After waiting for a long time, the most blockbuster blockbuster of 2021, "The Matrix 4", finally met with us.
Although it is expected that this kind of restart that has been silent for many years is mostly selling feelings, it is difficult to have any new breakthroughs, but the reputation of the film is still surprising.
Douban opened a score of 6.0, which has now fallen to 5.7 after being released in China;
The response from overseas audiences is also similar, with a Rotten Tomatoes freshness rating of 65%;
The IMDb score, like Douban, went from 6+ to a failing score.
Today we will talk about it carefully, where is the film?
Frankly, the beginning of Part 4 is subversive. Set in the world of the moment, Keanu Reeves plays Thomas Anderson, a talented game designer.
The plot of the "Matrix" trilogy is actually an interactive game he designed.
The name is "Matrix".
Based on himself, he designed the game's savior ,Neo.
The other main characters are also characters who often appear in his life.
For example, a woman named Tiffany, whom he has a crush on, is the prototype of "Trinity";
The business partner who annoyed him was designed by him to be the villain agent "Smith".
The Matrix game was a great success, but Thomas suffered from mental illness as a result. He began to hallucinate frequently, suspecting that his world was not real either.
At one point, he almost jumped off a building because he thought he could fly.
After that, he started seeing a psychiatrist.
Under the action of the other party's words and drugs, the hallucinations gradually disappeared.
But every time he looked at the blue pill in front of him, Thomas felt that everything was familiar.
In the "Matrix", "Morpheus" also took out two pills of red and blue, allowing "Neo" to make a choice.
Red represents facing the truth, blue represents returning to the matrix —
This seems to imply that the hallucination disappeared because he chose the blue pill this time.
Soon after, something strange really happened.
Thomas meets his programmed character, a new disguised version of "Morpheus."
The other party crosses from the "game" to promote his awakening.
When Thomas follows him through the mirror and into the real world again, he discovers that all the hallucinations turn out to be memories...
That's right, at the end of the trilogy, Neo sacrifices himself to end the war between humans and machines.
These are all things that have really happened.
But after that, the parent architect discovered that Neo and Trinity's love affair could generate enormous energy.
So he resurrects the two and implants them with new memories—the world depicted at the beginning of the film.
In this new story, Neo is still Thomas Anderson, and he still loves Trinity. Architects use this emotional power to power the new matrix.
But he also found that once the two were too close, Neo was in danger of awakening.
So he sets the relationship between the two into a crush that can't be loved, and he also lurks by Thomas's side as a psychiatrist...
Doesn't the setting sound good at this point?
But with all the background, the film is completed in the first 30 minutes.
After learning the truth, Thomas decides to return to the Matrix to save Trinity.
So, with the remaining two hours, the film basically remade the first one.
"Remake" here means pixel-level reproduction.
Even in terms of visual presentation, the film has not made any new attempts.
For example, the impressive Morpheus speech room and the fighting training room in the first part, this part is the textbook "I copy myself":
In terms of action and lens design, in addition to imitation, it has also ushered in a full range of downgrades.
In the first part, the action scene is guided by Yuan Heping, with a variety of moves, fighting fists to flesh;
In photography and lens design, there are also various new ideas that have never been seen before. For example, the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree static ring shooting, such as the "bullet time" that has been imitated by countless movies later.
By this time, Neo has been sleeping for 20 years and has returned as a teenager.
The hand-to-hand combat action is weak, and it can't rely on qigong:
The climactic big scene is also a round of explosions piled up by special effects.
The decisive blow depends on the savior couple", the legendary physical contraverse:
In terms of action design alone, the fourth part does not combine with the parent science fiction setting, not so much "The Matrix" as "Matrix Hunt".
Every time I saw Keanu Reeves with a heavy face facing the villain, I was afraid that he would ask the dog who killed him in the next line.
In addition, due to the maternal upgrade, Morpheus and Smith have new actors.
There is also a huge gap in the performance.
In the trilogy, Smith, played by Hugo Viven, suppresses the low-pitched phrase "Mr. Anderson" and the sense of oppression is already bursting;
Morpheus was still wearing sunglasses when he appeared, but only with his condensed facial expressions and line skills, he vividly expressed the aura of "everything under control".
In this part, the director designed a lot of self-tribute.
The famous lines of the two characters, word for word, all came again.
But when the new Smith shouted "Mr. Anderson" to Neo, as a viewer I just felt "unnecessary, really unnecessary";
Morpheus's debut lines are the same as the original, but the character turns his head and begins to laugh at himself.
Changing a role that has become a screen classic is a thankless task in itself.
What is even more disastrous is that the director also continues to insert the original film in various ways such as flashbacks and curtains, giving the audience an intuitive comparison of the gap between the two versions of acting, which can be said that there has not been such an embarrassing viewing experience for a long time.
In addition to these old faces, the newly added characters are almost all tool people, and there is no impression.
As the architect who appeared as a boss, his concept is all repetitive, and the whole person looks like he writes the "villain" on his face, and it is difficult to support the forced frame of the film.
Although the actor is my favorite actor, he can't save the role.
To say the root cause of the film's rollover, in fact, the director has said countless times in the early interviews - whenever someone asks whether "The Matrix" will have a sequel, their answer is "The story of the trilogy has been told." ”
The fourth part does not make any extension of the trilogy in terms of science fiction concepts, worldviews, or storytelling.
It is indeed a clumsy self-replication, and it is still reluctant.
In my opinion, the only sincere and interesting part of the film is the 30 minutes at the beginning that have not yet entered the main line.
At that time, Thomas made a lot of money designing the Matrix game and was asked by the company to continue to produce a sequel.
He was very upset and thought that the game had no room for development.
But the partner told him, "The market is sluggish, and the parent company has decided to do it."
And this "parent company" also collided with the producer of this film, also known as Warner Bros.
Thomas wanted to struggle, but the partner immediately warned him, "If you don't do it, the company will terminate the contract with you and then change people to do it."
Thomas didn't want his work to be destroyed by others, and eventually agreed to do "Matrix 4".
But the nightmare wasn't over yet.
At the creative stage, Thomas's team (the main creator) proposed that the sequel should be original, not just restarted and copied.
They believe that the core of the success of the Matrix is a shining philosophy.
But the parent company (Warner) is more concerned about branding and entertainment, demanding more "bullet time" and more action scenes.
Even if you just remake the original thing under a different name, you can sell well by hanging up the name "Matrix".
In this plot, the director has almost bluntly said "I was kidnapped, blinking".
Thomas in the film fell into depression, "Matrix 4" was not made, and the real "Matrix 4" was eventually made into a twisted, rough and fragmented work.
The first 30 minutes of it are real complaints and complaints, the middle hour is grafting and packaging, and the last hour meets the KPI of "more bullet time, more action scenes".
When you see that one classic meme is madly abused, and the red and blue pills alone make the protagonist choose three or four times, you understand that no amount of emotion can withstand such consumption.
Although at the end of the film, the salvation couple's leap of faith is still beautiful.
But I sincerely hope that after this movie, we won't have to see the forced birth of The Matrix 5 again.