predecessors across five previous iterations of
| the matrix.
|
| Could both have been part of the same overarching, pre-planned
| plot? Sure. But is that likely? Not at all.
| divbzero wrote:
| It could be something as mundane as the writer liking the
| sound of 'five' and 'sixth' in the script.
| pfisch wrote:
| Almost like having false dragons in the wheel of time, and
| also many predecessors who are real dragons...
|
| To be fair though I always assumed the second and third
| matrixes were retroactive revisions. They are just so
| different from the first one.
| kemitche wrote:
| The number is only five in both cases because only one plot
| was eventually used.
|
| Had the Morpheus 5 been kept in, it would have been trivial
| to use a different number of cycles (7, 10, 400, whatever)
| and avoid the confusion.
| [deleted]
| fullshark wrote:
| The coincidence of him being the 6th iteration in both cases is
| what's caught the author's eye, maybe the filmmakers liked the
| number 6 and used it in the 2nd plot thread after scrapping the
| first plot thread.
| kemayo wrote:
| I guess I can see how that might have confused the author. I
| do feel that at some point in writing this article they
| should have noticed that they were conflating two entirely
| different concepts based solely on the number 6 being used in
| reference to them...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It would confuse most viewers, so either it was a terrible
| choice to have similar stories about "sixth iteration", or
| it was originally one plot then changed to another.
|
| I agree with the author that Cypher would have been a more
| nuanced character had he more justification for his doubt.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I don't think it's a confusion on the author's side. It
| would be confusing and redundant to have 5 predecessors on
| two different levels in the movie. IMHO, they simply
| developed/morphed the ultimately unused predecessor idea
| from the first movie into a different variant in the second
| movie.
| yhorawu8 wrote:
| twox2 wrote:
| I think "The Animatrix" has some really cool stories that
| support these multiple concepts.
| colordrops wrote:
| IMO, The Animatrix is the only quality work in the matrix
| universe other than the original movie.
| twox2 wrote:
| I mostly agree, though I think the other movies are fun.
| But the Animatrix was so ahead of its time. Now Netflix has
| love, death, & robots - which to me seems directly
| inspired.
| evv555 wrote:
| The new Matrix seems like a spiritual successor to the
| Animatrix more so than the movies
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > two entirely separate plot concepts are incompatible, and I
| just don't see it
|
| I agree with you, but I also agree with the poster that they
| didn't actually have any of this in mind when they wrote Matrix
| 1, any more than George Lucas already wrote Star Wars I-III and
| then started filming with part IV.
| servytor wrote:
| It took me forever to realize that the Japanese lettering in the
| matrix code hinted at something. I mean why Japanese? I mean it
| could just be a homage because of "Ghost in the Shell", but after
| a while I suddenly realized it hints at the AI having evolved
| from a Japanese nation-state AI.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Reading the scenes, I don't see these as being incompatible with
| the overall plot line.
|
| The story presented here is that there were five previous "Ones"
| and they all faced an agent and were killed. But, if you recall,
| that's exactly what happens with Neo. His death at the hands of
| an agent is exactly what "unlocks" his powers. There would need
| to a be a couple more dialogues in the sequels but it would be
| trivial to address what happened to the other five after they
| were "killed".
|
| So while it may be true that there was no master plan for the
| sequels (and I have absolutely no doubt they came out very
| different than originally envisioned - that's the creative
| process), I don't necessarily see this as strong evidence of that
| fact.
|
| It was probably cut because the subplot just adds complexity for
| the audience without really adding much to the story.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I agree. No evidence was presented to support the sequels were
| "mostly the result of retroactive revision and was never
| planned when the first film came out." Revision already take
| place in all creative storytelling. Also where does he come up
| with the idea that the perception is the films were "mapped out
| in advance and executed in accordance with a foolproof master
| plan?" Seems a bit extreme.
|
| All stories are a creative process and small and large details
| can change as a story continues.
|
| For instance, originally machines used human brains as part of
| a greater neural net within the matrix. But then executives
| forced the Wachowskis to change that idea into humans-as-
| batteries to make it more palatable. So they re-write portions
| of the arc to fit that new narrative.
|
| So all I see here is the "5 predecessors" plot removed from the
| first movie becoming 5 predecessors in the "matrix is a lie"
| plot, which may not have changed much. It's silly to speculate
| without just asking The Wachowskis directly.
