Okay, if you're not listening to the podcast, the camera is still winning. That's what James Morrison. Welcome to the Popecast. Sit down and enjoy your point.
Okay, welcome to the Matrix episode of the podcast. Allison and Eric join me as we break down this sci-fi classic, that's some call the best sci-fi movie of all time. I don't go that far, but it's definitely the most influential movie of the past 25 years. The action and the special effects are groundbreaking, and the storytelling is really interesting and innovative.
Sure, it can be confusing. It can break your brain if you think too hard about it, but it's original. And that's a rare thing these days. It can be original.
That goes a long way. So take the red pill and join us as we break down the Matrix. We'll get everything you know. What is happening to me?
I like to tell you, it's that you're in danger. Forget everything you see. Fuck when you seek outdoor thinking, because Kansas is going bye-bye. Now the Matrix has you.
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. The Matrix. Alright, the Matrix, 1999.
The no-nonsense plot. This is pretty good. When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker, Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth. The life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber intelligence.
Okay, I think that's a different movie. Yeah. A little stranger. A beautiful stranger part is insane.
But also an evil cyber intelligence. I never really would have said, I mean, I guess in this movie, the agents are evil. It's evil. But it's just more like a survival to say this type of thing.
I never thought of a computer as evil, but I guess obviously they're the bad guy. They are devoid of a conscience to decide good or evil. I know. You gotta go way deep.
You're talking about the Matrix. That's one thing we're gonna, I don't want to get into, but it's inevitable. Yes. Is that all the philosophy and the allegories and everything.
Yes. It's kind of overwhelming. Yes. And we'll deal with that one week.
Okay. Okay. So it's a very caring thing about reaction to the movie. When where did you see it when it impacted to have overaging thoughts?
That type of thing. This was 99, we were in, I guess Chicago. We were in read and film. Yeah.
And I will, I remember very clearly the trailers on television and you're like, Oh, I can't wait to see it. And I'm like, ehh, I don't know if I really want to watch it. You're like, what are you talking about? You were like so annoyed.
I don't know that we saw it in the theater. I think we rented it. No. Maybe, I think you saw it in the theater.
I don't know that I did. I don't know. And then I watched it and I was like, well, it was, it was even in the trailer, you could tell, this is something different. I didn't understand it.
Immediately I had no idea what was going on. I didn't understand it for the first five times. I thought. Yeah.
But everything looked different. The philosophy was different. The computer simulation, living in a dream world. There's a world behind the world thing.
The philosophy of the allegories, the much hyped and much stolen and redone, choreography and fight scenes and the full-time. But you didn't know any of that going into it. You saw some of that in the trailers. Yeah.
But I mean, we're talking a minute and a half. You didn't know that there was all this deep philosophy and all that, didn't I? No, but right. But there was enough there that I knew I had to see it.
It was really, really different. And then we're talking about what you back to do. I think people forget how crazy unusual it was when it came out. There wasn't it.
It was completely different. There was nothing like it. It's completely different. Yeah.
It changed fighting sequences in any movie going forward, just about like nothing. It has influenced any remotely sci-fi action movie of any kind. Most influential movie of the past 25 years, arguably. I don't know if it's in the running.
I mean, off time ahead, I don't know. But I mean, every fight scene, every choreography, all these cinematography of sci-fi and fight scenes and all that sort of stuff. And all traces back to this movie. Yeah.
Eric, do you remember seeing it for the first time when you thought all that sort of stuff? I do. The week it came out was the week that I arrived at Fort Bragg. I don't remember exactly when I first saw the commercials for it.
But I do remember seeing the commercials. It's like what first get to Fort Bragg, it's like a week at a barracks. It was like the way they called it the replacement company, where you spend your week doing like in processing stuff and then they send you to your actual unit. The day that I got to my unit, I said it was that night, I went out with the guys because everybody was talking about it and we went to see it.
