Warner Brothers has started the marketing cycle for their upcoming fourth Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections.
They've revamped the OG 1999 Matrix website, What is the Matrix?, and it now offers you a choice of red and blue pills. The pills take you to different teaser clips where a voice creepily identifies what time it is for you.
The Matrix Resurrections seemingly picks up twenty-odd years after the events of The Matrix Revolutions, which ended in a truce between the human rebels and the machine AIs after they joined forces to defeat Agent Smith, but something strange has clearly happened in the interim. Old characters are back, but with new names and limited or no memory of what happened to them the first time around. Some characters also seem to be back in new bodies, or with new faces. Early previews have hinted at a much stranger (and probably even more divisive) film than the soulless cash-in many were expecting.
A full trailer is expected on Thursday. The film itself will be released on 22 December this year in cinemas and, in the United States, on HBO Max.
The film sees the return of Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Ann Moss, Lambert Wilson, Daniel Bernhardt and Jada Pinkett Smith from the original trilogy, with new casting additions including Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Yu Li Henwick, Toby Onwumere, Max Riemelt and Christina Ricci. The film is directed by Lana Wachowski (who co-directed the original trilogy) and co-written by Lana Wachowski with David Mitchell (yes, that one) and Aleksandar Hemon.
The AIs and machines are preparing for a final assault on Zion, the last surviving stronghold of the human race. Neo has been offered the chance to spare humanity from annihilation by rebooting the Matrix, an act which will start everything - the war, Zion, the prophecy - again from scratch, but has refused. With humanity's lifespan now measured in hours, Neo in a coma and the Matrix itself being overrun by the rogue Agent Smith program, it appears that all hope has been lost.
The Matrix Revolutions is a curious movie. If The Matrix was the paradigm-shifting, classic original which blended cyberpunk and Hong Kong cinema, then The Matrix Reloaded was the bigger, faster, "more!" sequel with more fights, more explosions, more CGI and more scope and scale. Also a lot more exposition, and hundreds of times more Hugo Weaving (the film asked us, "How much Hugo Weaving is too much Hugo Weaving?" and still never found a satisfactory answer). The Matrix Revolutions then has to be the weird one, starting off with a strange sequence with Neo lost in the Matrix before he is rescued (in a surprisingly non-drawn out manner) by his friends. From there the crew splits in two, with one team racing back to Zion before it comes under attack by the Sentinel army and the other making its way to the machine city, Zero One, to try to broker a peace. Much of the rest of the film is split between the adventures of the two hovercraft and the defenders in Zion.
This structure is fine as far as it goes, but it does rather obviously have a flaw: not a lot of the film (apart from the very start and the very ending) takes place in the Matrix itself, which given that's what the whole trilogy is about feels weird. Instead we're spending a lot of time with characters we've barely met or seen, apart from Morpheus who really doesn't have a lot to do in the movie (you start to realise why so many stories kill the "wise old mentor" character once the protagonist and thus the story outgrows them).
We do get some great action set pieces, such as the Mjolnir's running battle with a Sentinel fleet through miles of underground tunnels, and the assault on Zion is impressively apocalyptic, even if the script is writing cheques that 2003 CGI can't quite cash. The scenes in which thousands of Sentinels sweep through the Zion Dock and there's so many of them they look like a liquid is impressive, albeit somewhat nonsensical (and it's unclear why, if the Sentinels can do that, they don't just scour the Dock clean in a matter of seconds). The film succeeds in ramping up the stakes, although the fact that none of our regular characters are involved in this battle does remove some of the dramatic tension.
Neo and Trinity get a rough ride in the film, having to battle a human possessed by Agent Smith (Ian Bliss - as Bane - doesn't get enough plaudits for his spot-on impression of Hugo Weaving's Smith) before hitting (rater literally) Zero One and confronting the machines' governing core AI, the amusingly-named Deus Ex Machina. For those who enjoy the Matrix films because they get to see Keanu Reeves kicking a lot of butt, Reeves has surprisingly little of that to do in this movie before the big finale. The ending is also surprising, with perhaps the lack of a massive, apocalyptic finale that people were expecting. Instead, the film draws for its resolution on the idea of an negotiated settlement, a deal between humans and the machines, rather than the machines being wiped out altogether.
