Midweek Mention... The Matrix

The Matrix

Reegs: [00:00:00] Yeah.

Sidey: Matrix. Yeah. Is that where he lives? I dunno. You nominated this Riggs. Yeah. I know you're a fan.

Reegs: This is up in the conversation of the top movies of all time for me. This

Dan: Okay. I've never seen it.

Sidey: Liar.

Dan: Yeah, I'm a liar. Everyone's

Sidey: I rewatched it for this and I watched it with my daughter.

Reegs: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We'll have to

Dan: go. What is it? Is it a 12 or 15

Sidey: 16 plus on the Netflix thing, but that's barock. It's a PG seven now Bit in a bit. It's only

Dan: PG in a bit

Sidey: violent. That's

Reegs: For me, this is one of the great movies and it introduced a load of stuff and it changed actions, cinema in all sorts of.

Different ways. And that then it, the creators of this incredible piece of art then both turned out to be trans. And it having this trans allegory, which kind of had to be pointed out to me really but then in retrospect seems very, very obvious. Yeah, I just think it's a really fascinating movie and a real combination of lots of influences that I find interesting.

All [00:01:00] packaged up in this thoughtful, you know, story of. Craziness and against the machines.

Dan: Yeah. It is not as it first seems, is it when you watch it, you just think, oh, it's a great kick out, but there layers to it,

Reegs: Yeah. And then it did loads of other stuff like, you know, it convinced people that you could take a Hollywood star and train him for eight months doing kung fu and gunfight, you know, and that now we just accept that that's what happens all the time and they get Bob Odenkirk to do it and that sort of thing.

But it was a different thing in 1999, you know, it wasn't really the, the sort of thing, so it changed loads of stuff like that.

Dan: Yeah, and Keanu has this habit of just doing some amazing films. He has some really great choices. I mean, not all of them, but ones that he tends to do become real cult Yeah.

Reegs: Well, not their first choice for this as well. That would've been Will Smith

Sidey: this down for Wiki. Wy. Wild. Wild

Reegs: for Wild West. Yeah. Which I'm sure is a mistake. I am sure he recognizes. In hindsight,

Sidey: I know you're a fan, Chris. He [00:02:00] does have a new album coming out very soon.

Got great writeups, so stay tuned.

Cris: Are you gonna get the vinyl?

Sidey: Yeah, I could try and get him to sign it.

Reegs: Imagine what a different movie it would've been though if Neo had been like, welcome to Earth and all this. Like, I dunno. Yeah.

Cris: Well, well you would hope that the writing would be the same regardless of

Reegs: it's a difficult movie to imagine because it just seems so perfect for Keanu Reeves

Sidey: this sort of whether it's right or wrong, like kind of vacant nurse about him, which works really well as Neo at the start when it's all new to him and he's trying to process it all. But he is a bit like,

Reegs: yeah, he sort of surfer confused, look to him. Yeah.

Sidey: I'm sure he is not really like that. No.

Reegs: No, no, not at all. He's a real hero, isn't he?

Dan: I? Am an FBI hate you.

Sidey: But this, it starts off with a phone call, isn't it, with some green

Reegs: you got the green code

Sidey: with, with some someone. Is this a secure line? Yeah. You just like watching him, don't you? All that sort of stuff. Yeah. And then I think we go to this grimy rain soaked thing with some police [00:03:00] cops turning up to a building.

Reegs: Yeah, it's like a dark, abandoned, noirish hotel. The heart of the city. And the cops sort of enter a room or just flashlights and that sort of thing, and there's just a girl sitting at a desk. And then we cut to the arrival of Agent Smith and the other agents. And you get this conversation that you've seen a lot in action movies between cop.

And FBI types where it's like a jurisdiction type thing, but already it all feels a little bit off and he tells them no, it's not a jurisdictional thing. Your guys are already

Sidey: dead. He says, he says to, I have nothing to worry about. It's just one girl. I sent two units up and no, your officers are

Reegs: are already dead.

Yeah. And all you already notice mimicking that weird cadence that weaving has to his voice as Smith, which I think is mimicking one of the directors, one of the wachowskis voices. So anyway, we cut back to Trinity, who just explodes of violence. She breaks this guy's. Arm in like really horribly and then smashes his nose back, and then the camera sort of, she leaps into the air and the camera spins round in slow motion as she [00:04:00] crane kicks this guy, and then just dispatches the rest of the room, like, you know, running up walls and all in the dark.

Sidey: Yeah. So that's the kind of first time you're seeing the bullet time. I mean, it's not bullet, it's not the bullet, but it, the camera does pivot round while she's frozen in made air and then she volleys him into the wall. Yeah. And runs like, sort of like Spider-Man across the wall. Then after that,

Reegs: Did you see this in the cinema

times. Yeah.

Yeah. So your mouth was already like

Sidey: hanging over. Yeah.

Reegs: she dispatches with these cops and then it kicks off like a furious foot chase across the rooftops with first Trinity and then Smith doing these impossible leaps across the buildings, which the other cops, you know, and it, it's got that Osher style that you've seen that.

Period, Chinese martial arts style, but now with the noir urban aesthetic going on. So it's, you know, familiar and different

Dan: Well, I was gonna ask like Crouching Tiger. Yeah. Had this

You know, athletic and, you know, [00:05:00] jumping on bamboo and springing off and, and those kind of moves. That, and I, I think that was before this was it? Or is

Reegs: Tiger, I believe was after, but it's the same choreographer. Anyway, yen w Ping did all the choreography for the Matrix

Dan: and, I mean, this particular Chase, it just gives you straight away. Wow, this is gonna be fucking epic. This film

Reegs: is going. It's that moment you realize something weird is going on, right?