Yeah. And yeah, I was, I ended up having, I ended up going to see it again in the theater, like maybe not quite a month later, because like you, I didn't get it all the first time I saw it. Like I had to see it again to make sense of it. For sure.
I didn't really grasp it fully until the third time. I saw it probably. Yeah. I feel like that's why I'm pretty confident I did not see it with you.
I saw it on a rental and I think I watched it multiple times. We watched it multiple times that weekend. Like trying to understand everything. I remember specifically, I can't, movies came out on video way longer after the movie release.
So it might have been a year and a half later. Yeah. I think it might have been that Christmas. I remember watching it at your dad's place, that Christmas, like on the TV, like after.
Yeah, I had bought it and bought it home with me. I feel like I'm not Christmas time and we have to. Around the 27 inch television. Yeah.
Yeah. The 27 inch or with a dying photo tube. Yeah. Great.
I wrote down a bunch on VHS. I'm on VHS, of course. Bunch of little things here. Speaking of, there are so many versions of this have you purchased.
Is it three or is it four? Like did you have VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and then digital? Well, for the original movie Laser Desk? I just, for the original movie, yeah, I think that's right.
I think it's four. I think I had VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, yeah, and digital four times. OK, God. The other two.
No, the other two. I think three times. Because I think I bought a DVD, a box. I bought the box set on DVD, then a Blu-ray, and then digital.
Yeah, they're basically got a three. Let's be honest. There's moments. Come on.
Yeah. So I wrote down a bunch of like, thought starters here. I don't know where to go with them. They all sort of mix and match.
And I'm not sure where to start, except there's one place to start. And that is the influence or role of the Wachowski's gender, fluidity, transgender situation in this movie. It's all over the place from top to bottom. And I think we all probably saw this in the trivia.
The character, Switch. Yeah. It's supposed to be transgender. Well, she was going to be female in the Matrix in Male in the real world.
That's why her name was Switch. Oh. Yeah. I did not.
I mean, I did my little slot machine look at trivia, so I did not see that. That's interesting. Yeah. The actress that plays Switch, when they originally cast her, she was only supposed to be the character in the Matrix.
Yeah. Oh. So and one or both of the Wachowski's have come out, I think, recently and said, yeah, this whole movie is basically sort of at least parts of it. An allegory, a transgender allegory for what they're going through and identity issues and all of that sort of stuff, of course.
But then there's also the layer of the biblical allegory that's going on with the Neo and Trinity. And there's all the biblical references. I can't get putting those two together, like in the background of your brain, while dealing with all of the computerness of it, like, it hurts my head. Like, for example, the complexity of everything that's here.
There's so many layers and they're interconnected or they're disparate, like they're all over the place. Like when the oracle gives Neo a cookie. Yeah. And computers have cookies to remember and mark and track the user.
All that stuff. I can't keep track of all the computer stuff and all the transgender stuff and all the biblical stuff and follow the fucking plot. It's ridiculous. This is like six movies in one and it kind of hurts my head.
Even 22 years later. Yeah. It's really pretty incredible. The what that all of that could be packed into a single two hour movie.
It's nuts. In 1999 is incredible. I mean, it really is amazing that all of that was done. And it was so influential and changed.
It changed the use of CG. It changed the use of or the way fighting worked. It was it really, well, you already said it. So we have talked about this with other movies in the past.
Does the Matrix qualify as a perfect movie? For what it's doing, is it as near perfect as it could be? I'm going to say the movie as a whole. It's not perfect.
It's not flawless, but in doing what it's trying to do. It's I think it's near perfect. Yeah. I mean, I was watching it even a bit this evening and there's a couple of, like, actually wrote down like a couple of like, what the hell?
Like, this is the most ridiculous over the top performance or delivery of a line. It was it was distracted. Well, I mentioned it as well. So the scene when Cypher is unplugging everybody and tank goes, believe it or not, you piece of shit.
You can still burn and you shoot some and then he spits. It's ridiculous. That's that's. That's some George Lewis.