This resolution disappointed a lot of fans - who wanted a more definitive, final ending rather than what felt like setup for more sequels - but it does have some virtues. The overwhelming superiority of the machines makes any kind of outright human victory over them implausible in the extreme, so resolving the story in another, logical way which was well-established beforehand is a good move. It also pays off the fans who watched The Animatrix beforehand, which made it clear that the machines are thinking, feeling, sentient beings who have very good reasons to hate and distrust humanity, and the war isn't as one-sided as it seems. Of course, for the 99% of viewers who hadn't (and probably still haven't now) seen The Animatrix, it's an altogether less resonant conclusion.
There are plenty of other things to like about The Matrix Revolutions, such as the lack of overlong, overwrought martial arts scenes (something that bogged down Reloaded), replaced by more realistic fistfights outside the Matrix; the top score (this film easily has the best original score of the three, and the least reliant on pre-existing songs); the relatively intelligent (if not entirely emotionally satisfying) finale; and the reasonably impressive action set-pieces. There are also other things to dislike: some of the elements in the ending are not entirely clear (is Neo dead or not?), the personal stakes in the Zion battle are low (we don't really know these people very well) and, although the film is trying to respect the audience's intelligence by not spelling out every little thing, sometimes this results in obfuscation. For example, I spent ages trying to work out what the machines were doing to Neo's body and how that saved the day before I realised they were activating the source code in the One program, resulting in the Matrix rebooting and removing the "infection" in the process. In short, doing exactly what the Architect told us it would do in the previous movie. It's a smarter ending than I first gave it credit for, but it still feels not well-communicated.
The Matrix Revolutions (***½) can't hold a candle to the tight focus and wild inventiveness of the original film, but it's still a watchable and entertaining action movie, and has both better pacing and a stronger structure than The Matrix Reloaded, and far less overwrought fight scenes. So much of the film taking place outside of the Matrix itself is a bit of a risk, confirming that the "real" post-apocalyptic future is less interesting than it might first appear, but broadly speaking the movie works okay and delivers an interesting, if underwhelming finale. I'm interested in seeing where Lana Wachowski can take the franchise in the forthcoming fourth film in the series. The film is available as part of a box set with its predecessors in the UK and USA.
The AIs who control the world have decreed the destruction of Zion, the last free human city. As a vast army of Sentinels digs towards Zion, Neo must use his developing powers to help end the war from inside the Matrix. A message from the Oracle leads him towards a meeting with the Architect, whose revelations will change everything. But both sides in the war have reckoned without a wild card, the return of a program that should have been destroyed but has instead gone rogue and started spreading like a virus with only one purpose in mind: the end of everything.
It took four years for the Wachowskis to deliver their sequel to their 1999 paradigm-shifting action classic, The Matrix. As they developed ideas for the project, they realised they couldn't fit them into one movie so split it in two, with the two halves released six months apart. All the cool kids were doing this back in 2003, with Peter Jackson filming his three-part Lord of the Rings adaptation in one block and then releasing the films at one-year intervals. This was a huge success. The Matrix sequels had a rather more mixed reception.
The Matrix Reloaded does do a few very good things. The action scenes are stronger, the actors having trained for far longer and more in-depth for their martial arts scenes. There's far more spectacular stunts (the opening sequence with Trinity single-handedly destroying an office block and then engaging in aerial combat with an Agent remains outstanding), more worldbuilding, huge plot revelations and some clever ideas sprinkled amongst the action, although the philosophising of the first film has mostly fallen by the wayside.
Unfortunately, the film's good elements are dented by the fact that the pacing is poor. The Matrix Reloaded has a fairly simple plot progression: Neo has to meet with the Oracle, strike a deal with the deceitful (and randomly French) Merovingian and then follow a path to meet the Architect, whilst fairly nascent subplots follow a rivalry between Morpheus and Zion's military commander and the gathering of Zion's forces to oppose the machine army. This could easily have been done in under 90 minutes with plenty of time for cool action scenes, but for some reason the Wachowskis decided they had to use every single penny of the budget (twice that of the first film). As a result we get an absolutely absurd fight sequence between Neo and several hundred Agent Smith clones, which the technology is not quite able to deliver: the all-CG scenes between a blatantly fake Keanu Reeves and lots of claymation-looking Hugo Weavings are particularly painful. Even more offensive, because it is simply not important to the plot, is a hallway fight scene between Neo and the Merovingian's mediocre bodyguards which feels like it goes on longer than the Hundred Years' War. There's also a rave/dance party in Zion near the start of the film which feels a bit pointless (although prefiguring the Wachowski's love of showing people having a good time, which would inform their later Netflix project Sense8).