| duxup wrote:
| When I watched the first film I just assumed that Morpheus had
| found others and been wrong about them...
|
| Morpheus conviction that Neo is the one but everyone else being
| more ambivalent seem to imply that Morpheus could be or has
| been wrong in the past.
|
| I agree that being wrong wouldn't necessarily conflict with the
| rest of the film. I think it adds a lot of character to the
| story.
| als0 wrote:
| > When I watched the first film I just assumed that Morpheus
| had found others and been wrong about them...
|
| I'm pretty sure it's even hinted in the film how Morpheus had
| thought Trinity was the One until the Oracle had told her
| that she wasn't - but that she would fall in love with the
| One.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| And they pulled some of that into 2/3. The oracle is
| another form of control. She even told Neo he was not the
| 'one', and I suspect said the same to the others. Until he
| stopped believing their lies he could not be the 'one'. But
| he needed a push, the love for Trinity. So the oracle set
| that up. Another form of control.
| moonbug wrote:
| might as well stop at the first sentence. no-one thought that.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I get that people will view you as a genius if you have this
| multi-year, multi-(book/movie) plot all detailed out and slowly
| reveal it to the world, so there is a benefit in promulgating
| this idea, but is there actually any content where this technique
| was used successfully? It seems like it would just be overly
| restricting to creativity rather than a kind of genius move.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| The Expanse series of novels just wrapped up after ten years,
| with one short story left to be published. I can't judge their
| grandiosity compared to A Song of Ice and Fire or Star Wars,
| however I would consider them to be a major success.
| rhino369 wrote:
| But did they map it all out up front and then not make any
| major changes?
| gathly wrote:
| I never once heard nor thought the matrix sequels were planned
| from the beginning. The first movie is completely self-contained.
| The feel of the sequels is of someone stretching out a completed
| story, because of the money made from the first one, not anything
| pre-planned from the beginning, and they also feel like 1 movie
| that was made artificially into 2 to get more box office money.
| kemayo wrote:
| I've always suspected that the Matrix trilogy was pre-planned
| in the same sense as Star Wars had a planned 9 episode arc as
| George Lucas always claimed.
|
| That is, sure, they had a general sense of the surrounding
| world and events and what might happen next. But when someone
| actually said "here's an unfathomably large amount of money,
| please make these movies" they had to actually come up with all
| the concrete details and probably moved a lot of things around
| while doing so.
| zamfi wrote:
| I seem to recall from the time that the Wachowskis originally
| planned the Matrix storyline as a trilogy, but then they were
| forced into making a single movie, and so took all the
| fantastic parts of the whole trilogy and crammed it into one
| movie.
|
| Then they had to turn it into a trilogy again, and, well,
| it's hard to unscramble an egg.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Lucas had a script, and A New Hope ended up being the middle
| of it. He was all over the place. He wanted an Obi-Wan story,
| a Wookie movie, etc. Empire wasn't the original sequel, but
| it got so big they double downed and then he just rehashed
| the first plot for RotJ (in the original script the Wookies
| helped destroy the first Death Star, but Ewoks were better
| for Toys R Us).
|
| The prequel trilogy then just made it "Anakin's story" and in
| 2008 he was saying he was done and there was no thereafter.
| Given how bad those were, he would probably have not done
| much better than Disney for the last three.
| hateful wrote:
| IMO, 2 & 3 weren't that great. And it took years for me to re-
| watch the first one and remember how much I loved it as a self-
| contained film.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'll just throw "Lost" into the mix. Just about every plot
| development wound up being directly contradicted in the push to
| come up with stories for the next season.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Same thing happened with Alias too every season was practically
| a reboot with some new nonsense being invoked from thin air.
| mindslight wrote:
| Wait what? I don't follow entertainment media, so this "Master
| Plan" idea is news to me.
|
| I thought it was straightforward that the first movie is what
| they set out to make, complete in its own right. It's basically
| anti-authoritarian hacking/phreaking (abstraction fucking) plus
| kung fu. Neo achieves the win condition, and the story ends to
| avoid having to grapple with any implications of achieving
| godmode.
|
| Then the 2nd/3rd are basically add ons to the original
| story/universe. They include many more characters with large
| scale social dynamics, drawn out battle scenes, and the writing
| is less focused and more broad-appeal tropey. In the first movie
| society is something to exist outside of; in the sequels it's
| something the characters are a part of. In the first they
| literally blow up a federal building; in the sequels there are
| respected politicians. The end of the first is one of overcoming
| and creative destruction; the end of the third is that of
| reconciliation and hope for incremental change. I thought these
| stark differences where why the sequels were widely criticized?