She throws herself across like arrows through a door, like a little tiny window and then points back.

Sidey: bit looked a bit naff now, but

Reegs: it's 26 years old, though

Cris: still looks, it still

Reegs: still looks amazing. This

Sidey: It culminates with her having to she needs an exit. Yeah. And this is where you kind of get a bit more of the world building of they exit through a telephone.

Reegs: It's not, when you're watching this the first time in this cinema, it's not, you can see that she has to get to the phone box and it's important, but the, the a juggernaut just plows into it at the same time you're like, what the fuck is going

Sidey: So my daughter was asking me loads of questions about it and I'm going, well, this, this bit where they are isn't real. This is the [00:06:00] matrix bit. And she just, I dunno if she's still got it. At all throughout the movie, but it, it took a lot of explaining. Yeah. But she's 12 and I, I, when I watched it, you know, the cinema, it all just seemed to fall into place dead naturally. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Reegs: But you'd have been 19.

Yeah. 18,

Cris: I was gonna say. Yeah. It is a bit of a difference.

No.

Sidey: Yeah, she then the, the.

Receiver of the telephone drops and well, is that, that's actually the later one. You just don't know.

Cris: No,

the, the trash can, the tr, the rubbish bin, the lorry, whatever that he drives into it and you don't know what's going

Reegs: chat and they say, you know, don't they, they say something about her getting out and it's not important because we found him and all this, and then it dissolves from the,

Sidey: it actually says, is the source real?

Or something like that. Something like, which I never picked up on the first time as I'd seen it.

Reegs: The informant is real. It

says

Sidey: So they've got someone on the. Of the side. We don't exactly know what's going on just yet.

Reegs: And then we look, we sort of zoom from the receiver of the smashed up phone through, through the code of the matrix, out [00:07:00] of Neo's. Computer screen where like, you know, background exposition, articles about Morpheus are coming up and then suddenly the screen goes blank as neo wakes up to like text being written on his

Yeah. It's like a command line screen saying, you know, the matrix has you wake up, follow the white rabbit, and then knock, knock. And as it types that. Somebody knocks

Dan: the girl from home and away.

Reegs: There were a few home and away actors in this movie. Mouse. Mouse. Yeah. And her, I couldn't remember her name, but I used to fancy her as well.

Dan: Yeah. Can't remember.

Reegs: So yeah, 'cause you know, Thomas Anderson as this character may be known, you know, in the Matrix, he also has a double life as neo a hacker selling whatever to people on the black market. And, you know, it's almost like drugs, isn't it? So somebody comes to the door knocking, he goes and gets something from a stash in a book of simula and

Cris: Yeah. And it's also two grand. So, so it, it, so it's, you [00:08:00] know,

Reegs: serious money.

Cris: This is 1999. Two grand is a lot of money now. Yeah.

Sidey: They had a, they had a box of mini discs. Remember them? I've still got some in the, in the loft. Yeah. They, they were great. Yeah. Real good. Bring 'em back.

Reegs: yeah, so he hands over the, the, he gets the money and hands over the software

Cris: and that's when he sees the white

Reegs: about to just, they, they're like, come to the club and he can't be asked 'cause they look like goths. And then he sees the white rabbit tattoo as she's like, do you wanna fuck me? Basically?

Dan: And there's, I mean, there's, there's loads though, isn't it, that's going on. It's basically. Neo or is he neo at this stage? He's,

Reegs: yeah. That's kind of his alter ego already, right? He was already a hacker. It's,

Cris: with these guys. Not the next day when he goes into work,

Reegs: I don't believe he, they don't call him Neo

Dan: No, but he's, he's curious enough, he's been searching for something and he's had this feeling that.

Sidey: he's a conspiracy nut, I reckon.

Yeah. Yeah. He is a Q Anon.

Dan: Exactly. There's something that's not quite right with the world, and that's why he kind of lives the life that he does.

And he is searching, [00:09:00] he, he's looking at it. But yeah, I'm just thinking you know, as we, we go through the film, yeah. It's, it's

Reegs: it did really appeal though, doesn't it?

Because of the whole metaphor of it, like, you know. The system and it all feeling stacked against you in the human condition. And then, you know, it did feel re you know, that it connected with everybody in some sense. And then some of the messages of it were co-opted by the very worst people. You know, like every flat earth or covid, denier or fucking fascist will red pill you and all this shit now it's terrible shame

Sidey: But he has the night out. It goes to work and he gets a real dressing down for like, not taking his work seriously, being late, just being a fucking like ne do well,

Reegs: he meets Trinity on the night out, which is important 'cause she tells him that Morpheus is real, that he's looking for him.

Sidey: She's amazing. But yeah, he gets this and then when he is at his computer, he gets more of this stuff to, it's

Reegs: he gets delivered a package with a phone in it, which rings as soon as he

Cris: opens the [00:10:00] Nokia.

Reegs: and it's morphous, apparently omniscient able to tell him what's happening around him.

You know, people are arriving, look up Neo, go left. Wait. As he orchestrates a, a maneuver out of him, but Neo's not ready for any of this stuff yet,

Sidey: He's got too many questions when he just needs to follow the instructions. He is like, but why?

Reegs: Well, and also he's got tell him to do crazy stuff, like go out onto the scaffolding on the outside of the building, which,

Sidey: so he doesn't able to do it quite quite rightly, he gets apprehended by the agents.

Reegs: He does. And they got a big file on him. They know all about him and his double life and they don't,

Dan: Anderson. Yeah. Yeah. It's all very creepy. And

Sidey: they're like the,

Gestapo this lot.