Other action sequences also go on a bit too long, but they are at least a lot more varied and fun: Seraph and Neo's first meeting taking the form of a friendly table-based martial arts battle is as daft as a brush, but so technically impressive that it's less of a problem. The massive battle sequence on the freeway is also a bit bloated, but it has a lot more combatants and is very impressively handled. There's also some nice character beats, such as Morpheus - who's clearly been trained up by Neo and his new powers in the meantime - relishing the chance to go toe-to-toe with an Agent on more even terms.
The film was heavily criticised for the revelatory sequence with Neo and the Architect. Partially I think this was the fault of the extended gap between the films, during which time fans had come up with all sorts of theories on the Internet, some of them fairly compelling. The most constant and pernicious of these was that the "real world" was another level of the Matrix, and a lot of people were unhappy this wasn't the case. Personally I was relieved, because I think the Wachowskis would have lost the mass audience if they'd gone too wankery with the premise (in the event it would be another decade before Christopher Nolan played that card, more or less successfully, with Inception). And as it turns out a lot of the fans were right, the real world situation was another layer of control, just not in the way they were expecting. Still, I think the problem with the scene is, both ergo and concordantly, more in its presentation than the plot revelations it contains.
Still, the film does a lot that's right. The Wachowskis realising that they had a gift that would not stop giving in the form of Hugo Weaving and making 1000% use of him in the sequels was a good move. The expansion of the world and the cast is mostly successful and the action sequences and effects are technically impressive, until they become over-egged and self-indulgent.
The Matrix Reloaded (***) is a watchable, sometimes fun but overlong, overwrought and over-budgeted sequel to a great movie. It does a lot that's good and is never less than interesting, but with more judicious editing it could have been sharper, tighter and more compelling. The film is available as part of a box set with its predecessor and sequel in the UK and USA.
Computer programmer Thomas Anderson, who sports the hacking alias "Neo," is contacted by the mysterious Morpheus, a hacking paragon who offers to share with him information about a rumoured computer network known as the Matrix. Evading detention by sunglasses-wearing Agents, Neo meets Morpheus and learns the truth: the entire human race has been enslaved by advanced AIs to be used as batteries to power their systems. The Matrix is a computer simulation of the past, used to keep humans unaware of their true, nightmarish existence. Morpheus offers Neo the chance to escape the dream and help bring about the liberty of the human race.
Released in 1999, The Matrix rapidly became one of the most highly-acclaimed science fiction action films of its era. Its impact was heightened by the perceived disappointment of that year's Star Wars film, The Phantom Menace, and the fact that at the time of its release a number of other films (such as Dark City, eXistenZ and The Thirteenth Floor) had been recently released tackling similar themes but had failed to make much impact. The Matrix struck gold with a more high-concept, simply-relatable premise (what if our lives are an illusion?), a large number of impressive action scenes, some intriguing-if-shallow philosophical asides on free will and an extraordinarily great cast, particularly the impressive find of the then-unknown Carrie Ann Moss and rising talent Hugo Weaving, as well as hugely career-boosting turns from Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne.
One of the reasons The Matrix works is the idea it borrows from various Hong Kong action cinema and Japanese anime movies, namely the fact that the action is justified by the plot, as are the increasingly insane stunts, action set pieces and martial arts on display. For once, implausible action scenes, balletic martial arts scenes and frenetic gunplay is justified by the hyper-real setting of the Matrix itself, and the ability of both the Agents and Morpheus's band of rebels to twist the simulation to their own benefit.
The Matrix is also helped by its challenging budget. This has been overstated a bit over the years - $70 million in 1999 was still a solid sum of money (comparable to the budget of Independence Day three years earlier) - but the budget was still relatively low given some of the ideas and concepts that the Wachowskis wanted to pull off, forcing the effects team to consider low-fi solutions to problems (such as doing most fight scenes in-camera with the actual actors suspended on wires) given the limited amount of CG they could call upon. This gives the film a lot of credibility with the actors often undertaking their own stunts, allowing impressive close-ups even mid-fight.
