We Agree: The Matrix Resurrections

2021, Lana Wachowski (Cloud Atlas) -- download

This blog is weird. It is supposed to be where I write about movies, to elicit my love for movies, especially the movies I luuuuv. And yet, much is bemoaning about not seeing movies as much as I used to, and also how I don't watch movies the way I used to. Gone are the days when I would see every movie in the cinema. And my cinema days were pretty much gone pre-COVID. 

This preamble (ramble) factors in two things: Kent and I had originally intended on seeing this together in the cinema, but Wave 93265 of COVID came along as dashed that idea. But also, I have never written about my love of The Matrix ?!? Seriously, how I have not at least written a ReWatch of the first movie? Let me note that, so I can do an entire series writeup like Ken'ts. 

Ahem. I was unaware of the pressure the Wachowskis were under, to produce another entry in the series; considering the trilogy did sum things up nicely, by having the main characters Neo and Trinity die; I can see why the Wachowskis would balk at the idea. When I heard the chatter about a new movie coming out, I was hoping for a proper reboot of the series, something that would be almost entirely new, without having to rely on all the storylines and characters that came before, maybe even dispensing with the look & feel -- the pseudo-darkwave styles of the late-90s / early-00s are not really with us any longer. Instead we got something more akin to ... what does Kent call them ... a legasequel. This movie literally does pick up after the first three, sitting strongly as a fourth entry, which I guess the Wachowskis were never interested in making. But rather than letting someone butcher their legacy, they had another go at it. Or at least Lana did.

And yes, despite the animosity with which they must have approached the making of this movie, they actually did do something new(ish) with it. As Kent said, there is a lot of subtext in this movie. A LOT. Much of it is commentary on the pop culture sign posts that the original movies created: cool factor, leather coats, sun glasses, bullet time and the eponymous red pill vs blue pill -- free will & choice. Dealing with what Red Pill has come to represent must have been a challenge, but with one line they both dismiss what it means and embrace the truth behind it. For most, there never really is a choice, and the pill just represents actualizing that.

The Matric Resurrections begins with a proper amount of time having passed. More than proper, we learn. Sure, Neo negotiated a truce with the Machine World which should have led to peace between the humans and machines, but we both know that wouldn't work. And also, it couldn't have worked, or we wouldn't be here with a new movie.

The preamble, the prologue, is short and sweet and chock full of nostalgia. Our guide to this new world is Bugs (Jessica Henwick, Iron Fist), "as in Bunny, as in tech that listens", and she is poking around in what we learn is a "modal", a confined "space" inside The Matrix, connected the Matrix but separate... and something weird is going on, something that involves a recreation of the original opening sequence to the first movie, with Trinity and her cat suit, but with one addition -- an Agent who seems to know more than he should, who seems more aware than he should.

And then Act 1; I just love Act 1. The Matrix, the City, a gaming company called Ex Machina, in which a lead programmer / game designer named Thomas Anderson works. Twenty years prior, he and his business partner produced a game trilogy called The Matrix. At the height of his fame, Anderson tried to walk off the top of a building, having lost touch with the reality between the game he created and the world he lives in. And he is still struggling.

This act is where the bulk of the subtext comes into play, from the meta commentary of The Matrix being a game inside the Matrix, which was visually the movies, to the lost, lonely stuck in the rat race, stuck on a tread mill Mr. Anderson, who has more than regular visits to his Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris, Doogie Hauser), a man wearing blue eye glasses, and a blue sweater and supplying Thomas with all of his blue pills. Meanwhile Smith, Anderson's business partner has told him that their parent company, Warner Bros, will do The Matrix sequel game with, or without him. And so the game design company begins the (looping) brainstorming tables on how they will go about bringing the next chapter in a story that was supposed to have ended. Subtle, huh?

But even amidst all this sledgehammer heavy, loud as fuck "sub" text, there are hints of a much more complicated matter going on behind it all. From the flashes of Thomas not appearing who he sees himself as (older Keanu Reeves), to Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss, Jessica Jones), the woman at the local coffee shop who reminds Thomas of Trinity, but more represents the life Anderson himself never took on. She has kids, a husband, a "real" life. And even she is not who/what she appears to be. Why would an architect of imprisonment, if Anderson is in fact the "we know he died" Neo, give Neo so many hints of the life he lived and lost? Why be so subtle yet so slap in the face obvious? Because the power of the Matrix (literally, and figuratively) is taken from Neo knowing, yet choosing to stay, for in the Matrix, Anderson has Tiffany, albeit very distantly.