Right. That particular delivery is crazy. And the tasty wheat acting of mouse is like super Herky Jerky and bizarre and it's I don't get the delivery when in that particular scene given what he does throughout the rest of the movie. Right.
The whole scene with the eating the tasty wheat or whatever is weird. Maybe that kid just not a good actor. Well, that's what that's more of what it felt like. Like he was trying to be the funny, smooth, fast talking nerd.
He's nothing. But it came out really forced and awkward. However, I actually enjoyed the content of the dialogue around the tasty wheat and what it means about what you taste. What?
Yes. Did you notice that he even fucks that up? He says it backwards. Excuse me.
He doesn't say, you know, everything tastes like chicken. He said chicken tastes like everything. Chicken doesn't taste like everything. No.
It's the opposite of what he should've been saying, but you know what he wants to say, but I enjoyed the content of what was being said. The delivery misses the mark. So I think it's on the outer ring of the target. Top to bottom.
You could erase his character from the movie. You didn't notice it. It's fine. It's fine.
Yeah. Have somebody else develop the woman in red program. Fine. Good.
Yeah. Any of the other people have a pop type of fucking line of dialogue that matters would be great. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. He was kind of such an an ancillary character. Take Mouse and APOC, combine them into one, throw them in the garbage and then give all their stuff to do. Have sweet.
Why are they combined in one and then thrown in the garbage? It's funny. Then have all the thing, the three or four things they do, just hand that off the switch and then the movie is the same and it's cleaner. It went in nonsense.
That's it. I think this movie is close to perfect. Yeah. It's pretty, it's for what it's doing.
Pretty darn close. Yeah. For what it's doing at the time it did it, it's amazing. So back to the Wachowski's, the S&M influence throughout this thing is very interesting with all the leather and the club that they go to.
The club, which is a real club. All that's interesting. It was obvious then, I think, trying to do, but there was all the sort of ties in together. One thing I wrote down, nothing else but the Nokia phones.
That little slide out. People wanted to have those phones because of that. The scene where... I think I almost want to...
For some reason it's in my head that those phones were already discontinued by the time the movie even came out. They were brand new when they put them in the movie, but then they didn't work and they pulled them or something. One more time, watching the movie, they had that phone and the bottom slid out and whatever. Cool.
But even then we were like, that phone is huge. Cell phones at that time were not that gigantic. They were getting small. So yeah, I'm sure they were.
Obviously. The scene where they rescued Morpheus from, talked about them. Getting the guns in the white space or whatever. The loading program, they call it.
Getting through security with all the guns in the bags and then the shoot out in the lobby. Morpheus up top with the agent Smith going through white Hates the Matrix and wants to get out of there has to get the codes or whatever. Get out the shoot out the elevator. The fight at the top, the helicopter shoot out blowing out the whole top four or whatever that was.
Restoring Morpheus. The bullet dodging. It's 20 minutes or however long this thing is of 1999 profession. It's great.
I can't remember. I didn't spend a lot of time writing down these notes, but there are certain sequences that took six months to plan out. I want to say it was the helicopter one kind of that whole thing coordinating all of those different things took months and months and months and months and months to execute. That whole sequence to me holds up perfectly 20 years later.
Honestly, so it's so funny to say that. So when I was doing my homework or watching the movie a week ago, of course I fell asleep in the middle of it. Eric, I was rewatching it tonight mainly because I wanted to watch that scene. It's kind of like right, like just passed halfway into the movie.
I feel like when I do watch it, I catch the beginning, I catch the very end. I wanted to watch it because it is so well done, so well choreographed. I remember being blown away when that came out. How did they do this?
Because it still looks real. From there to the end of the movie, the movie just flows and just kicks through the end. That's great. It's really good.
So Eric, I had this question. I hadn't thought of it really ever until this rewatch. It should be obvious if you watch it, but it wasn't to me until now. So everyone, every single person in those pods, all of humanity, each one is living in their own little matrix.
Because there aren't real people don't interact with each other, right? Or do they? The whole thing is a dream world. I always thought of it as fucking Fortnite or something, right?
