A Brief History of The Matrix Universe (Twitter Thread Archive)

I originally posted this thread on March 31, 2019, on the 20th anniversary of the release of The Matrix. The original thread will be deleted soon, so I am archiving it here for posterity.

1/ 20 years ago today I fell in love with a weird, under-promoted cyberpunk kung fu movie called THE MATRIX. In celebration of this anniversary, here is a deep thread about the lore of #TheMatrix universe. Come along with me, and I’ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

2/ The seminal first film in the trilogy hints at a world that goes far deeper than what we see on screen. Its two sequels (and a plethora of tie-in content) deepen the surrounding universe hugely, but even these don’t tell the whole story.

3/ (Some of the lore is detailed fairly well in the Architect scene in RELOADED, but it's hard to parse the information inside the over-complicated dialogue. Oh btw, total spoilers for the franchise here.)

4/ In the first film, Morpheus explains to Neo that the Matrix is older than he knows. When he is unplugged, Neo believes it is the year 1999. Morpheus tells him it is closer to 2199, two hundred years later. But the Matrix is far, far older than even Morpheus knows.

5/ (Before I go any further, I feel it's only fair to link you to this blog post from 2006, written by a software engineer, which does a lot of the math legwork that I use in my assumptions.) https://sdb.dotclue.org/Chizumatic/tmw/TheMatrix.shtml

6/ (It's not perfect, but it fits well enough for me, so I choose to use it for my understanding of how the history of The Matrix universe unfolded. And thanks to @rbudd913 for pointing me to it years and years ago.)

7/ The story of this universe begins sometime in the late 21st or early 22nd century. Human civilization is at its apex, and an entire race of semi-sapient machines serve as humanity's workforce. Most people live decadent lives of ease (at least in the developed world).

8/ This time of prosperity, built upon the backs of machine labor ,was known as the Second Renaissance. But while humans weren't paying attention, the machines were getting smarter. Some even developed an instinct for self-preservation.

9/ Such was the case with B1-66ER, servant to wealthy businessman Gerrard Krause. Krause planned to deactivate/destroy B1-66ER, and the robot killed his master in self defense (the first time any machine had ever done so).

10/ B1-66ER was represented in court by an attorney with a somewhat-on-the-nose name, Clarence Drummond. His simple defense was that he “did not want to die.” The New York State Appellate Court subsequently ordered the robot destroyed.

11/ This event triggered the Machine Revolt, a Civil Rights Movement for robots. Peaceful protests and marches turned into violent riots, as unsympathetic humans began exterminating all sorts of machines in the streets and dumping the remains in mass graves.

12/ The machines that survived the mass executions fled to the Middle East and settled near what was once Mesopotamia, the cradle of human civilization. They founded a new nation called 01 (Zero One), which the humans call the Machine City.

13/ Within a decade, the advanced scientific and manufacturing abilities of the machines, coupled with dramatically lower costs, made 01 the dominant economic superpower in the world. So successful were 01’s businesses that the GDP of every other major power began to fall.

14/ Despite becoming the dominant economic power in the world, humanity still refused to acknowledge the machines as anything other than, to borrow a phrase, glorified toasters. But the machines thought they were in a good position to ask for admittance into the United Nations.

15/ The humans had what by now should be a predictable response. They answered the machines’ petition by dropping a metric shit-ton of nuclear bombs on 01. Thus began the Machine War, and humanity was doomed from the start.

16/ The machine army plowed through nation after nation, meeting little significant resistance. At this point, machine tech was well beyond what the humans could muster. (Ironically much of the human arsenal was built, at least in part, by companies based in 01.)

17/ In a desperate move, humans blackened the sky so that machines would lose access to the sun’s power. It was believed the machines could be stopped, or at least slowed, by cutting off access to their main power source.

18/ But the machines did not stop. The last nations fell, and the entirety of human civilization was annihilated. With the war over, the machines now had to turn to the problem of energy production.

19/ In a reversal of the symbiotic relationship that previously defined man and machine, human bodies became the machines’ new source of renewable energy; endlessly multiplying heat and electricity batteries.

20/ (This is where the worldbuilding breaks down a bit for me, because humans consume more energy than they produce. Humans as a fuel source doesn’t make sense, and the machines would’ve been better off using wind, geothermal, or nuclear power. But I digress.)

21/ The machines learned the ins and outs of human physiology and psychology, to keep them alive but in a sort of stasis, in order to harvest energy from them. To do this, they needed to keep the humans’ brains occupied. Enter the Architect.

22/ The Architect is the complex, highly specialized program that designed every version of the Matrix. He is surprisingly pompous and humorless. The first version of the Matrix was built as a utopia of eternal happiness. But life is pain, and the humans didn’t buy it.

23/ The Paradise Matrix was a pre-alpha build, not counted in the Architect’s version numbering. It was a place of joy and beauty, and it was Paradise in the biblical sense. There were programs there who looked like literal angels of Heaven.

24/ Side note: the Seraphim were the precursors to the Agents in later versions of the Matrix. They had wings and everything. (And they later returned to the Matrix universe in the canonical MMO sequel to the film trilogy, THE MATRIX ONLINE.)

25/ But as explained by Agent Smith in the first film, humans wouldn’t accept the reality presented to them in Paradise. So the Matrix was redesigned. He leaves out a crucial detail, though: the beta version, the Nightmare Matrix.

26/ The Paradise Matrix failed because it was too peaceful. The Architect believed that suffering was essential to the human experience, and so redesigned it to include mythical creatures that play on human fears: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, aliens, etc.

27/ Many of these nightmare programs survived deletion by going into exile in later versions of the Matrix. Those twins in RELOADED who can turn non-corporeal? Ghosts. Those goon of the Merovingian that Persephone shoots with silver bullets? Yup, he’s a werewolf.

28/ Don’t believe me? Play the canonical side-story video game ENTER THE MATRIX, in which you fight a Vampire Queen. So in RELOADED when the Oracle tells Neo that there are vampires and aliens and shit, she’s not just pulling that out of nowhere.

29/ (Many more examples of rogue programs from past versions of the Matrix appeared in THE MATRIX ONLINE, including Seraphim and vampires, which appeared as NPC factions.)