And then Bugs and her crew break out Neo from his rat race, assisted by the modal program Morpheus, now having attained his own freedom / independent state. No, not the Morpheus, but Anderson's own program given life, one aware of who he was modeled from yet bemused by his origins (which also contains a dash of Smith), shirking the shiny black leather for some dashing colour, and colour commentary. This is where the movie begins again, as it did the first time round, but for me, sort of slide backwards. And again, even that, with the less than vibrant battle scenes, and lack of anything as revolutionary as "bullet time", and even somewhat muted sound design for the gunplay, seemed... intentional, meta-commentary on what this "resurrection" should be / needs to be.

The bulk of my enjoyment of this movie comes from watching Neo tackle with this all again. He never truly believed he was ever The One, and even after he performed all those miracles, and did indeed end the war between Zion and the Machines, things never truly got better. Not entirely better. There is still a Matrix, which we should have known there had to be, as how else would the Machines generate power. There are people still living oblivious lives, not free. And once he is again in the mix of working with the captains of Io, the new Zion, he is not who he once was. If The One didn't truly save the world, then what is his true place within it? There is only one answer -- being with Trinity. Weird, how he cannot be The One without his other side.

The rest of the movie is the rescue of Trinity, with proper motivation, as the new Architect, the Analyst, will reset the current Matrix back to the more oppressive previous version if he cannot have both Neo and Trinity in his thrall generating the mass amounts of power they did. There is combat and new-phase references to video games (less fighter, movie zombie apocalypse) but Neo and Trinity never once pick up a gun. Instead, Neo uses his own version of force-push and ... force-shield ? His lacking of remembered true ultimate power is challenging to him, until... he realizes that in this iteration of their lives, it is not his turn. Its hers. And I, for one, want to see what this even newer version of the Matrix, that Trinity will make, will turn out to be.

n Paragraphs: Devs

2020, Hulu - download

I could probably do a whole series on the rewatches I have blown through during the numerous Lockdowns or Stay At Home Orders we have had here in Ontario over the past year plus. But, as I have done so in the past numerous times, I created an imaginary line between that which I watch for the blog and that which I watch for my own no-agenda viewing pleasure. Or distraction. I find it odd that my brain does this, the separating of two groups, given that this blog is not a requirement for anyone or for any reason. But its my brain, and I have to deal with it. 

But one thing that stood out in my Lockdown viewing, and I have mentioned this already, is Ease of Viewing. I choose easy things, like my ongoing rewatch of Castle or Enterprise or Person of Interest. There are many shows I could be watching, and by could I mean shows I know I want to watch but for one excuse or another, I don't. My looked back at Devs and Westworld S03 and decided to actively choose them, to break my "easy" streak and wake up my brain. I am so glad I did with this series by Alex Garland (Ex Machina).

On the surface, Devs is about our fear of technology, more precisely the fear of big technology companies. Facebook is stealing our private data. Google is listening to us. Microsoft is putting trackers in our vaccines. These massive tech companies have access to mass amounts of money and technologies and we can only imagine what they do with those resources, in order to expand the mass amounts of money even further. Devs deals with one such company, Amaya, whose area of expertise seems to be smartphones and search engines, i.e. Google, but really it all seems to be funding their quantum computing research.

Most of these type of shows suffer from an economy of plot progression, but this shows dives right into the plot, as Serguei accepts a job in the inner circle of Amaya, the DEVS program, where in he discovers the Faraday Caged workspace, air gapped and in a maglev floating programming chamber all excruciatingly beautifully designed and mysterious. Serguei is not told what the project is, but almost immediately he sees something in the raw code that leaves him in awe. But Serguei is not who he pretends to be, and steals said code with his James Bond watch. The security head of Amaya, Kenton (Zach Grenier, Law & Order), and the head head of Amaya, Forest (Nick Offerman, Parks & Recreation) murder him for the act. His GF Lily (Sonoya Mizuno, Maniac) is shown evidence he committed suicide, but she doesn't accept it and begins her own investigation. This is just the first and second episodes.

In Garland's typical slow and deliberate manner (and no, this doesn't contradict what I said above, he doesn't rush, but he also doesn't supplement the space between plot points with filler content), we are exposed to what is actually going on inside DEVS and why it was so important, a software company would murder to protect it. They have used the ultimate in "big data" to create a predictive model of our world. And by "ultimate big data" I mean, the relational information that each and every single particle in our universe has with the next particle. It means they understand the entire universe down to its smallest component. The revolutionary quantum computer they created had an application that surpassed even their wildest dreams.

