Speaker 1: On the Bell cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women and um are all their discussions just boyfriends and
Speaker 1: husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef in
Speaker 1: best start changing it with the bec Del cast. Jamie, Hi, Caitlin. Hi, sorry,
Speaker 1: it's not Caitlin, it's morpheoush. I just want to tell
Speaker 1: you that you're the one meet you, but I'm so
Speaker 1: sexy and regular. Well that's just that you're too sexy
Speaker 1: to be regular. Oh my god. Therefore you are the
Speaker 1: one that is how movies work, isn't it. Wow? Well, um, okay,
Speaker 1: I I accept. I accept this call to adventure, except
Speaker 1: that you're gonna have to get kidnapped for reasons that
Speaker 1: are a little confusing to me, and the stakes are
Speaker 1: going to continue to rise from there. Sure sure, sure,
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I have one more condition. Yes, yes, I
Speaker 1: need to get a little kiss at the end. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: hey Jamie, it's it's a trinity now, Hi. Hi, And
Speaker 1: I just wanted to tell you that the oracle told
Speaker 1: me that I would fall in love with somebody, and
Speaker 1: that somebody would be the one that's me and it's
Speaker 1: and I'm in love with you further confirming that you're
Speaker 1: the one. So can I have a little kiss? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Here you go. Well, thank you. But that was a
Speaker 1: very smooth intro. I think my intro is going to
Speaker 1: be very somber because I feel, well, let's introduce the
Speaker 1: show and then I have to make an apology and
Speaker 1: then I think we can get the episode started. Sure,
Speaker 1: for sure, I have a serious apology to make. So Hi,
Speaker 1: it's me Caitlin Durante. It's me Jamie loftus little tail
Speaker 1: between my legs. And this is the Pectel Cast. It
Speaker 1: is our show where we examine film through an intersectional
Speaker 1: feminist lens, using the Bectel Tests simply as a jumping
Speaker 1: off point, which of course is a media metric created
Speaker 1: by queer cartoonist Alice in Bectel, sometimes called the Bectel
Speaker 1: Wallace Test. Uh. There are many variations on the test.
Speaker 1: This is the one that we are currently using, where
Speaker 1: two people of any marginalized gender must have names, they
Speaker 1: must speak to each other, and that conversation has to
Speaker 1: be about something other than a man. Ideally it's a
Speaker 1: meaningful conversation that is like narratively relevant. Yes, okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: do you mind if I just please, you've got the floor.
Speaker 1: I have a prepared statement really quickly. Okay, hello listeners,
Speaker 1: this is Jamie Loftus. You might remember that almost exactly
Speaker 1: five years ago to the day, we released an episode
Speaker 1: about the movie The Matrix on this very podcast. The
Speaker 1: guest was comedian Matt donnaher lovely man, who we still
Speaker 1: have a friendship with. However, if you try to listen
Speaker 1: to this episode today, you will not be able to
Speaker 1: find it. And that is because as of December twenty
Speaker 1: I didn't actually watched The Matrix before we recorded the episode.
Speaker 1: I was very busy that week. It was the holidays,
Speaker 1: and I was drunk at the recording off of Mike's
Speaker 1: Hard Lemonade. Off of Mike's Hard Lemonade, as was my
Speaker 1: custom at the time. I would learned years later, that's
Speaker 1: actually not adorable to do. Um. So I just wanted
Speaker 1: to uh apol. I've been receiving criticism for never having
Speaker 1: watched The Matrix when I was twenty three. For years now.
Speaker 1: It's been it's something that's uh, you know, a common
Speaker 1: criticism has been brought up to me at shows. It's
Speaker 1: been tweeted at me repeatedly. It's on our Wikipedia page
Speaker 1: that I've never seen the Matrix. Um it took five years,
Speaker 1: but work course correcting. I'm a new person. I've been
Speaker 1: uh living, laughing, loving and learning and I really liked
Speaker 1: The Matrix and I'm excited for today's episode. So sorry
Speaker 1: one last time for not watching The Matrix five years ago.
Speaker 1: And if I could editor allies for just a second,
Speaker 1: I think it's very weird how mad everyone Wasn't me.
Speaker 1: We didn't make any money out the podcast. Then there's
Speaker 1: people people were mad, some of them, but there are
Speaker 1: I would say, just as many people who think it's
Speaker 1: awesome that you didn't see it and still writ prepare
Speaker 1: well it would be. You could be bad now because
Speaker 1: now it's our job, but back then it was our hobby,
Speaker 1: and um yeah I was. I don't know who knows.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. We are doing the episode now and
Speaker 1: we have a wonderful guest, so let's get her in here. Indeed,
Speaker 1: she is the critic at large for Vox. She's the
Speaker 1: co creator of the podcast art In. It's Emily Vanderworth. Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: it's so good to be here. And if you're wondering
Speaker 1: who the skywriter was above your house, that said, please
Speaker 1: watch the Matrix, Jamie. That was I learned how to
Speaker 1: fly a plane just for that. You flew the plane
Speaker 1: in everything. Yes I did. It's the personal touch, it
Speaker 1: really really is, and that her me extra deeply as
Speaker 1: a result. Yeah, well, you're also leaving out that you
Speaker 1: learned to fly the plane by just like having a
Speaker 1: training software uploaded immediately into your brain floppy disc. They
Speaker 1: plugged it into my brain and I was like, now
Speaker 1: I can fly in nineteen twenties biplane. Cool. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited for this episode, and we're so stuked that you're
Speaker 1: here to talk about the movie with us. Emily. Um,
Speaker 1: so this is this is our the So I guess
Speaker 1: whenever we cover franchise, we're covering the first movie. This
Speaker 1: episode will be released lining up with the new Matrix movie,
Speaker 1: which I just I guess right at the top. I'm
Speaker 1: curious if if y'all think it looks any good. I
Speaker 1: can't tell. I can't tell. I think so. I think
Speaker 1: it's going to be great. Yeah, Okay, I've just had
Speaker 1: my ass handed to me. No I I am, but
Speaker 1: I'm a Wachowski home homer. You know, I think they're great. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they've made a couple of movies I don't love,
Speaker 1: like I think the Third Matrix is their weakest film,
Speaker 1: but I still watch it all the time, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's I'm excited for it. I'm excited that it's very
Speaker 1: colorful from the trailers. I'm excited for Keanu Reeves to
Speaker 1: have a little rubber ducky on his head. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: I well, because I've watched the trailer dozens and dozens
Speaker 1: of times, mostly because I was like, well, first, I
Speaker 1: think it's very fun and it's great, and I think
Speaker 1: it makes the movie look great. I'm excited to see it.
Speaker 1: But also I was trying to figure out a Halloween
Speaker 1: costume for this year, and I was like, m, my
Speaker 1: hair length is about the same hair length as Kanus
Speaker 1: in the trailer. Maybe I'll dress up as Kanu like
Speaker 1: from the New Matrix movie. But he doesn't have necessarily
Speaker 1: a consistent look in the trailer. And also he like
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily look like Neo famously looks with all of
Speaker 1: his like kind of has his like John Wick hair
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, right, and then he's just wearing
Speaker 1: like scarves and like just regular clothes and like not
Speaker 1: his at least in the trailer again, like you don't
Speaker 1: see him with his like black trench coat and sunglasses
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So I just kind of picked a
Speaker 1: random look and replicated that there's like you see him
Speaker 1: for like seventeen frames or something like that. And I
Speaker 1: was just like, well, this is this is my costume
Speaker 1: this year, so I will share that on our Instagram.
Speaker 1: But um, it was a solid costume. It was good.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. So Emily, tell us what is
Speaker 1: your relationship your history with the Matrix slash the whole franchise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw this movie in theaters when it came out,
Speaker 1: but like very late, like after the buzz had kind
Speaker 1: of died down, because it was it was huge for
Speaker 1: a while, and I remember I was like very irritated
Speaker 1: by the marketing because I was someone who cared about that.
Speaker 1: At that time. It was like what is the Matrix? Was?
Speaker 1: Like all the marketing was um. And so I saw
Speaker 1: it several weeks after it opened with my then girlfriend,
Speaker 1: and I remember it just it spoke to me in
Speaker 1: a way I didn't entirely comprehend, but I just I
Speaker 1: loved it. And then I watched it. You know, probably
Speaker 1: dozens of times when it was on DVD, and I
Speaker 1: saw it again a few years ago in the theater um.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's one of the most perfect movies
Speaker 1: ever made, like there's not really anything in it that
Speaker 1: doesn't work. I kind of prefer the second one because
Speaker 1: I am a weird woman who likes imperfect babies and
Speaker 1: just like holding it up and being like, your head's
Speaker 1: a little dented, but I still love you. I think.
Speaker 1: I think the third one. I've seen this argument of
Speaker 1: the third one, in the second one should be considered
Speaker 1: one big movie, and in that case, the third one
Speaker 1: is better, but it isn't isolated thing. I do think
Speaker 1: it's The Witch House kis weakest movie, but like it
Speaker 1: not bad. I enjoy watching it. But the second one,
Speaker 1: I think is My Dented Little Baby. I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the second one as well. I would say I mildly
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I far prefer the first one. I agree
Speaker 1: that it's a perfect movie, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: it says about me that I like perfect things. You know,
Speaker 1: like liking perfect things is fine, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's uh, you look at that dented
Speaker 1: little baby. And you're like, no, get rid of that one,
Speaker 1: throw that one away. I am not like that. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's actually a huge flow. Let the baby
Speaker 1: have a dead. Oh goodness, um, Jamie, what is your well?
Speaker 1: You you did read your prepared statement. I just I
Speaker 1: just give a really long winded I should have saved
Speaker 1: it for here. I have never seen it. I lied
Speaker 1: about it five years ago. Uh, and then I have
Speaker 1: now seen it twice and I loved it. I really like.
Speaker 1: I wish I hadn't been so glad formatively out watching
Speaker 1: it as a bit because it is such a good
Speaker 1: movie and I've really enjoyed. Um, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: feel like but with some certain movies, you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't really want to engage with the fan culture around
Speaker 1: certain movies. But I've really enjoyed reading more about the
Speaker 1: Matrix and learning more about it. And I liked the
Speaker 1: sequel and I'm interested in what the new one is like.
Speaker 1: And I skipped the third one because I didn't have
Speaker 1: the stamina. But I yeah, the first Matrix movie, I
Speaker 1: can say with the whole heart, I loved it. What
Speaker 1: about you? I am a long, long, long time Matrix fan.
Speaker 1: I saw the movie at a drive in movie theater
Speaker 1: when it came out. I was like thirteen percent didn't
Speaker 1: understand it all the first time I saw it, but
Speaker 1: I think on subsequent viewings I did understand. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was because like I'm thirteen and I
Speaker 1: don't under like, I don't like this is confusing, or
Speaker 1: if it's just because I was like distracted and with
Speaker 1: my friends. Anyway, I think I had it figured out
Speaker 1: by the second watch, and I've seen it like probably
Speaker 1: fifty times since then. I watched this movie multiple times
Speaker 1: a year. I love it. I think it's perfect, and
Speaker 1: it holds up so surprisingly well for a movie from
Speaker 1: because we've covered a lot of movies from this podcast,
Speaker 1: and I would say almost none of them hold up,
Speaker 1: but The Matrix does very much does. Yes, I'm really
Speaker 1: I mean, just one of the like hottest casts ever assembled.
Speaker 1: Also just a gorgeous just just everyone is so incredibly
Speaker 1: beautiful of this movie. Uh, that's my contribution to the
Speaker 1: discourse today. I mean, honestly, I was going to make
Speaker 1: a joke about Joe Pantoliano, but like he's never been hotter,
Speaker 1: He's really hot. He joey pants is hot. His goatee.
Speaker 1: Even fine, I'll take it. I like, you know, the
Speaker 1: thing is with Joey Fans is goot. I like when
Speaker 1: someone makes a strong choice, and that's what Jelley Fans
Speaker 1: is doing with the goatee. I love that for him.
Speaker 1: All right, Should I recap the story and we'll go
Speaker 1: from there. Let's do it, and Emily jump in whenever.
Speaker 1: During the recap, we're fast and loose. Here it's an
Speaker 1: open forum, okay. So we open on some images of
Speaker 1: some kind of computer code. Uh. Then we meet Trinity,
Speaker 1: who's played by Carrie and Moss. Some cops have her surrounded.
Speaker 1: Hugo Weaving in a suit. A K agent Smith is
Speaker 1: also after her. There's a fight, they chase her. She
Speaker 1: seems to be able to defy gravity during a lot
Speaker 1: of this fighting and running away. She also takes control
Speaker 1: of the cinematography for like just a couple of seconds.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that is the opening scene is so good.
Speaker 1: It it's just yeah, immediately the style and yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I love it. Um. And then she escapes finally by
Speaker 1: answering a pay phone and seemingly disappearing, and we use
Speaker 1: the audience seeing this for the first time in or
Speaker 1: Monday whatever earlier this week. We're like, what what is
Speaker 1: going on? Oh my gosh. Then Agent Smith mentions an informant.