Dan: by this long. Yeah. That's it. And they've even got the room. It's just this.

Kind of perfectly spotlessly clean room. And they bring out the fo and you just get the creeps from this guy straight away. He's just clinical, he's, there's something wrong with him. He's that kind,

Sidey: But they're trying to intimidate him, aren't they? Yeah. And he sort of just says, well, I know my rights. Gimme my phone call. And he gives him a finger, doesn't he?

Reegs: Yeah. [00:11:00] And he says, what good is a phone call if you're unable to speak? And then his mouth just kind of closes up the skin between it.

It's horrible. And then,

Dan: Which was like that cartoon that we watched. What was that Australian It was not cartoon, it was a, an Australian kids thing.

Reegs: A little lunch. Was it little

Dan: No, they lived in the,

Sidey: the,

Reegs: Oh yeah,

Sidey: the lighthouse.

Dan: the lighthouse. And they they did that with a mouth once,

Reegs: didn't

Sidey: they? Yeah, he does that and they pinned him down and they put this it takes out a little pouch and. Got this little thing that he takes out and waggles it, and then it's like this mechanic

Dan: oh, it's a worm shrimp.

Yeah.

Sidey: But it's massive. And it goes down his belly button. Yeah. And then he kind of comes to the next day, like, snapped out of it.

Reegs: Well, he is in his bed, isn't

Sidey: yeah.

Reegs: oh, well that was all a dream. That was a bit weird or whatever. But then I think he gets a call from Morpheus straight away, doesn't he?

Sidey: Yeah. He ends up in the car then with Trinity and Switch.

Reegs: and he's starting to get all this heavy shit laid on him now.

'cause Morpheus is starting to talk to you. You are the one I've been, you know, you may have been looking for me, but I've been [00:12:00] looking for you my entire life. Like, all this sort of stuff. So it's getting really

Sidey: Trinity pulls out this enormous like steam punk kind of contraption Yeah.

And puts it on his belly. And he's like, what the fuck? And then it's got a, this crude screen on it. Mm-hmm. And you can tell what's gonna happen. They're gonna extract this fucking shrimpy thing out of him. He's, he's literally bugged. Yeah. And they suck out into this little glass container and he freaks out then because like, fuck all that thing I thought was a dream.

Was

real. And he's now in this other world of what he doesn't quite know what to make of it at

Dan: it's, it's green green pill and

Sidey: pearl, red pearl. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Well, in fact, yeah it is. Yeah. 'cause they bring him to Morpheus now wearing all that leather and those like, armless

Sidey: the glasses that clip onto your beak.

Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: And this is where we get the central idea.

He says, Morpheus says to him, what? You know, you can't explain, but you feel it. You felt it your entire life. There's something wrong with the world. You dunno what it is, but it's like, it's there like a splinter in your mind. Driving you mad, driving you mad. That was sampled as well, like a splinter in your [00:13:00] and he's just describing the bullshit of life, isn't he? All the fact that politicians are shit and bureaucracies, rubbish, and you know, AI snake, oil salesman at fucking goons. And you've got a worker job to earn money to spend on shit you don't need. And all that's just what he's describing and that's what you relate to.

And that is the matrix, I

Sidey: So he is given a choice. You can either go back to your life as it was take this pill, you'll forget everything that's ever happened to you. And he,

Reegs: well, he says you can't tell someone what the matrix is. You have to show him so it's blue or red.

Sidey: And as he holds 'em up, they reflect really nicely in his sunglasses. And the red pill, I forget which one's, which, the blue pill will, will that, I think it's like a. A

Dan: Lawrence Fish Burns

Reegs: yeah, it's the red pill is the one

Dan: that, those little kind of circular glasses or oval shaped glasses that look like they're for, for a sunbed or something, don't they?

Sidey: do. Yeah. So he is got a choice. They're held up even. And he's far too inquisitive. So he takes the right one. and then,

Dan: [00:14:00] what is it, the blue one he

Sidey: takes blue one.

Reegs: and he takes the red one. Red

Sidey: one, yeah. And then it's about finding him. Then we get, then we get to see what actually. Where he

Reegs: yeah, there's a whole like Alice in Wonderland thing here where he touches a mirror that's cracked and it sort of like heal itself.

And then the mirror travels from his fingertips up his body as he starts to go into a cardiac arrest. And then he does emerge in what is the real world

in a

pod. In a pod. Yeah. Just like struggling to breathe with invasive tubes down your throat and attached to your back and up your ass and in your back of your head.

Sidey: Very Borg.

Dan: Well, I, I've just come back from Japan as you know, and I slept in the pods.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: you? Like this, was it

Dan: little different. But there was no less disturbing. I imagine

Cris: still the same amount of juice in them, right?

Dan: Exactly. And the amount of snoring, it was like a an orchestra of snoring.

Sidey: Oh, is it really?

I

Dan: can't imagine. I've got a video of it I'll have to show you. But I can't imagine what the snoring would be

Reegs: we put the snoring in here?

Sidey: So yeah, he, he [00:15:00] sort of emerges out of this red, gooey liquid, doesn't he? Yeah. Shaved head. Like, just, they're all, I think camera does sort of go round and show you

Reegs: see thousands and thousands and thousands of them, and we, you notice straight away because the matrix has a green hue to it and the real world has a blue hue to it, and you, you know, you see in the distance.

Sidey: There's just

Reegs: just giant machines plucking things out and moving things around and it is

Dan: Hugh, Dennis, Hugh, Hugh Grant, which hu was you talking about?

Huge machines.

Reegs: Huge machines.