The simplest way to see what they have done, is that they can see the past, they can see the future, and they can see the present, in that they can also see any physical location. They can see everything. But it assumes that the universe is ENTIRELY deterministic, in that it is entirely based on the relationships between particles and everything we think of as free will or random is an illusion. In theory, what they see is the "simulation" of the time & place based on the relationships between the particles from now/here to there. This revelation/technology revolution utterly terrifies the members of DEVS but also excites them. Forest feels the need to control what they have unleashed, setting guidelines and rules. But of course, team members break the rules. But even then, in his mind, he accepts that it had to happen, as there was no choice.

Lilly represents the world of free will. Forest, and his assistant Katie (Alison Pill, Star Trek: Picard), represents a die-hard belief in determinism. Lilly is throwing all caution to the wind to find out what happened to Serguei, even when it presents more danger to her and those she loves. Those in Amaya "let" it happen because they know it will happen, and Forrest even seems at peace with it. But he has to be, as deep in his heart, if the world was not deterministic than a seemingly small variable took his wife and daughter from him, a variable he instigated.

I loved everything about this show, right down to what had to be a very controversial ending. This is Big Brain pondering about the capabilities of technology, but also about the philosophy of how our universe might be. Besides the ideas presented, the acting and pacing are just top notch. Sonoya Mizuno is just incredible, but then again, she is a stand out in everything I see her in. An amusing side-bit was that two of Sonoya's sisters, and her niece were also involved in the making of the mini-series. Of course, Nick Offerman is spectacular, and boy has Alison Pill come a long way from Sex Bob-Omb (sorry, rewatched Scott Pilgrim not so long ago). 

The post in Kent's universe is here where he also covers Westworld S3, which I will be covering soon, as well.

Determinism: Devs vs. Westworld (Season 3)

Devs - d. Alex Garland, FX (8 episodes)
Westworld Season 3 - HBO (8 episodes)

It would seem that in the past two or three years writer-director Alex Garland and Westworld showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan read the same book about how the philosophical concept of determinism could potentially be validated, or even instituted, by the mighty power of artificial intelligence and big data.

I don't know for certain that there is even a book out there that explores that thesis, but given that two shows running at the same time are exploring the same subject from different approach vectors seems to at least intone that it's now part of the intellectual conversation.  Maybe it's a Ted talk, I dunno.

I can't say I prefer one show's approach on the topic over the other.  Both have their merits, but I'm also still contemplating whether they're saying the same thing or not.

Garland has, for a number of years now, been exploring both philosophical and technological concepts in his very heady directorial sci-fi projects like Ex Machina and Annihilation, but his screenplays even before that, like Never Let Me Go, Sunshine and even 28 Days Later toyed with contemplation of existence (whether it be clones bred for organ replacement, a crew trying to save the humanity or a small group of survivors of a zombie-like plague).  Clearly, what life means and what we're supposed to be doing with it is something that is on his mind.


At the epicenter of Devs story [mild plot spoilers ahead] is that a secret coding project within the Google-like Amaya corporation, where they're working on a project that can see the past and future with precision.  But the meat of the show centers around Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) whose fiancee, Sergei, was admitted to the Devs program and then disappeared, only to show up days later and self-immolate on the Amaya campus.  Her investigation into Sergei's actions, attempting to understand them, lead her on a complicated path that sees her revisiting her past and questioning her future.

The idea behind the Devs project is one of determinism, that we're all on a fixed path, that free will is but an illusion.  Having taken in all of the data systems have collected on practically everyone for decades now, the Devs system can extrapolate and interpret and ultimate display the exact past and the exact future.  Everything will happen as it will always happen, such that it always has happened even if it hasn't happened yet.  Amaya founder, Forrest (Nick Offerman) and Katie (Allison Pill), his right hand on the project, have looked to their future and they know what happens.  As such they perform their roles as they're meant to, thinking they would be unable to deviate even if they tried.  They also know Lily's future, and they're more than at peace with letting the horrifying events in her life proceed without  any sense of troubled conscience.  They're devoted believers in the fixed tram lines our life are on, and feel absolved on any complicity because of it. 

An author before a script writer then director, with Devs, Garland seems to be redefining what can be done in the new golden age of television [aside - the new golden age of TV is certainly coming to an unpredicable end thanks to the Coronavirus shut-down...I wonder how things will look a year from now?] by literally making a tele-novel.  It's a rare show that has one writer and director for the entire production, but Garland's control of the situation make it a decidedly singular vision from start to finish, and it feels structured like chapters of a book.  At times the way the show plays out, it has a similar feeling to reading a book. There's a solitude to the experience of watching (or maybe that was just my experience watching it alone), as Garland let his camera sit and rest in a scene, letting the ambient noises fill the space, gleaning insight or understanding by holding on expressions or exploring the backgrounds, or just giving the audience time to contemplate meaning or feel the weight of events.  He bookends each chapter with a song, the same one in the starting montage and the ending montage, but a different song for each chapter.  The songs are well selected reflecting the tone the show is seeking perfectly.