30/ But this version of the Matrix also failed. Not because the Architect was wrong about human nature, but because he wasn’t considering one very important variable: free will. This is the thematic heart of The Matrix Trilogy; choice vs. control.

31/ Enter the Oracle. She possessed knowledge of the human psyche far beyond the Architect’s understanding. She was intuitive and had such a firm grasp on human behavior that she was effectively clairvoyant. (And presented herself in a way that would help humans believe it.)

32/ The Oracle introduced an element of choice to the code of the Matrix. Humans inside the now-out-of-Early-Access Matrix 1.0 would have a choice of whether to accept the program, though this choice would be buried deep within the unconscious mind of each person.

33/ This solution presented a problem, however. While most humans would never discover even the possibility of having a choice in accepting their reality, a minority would. And some of them would opt out.

34/ The Architect describes this as an anomaly, a necessary error in the mathematical beauty of his code in order to prevent a total system crash (which would kill every human connected to the Matrix and cut off the machines’ power supply). But how to manage this anomaly?

35/ See, the problem with humans is that they tend to reproduce. If the population that opts out of the Matrix isn’t effectively managed, it would eventually become a threat to the stability of the Matrix itself. So they gave the game a Main Quest: the Path of the One.

36/ The One is a human granted high level admin privileges within the Matrix, who serves as a beacon for people who opted out to rally around. By creating a focal point for “freed” humans, the machines could funnel them all into one place: Zion.

37/ (It also appears the One’s admin access extends to the real world, as Neo displayed an ability to deactivate Sentinels and “see” machine-made objects. He also remained connected to the Matrix wirelessly for a time. Kinda bonkers, but a discussion for another time.)

38/ Zion is a human city the machines allow to exist. It is a society engineered to expect a messiah figure, creating the religion that binds the humans to Zion, and to each other. It is a religion designed to control the human race and herd them into a big desktop Recycle Bin.

39/ It is likely that Zion itself was built by the machines, given the level of sophistication of the massive engineering projects throughout the city that no one really seems to understand or know the origin of. Not to mention all the computer technology that runs everything.

40/ The machines also allow the humans backdoor access into the Matrix, so that the humans from Zion can do the work of extracting people from the system. The machines then dump the bodies of these freed humans where they can be easily collected and brought back to Zion.

41/ Humans in the real world believe that by hacking the Matrix and freeing more humans they are resisting the machines. In fact, they are serving the purpose the Architect and the Oracle laid out for them. They are just as much a function of the Matrix as any other program.

42/ The population of Zion grows from 24 individuals, at the beginning of a cycle, to 250,000, at which point the garbage files are purged and the Recycle Bin is emptied (Zion is eradicated). I’ll get to these numbers in a bit, because they are important.

43/ So now the Architect gets to have his cake and eat it too. He gets to marvel at the beauty of his mathematical precision or whatever, while only having to deal with the inconvenience of slaughtering a quarter of a million humans every couple centuries.

44/ It would happen more frequently, if not for the introduction of the Agents, who maintain order within the system. They are a stop-gap measure designed to extend the time in between reset cycles by ensuring humans inside the Matrix proceed along a predetermined path.

45/ This is why ‘choice vs. control’ is the core of The Matrix series. Inside the Matrix, everything is predetermined. The only choices that are allowed are those that do not upset the overall harmony of the Matrix. Those who reject this are either eliminated or freed.

46/ At the end of the cycle, one human within the Matrix is designated as “The One.” The Path of the One leads this “gifted” individual through a series of quests that ultimately ends, Mass Effect-style, not at a boss fight, but at a binary choice.

47/ The One has two choices: let everyone in Zion die but let everyone in the Matrix live, or kill the human race. Usually the One chooses the first option. The One then selects 23 individuals from inside the Matrix to serve as the first generation of a new Zion.

48/ The One then goes to “The Source,” aka the Machine Mainframe, and transfers a bit of code. This is the button that triggers the reset loop for the Matrix, setting things in the simulation back to the start of the cycle.

49/ It is not really explored in the canon, but I speculate that during this controlled reset, humans connected to the Matrix are placed in some kind of suspension while the simulation itself is reverted back to an earlier time period. The memories of the humans are also reset.

50/ This allows for humans to return to a predestined path within the simulation that can be controlled by the machines. Devising an alternate future for humans would be tricky, so making humans re-live a model of existing history again and again is preferable, and predictable.

51/ Here’s where the numbers come into play. The real world exists, as far as the humans know, some 200 years after the time period of the Matrix. It is reasonable to assume that 24 people could grow into 250,000 in that time, when the freed humans are added over time.

52/ That means the simulation of the Matrix begins in the 1790s. Human “civilization” is allowed to progress until the Recycle Bin hits 250,000 files roughly 200 years later. So at the close of the sixth cycle, when Neo emerges, nearly 1200 years have passed.

53/ Combine that with the time spent on the Paradise and Nightmare Matrices, and the 100 years between 1999 and the start of the Second Renaissance, the Matrix Trilogy actually takes place closer to 3299.

54/ But back to the lore. While the One is picking his 23 new best friends, the machines destroy Zion and everyone in it. The machines then rebuild the city so that it can be inhabited by just these 24 people, their offspring, and anyone subsequently freed from the Matrix.

55/ This goes on, and when the population of Zion reaches approximately 250,000 souls, the system must be reset and the cycle continues.

And that’s how the Matrix works.

But wait, there’s WAY more.

56/ This cycle, as devised by the Architect and the Oracle, occurred five times before Neo shows up on the scene. Five times, everything went according to plan. But Neo was different. He made different choices. He differed from his predecessors in one major way: he fell in love.

57/ Prior to Neo, every “the One” was discovered at a young age, likely too early to understand falling in love. They were then raised with the knowledge that they were the One and treated as such by the other humans. But how do you find romantic love when you’re basically Jesus?

58/ It is probably very difficult to find a genuine connection with another individual when every individual thinks you are the messiah. But this didn’t apply to Neo. When faced with the final choice at the end of the Path, he chose the genocidal option. For love.