|
| I can see how that progression _could_ be that of a single
| planned story, but rather it feels an awful lot like the first
| movie was successful and Hollywood wanted More. The themes of the
| sequels have seemingly more to do with the Wachowskis ' own
| personal development struggles rather than abstractly following
| from the first. A hard truth of any critical art is that society
| looks a lot more comfortable after you've become successful. And
| well getting longer in the tooth myself, I guess that's just the
| cycle? _shrug_
| gumby wrote:
| Frank Herbert told me that Dune just got too long and so he split
| it into two books. There would be no further books because he was
| done writing that one.
|
| And it's not like I was anyone special, just someone he ran into
| at a party, so I'm sure he was telling lots of people that after
| Dune Messiah came out.
|
| Spoiler: I suspect none of that was true.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| What kind of party was it?
| gumby wrote:
| Just a party at someone's house in Boston or Cambridge. I
| think he lived on the west coast so perhaps he was just
| visiting another guest. It was of course several decades ago.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| I don't remember where I read it, but I remember reading that
| he wrote parts of Children and Messiah before or in parallel
| with writing the first book.
| gumby wrote:
| He also said at some later point that he had always
| envisioned it as a trilogy. I assume he simply enjoyed the
| money and attention (and probably had some leftover ideas to
| expand upon) and frankly, why shouldn't he?
|
| Dune is surprisingly tightly plotted so he probably left a
| lot of items "on the cutting room floor".
|
| Although I personally became bored with the sequels, they
| didn't have the "just turning the crank to get some bucks"
| feeling that a lot of sequels do. They simply weren't for me,
| which is fine.
| szenrom wrote:
| It's been years since I watched Matrix but is there really any
| conflict between these two Predecessors theories? IIRC actions of
| the Predecessors resulted not only in the resets of the Matrix
| but also destruction and recreation of the Zion. Is there any
| issue with Neo being sixth candidate to be "The One" within a
| sixth bigger loop? I don't think anyone but the Architect and the
| Oracle were aware of Matrix resets.
| Ergo19 wrote:
| There's no issue with that, but it wouldn't exactly be tight
| storytelling.
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| According to this they died at the hands of agents so I would
| assume they never expressed attributes of the one or reset the
| matrix.
| fungiblecog wrote:
| Not sure why this is even an issue. The original matrix is a
| beautiful self contained and tightly directed movie. the sequels
| are a complete mess. it's obvious they were only made to cash in
| on the success of the original.
| luckydata wrote:
| It's also possible that during the making of the following movies
| they might have changed their minds about what would work better
| story-telling wise. I don't see this "discovery" as the gotcha
| the author thinks it is.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I don't see the contradiction.
|
| Tangent: aside from the vastly inferior action scenes and the
| unnecessary, if not severely distracting throwbacks / returning
| characters I thought the new film was decent. They didn't get it
| right, but it was much better than most franchise resurrection
| attempts.
|
| The first act, I thought, was great. But I was disappointed when
| the writers showed their self awareness of missing the point when
| remaking a piece of art, and then... kind of did it anyway with
| the same level of depth for many scenes. I despised, in
| particular, how in the original films Neo's powers were just him
| being a god and understanding the world, but in the new one he
| kind of grunts and expels physical effort to do them like a
| typical superhero. That's just a different style altogether, and
| the original makes it abundantly clear that something like age
| shouldn't affect it. /rant.
| wwilim wrote:
| I totally get him. After 3 years of coding you feel great when
| you click "build" After 30 years of coding you're just really
| grumpy when you have to click "build" again
| _moof wrote:
| Sort of an aside: I find it so strange to insist that everything
| have The One True Story With All Its Details And We Shall Murder
| Anyone Who Disagrees ("canon"). I'm not an expert in literature
| by any means--I was bad at, and hated, lit crit--but it seems
| like this is a relatively recent invention, or at least that its
| application to anything other than religious texts is a recent
| development. For starters I don't think this is how stories have
| been told for most of human history. Before Beowulf was written
| down, were people interrupting scops to say that the color of the
| dragon in their version was non-canonical? And even if they were,
| most stories--and especially ones that we seem to get bent out of
| shape about when it comes to "canon"-- _aren 't real,_ so to
| insist that there is some set of essential, unchangeable facts
| that they refer to is gibberish.