I don't know. Or is it? Everyone is living their own individual reality. Everybody, Thomas Anderson.
Or in the nature. You're the star of your own movie and everyone has their own movie. No, I always took it as everybody's part of connected to one big world. That's what I thought initially, but rewatching it, they said something.
We were watching it and it came up and I brought it up and at the time it makes sense. Is it because of Cypher wanting to get plugged back in and like, how does that... Maybe it is. How does that kind of interact with other people that the student suddenly shows up and he's a rich guy?
Right. But I mean... A lot of things, a lot of things, a lot of things, a lot of what have yous. Maybe we shouldn't really go too deep and pull a mess during the whole thing falls apart.
But there's a lot of those type of things where we kind of just work. I did see something about the whole concept of the machines using people as an energy source. If you don't think about it, it's fine. But if you think about it for a half a second, it could possibly be.
So I did see something that is scientifically impossible of course. You do not produce much energy and the machines could easily gather more resources, more energy basically, by burning the nutrients that you sustain the people. So all the effort they're putting into raising and sustaining these human guinea pigs or these pods, all that stuff, just put it in a pile and set it on fire and you generate more energy. So I think it's the whole thing kind of falls apart.
Well, yeah. And there's also other little details and it caught me today and I was completely distracted then as a result I'm kind of now that I noticed it. So when Neil wakes up in the pod and he's in this line and he sits up and he's looking around and he sees like the big power plants with all the people in them and he's looking around and he's looking down, he's looking up and it's like miles of this. And then he wakes up in, he goes gets flushed down, is in then the little hovercraft ship and he is everything is fuzzy, close up.
And then he's saying, Demorpheus, I can't, how come I can't see her? How come I eyes hurt? Because you never use your eyes. How could he see all of the miles of stuff, what he is reacting as if he is?
What if it's just a big red or any blur? That's not what was implied. I know, I know. So, so then he sees and then he doesn't see, he sees and he doesn't see.
And I was kind of now that I was like, wait a minute, how can he see that far? If he could see Orpheus, three feet away. As we said, it may be a perfect movie that doesn't mean that's not flawless. I know, I agree.
I said it's a bit of nitpicking, but it caught me today that I was, I was not expecting it. I never noticed it in a hundred times. I've seen this movie. Okay, box office performance.
Okay. The Matrix did make the top 10 for that year. My first glance, this is one of those ones where I'm like, oh, this is a great movie. This is, the top 10 is ridiculous.
But then, oh, yeah, that's like four or five. Oh, it's really nothing. Oh, okay. Here we go, top 10.
Number one, Star Wars, the Phantom Menace. I know, but it's a big movie, 430 million. The sixth sense, 276 million. That's good.
I know, I know. It's a movie that everyone saw, but no one will ever watch it again. Like he wants to know the thing. I mean, it's not that watchable to me.
I don't agree with that, but it's different watching. Yeah. Number three, Austin Powers, Spy Who Shagged Me. Two hundred and six million.
Number four, Toy Story Two, 199. Number five, The Matrix, with 171 million. That comes out today. It's that hundred million.
It would be a huge movie, bigger than it was. Number six, Tarzan, 170 million. Yeah, that. Big Daddy.
Is that the animated or the live action? 1999, I'm thinking animated. Okay. So the Disney Tarzan?
Yeah. Big Daddy. I was wondering if it had my little sweetie, Alex Ager, Scarsard as Tarzan. Big Daddy, 163.
The Mummy, 155 million. Number eight. Number nine, Runaway Bride, 152 million. Three of Roberts.
Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. And number 10, a little tiny movie called the Blair Witch Project. Oh.
140 million. Yeah, Tarzan, down. That's quite a drop. Yeah.
Oh, this is good. No, it's not great. This movie, this year is not great. Like there are better movies below.
That didn't perform great, but fine. The Blair Witch Project though really kind of changed that genre a bit. Yeah. It really birthed all of those kind of.
