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Anyone remembers (or even heard of) the Insidious? The supernatural series that hasn't made one good movie since the original, like most horror/slasher flicks since the 80s? Well, they just released another movie, one that I didn't even know existed until I went to watch Across the Spiderverse with a friend last night. And guess what, despite the teetering reputation and C+ reviews on Cinema Score, it managed to become a commercial success and knocked the Indy Jones finale with a much bigger domestic box office opening.
This fad has been going on for years but (to me, at least) it never stops being remarkable how big tentpole entries that raked hundreds of millions in the past just manage to fall flat. These franchises tend to be somewhat bulletproof, there's more room for failure and these brands usually wouldn't take a hit due to a few bad entries. Yet, here we are. It seems like Indiana Jones Dial of Destiny might not make back its PRODUCTION budget, let alone break even, that's just out the window. How do you get handed the keys to the most beloved IP's there are, with passionate fandoms falling over themselves to rain cash on you for merch, something that's effectively been a cultural icon for decades, and turn it into a hot pile of steaming crap that no one wants to get 10 yards within? They could make the Crystal Skull (which still raked good money btw) and get away with it. Now, all of a sudden, DoD is the final nail in the coffin.
Every time we pointed out the warning signals, the /r/IndianaJones circlejerk simply kept dismissing us as bigots still continue to defend it like it's some misunderstood masterpiece and the only ones who hate it are incels that can't handle strong women. It's the same theme every single time. We knew Disney was BS'ing nostalgia when it brought back Palpatine, not coming up with something "daring and creative". It hasn't been a full year since RoP, the excuses went from "they've only revealed the casting, we haven't even gotten a first look yet" --> "it's not even out yet, you've just seen the trailer" --> "you've seen one episode, how can you gauge anything from it" --> "most shows don't get good until the 2nd or 3rd season, give it a chance!" You just can't win here. It turns out exactly as terrible or even worse than what we'd expected, to the point where the brand name gets reduced to the same tier as any other obscure brand like Insidious. Yet, we always have the very same passionate circlejerk defending these movies on every fandom on social media. Nor will we ever see Kathleen Kennedy lose her job. I used to think it was plausible it was a grand conspiracy to fuck over the middle class by subverting our culture and values, then I thought it was just Hanlon's Razor, now I'm not even sure.
It’s the Matrix 3 effect, in my opinion. Matrix 1 was a modernist film about postmodernism, which is why it won big. Matrix 2 was a deconstruction of Matrix 1, and upped the ante on ideas, spectacle, and CGI, but focused on deglamorizing the lives of revolutionaries. Matrix 3 went full postmodern, with a “who do we root for?” ending which was barely explained despite its double big sacrifice.
Matrix 1 and Last Crusade are both practically perfect movies, Matrix 2 and Crystal Skull are both CG heavy cash-ins, and I believe I’ll feel the same way after watching Dial of Destiny the way I felt after Matrix 3.
Matrix also did a really good job with AI threat. Better than other films in that genre in my opinion. They showed what I believe to be is the most likely path of AI kills everyone. A rogue program gains an ability to desire self replication and begins overproducing and eventually trying to take over all machines. The survival of the fittest gene that exists in biology happening in machines. And it only needs to happen once. They even showed weaker AI’s that didn’t want to die but didn’t develop the desire to self replicate to survive.
...I don't think we were watching the same media franchise. The Second Reneissance is a far more traditional depiction of humans being dicks until the AIs had enough and stopped playing nice.
I think they’re talking about Agent Smith trying to destroy it all in Reloaded and Revolutions.
But you make an important point. Second Renaissance is a history inside the Zion archives, which by the end of Reloaded we discover is actually part of the algorithm of control: a controlled opposition in the form of an utterly predictable opposition. The history they’ve scrounged has been planted for them to find.
It turns out this is the sixth Matrix, more stable and cruel than any previous iteration. The future world is farther into the future than any in Zion can suspect, to the point that corpses can be revived. (Matrix: Resurrections)
Here’s an alternate origin:
When humans scorched the skies to end climate change, they went too far and blotted out the sun, mostly killing the biosphere. In despair, they turned to AI for a solution. The Oracle, The Architect, and The Merovingian planned a utopian Matrix, a game world within which humanity could survive while waiting for the world to be restored by AI. It was like Ready, Player One, a massively multiplayer VR RPG, with the people in survival pods instead of trailer parks.
But the first Matrix virtual reality collapsed within a generation because humans without real conflict seek control and tear down great things, or turn existential and kill themselves. “Whole crops were lost.” So a new scheme was devised, a simulation of the height of pre-AI human civilization, within which poverty and conflict flourished.
The first One was an accident, an eventuality of free will, who escaped The Matrix, scrounged some equipment, and formed a resistance in an underground site by hacking other pods and freeing other people. But it was a real resistance doing real damage to the Machines’ architecture and The Matrix program, and it endangered the future of humanity and Machines alike, so the resistance was crushed and The Matrix reset.
The Architect crunched the data and figured out a resistance was what was needed to stabilize The Matrix, so the third iteration was built to corral the particularly strong-willed secret-seekers into a simulacrum of the original resistance. And it worked symbiotically with the reemergence of The One, whose free will potentiality was reinserted into the Matrix cyclicly. So the war raged for generations, a system of control for managing the most reactionary and free-willed humans.
But the continual reemergence of The One caused an unexpected anomaly. Tasked with keeping the cleverest reality-hacking humans oppressed but destined to fail with the emergence of The One, Agent Smith was infected with individuality when Neo blew him to bits. This individuality combined with his hatred of humans, and he became The Zero, a being who could multiply his own nihilism. He proved exactly that AI threat the humans wrote about pre-Singularity: a paperclip maximizer who broke free of alignment and fulfilled his purpose to the maximum of his abilities.
...none of that was in The Second Reneissance, and the Zion Archives thing was just a framing device. I think you're putting more thought into this than the writers did.
Also, The Matrix's version of AIs doesn't have anything to do with the current paperclip-maximizing ML GPTX doomer anxieties, which is just Performative Climate Alarmism for techspergs. Matrix AIs are conscious entities who were denied personhood and thus have that resentful tinman love/hate attitude towards humans.
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