Speaker 1: He's talking to his other agent friends. There are these
Speaker 1: like white guys in suits. He mentions an informant and
Speaker 1: also the next target, someone named Neo. Then we cut
Speaker 1: to Kiana Reeves, who in this world goes by Thomas Anderson.
Speaker 1: Someone has hacked into his computer and is sending him messages.
Speaker 1: There's mention of the matrix. I love hearing Kiana Reeves
Speaker 1: just read something off of the screen. It's very compelling
Speaker 1: to me. It's very calming. I like it. Yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 1: His performance in this movie is incredible. I love him
Speaker 1: so much. Kianu is a national treasure. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: person on his computer tells Kianu to follow the White Rabbit,
Speaker 1: which ends up being a friend's tattoo, which leads him
Speaker 1: to a club where he meets Trinity face to face.
Speaker 1: She's like, I know that you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what the matrix is. By the way, you're in danger
Speaker 1: and you're being watched. And then the next day at work,
Speaker 1: Kianu gets a cell phone delivered to him and then
Speaker 1: immediately receives a call from Morpheus, who gives him instructions
Speaker 1: on how to escape Agent Smith and the other agents
Speaker 1: who are after him. But Kanu is unsuccessful and he
Speaker 1: gets captured by the agents who want his help in
Speaker 1: finding Morpheus, who they see as a terrorist. I liked
Speaker 1: I liked that. Um. I felt like this movie could
Speaker 1: have come out almost whenever. But there you think about
Speaker 1: this movie. I felt like was like the office job sequence.
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, this is such a late nineties
Speaker 1: like gen X, I hate my job. The man is
Speaker 1: killing me. Like it feels like it was made just
Speaker 1: Mike Judge just had some office space out takes, just
Speaker 1: laying was like here you go. They just like color
Speaker 1: corrected it green and they're like, and now it's these
Speaker 1: are scenes from the Matrix. This is this is the
Speaker 1: scene with with the bug in it, right, a little
Speaker 1: bug that goes in yes belly button. UM. When I
Speaker 1: saw this movie in nine, I saw it with my
Speaker 1: my then girlfriend, who had enormous Reese Witherspoon energy, UM,
Speaker 1: and she was so disgusted by this. She was just
Speaker 1: horrified by it and like hiding her face. And I
Speaker 1: was watching it like, yeah, this is just how life is, right,
Speaker 1: somebody just traps you and puts a bug in you,
Speaker 1: and then you have to just walk around with it
Speaker 1: inside of you. And yeah, that was when I was like,
Speaker 1: this is one of my favorite movies ever because it's
Speaker 1: the only one that understands what it's like to have
Speaker 1: a little bug crawling around inside you. To this day,
Speaker 1: I cannot watch the bug either going into his belly
Speaker 1: button or coming back out of it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have like a weird of belly button thing where
Speaker 1: I just so I loved watching it. I thought how interesting.
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting to watch. I'm stuck on
Speaker 1: the phrase enormous Reese Witherspoon energy. That is, like you
Speaker 1: said it as immediately I was like, I know exactly
Speaker 1: what that means. Yes, yes, I I dated the girls
Speaker 1: I wanted to be at that time, but yes. This
Speaker 1: is the scene where Neo refuses to help the agents,
Speaker 1: so they bug him and then release him, and then
Speaker 1: Neo gets another call from Morpheus and Morpheus is like
Speaker 1: you're the one, and he's like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: And then Trinity and a couple other people switch and
Speaker 1: APOC pick Neo up. They debug him in the other
Speaker 1: scene I can't watch um and then they take him
Speaker 1: to meet more Pheus, who we see in the Flesh
Speaker 1: for the first time. He's played by Laurence Fishburne. Morpheus
Speaker 1: gives Neo the opportunity to choose between taking a blue
Speaker 1: pill and a red pill. Now, the blue pill will
Speaker 1: let Neo to continue on with his life as he's
Speaker 1: been living in and forget all about Morpheus and the Matrix,
Speaker 1: but the red pill will give him access to the truth. Right,
Speaker 1: and nobody ever thought about that idea again, like that
Speaker 1: never came. No one has ever, No one has used that.
Speaker 1: That's fun, imature, nefarious reasons even a little bit. No, okay,
Speaker 1: So Neo takes the red pill and then Morpheus shows
Speaker 1: him what the Matrix is. Basically, the Matrix is a
Speaker 1: computer simulation that most humans are plugged into so that
Speaker 1: they don't know what's actually happening, which is that it's
Speaker 1: two years in the future and the artificially intelligent machines
Speaker 1: grow humans like crops and use them as batteries to
Speaker 1: power They're like post apocalyptic machine world. So all the
Speaker 1: humans are plugged into this simulation, which basically simulates reality
Speaker 1: or some version of reality and that's what the matrix is.
Speaker 1: So Morpheus and his crew unplugged Neo from the matrix.
Speaker 1: So we see him in this like pod thing that's
Speaker 1: full of who I love when he's in the goo.
Speaker 1: I'm a simple person, I like when he's in the give.
Speaker 1: This is another scene where I was like, well, this
Speaker 1: is just what life is like. Somebody unplugs you and
Speaker 1: wake up in a pile of go Like that didn't
Speaker 1: even registered for me. A how matter of factly that
Speaker 1: is presented where it's like, well, now he's in goo,
Speaker 1: and then cut to the next scene he's out of
Speaker 1: the goo. Now, yeah, it is what it is, and yeah,
Speaker 1: so they take him out of the goo and they
Speaker 1: bring him aboard Morpheusis ship, the Nubuchadnezzer. We meet the
Speaker 1: rest of the crew, which is Cipher, that's Joey Pants,
Speaker 1: Joe Pantaliano, Mouse, Tank, and Dozer, who have all either
Speaker 1: been unplugged from the matrix or, in the case of
Speaker 1: Tank and Dozer, they were born in a human society
Speaker 1: called Zion and we're never plugged in to begin with.
Speaker 1: So Neo learns all this stuff and has difficulty accepting
Speaker 1: the whole situation at first, but then he comes to
Speaker 1: accept it and starts learning more about the matrix, how
Speaker 1: to manipulate the laws of physics inside of it, how
Speaker 1: to do kung fu, he learns how to jump really far,
Speaker 1: things like that, and then Morpheus also explains that the
Speaker 1: agents like Agent Smith a K. Hugo Weaving, are the
Speaker 1: sentient programs that can kind of move throughout the matrix,
Speaker 1: and they're basically designed to like keep order, and they
Speaker 1: are the main antagonistic force against the people like Morpheus
Speaker 1: and his crew while they're inside the matrix. Right. Morpheus
Speaker 1: also tells Neo about a prophecy that the oracle made
Speaker 1: about the one. Basically, someone would be able to destroy
Speaker 1: the matrix and the war against the machines and bring
Speaker 1: freedom to the humans, and as it's already been suggested,
Speaker 1: Morpheus believes Neo to be the one. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: really short walk. You just have to move, oh in
Speaker 1: front of an andy, Like, you don't have to do
Speaker 1: that much work. I feel like it shouldn't have taken
Speaker 1: them that long, Right, it's true, it's written in the stars.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate that Neo is an anagram for one,
Speaker 1: not unlike my name. Caitlin Durante is an anagram for
Speaker 1: for such things as Latin dancer, U t I, nine tips, Dracula,
Speaker 1: and my favorite, Lauren D Titanic, Lauren D. I got
Speaker 1: to look this up. I'm looking myself up there. They
Speaker 1: haven't done it in a while. Wait, and I think
Speaker 1: I always get cranky when anagrams come up, because all
Speaker 1: mines suck. But you have every all of the vowels
Speaker 1: in your dose your middle name. No, okay, yeah, mine, don't.
Speaker 1: I think that's cheating, that's yeah. But yeah, let let
Speaker 1: me let me know if either of you discover any
Speaker 1: impressive anagrams of your name. In the meantime, we learned
Speaker 1: that Cipher is a trader. He's the informant who has
Speaker 1: been working with the agents and who is going to
Speaker 1: sell out Morpheus because the agents want the access codes
Speaker 1: to the main frame of that human city Zion to
Speaker 1: destroy the human population there. After getting a lot of
Speaker 1: Joey Pants's facial hair, I'm like, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I expected in regards to whether he was going
Speaker 1: to be a hero or a villain, Like, okay, right,
Speaker 1: he just looks like a like a like a sad
Speaker 1: dad who came home from his office job, and it's like,
Speaker 1: my office job is fighting the machines, and I just
Speaker 1: want to join the machine. The machines have such good
Speaker 1: meats at their machine restaurants. He's like, I actually get
Speaker 1: along with the machine software guys much better, So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna hang out with them. I think about this
Speaker 1: all the time. If the Matrix is real and we
Speaker 1: are all plugged into a simulation. But then we learned
Speaker 1: about how it is actually a prison for our minds
Speaker 1: if given the opportunity to be freed from it. But
Speaker 1: then to live a life that seems very dangerous, and
Speaker 1: like the quality of living doesn't seem that great, seems
Speaker 1: cold and dark, and you have to eat like goog
Speaker 1: all the time. Like I'm like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I want to live in the Matrix. I did think
Speaker 1: it was interesting that the like I mean, the world
Speaker 1: is so carefully built out, and I like, we get
Speaker 1: all these like little questions that I would have as
Speaker 1: a viewer that they just like answer in text of like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's dangerous to tell people about the matrix
Speaker 1: when there a certain age, which was something that I
Speaker 1: thought of it like, oh yeah, that's like, if your
Speaker 1: brain is fully formed, do you want to learn that
Speaker 1: everything you've ever known as a lie? Probably not. Probably not.
Speaker 1: You probably couldn't handle it. And and that's also why
Speaker 1: I like Mouse so much. I also like Mouse because
Speaker 1: he kind of looks like We'll Poulter. But also I
Speaker 1: also like us because he's like kind I mean, he's
Speaker 1: outside of the matrix, buties like the food sucks here
Speaker 1: and I want to have sex, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd feel the same way. I designed a lady computer
Speaker 1: program for me to have sex with and that's cool,
Speaker 1: little rascal, and then he like explodes to death. I
Speaker 1: know we're not bringing the sequels in, really, but the
Speaker 1: second movie suggests everyone in Zion just just fo Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe it was more of a personal issue for Mouse.
Speaker 1: Is he just happened to not be fucking poor Mouse?
Speaker 1: But I just that scene where he turns to Neo
Speaker 1: and he's just like, this food is bad. I'm horny,
Speaker 1: Like I love this classic Mouse. Okay, So then Morpheus
Speaker 1: takes Neo into the Matrix to see the Oracle to
Speaker 1: hopefully confirm that Neo is in fact the one, but
Speaker 1: the Oracle tells Neo that he actually isn't the one,
Speaker 1: and it's implied that it's because he does not yet
Speaker 1: believe that he's the one. On their way back out
Speaker 1: of the matrix Um, where they like have to answer
Speaker 1: phones in specific places to get safely disconnected, agents ambush
Speaker 1: Neo Morpheus, Trinity and the rest of the crew and
Speaker 1: they kidnapped Morpheus. So Neo Trinity and everyone else tries
Speaker 1: to get back, but Cipher is sabotaging them and he
Speaker 1: kills Apoc and Switch. And also this is shortly before
Speaker 1: this mouse gets shot by the agents and Sarah ammoniously
Speaker 1: moved because he was too horny to live that mouse
Speaker 1: he had to go. Makes me sad anytime anyone. I mean,
Speaker 1: they really do it an amazing job of building out
Speaker 1: the side characters that I'm like, oh, I think I've
Speaker 1: maybe heard this character speak three or four lines of dialogue,
Speaker 1: but I'm still absolutely gutted when they're killed totally. So
Speaker 1: much of it is the is the visuals, Like they're
Speaker 1: such distinct looking characters, they don't blend into each other,
Speaker 1: especially for it's it's a somewhat diverse cast, so you
Speaker 1: have like a really strong feeling for who everybody is,
Speaker 1: even if you've only heard them talk two or three times,
Speaker 1: and mostly they just talked about how they were horny, right, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, Agent Smith is trying to break Morpheus to
Speaker 1: get access to these codes to Zion. They're basically like
Speaker 1: trying to hack his brain. And since keeping Zion safe
Speaker 1: is the most important thing that any of these characters
Speaker 1: can do, Neo, Trinity, and Tank consider pulling the plug
Speaker 1: on Morpheus so he doesn't give up these mainframe codes
Speaker 1: to Zion. But then Neo is like, no, there's got
Speaker 1: to be another way, so he and Trinity go back
Speaker 1: into the Matrix to try to save Morpheus and fight
Speaker 1: the agents, and then what follows is a couple fight
Speaker 1: sequences where Neo is dodging bullets, Trinity is flying a helicopter.