Sidey: A big claw. Did everyone say the claw when it came down like I did. And it, it extracts him from this pod and then we see him taken into the ship.

And he's And he puked, isn't he?

yeah.

Dan: And he's got, yeah, he's got

Sidey: quite, quite a shock. Yeah.

Dan: and everything and he looks very far from human.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. And well, because, you know, he's like, why do my eyes hurt? You've never used them before. His muscles are atrophied. So he's, you know, sort of healed for a little while and bought on board the ship and then he meets the kind of rest of [00:16:00] Morpheus crew.

'cause turns out to be the captain of this ship, the ne Kza that they're on, and Trinity is his first officer. And the real

Dan: to see him.

Reegs: They are excited to see him. The thing here now is just, this is where we finally get the explanation of really what the matrix is.

He, he gets him straight to the point, doesn't, he tells him before they're even in the construct that it's closer to the year 21, 99 than it is 1999. So we already know that what we thought was true about the world is a lie here. And then they do, like, he just ushers him into a chair. Sticks this, he goes, this is gonna feel a bit weird.

And then he shoves this thing in a porthole in the back of his

Sidey: tray. Yeah.

Reegs: and then suddenly they're in a computer program. The construct.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: It's like a loading program where they can put whatever they want in there and they have a big conversation about so many topics, the nature of reality, what is real, if you're talking about things you can touch and taste and feel, it's just electrical impulses in your brain.

But then he explains to him the truth of the world is that in the [00:17:00] late 20th. Century AI was developed and humankind was very happy. And then not long after that, there was a war. We don't know who started it, but it, it ended with us humans scorching the sky because they were solar powered. And the AI's plan to combat

Sidey: the lack of

Reegs: of power was to enslave humanity in an artificial prison, an artificial reality in meantime using their bodies essentially as.

Batteries to power their,

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. He is got a stat about how much energy a, a body creates in

Reegs: we see a fucking grim thing where you see a baby come in and they're talking about like, this baby being fed on the dead remains of other humans, like slu s Sleuthed into him. Yeah. grim.

Sidey: Lovely. So that's the shocking reality for him. Yeah. And what notice watching it this time? 'cause it'd been been quite a while since I've seen this one. I watched the new one when it came out. But from the, the time when Trinity kicks off and you get that great bit of action there.

Yeah. To when it, it [00:18:00] gets going again. There's no big

Reegs: it's a long time, a

Sidey: long gap between action. Yeah.

Reegs: There are a lot of concepts to explain. It's an exposition heavy movie and I, I think, you know, not, not everybody got everything that was going on the first time they watched it.

Sidey: So we're gonna get some training.

There's, there's other things going on. I forget the name of Joe Pan's. Character? Cipher. Cipher. He seems a bit kind of shady.

Reegs: He's a bit shady already, and he'll come, his shadiness will come out more and more. One time Neo catches him like, and he's like, turns his computer off, like he had kiddie porn on yeah, the, the fight I think is the thing. So Neo, they learn that he can be trained up with stuff.

He can plug that thing into his brain and then you can, I know kung fu so he

Cris: so you load up.

Reegs: it's like a computer game. You level up and eventually what everybody wants to see Neo fighting Morpheus. So they go to the construct, the training program, which is set out like a spa, like an old Chinese Yeah.

Dojo or whatever. And they go to Scrap and Morpheus kind of kicks his ass. Really, it's not. Neo's [00:19:00] got kind of

Dan: he gets in a few digs, doesn't he? And I think they're kind of impressed.

Reegs: But Morpheus is kind of at half pace really. I mean, when he beats him, he's kind of looking at his fingernails, really dismissively.

And he says to him, you know, do you think it's 'cause you're, you know, being fast or stronger is in here, is anything to do with my muscles? And then he says to him, do you think you're breathing air? That that's suddenly he's starting to wake up and realize what he could be. And he does like come back at him now and he's moving super fast actually.

Anyway, they end the program and they go for the jump. And everybody's excited by this. What if he makes the jump? Nobody makes the jump the first time, which is like leaping between buildings as Morpheus demonstrates almost kind of Superman style,

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. And Neo tries and he doesn't

make

Cris: Tom Cruise can do that.

Reegs: Yeah. It's one of the other things I like about this, they set up the hero's journey and trials, but he doesn't make them all the time. And there's misdirection because he comes to believe that he isn't the one. And is told

Sidey: he's explicitly told. Yeah. You're not the one.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: He needed to hear it though. Yeah.

Reegs: [00:20:00] So, there's more, there's a slight, the, the next bit is just the agents. Essentially there's a program where they freeze time and they filmed it with loads of twins in it. So if you look at it, is it, 'cause it's supposed to be like a crude program. So yeah.

And that's when he explains about the agents. The agents can bend the rules of the matrix and run is basically the advice for the matrix for the

Sidey: No one's been able to take one on and survive.

Reegs: although Morpheus says that he, you know. He's saying that you will. He, he said, I think he says what you're trying to tell me. I can dodge bullets.

And he says, I'm telling you, you won't have to.

Sidey: Yeah, yeah. So you can see where it's going.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: there's gonna be a showdown.

Reegs: We get some like stuff that's happening in the real world as Squiddy comes along, doesn't it? And like they have to have, like we get told about the EMP that they use because there is a city called Zion as well that needs to be protected.

It's more important than anything else. The real world city.

Sidey: yeah. Dozer and tank in the ship are Normies. They don't have [00:21:00] ports. They were born in Zion. They're, they're real. I think that guy Tank fucked it, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah. He want more money. Yeah, he overplayed his hand for the secco and they were like, well, no, you can just fuck off and just replaced him.

Well done. Yeah.

