He's the most relatable. He's just overwhelmed with the task of being part of a post-apocalyptic revolution. What's the alternative? Living out an ordinary life in a pre-apocalypse? That's basically the choice that every regular person makes in real life
Are you joking?, he’s the worst, he’s the rat, and he never fights despite the fact that he holds a machine gun on the poster
shareHe sorta fights. He uses that lightning cannon on the Nebuchadnezzar.
shareThat wasn’t a fight, it was murder
shareAlso yes.
shareYou THINK he’s a character that fights since he holds a machine gun on the poster, when in actuality, he doesn’t, and he’s a double agent
shareYeah, he's a rat. I think he's a good character though, in terms of complexity and relatability (not betraying friends, but who can't relate a little bit to his feelings of betrayal and hopelessness at the world he's been given, the Truth he's swallowing). So he's a bad person, and he's definitely not morally good, but I think he's well-crafted by the Wachowskis' script/direction and Joe Pantoliano's performance.
shareJoe Pantoliano Is Great At Playing The Shady Type Or Bad Guys, That I Agree With
shareI have a feeling that Joe Pantoliano can play just about anything, although his "hit" is definitely the shady guy, sneaky guy, or rat-fink. He's a great character actor, but I think he could be more versatile if somebody'd give him a shot.
shareHe voiced an animal on racing stripes as well, it’s the only time he didn’t play evil lol
shareCypher is an interesting character, yes, although I think Morpheus is at least as interesting.
Actually, one of the things I always loved about this movie was how cool the supporting cast are, despite their comparatively low screen time.
Switch was always my favourite. Maybe 'cause she dressed all in white while everybody else was in black? Maybe it's due to her dispatching SWAT guys with the demeanour of an ice cube. Maybe it's her final line in the movie ("Not like this...") and the astonishing level of pathos Belinda McClory manages. I don't know exactly, but she's awesome.
Apoc is cool - total badass.
Mouse was funny and sympathetic (also very relatable).
Tank gets me every time with Chong's line delivery on, "Very exciting time!" He feels so *real* in that moment.
Yeah. It's one of the miracles the film pulls off - great supporting cast with so little time to make them beloved.
Tank gets me every time with Chong's line delivery on, "Very exciting time!" He feels so *real* in that moment.
I think that's one of the reasons the sequels didn't work. Yes, there were a LOT of reasons for that, but a big one (I think) is that the people around Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity just aren't as interesting. For one thing, the Neb's crew is just those three plus Link, and there just aren't any cool dynamics.
Even the way the cast interacted together felt special. They're all eating the protein slop and they seem like a good team or a rag-tag family. The vibe was SO good.
We live in an era of sequels and reboots and spinoffs. Why couldn't the Wachowskis have cranked out one prequel film of Morpheus and his crew sabotaging the Matrix and looking for The One?
I'd never quite looked at from that perspective but that makes a whole lot of sense. There's a strong human element that we can see from those interactions in the first movie, that we don't really get later, probably because the movies are so wholly focused on increasingly incoherent philosophical themes and ambiguous worldbuilding...
Huh.
This just makes me wish that big movies would just go for smaller scale situations at times. This is a non sequitur but I'm always thinking...does Tom Cruise really have to save the world or clear his name every single Mission: Impossible movie? The stakes don't have to be super high to have a compelling blockbuster (e.g. Dredd, where it's just another day on the job but they're clearly fighting for their lives).
We could have just had another day with the preMatrix crew.
It's one that's easy to overlook in The Matrix, and I'm not even sure how much I realized it until we were talking about it. I was kind of aware of it, but I don't know that I connected it directly to the sequels yet (outside of finding it odd that they went from an eight-person crew (pre-Neo) to a four-person crew in the sequels. They had other supporting characters (like Niobe and Ghost) but they weren't as "right" as the originals were.
Maybe they could make a video game...
The personal touch makes a movie go from fun to unforgettable. Big scales don't matter as much to us in the audience because we don't think our Earth is about to get blown up by aliens (not really) so although the adrenaline rush-by-proxy of an action movie is fun, we don't really *care* until we feel that personal connection.