Speaker 1: They managed to save Morpheus, so you can picture what
Speaker 1: it looks like. You've all seen because you've seen it
Speaker 1: referred to in every piece of media since then. Then
Speaker 1: Neo gets stuck in the Matrix and has to face
Speaker 1: off one on one with Agent Smith. They fight, and
Speaker 1: then Agent Smith gets the upper hand and shoots Neo
Speaker 1: a bunch of times and he dies, but Trinity who
Speaker 1: is back in the real world on Morpheus's ship. It's like, Neo,
Speaker 1: you can't be dead because the oracle told me I
Speaker 1: would fall in love with the one, and I love you,
Speaker 1: so you're the one, and that means that you can't
Speaker 1: be dead, and that brings Neo back to life. This
Speaker 1: is so often written off as like, you know, the obligatory,
Speaker 1: the woman falls in love with the male love interest,
Speaker 1: and I like, textually that's true, but it's such a
Speaker 1: fucking lesbian moment. It's so much. It's just so much like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know, I've known you for a couple of days,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure we're going to get married, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, nine months from now they're going to break up,
Speaker 1: but right now, yes, absolutely, it's true love. I mean
Speaker 1: I never really questioned it. I always bought it. I
Speaker 1: was just like, Yep, she loves him, and I mean,
Speaker 1: who wouldn't love Keanu Reeves when he shows up and
Speaker 1: it is all hot and amazing. Neo and Trinity are
Speaker 1: just two girls who met at a at a party
Speaker 1: at Barnard and just like hit it off, spent the
Speaker 1: next week together, and now they've been together for twenties.
Speaker 1: Thing years, similar to how Rose and Jack of Titanic
Speaker 1: Fame of the Titanic of the Titanic famously historically is
Speaker 1: another iconic lesbian romance. Absolutely about Actually this is a
Speaker 1: total tangent. But the director of Portrait of a Lady
Speaker 1: am Fire, Sleen Shama. If I didn't interview with her
Speaker 1: box if you find it, she talks about how she
Speaker 1: modeled her movie on Titanic. Yeah, yeah, wait reference we
Speaker 1: talked on that episode on Portrait of the Medium Fire. Awesome.
Speaker 1: I like when I I just love when like quote
Speaker 1: unquote art filmmakers are like, no, of course I watch
Speaker 1: fucking Titanic, Like I don't be ridiculous. Come on. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so Trinity professing her love to an unconscious Neo brings
Speaker 1: Neo back to life, and so then in the Matrix,
Speaker 1: he is able to finally defeat Agent Smith and proves
Speaker 1: that he is the one. And then the movie ends
Speaker 1: with Neo talking to someone on a pay phone. It
Speaker 1: seems to be that he's like talking to the Matrix itself.
Speaker 1: He hangs up the phone, Rage against the Machine starts
Speaker 1: playing and flies away. I didn't know that the movie
Speaker 1: ended on Rage against the Machine and anytime I was
Speaker 1: watching it with Caitlin, I was like, anytime Rage Against
Speaker 1: the Machine comes on, I'm instantly like in the backseat
Speaker 1: of my uncle's car, Like it's just instantaneous. We're late
Speaker 1: to school, he's mad, he's singing the lyrics. We're fucked.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love that. I love that ending.
Speaker 1: It is also the most about the movie. It is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is literally just like what if we had what
Speaker 1: if we had a nine in this movie? That and
Speaker 1: the scene where Neo has like followed the white Rabbit
Speaker 1: tattoo lady to the club and Rob Zombie is playing
Speaker 1: those are the two like, Yes, this movie is extremely
Speaker 1: from and it's it's obviously like all the tech, the
Speaker 1: cell phones and stuff is very the Nokia phone that
Speaker 1: comes out down. Yeah, every time Nokia got a shout out,
Speaker 1: I was like, good for them, Good for them. They
Speaker 1: they don't know that they're living in the best year
Speaker 1: that they're ever going to have right now, Let's just
Speaker 1: let them have it. I feel like Matrix four should
Speaker 1: bring Nokia back, like they should just yeah they If
Speaker 1: anything could it would be the fourth Matrix movie. It
Speaker 1: will completely revitalize the Nokia brand. One of my great
Speaker 1: dreams is to interview Lana Wachowski. She's famously pressed, shot,
Speaker 1: it's never going to happen, But I would just ask
Speaker 1: her about Nokia. I'd just be like, Heylan, Like, that's
Speaker 1: one of the things I hit Lana. I want to
Speaker 1: know how you feel about Nokia. Do you want to
Speaker 1: bring back the brand? Like? Are you concerned about their
Speaker 1: their market share? You know? I think we I think
Speaker 1: we have a lot in company. Um let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then we will come right back to
Speaker 1: discuss and we're back, all right, Where shall we begin, friends,
Speaker 1: where do you want to start? Well? Um, so, in
Speaker 1: in recent years, kind of in lieu of both which
Speaker 1: Houseki is coming out as trans women. The Matrix, especially
Speaker 1: the first movie has widely been interpreted as a trans allegory,
Speaker 1: which Emily you have written about, and I was just
Speaker 1: wondering if you could speak to that more, speak to
Speaker 1: your interpretation of the film as a trans metaphor. We'll
Speaker 1: be linking to your essay. You have no pressure to
Speaker 1: completely reiterate your essay, but actually I'm just going to
Speaker 1: pull it up and read it right. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: actually be amazing. I mean, the basic idea of it
Speaker 1: is that if you were trans or even just like
Speaker 1: gender nonconforming, gender curious, whatever, going online was like this
Speaker 1: revolutionary new way to explore like who's your real self,
Speaker 1: who's the person that you actually want to be? And
Speaker 1: and for many many, many many years, it's been rumored
Speaker 1: that the Witch Howskis wanted switch within the film to
Speaker 1: be a woman within the matrix and a man within reality,
Speaker 1: and Warner Brothers was like, no, and Kiana Reeves, I
Speaker 1: think actually like just confirmed that that's true, this sort
Speaker 1: of long standing rumor. When when I wrote my piece,
Speaker 1: I had like tracked it down to a couple of
Speaker 1: people where I was like, Okay, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: probably true, but like I could never verified and like
Speaker 1: Kianu now has confirmed it. Thank you Kiana for yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah it is. It is a movie about, you know,
Speaker 1: living a dual life. It is a movie about feeling
Speaker 1: like one person well you know, you're perceived as another.
Speaker 1: And it is very much driven by um is very
Speaker 1: much driven by these ideas of duality, and like there
Speaker 1: are just like little things like when Neo finds Trinity
Speaker 1: in the club, he says something like I wasn't expecting
Speaker 1: you to be a woman, and she says most guys
Speaker 1: don't um. And at the end, when Agent Smith is
Speaker 1: you know, beating up Neo, he continues to call Neo
Speaker 1: Mr Anderson, and Neo says, my name is Neo. It's
Speaker 1: you know, pretty classic dead naming allegory. And of course
Speaker 1: there's the famous thing of like, at the time the
Speaker 1: movie was made out, the pills that contained estrogen were read,
Speaker 1: so taking the red pill was estrogen or whatever. I think.
Speaker 1: And I say this as like the person that brought
Speaker 1: a lot of this into the mainstream by writing that essay.
Speaker 1: I think it is a little overstated that Wachowski is
Speaker 1: like Lily Wachowski has given an interview where she was like,
Speaker 1: I was not unconsciously thinking about that at the time.
Speaker 1: Now I see how it filtered in. But like creating
Speaker 1: this idea that like everything and it is an intentional allegory,
Speaker 1: I think kind of cheapens the movie and also cheapens
Speaker 1: trans storytelling in a lot of ways. But the thing
Speaker 1: that I think is is most trans about it is
Speaker 1: that the second that Neo learns that this one thing
Speaker 1: about his life is a lie, he becomes a communist.
Speaker 1: So um he he's just like I'm going to tear
Speaker 1: down modern society and blah blah blah blah blah. Like
Speaker 1: it is the thing I think gets lost a little
Speaker 1: bit and discussions of this film is how incredibly incredibly
Speaker 1: leftist it is, especially for and the sequels go even
Speaker 1: further in that regard. But yeah, like I think it
Speaker 1: is inescapable that there is a huge trans allegory read
Speaker 1: of this film. I'm just always very cautious of Like,
Speaker 1: it's not the only read of this movie that is valid.
Speaker 1: Just because two trans women made it doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: only way you can interpret it is as a trans allegory.
Speaker 1: That's just one of many ratings that sits alongside others,
Speaker 1: and like that that's not me saying that to you.
Speaker 1: That's me saying that to the internet, which is now,
Speaker 1: which is now, Like if you go on Twitter, they're like,
Speaker 1: here's this is a this is a thing. All trans
Speaker 1: people know is if you go on Twitter and you say,
Speaker 1: did you know the Matrix was a trans allegory made
Speaker 1: by two trans women and here's the reasons, you will
Speaker 1: get three thousand retweets in like an hour. Becausist people,
Speaker 1: This blows their fucking minds. They're just like, what the
Speaker 1: matrix I've seen that movie? Am I trans now? And
Speaker 1: then hopefully that like opens a door in their brain
Speaker 1: and they think about it. But yeah, it is. It
Speaker 1: is the thing, and I worry that it's the same
Speaker 1: thing that happened with the red Pill thing, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure we're going to we'll get into where the whole
Speaker 1: thing is, like, this is what the movie is about,
Speaker 1: and like, no movie this good is about one thing.
Speaker 1: So yes, trans allegory, but don't I wouldn't just boil
Speaker 1: it down to that except on Twitter if I want
Speaker 1: to get retweets. I mean, if you need some engagement,
Speaker 1: it's always going to be there in your back pocket,
Speaker 1: and exactly I can. I'll take that for view. Thank
Speaker 1: thank you for for for kind of unpacking that I
Speaker 1: think that it is, like, um, it's been interesting to
Speaker 1: watch the I mean even in truly the five years
Speaker 1: that I was not watching this movie, the conversation around
Speaker 1: this movie has changed so significantly, and a lot of
Speaker 1: it is because of your work, And I think it
Speaker 1: is like fascinating how many different ways there are to
Speaker 1: look at this movie and how the leftist read really
Speaker 1: stuck out to meet this time as well, and which
Speaker 1: makes it I think even more baffling and like awful
Speaker 1: that the red Pill discussion went the way it did
Speaker 1: because it's like, well, he's clearly being radicalized in a
Speaker 1: very particular direction. Did you watch the movie? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember when that piece published the Matrix piece on the
Speaker 1: twentieth anniversary of the movie, so b March nineteen. I
Speaker 1: just know when the Matrix came out. That's a thing
Speaker 1: that I just know. Um, there were so many people
Speaker 1: who tweeted that piece out, who like very prominent names
Speaker 1: within journalism, within the media, etcetera, who were just like,
Speaker 1: I thought this movie was a conservative screen because it
Speaker 1: had been like taken over by the red Pill people,
Speaker 1: and you know, they'd seen the Matrix, but they hadn't
Speaker 1: seen it in twenty years or whatever, so it had
Speaker 1: like calcified in their mind based on who was obsessed
Speaker 1: with it. So I do like the fact that there
Speaker 1: is this trans reading of it now because it has
Speaker 1: liberated the movie from this sort of fate it was
Speaker 1: going to meet. That would be similar to something like
Speaker 1: fight Club, where it is now just totally defined by
Speaker 1: its bad fans, even though you know it is not
Speaker 1: necessarily the movie they're selling it as right, And I
Speaker 1: think I think it's been really cool to Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm curious of in your thoughts and this
Speaker 1: as well, Emily, how Lana and Lily Wachowski have kind
Speaker 1: of engaged with the trans reading of the movie where
Speaker 1: it feels like I like their I like their style
Speaker 1: of like responding to stuff like this a lot, because
Speaker 1: it seems like they never bring up new reads of
Speaker 1: the movie, but it's brought to them and they're like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, that's like that is like, UM, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think that that the way that they
Speaker 1: engage with fans of the Matrix is so smart because
Speaker 1: it's not like they're resisting doing so at all, but
Speaker 1: they're all also not like, I don't know, going the
Speaker 1: other way that directors do sometimes where they're over engaging
Speaker 1: and creating new cannon and I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: they're so fucking cool. It's wild. Lily, Lily Witchusky works
Speaker 1: on this really great showtime show called Work in Progress, Um,
Speaker 1: and I got a chance to talk to her. I
Speaker 1: got a chance to talk to her a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago for that show, and I was like, how
Speaker 1: do I not just make this interview about the Matrix?
Speaker 1: Because she had the other people that work on that
Speaker 1: show with her there, so I had to also ask
Speaker 1: them questions, and I finally came up with, how is this,
Speaker 1: you know, this tiny little TV show that you make
Speaker 1: basically independently, how is that any continuum with the Matrix?
