I dont think i even saw the third one, i barely remember the second film and the first one had only one really memorable scene…and i personally remember the spoof from Conkers Bad Fur Day better than the scene…
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I’m happy that Keanu Reeves is so prominent lately with the John Wick series and Agent Smith was definitely the best part by far of the original matrix trilogy but, honestly? The matrix was mainly good for a lot of the early internet memes and, much like the insanely overhyped Avatar (it was real pretty but, man, I could not tell you what was going on), we really don’t need a sequel (or four, Christ!) a decade plus later…
I haven’t thought about the matrix in years and I guess I’m just wondering if anybody really wants this? Or the Avatar sequels?
I liked the Matrix movies (the third was a bit eh) and I look forward seeing the new one, though maybe some time later than now.
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I liked them too. It’s just not something I was thinking about, like, “hey, they should make another matrix”, and the trailer hasn’t really done anything to change my mind
I don’t usually dislike movies. I liked the three Matrix movies. Heck, I like all 9 Star Wars movies. I’m looking foward to seeing this one.
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i know reboots and remakes aren’t anything new, but so many big budget tent pole movies over the past few years - and for the foreseeable future - are preoccupied with reviving, rehashing, repackaging or re-examining the past.
it’s like there’s no such thing as cultural ephemera anymore. nothing seems to die in movies, games, music or whatever. give it long enough and it gets dug up, repackaged, and people - me included - just throw money at it, leaving little space for new ideas to replace it. we’re living in a necromantic zombie culture, and part of me wishes a new set of ideas would come like a bullet to its rotten brain and put it out of its misery.
problem is, i also think this undead pop culture we’ve fostered is merely a symptom (or reflection) of much more fundamental issues at the heart of western society. i think it’s telling that the biggest ‘political upset’ in the last ten years - in the us and uk, at least - was one obsessed with recapturing a past that never existed, rather than envisioning a new kind of future pertinent to our time.
good morning, everybody!
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Same.
A movie would have to do something truly special to cause me to dislike it (like Elizabethtown, which is my least favorite movie of all time and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy) but it also takes a bit more to get me interested in seeing a movie in the first place (like with matrix 4, which I’m just not feeling).
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I do think the prequels have gained a new appreciation now, maybe once removed from the insurmountable hype what was built back in the day and the side works what followed.
The prequels I think has problems on the script, pacing and character usage (Maul, Grevious and Dooku were all good ideas and well acted but could of been so much more) but there is alot to respect on George Luca’s vision and avoiding doing a rehash of the original trilogy. I think he might of been overly ambitious with wanting to add more politics in without quite having the skill to pull it off. Compare the new Dune movie what made it’s politics feel more seamless and integrated into the world and characters then Trade Negotiations between the CIS and and Republic.
Though I do think more skilful writers were able to better write politics in to the prequels with all the side books, series and comics. I think Anakin improved massively with attaching more of a ends justify the means view as well as fleshing out the Republic and the CIS. But though all that the prequels gave the Star Wars world some proper fleshed out universe building which the original trilogy didn’t quite have.
The prequels had more of a vision with what they wanted to say where as I don’t think the sequels has any real vision and really deteriorated as a result.
It was really the The Last Jedi which I felt had any real world building or vibe to it as wanted to push beyond the Skywalker family, set up the idea of this universe high class war profiteering (albite this theme might of been too big for the B plot) as well as perhaps work against giving Kylo a redemption arc.
Though of cause that all dropped in Rise of Skywalker due to massive “Fan” backlash where it spent half the film reversing anything gained in The Last Jedi and the other half to fan pandering and as a result made the sequel trilogy just meaningless to the series and essentially ended the same status quo as the original trilogy. And as a result without a vision or any real end-goal none of the side works can really help salvage or flesh out the sequel trilogy the same way they did for the prequels.
Sorry for the rant, been holding this for a while and your post seemed like the perfect spot to let it out.
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There’s no need to apologize. That’s a good, nuanced take and there isn’t enough of that anywhere, let alone in sci-fi/Star Wars circles.
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Death on the Mississippi is underrated
BBQ sauce and tofu should have never been created
Curtains down is the bane of my existence
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I’ll be doing a whole video that is full of them but some examples are.
Shenmue is 2nd best game of 1999.
2001 wasn’t a good year for games.
Mafia 1 is better than any GTA released of the era.
Yooka Laylee is 2nd best game of 2017.
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Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.
Yes, it takes place during Christmas and a lot of the decorations and music of Christmas are present throughout the film, I’ll give it that. But, the movie does not contain any message that relates to how people are supposed to behave or act around Christmas, nor any connection the the origin or nature of the holiday, and if the movie had taken place at any other time of year, it wouldn’t have changed any relevant part of the film.
The only way Christmas has any kind of importance to the movie is that the building is mostly empty because everyone has gone home for Christmas and the few people still inside are having a company Christmas party. That is literally the only relevance Christmas has in the entire movie, and you could have set it on New Year’s Eve and achieved the exact same results.
And to top it all off, the first sequel, which takes place the very next year, is also set on Christmas Eve and it is not thought of as a Christmas movie, despite having the same number of references to the holiday and the exact same specifically limited relevance. Why the first one, but not the second?
I’m sorry folks, but Die Hard is no more a Christmas movie than Gremlins or The Nightmare Before Christmas are.