From a philosophical viewpoint, the film muses on various real-world influences such as Jean Baudrillard's Simulacres et Simulation (Baudrillard found the film's understanding of his ideas to be flawed) and elements from Descartes, Kant and Taoism. The film uses these ideas somewhat clumsily - expression and economy of dialogue is clearly not a priority, as evidenced during lengthy exposition scenes from Morpheus - but in doing so it brought them to a much wider audience and inspired newer ideas. The central concept in the film, that reality is not real but a computer-generated illusion, was later expanded on by Nick Bostrom in his 2003 simulation hypothesis.
However, the real success of The Matrix is in its establishment of a new world and mythos that is interesting and engaging, if not hugely convincing in this film (the two sequels and, more successfully, the animated spin-off project The Animatrix expand and explore on elements that feel under-explored here). The notion of the machines using humans as batteries rather than, for example, far more cost-effective geothermal or nuclear energy is a bit preposterous until The Animatrix reveals that it was humanity's repeated aggression against the AIs, who initially only wanted peace after achieving sentience and independence, that led to the AIs decision to enslave humanity and use them as a fuel source out of both a need for revenge but also a humanitarian reluctance to fully wipe out their creators.
Twenty-one years on from release, The Matrix (****½) remains a highly watchable movie. The action is convincing and impressive, the cast is magnetically engaging and help overcome an occasionally clumsy script, and the philosophical ideas and allusions add intelligence (or at least a veneer of it) to the SF action adventure mix. The film is available as part of a box set with its two sequels in the UK and USA.
Wolfgang is a prisoner of BPO, but his fellow sensates have taken the enigmatic "Whispers" prisoner in turn. The two sides arrange a prisoner swap in Paris, but both are eager to double-cross the other and gain the upper hand in their clandestine war. For BPO, the sensates are a weapon and a resource to be exploited. All the sensates want is freedom. The two sides are poised for a final confrontation.
Sense8 is one of the oddest shows on television, an anthology show with eight main characters in which the central character of each story can call upon the skills and advice of the other seven, despite each story being very different in tone and ideas. It's also a show that is fairly over-brimming with positivity about humanity and about life. If the relentless cynicism of the likes of Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead gets too much for you, than Sense8 is the antidote, a show in which the characters can escape murderous torture, gun down some bad guys, and then get together with their cluster for a telepathically-communicated musical throwdown to Depeche Mode. As you do.
When Sense8 was cancelled after its second season, it was the raucous reception by the fans that saw Netflix agree to commission a TV movie to round off the story. This presented Lana Wachowski with a difficult choice to make. Sense8 was envisaged as a five-season project. With more than half of that material remaining, should she chuck all of that out and craft a simpler resolution to the story, or try to cram in another 36-odd episodes worth of plot into a single special? Her conclusion was to try to do a bit of both. So the central struggle of this finale is firmly on the sensates vs. BPO, with Whispers as the key in that conflict. That's fine and focused, but Wachowski also brings in a huge number of other elements which there is simply no time to develop, such as a neutral council of sensates who have so far stayed out of the struggle but are now willing to support one side and then don't do very much. Some of this excess baggage should have been dropped.
Sense8's finale gives fans a lot more of what they've seen so far: our characters swapping skills, having emotional heart-to-hearts and a couple of musical numbers and party scenes, along with the show's standard, fantastic location filming (the use of Naples is excellent, but the actual use of the real Eiffel Tower for the grand finale is jaw-dropping). However, it also drops the characters' individual storylines to focus on the grand mystery. This is possibly unwise, as the show's central storyline of shadowy government or trans-national organisations and mysteries dating back decades always felt a bit undercooked and took too much time away from the characters (a similar problem to Orphan Black and latter-day Lost). Still, at least the finale straightens out the show's mythology and resolves it with admirable efficiency.
Possibly less successful is the decision to pay off every single character in the show. And I mean every single character. Sylvester McCoy's elderly sensate has a part to play, as does Wolfgang's Conan the Barbarian-quoting best friend, and Kala's eternally confused husband and Capheus's political team and Will's cop partner from Chicago and Riley's chill hippy dad and Nomi's transphobic/homophobic mother and Sun's Korean cop nemesis/boyfriend and that bald girl from the second season and Angelica and her cluster (despite them all being dead) and pretty much everyone who hasn't been killed off. Jamming all of these characters into the special is nice, but unwieldy, massively self-indulgent and not very logical. Even worse, the proliferation of characters beyond the central eight means that some of the main cast of characters, most notably Capheus and Lito, don't really get much to do.