Speaker 1: And her answer was basically just like, I'm always trying
Speaker 1: to talk about the same things and it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: the size of the story. And I was like, thank you,
Speaker 1: Lily Witchowski, that's a great answer to that question, so amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just to kind of go back to the idea
Speaker 1: that a piece of media like this, especially because the
Speaker 1: director's intent was not specifically at the time to make
Speaker 1: this trans allegory. Because they're both trans women, it stands
Speaker 1: to reason that they might have written certain just little
Speaker 1: details or themes or something like that into the story
Speaker 1: kind of unconsciously, almost or subconsciously, but as you stated,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't like deliberately created as this specific allegory
Speaker 1: from a very intentional place. Because there are some movies
Speaker 1: that are like, whatever, what's his fate? Darren Aronofsky being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: mother exclamation point is that you've got like charts behind them.
Speaker 1: He's like, the allegory is very precise. You're like yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you watch the movie and you're like, what
Speaker 1: do you even what are you trying to say here?
Speaker 1: But like, the thing with a lot of metaphor and
Speaker 1: allegory found in art and in narratives is that it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily intentional, um, which does mean that it is
Speaker 1: open to interpretation. And I think that's just like a
Speaker 1: really cool thing about this movie and about the franchise,
Speaker 1: and not only that the movie explores all these like
Speaker 1: philosophical things. I remember I took a class as a
Speaker 1: freshman in college and wrote a paper about the matrix.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure you can imagine how brilliant of a
Speaker 1: piece of writing that was. But it was a class
Speaker 1: called like Philosophy, Art and Film, and you had to
Speaker 1: like watch a movie and then take like a philosopher's
Speaker 1: philosophy and then apply it to the movie. So I
Speaker 1: don't even know what philosophy I was trying to like
Speaker 1: attach to the matrix, but I remember I was I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, I'm so freaking deep right now,
Speaker 1: I'm so about this movie is about choice and it's
Speaker 1: about duality, and it's about fate or what if there's
Speaker 1: not fate, and like just like all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, I feel like this movie is just
Speaker 1: so rich in that way that it is open to
Speaker 1: a lot of interpretations and a lot of analysis from
Speaker 1: many different perspectives. So our eighteen year old self sort
Speaker 1: of totally vibe that's what you're saying. Just just talks
Speaker 1: talks the matrix and be like, you know what's kind
Speaker 1: of about every philosophy, right, That's like part of what
Speaker 1: makes this movie so cool and why I feel like
Speaker 1: there there are so many different lenses to view with
Speaker 1: its like there is a trans allegory in here. There
Speaker 1: is a like leftist radicalization in there, and it's because
Speaker 1: it's so unique to who these filmmakers are. So it's like,
Speaker 1: of course all this stuff is showing up. And I like,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are two of the most distinct filmmakers
Speaker 1: in the entire world, like and and I really like,
Speaker 1: I mean just truly, as a new convert to the
Speaker 1: matrix fandom, I was so blown away and impressed with
Speaker 1: how many I mean you said now Aronofsky is stuck
Speaker 1: in my mind because this is what I struggle with
Speaker 1: with him in certain cases, as like, you know, the
Speaker 1: Waaskis are able to take so much complicated stuff and
Speaker 1: make it fun and engaging to watch and it's moving
Speaker 1: the story, where like other filmmakers are like really getting
Speaker 1: bogged down and trying to let you know that they've
Speaker 1: read a book and you're like it's fine, Like I
Speaker 1: believe you, but I'm so bored and I don't know.
Speaker 1: They're just they're so fucking smart. Um, you know, I think, um,
Speaker 1: this is the famously a movie, Um that it blends
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of influences. You know, it blends in anime,
Speaker 1: at blends in also known as kung fu movies, It
Speaker 1: blends in like like there's a lot of James Cameron
Speaker 1: in this movie, which I don't know that I every
Speaker 1: time I rewatched him, Like this is like this is
Speaker 1: very on a line with like Aliens or True Lies
Speaker 1: or some of those movies. And I think that people
Speaker 1: miss how many like intellectual influences are also in there,
Speaker 1: and like so like the trance stuff is in there,
Speaker 1: the pilosophy stuff is in there, but also just like
Speaker 1: they clearly had read a lot of you know, Gnome
Speaker 1: Chompski and stuff that just gets dropped in there. But
Speaker 1: it's all in the package of this huge, big budget
Speaker 1: action movie that totally works as an action movie. You
Speaker 1: can detach from all of that and still enjoy this.
Speaker 1: It's and I think that's why it's so perfect is
Speaker 1: because it works on like sixteen levels at once. I
Speaker 1: read on our favorite scholarly journal Wikipedia that the Lilian
Speaker 1: Lana Wichowski required the cast to be able to explain
Speaker 1: what the Matrix is and they made them read and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to pronounce this correctly, but simulacra and
Speaker 1: simulation from French philosopher Jean bald God Jean or something.
Speaker 1: I do not speak French, but um yeah, the Witch
Speaker 1: House kis were like, Kianu Reeves, We're going to require
Speaker 1: that you understand a lot of heavy philosophy to be
Speaker 1: able to be in this movie. I love that. And now,
Speaker 1: just like knowing what sort of person Kianu rees is,
Speaker 1: at least in the public facing way, you're just like,
Speaker 1: he was so down for that. I don't know. There
Speaker 1: we talked about this in the Matrix episode that no
Speaker 1: longer exists, but I used to work at a bookstore
Speaker 1: as my first I worked at book Soup in l
Speaker 1: A and that was my first job when I moved here.
Speaker 1: And Kianu Reeves would come every Wednesday night on his
Speaker 1: motorcycle and get a new book and Sudoku puzzles and
Speaker 1: he's a he's a bookhead. I think it's so cool
Speaker 1: that that they gave him homework. I also just like,
Speaker 1: as someone who does not have the confidence to give
Speaker 1: someone homework, I love that the witch House skis were like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna need to get a library card and really
Speaker 1: put in some hours because the test is on Monday.
Speaker 1: Before I would agree to come on the show, I
Speaker 1: required you both to read Jock Alldy yards uh similar
Speaker 1: cromin Simulation. So I'd like to leave like a ten
Speaker 1: minute discussion of that right now. And what your thoughts were? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I thought it was really good. I liked it.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite plot twist? I thought it was a
Speaker 1: derivative if you're asking me. I liked when Simulacra and
Speaker 1: Simulation met for the first time. I thought it was
Speaker 1: so I love when they kiss at the end. So romantic,
Speaker 1: I know. And you're like, Simulation loved Simulacra so much
Speaker 1: the whole time, and Simulacra had no idea, but then
Speaker 1: when they heard it, they were It was just I
Speaker 1: thought it was beautiful. Another iconic lesbian romance exactly. I
Speaker 1: did think it was a little weird when it was
Speaker 1: revealed that they were the same person, but that's also
Speaker 1: iconic lesbian cinema. So yeah, I I you know, I
Speaker 1: liked the duality. I liked the tone, I liked the ideas,
Speaker 1: and I loved reading the index. Also, we're all we're
Speaker 1: all going to have somebody with high as skywriter above
Speaker 1: our houses to say reads Simulation, you assholes reads I
Speaker 1: dare you? Oh my gosh, I yeah, I just god,
Speaker 1: I love I mean, there is a part of that
Speaker 1: anecdote that makes me feel like I'm being like I
Speaker 1: was like, oh yeah, this is this is kind of
Speaker 1: just a simulation of being in the d s A
Speaker 1: where everyone's like, have you read this book, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I haven't. I just want everyone to have health insurance.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The thing that this is this is A
Speaker 1: tweeted about this several times. The thing that like like
Speaker 1: most makes me stand out at like when I hang
Speaker 1: out with with other leftists, is like, I have super
Speaker 1: normy pop culture days. I'm yeah, well you know, I like,
Speaker 1: you know, these extremely mainstream HBO shows and they're like,
Speaker 1: what about this? And I don't know. That's fine too.
Speaker 1: You want to talk about six USh and everybody, right right,
Speaker 1: I know, it's just I, um the leftist. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love him to death. And make room for us
Speaker 1: basic gals because we have something to bring to the
Speaker 1: table too. Yeah, you want to listen to Taylor Swift together.
Speaker 1: You want to recruit people into the movement, you gotta
Speaker 1: be able to talk about what happened on Succession last week. Sorry, um,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break and then we will come
Speaker 1: back for more discussion, and we're back. One last comment
Speaker 1: on the homework section. I just like that that section
Speaker 1: ends with Carrie and Moss commented that she had difficulty
Speaker 1: with this process. Kotu was like, yes, more books, and
Speaker 1: She's like, I did not sign up for this. I
Speaker 1: thought I was going to be wearing a jacket and fighting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how much of her fighting
Speaker 1: in the movie is like stunt people, but it seems
Speaker 1: like a lot of the actors were like trained in
Speaker 1: martial arts and doing a lot of their own stunts
Speaker 1: and fight choreography, which is very impressed by. So she
Speaker 1: was probably just busy learning like martial arts, and she
Speaker 1: didn't have time to read a book, much like us.
Speaker 1: I remember Laurence Fishburne was on Hannibal and Um I
Speaker 1: talked to Brian Fuller a lot around that show, and
Speaker 1: he was like, sometime between season one and season two,
Speaker 1: Lawrence fishburn came to him and was like, listen, Briant,
Speaker 1: I have all this kung fu training from the Matrix.
Speaker 1: Can I get in a fight? And like, there's an
Speaker 1: amazing fight in season two that was inspired entirely by
Speaker 1: him being like, Brian Fuller, I know how to fight,
Speaker 1: Please let me fight. So, yeah, they did a lot
Speaker 1: of their own stuff. Yeah, that's so cool. I guess
Speaker 1: if I knew how to do kung fu, I would
Speaker 1: just try to work it into whatever I did for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. Also, that's so cool. Really
Speaker 1: hard to do in an audio medium, is the thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I would definitely try and work. At end
Speaker 1: of season three of Our yeah, I mean just just
Speaker 1: again leak leak the zoom call, you know, our hair
Speaker 1: looks great. We have kung fu skills to show off.
Speaker 1: What are we doing? I wanted to talk about the
Speaker 1: film itself, the narrative, the characters, because I think we've
Speaker 1: got an interesting cast of characters here, and I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons the movie holds up as well
Speaker 1: as it does. I think one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: I was so attached to it as a young person
Speaker 1: is like the badassary of Trinity. And this was like
Speaker 1: the bulk of our conversation on the again first version
Speaker 1: of this episode that no longer exists. But um, the
Speaker 1: tapes we should we should drop. We still have the
Speaker 1: audio file in our Google drive. We should drop a
Speaker 1: little because that was fun for our listeners to go
Speaker 1: back and be like, wow, Jamie didn't make a definitive
Speaker 1: statement the whole I am interesting. So yeah, maybe on
Speaker 1: our Patreon will like leak a couple of minutes or something.
Speaker 1: Shame anyways, But um, I feel almost like simple being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Trinity is so cool and badass, and like watching her
Speaker 1: fight competently and like know how to hack, and like, no,
Speaker 1: she's just she's equipped with with a lot of skills.
Speaker 1: But I never felt that she fell into like the
Speaker 1: Merry Sue type. I like it's implied that she's had
Speaker 1: extensive training to Like, the more you get to know
Speaker 1: her character, it's like, you know, how why why she
Speaker 1: can do what she does? Write different characters, and it's
Speaker 1: often like the villains are constantly underestimating her. Also where
Speaker 1: there's like the movie opens on that sequence where there's
Speaker 1: like a cop who's like, oh, we can handle one
Speaker 1: little girl, and then Agent Smith, who know who Trinity
Speaker 1: is and like understands the extent of her capabilities, is like, no, Lieutenant,
Speaker 1: your men are already dead. And that was an amazing
Speaker 1: Hugo Weaving impression. Thank you so much. That was good.
Speaker 1: That was good. How did those gorgeous lips just like,
Speaker 1: just like Mr Hugo does Hugo Leaving weavings. Lips are
Speaker 1: so distracting in this movie, And I like in a
Speaker 1: good way, but I was just like, I just wasn't
Speaker 1: expecting those beautiful lips out that whole time. Wow, there's
Speaker 1: a part at the very end it's like the final
Speaker 1: battle between him and Neo, and again he's constantly calling
Speaker 1: Neo Mr Anderson throughout the whole movie, and his voice
Speaker 1: gets really gravelly at one point, and he's just like
Speaker 1: Mr Randerson, It's incredible, and then like Neo Neo kind
Speaker 1: of like flexes and like you see dust come off
Speaker 1: of his shirt and then he just like starts to
Speaker 1: be Agent Smith's ass uh, it's so good anyway. My
Speaker 1: point is people people are often underestimating trinity, which is
Speaker 1: something that many women can identify with. Um, even Neo,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned Emily Um, there's that scene where he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're the Trinity who cracked the I R S D
Speaker 1: base and she's like, yes, but that was a long
Speaker 1: time ago. I'm humble. And then he's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: just thought you were a guy, and she's like most
Speaker 1: guys do. Um. I don't know, just like those little
Speaker 1: nuggets in there, they're kind of like not like throwaway
Speaker 1: moments really, but just like little details that I found
Speaker 1: made that character just like especially relatable and and I
Speaker 1: like that it's like they're not I don't know. There
Speaker 1: are certain movies where it's like those moments come off
Speaker 1: as extremely over the top, and like I feel like
Speaker 1: we've talked about a lot of action movies where there's
Speaker 1: like the like you're a googoogo girl, like in the
Speaker 1: middle of a scene. But it's just like, even though
Speaker 1: that moment happens, it's just a natural part of the scene,
Speaker 1: and it's not like the reaction from Neo isn't like
Speaker 1: I found out that like a woman is an incredible
Speaker 1: hacker and I'm upset about it. He's just like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess my assumption was wrong. And then the scene
Speaker 1: continues and it's like, Oh, I didn't realize that. What
Speaker 1: a relief that is to watch someone react like that.
