A deleted subplot from “The Matrix” contradicts its sequels | Hacker News Reader

A deleted subplot from “The Matrix” contradicts its sequels

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97 pointsgeorgecmu123 comments

This article seems to be saying that two entirely separate plot concepts are incompatible, and I just don't see it.

1. Morpheus has found other people he believes to be "the One" before. He was wrong, and they died or otherwise didn't pan out. (I'm fairly sure this is still referenced in the movie? Just not the specific deleted scenes that the article mentions.)

2. There is a larger cycle of "the One" resetting Zion as part of the machines' system of control. This has happened a bunch of times now.

These are different things. They have nothing to do with each other. They are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually supporting.

The coincidence of him being the 6th iteration in both cases is what's caught the author's eye, maybe the filmmakers liked the number 6 and used it in the 2nd plot thread after scrapping the first plot thread.

I guess I can see how that might have confused the author. I do feel that at some point in writing this article they should have noticed that they were conflating two entirely different concepts based solely on the number 6 being used in reference to them...

It would confuse most viewers, so either it was a terrible choice to have similar stories about "sixth iteration", or it was originally one plot then changed to another.

I agree with the author that Cypher would have been a more nuanced character had he more justification for his doubt.

I don't think it's a confusion on the author's side. It would be confusing and redundant to have 5 predecessors on two different levels in the movie. IMHO, they simply developed/morphed the ultimately unused predecessor idea from the first movie into a different variant in the second movie.

I think "The Animatrix" has some really cool stories that support these multiple concepts.

IMO, The Animatrix is the only quality work in the matrix universe other than the original movie.

The new Matrix seems like a spiritual successor to the Animatrix more so than the movies

I mostly agree, though I think the other movies are fun. But the Animatrix was so ahead of its time. Now Netflix has love, death, & robots - which to me seems directly inspired.

The fact that there were five predecessors in the shooting script, and five predecessors in Reloaded / Revolutions, very strongly suggests that they lifted and reworked that plot from the first movie, for reuse in the sequels.

From a narrative point of view, it would be confusing as hell to have five predecessors in this iteration of the matrix, as well as five predecessors across five previous iterations of the matrix.

Could both have been part of the same overarching, pre-planned plot? Sure. But is that likely? Not at all.

It could be something as mundane as the writer liking the sound of ‘five’ and ‘sixth’ in the script.

Almost like having false dragons in the wheel of time, and also many predecessors who are real dragons...

To be fair though I always assumed the second and third matrixes were retroactive revisions. They are just so different from the first one.

The number is only five in both cases because only one plot was eventually used.

Had the Morpheus 5 been kept in, it would have been trivial to use a different number of cycles (7, 10, 400, whatever) and avoid the confusion.

If Morpheus found 5 previous "The Ones", then I believe that there would still need to be 5 separate iterations of Neo, since after each iteration, the Architect wipes out Zion except for a small number of people that are used for repopulation. Morpheus would need to have been part of each of those genocides which he probably would have brought up in conversation.

no, the two things are completely unrelated

the matrix could have gone trought 5 iteractions of the one cicle that morpheus knew nothing about, each resulting in the destruction of zion.

yet in this current version of the matrix, during this cicle, morpheus could have find 5 previous individuals that he tough were candidates to being the one, all that were ultimately not the one and who died fighting smith, before finaly finding neo the actual one for this latest cicle of the matrix.

> two entirely separate plot concepts are incompatible, and I just don't see it

I agree with you, but I also agree with the poster that they didn't actually have any of this in mind when they wrote Matrix 1, any more than George Lucas already wrote Star Wars I-III and then started filming with part IV.

> they didn't actually have any of this in mind when they wrote Matrix 1

But the article fails to show that at all.

Reading the scenes, I don't see these as being incompatible with the overall plot line.

The story presented here is that there were five previous "Ones" and they all faced an agent and were killed. But, if you recall, that's exactly what happens with Neo. His death at the hands of an agent is exactly what "unlocks" his powers. There would need to a be a couple more dialogues in the sequels but it would be trivial to address what happened to the other five after they were "killed".

So while it may be true that there was no master plan for the sequels (and I have absolutely no doubt they came out very different than originally envisioned - that's the creative process), I don't necessarily see this as strong evidence of that fact.

It was probably cut because the subplot just adds complexity for the audience without really adding much to the story.

When I watched the first film I just assumed that Morpheus had found others and been wrong about them…

Morpheus conviction that Neo is the one but everyone else being more ambivalent seem to imply that Morpheus could be or has been wrong in the past.

I agree that being wrong wouldn’t necessarily conflict with the rest of the film. I think it adds a lot of character to the story.

> When I watched the first film I just assumed that Morpheus had found others and been wrong about them…

I'm pretty sure it's even hinted in the film how Morpheus had thought Trinity was the One until the Oracle had told her that she wasn't - but that she would fall in love with the One.