Found footage. Yeah. Well, that's my favorite like independent made on a shoestring and then made a hundred million. Yeah.
So the budget for The Matrix was 63 and it made a hundred and seventy one. So pretty damn good. It's amazing that they made this movie for 63 million. Yeah.
Especially since they invented a lot of stuff. Right. All that bullet time stuff. I mean, I think I saw something like 20% of the movie was CG.
So CG at that time was probably more expensive. And then the fact that 80% of this was actually real is expensive. Ron tomatoes. Let's do that.
Let's you want to do audience or critics? Let's do critics. What do you think the critics gave the Matrix? I often go first.
I'm going to let Eric go versus time. Eric critics critics. I will say 85. I think the critics are going to have actually ranked it higher.
I think they're going to have liked all of the effects and impact on the same anyone. Critics gave rotten tomatoes and ate her. The critics at run tomatoes gave the Matrix 88% right in the middle. Nailed it.
What was the audience square? That's got to be. 95. Yeah, I'll say 98.
It's got to be. It's got to be. 95. 85.
Really? More than the audience on run tomatoes. Oh, that doesn't make any sense to me. I am baffled by that.
That was 15 people out of 100 that are. That is a glitch in the Matrix. Yes. That's a glitch in the Matrix right there.
Okay. What do you think the body count was? I feel like it's going to be lower than. What do you think?
It does. Whoa, what? I was going to say like 65. Twelve.
We have 65. The body count. You know, Do not hold me to this number. This is what I found.
So who knows? What do you think the body count was? I feel like it's going to be lower than. What do you think?
A dozen. Whoa. I was going to say like 65. Twelve.
We have 65. The body count. Yeah. For the Matrix.
We're working together. We get it right every time. So they shot the Matrix in Sydney, like in Australia. Yeah.
And the Wachowski's are from Chicago. And Sydney is a stand in for Chicago in this movie. Every street they mention is eerie or it's all downtown Chicago stuff. All the architecture that is either real or, you know, it sets in the movie all looks like Chicago.
Well, I was always kind of. Wondering about that because I knew the streets were very Chicago, but I didn't feel like it looked as Chicago. And I'm like, what's so is this all CG and it's never named or called Chicago, but it's really. Yeah, no, I know.
I'll just point to it. Still, like it. I guess I was expecting a little bit more of a prettier look. It's a little whitewashed.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know if it needs Sydney is. Yeah.
Yeah, some of this, Trudy. We already talked about the the S&M club in the beginning was a real thing called the Hellfire Club in Sydney. In Greek mythology, Morpheus is the God of dreams. Oh.
See, you have another layer of Greek mythology. Because he's a Morpheus is also like a John the Baptist character. Right. Right.
Right. There's too many layers. You got the whole Romans and Christians and I couldn't ask what are you going to do? No, I know the Greeks and Romans are different, but I'm trying to make your connection.
They're all sort of swarthy Mediterranean people. In the first 45 minutes of the movie, Neo has 80 lines, 44 of those lines are questions. Oh. So he's the whole first half of the movie.
He's essentially just asking questions. Continually questioning what's going on. What is this? Yeah.
One of the things I saw, I didn't see that specifically, but I saw something that when in the beginning of the movie, when you see Neo, all of his clothes are a bit like tattered and ill-fitting to kind of subtly signify that he doesn't fit in in that world, that it's just things don't quite match up for him. Well, and that goes back to the whole transgender thing with the Macchow's Heat. It's like not fitting into the world or even their own skin. Right.
Right. This is the only film in the trilogy where Neo uses firearms. No. He never uses a gun on the other ones.
He doesn't have to. That's right. I was looking for the first part of the quote and I could get there. The hotel room and number when you're ready where Neo is told to go after the fight in the subway are the same as though.
It's the same hotel and room where Trinity is in the police gator. She's typing on the computer. It's the heart of the city hotel room. 303.
303 is the avatar equivalent of Trinity. And I remember I used apartment as one on one, right? Yeah. Neo the one is in one on one.