Speaker 1: The sympathy of that moment in that scene is with Trinity,
Speaker 1: and that's why it works because you're like, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's been underestimated. That fucking sucks because I already know
Speaker 1: she can kick people in the face, you know or whatever.
Speaker 1: You mentioning how how much hacking is in this movie
Speaker 1: reminds me. This is other influence in the film that's
Speaker 1: totally been forgotten, which is mid nineties movies about the
Speaker 1: Internet that trying to like personify like this is just
Speaker 1: Sonder blocks the Net, but like a little bit better,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, the net. We should cover the net.
Speaker 1: We should cover the net. We've covered hack. I'll come
Speaker 1: on to talk about the net anytime, please come back
Speaker 1: into the net. Oh my god. Um. There's another small
Speaker 1: moment that's like again very fleeting, but just like relatable
Speaker 1: and and I really appreciated it where Neo has taken
Speaker 1: the red pill. They're kind of like preparing him to
Speaker 1: be unplugged from the matrix and like Trinity is hooking
Speaker 1: him up to a bunch of like apparatus and Neo
Speaker 1: is just like, you did all this to Trinity and
Speaker 1: she was just like mm hmmm. So like it was
Speaker 1: just like a nice moment where he like recognizes that
Speaker 1: she probably put in all of this effort and like
Speaker 1: did all this work and like set up this whole thing,
Speaker 1: especially now that he knows that she's the one who,
Speaker 1: like how's all these amazing like hacking and computer skills.
Speaker 1: And then she's just like uh huh, yeah I did that,
Speaker 1: like very matter of fact ye, And he's just like cool.
Speaker 1: And because like so many movies, like you said, Jamie,
Speaker 1: there would be if we saw a woman like doing
Speaker 1: something impressive, or we saw like you know, kicking or
Speaker 1: hacking or something, the guys would be like what boner right, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they'd like instantly fall in love with her,
Speaker 1: and they were like jaws would drop and they just
Speaker 1: like wouldn't know how to turn into that corny cartoon
Speaker 1: wolf right, and they just wouldn't know how to comprehend that,
Speaker 1: like a woman is capable of something, especially something that
Speaker 1: they assume would be something that only a man could do.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just these like little moments that we like
Speaker 1: learn things about her character, we learn about her abilities,
Speaker 1: and it's just presented a very matter of factly and
Speaker 1: in a way that like Neo immediately accepts and there
Speaker 1: is I think, um, some of those moments where people
Speaker 1: are like, whoa Trinity, you can do things? Um, they
Speaker 1: feel so much like studio notes. They feel so much
Speaker 1: like somebody at the exact level was like, well, if
Speaker 1: she's with all these computers, someone has to note that
Speaker 1: she did that, and that's unusual because she's a girl,
Speaker 1: And so they put that in the script and like
Speaker 1: most directors would make a big moment of that. But
Speaker 1: like the Witch, how skis, even if they were not
Speaker 1: aware of their transness at the time, their sympathies are
Speaker 1: always with Trinity because they are in fact women, uh,
Speaker 1: And like that makes those moments play because you're not
Speaker 1: like sitting there and being like, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is so condescending because it's it is like a thing
Speaker 1: that would have been condescending in any other movie with
Speaker 1: the exact same dialogue. It's just like how they wait
Speaker 1: that scene. I was. I was. I was kind of
Speaker 1: challenged by a lot of moments in the movie for
Speaker 1: that exact reason, where it's like on paper, if you
Speaker 1: hear like a similar thing with with Joey Pants, when
Speaker 1: you find out that Joey Pants has been lusting after
Speaker 1: Trinity was. At first, it being my first time encountering
Speaker 1: this plot point, I was like, Oh cool, we're adding
Speaker 1: in a spiteful ex boyfriend character to the one woman
Speaker 1: we're going to get to know during this movie, Like
Speaker 1: where is this gonna go? But the way I don't know.
Speaker 1: I generally felt like the way that that storyline play out.
Speaker 1: I just feel like almost any other director would have
Speaker 1: implied that Trinity had somehow brought this upon herself, that
Speaker 1: she could have handled rejecting Joey Pants in a different
Speaker 1: way that would have prevented this outcome. But this movie
Speaker 1: doesn't go for that at all. It presents the spiteful
Speaker 1: Joey Pants ex boyfriend, of which there are unfortunately many
Speaker 1: in the world, and does not blame the woman who
Speaker 1: is being raged at for what is happening, which again
Speaker 1: is just like I feel like that just wasn't happening
Speaker 1: a lot in movies at that time, and I was
Speaker 1: I ended up being kind of pleasantly surprised by I mean,
Speaker 1: and again, it's like, that's scraps, but it it. I
Speaker 1: was surprised that was how that story kind of played out.
Speaker 1: What if every shitty, spiteful ex boyfriend turned into a
Speaker 1: clone of Joe Pantoliano, like Agent Smith overtaking someone in
Speaker 1: the matrix. Now that's a movie, I hope. I hope
Speaker 1: that's Resurrections that they just had start showing it. I
Speaker 1: did want to talk a little bit about the romantic
Speaker 1: subplot between Trinity and Neo, because that's the one aspect
Speaker 1: of this movie where I get a little I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, entering it in, I feel like it
Speaker 1: stood out to me a little bit more because I
Speaker 1: didn't have any nostalgia for the movie, and also because
Speaker 1: we recently covered speed in this movie, which ends with
Speaker 1: Kanu getting a little a little slurp at the end
Speaker 1: a plot resolving slurp if you will. Yeah, my main gripes,
Speaker 1: I don't even hate that it's there. You know, movies
Speaker 1: be movies, and movies have hetero romantic subplots in them often,
Speaker 1: but I don't there there are heterosexual I know. Is
Speaker 1: that's still a thing. God, I'm actually writing standout material
Speaker 1: about this as we speak, But um my gripes with
Speaker 1: it are that Neo being brought back to life by
Speaker 1: like Trinity's love and kiss to me that almost read
Speaker 1: is like because it's a it's a surprise kiss of
Speaker 1: Trinity kissing Neo while he's unconscious, like the prince in
Speaker 1: snow White bringing back to life, like that whole fairytale thing.
Speaker 1: It's like why you're like, don't don't kiss an unconscious
Speaker 1: person they cannot consent and stop showing that in movies. Also,
Speaker 1: um my other question I'm interested to hear people's thoughts
Speaker 1: about this, is so the oracle prophesied that or does
Speaker 1: that a word prophecied? Made a prophecy, she did a prophecy.
Speaker 1: She did she did a prophecy that Trinity would fall
Speaker 1: in love and that that man would be the one.
Speaker 1: And then that ends up being true. My question is,
Speaker 1: does it feel like that kind of removes agency from
Speaker 1: Trinity or is that not how prophecies work? No, I do,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I My feeling on that
Speaker 1: was like, if we're I, Trinity receiving my prophecy, of
Speaker 1: which you seem to only get one, I would be
Speaker 1: sort of let down that the prophecy seemed to have
Speaker 1: actually not that much to do with me, and more
Speaker 1: like a second prophecy for a different person. Like I
Speaker 1: do think that there's like that trope that you see
Speaker 1: a million times of like a woman's love will you know,
Speaker 1: it's like Helen of troy Ship. You know, a woman's
Speaker 1: love will resolve the plot or the war, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: that's definitely present here. I don't know, I mean in
Speaker 1: terms of agency, I guess I hadn't really considered that,
Speaker 1: But I think that that's where of a testament to Like,
Speaker 1: it feels so clear in the plot that Trinity and
Speaker 1: and EEO should be together that if I felt like
Speaker 1: there wasn't chemistry between those characters, um and that I
Speaker 1: wanted them to kiss so badly, maybe maybe that would
Speaker 1: have told me. I don't know that it does then
Speaker 1: I mean when you think about the prophecy that Morpheus received,
Speaker 1: which was you're going to find the one. Neo's prophecy
Speaker 1: is you are the one as long as you believe
Speaker 1: that you're the one, and once you believe that you're
Speaker 1: the one, then you're the one. Those are prophecies that
Speaker 1: have to do with them, right. And then Trinity's prophecy
Speaker 1: is You're going to fall in love with a man,
Speaker 1: which feels it feels like a very gendered choice. But again,
Speaker 1: I don't even hate that the love stories there, but
Speaker 1: it does, know, I mean, I like the love story.
Speaker 1: I do think that the two sequels really do a
Speaker 1: lot to further sell it. And I'm always like reading
Speaker 1: who those two characters become back onto the first movie,
Speaker 1: but I remember I was very much like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know this love story. I I think they have
Speaker 1: good chemistry, but I'm not sure it was needed. But
Speaker 1: like Matrix Reloaded especially has some great stuff for those
Speaker 1: two characters to sort of bounce off of each other.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like if it wasn't for their chemistry, I
Speaker 1: don't think it would work. Fortunately they have amazing chemistry. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. I do feel like there are there are
Speaker 1: some kind of and Emily, once you brought up studio notes,
Speaker 1: now I can't stop thinking of, like, well, at what
Speaker 1: you know? I now I want to blame everything I
Speaker 1: didn't love about the movie on studio notes, but who knows.
Speaker 1: I do feel like it would have been just as
Speaker 1: easy and it wouldn't have impacted the story for them
Speaker 1: to not get together in that way and be like
Speaker 1: a team. And I think that that would have been
Speaker 1: just as strong a choice and would have worked completely fine,
Speaker 1: and the love story didn't have to be there. I
Speaker 1: didn't hate that it was there, but I felt like, yeah,
Speaker 1: my my main thing was like we especially because the
Speaker 1: movie starts with just a long introduction to how fucking
Speaker 1: cool and capable and brilliant Trinity is for her to
Speaker 1: get uh message like that from the oracle and then
Speaker 1: just have it bear out and not have Trinity, I
Speaker 1: mean she it's I thought it was interesting because in
Speaker 1: the movie she seems kind of annoyed that that is
Speaker 1: what she was told, or like very conflicted of like
Speaker 1: that's what I have to learn, like because it just
Speaker 1: we know, like we've seen how much she can do.
Speaker 1: It doesn't quite make sense that her fate would be
Speaker 1: so limited in the way that it's presented. There's a
Speaker 1: great piece on the sadly defunct website that dissolved by
Speaker 1: um Tasha Robinson about this very thing about how many
Speaker 1: movies have a basically a trinity character who's badass and
Speaker 1: capable and can do anything, and then her story ends
Speaker 1: up being but also she falls in love with the guy,
Speaker 1: and the Matrix actually does a pretty good job with
Speaker 1: that idea, and it's sort of the innovator of that trope,
Speaker 1: which is I think why in some ways it gets
Speaker 1: away with it. But then by the time she wrote
Speaker 1: it in, it's just like everywhere and it's not doing anything.
Speaker 1: It's just like sitting there taking up space and having
Speaker 1: the illusion of strong women characters while never actually having
Speaker 1: to create a strong women character. They're creating the trappings
Speaker 1: of one without actually having to make a full character.
Speaker 1: By the way, do you think people go to the
Speaker 1: oracle and get just like really boring prophecies? Do you
Speaker 1: think the oracles ever just like Jamie, you've seen the
Speaker 1: most beautiful duck you'll ever see already, Like, do you
Speaker 1: think that ever just comes up? And then I would
Speaker 1: just walk into traffic afterwards, I'd be like, well, thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, I hope so I well, we'll get to
Speaker 1: the oracle, whole, whole whole discussion to be had there.
Speaker 1: I God, that's my that's my worst fear is to
Speaker 1: encounter someone who's just like, yeah, your best days are
Speaker 1: very much behind you, so just write it out. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, Jamie you pointed out the movie opens with this,
Speaker 1: like the whole sequence showcasing Trinity and her skills. Like
Speaker 1: for this action movie to open on an action set piece,
Speaker 1: which is not uncommon for an action movie, but for
Speaker 1: that action set piece to center around a woman and
Speaker 1: a woman who's not even the protagonist, because you would
Speaker 1: expect that from something like Laura Croft tomb Raider or
Speaker 1: something like that. But we get this whole set piece
Speaker 1: where we see a woman fighting and kicking ass, and
Speaker 1: she doesn't even end up being the protagonist of the narrative.