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- The basic narrative situation of Die Hard is a man returning to his family for Christmas.
- His wife is called Holly.
- It takes place on Christmas Eve. Not Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. It could have been set any week of the year, but wasn’t.
- The chief villain Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) explicitly invokes the Christmas spirit: “It’s Christmas, Theo, it’s a time for miracles.”
- Gruber is a classic bad capitalist villain: he’s there to steal money. Just as Old Man Potter does in It’s a Wonderful Life.
- The soundtrack features Christmas tunes new and old: Run DMC’s Christmas in Hollis and Frank Sinatra’s rendition of Let it Snow.
- Santa Claus makes an appearance (in the form of a dead terrorist).
- The film ends with the of character of limo driver Argyle (De’voreaux White) looking forward to New Year’s Eve.
And point nine, the clinching argument, perhaps, is that Christmas is a socially invented tradition, and like all invented traditions it continues to adapt and evolve.
Films don’t need to include religious references or a man in a red suit, Christmas changes every year and as such what constitutes as a Christmas flick has expanded hugely.
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Thank you for putting genuine effort forward to argue the point. So many have failed to do so any time I bring up this subject. Now, to not let your hard work go to waste… (cracks knuckles):
Could have been returning to them at any other time of year, no relevant changes occur.
Incidental at most, coincidental at least. Use any other name and no relevant changes occur.
Still does not make it a Christmas movie solely for falling on Christmas. The fact that it is Christmas is marginally relevant for Hans’s plan, not for the movie itself. As mentioned before, had it taken place on any other time of year, not simply a holiday but even on a plain day, and no relevant changes occur.
And had it not been Christmas, he would have said something else. It’s also clearly just a platitude that he’s throwing out that he doesn’t believe in. Not relevant to the film, or to the idea that it’s a Christmas movie.
And any other classic bad capitalist villain in countless non-Christmas stories.
Acknowledged in the first sentence of the second paragraph of my post. No more relevance than the Christmas decorations in the background of I Am Legend as the outbreak begins at Christmas time.
No, a dead terrorist has a Santa hat placed on his head. The Ho-ho-ho line in writing on the sweater could have been used even outside of Christmas time as a way of trolling the terrorists that they didn’t know who it was in the building with them, so it could have even been Santa Claus, which is a joke that has been made before in other, definitely non-Christmas movies (this also covers your point, @Screaming_Meat). The hat was an additional touch, but not necessary to make the point or the joke. Again, the movie taking place during Christmas does not automatically make it a Christmas movie.
And if it had taken place on New Year’s Eve, or Valentine’s Day, or Halloween, he’d likely have said something along the lines of “if this is how you spend (insert holiday name here), I gotta be there for Christmas!” No relevant changes occur.
Never said they do. However, other than the traditional commercialized air of Christmas in the film’s background, no part of the film presents even a tangential message relating to Christmas, at least not any more so than any other average movie message about the importance of family and caring and whatnot. The purpose of the film was to show an Everyman action movie, not a Christmas movie. It simply takes place during Christmas. Even the part where Hans’s plan was based on the expectation of the building to be mostly empty because of the holiday, he’d likely be able to achieve the same result if he’d attacked near midnight on any given Sunday.
To be clear to my point, and those who also believe that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, and this is where personal opinion comes into play, I see it like this: in order for it to be a Christmas movie, it has be a movie that is not only placed around Christmas, it also has to be about Christmas; if it wasn’t Christmas in the movie, there’d be no movie. It had to specifically exist because of, and in service to, the Christmas holiday in-and-of itself. If you place, not just a version of that story, but the exact same story down on any other day, and it still works in every way that matters, then it can’t be a Christmas story.
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Die Hard is as much a Christmas Movie as Home Alone is. If either one is, they both are.
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Not true. Home Alone is specifically filled to the brim with not only Christmas imagery and music, but also it’s themes and it’s messages. Kevin spends his time at home actively celebrating Christmas, and learning to appreciate doing so when his family was with him now that they aren’t. He even believes his family is gone because he made a Christmas wish that they would disappear. Aside from wishing on a birthday cake, there’s no other time of year that allows the idea that he could have wished his family away, and he’d have thought something else had happened to them and not felt as guilty about them being gone. The burglars aside, you have a very different movie if Home Alone takes place at another time of year or another holiday.
Nothing that John McClane went through in any way taught him any Christmas-related lessons, or would be changed if it happened at another time of year.
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Of course it’s a Christmas movie! It has the classic themes and message. It’s about love, family and the bad guys standing in the way. McClane as a modern Jesus has to endure pain and agony to free everyone from evil. He didn’t chose his destiny, it was chosen for him.
It’s actually the best Christmas movie. And I’m not just saying that. If you don’t think “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie, have a look at this list and be amazed what other movies are considered Christmas movies.
Btw: Even Steven de Souza (writer of “Die Hard”) confirmed that it’s a Christmas movie.
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Home alone taking place during Christmas break is irrelevant to the film. The main point of the movie was that this little tortfeasor was left alone during a family trip. This movie could’ve easily happened during spring break travel, summer travel, even thanksgiving.
Kevin commits endless intentional torts towards the wet bandits. How is it different from John McClane committing murder during Christmas? There are wrongs involved in both films that take place during Christmas. Either both movies are Christmas movies, or they aren’t.
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