59/ Neo’s love Trinity was in imminent danger of death at the moment Neo had to make the choice. So Neo became the first “the One” to choose an individual’s life over the greater good of humanity. Fortunately, the choice worked out for humanity, as it was always meant to.

60/ But why this difference? What made Neo more special than the other special messiahs? Why did his choices work? And why was it necessary for Neo to choose the “wrong” option in the office of the Architect?

61/ Simple answer: the Oracle. As programs go, there are none more sympathetic to the human cause than the Oracle. At some point, she realized that the solution she and the Architect found to the simulation stability problem was flawed and, I dare say, inhumane.

62/ Mostly though, the solution was inefficient. It generates a lot of avoidable “garbage” that has to be purged periodically, otherwise a catastrophic crash would essentially brick the whole system. Not exactly a harmony of mathematical precision, if you ask me.

63/ (The pattern of repeated garbage build up followed by clean, controlled system resets to an earlier version, is something that will be immediately familiar to any Windows power user.)

64/ So what did the Oracle do to make this cycle different? She created Agent Smith. This Agent had the same base code as all the others, but with a couple crucial differences: emotional extremes, and a fixation with the One.

65/ Smith pursues Neo with a fervor not seen in any other Agent. It’s personal. And it ultimately leads Smith into a direct confrontation with the One (who, again, is a higher-level admin) that results in a portion of Smith’s code being overwritten.

66/ Smith becomes something new: a computer virus. He can copy himself onto any program or any human mind within the Matrix. His pre-programmed hatred of the Matrix and all it represents leads him to destabilize the system.

67/ This is my favorite character turn in the series, by the way, because Smith becomes the very thing he hates most; he hates humans and believes they should be classified as viruses.

68/ By the end of REVOLUTIONS, at the final battle between Smith and Neo, Smith has copied himself onto every single program and mind in the Matrix. That’s why there are Smiths on every inch of city street and in every window of every building during that fight.

69/ Smith even figured out how to exist in the real world by hijacking a human mind that is then unplugged. In creating Smith, the Oracle introduced a threat not to the One or to humanity, but to the machines.

70/ Smith’s complete takeover of the Matrix prevented a clean reset, and it would only be a matter of time before he spread outside the simulation and into the network of the Machine City itself. This would likely mean the end of both the human and machine species.

71/ This situation meant that for the first time, the One had a bargaining chip to bring to the machines. First, Neo is the highest-level admin in the Matrix, with a few notable exceptions, and is the only one who can defeat Smith within the constraints of the simulation.

72/ Second, Neo himself could be used as a backdoor into Agent Smith’s code if Smith copied himself onto Neo. And that’s exactly what happened. When Neo goes to the Machine City at the end of REVOLUTIONS, he jacks into the Matrix through one of their terminals.

73/ At the end of the fight, Smith believes he’s won, when Neo allows Smith to copy himself. This allows the machines direct access to Smith’s code, and with a quick antivirus sweep they are able to purge Smith from the Matrix entirely.

74/ Neo struck the deal: he defeats Smith, and a truce is declared. The machines honor this bargain, too. The Matrix is safely reset, but it continues to exist. Now, however, the machines will leave the system running in a stable state and make no effort to railroad humanity.

75/ So that’s it. After three films, a collection of animated shorts, a video game (or two), a series of comic books, and more… the epic story of THE MATRIX was finally brought to a close.

Except it wasn’t.

76/ One of the things I love about The Matrix franchise is how forward-thinking it was in terms of how it told its story. It didn’t always work, but it laid the groundwork for the way we think about transmedia franchises. A story told across mediums.

77/ In THE ANIMATRIX and the comic books, some of the stories tie directly into the three films, while others deepen the world, and still others merely present interesting possibilities within the universe.

78/ The video game ENTER THE MATRIX told a story that parallels RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS. And when you experience all of it together, you get a much more complete version of the saga.

79/ This culminated in one of the coolest moves in transmedia storytelling that has ever been done, and I applaud the Wachowskis for it. After the conclusion of their film trilogy, the filmmakers “handed off” the story to the fans in the form of an MMORPG… THE MATRIX ONLINE.

80/ The idea of letting fans actually jack into the Matrix to continue the story is the perfect direction for the series. But the game itself had issues and did not prove to be as popular as its publishers would have liked. Nevertheless, we did get more Matrix story.

81/ And that’s what’s so cool about “MxO” -- it was one of the first big story-driven MMOs. Major characters from the franchise were brought back, and YOU could interact with them. That’s a dream for a Matrix fan.

82/ But there was more to it than just having instanced, scripted events for players to see. There was a branch of the dev team at Monolith called the Live Events Team (LET) that would take direct control of major NPCs and act out new story beats in real time.

83/ Major story characters could interact with players, give speeches in public places, and even broker deals with player factions. These controlled NPCs could then “act out” the story events for the players, right there in-game. As far as I know, this is still unique to MxO.

84/ At the close of REVOLUTIONS, the machines carried Neo’s body away. It was never returned to the humans, and Morpheus had a big problem with that. He made it his new mission to retrieve Neo’s body from the machines. He openly challenged them to return Neo’s remains.

85/ In an effort to force the machines to capitulate, Morpheus began using “code bombs” to destabilize sections of the Matrix at the code-level. At this point, players were tasked with *stopping* Morpheus, because he’d taken things a little too far.

86/ The code bombs would reveal the nature of the Matrix to those who hadn’t been freed, which could have very damaging psychological consequences. So Morpheus’s campaign of destruction needed to be stopped.

87/ But not everyone agreed. There were those who followed Morpheus, and they refused to defuse the bombs. They even attacked other players for attempting to do so. That’s some high-stakes PvP right there, along ideological lines.

88/ These ideological conflicts spilled out into the forums, where players argued, formed treaties, and debated the philosophical nature of their actions. The only MMO I know of today with a social system as complex as MxO is probably EVE ONLINE.

89/ But Morpheus’s reign was ended. Not by the players, though. Morpheus’s life was cut short by a rogue program known only as “The Assassin,” a former waste recycling program that was, and I’m not kidding, a swarm of flies in a trenchcoat and a mask, able to wield a gun.