Speaker 1: I think is like, I don't know where else I've
Speaker 1: ever seen that. I don't think really anywhere. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think just to kind of jump back to how yeah,
Speaker 1: before this, and especially like action movies and action franchises,
Speaker 1: the one woman character who we get to know pretty well,
Speaker 1: would be framed only as the romantic interest who maybe
Speaker 1: gets like dragged along for the ride, but isn't participating
Speaker 1: in an any of the action or the plot herself,
Speaker 1: and it's just kind of like present for the man
Speaker 1: to eventually kiss at the end. Whereas this movie, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know there are other examples before this,
Speaker 1: but like I feel like this is one of the
Speaker 1: ones that like kind of popularized or like actually gave
Speaker 1: the woman more agency, more to do, more skills, and
Speaker 1: actually allowed her to participate in the plot in more
Speaker 1: meaningful ways, but still couldn't quite stick the landing on
Speaker 1: given her the full story. Right, there's there's really before
Speaker 1: this movie. There is. If you're a woman in a movie,
Speaker 1: you are just an incredible badass. Woman in an action movie,
Speaker 1: you're just an incredible badass. Usually there's not a man around,
Speaker 1: like the kind of the one exception I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: right now is um Linda Hamilton's and Terminator to but
Speaker 1: even like in the first Terminator, she falls in love
Speaker 1: with this guy and has sex with him, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: or you are the love interest, you know um, So
Speaker 1: this is the first movie that tries to blend those
Speaker 1: two but it is very much like at the end
Speaker 1: they have to pick one of those two corridors and
Speaker 1: they pick the wrong one. To my mind, it's messy
Speaker 1: and it's and it's like we're it's not even like
Speaker 1: we're suggesting that women who can execute perfect fight choreography
Speaker 1: and hack a computer don't deserve love if they want
Speaker 1: love or and they want a relationship, But it's like
Speaker 1: more the way that it's executed and how what we're
Speaker 1: told in the first half of the movie is what
Speaker 1: makes her special, isn't what makes her special or relevant
Speaker 1: to the plot by the end, And that is like
Speaker 1: I don't know if that all like played in and
Speaker 1: she wants a boyfriend. Amazing, great love that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Definitely a little bit messy, but still
Speaker 1: I mean I keep every time I like Peel, the
Speaker 1: need to qualify it at every turn as like, but
Speaker 1: it's doing way better than any other movie was doing
Speaker 1: at this time, like by quite a bit. So I
Speaker 1: feel like, yeah, that's there's a lot of product of
Speaker 1: its time. Zenous to that choice along the lines of
Speaker 1: this being a product of its time. This is a
Speaker 1: movie from as we've stated at nine nine is just
Speaker 1: clogged with movies that are about, well, we've reached the
Speaker 1: end of history capitalism one and everything's great. Why do
Speaker 1: I feel hollow inside? And like there's like five or
Speaker 1: six that come out in even more if you include
Speaker 1: two thousand. But the Matrix is the one that's held
Speaker 1: up best to my mind because it has this larger
Speaker 1: critique of everything feels empty because you have been misled
Speaker 1: by corporations and governments and all these systems to think
Speaker 1: that you do not have any actual human connection. And
Speaker 1: the truth is you should have human connection. You should
Speaker 1: move to a city at the center of the earth
Speaker 1: and just funck everyone you see, Like that is the
Speaker 1: message of these movies. But like you know, you compare
Speaker 1: it to something like American Beauty, which one best picture
Speaker 1: that year, And it's just that that vision of like
Speaker 1: what it means to be alive is like so shallow,
Speaker 1: and this movie's vision of what it means to be
Speaker 1: alive is so rich and fascinating and weird and complicated.
Speaker 1: And um, I think that is to the credit of
Speaker 1: the Witch, how skis whatever stumbles they may have made
Speaker 1: along the way. Sure, I totally yeah. I just love Trinity,
Speaker 1: and I also love how there. I don't know the
Speaker 1: way that the characters are presented in this movie. I
Speaker 1: know it's just like a part of the aesthetic of
Speaker 1: this world as it is. But the women in this
Speaker 1: world are not aggressively sexualized. You know. Everyone is basically
Speaker 1: wearing the same exact outfit. Everyone has a variation on
Speaker 1: the same exact haircut, and then everyone has the jawline
Speaker 1: to pull off that haircut. And don't don't get us wrong,
Speaker 1: Trinity is very sexy. But yes, I agree everyone sexually
Speaker 1: everyone's sexually am sexy, but yeah, not overtly sexualized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind know that it is kind of that nineties
Speaker 1: Internet aesthetic where it's like, well, online everyone's the same.
Speaker 1: Everyone just kind of looks the same, has the same
Speaker 1: vibe on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog
Speaker 1: whatever that cartoon was at the time. Like, um, and
Speaker 1: I when I've watched the trailer for this there's a
Speaker 1: lot more less homogeneity, you know, within that world. And
Speaker 1: I think it's because now we understand the Internet can
Speaker 1: be as terrible as real life too, if not worse.
Speaker 1: I wanted to uh, we even talked too much about Morpheus,
Speaker 1: yet I wanted to talk about Morpheus a little bit.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, because he's amazing, he's great, um,
Speaker 1: But there was as I was going back to it,
Speaker 1: so I was doing the always interesting but sometimes unpleasant
Speaker 1: task of going back to the original round of criticism
Speaker 1: for this movie in the late nineties, going into kind
Speaker 1: of like movie blogs of the early two thousands, and
Speaker 1: there was, I think, especially in the earlier years of
Speaker 1: this movie, a fair amount of criticism around mystical black
Speaker 1: character tropes used in the writing of Morpheus's character as
Speaker 1: well as the oracle. UM. So I kind of wanted
Speaker 1: to uh open the floor on on that topic to
Speaker 1: I mean, the criticism that I was seeing and we
Speaker 1: can um link this in the description as well, is
Speaker 1: that and we've discussed this, I mean we we just
Speaker 1: discussed this on the show in our full Court Miracle
Speaker 1: episode or that troupe couldn't be more different movies, but
Speaker 1: the trope is at play to varying degrees in both
Speaker 1: of these movies that are made by and you know,
Speaker 1: made and written by white filmmakers, in which essentially black
Speaker 1: character appears as this mystical fairy godmother plot advancement character
Speaker 1: for the chosen white protagonist, whether that be Neo or
Speaker 1: the kid in Full Court Miracle. You know, it just
Speaker 1: it just all depends um. And I mean I I
Speaker 1: think that it's absolutely a valid criticism of the way
Speaker 1: that those characters are written. Not the worst example, but
Speaker 1: um certainly is present. I think Originally, I mean, the
Speaker 1: term was originally used by Spike Lee in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, and I have an old Salon article up
Speaker 1: here which really takes me back. But the character is
Speaker 1: being cited. When this term was first coined. Was Kuba
Speaker 1: Gooding Jr. In What Dreams May Come, which is a
Speaker 1: movie I haven't seen that's about a spirit guide helping
Speaker 1: Robin Williams rescue his wife from hell. Question mark um
Speaker 1: will Smith in the Legend of Bagger vans Uh Laurence
Speaker 1: Fishburne in The Matrix, which is described as in this
Speaker 1: as obi Wana. Kiana Reeves is Luke Skywalker, and Michael
Speaker 1: Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile, in which he plays
Speaker 1: a man on death Row who has healing powers and
Speaker 1: heels white characters. Do you want to know the Supper
Speaker 1: Eyes twist of What Dreams May Come? What Cooper Gooding Jr.
Speaker 1: Is playing Robin williams son in disguise to like lead
Speaker 1: him through the afterlife, because if it was his actual son,
Speaker 1: Robin Williams wouldn't like go along with it. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's very weird. I have never heard of this movie,
Speaker 1: and but um, yeah, so I did. I did want to,
Speaker 1: you know, just bring that criticism up, because it's uh,
Speaker 1: something that comes up quite a bit in movies still.
Speaker 1: But I think in a high density of movies of
Speaker 1: this kind of stretch of years in the late nineties
Speaker 1: into their early two thousands, sure it does. One thing
Speaker 1: I like about the casting of the fourth movie is
Speaker 1: it seems, yes, they have abdual Matine playing who is
Speaker 1: obviously the Morpheus character. Um, but they have a bunch
Speaker 1: of other actors of color and different roles that look
Speaker 1: like they're going to be all kind of over the map,
Speaker 1: and I think that will help with this issue. I
Speaker 1: do think I think that like this is obviously a
Speaker 1: valid and important criticism of the film. I do think
Speaker 1: that there is the thing of you know, they get
Speaker 1: considered a lot of different actors for the role of Morpheus.
Speaker 1: They settled on Ward's fishburn, should they when they settled
Speaker 1: on him, did they settle on him because they had
Speaker 1: certain you know, racist stereotypical ideas that you know, we're
Speaker 1: in their heads already, you know, we can't know that.
Speaker 1: But I do think once you've cast a black actor
Speaker 1: in a role like this, you do have sort of
Speaker 1: the burden of going back over the script and being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: are there ways we can complicate this? Are other ways
Speaker 1: we can make it more interesting? That said, I think
Speaker 1: that Morpheus is nowhere near Kuba cutting juniors. Like he's
Speaker 1: a fully realized human being, and like, sometimes the tropes
Speaker 1: are bad because they we just lean on the tropes,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the tropes exist because we need certain tropes
Speaker 1: to tell us worries. We're not saying we need this one.
Speaker 1: But Morpheus is a fully realized human being, and I
Speaker 1: think that keeps him from falling into the worst examples
Speaker 1: of this. The thing that and again it's like we're
Speaker 1: we're three white women here, and I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: extremely white. When I said big Greece witherspin energy, I
Speaker 1: was describing myself. Uh, but but I did, I mean
Speaker 1: the only thing that this is even like pushing back
Speaker 1: at all. But like Will Smith almost played Neo is
Speaker 1: another thing that I kind of took into consideration when
Speaker 1: I was just kind of going through this criticism is
Speaker 1: I think that I totally agree with the Emily where
Speaker 1: it is on the filmmakers once they've made their casting
Speaker 1: decisions to consider, you know, whether intended or not, what
Speaker 1: might be coming across, and and take that into consideration
Speaker 1: with how characters are presented and how their their storylines unfold.
Speaker 1: But it does seem like the cast I mean, reading
Speaker 1: about the casting process for The Matrix outside of this
Speaker 1: discussion is just very interesting. Will Smith has made so
Speaker 1: many YouTube videos about how he almost took his part.
Speaker 1: He's still mad about it. There's one in particular that
Speaker 1: like involves some animation and he like it's so funny.
Speaker 1: He's spending money telling people that he was almost in
Speaker 1: the Matrix, Like it's funny, it's amazing. So I I
Speaker 1: think that you know, where the casting dead land. It's
Speaker 1: a valid criticism and and you know, I think we're
Speaker 1: being made now, Like if this movie was coming out now,
Speaker 1: it would be something that would be taken into account
Speaker 1: carefully because Spike Lee made this criticism of all of
Speaker 1: these movies. So yeah, and I definitely think the Oracle
Speaker 1: does fall a bit more into that trope, for I mean,
Speaker 1: because we know nothing about her. She's in one scene,
Speaker 1: and everything we know about her is that she seems
Speaker 1: to have these like kind of otherworldly clairvoyant capabilities that
Speaker 1: no one else has. So yeah, she is presented as
Speaker 1: this very like mystical figure. I love that performer though.
Speaker 1: Gloria Foster so good and so there's something so warm
Speaker 1: about her and like I wish we'd gotten ten million
Speaker 1: more performances from her. She's so good. Yeah, she's also
Speaker 1: in the Matrix Reloaded, and then I believe that actor
Speaker 1: died before they shot Revolutions, but the character is still
Speaker 1: there and they actually comment on like why she looks
Speaker 1: different because she gets a different actor gets cast to
Speaker 1: play the Oracle in Matrix Revolutions. But um, yeah, that
Speaker 1: actor was incredible and like funny too in a movie
Speaker 1: that doesn't have a ton of like very light calming scenes.
