oh hey it's four different comics that look like the same comic! Let's quickly dismiss each of them:1-bonus points to whichever of you pointed out that Trinity never looks like that (her hair, for example), it's just that Randy can't draw women except for their hair. Anyway, this just felt like another "Hey, what if movie characters were sarcastic all the time??" comic, like the Princess Bride one or the Episode V one. funny? I guess, if you like imagining what a Randall Munroe screenplay would read like.
2-Hey, you figured out how to make Lawrence Fishburne look black! now go back and do it in all the other panels!
3-ha ha, penis!
4- Ok, I'll admit it, this last one was not bad. Not that the "I hate the second two matrix movies" is a clever premise, but it was still done well. Of course, the fact that alt-text says he enjoyed the movies when they came out is a serious problem, but is valuable evidence for those of us trying to figure out why Randall has such bad taste.
that was FUN
LOL, REMINISCENCE OF A TEDIOUS AND DERIVATIVE MOVIE FOR PSEUDO-SCIENCE CREEPS WHOSE CHILDHOOD HAS LASTED AT LEAST THE LAST TEN YEARS!!1
ReplyDeleteyeah this comic might have been funny 9 years ago, when the bar for webcomics was a lot lower and The Matrix had only been out for a couple weeks (okay, the last one does require the passage of time but still)
ReplyDeleteI mean he's had TEN YEARS to come up with some decent jokes and this is all he could manage? Criminy.
So now you're having a go at him because he disagrees with you about a few movies?
ReplyDeleteNice.
that "take both pills" is the most obvious joke ever
ReplyDelete"So now you're having a go at him because he disagrees with you about a few movies?"
ReplyDeleteYes. The kind of media someone enjoys in indicative of their tastes and aesthetic ideals, and if Carl believes that this represents and unrefined, unintelligent, or uninformed sense of style, then he is perfectly justified in pointing it out.
On a related note, media studies is one of my primary areas of expertise, and I have to say I agree with Carl that the two Matrix sequels were terrible, unfocused, and sloppy compared to the original. Then again, considering the path xkcd has taken over about the past, it's not surprising that Randy would be willing to forgive the drop in quality in the series.
Ugh..."over about the past YEAR." Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteHate on the Matrix sequels all you want, but someone out there please go against the grain and tell me you liked Speed Racer? It was a smashing success in my book, I believe for all the "right" reasons (I cannot fight your media studies, poore, but I've taken film classes?).
ReplyDeleteThat last strip has an alright endjoke ("let's pretend the sequels never existed"), but the first three panels are a terrible setup to me, specifically since the consensus years ago was that the sequels were poor and Randy chiming in with an act of violence feels like the sort of pandering that leads to forum posts like this....*reads first page of this comic's forum*
Well hot damn, there's a healthy mix of opinions about it. Bravo, forums. What a healthy page-one surprise! Ok, so the "Revisited" brought out people's honest reactions. I am (happily) wrong.
The take both pills is not only an obvious joke, but there's no reason and no humor in snorted them. Who can't swallow two pills at once?
ReplyDeleteThe ending would also be better without the violence. Just skip to the last panel in the fourth line, wink to the audience, because they'll get it if you just say "they never made any sequels". And the people that don't get it will be amusing.
The last joke was extremely shitty. It's just Discontinuity, there's nothing original or interesting or mildly funny about that.
ReplyDeleteBut still, some moron fan puts that xkcd strip on tvtropes:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisContinuity
Can we call discontuity on the latest xkcd strips? I think we can! Is that ironic?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.polkout.com/PraguePolk9-2.png
Why did 469 get skipped anyway?
ReplyDelete469 seems to be one of those things that's hard to critique directly. I mean, the whole "joke" is "these jokes aren't funny." What else is there to say?
ReplyDeleteToday's comic sucked but at least the art was good. As in you can TELL it's Benjamin Franklin.
ReplyDeleteI think you are being tremendously unfair to the third line. It's not a penis joke in essence- everyone remembers the badass scene where Neo throws open his trenchcoat for the cop to see. You can't really deny the humor in a situation in which he was actually just flashing the cop.
ReplyDeleteCarl is being unfair! BLOO BLOO BLOOOO
ReplyDeleteI skipped 469 because I was very very busy at the time. I believe I skipped a few more around then; in any case I gave ample warning with this post.
ReplyDeletePoore, I think his point actually agreed with your assessment - he says the sequels don't stand up to comparison with the original, after all. He was just saying that they weren't actually *bad* movies, just not up to the same standard as the original. It's not unlike saying the new Indian Jones movie was a crappy Indiana Jones movie (it was) but if you pretend the characters are named differently and it's not part of the same series, it's not that bad a movie.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't change the fact that there's no actual *joke* anywhere in that setup, or that the comic is bad. And it's not a totally terrible complaint on its own - it just doesn't stand up to comparison against the rest of the critiques here :P
The new Indiana Jones movie was crappy how?
ReplyDeleteOuch! You got CALLED, anonymous.
ReplyDelete(yeah, i am totally claiming all names of the form "the_somethingfish", so there.)
How wasn't it crappy?
ReplyDeleteHow was it crappy? It had aliens? Boo hoo.
ReplyDeleteIt was cool right up until the point when the spaceship took off into the sky.
ReplyDelete- and Shia LaBoeuf sucks.
BAWWWW
ReplyDeleteother people don't like the same things as you
BAWWW
ReplyDeletePeople like things you don't like.
BAWWW
(You're a gay furry, aren't you?)