Oh my God. Oh my God. I mean all the layers. I can't keep it together.
And you know, it's like a crime. And of course, Neo is an emigram for one. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean much of this stuff has been talked about here and there online for years. Yeah. Okay. You mentioned this out.
Okay. The name of the company where Thomas Anderson works is Medi Cortex. The roots of this word are meta, which means going beyond or higher. Transcending in cortex, which is the outer layer or boundary of gray matter surrounding the brain.
The meta cortex is transcending the boundaries of the brain, which is exactly what Neo ends up doing. Amazing. Amazing. I mean, we can do this for an hour.
It's never ending with this movie. But my last little bit of trivia and the guys can chime in the guns used by the agents desert eagle mark 19 pistol, not .50. I wish it was .50. Then world with collide with the matrix and snatch.
We have to do it some sort of mash up sequel prequel. That's all I'm doing for trivia because otherwise we'd never leave. Yeah. The only other thing that I had that I loved was so we were talking about the shoot it up scene when they're going to rescue Morpheus where they show kind of that lobby after it all happens and the facade falls off of that pillar.
That was unplanned. So that was not intended to happen. But as they were finishing the shot and it fell, they loved that impact or they loved what it communicated and left it. Yeah.
That's when the editor just hangs on to it for an after beat. Yeah. Well, and there are more funny parts. Like comedic elements have funny, might be too strong of a word, but comedic elements to this movie than you remember.
I mean, some of the quotes are pretty funny. We can get to those. We talked about that. Yeah.
I had as a trivia is more around casting. Well, yeah. Do you have any non casting trivia? Otherwise we're going to get into the casting issues.
No. I don't know if it's necessarily true. Well, no, this would be good. I'll talk about it if we get it to like memorable quotes and stuff.
Yeah. Okay. Casting. I saw the same stuff you guys saw in most of this is the big names we've heard of mostly here and there.
I'll bring up in a minute. This is one of those ones where you try to figure out who was almost cast or who read for this role or almost had it or was offered it or whatever. And the answer is every actor in Hollywood, like had it chance and pass on it or couldn't do it because of this or whatever was. So I don't know what to believe, but here's where I'm going to start.
Before I get into the specific issues with Neo and Trinity movies. When the idea of the Matrix was in early development in the early 90s, Lana, Lana, Lana and Lily, which I was he's their first. For Neo back then was Brandon Lee, but he died in the filming. Yeah.
Interesting. So he that's kind of an interesting and I think a good Neil. Yeah. That would have been really good.
Yeah. Okay. Neo. Do you have something you want to know?
No, it's not Neo. It's a different character. But yeah. So this is what I found.
I don't know how much this is real. So take everything with a grain of salt. Supposedly Johnny Depp was the which house keys first choice to play Neo. But Warner Brothers pushed them to use Keanu Reeves only after it was turned down by Will Smith, which that's a famous one.
Yeah. Nick was cage. I don't buy that. No, I don't buy that.
Brad Pitt. I've seen a bunch of places. Yeah. Who knows Val Kilmer.
I don't buy that one. And then other two I see are you and McGregor in 99 and Leonardo DiCaprio. I don't know that. So all this stuff is weird.
I don't buy you McGregor because Star Wars. Yeah, he does Star Wars. And before that he just had train spotting. So he was right.
Not on anybody's radar really. Right. I don't know. Yeah, I don't buy that one.
Other one that I saw for Neo and this is real is that it was potentially going to go to Sandra Bullock. The Neil part. Oh, I thought that was a Trinity. I kept looking for that.
I saw someone mentioned the Trinity. I tried to find more information like confirmation of that. I didn't find that. I saw the producer Lorenzo D Bonaventura.
A producer on the Matrix said, yeah, we offered it to Sandra Bullock and we wanted to have it. She has said that I wish I had taken the Matrix role and everything points to they want to have Sandra Bullock as a female Neil, like change the character to. Yeah. I never heard of that.