Reegs: So CFO's been a dodgy, busted all the way through, really is then shown going for a steak dinner with the agents where he's like, right. Basically, I, this is bullshit. The real world is like a horrible, messy place. Like, food's terrible. I'm crammed in a, like a sweaty ship doing this stuff.

Just put me back in the matrix. Make me famous, gimme money. I'll

Dan: don't wanna remember anything. Nothing. I wanna be something like a important, like an actor, he says, doesn't he? And

Reegs: he's picking meat from between his teeth. He can't be more dislikable

Dan: And he, he's, yeah, he's just he's had enough and he's gonna rat out.

Sidey: He's gonna sell 'em out. Yeah.

out. Yeah. So they, they go out on a mission, don't they?

Reegs: They go to find the oracle. Yeah. Because everybody goes to see the Oracle. The Oracle [00:22:00] told Morpheus he would find the one he's told Trinity, something that she doesn't want us to know as the audience yet. Yeah, pretty obvious.

So they go to see the, the, the Oracle who will help. And is this on the way where he drops the.

Cris: Phone.

phone. Yeah. In the bin.

as as they go out from that garage thing

Reegs: thing?

Yeah.

They, they come into the matrix and cipher drops a phone into the thing. So we know that this is a doomed mission already.

Neo fucks off to see the, the oracle.

Sidey: It's just some lady cooking dinner.

Reegs: Well, there's, first I did wanna talk about the other potentials, 'cause one of them calls him a bender. You'll see the spoon.

Sidey: Terrible bit child acting here.

Reegs: Yeah. You'll see it's not the spoon that bends, it's you.

Sidey: There is no food. There is no spoon. Yeah. Do you say that every time you pick up a spoon? Every time.

Reegs: So yeah, he goes to see the oracle and there's a bit of stuff about, because Neo kind of does, you know, his character would definitely not believe in fate and things being predicted. That's kind of the whole point of him.

Sidey: She says, don't worry about the vase. Yeah. [00:23:00] Although she says vase. They he says, what? And he,

Reegs: as he turns

Sidey: he knocks over. Yeah. And,

Reegs: she says, what's really gonna piss you off is if I hadn't have said it, would you have still knocked it over?

so a good bit of stuff about

Sidey: that.

Yeah. Then she does say to him, look, you, you know, you're not the one. Yeah. She

Reegs: looks in his mouth like a horse

Sidey: Yeah, he's a bit like, oh shit, Morpheus seemed pretty certain. Yeah. It's like, well,

Reegs: And she said, well, no, he is certain and he's so certain it's gonna cost him his life. Or at least you are gonna be faced with a choice of his life or yours. And you that's kind of food for thought as he's sent packing and they head off back to get on a hard line back into the real world, which is, when neo experiences some deja vu, right? He sees a cat and they suddenly are very concerned about the deja vu. Was it the same cat? Did it happen?

Was

Sidey: Yeah, it's a glitch. That's

Reegs: Such a cool thing that every time when you came out, like it happens when they change something.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: When was the last time you heard deja vu?

Reegs: Not for a while, but yeah,

Dan: it's a good one. Do you add it for in a little while? I can't

Cris: Oh, I can't remember. [00:24:00]

Sidey: I can't think of one, but it does happen.

They realize I can't remember what it says off. I think they, I think it's just the cab. They think, well, fuck, we're in trouble. And mouse has gone right to the top of the building. Yeah. And they say, well, we need to get out here. And he pulls back the curtain and just look out the window and it's bricked up.

And that's what they've, they've just completely shut the building off. Yeah. There's no way out. And agents have been no millions of police officers.

Reegs: both agents and the officers SWAT team turn up.

Sidey: Mouse opens his suitcases, been carrying and pulls out two massive massive guns like Gatling guns sort of things. Shoots away, but he has taken down.

We see him die then on the ship with blood coming out of his mouth. Yeah. 'cause if you die in the waitress, you die in real life. So he's gone? Yeah.

Reegs: They very quickly ask for schematics of the building. And the wet wall. The wet wall, yeah.

So they get in the walls to hide where cipher gives them away by coughing through the wall. And then in a sort of act of self-sacrifice Morpheus hurls himself through the wall at Smith and they have a very contained fight whilst the rest of the team get away. He just, he beats the shit out of him, really doesn't, he

Sidey: smash the, I think in this, [00:25:00] the, the noise, the. The sound effects of people getting punched is spot on.

Yeah, it's really good.

Reegs: And the noises of pain as things connect and

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. It was really good.

Reegs: But it, it, they, they sort of take Morpheus away. But it allows. The rest of the

Sidey: It's some bad shit going down on the ship though, at the same time.

Reegs: Well, exactly. Because the, there's a bit of a bait and switch here where cipher doesn't make it away, and then he does, there's a car crash, yada yada. I managed to get out and then he double crosses the whole team. It's all going on. He starts to unplug them one by one and the score swelling. He's like, if he really is the one, there's no way in hell I should be able

Sidey: 'cause first of all, he's killed,

Reegs: He does switch.

Sidey: does switch.

He's killed. No, he's killed Dozo and he is killed Tank. Oh yeah. With this mad gun. He's shot them in the ship and then he's taken control of like the operator position. Yeah. And then he's saying, well, I'm gonna start, you know, I'm talking. People say he does switch and he does epoch. Yeah. And then yeah, like you say, he's saying, well if, if Neo's the one, then how come?

And he goes, no, no. And he hasn't killed tag and [00:26:00] tank's able to, to gun him down. But the team is. Half the size it used to be.