And they pulled some of that into 2/3. The oracle is another form of control. She even told Neo he was not the 'one', and I suspect said the same to the others. Until he stopped believing their lies he could not be the 'one'. But he needed a push, the love for Trinity. So the oracle set that up. Another form of control.

I agree. No evidence was presented to support the sequels were "mostly the result of retroactive revision and was never planned when the first film came out." Revision already take place in all creative storytelling. Also where does he come up with the idea that the perception is the films were "mapped out in advance and executed in accordance with a foolproof master plan?" Seems a bit extreme.

All stories are a creative process and small and large details can change as a story continues.

For instance, originally machines used human brains as part of a greater neural net within the matrix. But then executives forced the Wachowskis to change that idea into humans-as-batteries to make it more palatable. So they re-write portions of the arc to fit that new narrative.

So all I see here is the "5 predecessors" plot removed from the first movie becoming 5 predecessors in the "matrix is a lie" plot, which may not have changed much. It's silly to speculate without just asking The Wachowskis directly.

I can't see how anyone ever thought that the entire Matrix trilogy was originally conceived as one unified whole. The jarring transition in the narrative from Matrix 1 to Matrix 2/3 is so pronounced that it just feels like two nearly completely separate stories that were grafted together in some Frankenstein-esque fashion. It's almost like the jump between the Old Testament and the New Testament - two entirely different religions that someone tried to retroactively glue together so they would look like one "thing" with a common linear narrative.

Can you give some examples?

I only watched all 3 way back when and was much younger, but the main parts of the plot seemed coherent to me at the time.

I mean... the entire focus of the narrative completely changed. Matrix 1 was all about "destroy the Matrix and free humanity" while Matrix 2/3 was all about "save Zion from the IRL machine invasion".

And I'm not saying it isn't coherent in that one can't follow from the other, or that you can't find a way to make a linear narrative out of that. I'm just saying it's a very pronounced change in focus/tone/direction, whatever you want to call it. And to me, from the very first time I saw Matrix 2, I had this strong sense of "wow, that came out of nowhere and went off on a weird direction". It felt very disjointed and weird to me all along.

I still don't get what surprised you there since Zion is mentioned in the first movie while he doesn't either destroy the Matrix nor frees humanity there. So it must have happen in some way elsewhere and it does in 2 and 3. I found it quite logical that he would visit Zion, that the machines would attack Zion and that he would continue to try to destroy the Matrix and free humanity. The whole movie 2 and 3 actually show the way he goes to accomplish (or not accomplish) that while the prologue in 1 only introduces him as the protagonist who would go the way.

Sure, Zion was mentioned in the first movie. As a side-bar, almost a throwaway thing. But the meat of the story is about the drive to free all of humanity from the Marix. In Matrix 2/3 that element entirely disappears and the "resolution" is some sort of truce between the humans and the machines... that doesn't jibe at all with the "destroy the Matrix" idea, IMO.

Anyway... not trying to change anyone's mind here. This is obviously pretty subjective. All I can say is that to me, it's very clear that Matrix 2/3 represent a substantially different (albeit related) story than Matrix 1. If anyone disagrees, well, so be it.

> Sure, Zion was mentioned in the first movie. As a side-bar, almost a throwaway thing.

A throwaway thing? What?

This is where humanity lives outside the Matrix. This is the dialogue:

NEO Zion?

TANK If this war ended tomorrow, Zion is where the party would be.

NEO It's a city?

TANK The last human city. The only place we got left.

NEO Where is it?

TANK Deep underground. Near the earth's core, where it's still warm. You live long enough, you might even see it.

Further on Zion is mentioned in connection with the warning and later in the even more important topic of the access codes and coming from Tanks mouth:

TANK We can't let that happen, Trinity. Zion is more important than me. Or you, or even Morpheus

Or Agent Smiths:

AGENT SMITH Once Zion is destroyed, there is no need for me to be here. Do you understand? I need the codes. I have to get inside Zion. You have to tell me how.

I mean seriously. I have the feeling you did not pay attention which is the feeling I get from most of the people who are an the hate train. It seems like those people live off the hype for the fight scenes and visual impact of the first movie which none of the others could deliver because the revolution has happened already. But all movies after Matrix had that problem too and it doesn't say anything about the progression of the story of Matrix.

> But the meat of the story is about the drive to free all of humanity from the Marix. In Matrix 2/3 that element entirely disappears and the "resolution" is some sort of truce between the humans and the machines... that doesn't jibe at all with the "destroy the Matrix" idea, IMO.

It doesn't disappear. It is the main part of the story of those movies. The decisions need to do are just about that. This is what is important and the result is a consequence of what happened along the way.