The finale also has some decidedly undercooked action scenes. Sense8's action scenes have always been phenomenal, the Wachowskis relishing their relatively low budget to get back to the ground-level tricks for shooting gunfights and martial arts they haven't had to employ since the original Matrix. For the finale, they clearly had much less money and time available than normal. The fight scenes feel perfunctory and the CG in the gunfights (to simulate bullet sparks) is poorly integrated with the live action. Given there's quite a few action scenes in the finale, this is definitely a bit of an issue, but ultimately a minor one.
But these questions of logistics and over-indulgence and logic are perhaps the wrong ones to address. Sense8 was a show about eight well-drawn characters from completely different backgrounds coming together and finding commonality despite their very different origins, and overcoming the obstacles in the way. The show wasn't perfect - bum dialogue and a tendency to schmaltz dogged it from early on - but its flaws were often endearing, its characters resolutely human and its message determinedly hopeful. Hopefully we will see its like again.
Sense8's finale (****) is available to watch on Netflix worldwide now, along with the rest of the series.
The series finale of Sense8 has been given an airdate. The movie-length grand finale to the story will air on Netflix on 8 June.
Netflix cancelled Sense8 last year after, curiously, airing the second season with almost no marketing, meaning that even big fans of the show were unaware it had returned. Netflix had chosen instead to keep marketing 13 Reasons Why, despite that show already being a big hit, and the need to get eyes on Sense8 being much greater because of its larger budget (Sense8's second season cost an eyewatering $9 million per episode). This was a bit of an own goal, to put it mildly, and after a fan campaign which involved mass rewatches of the first two seasons, Netflix agreed to fund a two-hour finale. This will wrap up the second season's cliffhanger ending and will provide a conclusion to the series overall, despite writers J. Michael Straczynski and the Wachowskis previously saying that the show was meant to run for an additional three seasons.
Some fans are hoping that the finale is successful enough to warrant a third season being commissioned, although that seems unlikely.
The two-hour finale movie of Netflix's Sense8 has entered -preproduction, with the script being distributed for the cast for read-throughs before shooting begins.
Sense8was cancelled by Netflix earlier this year, after citing disappointing streaming figures for the second season (despite Netflix themselves doing an awful job of advertising it). A strong fan campaign, helped by lots of news stories and more people watching the show, allowed Netflix to give the series a reprieve and allow the writers to tie up the story.
The finale, intriguingly, is written by Lana Wachowski with novelists David Mitchell and Aleksander Hemon. Wachowski previously collaborated with Mitchell on the Cloud Atlas movie. J. Michael Straczynski, who co-created the series and co-wrote the first two seasons, is surprisingly absent. Despite some speculation to the contrary, Lily Wachowski has also not returned to contribute to the finale (although there remains a chance she may return as a producer or director).
Officially, this will be the last-ever episode of Sense8, but there remains a small chance of a further revival or a spin-off if this finale is well-received.
Adult entertainment website XHamster has offered to pick up Netflix's recently-cancelled TV series Sense8, in an apparently serious proposal to series showrunner Lana Wachowski.
Sense8's second season aired earlier this year to apparently disappointing viewing figures, especially compared to the show's lavish $9 million-an-episode budget (the second-highest on American television, behind only Game of Thrones). Netflix regretfully pulled the plug, but after an intense fan campaign, agreed to produce a two-hour finale movie so Lana Wachowski and co-writer J. Michael Straczynski could wrap up the cliffhanger ending the show was left on.
Now XHamster has stepped in, posting an open letter to the Wachowski sisters (Lilly Wachowski stepped back from Season 2 of Sense8 after co-producing the first season, but may return for the finale) in which they make a serious offer to pick up the series properly, presumably meaning they would fund the remaining three years of the planned five-season run. Obviously this would require Netflix licensing the property to an adult website, but given Netflix's own history of giving a new home to previously-cancelled series (like Gilmore Girls and Arrested Development), they may be open to the notion.
Certainly XHamster has the financial firepower to make it happen. The website is one of the biggest and most heavily-trafficked on the entire Internet, dwarfing almost every single news outlet and bringing in colossal revenues from advertising. XHamster doesn't have much of an outlay cost, since most of their own content comes from other companies or is, er, crowd-sourced, so they end up making stupendous amounts of money and not doing very much with it. As the XHamster statement says, they can easily afford to produce Sense8 at the same level as Netflix was able to, which is mind-boggling.
Whether this idea goes anywhere remains to be seen, but I'm pretty sure that fans of the show would be happy to see the full five-year story concluded according to the Wachowskis and Straczynski's vision. We await their official response - and Netflix's - with interest.