|
| Would very much appreciate insight on this from someone who has
| studied literature and/or folklore extensively (though I suspect
| this might not be the right place to find such a person).
| josephd79 wrote:
| The new one is still a great movie. I'm gonna watch again tonight
| so I can tune out the real world and my adulting responsibilities
| for a few hours.
| kerblang wrote:
| Not to mention that there was originally an entire character
| named "Switch" who switched genders between matrix/real-world and
| didn't make it past The Hollywood People and that according to
| one of the Wachowskis it was really an allegory for
| transgenderism... Well here's one article about that (there's
| another on Vox I think):
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435
|
| Honestly though it would be ill-advised to try to think of the
| Matrix as A Great Revelatory Truth About Humankind's Place In the
| Universe and I hope folks are past that kind of quasi-religious
| thinking. It's an imperfect but thought-provoking series of
| fictional stories.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Imho this is actually the much more interesting revelation to
| me and look how few words you needed to accomplish that...
| beaned wrote:
| "It's thought provoking, but I hope it doesn't provoke these
| specific thoughts."
| weeblewobble wrote:
| Pretty weak IMO.
|
| 1. The whole thing is intended to refute an idea that is not
| widespread nor of any particular importance (a few fluffy quotes
| from critic reviews don't make a zeitgeist)
|
| 2. The smoking gun evidence of plotting changes between 1 and 2
| is weak.
|
| 3. Even if they did change the plot between 1 and 2 that wouldn't
| prove they didn't have a plan going on. Sometimes things change,
| and "master plans" are not etched in stone
| Jtsummers wrote:
| This is a weird sentiment:
|
| > No, the Story of the One in the first movie always meant to be
| non-canon, an intentional misleading of the audience, a red
| herring.
|
| It's not "non-canon", it is canon that Morpheus and others
| _believed_ this "Story of the One". That it wasn't _true_ does
| not make the _belief_ (that the characters ' held) non-canon,
| just wrong. To be non-canon then you'd actually be throwing away
| the first movie, but that's not the case, instead the information
| available to the characters has been expanded and so a once-held
| belief becomes falsified.
| ck2 wrote:
| the other Neo-s Morpheus found were within his own timeline, it
| was his "purpose"
|
| but there were other matrix before the matrix in the movie
|
| the Merovingian and Persephone were The Architech's failed
| versions of Neo and Trinity from the machine world, they didn't
| work because they could never have human "love" (this is why
| Persephone is so utterly fascinated by it) it took the Oracle to
| realize this because the Architech could never understand
|
| I still haven't seen the newest movie and was trying to stay
| spoiler free but the commercials kept popping up, I really,
| really dislike how "clean" the digital format looks compared to
| the original films and Neil Patrick Harris may be a great actor
| but he is completely anatopical to me in a matrix movie, should
| be "unknowns" to avoid distraction of the actor
| kranke155 wrote:
| Only people who don't work in the film industry would ever think
| Matrix was conceived as a trilogy from the start and the plan was
| never changed/altered.
|
| That literally never happens, it's never happened that I aware
| of, unless the work is an adaptation.
| canjobear wrote:
| Oh my god. This is the true redpill. You mean that moviemakers
| sometimes retcon stuff and then say it was all part of a master
| plan? I can't process this. This shatters everything I've ever
| believed in. What do you want to tell me next, that George Lucas
| wasn't thinking of Anakin's podracing skills when he had Darth
| Vader say "I am your father"???
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I wish they would have deleted that ending from the latest Matrix
| Resurrection. The first 99% of the movie was great. The last 1%
| was just anticlimactic and the cover of Killing In the Name just
| reminded me that this was a rehash of a great original movie.
| [deleted]
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The deleted bits (the conversation between Neo and Cypher, and
| the followup conversation between Neo and Morpheus) doesn't
| contradict the sequels. They simply show that Morpheus was wrong
| about who the One was. The existence of the failed candidates
| doesn't contradict the existence of the failed predecessors. If
| anything, it fits into the numerology of the trilogy (6
| candidates, 6 Ones, 6 crew members, 6 ships, 6 trips into the
| Matrix, 6 Zions, etc.)