Speaker 1: It's just I don't know, And and the set design,
Speaker 1: the kitchen, the green kitchen that she's in is so
Speaker 1: I don't know. She's she's good, she's very good, but
Speaker 1: I do think also cleanly falls into that chap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just saw that Will Smith turned this movie down
Speaker 1: to do Wild Wild West. Yeah, yes, isn't it. So
Speaker 1: that's why he's so bad about it and he'll never
Speaker 1: get over it is because he didn't just turn it
Speaker 1: down to do a different good movie. He turned it
Speaker 1: down to do because of my favorite bad movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll send you the link to the video where he
Speaker 1: like lays out the whole story. It's very funny. He
Speaker 1: was just kind of like a skeptical of the script,
Speaker 1: I think, And he also didn't I think he didn't
Speaker 1: want to be typecast as like the sci fi action
Speaker 1: guy because he had already been in Men in Black
Speaker 1: and Independence Day. So yeah, it's well, well, we'll share
Speaker 1: the link to everybody of that video, but it'll make
Speaker 1: sense on paper. But then when you know that he
Speaker 1: turned down the Matrix, that is funny. And I think
Speaker 1: it would have I mean, I wouldn't trade Keian you
Speaker 1: as Neo for for anyone, but I do I do
Speaker 1: like to think of like Will Smith and Laurence Fishburne
Speaker 1: would have been I mean, it would have been very different,
Speaker 1: but it would have been cool. It would have been good. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. It wouldn't have been Laurence Fishburne. They
Speaker 1: had Val Kilmer in mind to play Morpheus, had it
Speaker 1: been Will Smith got cast. I have to go back
Speaker 1: and watch Will Smith's cursed YouTube video about this. I
Speaker 1: forgot about that. But even though these tropes are present
Speaker 1: in this movie, I would say that this is a
Speaker 1: surprisingly diverse cast for a late a late nineties action movie.
Speaker 1: And I think it gets even more diverse as the
Speaker 1: movies go on, because in the two sequels a ton
Speaker 1: of new characters are introduced, maybe even too many, I
Speaker 1: would argue, but most of them are people of color,
Speaker 1: especially the characters who are like fighting for the resistance,
Speaker 1: like who are like inhabitants of Zion, are like mostly
Speaker 1: people of color. Do you think it bugs Will Smith?
Speaker 1: Because Jada Pinkett Smith is in the two sequels and
Speaker 1: like she just holds it over him all that time,
Speaker 1: as I did consider that guy and have they we
Speaker 1: know that they have some some issues that they need
Speaker 1: to work out in public. They have to uh there.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to Sorry. I know we're having every
Speaker 1: and extremely academic discuss I just wanted to go through
Speaker 1: the other casting stuff because I always forget how kind
Speaker 1: of wild it was. Um so yeah, Will Smith said,
Speaker 1: I would rather do Wild Wild West, one of the
Speaker 1: taking one of the biggest els in all of casting history.
Speaker 1: Nicholas Cage turned it down due to family obligations. Who
Speaker 1: knows what that means. Uh. Leonardo DiCaprio originally accepted the part,
Speaker 1: but then said that he did too many visual effects
Speaker 1: in Titanic and he didn't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 1: Then the studio was like Keanu Reeves who got the
Speaker 1: role over Johnny Depp, who I guess is who the
Speaker 1: witch how skis wanted for this role. And then there
Speaker 1: was a side quest where they sent the screenplay to
Speaker 1: Sandra Bullock and we're going to rewrite Neo to be
Speaker 1: a woman, which I guess didn't happen, but I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's interest think, there's just really the net. It would
Speaker 1: just have been the net. It could have been the net.
Speaker 1: I yeah, so you know, that's a lot of information
Speaker 1: all at once. I would have loved Neo as a woman,
Speaker 1: especially because we talked about this a lot, where there
Speaker 1: are a Brazilian Chosen One narratives as movies and very
Speaker 1: few of them are about a woman, so that would
Speaker 1: have been very cool. But at the same time. I
Speaker 1: love Kano as Neo, I know, and and for Trinity. Sorry,
Speaker 1: it's just it's really interesting. Janet Jackson was considered for Trinity,
Speaker 1: and Samahak and Jada Pinkett Smith were also considered, and
Speaker 1: then um didn't do it, but then Jada came in later. Anyways,
Speaker 1: Janet Jackson is such a fucking good movie actress and
Speaker 1: she's only made just a handful of films and she's
Speaker 1: just really good. Come on, Janet, I want to like,
Speaker 1: I want Hollywood to cast Janet more often or I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. It sounds like she was
Speaker 1: pretty bummed about not getting to do the main tricks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah again. American action franchises have usually a pretty
Speaker 1: big problem with casting mostly white actors. But again, the matrix,
Speaker 1: even the first movie is doing better than most. Between
Speaker 1: the protagonist Neo played by Kiana Reeves, who is coded
Speaker 1: white I think a lot of times in in movies,
Speaker 1: UM he is of European, Chinese, and Polynesian ancestry, so
Speaker 1: he's multiracial. So between Kanu Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus, the
Speaker 1: actors who play Tank and Dozer, the actor who plays
Speaker 1: Apoc Julian Arjanga is Maori again just a more diverse
Speaker 1: cast than most action movies of this time, and more
Speaker 1: representative of what a futuristic leftist society would look like.
Speaker 1: So it makes narrative sense and world building sends in
Speaker 1: a way that a lot of movies ignore is true
Speaker 1: and like this is this has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the film's racial diversity, but I think in terms of
Speaker 1: gender presentation diversity, obviously this movie is very androgynous across
Speaker 1: the board. But belindam glorious, which the character who was
Speaker 1: originally sort of intended is translate there, nobody was nobody
Speaker 1: was styled like that in an action movie at the time,
Speaker 1: Like she's just so there's just such an an androgynous,
Speaker 1: nonconforming energy just sort of pouring off of her totally.
Speaker 1: And I really, I mean, I just and this is
Speaker 1: kind of just like a compliment to the movie. But
Speaker 1: the way that the crew of the ship, which I'm
Speaker 1: not going to try to say because I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say it right, but the way that the crew
Speaker 1: works together, I just I just really like how they
Speaker 1: interact with each other. Where like you were saying earlier
Speaker 1: in this episode, only like everyone has a distinct personality
Speaker 1: even when you don't hear them speak very much. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows what their role is. But I just I don't
Speaker 1: know the way that the movie is written and they're
Speaker 1: used so thoughtfully to like, oh, this person is talking
Speaker 1: behind Morpheus is back a little bit, or like the
Speaker 1: way that Trinity clearly has this deep respect for Morpheus
Speaker 1: but is sometimes like, well he's wrong about that though,
Speaker 1: like he's wrong and he is being shortsighted, and just
Speaker 1: like I don't know, I really love when there's a
Speaker 1: group of characters who clearly hold a lot of love
Speaker 1: and respect for each other, but also we are constantly
Speaker 1: talking about each other um in a way that is
Speaker 1: just like very effortless, and in this completely bizarro world,
Speaker 1: feels like real and like actual dynamics that you would
Speaker 1: see in a group of friends who you know, the
Speaker 1: fate of the world is not hinged on. Is it
Speaker 1: fair to say that part of the trans allegory is
Speaker 1: that like this group of people is like each other's
Speaker 1: chosen family. Yeah, that's I think that that is very
Speaker 1: um there is a queerness to it that is very
Speaker 1: I think interesting and I don't know how intentional, but
Speaker 1: definitely subconsciously intentional, intentional. I'm thinking about how they're making
Speaker 1: so many TV shows set in like movie universes now,
Speaker 1: and like a show just sort of set on any
Speaker 1: given ship in the Matrix universe where they're just like
Speaker 1: hanging out and complaining about each other and occasionally fighting
Speaker 1: spider robots. Brad. I'd watch that, I would watch. That
Speaker 1: would be incredible. Yeah. The one thing I didn't watch
Speaker 1: in preparation for this was Animatrix, which I haven't seen
Speaker 1: at all, and I've heard it's good and I think
Speaker 1: I just need to sit down and commit to it.
Speaker 1: But it's really hard to see now. I think it's
Speaker 1: on HBO Max. It's on HBO Max. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: just for a long time it was hard to see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems to be accessible now, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: go check it out. But um oh, I was going
Speaker 1: to say, going back to the discussion of gender expression
Speaker 1: and presentation of certain characters, Trinity's character design and aesthetic
Speaker 1: is also what you would expect as the main female
Speaker 1: character in an action movie who also plays the role
Speaker 1: of the love interest of the male hero. Her clothes
Speaker 1: and haircut are I would say pretty gender neutral. You know,
Speaker 1: she doesn't have this long flowing hair that's completely impractical
Speaker 1: to fight bad guys with. And she's not like made
Speaker 1: up in a bunch of makeup the way that, again,
Speaker 1: a lot of women would be in an action franchise,
Speaker 1: because the function that a lot of women serve in
Speaker 1: an action franchise is to like be eye candy for
Speaker 1: what the studios assume is going to be a mostly
Speaker 1: hetero male audience. But they don't stylize Trinity that way,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't make sense that she would like be
Speaker 1: all made up when she's like flying around in the Nebuchadnezzar.
Speaker 1: But they also don't make her up that way when
Speaker 1: she's like in the Matrix either, which I thought was
Speaker 1: interesting and cool. They in fact even make her a
Speaker 1: little less glamorous in the sequels, like if that's an all,
Speaker 1: Like I love how stripped down the visuals of this
Speaker 1: just just constantly are in terms of not trying to
Speaker 1: make anyone movie pretty. There of course incredibly attractive, but
Speaker 1: they don't like overstate that attractiveness, right yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: And again it's just like the Wakis are so confident
Speaker 1: when they make a choice, they make it so hard
Speaker 1: that it's like, yeah, we're just gonna let the hot
Speaker 1: people be hot and not you know, they're all going
Speaker 1: to wear the same outfit. We don't need to embellish it.
Speaker 1: Like we're just gonna let the jawlines do what they
Speaker 1: do and fall where they may, and it's going to
Speaker 1: be sexy because it is. Like I was just thinking
Speaker 1: about the bullet time thing where the camera swings all
Speaker 1: the way around. I like the other early major use
Speaker 1: of this technology was for a gap commercial like really
Speaker 1: that came out at the holiday as. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like they were doing a swing dance or something. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that. I cannot remember if the gap ad
Speaker 1: predates the Matrix or the Matrix predates the gap at
Speaker 1: because I don't think that bullet time was invented for
Speaker 1: the Matrix, but I think it was like a thing
Speaker 1: that they pulled in that other people had also come
Speaker 1: up with. But I would not be surprised if it
Speaker 1: would be great if the gap AD came first and
Speaker 1: like everyone in the Matrix was like we missed it
Speaker 1: by like two months, um, But I do think the
Speaker 1: Matrix came first, So I would love sitting in a
Speaker 1: movie theater. Here's someone lean over and be like, they're
Speaker 1: just ripping off that gap commercial. I saw so derivative
Speaker 1: of that gap commercial. Unbelievable. UM. I wanted to really
Speaker 1: quickly touch on just because and we can kind of
Speaker 1: blow through this, but because the red pill discussion snowballed
Speaker 1: out in the way that it did, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to quickly touch on not even UM. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming if you listen to the show, you're aware of
Speaker 1: the wild misinterpretation that the term red pill had taken,
Speaker 1: where it's intended to be some reveal of a great
Speaker 1: truth and then was co opted by right wing weirdos
Speaker 1: who were like, yeah, and the truth is that straight
Speaker 1: white guys are oppressed, and you're like, that's not the
Speaker 1: one that was being referred to. UM. But I did
Speaker 1: just want to um quickly. It seems like the Wachowski's,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Witchowskis have responded to this, but I
Speaker 1: think the best exchange was from Lily Wichowski back in May,
Speaker 1: because that's when Elon Musk tweeted take the red Pill,
Speaker 1: and then Ivanka Trump retweeted it saying taken, and then
Speaker 1: Lily Wachowski replied by saying funk both of you, which
Speaker 1: I think is really all you need to know. That's
Speaker 1: that that's the story, and that show an icon. I
Speaker 1: remember I covered the early days of gamer Gate, which
Speaker 1: is the reactionary movement that basically folved into the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign UM, and they were all talking about the red Pill,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I feel like you haven't actually
Speaker 1: watched the Matrix, and like at the time, I was like,
Speaker 1: this will dispel this if I just I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: the Matrix is a very different theme, but it didn't
Speaker 1: work for some reason. To this day, the gap ad
Speaker 1: does predate the mat I can't believe it. Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't like the Matrix anymore. Derivative. The tech that made
Speaker 1: up bullet time has been around since like the dawn
Speaker 1: of cinema. People have been like, if we put a
Speaker 1: bunch of cameras around something in film it from all
Speaker 1: those angles, then we can But like computers were required
Speaker 1: to like actually simulate moving around, and the gap AD
Speaker 1: just like got there first. But the term bullet time
Speaker 1: specifically was coined for the Matrix. So God, I want
Speaker 1: to see that gap commercial now. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever seen it. Yeah, I mean i'd have to link
Speaker 1: it in the description. I say that five hundred times
Speaker 1: an episode, and then I have to go find it.
Speaker 1: And it's awful. I'm posting. I'm posting the bullet time
Speaker 1: at in chat. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. Um.
Speaker 1: Does anyone have anything else they would like to talk
Speaker 1: about in regards to the Matrix? That's all I had,
Speaker 1: I believe. Yeah. I just wanted to state that I
Speaker 1: have found my anagram and it's a Warden fever filmy. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's really okay. Get the merch. Get the merch going amazing.
Speaker 1: Mine I couldn't find my mine all suck. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's wrong. My I got the wrong letters. Jamie.