So I found it. Yeah. It appears to be legit. Interesting.
All right. Who do you want to talk about? I don't know that it's really that big of a deal, but it definitely made me chuckle. I think that is, PAD cast favorite.
Jean Reno was approached to play agent Smith. John Renau. Jean Reno. Yeah.
I actually like that one. I started laughing because of course I read the name is Jean Reno, not John Reno. Yeah. Trinity.
That was the only thing that caught my eye. I really tried to avoid the casting. The only two people I saw for Trinity, one I think is real. The other one I don't believe for a second.
The one I saw that I like, I think is real was Janet Jackson. For Trinity. Yeah. I can believe it.
I can believe it. They tried for her. The one that I saw that I don't get is Jillian Anderson. Was that.
That's why I was. I know. But that show still going at that time. I think it was that it's hey, wasn't it?
Yeah. Maybe should just, yeah. After the peak, but whatever. Yeah.
That one I didn't quite get. Morpheus. Okay. Morpheus.
I've got three. Okay. All I think are fine. Gary Oldman.
Samuel L. Jackson. And Russell Crow. I think Russell Crow is fine too.
Oh, wow. Gladiator Russell Crow. Yeah, I know. I know.
I don't think he's ideal. I think. Yeah, that's possible. Yep.
There was a rumor, but it's a miscommunication out there that Sean Connery was up for Morpheus, but he didn't get the script and said no. That's not true. He was actually up for the architects in the next movie. Oh, interesting.
Yeah. Which makes more sense to the old guy who was right here in the way here. Everyone have been unbelievably distracting. Right.
Right. Right. To have Sean Connery trying to. The funny part is, is I read over and over different places that he turned it down because he just didn't get the movie.
He couldn't make no sense to me. What is this bullshit? I can't read these ridiculous dialogue. Yeah.
I think it's kind of the urban legend is that Sean Connery turned down the Matrix and Lord of the Rings back to back because he didn't really get him. Yeah. So then the next time he was offered a movie in that sort of same vein was the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was terrible. Connery is basically like, I don't understand this industry anymore and essentially retired and pretty much never piece of it again.
Wow. That makes perfect sense. I believe for that. Yeah.
Okay. Now the preamels over, we get, you know, the appetizers are done. Let's get to the main course. It's a recasting debate.
It is time to recast debate. Better close the door. It's time to be constubated. Okay.
All right. I feel more confident in my choices here than I have for any movie we've done today. Interesting. I don't know that I feel that confident.
I have one, two, three, three at least, and it could be four or five that are the right answer and there is no other answer. I'm just telling you everything I say is right today. So just get ready for it. The main four we're talking about is Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, Agent Smith.
Everything beyond that is a bonus. We got Cypher, we got Switch, we got the Oracle, we got Apop Tank, Mouse, Dozer, Partridge and territory, whatever. If you're recasting, those are then we need to shut this. I wrote the name down and I put nothing next to it.
So I'm with you. Okay. Should we start with Neo? Sure.
Yeah. I have four. I'm just going to do three. Three.
Three. I know. I'll start. My number three for Neo.
Nicholas Holt. Oh, I thought about him. I wasn't sure he'd be fast enough. I have him somewhere else.
I feel like he's got some lead feet. I didn't think running speed was going to be the lead. Not running speed, but he's like kicking and touching and there feels like a level of remoteness that needs to be there. Keanu Reeves is as stiff and real batronic as you can get in this movie.
But he is slicing right here. That's my number three. My number two, I like a lot. Could have been number one.
My number one is interesting. Okay. So number two with a bullet. Michael B.
Jordan. Oh, he's my number two as well. Yeah. You can't argue with it.
Fine. Right. Number one, because it fits in, I think, most ways, although if we're worried about foot speed, this may be an issue. That's good.
Adam Driver. He's not one of my. That's the answer. Yeah.
But I think he can. I think that's an interesting work as Neil. Yeah. So a very different deal, but it's he can pull it off.