Random Thoughts on... The Matrix Resurrections

Well, it has been a two-year wait, but after this recent re-watch, it’s time to return The Matrix once again. When I heard that there was another Matrix coming, I was whelmed. The casting also got me excited though I was a little saddened to see that Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving weren’t returning. The hype for The Matrix Resurrections really didn’t hit me until the first trailer came, and I gotta say that was one awesome trailer. So, this film is either going to be a hit or a trainwreck. Knowing the Wachowskis (and we only have one with Lana), it could go either way. So, The Matrix Resurrections was released toward the end of 2021. Since we were still in the pandemic, the WB was releasing most of their newest movies in theatres and on HBO Max at the same time. By the way, that merger with Discovery sucked in all kinds of ways. 

Oh yeah… PAY YOUR WRITERS AND ACTORS! $*%&#!

Movie Talk - The Animatrix

Well, we got a couple of days until The Matrix Resurrections is released in theaters. Like most, I’ll be watching from home on HBO Max, but I know this would be a good theater experience. Now that I got that retrospective out of the way, I can finally talk about the Animatrix. This was an anthology film that was released in June 2003 at around the same time Reloaded was out. Man, WB was pushing it hard with this series since Enter The Matrix was released on the PS2 about a month earlier. I really never got around to watching the Animatrix until just recently. I think I ended up seeing a bit of it airing on TNT a few years ago though.

The Animatrix houses nine short films that are supposed to fill in the backstory of the franchise. The Wachowskis were producers and even wrote the scripts for some of the films. Each film was helmed by an anime director. This worked out pretty well since anime has influenced the Wachowskis’ work. I don’t know of them too well, but a lot of these guys worked on big things like Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Afro Samurai, and Aeon Flux. If you’re looking to compare this to anything, it would be Batman: Gotham Knight, a movie that uses the same format to tell stories about the Nolan version of Batman. A review of that is also here somewhere.

Random Thoughts On... Re-Evaulating the Matrix Trilogy

Since The Matrix is making a comeback to movie theaters, I’ve been a bit stoked. I’m actually looking more forward to this than the other movie coming out at around that time, Spider-Man: No Way Home. I think that just shows how uninterested I am in MCU’s Spider-Man. Heck, I haven’t even seen Far From Home yet. Maybe I’ll see it when Andy turns 5 or something…

Anyway, I had been revisiting the Matrix trilogy on HBO Max for a while now. While the first one still holds up well (well “Not like this” is a bit funny), the sequels are still okay at best. My son started crying when the Architect showed up, but that may have been because he was hungry. I think my term “Overblown Epicness” still applies for those last two movies. I had talked about the trilogy years ago on the blog. I was going to go ahead and talk about the Animatrix which I finally saw a couple of weeks ago, but I think it’s time for me to reevaluate what I think of the trilogy. Yeah, others have done it, so I might as well throw my two quarters in.

 

Favorites - 15 Favorite Black Characters in Sci-Fi

The science fiction genre has given us a crapton of characters to follow and root for. When it comes Black folk, it gets a little tough. You may see one or even two of us running around or being a side piece somewhere. Even when you see one of us playing a character, they’re sometimes playing an alien. Just guess why you won’t see someone like Guinan, Worf, and Tuvok from Star Trek or Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy. I could make a case for Teal’C from Stargate: SG-1 since he is technically human, but I’ll leave him off this one. It gives me a chance to look for other characters outside of these big sci-fi franchises.

So, here are my favorite black characters in the genre. One limitation I gave myself was that I wouldn’t include any superheroes on this list, so no Storm or John Stewart. I actually made a list similar to this years ago, and I wanted to look in other places where there are some cool characters. I might break that rule for a couple, but I’ll only go so far. As usual, it’s a bit of a random list, but I’ll put my favorites up top. You only can guess who’ll be first.

Favorites - Nine Favorite Fight Scenes from Martial Arts Movies

Hey, all. Well, it’s sort of been a good month. Other than some weirdness here and there, I had fun doing this themed month again. I finally got to talk about some things that have been a long time coming. Of course, Butt-kicking month will be back next year. Last year, I ended it on my favorite Bruce Lee fights. This time, I’m just going to talk about nine of my favorite fights scenes in movies. It’s not going to be in order or anything like that.

I originally wrote a lot of this stuff a couple years ago. I was going to post it at the end of my first Martial Arts Month, but I decided to do something else. As I said before, these are just some of my favorites. It’s not a definitive list of the best since a couple of these wouldn’t be on that list. You’ll see ones I’ve talked about before and some I haven’t gotten to yet on the blog. I will also limit it to one martial arts actor or series of movies. I may have to cheat with one you'll see.

Movie Talk - The Matrix Trilogy

SYMBOLISM!!!!!!!!

Well, I’m at the end of Martial Arts Month. I’m definitely going to do something like this next year. There were other things I wanted to do here, but I have to end it somewhere. So, I’ve decided to look at a trilogy that combined martial arts, philosophy, religion, and a post-apocalyptic landscape: The Matrix trilogy.

I don’t remember when I first saw the The Matrix. I know I saw it before the sequels came out because I was already a fan of the movie. I was kind of a fan of the franchise. I’ve only seen snippets of The Animatrix.  I even played the tie-in game, Enter The Matrix, which wasn’t as bad as people said it was. I saw both movies on VHS when they came out respectively. I even remember that I saw a snippet of The Matrix Revolutions during a band trip in New Orleans. Over time, I decided to add the movies to my collection. When I came up with the idea of doing this month, this trilogy was definitely on the list. Since I hadn’t seen the movies in such a long time, I’ve watched them all this week.

Top 22 Villains - Part 3

Well, I'm at the end of the road for this list. Who's in my top eight villains? Let's find out:

8. The T-1000 from Terminator 2 

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of my favorite movies. The T-1000 is one of those reasons. In the movie, his main goal is to kill John Connor, the boy who would one day grow up to become humanity’s hero. While the T-800 from the first movie is the iconic version, the T-1000 kicks that version out of the water. The machine is just ruthless in the movie. He does all he can in trying to find and kill John Connor. He’s a shape-shifter, he’s virtually indestructible, and he rarely talks. Whoever decided that Robert Patrick should play the T-1000 should get an award or something.