Netflix have confirmed that they will be resurrecting Sense8 for a two-hour finale to resolve the cliffhanger the show was left on when they cancelled it last month.
According to Netflix, the outpouring of fan support for the show had impressed them and made them reconsider their plans to simply dump the show where it was. The final two hours will resolve the unresolved storylines, most notably the fate of main character Wolfgang, who'd been taken prisoner by the sinister corporation that was seeking to exploit the sensates. The rest of the gang teamed up - in the flesh, for the first time - in London to help rescue Wolfgang and managed to counter-kidnap their old nemesis Whispers.
No word on a production or release schedule for the finale has yet been set.
Netflix have cancelledSense8 just two seasons into its planned five-season run. The news came as something of a surprise, as Netflix had opened negotiations with the cast to extend their contracts on the show just a couple of months ago, which was widely interpreted that they were looking at moving forward with a third season. There'd also been indications that a final decision would not be taken until August, allowing more time for discussions with the producers and writers.
Sense8 is Netflix's most expensive show, with Season 2 clocking in at a reported $9 million per episode, vastly more (some say twice as much) as any of its tentpole Marvel Studios series. It's also far more than the likes of Stranger Things or Orange is the New Black. The only other Netflix shows in the same ballpark are House of Cards (a lot of which is actor fees) and the in-production Altered Carbon. Given that Sense8 reportedly drew much smaller audiences than any of those shows in the US, it's perhaps less surprising that Netflix decided to call it a day.
However, Sense8 has been a much bigger show in many foreign territories: a Season 2 storyline set in Sao Paulo was interpreted as a big thank you from the producers for making the show a massive success in Brazil, as well as several other South American countries. Given Netflix's plans to grow in international markets, the show was considered a boon for those territories.
A major stumbling block may have been the chaotic production of the second season. J. Michael Straczynski, one of Sense8's three writer-producers alongside the Wachowskis, played a much more key role in Season 1, bringing with him his sense of budgeting nous, getting maximum bang for the buck and pre-planning from shows like Babylon 5 (which often achieved end results more impressive than the contemporary Star Trek shows on about 40% of the budget). Season 1's budget was considerably smaller than Season 2's, even though in scope and scale it didn't look that much less. Straczynski played a much smaller role in Season 2's production and Lily Wachowski dropped out altogether, leaving production in the hands of Lana Wachowski. It appears that there was much more last-minute reshoots and even planning of entire sequences: the Sao Paulo sequence was apparently, written and shot at the last minute when the production realised they'd be able to fit in a shoot during the city's Pride march, despite the ballooning effect this had on the budget. There was also the recasting of one of the eight leads and much more elaborate fight and effects sequences, including an ambitious car chase on the streets of Seoul.
Netflix's renegotiations with the cast which seemed to be paving the way to a third season may suggest that Netflix was in fact willing to continue the show if the spiralling budget was brought under control and reduced, perhaps with a reduction in the number of countries and cities that were being filmed in. It may be that the producers were unwilling to consider such a move. Alternately, Netflix may have deemed the early streaming figures for Season 2 to be too disappointing to continue, although in this case they may have to take the blame themselves for a strangely lacklustre and underwhelming marketing campaign: Netflix blanked adverts for their latest (and very cheap) breakout show 13 Reasons Why at the time when Sense8's second season was released with barely a whisper.
It remains to be seen how Straczynski and the Wachowskis plan to wrap up the story left dangling at the end of Season 2, although comics and novels are possibilities. Due to the high budget, a move to another station or channel seems extremely unlikely.
The sensates are in danger. The sinister Whispers has formed an unwanted, hideously invasive mental connection with Will and is stalking his every move, hoping he betrays his location. However, Will is likewise stalking Whispers, determined to defeat this enemy before he can kill anyone else. The rest of the group has to deal with their own problems, but soon find new allies waiting as they make contact with other clusters and discover their numbers are far greater than they could possibly imagine.
Sense8's first season was a deliberately-paced introduction to eight different, diverse characters hailing from completely different parts of the world, each accompanied by their own set of supporting characters but linked by a shared mental connection. It was excellent, but it was slow and at times risked becoming self-indulgent.