You should really consider watching those movies again because I think you've missed a lot there.

You should really consider watching those movies again because I think you've missed a lot there.

I have watched The Matrix probably 100+ times (and the sequels a good 30 or more times each). I really doubt that I'm the one who's "missing something" here.

Anyway, if you see it differently, then you see it differently. That's totally acceptable. Two people can watch the same movie(s) and reach different interpretations. Nothing unusual about that.

I have no opinion but I find it interesting that you started this conversation by saying:

"I can't see how anyone ever thought..."

and end the conversation with:

"Nothing unusual about two people reaching different interpretations. "

Whether the Matrix was intended as 1 movie or 3 movies is inconsequential in the grand scheme, but seeing this side of human nature is kind of interesting and somewhat amusing.

Note what I did not say at the beginning:

"No one could possibly watch the Matrix and think that..."

I'm just saying I personally don't see the thought process, and the interpretation(s) where the movies are a cleanly connected, smooth, linear, contiguous narrative. I'm not saying that such processes and interpretations can't exist, hence

"Two people can watch the same movie(s) and reach different interpretations."

Anyway...

Dude, just stop. Your attempt to refute Kranar citing you contradicting yourself is laughable, and (speaking as one who has no horses in this race) Krasnol pretty convincingly demonstrated that you were wrong. That you claim to have watched The Matrix more than 100 times makes you look worse in this context, not better.

I haven't watched the move 100 times, but there is something I think isn't addressed. If the "war" ended tomorrow, and all the humans are freed, freed into what? You wind up with billions of naked hungry adults wandering around, no food, no sunlight, all going to die quickly.

Good point and another one why it needed more than one movie.

This is exactly how I felt as well. The most surprising part of that article was that many people think it was originally envisioned as a trilogy. To me, it feels exactly like one movie that was extraordinarily successful, so they grafted on some stuff to make it a trilogy.

iirc the Wachowski’s plan was for a trilogy from the start but WB didn’t want to fork that much on newcomers and new ip. But once realizing the success and cult following they gave cart blanche for the rest. That explains why the first movie was much more contained, as it could at least stand alone.

As I see it we have The Matrix, Animatrix, then a long sequel split in two, and now a conmemorative sequel with pets and zombies. It feels like a wink to Disney.

I'd have peferred them to explain how Neo was able to use the "force" against the machines, see their energy while blind, and who's the Zero. Expected a replica of Neo to be used by the machines or something in the lines of "don't be evil" becomes evil, as a critique to modern tech.

There used to be a theory that the real world is just a upper layer of matrix used by machines to catch anomaly/neo and reset guide/deceive him via an illusion of choice to fight smith and reset the system.

That would explain the powers he gets in real world.

The tale I was told, by a friend who used to work in the film industry, was that the Wachowskis did in fact write a Matrix trilogy as a unified whole, but the studio felt that a three-movie commitment was too risky and told them to settle for one. The trilogy was therefore abridged and filmed as "The Matrix". After that movie's runaway success, the studio naturally changed their mind and came around asking for parts 2 and 3... which were promptly cobbled together as a single monster sequel over the course of a two-week writing marathon.

I have no way to tell how large a kernel of truth this story may contain, but it certainly feels like it could be true.

I have no way to tell how large a kernel of truth this story may contain, but it certainly feels like it could be true.

OK, I could see that. It would explain why there was such a shift between Matrix 1 and Matrix 2/3.

I never once heard nor thought the matrix sequels were planned from the beginning. The first movie is completely self-contained. The feel of the sequels is of someone stretching out a completed story, because of the money made from the first one, not anything pre-planned from the beginning, and they also feel like 1 movie that was made artificially into 2 to get more box office money.

I've always suspected that the Matrix trilogy was pre-planned in the same sense as Star Wars had a planned 9 episode arc as George Lucas always claimed.

That is, sure, they had a general sense of the surrounding world and events and what might happen next. But when someone actually said "here's an unfathomably large amount of money, please make these movies" they had to actually come up with all the concrete details and probably moved a lot of things around while doing so.

I seem to recall from the time that the Wachowskis originally planned the Matrix storyline as a trilogy, but then they were forced into making a single movie, and so took all the fantastic parts of the whole trilogy and crammed it into one movie.

Then they had to turn it into a trilogy again, and, well, it's hard to unscramble an egg.

Lucas had a script, and A New Hope ended up being the middle of it. He was all over the place. He wanted an Obi-Wan story, a Wookie movie, etc. Empire wasn’t the original sequel, but it got so big they double downed and then he just rehashed the first plot for RotJ (in the original script the Wookies helped destroy the first Death Star, but Ewoks were better for Toys R Us).

The prequel trilogy then just made it “Anakin’s story” and in 2008 he was saying he was done and there was no thereafter. Given how bad those were, he would probably have not done much better than Disney for the last three.