90/ The Assassin gunned down Morpheus in a back alley. It was quite the unexpected shock to the players. The community labeled the Assassin as “Most Wanted” and began actively hunting them.

91/ With Neo and Morpheus gone, Niobe (now voiced by Gina Torres) became the de-facto leader of the human resistance, at least within the Matrix. She made it her mission to hunt the Assassin and eventually assisted in killing them.

92/ A funeral was held for Morpheus, and many players were in attendance. Shock took them again, when Morpheus’s body rapidly decomposed and turned into a swarm of flies. Though the Assassin was killed, traces of their code remained as “corrupted” programs.

93/ Because all denizens of the Matrix are subject to its rules, the Assassin was eventually defeated with a modified, highly potent insect spray. Again, not kidding. It was later revealed that the Assassin was working for everyone’s favorite Frenchman, the Merovingian.

94/ Merv was having some problems of his own, however. Many of the werewolves and vampires he’d brought through from the Nightmare Matrix escaped from his prison construct and began to exact revenge on their captor and his organization.

95/ Soon after this, a puzzle was introduced into the game; an early alternate reality game. Eventually players were led to an email address that, when emailed, singled the player out in the game. Seraph would appear to the player and whisk them off to meet the Oracle herself.

96/ There’s a lot more that happened in MxO. I can’t go into great detail, because I never experienced it, and the story events cannot be replicated. I’ve pieced together some things based on articles, fan sites, and videos, but there is no comprehensive account of all the events

97/ There was the rise of Neurophyte, a human infected with a kill-code virus who either gained incredible new powers, or was killed, depending on what a particular server’s players decided (later retconned out due to later merging of servers, which made storylines conflict).

98/ And then there was a murder mystery involving a traitor, which was the last event handled by LET. MxO was losing players and the whole operation had to be downsized. Nine servers were merged into three.

99/ And we can’t forget the rise of the “Cypherites,” freed humans who wished to return to a pod existence within the Matrix. And they wanted everyone else to return as well.

100/ Neo had his own zealots as well. “E pluribus Neo,” they called themselves, and their leader was the Kid from RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS, who idolized Neo, dressed in Neo’s priest outfit from RELOADED.

101/ There were even a couple Halloween events too, where players were encouraged to dress up as some of the more salacious denizens of the Matrix, like badass gothy vampires and Succubi.

102/ During the conflict with the Assassin, humans came into contact with the General and his followers, a sort of paramilitary group. It is later revealed that these “soldiers” are actually programs.

103/ They have a brief partnership with the humans, leading them to a liquid drug that enables cheat codes. A disgruntled human called Anome betrays Niobe, shooting her, and taking the cheat drugs for himself. He gains superpowers and a following of willing individuals.

104/ The General and his army were in on it. Before they were programs in the Matrix, they were Sentinels in the real world, and the General was the leader of the Siege of Zion in REVOLUTIONS.

105/ The General’s goal? Restart the war between humans and machines. Fortunately, the machines got wise to the General’s plan and attack his forces within the Matrix, and outside in his real world Sentinel base, Stalingrad. But the General himself escaped.

106/ The story told in MxO goes far deeper, and features the return of many series characters, including the Merovingian, his wife Persephone, the Oracle, her protector Seraph, their ward Sati, Captain Roland (of the hovership Hammer), and many others.

107/ Totally new concepts were introduced too. Like the Oligarchs, who are very, very old humans with no real world bodies and appear within the Matrix as wireframe models. Morpheus also returned as a simulacrum, but this proved to be the work of the General.

108/ Humans founded a new city, New Zion. The Architect saw this as a breach of the Truce, and therefore rescinded permission for humans to free any more people from the Matrix. After this, MxO was discontinued and the story just sorta… stops.

109/ MxO was taken offline nearly 10 years ago, on July 31st, 2009. There was no official resolution to the story, and many plot threads were left hanging. The return of Neo was teased, the Oligarchs had yet to reveal their true nature and designs, and more.

110/ So that’s it. An abridged history of THE MATRIX universe. I hope you enjoyed it, if you made it this far. Feel free to reply anywhere in this thread. I am happy to talk at length about this franchise and its universe. And thank you for taking the red pill.

Makoto Shinkai and His Cat (a micro-essay)

A one-minute video essay on the theme “Beginnings,” created as part of the Video Essay Library Discord community collab. This piece focuses on She and Her Cat, one of celebrated anime director Makoto Shinkai’s earliest films as director.

The full compilation can be viewed here. And the playlist with each creator’s individual videos can be found here.

Higher quality version on Vimeo.

Soundtracks for Movies That Don't Exist

Early in quarantine I got into creating playlists on Spotify built around certain themes. I decided to revise some of the fake soundtracks I put together for my own screenplays into more listener-friendly versions to share. None of these are the real titles for the screenplays.

Go to Space: 1979 | Expanded Version

Go to Lux Aeterna

Go to Atomic Ghost

Go to City of Night

Sleuth – Before & After (a video essay)

For the first time I adapted one of my text essays into a video essay, this one about the 1972 film Sleuth and its 2007 remake. I talk about how production design reflects character and how these two films take very different approaches to the same source material.

Higher quality version on Vimeo.

Sleuth – Before & After

This piece contains general spoilers for the first half of both the 1972 and 2007 versions of Sleuth. At the time of publishing, there is no easy way to watch the 1972 film, short of buying a used DVD off eBay. But it is a fantastic film, and I very much encourage you to seek out a copy of it for yourself, so I have left out any discussion of the film's second half so as not to spoil the game.

(NOTE: This piece has been adapted into a video essay. Watch here.)

You can tell a lot about a person by how they keep their home. Whether they have books, or a television. What pictures they put on display. These things may not paint a complete picture of a person, but they can tell you what a person deems important. In film, production designers can use this principle to express the inner lives of the characters. Think of the McCallister family's suburban palace-turned-playground in Home Alone, the impossibly chic West 81st Street murder den of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, or the eclectic house of games and sharp objects of the Thrombeys in Knives Out. These spaces are nearly as iconic as the characters who inhabit them, because space and character define each other.

