Imagine they if they told Keanu Reeves to records all the words of the dictionary and all his facial expressions and body postures and keep it as IP forever.
(Nothing personal with OP. It was actually a very clever joke. Just had to do this to keep HN standards. I really don't want to lose this place to memes and hot takes as it happened in virtualy every other aggregator).
Li's role would only have been in the sequels anyway, not the one good movie...
Seriously though, for such a deal if one gets a percentage as royalties perpetually too, then it may be a good arrangement. I think Li's objections could have al been addressed as terms in the deal. Apparently what Li is saying is the terms offered were one-sided and he didn't like them.
It's the opposite for me, I liked them all, but the first one was just a good old rehash of Socrate's cave allegory. It offered hardly anything new, but was pretentious with various references to Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, which is precisely a critique of the cave allegory. The first one was accessible, simple, fun. The sequels were no less fun, but you had to think. While the first ones referenced Christian mythology a lot, the sequels jumped into Eastern metaphysics.
Also the secret to happiness is low expectations, and I never walked into a movie theatre with higher expectations than I did for Matrix 2.
In the first film every character motivation is crystal clear, every character change is obvious and massive and compelling.
I still get a tingle at the exact point where Neo wraps the rope around his arm and decides he’s going to catch a helicopter to save Trinity.
?:-^