Season 2 has no truck with this. After the Christmas special bridging the two seasons (which gets the show's apparent annual need for a rave scene and orgy out of the way quickly) the show kicks into gear and slams the accelerator down so hard you'll be forgiven for thinking this is the same show. By the end of the second episode our characters have already reversed many of the devastating incidents of misfortune that afflicted them in the first season and the story is moving forwards on all fronts.
The show employs the same structure that we saw the first time around, with each of the eight sensates having their own story to follow as well as being unified by the ever-growing threat of Whispers and the organisation he fronts. The biggest difference is that we now know all eight characters and they now know all each other. When confronted by individual danger they can call upon the entire team's help rather than just one or two as with last season and this definitely massively ups the stakes in both emotional and dramatic terms. Seeing the team join forces to expose the identity of one of Whispers' superiors based on a glimpse of his office, like a telepathic edition of CSI, is a great idea. It's also good to see slightly under-served characters having more to contribute: Kala gets to use her scientific knowledge to great effect in several scenes (including working out how to blow up a van during a gunfight whilst Wolfgang and Will are arguing about whether to flank or fall back).
This is also the year that the show ups the stakes in action and visual terms. Season 1 had some excellent moments (rocket launcher, anyone?) but Season 2 takes it up to the next level. Lana Wachowski - flying solo for the first time as a director (Lily took a break this year) - revisits the Matrix lobby scene with a shoot-out in a restaurant between two sensates (complete with their own cluster, meaning sixteen skillsets being showcased together) which is ridiculously good fun. Even better is a high-speed car chase through the streets of Seoul - complete with vehicles flipping through the air and crashing for real - which is jaw-dropping and looks as good as any feature film. The production values, if anything, step up a notch in line with the confidence of the directors and returning co-writer J. Michael Straczynski.
But the show's characters remain the core focus of the show. As well as the central cluster and their returning allies (including a still-excellent Freema Agyeman, acting on an altogether different level to her stint on Doctor Who) there are new characters, including a wonderfully batty turn by ex-Doctor Who, ex-Radagast the Brown Sylvester McCoy as an older Scottish sensate and Valeria Bilello as a sensate from another cluster who works as an enforcer and fixer for a shady German businessman. But the core cast remains at the centre of attention, including newcomer Toby Onwunmere who is given the difficult task of replacing he likeable and energetic Aml Ameen as Capheus. Onwunmere is a different kind of actor, less funny and more intense, and the adjustment is a bit rough (not helped by a couple of comments lampshading the change) but by the end of the season he has managed to make the role his own. The rest of the cast are on top form, with Jamie Clayton in particular improving from the first season where her massive, hacker-driven infodumps of exposition could be clunky.
The second season also spends some time developing the backstory of the sensates - no Lost-style teasings here, the sensates have pretty mundane origins and well-established rules on how they operate - and how many clusters there are and how they operate. "Our" cluster, it turns out, is pretty lucky in having so many complimentary skills. We also learn that just being a sensate isn't enough to make you a good person and that some sensates are downright nasty. There's more to come on this front but the sheer size of the sensate population means that the writers have a lot of material to play with in coming seasons.
Weaknesses? Well, there are some very jarring tonal moments in Season 2 which don't quite connect with the rest of the story, some bum lines of dialogue and occasional over-indulgence in positivity (as refreshing as this is from shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead almost making a fetish out of grisly cynicism). A scene where Nomi and Nita form a secret hackers' alliance with Anonymous, who it turns out know all about the sensates and have been helping protect them (no, seriously), feels like it was biked in by a totally different writer who'd done three minutes Internet research on the organisation before he wrote it. Also, and this was exacerbated by watching this show immediately after Mr. Robot, the hacking scenes in general are pretty unconvincing. Overall, though, this year emerges as slightly stronger than its predecessor season, more confident, much better-paced and with more of a sense of purpose and energy.
Season 2 ends on a titanic cliffhanger, which is a sign of huge confidence from the writers, producers and Netflix themselves. Sense8 is massively expensive, probably the most expensive show on the Netflix roster apart from the in-production Altered Carbon, and it hasn't quite hit the same level of success in the USA as the likes of Stranger Things and Daredevil. However, it's a lot more popular in many other parts of the world (such as Brazil, which gets its own huge shout-out in an episode set in Sao Paolo) and a third season seems pretty likely at this point. Hopefully Netflix won't tease us for quite so long like they did last time and also won't make us wait two years for the next full season.