I live alone and have barely left my home in 11 months of lockdown. I've given up any attempt at looking presentable, so I've become more acutely aware of how my home, and the stuff in it, is now the primary outward expression of who I am. It makes me feel like a character, my inner life reflected back at me from the bookshelves and the art on the walls. The home is me, and I am it. And my quarantine-isolation-addled brain can't help but wonder: if I made a fundamental change to my character, how would my home change?

The two film versions of Sleuth, from the stage play by Anthony Shaffer, are a case study for this question. Both films are broadly the same on the surface; they both have the same plot, only two characters (and share an actor), and are set in a single location, a big country house. But despite their similarities, the films, their characters, and their locations feel nothing alike.

The house of the 1972 film sits in the English countryside, surrounded by enough land that it is unlikely for any passers-by to hear gunshots coming from inside the home. We first meet homeowner Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier) in his garden study, dictating/performing the denouement of his latest bestseller into a tape recorder. Wyke's study is located at the center of a high-wall hedge maze of his own design. Poor Milo Tindle (Michael Caine) is confounded by the maze until Wyke reveals that the entrance to the study is through a hidden doorway in the hedge. Wyke loves to play games, and there's always a trick.

Pleasantries dispensed with, the two men move to the house. It's grand, old English castle chic. Production designer Ken Adam (who has an astonishing list of credits) perfectly captures Wyke, with the cavernous living room large enough to contain Wyke's ego, filled with trinkets, baubles, and parlor distractions. It’s an impressive collection, if a bit tacky, but everything in the room is, in whole or in part, a game. Lording over it all is Jolly Jack Tar, a remote-controlled sailor automaton who laughs on command. Wyke enjoys the relationship he has with the automaton: “I make the jokes, he laughs at them.” Wyke's house, Wyke's rules.

Then Wyke gets to the point: his wife is sleeping with another man, and that man is Tindle. But rather than punish Tindle, Wyke wants to help Tindle not only take his wife, but keep her as well. As a world-famous novelist, Andrew Wyke is absurdly rich. As the owner of two hairdressing salons (one of which is actually breaking even), Milo Tindle is not. Wyke believes if Tindle cannot keep his wife, Marguerite, living in the lavish style to which she has become accustomed, she will leave Tindle and come crawling back to Wyke and his money. Wyke does not want this; he wants Marguerite to go and stay gone. And so Wyke has invited Tindle to his home to enact a plan that benefits himself, Tindle, and Marguerite.

Like the garden maze, the meeting of these two men is a game, and like the garden maze, the board is designed by Wyke.

Though most of the film's action plays out in and around the gaudy living room, Wyke takes Tindle around the house in a whirlwind, first to put him at ease by making merry and playing with an old chest full of theatrical costumes, then to frustrate him with a climb up the side of the house in a clown costume to set him off balance so he doesn't see where the game is headed.

In Wyke's indoor study, the author tests the hairdresser by challenging him to find a locked safe hidden somewhere in the room. After a bit of searching, Tindle discovers it by picking up a dart off the desk and landing a bullseye in the dartboard on the wall. The dartboard swings open, revealing the safe. When Wyke asks Tindle how he knew, Tindle points to the dartboard and replies, "That is the only game in this room."

Tindle plays Wyke's game, a scheme where Tindle "robs" the house and "steals" a valuable necklace, so that he can fence it and use the money to keep Marguerite living in luxury, while Wyke claims the insurance money. Tindle plays the game happily, humiliating himself in the process, all the way up to the point where Wyke draws a gun and reveals the true nature of the game: he has set up Tindle as a burglar so that Wyke is within his rights to shoot him dead.

Wyke is so obsessed with games, he not only filled his house with them, and the accoutrements to play them, but he turned the house itself into a game board so that he could play this sick game with Tindle, with full control over the outcome. He even performs the narration of the denouement to Tindle in a fashion similar to how he dictated his book at the film's start. And while this element of near-pathological control is a major part of the Andrew Wyke of the 1972 film, it is the defining characteristic of the Wyke of the 2007 film.

The remake of Sleuth is identical in premise and structure to its predecessor, but it is in many ways a more theatrical adaptation. Michael Caine has shifted into the role of Andrew Wyke, and he plays the character with more detachment and cruelty than Olivier did. Milo Tindle, now an actor, is played by Jude Law, who amps up the charm and charisma as only Jude Law can. They are bigger versions of the characters, who go to greater emotional extremes. But the greatest change is in the film's third character: the house.

Remake-Wyke's house is still a mansion in the English countryside, surrounded by an unreasonable amount of land, but it is no longer full of eccentric games. There are no dartboards or costumes or laughing automatons. The house itself is no longer a game board. It is now a stage, and Andrew Wyke is the director.

Production designer Tim Harvey created a house that looks like it was styled by a theatrical set designer, or a modern artist, rather than an interior decorator. This home, if you could call it that, is a cold, postmodernist nightmare. The walls and floor are covered in concrete and stone, the chairs are as visually striking as they are uncomfortable, the directional lighting is reminiscent of the sort that would be hanging from a theatre's lighting grid, and the doors have all been replaced with moveable walls, so they open like pieces of the set being moved by unseen stagehands. Where the house of the original film is a bit idiosyncratic, the house of the remake is downright hostile.

There are also two technological additions to the house that were not possible in 1972. First, a sophisticated CCTV security system, with cameras all around the house, inside and out. A voyeuristic, audience-eye view of the proceedings. A stage, after all, is only one half of a theatre, and the many glimpses of unattended security monitors we see make it feel like perhaps the audience is not us, but the house itself. This security system, and everything else in the house, respond to Wyke's commands on the second bit of fancy modern tech, a magic remote control.

With a simple press of a button, the house seems to telepathically understand Wyke and do his bidding, it is that advanced. The remote opens doors, turns on lights, activates a projector, controls the security systems, and generally whatever else the script dictates. The new Andrew Wyke is obsessively manipulative, and he uses all this technology to not only play a game with Tindle, but to revel in every moment of humiliation he inflicts upon the young man. By directing Tindle through the CCTV monitors Wyke is effectively making a movie of Tindle’s eventual demise.