|
| Of course the Matrix Trilogy wasn't _fully_ written out when they
| made the first film. The Wachowskis never claimed that. They said
| it was all _conceived_ as one whole, and the specific execution
| of that concept (i.e., the screenplays) changed after the first
| film to reflect the narrative that actually made the final cut in
| the first movie... Which is exactly how things work in Hollywood,
| because canon is only what actually makes it onto the screen.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Yeah I totally agree - as much as I would have liked these
| scenes in the movie because they do really flesh out Cyphers
| motivation (and its not like the Matrix was an excessively long
| movie to begin with) I dont think these are incompatible at
| all.
|
| That being said as much as the second two films get shit on I
| rewatched both recently and number 2 really is quite good - not
| as iconic as the first Matrix but still solid. Unfortunately it
| seems its reputation got really spoiled by the third movie
| which.......well we all know how that goes.
| beaned wrote:
| This sub plot being casually discarded for cutting time (if it
| was) has to be one of the luckiest edits in film history, as it
| allowed a much cooler story, 2 great sequels, and a delayed plot
| twist outside of the first movie.
|
| Someone else points out that it wasn't strictly necessary to cut
| this sub plot to enable the second concept of "one" cycles, which
| I agree with, but having just the b more interesting of the two
| is probably more potent storytelling.
| vehemenz wrote:
| I agree with the author. The cut scenes would have provided
| better character development for both Morpheus and Cypher, as
| well as some more motivating additional doubt for Neo and perhaps
| a better payoff when he realizes he is the One.
|
| However, I think the whole discussion about canon is nonsense.
| For this, for Star Wars, and for everything.
|
| Is anything Star Wars watchable after 1983? No. So why even talk
| about canon? Just watch the good stuff and ignore the rest. Is
| any Matrix movie after 1999 worth watching? Of course not. So why
| even talk about it?
|
| In both cases, the original writers didn't respect their own
| material; why should you respect their idea of what the "real"
| story is? Life is too short for bad art.
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| Matrix Resurrections is worth watching, but it won't please
| people who are fans of anything beyond the original film.
| veilrap wrote:
| I'm confused by this statement. I agree Matrix Resurrections
| is worth watching, it's quite good. But I'm also a fan of the
| other 4 films (Matrix, Reloaded, Revelations, Animatrix).
| Many people I've talked about the films with agree.
|
| Personally, I found Revelations to be some what weaker than
| the rest, but they all form a pretty compelling and enjoyable
| series.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Much like the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises, the extent
| to which Everything Was Carefully Planned In Advance has been
| greatly exaggerated. It's just not possible to think that far
| ahead!
| moritonal wrote:
| Sad to see Harry Potter lumped in there. Whilst the first seven
| books had a meticulous plan with payoffs from Book 1 in Book 7,
| I wholly agree that the spin off franchises did not.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| See also: Lost, Battlestar Galactica.
| kennywinker wrote:
| The "and they have a plan" line in the opening sequence got
| more and more ridiculous as the series went on and it was
| clear the cylons did NOT have a plan at all.
| cwillu wrote:
| I always say that there was a great 3 season show hidden
| inside BSG's 4 season run.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "The plan is to wing it."
| Izkata wrote:
| For Lost, there was a rumor online around the second or third
| season that someone had either figured out or leaked the
| entire remaining planned plot, so they started changing it in
| random ways just so they could keep claiming no one had
| figured it out.
| Ergo19 wrote:
| In my youth it was generally accepted that "George Lucas wrote
| an entire 9 film series." I don't know how this rumor spread or
| came to be so widely believed.
| graywh wrote:
| Lucas had plans for sequels way back in the 70s, even making
| comments about when Mark Hammill would be the right age, but
| nothing concrete
| aeturnum wrote:
| I also think this blog post betrays a lack of understanding
| about when it's appropriate to draw lines around "the plot" of
| a series. Like, it doesn't surprise me that they played with
| ideas that might have contradicted the trilogy - but they ended
| up not including them, and those ideas made an appearance
| later, which actually supports the claim that they were
| thinking about 2 and 3 during 1.
|
| Like, shooting and then deleting a scene that you think might
| hurt the plot in future movies is "carefully planning in
| advance."
| kennywinker wrote:
| The theory presented is that it was cut for running time, not
| for story arc reasons.