IMO, 2 & 3 weren't that great. And it took years for me to re-watch the first one and remember how much I loved it as a self-contained film.

This is a weird sentiment:

> No, the Story of the One in the first movie always meant to be non-canon, an intentional misleading of the audience, a red herring.

It's not "non-canon", it is canon that Morpheus and others believed this "Story of the One". That it wasn't true does not make the belief (that the characters' held) non-canon, just wrong. To be non-canon then you'd actually be throwing away the first movie, but that's not the case, instead the information available to the characters has been expanded and so a once-held belief becomes falsified.

I don't see the contradiction.

Tangent: aside from the vastly inferior action scenes and the unnecessary, if not severely distracting throwbacks / returning characters I thought the new film was decent. They didn't get it right, but it was much better than most franchise resurrection attempts.

The first act, I thought, was great. But I was disappointed when the writers showed their self awareness of missing the point when remaking a piece of art, and then... kind of did it anyway with the same level of depth for many scenes. I despised, in particular, how in the original films Neo's powers were just him being a god and understanding the world, but in the new one he kind of grunts and expels physical effort to do them like a typical superhero. That's just a different style altogether, and the original makes it abundantly clear that something like age shouldn't affect it. /rant.

I totally get him. After 3 years of coding you feel great when you click "build" After 30 years of coding you're just really grumpy when you have to click "build" again

Frank Herbert told me that Dune just got too long and so he split it into two books. There would be no further books because he was done writing that one.

And it's not like I was anyone special, just someone he ran into at a party, so I'm sure he was telling lots of people that after Dune Messiah came out.

Spoiler: I suspect none of that was true.

What kind of party was it?

Just a party at someone’s house in Boston or Cambridge. I think he lived on the west coast so perhaps he was just visiting another guest. It was of course several decades ago.

I don't remember where I read it, but I remember reading that he wrote parts of Children and Messiah before or in parallel with writing the first book.

He also said at some later point that he had always envisioned it as a trilogy. I assume he simply enjoyed the money and attention (and probably had some leftover ideas to expand upon) and frankly, why shouldn’t he?

Dune is surprisingly tightly plotted so he probably left a lot of items “on the cutting room floor”.

Although I personally became bored with the sequels, they didn’t have the “just turning the crank to get some bucks” feeling that a lot of sequels do. They simply weren’t for me, which is fine.

While I am generally inclined to believe the first film stands alone and the later films had at most vague hopes and dreams about where to go if it was successful, I also think this overstates the case a bit. If Morpheus was wrong about 5 previous "The Ones" in the Matrix, that changes his character and Cypher's character in the first movie, sure, but it doesn't have much effect on the subsequent stories.

If you watch carefully, you can penetrate Laurence Fishburne's incredible screen presence by the end of the second movie to notice that Morpheus is a naive tool, quite a while before the character figures it out himself. (In fact, I find him a bit cringe to watch in the third movie because by then it's obvious that almost every word out of his mouth is unjustified by reality, and he is only right by coincidence. I don't mean the bad accidental sort of cringe, it's deliberate, and it works fine. Legit character choice.) It doesn't change the overarching story that much to make it possible to derive that in the first movie. It would just change the first movie.

I'm not sure accommodating this revelation would require any changes in the second and third movie. You could add a conversation where Neo confronts Morpheus more directly, but it wouldn't be obligatory.

My guess is that the reality is the same for them as it is for a lot of us. How many times have you worked on a project, either personally or at work, and come up with hopes and dreams about what Phase 2 will look like? Tons of times for me. But even when I stick with the design we hoped and dreamed about (which is basically the task I'm working on right now at work), there's still a lot between those hopes and dreams and running code. I bet there was at least thoughts about future plans, but there's a lot between hopes and dreams and a functioning script, let alone actual movies.

I agree with the author. The cut scenes would have provided better character development for both Morpheus and Cypher, as well as some more motivating additional doubt for Neo and perhaps a better payoff when he realizes he is the One.

However, I think the whole discussion about canon is nonsense. For this, for Star Wars, and for everything.

Is anything Star Wars watchable after 1983? No. So why even talk about canon? Just watch the good stuff and ignore the rest. Is any Matrix movie after 1999 worth watching? Of course not. So why even talk about it?

In both cases, the original writers didn't respect their own material; why should you respect their idea of what the "real" story is? Life is too short for bad art.

Matrix Resurrections is worth watching, but it won't please people who are fans of anything beyond the original film.

I'm confused by this statement. I agree Matrix Resurrections is worth watching, it's quite good. But I'm also a fan of the other 4 films (Matrix, Reloaded, Revelations, Animatrix). Many people I've talked about the films with agree.