Reegs: Yeah. And it is a real d sx Mackinac. 'cause they'd showed us that guy basically being dead and then ta-da. I'm not. But the movies absolutely earned it at this point, particularly as they've been through the fucking mill and lost on every account.

So anyway, they finally get some control back,

Sidey: but they're only got now Doza who's wounded Neo and Trinity with Tri, with Neo. Now not believing that he is. This one.

Reegs: the one wherever he is. And Morpheus now being drugged and interrogated for the Zion mainframe access codes by the agents back in the matrix.

Where Smith kind of goes off on one a bit, you see that actually living in the Matrix is getting to him. It's, you know, being around humans, he compares us to a virus, I think fairly accurately. And you know, it's, it's where he takes his. Sunglasses off and you suddenly see he's fuck, he looks like a maniac as well.

His eyes are bulging and he is like,

Dan: Yeah, [00:27:00] he's really fed up and

Reegs: It's the smell.

Dan: He's

disgusted.

Sidey: Yeah.

Neo's got a choice as the Oracle told him, and he's gonna decide to go back. Well,

Reegs: 'cause Tank is about to unplug him. He's like, as soon as I see that Morpheus is gonna break, I'm gonna unplug him and he's gonna die.

And he's like, hang on a minute. I was told this was gonna

happen.

Sidey: Yeah. So this is where it gets really cool. Yeah. They go to the construct we need guns, lots of guns. Yeah. And they just fly towards the screen, this row and row and row of all different kinds of super heavy artillery.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: They get,

Reegs: Trinity decides to go in with him.

Sidey: Yeah.

In some super fetish

gear.

Reegs: he? Yeah.

Dan: he? Yeah. Doesn't he sort of download like loads of

Sidey: he's

kind of done that in the, in the training. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah, he is ready to go, man. And we have the lobby scene and it is one of the few scenes in cinema that is made to sort of put you in the position of empathizing with a terrorist because he goes into this lobby and it's in a crazy cartwheeling action scene, you know, slowmo and all this stuff.

But the movie makes it [00:28:00] very clear he's gunning down innocent people and that it, they're all dying. In this, because they are part of the system and that is, you know, that is how an ideolog, how a terrorist thinks that you must kill anybody who's a part of the system. But

Sidey: what the, that's what the rebels do in Star Wars.

Yeah,

Reegs: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. But it makes it more clear than in other movies, that

Sidey: there is an episode of Battlestar where they're all being held hostage and they do suicide bombings, and that's very much like that, putting you in the. PV of like their,

Reegs: Yes.

Sidey: like a inberg commas terrorist ideology

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. So it's really, but so you get all that going on and also some just fucking kick ass kung fu and just guns exploding all over the place and cartwheels and all that shit. Anyway, they destroy the building and ride a elevator shaft up to

Sidey: with a

Reegs: roof. Yeah.

And when they get up there, there's an agent there, Neo empties, a clip at him, and he just dodges them all, like moving so fast in the air.

He's a blur. Yeah. Which is then when the [00:29:00] agent turns the tail

Sidey: him. Well,

he, he. Shoots. He SA clip at the in and the agent goes all sort of see through and whatever and, and neo almost as it, but he gets clipped with a couple just through just flesh

Reegs: turns around, he, he shouts help. And then as he fires, I think this scene has got to be one of the most now mimicked special effects, you know, in every movie for the next 10 or 15 years afterwards, had a version of this kind of shot as it entered bullet time.

And we saw from the perspective of Neo, you know. It was crazy in the cinema of this thing and then afterwards, 'cause we've seen it in slow motion Trinity's like how did you do that? I'd never seen anybody move so fast. 'cause obviously it's been happening. Is she guns down the other

Sidey: dodge this. Yeah.

Cris: Yeah. That was good.

Sidey: Yeah. That's really good.

Yeah.

Reegs: And then they go,

Cris: she learns how to fly the helicopter.

Reegs: They fly a chopper and they

Cris: load the program.

Teach me how to fly the F 17 Casio.

Sidey: Tell

Reegs: me how to fly Dan's watch.

Dan: LB 100? Yeah.

Reegs: They,

Sidey: the

two agents. 'cause we've seen that the agents can port between [00:30:00] different bots.

Yeah. And they go back to the floor where Morpheus is being tortured. In, you know, interrogated. Yeah. And they open the door and they can see that Smith's taken his earpiece out and he is like, gone beyond the program. And they're like looking at him like, what are you doing? And and then they look at each other like he doesn't know.

He doesn't in. Yeah. And then the, the helicopter comes down with a fucking mini gun and he just fucking unleashes. And

Reegs: lucky they didn't kill Morpheus in this, I would

Sidey: Well, I was thinking

Reegs: sprays the whole room

Sidey: hell of a shot.

Reegs: a billion

Sidey: Yeah. And we get. This is what I think it like falls victim to in the later films.

This shell casings just falling and falling. And I think the third film is like an hour and two hours of just shell casings falling. This one it looks

is

Reegs: I liked it. I

Sidey: good here.

Reegs: amazing.

Sidey: other films are shy, but this one yeah, he just unloads. And then the, the agents are sort of gunned down. They even, they can't dodge a mini gun.

Yeah. But

Reegs: can just take another pair of bodies

Sidey: but they've gotta find one somewhere. But Morpheus is then alone in the room. [00:31:00] And he's like, come on, you need to. And he's able to summon the strength to run, but as he does, Smith ports into another body of a guard and is shooting through the wall,

One gets into the ankle, which I don't think we're ever shown any repercussions of that ever again in the movie.

Reegs: Well, it wouldn't be in the real, he goes out into the real world

Sidey: yeah. Yeah. But he would've had a knackered 'cause his brain would make it real, I dunno. Anyway he leaps, he doesn't quite make it, but Neo jumps out.

