I mean, it's entirely possible that they wanted a different Morpheus for artistic reasons and it wasn't intended as a snub towards him.
Even if a lot of people consumed it as a dime-a-dozen action flick, The Matrix has always had a lot going on philosophically and artistically speaking. It's not really the same thing as, idk, Robert Downey Jr getting turned down and recast in an Ironman movie or something imo.
This is what I think was the case. Say what you will about Ressurection but nothing about that movie's story or casting feels unintentional. They very much point out how they "brought back Morpheus" but he also isn't really Morpheus, hell they show pictures of Fishburne in the background while they do it. Apparently Hugo Weaving was approached to play Smith again, and he would have done it if not for schedule issues, so they weren't recasting for budget reasons or whatever, I think Ressurection Morpheus and Trilogy Morpheus are just meant to be different characters and the recast helps solidify that.
Honestly the subtle as a brick scene where its clearly her saying, "I don't want to do this, but the studio was going to do it with or without me," made me enjoy the movie for what it was.
I believe the context in the movie is when they're talking about making a sequel to the game, with or without Neo. Smith delivers it? Its been a while. I mostly remember how unsubtle it was lol
The Matrix trio includes Laurence Fishburne. It would be akin to not only excluding Harrison Ford in The Force Awakens but also recasting the character entirely. This was part of the reason I didn't go see the movie in theaters. And given that the movie bombed, other people probably thought the same thing.
The narrative has already explicitly established that he isn't even the first Morpheus just as Neo and Trinity aren't the first Neo and Trinity and Zion isn't the first Zion, plus they kind of killed his character off in a spin-off video game or something that they canonized for some reason
We can have a discussion about whether or not what they did with Morpheus worked for the story they were trying to tell, but that's a completely different discussion than whether or not they were intentionally snubbing Fishburne
I read the article posted. It sounds like he was snubbed. It sounds like Lana Wachowski has some sort of problem with him. She's not the director for the 5th movie but she's an EP. If she has a problem with him he probably will be excluded from 5 as well.
I also read it and didn't get that impression, idk what to tell you
"I wasn't invited to come back and when I reached out to ask if I could they didn't respond well" doesn't necessarily mean "they snubbed me for personal reasons"
This makes no logical sense when they kept Neo and Trinity and some others, maybe it wasn't a snub but lets not pretend bullshit “artistic reasons” are why it happened.
Unless the Green Goblin in your new movie is explicitly not Norman Osborne, which you might want to do for various reasons that have nothing to do with whether you want DaFoe to come back for your movie
Yeah every aspect of The Matrix and its sequels feels extremely thoughtful. No decisions were made rashly.
(Thoughtful does not always mean good, though)
I'll always take a "thoughtfully made movie that came from an artistic vision" type of bad movie over a "corporate meddled to shit trying to up scores in a focus group" type of bad movie. Rebel Moon is a much more interesting movie than Rise of Skywalker, even though RM is a....just a garbage set of movies.
I'd take a hundred matrix sequels before watching Ant Man 3 again.
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u/Silvermoon3467 2d ago
I mean, it's entirely possible that they wanted a different Morpheus for artistic reasons and it wasn't intended as a snub towards him.
Even if a lot of people consumed it as a dime-a-dozen action flick, The Matrix has always had a lot going on philosophically and artistically speaking. It's not really the same thing as, idk, Robert Downey Jr getting turned down and recast in an Ironman movie or something imo.