Personally, I found Revelations to be some what weaker than the rest, but they all form a pretty compelling and enjoyable series.

The deleted bits (the conversation between Neo and Cypher, and the followup conversation between Neo and Morpheus) doesn't contradict the sequels. They simply show that Morpheus was wrong about who the One was. The existence of the failed candidates doesn't contradict the existence of the failed predecessors. If anything, it fits into the numerology of the trilogy (6 candidates, 6 Ones, 6 crew members, 6 ships, 6 trips into the Matrix, 6 Zions, etc.)

Of course the Matrix Trilogy wasn't fully written out when they made the first film. The Wachowskis never claimed that. They said it was all conceived as one whole, and the specific execution of that concept (i.e., the screenplays) changed after the first film to reflect the narrative that actually made the final cut in the first movie... Which is exactly how things work in Hollywood, because canon is only what actually makes it onto the screen.

Yeah I totally agree - as much as I would have liked these scenes in the movie because they do really flesh out Cyphers motivation (and its not like the Matrix was an excessively long movie to begin with) I dont think these are incompatible at all.

That being said as much as the second two films get shit on I rewatched both recently and number 2 really is quite good - not as iconic as the first Matrix but still solid. Unfortunately it seems its reputation got really spoiled by the third movie which.......well we all know how that goes.

The third movie is the best sequel...when viewed through the understanding that it is a war movie. At any rate, the stuff that happens in the third movie matters, unlike the countless pointless fights between immortal characters in the second movie.

Sort of an aside: I find it so strange to insist that everything have The One True Story With All Its Details And We Shall Murder Anyone Who Disagrees ("canon"). I'm not an expert in literature by any means--I was bad at, and hated, lit crit--but it seems like this is a relatively recent invention, or at least that its application to anything other than religious texts is a recent development. For starters I don't think this is how stories have been told for most of human history. Before Beowulf was written down, were people interrupting scops to say that the color of the dragon in their version was non-canonical? And even if they were, most stories--and especially ones that we seem to get bent out of shape about when it comes to "canon"--aren't real, so to insist that there is some set of essential, unchangeable facts that they refer to is gibberish.

Would very much appreciate insight on this from someone who has studied literature and/or folklore extensively (though I suspect this might not be the right place to find such a person).

> I find it so strange to insist that everything have The One True Story With All Its Details And We Shall Murder Anyone Who Disagrees ("canon"). I'm not an expert in literature by any means--I was bad at, and hated, lit crit--but it seems like this is a relatively recent invention...

I agree. It's what you get when you combine obsessive fan-geekery with milking some IP for every cent it's worth with sequels and tie-ins.

There are similar stories about Babylon 5 (envisioned as a 5 year cohesive story arc; lots of changes to the plot happened over the years of production)

This really shouldn't be too surprising to anyone who has worked on a creative project over an extended period of time. Heck, NaNoWriMo has you write a novel in a single month and I doubt many people have the novel hit exactly all the plot points they had originally thought up. How much more should we expect plans to change over many years (and with external constraints).

Sometimes you find the optimal path after trying others.

Seems pretty natural to me.

To be fair Babylon 5 WAS planned for the 5 Season Arc and only extended after the original plans for season 3-5 were essentially compressed into what became season 3 and 4. But from what I know it's true that the Babylon 5 we got was substantially different from the one originally planned. Here's a very detailed Discussion of the original story line https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/synopsis-of-jmss-synopsis-of...

I don't think 3 was compressed, it was 4 and 5 that became 4 due to fears the network would cancel it without having a chance to resolve the big arcs. But even there, the story was that they did it by dropping the side plots, and then the 5th season that aired was made entirely of those dropped side plots, not just extended in the usual sense.

Also interestingly from that link, the end of that version of season 5 where Sinclair was believed to be a traitor, got rolled into the planned plot of the Crusade spinoff, though the series was canceled before they reached that point.

Much like the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises, the extent to which Everything Was Carefully Planned In Advance has been greatly exaggerated. It's just not possible to think that far ahead!

See also: Lost, Battlestar Galactica.

The “and they have a plan” line in the opening sequence got more and more ridiculous as the series went on and it was clear the cylons did NOT have a plan at all.

"The plan is to wing it."

I always say that there was a great 3 season show hidden inside BSG's 4 season run.

It was the show that made me realize that 22 episode seasons just don’t work with the kind of serialized story that everybody does now. If bsg had been 8-12 episodes per season every episode would have been gold.

For Lost, there was a rumor online around the second or third season that someone had either figured out or leaked the entire remaining planned plot, so they started changing it in random ways just so they could keep claiming no one had figured it out.

I also think this blog post betrays a lack of understanding about when it's appropriate to draw lines around "the plot" of a series. Like, it doesn't surprise me that they played with ideas that might have contradicted the trilogy - but they ended up not including them, and those ideas made an appearance later, which actually supports the claim that they were thinking about 2 and 3 during 1.