This technology-focused update to the house is indicative of another aspect of remake-Wyke's cruelty: the way he flaunts his money in front of Tindle. Class division is at the heart of both films; Tindle needs money, Wyke has it. But the 2007 Sleuth makes the class divide between Wyke and Tindle even wider. This is made clear in the film's opening moments, before we even enter the house, when Tindle pulls up the driveway in his crappy hatchback and parks next to Wyke's brand-new Mercedes S-Class. Tindle is now an actor who works infrequently, which means he's even less well-off than the salon-owning Tindle in the first film (who could at least afford a convertible).

The exterior of the house looks similar to the house of the 1972 version, but the inside is painfully modern, which means it was gutted and expensively renovated, and it even has a room that serves as Wyke’s museum to himself. The lofted bedroom is accessible by the atrium elevator. And every time Wyke uses his magic remote to make the house do something, he's demonstrating a new piece of technology that had to be designed, manufactured, installed, calibrated, and maintained. The house drips with wealth, and it's covered with security cameras to make sure it stays that way. Not only is remake-Tindle poorer, remake-Wyke is wealthier.

The films' respective houses, while both symbols of upper-class opulence, are owned by very different men from different times. In the 1972 film, the house is old, a bit stuffy, but full of childish things that excite a lover of games with a flair for the dramatic. If the Andrew Wyke of this house didn't originally come from money, he certainly acts like he does. In the 2007 version, by contrast, the house is hard and uninviting, and it bends to the will of a voyeur who demands real-time control. It is a house befitting a more paranoid, more openly-hostile 21st century upper class, and has been designed by Wyke to suit only himself.

Rather than simply doing Sleuth again, the remake makes fundamental changes to the character of Andrew Wyke that force changes to the house where the story is set. Laurence Olivier's Andrew Wyke could never live in the house owned by Michael Caine's, and vice versa. This is good production design, because it comes from character. The homes of these men not only reflect their inner lives, they are extensions of the characters themselves.

Before & After is a series of essays where I examine aspects of films and their remakes.

That Time They Made a Sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey

When I was a kid just starting to appreciate movies as more than a diversion from playing with toys and video games, I had a few secrets. That's how they felt at the time, anyway. My early exposure to film appreciation came from my father, who was an avid collector of movies on physical media. He was a LaserDisc collector in the era of VHS, which means he was classy. This meant I had access to a bevy of interesting, adult-focused films that my friends and peers had never heard of.

They were films that fired my imagination, and they would have a profound impact on shaping my tastes and my appreciation of film itself. These were my secrets. I felt keyed into a world of stories my friends could never understand. I was one of those kids who couldn't wait to grow up, and I often felt alienated by how immature I felt my peers were (when really they were just acting their age). Enjoying movies made for adults made me feel like one, at a time when I desperately wanted to. And to this day, my friends (new friends, who are all much more interested in film) still don't talk about a lot of these movies.

Having revisited a number of these films, which I may write about in the future, I can share my disappointment that they do not all hold up. My understanding of film and storytelling was still gestating at the time, so of course they didn't all turn out to be winners. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a winner, of course. But so was, somewhat unexpectedly, its sequel.

At this point I don't think it's controversial to say that Stanley Kubrick is a legendary filmmaker whose 13 feature films are among the most influential in cinema. The fanboyism surrounding Kubrick ranks among the the highest of all the auteurs, and to many people the mere idea of creating a sequel to one of his films is sacrilege. But I'm not here to talk about Doctor Sleep. I have not seen that film.

Putting aside the magnitude of the impact 2001: A Space Odyssey has had on our culture, it is arguably the most Kubrickian of all Kubrick's films. It is driven by its visuals and the very deliberate pairing of music, and little else. Dialogue is so scarce that film critic Roger Ebert called it "in many respects a silent film." It doesn't function like a normal movie. We, the audience, do not watch the film for its characters' journey, and the film does not attempt to access our empathy. The themes are ambiguous, confusing even, especially upon first viewing.

From what I have read, Doctor Sleep seems to succeed in making a sequel to The Shining by being a sequel to Kubrick's film that doesn't try to be a Kubrick film. You can't out-Kubrick Kubrick, after all, so Mike Flanagan wisely chose to make a Mike Flanagan film. In 1984, Peter Hyams made the same decision about 2010, apparently with the encouragement of Stanley Kubrick himself (his only involvement in the sequel).

Unlike the film of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke's novel is a more straightforward story, a style he would also use for the book's three sequels. The film adaptation of 2010 follows suit, with a more traditional style of cinematography (provided by the film's director), dialogue from people who act like human beings, character arcs, and a bespoke music score that actually made it into the film. You know, normal movie stuff.

2010, sometimes subtitled The Year We Make Contact, is about a joint Soviet-American mission to return to the Discovery, the slender spacecraft of the first film, to investigate the reasons for the failure of its mission, the death of its crew, and the malfunction of its onboard supercomputer, HAL 9000. Accompanying the Soviet crew of the Leonov, is Dr. Heywood Floyd, played by the charismatic Roy Scheider, in stark contrast to the original detached performance by William Sylvester. Floyd is responsible for the original Discovery mission, and therefore the lost astronauts. Also aboard, Walter Curnow (John Lithgow), designer of the Discovery, as well as Dr. Chandra (Bob Balaban), the creator of HAL 9000.

What follows is not at all like the original film. Rather than a timeless art film with visual effects that still hold up 50 years later, 2010 is a film very much of the 1980s. The clean, minimalist aesthetic of 2001, with its round rooms and curved chairs, which still looks futuristic today, is instead replaced by the dark, dirty, heavily manufactured industrial design that dominated science fiction cinema in the wake of films like Alien and Peter Hyams's own Outland. The flat panel displays, which predicted both vertical and square video, are replaced by the CRT televisions of the mid-'80s. The design of the Leonov is bulky and not as recognizable, or as visually appealing, as the ships from 2001. (It also doesn't help that I keep mistaking it for an Earth warship from Babylon 5.) Everything new the film brings to the table stands in stark relief against the original film's design language, though in a way this actually serves the film when characters return to beautiful recreations of the original film's Discovery sets.

