When was the last time I was this excited about a film? To be honest I can't remember. I mean, I was pretty excited about Endgame. But mainly to see how things would end. This was altogether more exhilarating! After all, for nearly twenty years, I hadn't expected there to be another Matrix! :)
(In fact, I was so excited that I started writing this post about The Matrix Resurrections several weeks ago. But then, one paragraph in, normal life kicked in and this is just getting rolled into my usual monthly one :P. Sad. Or maybe not :). You've gotto be happy with the life you've got right? I mean, of course, if it really isn't working out, then change some stuff. But to be honest I'm pretty happy most of the time with being able to post about life once a month, so...)
But yeah! I was excited enough to actually go to the cinema to watch it! We even did the right thing and re-watched The Matrix up front. And the experience was just awesome!! I mean! It's different! All for the better, if you ask me. There's more colour, a lot more fun! Yeah, humour, straight up! In a Matrix film, who'd have thunk it!
I really really liked the self-referential loops and the ways the new film takes in how the original film has affected pop culture! Is that because The Matrix affected my sense of popular culture in an outsized sort of way compared to most of the rest of the world? Who knows. But hey, I'm a total fan of the first film. In fact, I'm even a fan of Reloaded and Revolutions! Yes, they had their flaws, but I was invested enough in the world to accept them anyway. (We actually watched the sequels back to back one evening after watching Resurrections, and yeah, that was fun too! :) )
I honestly don't get how so many people are dissing Resurrections. Honestly! Get over yourselves! If you're a Matrix fan, go watch it. If you've never ever heard of The Matrix, watch the first one, then go watch Resurrections. If you like it, watch the other two too, just to fill in some of the narrative gaps. (Although.... I mean, I'm not so sure the prime narrative works if you don't at least know how Revolutions ends... so yeah, maybe watch all three first :). Whatever.)
(Also, I was so taken with Neo and Trinity being back, I ended up watching a lot of the casts' interviews around the premiere and on one of them Keanu Reeves ends up mistakenly plugging Revolutions instead of Resurrections =))). What an absolute legend!!)
So yeah, that was a lot of fun. But that was also the first weekend of the year :P. And for the first ten days or so of the new year, the snow was great! So we went cross-country skiing a bunch of times! I have to say, the new skiis make a huge difference! No prep, no problem, no matter the conditions :D. The downside is that I'd gotten very used to my old skiis, so I had to do a bit of re-learning, the hard way. A few bumps and scratches, but no stress :).
Since then though, some rather weird weather has come by and melted most of the snow and turned what remains into treacherous ice :(. Not cool at all. But hey, such is life. At least for the first time in a while the forecast seems to be predicting some actual snow in the near future. We'll see how that works out :).
To be fair, Resurrections wasn't the only awesome film we've watched lately. Our Kind of Traitor, for example. What a cool little film! Twists in the plot, solid acting, and really thought-provoking. Into the Spiderverse on the other hand was all about the awesome visuals for me. As in, using the visuals to really push home the narrative. I'm also happy I saw that before No Way Home :). Planning to go see No Way Home soonish, but there seem to be too many other people doing that still, so we wait..
Then there was Chaos Walking. I think I was more enamoured with the idea of it (and Tom Holland :)) than the film overall. But the idea of thoughts and memory being projected visibly is pretty cool, right? I think it may have had something also to do with the book I was reading at the same time, Americanah, but it made me think a fair bit about how there are so many layers to thought. What we think, what we think we think. What we think we aught to think. What we think others think we think, or think we should think. You get the idea.
The book itself has quite a lot more to it beyond just exploring the levels of self awareness to thought. The layers that exist to identity, racial, national/geographical, gender based.... How we each live our unique lives with each of our unique set of experiences in life. But part of that is also how those around us group is into imaginary boxes. And we do it right back I suppose. Because as humans it's quite hard to treat, or even see, another person as who they are. Perception, assumptions, prejudices, bias.
On a more concrete level, it was a revelation to see how much of the author's exploration of getting to and settling in a foreign culture seemed directly relatable. And the parts that were not. So yeah, definitely a thought provoking read.
Since then I've moved on to Project Hail Mary. Which is a lot more light-hearted in many ways. A thoroughly enjoyable and rapid read. And my first time back into anything resembling hard sci-fi in quite a while. (Asimov really doesn't count :).)
In the real world, there's also been something of an evolution. A change I was expecting to happen at some indeterminate point in the future suddenly materialized, leaving me slightly off balance. Yet, excited at the same time. I suppose there remains the question of how much of one's identity is really tied to a 125mm x 88mm booklet.