Like, shooting and then deleting a scene that you think might hurt the plot in future movies is "carefully planning in advance."

The theory presented is that it was cut for running time, not for story arc reasons.

I disagree with the article’s premise that it would have changed the story of the sequels - but they make a good case for it being cut for incidental reasons.

I disagree with that read of the evidence they list, to wit:

> In the introduction to a copy of the Final Shooting Script included in the book, editor Spencer Lamm notes that “everything” in the script was filmed but “changes occurred during editing.”[...]the part “where Cypher tells Neo there were five potential Ones before him was shot and then cut in postproduction for reasons only [Lana] and [Lilly] know.”

So the quotes here say they shot everything in the script, but then they made changes in the editing room for reasons only known to the writers of the trilogy. It could be for runtime! I don't think there's any definitive evidence it isn't, but clearly this account also supports them shooting something that they later realized would screw up their planned script.

I also wanna say that there is an ambiguity over if the five "ones" are actually Ones or just people Morpheus believed are ones. It wouldn't contradict the later plotline of Neo being the sixth One for Morpheus to mistakenly free five people who aren't Ones and get them killed - but it would be really confusing! Since the people in question are summarizing a deleted plot arc that the directors removed, I suspect they may be summarizing in a way that wasn't accurate to the understanding of those directors.

All of which is to say that the blog article is telling a very specific story about what seems like pretty ambiguous evidence. The script had reference to previous people pulled out as potential Ones having died to agents. It would be confusing to the audience for these to be five "fake" ones and then also have five previous real Ones, but it wouldn't be internally contradictory. The only way it directly contradicts is with a very narrow meaning which I don't think the blog post convinced me was intended. Beyond that - as I said above - since they never put it into the movie I think this could count as "being intended from the beginning" where the beginning is the release of the first movie.

Disney Star Wars however was by far the most blatant example. The sequel trilogy had no overarching plan at all. The Directors were free to make whatever story they wanted.

This of course ended terribly in Episode 8 when Johnson single-handedly destroyed everything Abrams had put in place and left him nothing to go on for the finale.

Which is kinda sad given that Disney as an organization should be aware how much good storytelling and a "cohesion team" is for the importance of an universe, given their experiences with the MCU.

Even the Star Wars expanded universe was carefully and competently taken care of prior the acquisition - so many books and yet so little inconsistencies. Then Disney decided to throw all of the decades of worldbuilding away for three shitty plots and an endless lot of Rey-based Rule 34 material.

The Star Trek reboot quality is similarly questionable, but at least they didn't simply go ahead and un-canon all existing works.

...and an endless lot of Rey-based Rule 34 material.

Good on ya to point out the silver lining.

I actually had to find something I was happy about. Han Solo murdered, Luke and Leia getting sacrificed, for a shitty Palpatine clone of all things? What a disgrace of a chaos of a plot!

ETA: not to mention, the "character dies and gets reborn" plot was already questionable in TCW (where Darth Maul was revealed to have survived being sliced in half by Qui-Gon Jinn in Episode 1), but that one at least had a decent bit of usage... Palpatine's appearance was mostly the reveal at the end on Exegol, a fight and his (hopefully final...) death.

The only way I can see any future films being set is somewhere between the trilogies (there's more than enough to be explained between EP3/4 or between 6/7) or an alternative-timeline reboot happening after EP6 (or maaaaybe but difficult given the deaths of primary actors, a timeline split caused by the destruction of that superlaser planet).

I like the Star Trek reboots, but respecting the lore is not their strong suit.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aSrSBBLLtYc

I'm a tiny bit out of date regarding ST continuity (lost interest after the end of DS9 and the death of Data in Nemesis) so please correct me if I mess up my time travel or don't get the meme, but the split in the timeline of the reboot happened in the early days of the Kirk captaincy while Discovery is set ten years before TOS... which means all the interactions of the TNG/DS9/VOY episodes with Q didn't have happened yet in the timeline of the first two Discovery seasons and at all in the future of Seasons 3ff?

(Seriously, time travel as a concept is annoying, especially when everyone uses their own version of how it works!)

I thought Q Continuum and Q as individuals existed outside of normal spacetime, although I do like the line of reasoning you have traced.

Urgh, yes. Completely forgot about that part... Q can technically be used to retcon every difference, by a simple act of Q. A snip and whatever is wrong didn't even happen, or it happened in a multi-verse (we have evidence for the existence of at least one, the infamous Mirror Universe... one of my least favorite plot devices).

Mirror Universe is so fun, though! It gave us classics like Mirror Riker. I thought the Mirror Universe in Discovery was very well done, without spoiling anything.