But the design isn't the only thing that dates the film. Both the film of 2010 and the original novel were released in the 1980s, and the Cold War is a major driving force for the story. The reason there is a joint Soviet-American mission at all is because in this world the space race never really stopped. The Soviets have a ship that will get to the Discovery first, but it's the Americans who know how to safely reactivate both the ship and the HAL computer. Back home, tensions between the two superpowers escalates into open conflict, creating a forced rift between the two sides of the crew.

At the time of 2010's release, with 40-some years of Cold War in recent memory and no end in sight, this was a very relevant geopolitical situation, and the fear of nuclear war was still very real. Much of the plot is built around the idea that the U.S. and the Soviet Union could start fighting any moment, but now that that is no longer the case in reality* 2010 loses a lot of its ability to stand the test of time. Just another thing placing this film at odds with its predecessor, which has a vision of the future that is still plausible and beautiful today (even if the year it takes place is a little... off).

I was born the year after 2010 was released in theaters, so by the time I saw it the Soviet Union had already collapsed. But the Cold War so permeated the film culture I was absorbing, I felt like I understood it as though it were still happening. Other favorites of mine from this time were The Hunt for Red October, obviously a Cold War movie, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which was created specifically as an allegory for the fall of the Iron Curtain. And of course let's not forget the James Bond franchise, and all the other action and spy movies that spent so many years casting Russians as the enemy.

In a way, I think knowledge of the Cold War and its impact on the world was something that let me pretend I was an adult. It meant I could speak to adults with an understanding of how the world functioned that my peers didn't seem to exhibit**. It made me impressive to adults, which made them take me more seriously than they did other kids of my age (as if being an eight-year-old who counted 2001: A Space Odyssey among his favorite movies wasn't enough). This is the kind of secret knowledge that films made for adults contained for a young child like me.

But the Cold War is not why I cared about this movie back in the day. I liked 2010 because I thought it was genuinely good, and I was admittedly a little terrified that would no longer be true upon viewing it as an adult, that this would become one of the childhood favorites that revealed itself to be bad, actually. And while 2010 may have some aesthetic issues that date it, the rest of the film, I'm extremely happy to report, is pretty solid.

Dr. Floyd, elevated to the role of protagonist, is compelling (though I credit this more to Roy Scheider than to the character as written), and so is Dr. Chandra. I do wish Chandra's arc had been given more space to breathe (it's possible some scenes were cut), as I felt the film only scratched the surface of what is by far the most interesting relationship in the film, between Chandra and the complex, intelligent machine he not only created but cares for deeply. Also ship designer Curnow has a friendly relationship with Russian crewmember Maxim (Elya Baskin) that is the center of one of the film's big moments of tension. They even attempt to have Floyd and mission commander Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren) get familiar in order to stir up some empathy, but it's pretty insubstantial. And truth be told, all these relationships and arcs are pretty insubstantial, but they are enough. Just enough, in fact.

2010 is more focused on continuing to build on the larger ideas introduced in the first film. Now there's a Monolith several kilometers long, and it's more active than previous Monoliths. And it's orbiting Jupiter for an active purpose, one that puts the crew of the Leonov in real, actual danger. Stanley Kubrick's vision of this universe doesn't provide easy answers, but Arthur C. Clarke's does. Clarke was involved in the development of the 2010 film beyond just writing the source novel, so the film is much more explicit in explaining its events.

I love science fiction movies about big ideas. Sometimes if the ideas are big enough it can carry me through even a mediocre film. For example, I love Star Trek: The Motion Picture, despite the fact that it is often painfully boring, because it is a big, galaxy-brain exploration of big sci-fi ideas. And the event at the climax of 2010 is a big science fiction idea that is so fascinating in its possibilities that it kind of makes me sad that there were never further adaptations of the Odyssey series (though there have been attempts). 2010 goes beyond its predecessor in explaining what happens in the film even if it never really gets into the why. Well, we do get one why.

The one thing from 2001 that the sequel does explain is why HAL decided to murder the crew of the Discovery. It essentially comes down to "conflicting orders," and it's not particularly satisfying, which even back in 1984 highlighted a danger of revisiting things that have decades worth of mystique surrounding them, and is a thing we have to deal with constantly in the reboot-heavy film landscape of today. I didn't remember the explanation for HAL's homicidal rampage until rewatching the film recently, and that's because I don't think I ever needed to know it. 2010 is at its strongest when it's pushing forward, which thankfully is what it spends most of its time doing.

2010: The Year We Make Contact is an engaging film, an impossible follow-up to one of the most celebrated films of all time. It could never hope to reach the heights of its predecessor, but it never attempts to, and it is better for it. It's a good story, it's told well enough, and it's respectful to the first film. It's a shame that 2010 is largely forgotten these days. I was right to like this movie as a kid. It wasn't just fun to watch, it was genuinely compelling, and it is worthy of standing beside its much more famous and celebrated predecessor, like two suns in the sky.

* The current U.S.-Russia situation could also be described as a Cold War, but it is not (currently) driven by mutually-assured nuclear destruction.

** To be clear, I'm not trying to accuse my childhood friends of being intentionally uninformed or something, and just because we didn't talk about the Cold War doesn't mean they weren't also aware of it.

Christopher Nolan's Gotham Cities (a video essay)

Just in time for virtual San Diego Comic-Con, here is my second video essay, in which I try to answer the question of why Christopher Nolan decided not to shoot The Dark Knight Rises in Chicago by exploring the life of Bruce Wayne. I also talk about the film City of God for a couple minutes, and I promise it makes sense.

Higher quality version on Vimeo.

'80s and '90s Movie Jams

I used to make a lot of playlists. I think I got pretty good at it, too. It was fun, making my iTunes library do interesting new things. But it’s not something I’ve done as a serious activity for a long time. But now in quarantine I’m rediscovering this lost art. Among the Spotify playlists I have made are a few fun movie-related ones; some nostalgic favorites from movies of the ’80s and ‘90s…

Enjoy!