To me that's why talks of a Firefly reboot are a fool's errand. That show had such good chemistry with its cast that replicating it would be miraculous.
I got a reply on another thread that I'd long forgotten about, on the Mission: Impossible boards, that is kinda along these lines.
Fair warning: there are some spoilers for the film, particularly the opening sequence of the movie, so if you haven't seen it and want the surprise, don't read.
But it's about the team of agents at the beginning of the film and how great I found them. Same type of quick-fire chemistry where I met them in-film and was instantly digging the vibe.
https://moviechat.org/tt0117060/Mission-Impossible/600f03f7eef9966eef80967e/Sympathy-for-the-First-Team?reply=62b0a58887889d1819bd6b0b&animate=false
lmao! I was planning to respond to your MI thread later. I just caught saw your observations and was like omg, that IS exactly what we were talking about re: the Matrix, and in all these years of rewatching MI1, I'd never consciously realized how important that initial chemistry was either.
shareCypher exists because the moviemakers needed some way to 'counter-argue' their otherwise too linear value system of 'real world is the only world living in'. They needed to bring in the point that viewers would otherwise make, that at least for some people (if not most), living in The Matrix would be much better and happier than living in the real world.
They underline this point a bit too much by making the real world an awful, miserable, dark, gloomy, cold place with no proper food or anything fun. All work and no play, etc..
However, they don't go far enough to show that the crew uses the simulations for entertainment, besides the 'lady in the red dress'-stuff, which is just scratching the surface - I also don't get people's attitude against Mouse, who is not only doing a valuable work by programming an enticing figure for the lesson, but also understands the 'Holodeck'-style entertainment value.
Surely everyone uses the holodeck (for lack of better word) for their entertainment, and surely everyone has all kinds of physical needs they can also use the holodeck for. It's like.. everyone reads porn magazines, but suddenly everyone despises the maker of the porn magazines. Not much makes sense about this movie.
In any case, Joe Pantoliano is a really charming and charismatic (in a bit unorthodox sense) actor, and when I watched Memento, I wanted more of his scenes. There's something inherently likable about him.
I think Cypher has a good point, but I also think he's a weasel because he doesn't CONFRONT Morpheus about his misery and needs, and Morpheus is also a bad leader for not noticing that Cypher is miserable, and not offering holodeck to him.
In reality, everyone would be constantly using the simulations for entertainment and 'dream life', whatever it may be from space exploration to realistic video games to carnal needs entertainment to social stuff - we already know they use it for learning things very quickly, and learning can be fun.
This would mean that Cypher REALLY has nothing to complain about; besides his FEW duties on the ship (it can't be as bad as he makes it up to be, and why WOULD he just blindly obey everything Morpheus says without questioning or asking for leave or whatnot, and why did he SIGN UP for the ship instead of staying in Zion to party, and can't he just quit and live in Zion and basically in holodeck for most of his life in pure bliss anyway?) and 'bad food'.
Couldn't they arrange it so that you can eat or 'be automatically fed' whenever you eat in the holodeck, so you can eat the most delicious gourmet food in the holodeck, while your body is being fed that 'healthy goo'? Best of both worlds.
It wouldn't matter that it's cold and food is bad in that situation - you would come out of the holodeck paradise to do your duty on the ship, and off-duty, you could plug in and just live in pure bliss your free time. Realistically, this WOULD be Cypher's life, and if he had any backbone, he would NEGOTIATE and DISCUSS with Morpheus about these problems, but of course if Morpheus was a good captain/leader, he would KNOW all of these perspectives and problems already, and would offer his crew PLENTY of 'holodeck time' just to keep their sanity and motivation up.
As I said, Cypher is a NECESSARY character, but his motivations are pretty flimsy and unrealistic, and he has no backbone, leading him to do crazy, stupid things instead of sane, human things, like discussing his plight with his captain. What exactly forces him to obey Morpheus anyway? Can't he say no? Can't this rebel rebel in smaller scale?
Cypher only exists to make the audience think about the 'other side of the coin', really. He is also a convenient plot device to make things happen.
I really hate the Oracle, though, she could've told about Trinity's stupidity, or told Trinity to abandon her 'subway station speech' plan, and so on. She could've changed the future so much just by giving enough information.