I dunno, I think it's more accurate to say that it ended terribly in Episode 9 when Abrams returned, shrugged, and ignored everything that had happened in 8. The film where we were given the phrase "somehow Palpatine returned"... :D

All symptoms of staggering mismanagement by Disney, of course. A trilogy with a stupid planned plot arc would have been better than the sequence of "solid but uninspired Star Wars throwback" + "interesting and out there reinterpretation of the mythos" + "but what if RotJ again but dumber?"

Sad to see Harry Potter lumped in there. Whilst the first seven books had a meticulous plan with payoffs from Book 1 in Book 7, I wholly agree that the spin off franchises did not.

In my youth it was generally accepted that "George Lucas wrote an entire 9 film series." I don't know how this rumor spread or came to be so widely believed.

Lucas had plans for sequels way back in the 70s, even making comments about when Mark Hammill would be the right age, but nothing concrete

I'll just throw "Lost" into the mix. Just about every plot development wound up being directly contradicted in the push to come up with stories for the next season.

Same thing happened with Alias too every season was practically a reboot with some new nonsense being invoked from thin air.

It's been years since I watched Matrix but is there really any conflict between these two Predecessors theories? IIRC actions of the Predecessors resulted not only in the resets of the Matrix but also destruction and recreation of the Zion. Is there any issue with Neo being sixth candidate to be "The One" within a sixth bigger loop? I don't think anyone but the Architect and the Oracle were aware of Matrix resets.

There's no issue with that, but it wouldn't exactly be tight storytelling.

According to this they died at the hands of agents so I would assume they never expressed attributes of the one or reset the matrix.

The weird thing is: I think i remember seeing this sublot when i first saw the matrix on some bootlegged VHS... perhaps some mandela effect thing..

Trinity told Cypher her part of the prophecy (“The Oracle told me that I would fall in love, and that that man, the man who I loved would be The One.”), and Cypher thought he was in love with Trinity, which is why Cypher teases her about it: in the dialogue that opens the movie (“You like him, don’t you? You like watching him.”, “You don’t, do you?”), and again when neo is recovering on the ship (“I don’t remember you bringing me dinner. There is something about him, isn’t there?”), and finally when he betrays them (“You know, for a long time, I thought I was in love with you.”, “all I want is a little yes or no. Look into his eyes, those big pretty eyes. Tell me. Yes or no?”).

Oh wow, this subplot went totally over my head, I mean I caught that he was jealous of the new kid on the block but his betrayal makes a lot more sense now, thanks a lot!

Wait what? I don't follow entertainment media, so this "Master Plan" idea is news to me.

I thought it was straightforward that the first movie is what they set out to make, complete in its own right. It's basically anti-authoritarian hacking/phreaking (abstraction fucking) plus kung fu. Neo achieves the win condition, and the story ends to avoid having to grapple with any implications of achieving godmode.

Then the 2nd/3rd are basically add ons to the original story/universe. They include many more characters with large scale social dynamics, drawn out battle scenes, and the writing is less focused and more broad-appeal tropey. In the first movie society is something to exist outside of; in the sequels it's something the characters are a part of. In the first they literally blow up a federal building; in the sequels there are respected politicians. The end of the first is one of overcoming and creative destruction; the end of the third is that of reconciliation and hope for incremental change. I thought these stark differences where why the sequels were widely criticized?

I can see how that progression could be that of a single planned story, but rather it feels an awful lot like the first movie was successful and Hollywood wanted More. The themes of the sequels have seemingly more to do with the Wachowskis' own personal development struggles rather than abstractly following from the first. A hard truth of any critical art is that society looks a lot more comfortable after you've become successful. And well getting longer in the tooth myself, I guess that's just the cycle? shrug

I get that people will view you as a genius if you have this multi-year, multi-(book/movie) plot all detailed out and slowly reveal it to the world, so there is a benefit in promulgating this idea, but is there actually any content where this technique was used successfully? It seems like it would just be overly restricting to creativity rather than a kind of genius move.

The Expanse series of novels just wrapped up after ten years, with one short story left to be published. I can't judge their grandiosity compared to A Song of Ice and Fire or Star Wars, however I would consider them to be a major success.

But did they map it all out up front and then not make any major changes?

Not to mention that there was originally an entire character named "Switch" who switched genders between matrix/real-world and didn't make it past The Hollywood People and that according to one of the Wachowskis it was really an allegory for transgenderism... Well here's one article about that (there's another on Vox I think):

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435

Honestly though it would be ill-advised to try to think of the Matrix as A Great Revelatory Truth About Humankind's Place In the Universe and I hope folks are past that kind of quasi-religious thinking. It's an imperfect but thought-provoking series of fictional stories.

"It's thought provoking, but I hope it doesn't provoke these specific thoughts."