|
| I disagree with the article's premise that it would have
| changed the story of the sequels - but they make a good case
| for it being cut for incidental reasons.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I disagree with that read of the evidence they list, to
| wit:
|
| > _In the introduction to a copy of the Final Shooting
| Script included in the book, editor Spencer Lamm notes that
| "everything" in the script was filmed but "changes occurred
| during editing."[...]the part "where Cypher tells Neo there
| were five potential Ones before him was shot and then cut
| in postproduction for reasons only [Lana] and [Lilly]
| know."_
|
| So the quotes here say they shot everything in the script,
| but then they made changes in the editing room for reasons
| only known to the writers of the trilogy. It could be for
| runtime! I don't think there's any definitive evidence it
| isn't, but clearly this account also supports them shooting
| something that they later realized would screw up their
| planned script.
|
| I also wanna say that there is an ambiguity over if the
| five "ones" are _actually_ Ones or just people Morpheus
| believed are ones. It wouldn 't contradict the later
| plotline of Neo being the sixth One for Morpheus to
| mistakenly free five people who aren't Ones and get them
| killed - but it would be really confusing! Since the people
| in question are summarizing a deleted plot arc that the
| directors removed, I suspect they may be summarizing in a
| way that wasn't accurate to the understanding of those
| directors.
|
| All of which is to say that the blog article is telling a
| very specific story about what seems like pretty ambiguous
| evidence. The script had reference to previous people
| pulled out as potential Ones having died to agents. It
| would be confusing to the audience for these to be five
| "fake" ones and then also have five previous real Ones, but
| it wouldn't be internally contradictory. The only way it
| directly contradicts is with a very narrow meaning which I
| don't think the blog post convinced me was intended. Beyond
| that - as I said above - since they never put it into the
| movie I think this could count as "being intended from the
| beginning" where the beginning is the release of the first
| movie.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Disney Star Wars however was by far the most blatant example.
| The sequel trilogy had no overarching plan at all. The
| Directors were free to make whatever story they wanted.
|
| This of course ended terribly in Episode 8 when Johnson single-
| handedly destroyed everything Abrams had put in place and left
| him nothing to go on for the finale.
| kemayo wrote:
| I dunno, I think it's more accurate to say that it ended
| terribly in _Episode 9_ when Abrams returned, shrugged, and
| ignored everything that had happened in 8. The film where we
| were given the phrase "somehow Palpatine returned"... :D
|
| All symptoms of staggering mismanagement by Disney, of
| course. A trilogy with a _stupid_ planned plot arc would have
| been better than the sequence of "solid but uninspired Star
| Wars throwback" + "interesting and out there reinterpretation
| of the mythos" + "but what if RotJ again but dumber?"
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Which is kinda sad given that Disney as an organization
| should be aware how much _good_ storytelling and a "cohesion
| team" is for the importance of an universe, given their
| experiences with the MCU.
|
| Even the Star Wars expanded universe was carefully and
| competently taken care of prior the acquisition - so many
| books and yet so little inconsistencies. Then Disney decided
| to throw all of the _decades_ of worldbuilding away for three
| shitty plots and an endless lot of Rey-based Rule 34
| material.
|
| The Star Trek reboot quality is similarly questionable, but
| at least they didn't simply go ahead and un-canon all
| existing works.
| ourmandave wrote:
| _...and an endless lot of Rey-based Rule 34 material._
|
| Good on ya to point out the silver lining.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I actually had to find _something_ I was happy about. Han
| Solo murdered, Luke and Leia getting sacrificed, for a
| _shitty Palpatine clone_ of all things? What a disgrace
| of a chaos of a plot!
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I like the Star Trek reboots, but respecting the lore is
| not their strong suit.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=aSrSBBLLtYc
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I'm a _tiny bit_ out of date regarding ST continuity
| (lost interest after the end of DS9 and the death of Data
| in Nemesis) so please correct me if I mess up my time
| travel or don 't get the meme, but the split in the
| timeline of the reboot happened in the early days of the
| Kirk captaincy while Discovery is set ten years before
| TOS... which means all the interactions of the
| TNG/DS9/VOY episodes with Q didn't have happened yet in
| the timeline of the first two Discovery seasons and _at
| all_ in the future of Seasons 3ff?
|
| (Seriously, time travel as a concept is annoying,
| especially when everyone uses their own version of how it
| works!)