Speaker 1: Just come up with the hacker name for yourself, and
Speaker 1: then I know. I used to do a whole show
Speaker 1: about hackers, but I didn't know what I was talking about,
Speaker 1: so I've had to stop doing the show. But maybe
Speaker 1: that name will be more in agrammable. It's true, it's
Speaker 1: just a thought. I'll work on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: We've had this conversation before on the other Matrix episode
Speaker 1: that has been lost to time, about whether or not
Speaker 1: this movie passes the Bechdel test. Yeah, and I feel
Speaker 1: I don't remember what we concluded, and I did not
Speaker 1: remember to pay attention to whether or not it passes
Speaker 1: when I was watching it this time around. I think
Speaker 1: it's a barely pass situation due to a quick exchange
Speaker 1: that Trinity and Switch have in the car when Neo's
Speaker 1: got the bug all scooting around in his guts. It's
Speaker 1: possible that he's the subtext of that conversation. But I'm
Speaker 1: inclined to just want to give this movie anything we can.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know that they have like one or
Speaker 1: two exchanges they are just between the two of them
Speaker 1: that I believe are about the bug. They're about the bug,
Speaker 1: but the bug is in Neo, so I don't know
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, we've all got a bug inside
Speaker 1: of us somewhere, so technically that's true, the Bug and
Speaker 1: the Bug famously genderless, genderless icon the Bug, the Bug. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then I remember talking about how there's a conversation
Speaker 1: where when Cipher is sabotaging them and when he kills
Speaker 1: Switch and Apoc, he's talking to Trinity and he's like,
Speaker 1: if there's anything terribly important you have to say to Switch,
Speaker 1: say it now. And then before Trinity can say anything
Speaker 1: to switch and then maybe pass the Bechdel test. Uh,
Speaker 1: cipher kills switch. So he really doesn't want women to
Speaker 1: talk to each other. Yeah, that's why he's not an ally,
Speaker 1: not because he's murdering people. Now, technically, you're right, this
Speaker 1: movie does barely pass because the bug is genderless. But
Speaker 1: when you consider that Neo and Trinity are both trans lesbians,
Speaker 1: then it passes so much flying colors. Let's go with that.
Speaker 1: I just I just want to give this movie nice. Thanks, Jamie.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you like it. I was not sure
Speaker 1: if you would because I know you're famously not an
Speaker 1: action movie fan. But it's not just an action movie.
Speaker 1: There's so much coming with so much more, and they
Speaker 1: have a little horny Will Poulter character. I'm like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I like the movie. It's good. No, I
Speaker 1: really loved it. There is this on the website that
Speaker 1: exists in service of the Bechtel test, which is I
Speaker 1: think wrong quite a bit of the time. But spectel
Speaker 1: test dot com there is such an extensive conversation arguing
Speaker 1: about whether this movie passes the Bechtel test. No one
Speaker 1: seems to agree. I just pulled it up and people
Speaker 1: do talk about that scene in the car, and people
Speaker 1: are arguing about what we were just talking about of like,
Speaker 1: well the bug in the which, honestly, if you have
Speaker 1: to get I feel like our rule of thumb is like,
Speaker 1: if you have to get that far in the weeds
Speaker 1: about it, it probably doesn't test the Recktel test if
Speaker 1: you have to like split hairs like that. But I
Speaker 1: think under Emily's qualification it does pass, and let's not
Speaker 1: worry about it. I'll just go on that site and
Speaker 1: I'll be like, no, listen, everyone in this movie is
Speaker 1: a trans lesbian. Passes every test. The whole movie passes. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: as we always say that, you know, the Bechtel test
Speaker 1: is not the end all be all for anything. It's
Speaker 1: just a jumping off point. What is the end all
Speaker 1: be all is the nipple scale? Yes, which is our
Speaker 1: metric zero. Really appreciated your visceral reaction of hear us out. Technically,
Speaker 1: this movie has obviously I know what we're going to
Speaker 1: do here, but this I was just thinking about how
Speaker 1: this movie has a whole bunch of other nipples on
Speaker 1: your back, Like those are just kind of got some
Speaker 1: back nipples. They've got back nipples. You've got armed nipples,
Speaker 1: You've got the back of the head nipple. There's a
Speaker 1: lot um wowskis. Know what we wanted. It's nipples and
Speaker 1: it's like hard plastic black Witchy saw Joel Schumacher nipples
Speaker 1: and we're like, we could, we can do more wreaking
Speaker 1: to Okay, So zero to five nipples based on how
Speaker 1: the movie fares examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, Gosh,
Speaker 1: me loving this movie so deeply might cloud my judgment
Speaker 1: a bit here, But I love that there are multiple
Speaker 1: different reads of this movie, one of them being this
Speaker 1: really interesting trans allegory. I love that this is a
Speaker 1: major franchise directed by trans women, which hopefully paves the
Speaker 1: way for there to be more transvisibility on screen of
Speaker 1: actual trans people and not just it all being a
Speaker 1: metaphor that features all siss people. You know that that's
Speaker 1: like the goal that we're aiming for, right, is just
Speaker 1: like more visibility and hopefully things don't have to be
Speaker 1: coded and um steeped in metaphor and and things like that.
Speaker 1: But it was nine to Trinity being a character who
Speaker 1: I always loved and admired, and that was so Cool
Speaker 1: and I love just everything about the damn movie. I'm
Speaker 1: going to give it four nipples plus maybe also a
Speaker 1: half nipple on top of that. Is that too much? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We we do give halves and sometimes even quarter nipples.
Speaker 1: Get into the decimals if you need to. You know,
Speaker 1: it's point three through three repeating, um, whatever it needs
Speaker 1: to be. I mean maybe I'm being too generous, but again,
Speaker 1: I love this movie. I think it holds up and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go out four and a half nipples done, love,
Speaker 1: Who are you giving your nipples too? I'm going to
Speaker 1: give one to Keanu Reeves, who is the best man alive.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give one to Gloria Foster, who plays
Speaker 1: the Cool. I'll give one nipple to Blenda McClory, who
Speaker 1: plays Switch. I'll give one nipple to Laurence Fishburn. And
Speaker 1: I'll give my half nipple to the little Black Cat,
Speaker 1: who we see twice in the deja vu scene, Little Flee.
Speaker 1: He's just like my cat. Yeah, so for and half
Speaker 1: nipples boom. I'm going to go for and half as well,
Speaker 1: mostly because I'm like, I like this movie so much.
Speaker 1: What a what a long standing edging experience of saying
Speaker 1: I was going to watch this movie, never doing it,
Speaker 1: lying out my ass and then learning that I loved
Speaker 1: it and I'm excited to watch it again, and I'm
Speaker 1: excited to watch the new one too, Jimmie, let's go together.
Speaker 1: We should. Oh yeah, let's go because I know it's
Speaker 1: it's coming out on HBO Max, but it seems like
Speaker 1: something that you should see. I would love to, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I I'll echo what you're saying there, Caitlin. There are
Speaker 1: certainly like dated elements to certain things of the plot,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's as far as movies from this
Speaker 1: year goes. I mean, what more can you ask for?
Speaker 1: And it's also just I don't know, it's like such
Speaker 1: a movie. Does that make sense? You know, it's such
Speaker 1: a movie movie. And I was just interested in every
Speaker 1: second and everyone was so unique, even though they all
Speaker 1: kind of like look the same, but that also they
Speaker 1: didn't and there was a lot of diversity, and they're like,
Speaker 1: I just it's so fun. I'm excited to watch this
Speaker 1: movie again and not have to take notes this time.
Speaker 1: It's going to be fun. Yeah. Uh so, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give it for and a half nipples. I'll give one
Speaker 1: to Trinity. I'll give one to the Oracle. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give one to Mouse. Sorry, uh loved mouse, loved mouse.
Speaker 1: I think we really should have paused more to he
Speaker 1: was he wanted to cheeseburg and he was horny. Love him.
Speaker 1: I'll give half a nipple to Hugo Weaving's lips, and
Speaker 1: I'll give my last nipple to the witch House key sisters.
Speaker 1: I'm how about you. Well, listen it sounds you know
Speaker 1: if I come back on here and do the net,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, if I give the Matrix anything less
Speaker 1: than five, I'm going to feel like I'm insulting it
Speaker 1: when I come on here and do the net and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know, like two and a half,
Speaker 1: you know, Like, so I'm giving it. I'm giving it
Speaker 1: to full five. I'm giving it to full five. I think,
Speaker 1: especially for its era, it is groundbreaking and impressive and
Speaker 1: that it mostly holds up today. And you can like
Speaker 1: quibble with some of the casting choices. You can quibble with,
Speaker 1: like it's presentation of transness, etcetera, but like it still
Speaker 1: holds up in a way that like most other action
Speaker 1: movies of this era, don't like you think about this
Speaker 1: came out to say, just a couple of months before
Speaker 1: UM Star Wars Episode one, and you're just like, those
Speaker 1: are those movies are from different planets entirely. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to give a nipple to carry In Moss because
Speaker 1: she's she's the best. I'll give one to Kianu. Kiano deserves.
Speaker 1: He only has one nipple right now. He needs to
Speaker 1: needs to nipples. Yeah, that's good for him. Uh you
Speaker 1: know what I got. I gotta give one to the
Speaker 1: Witch House Ki sisters, who are just the best and
Speaker 1: some of my favorite filmmakers of all time. And you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to hang out with them so they
Speaker 1: seem so cool. I want to um give a nipple
Speaker 1: to Bill Pope's cinematography, which is legitimately groundbreaking, change the world,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I'm gonna give a I'm going to split
Speaker 1: my last nipple one into I'm sorry, I'm breaking the
Speaker 1: roles to get a half nipple to the Bug because
Speaker 1: we love the book. I'm going to give my other
Speaker 1: half nipple to producer Joel Silver, not because I actually like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh wow, great Joel Silver, though he did
Speaker 1: get this movie made when like a lot of producers
Speaker 1: wouldn't have. But because I like the image of someone
Speaker 1: like knocking on his door in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night and he comes and looks down and there's just
Speaker 1: half a nipple laying on his doorstep. I think I
Speaker 1: just like that image. So Joel Silver, you get half
Speaker 1: a nipple. I bet he appreciates it. But yeah, he
Speaker 1: first made a view it as a threat, but then
Speaker 1: once he gave him the context he needed, I think
Speaker 1: he'd come around. He'd be so happy. It's like that
Speaker 1: part in the Matrix when like Neo is rejecting this
Speaker 1: whole thing and he's like, I don't believe it. Let
Speaker 1: me out here, and then he barfs all over the
Speaker 1: floor and then he collapsed his face first into his
Speaker 1: own barf. But then like in the next scene, he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess it's fine. Perfect the agreeable guy that Emily.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us and for being here.
Speaker 1: Come back for the net, come back for anything you
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. I'd love to come back. I
Speaker 1: had a blast. Good. Where can people check out your writing?
Speaker 1: Follow you on social media? Plug anything you want to plug.
Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at twitter dot com, slash Emily V
Speaker 1: d w um, I get up to all sorts of nonsense.
Speaker 1: They're actually less because I've mostly locked out of Twitter,
Speaker 1: but I do tweet every song for the best look
Speaker 1: at me and yeah, my writing appears vox dot com.
Speaker 1: I also have a newsletter where I just write some
Speaker 1: of my weirder ideas. That's Emily vdW dot letter, Drop
Speaker 1: dot com. I co create Right Show, Run et cetera,
Speaker 1: occasionally play a whale in the scripted fiction podcast Arden.
Speaker 1: It is about two women who solve Colt cases and
Speaker 1: try not to fall in love. Um. It is a comedy,
Speaker 1: but it's also about my weird drauma. Um so that
Speaker 1: hooray uh and you can I. I published a book
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago that I still bring up
Speaker 1: with Monsters of the Week, complete critical companion to the
Speaker 1: X Files. You could find it in at various booksellers. Amazing,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming yet. Truly, you're one
Speaker 1: of my favorite writers in the world, and I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you could be here with us. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. I love this show, and um, I'm glad
Speaker 1: that I could make it and talk about nipples. So
Speaker 1: amazing come back for the net. I would love to um.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. At spectel cast.
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Speaker 1: for five dollars a month. We're doing some cursed holiday
Speaker 1: favorites this month, surprise, and you can get speaking of
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Speaker 1: public dot com slash the pytel cast and pick up
Speaker 1: some merch or not. We won't know, and it's up
Speaker 1: to you. And and what's a good way to end
Speaker 1: this episode? Um? What is? What is neo? Okay? Neo?
Speaker 1: At the very end, he's just like, Okay, oh, I
Speaker 1: know you're out there and I'm going to show these
Speaker 1: people what you don't want them to see. And then
Speaker 1: he hangs up the phone and it's likely do they're
Speaker 1: turn Can you add in the rage against the machine
Speaker 1: at the end of this episode? Yes? How many seconds
Speaker 1: can you get away with of like an audio clip
Speaker 1: before you get sued for copyright stuff? We'll tie, We'll
Speaker 1: take it off Mike who knows uh all right? Click
Speaker 1: click on