BAWWWWWW
ReplyDeleteEverybody's insulting each other.. makes me sad. I think I'll go read a book.
I'm not upset that people like things I don't like. I'm ridiculing people who get upset at people having different tastes than them.
ReplyDeleteObjectively, it's not a crappy movie just because you didn't like the aliens. It's the aliens, isn't it? It's always the aliens.
ReplyDeleteWell I also take issue with the ridiculous atom bomb test/refrigerator thing, although I guess that falls under the category of "Harrison Ford is a superhuman badass" so it doesn't bug me quite so much.
ReplyDeleteSo aliens aren't allowed, but Nazis exploding from some sort of holy power is?
ReplyDeleteThe first three movies were in a consistent realistic-fantasy world, pretty much like the real world except that there was at least a grain of truth to certain miraculous aspects of ancient religious texts. The fourth instead existed in a slightly different realistic-scifi world.
ReplyDeleteReligion-based magic was the theme of the original trilogy, and having a sudden departure into X-Files territory was a bit odd.
On its own, the aliens aren't horrible. It just doesn't quite fit with the theme of the movies.
Mostly I'm just being a snarky bitch.
Consistent? You have Hinduism and christianity both being real!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWell, Judeo-Christianity (and Nazis) were real, anyway. I don't recall there being any specifically Buddhist fantasy elements which were shown as real.
ReplyDeleteOops, Alex removed the Nazi-related post that I was referencing. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteAnyway I don't actually care that much about the sanctity of a movie's narrative. IJ4 just seemed a bit excessive and nostalgic for the sake of nostalgia. That doesn't mean I won't watch it again though.
I actually haven't seen the Matrix sequels yet simply because of how bad I'd heard they were. I've just added them to my Netflix queue so I can do the instant-streaming thing this weekend. I plan on doing it while drunk.
LOL, Hinduism is pretty freakin' different from Buddhism. WATCH THE SECOND MOVIE.
ReplyDeleteOops, yeah, I know they're different things. I just had a massive brainfart when I read your comment.
ReplyDeleteThe second one didn't seem to have much to do with Hinduism-made-real either, though.
Now that this discussion has derailed in about 20 different directions, I just wanted to say I thought Shia LaBeouf's part in 'The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' was a much fuller and funnier role than I thought it would be and was another good way to tie the series to the 50's.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I deleted the Nazi comment because it was out of sequence suddenly. Joke didn't make sense, couldn't go back and edit.
ReplyDeleteCrystal skull was a good movie right up until they were having a high speed chase in tiny cars through a jungle that only 10 seconds before was so incredibly dense that they needed a GIANT ARMORED SAW-TRUCK to cut a path through it at an agonizing pace.
ReplyDeleteThen it only went downhill from there. For example: why does knowledge turn people into dust? Why is Shia LeBeouf still allowed to act after being in Transformers?
@Anonymous who tried to contradict me:
ReplyDeleteConsidering a movie without considering the fact that it is a sequel, and that the movie that led up to it is insanely influential in how a general audience as well as a critical audience receives said movie, is just plain retarded.
Saying, "Oh, the Matrix sequels weren't bad if you ignore the fact that they're sequels to the Matrix" is like saying, "Oh, the Super Mario Bros. movie wasn't bad if you don't consider that it was based on Super Mario Bros."
You are an idiot, and even though I've had the BEST DAY EVER TODAY (well, technically, it's yesterday at this point, but fuck it), I still hate you.
Also, whoever made the comment about gay furries? That's my shtick. I'm the one who calls people gay furries. Go find your own thing.
@poore: you are Charlie Brooker and I claim my five pounds.
ReplyDelete(although not as funny, perhaps because you don't have the rigorous* subbing of The Guardian to massage the text)
*possible lie
@the_cuddlefish:
ReplyDeleteThanks, I guess? I would've preferred a Yahtzee Croshaw comparison, but I'll take Brooker.
So last night I finally saw Matrix: Reloaded, and it was pretty pathetic. Every single even remotely-interesting thing was stuff I remember seeing from the trailers, and the plot was completely predictable. Also, what was the deal with Agent Smith infecting a human at the very beginning and then it not having anything to do with the movie until the OMG COMPLETELY TELEGRAPHED TWIST!!!! at the end?
ReplyDeletePlus there was a lot of BLAH BLAH BLAH pseudo-philosophy which was even more asinine and basic than the first movie. YES WE GET IT TECHNOLOGY AND HUMANS ARE IN A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP, THAT WASN'T TOTALLY THE NOT-VERY-SUBTLE SUBTEXT OF THE WHOLE FIRST MOVIE.
So, Randall's thing about how the sequels "weren't bad, they just don't hold up like the original" shows that he still has the same level of EXCELLENT TASTE that we've come to expect from him.
oh and why the hell did Neo keep on getting into these impossibly difficult fights and then only flying away right before he got completely clobbered? it seems like he doesn't have much sense if he's not just going to use his kwisatz haderach^W^W THE ONE powers to escape and nuke-from-orbit the bad dudes right away. Plus, obvious CG is obvious.
ReplyDeleteoh yay, I pointed out that Trinity has never ever worn a fucking bun in the last thread. I RULE.
ReplyDeleteThe Matrix movie doesn't make much sense to me, and neither does this particular piece of Randal's work. He must be doing a good job replicating it. I wouldn't be so quick to judge the opinions of others, for there is no wrong opinion. Opinions have always been arbitrary. And who the fuck is this "Trinity", anyway?
ReplyDelete