And gets him, catches him midair. Yeah. Drops him onto a rooftop.

Reegs: Looked like a pretty far drop, but he was all right.

Cris: Yeah.

Sidey: And then has to.

Reegs: The, the chop has taken a few hits at this point and is starting to go absolutely haywire. So she sort of pilots it into a building and Neo jumps out and he's been tethered to the aircraft and it's a fucking leap of faith.

Faith, this one, because she untethered it as the helicopter crashes it and sort of attaches it to herself. Yeah. And Neo is able to sell, save her, which is when. Morpheus is like, well, you are definitely the [00:32:00] one buddy. You know that, I mean, yeah. It's

Cris: And it's the crash of the helicopter scene where the, the glass just kind of ripples.

Yeah, it's cold. That was good.

Sidey: Mm, I

Reegs: So,

and then they just need to now get down to the subway for an exit. So the three of them do. Trinity goes Morpheus goes first, then goes Trinity as she drops some cryptic plot information about everything that the oracle told me was true except for this.

And then we don't get to know what that means just yet because Smith turns up,

Cris: in the

homeless. In the homeless guy. No. Yeah.

Reegs: And he, the, the phone receiver is damaged. Neo starts to run and then decides to face him off. And we've seen like a real evolution of his combat style over the movie. And this is getting more and more crazy.

They sort of fly at each other, discharging weapons and there's loads of power punches, stuff being beaten up and all that. And then it's ended with Neo kind of jumping him into the roof of a, of the subway and leaping out the way of the oncoming train. It was inevitable.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: [00:33:00] And it took him down.

I mean as soon as he gets away, the train arrives and then just Smith just steps off the subway and off they go. So this is now into the last 10 minutes, the movie. He's gotta find his way back to a phone line to get out.

Cris: Meanwhile, in the real world, the squids are breaking into the hovercraft, into

Reegs: actually breaking through the outer shell of the hovercraft.

That's a bit too close to cup for comfort for

Sidey: originally when I first watched it, I thought they were underwater, or I thought, I thought they were like going through like, yeah, they're not. 'cause they cut through the hole and they actually get into the thing and they are, they need Neo to get back so they can fire the e mp because if they fire it with him in the matrix, they'll kill him 'cause it will shut down all the, the gear. So he's race against time to get to the thingy

Reegs: and he nails it back to room 3 0 3 of the heart of the city hotel, exactly where our movie began to answer the phone there. But unfortunately, Smith is already there.

And as he opens the door, he just discharges silently three or four bullets, I think into him.

Sidey: Yeah. It's Jesus.

Reegs: And he's gone. He is dead. Dead in the real world. [00:34:00] Dead in the matrix. Definitely dead. And then Trinity says, you can't be dead because the oracle told me that

Sidey: you'd finger me.

Reegs: you fingered me. I I would be fingered by the one.

Yeah. And you fingered me last night. So you are the one. Yeah. It's a big love story. Yeah. And you know, I would love the one and I love you. And

Sidey: She kisses him. She kisses

Reegs: she kisses him. He kisses him and he rises up and

Cris: very thematic in with this week as

Sidey: With Easter. Yeah. Yeah. And then he is going to fight the

Reegs: well, he sees the world for the code for what it is.

He can see everything.

Sidey: Yeah. They

Dan: that green code kind of dripping down

Sidey: The three agents are there and they're like, no, and they just all unload full clips at him. And the bullets are sort of. Coming towards him, but slowing down a bit and he just puts his hands, says

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: And they just freeze in front of him and then just sort of harmlessly drop to the floor in front of him

Reegs: and then Smith rushes him to fight him and he looks bored as he fights him off with one arm. In the end it's just too easy. At which point I think he punches him. Smith flies backwards. The other two agents absolutely shit [00:35:00] it and run away.

Yeah. And then he leaps into his kind of stomach and just smashes him apart. It's like, you know, the source code's merging or whatever and destroying him. Smith's gone

Yes.

And at which point they can trigger the MP back in the real world at exactly the same time. And, and Neo does get out and

Sidey: Someone is nearly crushed by a squid. It falls just so close to on. I thought that would've been a bad way to go. Yeah.

Reegs: And then we finish with Neo in a phone booth, a bit of Superman type thing here as he talks about being what does he say? He's anything is possible and he's coming back to, Come and fix the, whatever, the broken system or whatever.

And as he comes out, he flies up, Cape flapping the end, and then we get rage against the machine. A band whose name describes both the literal and figurative meaning of this movie and the central conflict at it. So

Sidey: Yeah. So

Reegs: that's good.

Dan: [00:36:00] Yeah, it was. And everybody then is just going

part two.

part two. Because it just. Set up you know, obviously a sequel. And everybody really excited because this was immense, wasn't it? This is just like a, a cultural phenomenon. Everybody had seen it within a month of it coming out.

Everybody had talked about it. And if

Reegs: There was probably somebody at your school who started wearing a long Mac and sunglasses.

Not like, unlike this I know I, who I'm thinking

Dan: telling the teachers to fuck off or whatever, and just saying it's not all real anyway.

Sidey: How are they ever supposed to win though?

Reegs: What do you mean about against the machines? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and what does winning mean

Sidey: Everything's so fucked to

Reegs: Exactly. What would winning even mean?

Yeah. So, and I, the movie, the second and third movies, I think do explore that idea a little bit. The fourth one was not so much for me anyway. We don't need to talk about it, just talk about this amazing piece of art that I really love.