Imho this is actually the much more interesting revelation to me and look how few words you needed to accomplish that...

I wish they would have deleted that ending from the latest Matrix Resurrection. The first 99% of the movie was great. The last 1% was just anticlimactic and the cover of Killing In the Name just reminded me that this was a rehash of a great original movie.

This sub plot being casually discarded for cutting time (if it was) has to be one of the luckiest edits in film history, as it allowed a much cooler story, 2 great sequels, and a delayed plot twist outside of the first movie.

Someone else points out that it wasn't strictly necessary to cut this sub plot to enable the second concept of "one" cycles, which I agree with, but having just the b more interesting of the two is probably more potent storytelling.

Pretty weak IMO.

1. The whole thing is intended to refute an idea that is not widespread nor of any particular importance (a few fluffy quotes from critic reviews don't make a zeitgeist)

2. The smoking gun evidence of plotting changes between 1 and 2 is weak.

3. Even if they did change the plot between 1 and 2 that wouldn't prove they didn't have a plan going on. Sometimes things change, and "master plans" are not etched in stone

I think this can only be understood if you think in linear terms. I thought it was obvious by the second film that when Neo met the Architect, his five "predecessors" were actually in fact running in parallel with him, like threads to a singular process, hinted by all the televised instances of Neo while the two of them conversed on the topic of choices and consequences.

why is it impossible that, when asked to cut the film's running time down, it was decided that the "six previous Ones" idea should be excised and expanded upon in the form of a "twist" (instead of "Morpheus thought he found The One six previous times," it's "the entire cycle of the machines freeing some humans, the humans establish/rediscover/rebuild Zion, eventually The One is found, he resets the cycle, and this has all happened six previous times") in the sequel? that sounds pretty reasonable to me—they wanted the same gist of "you're not the first The One, Neo, this has all happened before," but on a much grander scale.

it's still very interesting though that the original idea makes Cypher much more sympathetic, and the final cut makes Morpheus more sympathetic.

the other Neo-s Morpheus found were within his own timeline, it was his "purpose"

but there were other matrix before the matrix in the movie

the Merovingian and Persephone were The Architech's failed versions of Neo and Trinity from the machine world, they didn't work because they could never have human "love" (this is why Persephone is so utterly fascinated by it) it took the Oracle to realize this because the Architech could never understand

I still haven't seen the newest movie and was trying to stay spoiler free but the commercials kept popping up, I really, really dislike how "clean" the digital format looks compared to the original films and Neil Patrick Harris may be a great actor but he is completely anatopical to me in a matrix movie, should be "unknowns" to avoid distraction of the actor

It took me forever to realize that the Japanese lettering in the matrix code hinted at something. I mean why Japanese? I mean it could just be a homage because of "Ghost in the Shell", but after a while I suddenly realized it hints at the AI having evolved from a Japanese nation-state AI.

Only people who don’t work in the film industry would ever think Matrix was conceived as a trilogy from the start and the plan was never changed/altered.

That literally never happens, it’s never happened that I aware of, unless the work is an adaptation.

It's also possible that during the making of the following movies they might have changed their minds about what would work better story-telling wise. I don't see this "discovery" as the gotcha the author thinks it is.

For anyone who’s actually interested in the Matrix, this is a great website. Been reading it for over a decade

https://www.matrixresolutions.com/

Not sure why this is even an issue. The original matrix is a beautiful self contained and tightly directed movie. the sequels are a complete mess. it's obvious they were only made to cash in on the success of the original.

Can someone explain to me if machines were so advanced why couldn't they build a solar power above the cloud instead of using humans as a battery?

Iirc “humans as a battery” was a plot-rewrite to not be so cerebral, but of course humans do not output more power than you put in, what kind of batteries are we talking about anyway, grid storage? Maybe a capacitor of some sort?

no, each human was a single core of a vast supercomputer. The computer’s purpose is anyone’s guess, maybe it was searching for the ultimate question to make sense of 42… but life wants to create more life, perhaps the machines thought they were doing us a favor, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace style. I believe the architect spells this out; they tried to give us paradise but it gave us aneurysms, as living things we need something to struggle against or else we wither and die.

IIRC that was actually smith in the first movie, during his interrogation of morpheus

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost.”

The new one is still a great movie. I'm gonna watch again tonight so I can tune out the real world and my adulting responsibilities for a few hours.

There were sequels?

The animatrix was disappointing in some ways, but it's the only sequel we've got.

might as well stop at the first sentence. no-one thought that.

Oh my god. This is the true redpill. You mean that moviemakers sometimes retcon stuff and then say it was all part of a master plan? I can't process this. This shatters everything I've ever believed in. What do you want to tell me next, that George Lucas wasn't thinking of Anakin's podracing skills when he had Darth Vader say "I am your father"???

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