| iso1631 wrote:
| There were sequels?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| There are similar stories about Babylon 5 (envisioned as a 5 year
| cohesive story arc; lots of changes to the plot happened over the
| years of production)
|
| This really shouldn't be too surprising to anyone who has worked
| on a creative project over an extended period of time. Heck,
| NaNoWriMo has you write a novel in a single month and I doubt
| many people have the novel hit exactly all the plot points they
| had originally thought up. How much more should we expect plans
| to change over many years (and with external constraints).
| dtx1 wrote:
| To be fair Babylon 5 WAS planned for the 5 Season Arc and only
| extended after the original plans for season 3-5 were
| essentially compressed into what became season 3 and 4. But
| from what I know it's true that the Babylon 5 we got was
| substantially different from the one originally planned. Here's
| a very detailed Discussion of the original story line
| https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/synopsis-of-jmss-synopsis-of...
| Izkata wrote:
| I don't think 3 was compressed, it was 4 and 5 that became 4
| due to fears the network would cancel it without having a
| chance to resolve the big arcs. But even there, the story was
| that they did it by dropping the side plots, and then the 5th
| season that aired was made entirely of those dropped side
| plots, not just extended in the usual sense.
|
| Also interestingly from that link, the end of that version of
| season 5 where Sinclair was believed to be a traitor, got
| rolled into the planned plot of the _Crusade_ spinoff, though
| the series was canceled before they reached that point.
| duxup wrote:
| Sometimes you find the optimal path after trying others.
|
| Seems pretty natural to me.
| [deleted]
| iszomer wrote:
| I think this can only be understood if you think in linear terms.
| I thought it was obvious by the second film that when Neo met the
| Architect, his five "predecessors" were actually in fact running
| in parallel with him, like threads to a singular process, hinted
| by all the televised instances of Neo while the two of them
| conversed on the topic of choices and consequences.
| xafnuaetrf8764 wrote:
| adamrezich wrote:
| why is it impossible that, _when asked to cut the film 's running
| time down_, it was decided that the "six previous Ones" idea
| should be excised and expanded upon in the form of a "twist"
| (instead of "Morpheus thought he found The One six previous
| times," it's "the entire cycle of the machines freeing some
| humans, the humans establish/rediscover/rebuild Zion, eventually
| The One is found, he resets the cycle, and this has all happened
| six previous times") in the sequel? that sounds pretty reasonable
| to me--they wanted the same gist of "you're not the first The
| One, Neo, this has all happened before," but on a much grander
| scale.
|
| it's still very interesting though that the original idea makes
| Cypher much more sympathetic, and the final cut makes Morpheus
| more sympathetic.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I can't see how anyone ever thought that the entire Matrix
| trilogy was originally conceived as one unified whole. The
| jarring transition in the narrative from Matrix 1 to Matrix 2/3
| is so pronounced that it just feels like two nearly completely
| separate stories that were grafted together in some Frankenstein-
| esque fashion. It's almost like the jump between the Old
| Testament and the New Testament - two entirely different
| religions that someone tried to retroactively glue together so
| they would look like one "thing" with a common linear narrative.
| ffhhj wrote:
| As I see it we have The Matrix, Animatrix, then a long sequel
| split in two, and now 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.
| fatnoah wrote:
| This is exactly how I felt as well. The most surprising part of
| that article was that many people think it was originally
| envisioned as a trilogy. To me, it feels exactly like one movie
| that was extraordinarily successful, so they grafted on some
| stuff to make it a trilogy.
| beaned wrote:
| Can you give some examples?
|
| I only watched all 3 way back when and was much younger, but
| the main parts of the plot seemed coherent to me at the time.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I mean... the _entire_ focus of the narrative completely
| changed. Matrix 1 was all about "destroy the Matrix and free
| humanity" while Matrix 2/3 was all about "save Zion from the
| IRL machine invasion".
|
| And I'm not saying it isn't coherent in that one can't follow
| from the other, or that you can't find a way to make a linear
| narrative out of that. I'm just saying it's a _very_
| pronounced change in focus /tone/direction, whatever you want
| to call it. And to me, from the very first time I saw Matrix
| 2, I had this strong sense of "wow, that came out of nowhere
| and went off on a weird direction". It felt very disjointed
| and weird to me all along.