Dan: Yeah. I love this film. It, it's I've seen it least three times. [00:37:00] Maybe more. It's maybe four. It, it was just, I, I like Keanu as you. Said earlier, I can't imagine somebody else playing it now. It was just piece perfect. And the other films are all disappointing. That's the, the worst thing about the Matrix is that it didn't have any other good sequels really.

It tried to tap into that same feeling, that same vibe. Maybe the cat was out the bag. We, we all kind of thought. We knew what should happen and it should be better than what

Reegs: didn't have a clue, to be honest, what a sequel would look like.

Dan: Well, you just didn't expect that though, that

Reegs: I, I I liked two and three to some degree.

Dan: To some degree, but they, they weren't in, you know, if this is, if this is a nine out 10, they're like a, a five or a six. You know, it, it wasn't, it was, it was good because of this one. You know, it was

Reegs: It was never gonna have the influence that the sequels were never gonna have the influence because this changed lots of stuff, you know, the [00:38:00] leather, aesthetic, aesthetic and then noirish elements and all that.

Dan: But yeah, still a classic

Reegs: good cast as well.

Sidey: Enjoyed it, Chris?

Cris: Yes. Yeah, it was, it was very good. I remember watching it as a, I was very young though. I was 14, maybe, something like that when it came out. So I was, you know, I didn't understand it obviously at the beginning, and even with subtitles, it's still, yeah. You know when, when you The matrix, what do you mean the matrix?

You know, it was, I had to watch it the second time and I think the third time to kind of. Right. Okay. That's what

Sidey: it, I think they were asked to put in more exposition because it was quite confusing.

Reegs: The battery scene was the big one. They didn't wanna do that originally. The plan was for, it wasn't gonna be batteries.

'cause actually it doesn't make a lot of sense. But it was gonna be, they were gonna be part of, humans would've been a part of a sort of big neural network

Sidey: Right.

Reegs: Theis would've accessed. But they thought that was too

Sidey: Right.

Cris: Okay. No, it was, yeah, it was brilliant. It was brilliant. And the, there's, even though, let's say it was a long time ago and, and the [00:39:00] access to internet and to memes and to all that is not what it is today.

The, the fight scene when the Trinity's, at the beginning, when she kind of goes up in that kind of stance with the, with the legs, knees high and the that kind of stance. That was everywhere. People recreated it in, in, obviously not in the school yard, but they recreated in video music videos, in commercials, in a, anything that style of fighting where they kind of zoom in and then they twist and turn the camera and they show you a different angle.

they

Reegs: essentially just take loads of photos of it.

I mean, I've watched the, did

Sidey: this. Yeah. It's just a, a, a, a spiraly thing of millions of cameras.

Reegs: there. Yeah.

Cris: Okay. Yeah, I didn't know that, but, but these kind of bits the, I know kung fu, the, there's a few things that, that was the meme before the meme

Sidey: Basically. Yeah. Yeah.

Cris: But it was the meme on the tele

Reegs: televis.

There is no spoon. There's loads of them. There are loads of things that contributed to culture.

Sidey: Yeah. Watching it this time, I'm like. [00:40:00] When Agent Smith runs outta bullets, why don't the computer just say, well, you've got more bullets. Just like, anyway, but no, obviously this is classic super

Reegs: because there has to be rules to some degree or another.

The system has to have rules. 'cause we

Sidey: Well that's more is explicitly telling you that that doesn't matter.

Reegs: Yeah. But that's he, that he's, that's why humans will always be better because they don't,

Sidey: Yeah, I suppose, system will Trinity's little was just like astounding at the time and all the phone stuff. I, I guess, you know, when they have to get out of a phone, maybe we'd moved past it in 1999, but we still had dialect, modems and shit at the time.

So you, like you, you'd hear that noise. Yeah, if someone picked up the phone, you would hear that internet noise, you know, all that sort of stuff. So it was more sort of tied into our sort of era as well, I think. Yeah. Which is why I probably got stuff a bit quicker than maybe my, although she's younger, but yeah, it's fucking rad.

Reegs: Life is a simulation is a pretty big thing for an 11 and 11 and a half year old to comprehend, I

Sidey: Okay. So, so the bit, when he is got hair mm, that's when they're in the matrix. The bit one doesn't have hair that's in the back of the real world. It's like, okay, are they, I know,[00:41:00]

Forget. it.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. But then the next day she immediately wanted to watch the second one.

I was like, nah, I'm not watching it. It's crap. There's some nice set pieces in it, but it's nowhere near as good as this. So yeah, this is a 10. 10 outta 10 strong recommend.

Dan: Yeah.

It's a strong recommend. I mean,

Cris: It was it was, sorry. It was, it was also big budget, but big money.

Sidey: Six 63 million. Budget. 480 million bucks of,

Reegs: It's a big swing though, isn't it? Because it's not an easy elevator pitch.

You know, the big, the middle, like you said, the middle section of the movie, about 45 minutes of the movie is devoted solely to explaining what the premise is and how

Cris: Yeah. But it's also very

Reegs: It is but

Cris: explaining, so it's not like, you know, when we, we, because we watched this was what, two hours? 25?

Something like that?

Reegs: two hours,

Cris: then, okay. 2, 2 15. That's still. It's still a a long movie. Yeah. Especially for 1999. So when we've watched loads of films that you think half an hour could have been taken out of this movie and not a problem if you take half an hour of this movie out Yeah. You are, are very confused.

So with [00:42:00] two hours, 15, that explanation is very much needed.

Reegs: Yeah, because it is really tight. There isn't a single wasted scene or frame, I don't think It's very tightly edited as strong

Cris: yeah. Strong.

Dan: Go for it.