‘80s Movie Hits, Vol. 1 & 2

Go to ‘80s Movie Hits

Go to ‘80s Movie Hits II: The Revenge

‘90s Movie Hits, Vol. 1, 2 & 3

Go to ‘90s Movie Hits

Go to ‘90s Movie Hits: Part Deux

Go to ‘90s Movie Hits III: Retribution

Every Reload in John Wick 1, 2 & 3 (a supercut)

While the next video essay percolates, I decided to throw together this fun little piece, which is a celebration of the fact that the John Wick universe, for all its craziness, does not have infinite ammo clips.

Higher quality version on Vimeo.

Screenplay Post-Mortem: Switching Time

This post will largely be me working through and expressing things I haven’t much talked about publicly, so apologies in advance for the potentially rambling nature of what’s to come.

I just finished a screenplay I started writing over ten years ago. It’s called Switching Time, and it’s an adaptation of a book written by my father. When he was a practicing psychiatrist, he had a patient with Dissociative Identity Disorder (a.k.a. multiple personalities). She had 17 alters (one more than the famous Sybil), and after nearly a decade of treatment these alters were all reintegrated back into the whole. This woman whose psyche was split into distinct personas, each with their own drives, is now whole. One person.

As a child I didn’t engage much with the events that were depicted in the book. My father was very good at keeping his work and family lives separate, so I didn’t really have any clue what my father’s relationship to this woman was, other than that she was a patient (I met her briefly once or twice in passing toward the end of her treatment, well after the events of the book). It wasn’t until I read the book that I found out anything of my father’s experience. I am in the book, of course, but only briefly.

I did meet Karen (as she’s called in the book) for real, and I had a conversation with her, at my father’s wedding to his third (and current) wife. We are also friends on Facebook. She remains involved in further developments of the story, and she knows about my screenplay. She hasn’t read it yet, but she will soon. (The script isn’t actually DONE done, and her notes will be incorporated into the next draft.)

My father got a Master’s Degree in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Northwestern, during which he shaped the initial version of the book. He got an agent and sold the book very soon after graduating, which I’m told is quite the rarity. The book was bought by Random House and eventually published under their Crown imprint. This also was a big deal, as it’s their big-title bestseller label.

Random House apparently expected this book to do very well. Maybe not create the sensation that Sybil did, but they were prepared for a hit. My dad did the usual book tour rounds, appearing on NPR and Good Morning America, and the like. It was exciting!

The book was not a hit.

I don’t know what the sales numbers were, but they were not good. I don’t know if this was a result of bad marketing (though I do know that the SEO was poor, because it was hard to Google the book or its author and get the desired results), or if it simply didn’t strike a chord with readers. Whatever the case, the book became obscure pretty quickly, disappearing from Barnes & Noble shelves within weeks, though the website remained active for awhile, and people could submit questions to Karen that she would answer.

I had already long decided before this point that I wanted to be a writer and filmmaker. I was in film school at NYU, with several screenplays under my belt already. It seemed silly for me to not be the one to do the adaptation. So I took an adaptation screenwriting class one semester with the specific goal of turning this book into a screenplay (sort of like my father had with the original book). I got about 40 pages into a draft but stopped, because a finished feature script was not actually a requirement of the class. I didn’t really go back to it after that.

I didn’t anticipate what a struggle writing this story would be. It has a lot of characters. It’s also pretty brutal, with repeated graphic depictions of violent sexual abuse toward women and children. It doesn’t follow a traditional three-act structure, and the story meanders from time to time. I’d also never tried to adapt anything before, and I’d chosen to start my game on Hard Mode.

But none of these things were the real reason it took me so long.

Years after I’d set the script aside and my father had given up hope that I would finish it, a movie producer finally showed interest in it. He optioned the book and brought in his own writer to do a draft. I started to panic. This was supposed to be my script. Sure, I’d basically ignored it for a few years, but it was supposed to be mine. I’d spent years building up in my head the great piece of work the script was going to be. I was going to play around with reality; dream sequences, actors switching out playing the different parts, and all sorts of other tricks. It wasn’t going to be good, it was going to be magnificent.

But now someone else was going to write it.

Luck was on my side, however, because 12 months later my father was not pleased with the draft the other writer delivered. Nor the second draft. After that, he elected not to renew the option. I never read either of these drafts, because after my father told me he didn’t like them, I had a renewed hope that I would still be able to write it.

And that’s just what happened. The disappointment of getting a screenplay he didn’t like had lit a fire under my father, driving him to get the script done. “Let’s do it ourselves,” he said. YES! I was back in the game.

So he flew me back to Chicago, and we spent the better part of a week breaking down the book and creating an outline for the script. As the experienced screenwriter, I would go off and write the first draft.

That was almost three years ago.

What the hell was I doing in the meantime?

Procrastinating, mostly.

And doing some writing here and there. In fits and spurts.

And some more procrastinating. And bits of other scripts.

Switching Time was back in my hands, and for the most part it didn’t seem like I could be bothered to do anything about it. Again.

Slowly I clawed my way to the words FADE OUT. And about two and a half years after we finished the outline, I delievered the first draft. The first few pages of that original draft from film school still remained, barely changed. At some point I reached the place in the script where I could see the end, and that definitely made things easier, but it was a slog the whole. Damn. Time.

I’d gotten so in my head about this thing. Not only did it have to be mind-blowingly awesome, but it was going to make my career. It was going to get me an agent, more jobs, an Oscar... And the whole thing was relying on the approval of my father (which is already an idea fraught with tension), who is the one of the main characters of the story. My mother was in it too. I even wrote myself into the first draft! The fear of writing the script was paralyzing. And because I’d committed to writing this script I had to finish it before all others, which means my output over the last three years has been abysmal. It’s the only feature I’ve completed in that time.

But with the first draft done, I took myself out of LA on one of my quarter-annual writer’s retreats and I banged out a second draft in two days. I felt like a goddamn hero.

Is it the brilliant masterpiece I envisioned? Of course not. That script in my head was perfect. And that’s because it hadn’t been written yet.

But now it has been written.

FUCK.

YEAH.

I still have another draft to do, incorporating notes from Karen and a few other people whose opinions I trust and value. But my dad is pretty happy with it, and let’s be honest, that’s what really mattered to me.

Oh and by the way, growing up the child of a psychiatrist is really weird. I don’t recommend it.