Devs is very small scale in how its looking-glass project impacts humanity in the world of the story.  It's still technology at its incubation stage.  It hasn't been commoditized or exploited for much purpose other than self-satisfaction.  But one can see where taking all that personal data collected, all that observational video recorded, all that digital audio parsed and using it to see what people will do, and what they have done (or at least believe that's what you're seeing) could wind up being very bad for society, and the very sense of freedom.

In Season 3 of Westworld, we've left the trappings of the theme park where the automatons ran wild.  They're now loose in the real world (well, the real world of 2058) and they've starting a war nobody even realizes is happening yet.  Delores (Evan Rachel Wood) an a small cabal of hosts have taken various strategic forms and insinuated themselves in roles across the globe, including taking the body of Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) seeding her in the top spot of Delos, the owners of the AI technology and host body technology.

Delos is the focus of a hostile takeover by Incite and its somehow mysterious and completely off-the-grid owner Serac (Vincent Cassell).  Serac, meanwhile, is aware that someone, or something is interfering with his plans.  Serac is the co-creator of Rehoboam, an AI construct that has absorbed the world's big data and now effectively (and secretly) governs it, ensuring that everyone stays on their predictive paths, and that the outliers, the ones its unable to predict the actions of, are removed from the equation.

Rehoboam is also tracking aberrant behavior from other hosts that made it out, Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) who's basically in hiding, having had the massacre at Westworld pinned on him, and Maeve (Thandie Newton), who has been resurrected under Serac's sway.  It's also tracking Caleb (Aaron Paul), an ex-marine with PTSD finding it hard to break out of Incite's predictive existence for him, and who falls into Delores' sphere of influence.

Westworld is using our advancements in big data, AI and predictive modeling as it's groudwork, noting its potential to eventually accurately predict the future, and then extrapolating a scenario where the AI and its employers ensure a predictable future, both as well-meaning societal benefit and as a means of self-elevation (Serac is clearly not hurting for money or resources).  It's the central thesis of the season, having already explored the ideas of existence and what it means for AIs to have consciousness and exist in the previous seasons.  It carries those with it, as the hosts are still front-and-center, but each displaying just as much humanity, good and bad, as any character in the show.  Serac and Delores are flipsides of the same coin each very much fueled by their convictions, and each very much willing to sacrifice anything for their plans.

Jonathan Nolan explored the emergence of artificial intelligence prior to Westworld in Person of Interest, a clever bait-and-switch on the case-of-the-week formulae that was really about observational nanny state, the abuse of all that monitoring, and artificial intelligence that could use that information for good or ill based on the guidance of their programmers.  Rehoboam in Westworld is very much an extension of PoI's machine, taking that observational AI system, feeding it ALL the world's data and giving it the task of ensuring humanity's future through order.  It's kind of like communism if you manage to eliminate the corruption and thirst for power.
 

Where Devs' determinism is explored on the micro level, how the very idea impacts the people who believe it, or the people who refuse to do anything with the information they have, believing even the possibility of doing something other impossible, Westworld's use of determinism is mostly macro.  We don't really sit with the impact of a predetermined existence too much with any one character, but we see the impact it has on society, and it's not a far-off extrapolation of where we already seem to be heading.  Westworld, however, has more designs on staying within its pulpy Michael Crichton origins. Action is still very much a part of the play, as are cool looking technology and futuristic designs to vehicles and other equipment.

The original Westworld is said to have influenced the Terminator, and this season is taking that influence right back.  The indestructible machine, the stony-faced determination, the impassioned assaults... Evan Rachel Wood's face seems to be made up to be even more esoterically smooth and her angles sharpened to give her an inhuman, perhaps even ultrahuman visage.  It's not uncanny valley, but it is somehow captivating and unsettling.

In both shows, the idea of the outlier does come into play, where in Devs the very concept is willfully abandoned, the very idea that there is free will would throw the system into a chaotic multiverse, but it does play it's part.  In Westworld it's these anomalies hailed as humanity's savior...or at least liberator, much like Delores was her people's liberator in Season 2.  For better or worse.

Devs is methodical, and may not be to everyone's taste.  Westworld Season 3 basically reboots the show with a new path and keeps only a scant few threads from the past.  It may not be what viewers of previous seasons were expecting.  Both are, however, compelling viewing.