| Krasnol wrote:
| I still don't get what surprised you there since Zion is
| mentioned in the first movie while he doesn't either
| destroy the Matrix nor frees humanity there. So it must
| have happen in some way elsewhere and it does in 2 and 3. I
| found it quite logical that he would visit Zion, that the
| machines would attack Zion and that he would continue to
| try to destroy the Matrix and free humanity. The whole
| movie 2 and 3 actually show the way he goes to accomplish
| (or not accomplish) that while the prologue in 1 only
| introduces him as the protagonist who would go the way.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Sure, Zion was _mentioned_ in the first movie. As a side-
| bar, almost a throwaway thing. But the meat of the story
| is about the drive to free all of humanity from the
| Marix. In Matrix 2 /3 that element entirely disappears
| and the "resolution" is some sort of truce between the
| humans and the machines... that doesn't jibe at all with
| the "destroy the Matrix" idea, IMO.
|
| Anyway... not trying to change anyone's mind here. This
| is obviously pretty subjective. All I can say is that to
| me, it's very clear that Matrix 2/3 represent a
| substantially different (albeit related) story than
| Matrix 1. If anyone disagrees, well, so be it.
| Krasnol wrote:
| > Sure, Zion was mentioned in the first movie. As a side-
| bar, almost a throwaway thing.
|
| A throwaway thing? What?
|
| This is where humanity lives outside the Matrix. This is
| the dialogue:
|
| NEO Zion?
|
| TANK If this war ended tomorrow, Zion is where the party
| would be.
|
| NEO It's a city?
|
| TANK The last human city. The only place we got left.
|
| NEO Where is it?
|
| TANK Deep underground. Near the earth's core, where it's
| still warm. You live long enough, you might even see it.
|
| Further on Zion is mentioned in connection with the
| warning and later in the even more important topic of the
| access codes and coming from Tanks mouth:
|
| TANK We can't let that happen, Trinity. Zion is more
| important than me. Or you, or even Morpheus
|
| Or Agent Smiths:
|
| AGENT SMITH Once Zion is destroyed, there is no need for
| me to be here. Do you understand? I need the codes. I
| have to get inside Zion. You have to tell me how.
|
| I mean seriously. I have the feeling you did not pay
| attention which is the feeling I get from most of the
| people who are an the hate train. It seems like those
| people live off the hype for the fight scenes and visual
| impact of the first movie which none of the others could
| deliver because the revolution has happened already. But
| all movies after Matrix had that problem too and it
| doesn't say anything about the progression of the story
| of Matrix.
|
| > But the meat of the story is about the drive to free
| all of humanity from the Marix. In Matrix 2/3 that
| element entirely disappears and the "resolution" is some
| sort of truce between the humans and the machines... that
| doesn't jibe at all with the "destroy the Matrix" idea,
| IMO.
|
| It doesn't disappear. It is the main part of the story of
| those movies. The decisions need to do are just about
| that. This is what is important and the result is a
| consequence of what happened along the way.
|
| You should really consider watching those movies again
| because I think you've missed a lot there.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _You should really consider watching those movies again
| because I think you 've missed a lot there._
|
| I have watched The Matrix probably 100+ times (and the
| sequels a good 30 or more times each). I really doubt
| that I'm the one who's "missing something" here.
|
| Anyway, if you see it differently, then you see it
| differently. That's totally acceptable. Two people can
| watch the same movie(s) and reach different
| interpretations. Nothing unusual about that.
| Kranar wrote:
| I have no opinion but I find it interesting that you
| started this conversation by saying:
|
| "I can't see how anyone ever thought..."
|
| and end the conversation with:
|
| "Nothing unusual about two people reaching different
| interpretations. "
|
| Whether the Matrix was intended as 1 movie or 3 movies is
| inconsequential in the grand scheme, but seeing this side
| of human nature is kind of interesting and somewhat
| amusing.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Note what I did _not_ say at the beginning:
|
| "No one could possibly watch the Matrix and think
| that..."
|
| I'm just saying I personally don't see the thought
| process, and the interpretation(s) where the movies are a
| cleanly connected, smooth, linear, contiguous narrative.
| I'm not saying that such processes and interpretations
| can't exist, hence
|
| "Two people can watch the same movie(s) and reach
| different interpretations."
|
| Anyway...
| bigodbiel wrote:
| iirc the Wachowski's plan was for a trilogy from the start but
| WB didn't want to fork that much on newcomers and new ip. But
| once realizing the success and cult following they gave cart
| blanche for the rest. That explains why the first movie was
| much more contained, as it could at least stand alone.
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