Sense8's second season (****½) is wacky, bizarre, over-brimming with optimism and also deeply rooted in interesting and engaging characters, with an interesting backstory and some of the greatest action scenes ever filmed for television. It is available on Netflix now.
The first season of Sense8 remains, easily, the most interesting thing Netflix has done (maybe not quite the best, but certainly the most original), a tale of empathy and how people are defined and enhanced by their shared humanity. The Christmas special - which was really the first two episodes of Season 2 combined for an event episode of television - was likewise accomplished and intriguing.
Netflix have released their Sense8 Christmas special. The new, double-length episode is designed to allow people to refresh themselves with the story, the characters and where everyone was left at the end of Season 1.
You can watch the episode right now on Netflix. Season 2 of Sense8 proper will be released in May 2017.
Season 1 of Sense8 consisted of 12 episodes released on 5 June 2015. Season 2 will again consist of 12 hours, but the release pattern will be different. The first 2 episodes will be released as a two-hour event TV movie - a "Christmas special" - on 23 December this year. The remaining 10 episodes will then be released on 5 May.
Lana Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski have written the second season (Lily Wachowski has taken the second season off, but may return for a third), with Wachowski, Tom Twyker and Dan Glass returning to direct.
A woman named Angelica kills herself in a derelict church in
Chicago. She dies alone, but the
moment of her death is imprinted in the minds of eight other people in
different parts of the world: Riley, Will, Sun, Capheus, Wolfgang, Kala, Lito
and Nomi. From that moment onwards, those eight people can touch each other's
minds, see through their eyes, talk and share their skills and abilities. They
have become sensates, eight who can act as one, the result of a different
strand of human evolution. But their skills and abilities are jealously desired
by a mysterious organisation and the man - known only as "Whispers" -
they send to find them.
Sense8 is a
bewilderingly original, maddening, confusing TV show, refusing to stay still
and be pinned down. One second it's a melodramatic Mexican telenovella starring
a handsome action hero living in the closet. The next it's a brooding, gritty Berlin
crime drama. Then it morphs into the story of an Icelandic DJ living in London
trying to find herself, but denying the secrets of her past in Reykjavik.
The next episode might explore transgender identity issues, the next might
delve into the story of family and religious life for a young female scientist
living in Mumbai. One key storyline focuses on corporate drama in a South
Korean business that segues into a Seoul
prison drama. Another is a comedy about a cheerful Kenyan man who drives people
around Nairobi in his Jean-Claude
Van Damme-themed bus...which takes a darker turn when he invokes the ire of the
city's gangs. Finally, it's a modern Chicago
cop drama musing on race relations and family struggles, right up to the point
our cop hero runs into another sensate.
At its heart, Sense8
is a show about empathy. The ability
to step into another human being's shoes, imagine what their life is like and
try to relate to them emotionally as well as intellectually, is a vital part of
what makes us human. It's a vital tool for writers and journalists. Empathy is
vital for humans to coexist with one another and understand each other's place
in the world. The denial of empathy, the reduction of other people, other
cultures, entire other strands of humanity to cliches, to generalisations and
to "the other" is to deny their humanity and justify the
worst excesses of crime, war and bigotry.
Although a quintessential part of humanity, it's also a
nebulous concept to build a TV drama around. J. Michael Straczynski tried once
before in his epic mid-1990s space opera series Babylon 5. A subplot explored the lives of
telepaths, people who can touch each other's minds and live each other's lives,
engaging in an exchange of thoughts, ideas and emotions that
"mundanes" could never understand. It was a thoroughly intriguing
idea, but one that had to jostle for attention alongside other stories
involving war, religion and space-going teddy bears (long story). Straczynski
clearly wanted to do more with it, at one time planning a feature film spin-off
focusing on the concept, but it was never made.
A meeting with the Wachowskis, who at the time were
fresh off their own movie about human lives touching and affecting one another
across time and space (Cloud Atlas),
led to the development of Sense8.
The writers wanted to create an epic show exploring empathy, diversity, emotion
and the truth of what makes people people, their joys, their fears, their loves
and their prejudices. It was a tall order, but you're never going to accuse the
creators of The Matrix trilogy and Babylon 5 of lacking vision or ambition.
Sense8 is mostly
successful, although given there's never been anything quite like it before
it's hard to come up with a metric to measure it by. Possibly the closest
touchstone is Lost, particularly its structure and construction as it
builds up the story of eight main characters (and several supporting ones) in
tremendous depth and detail, often employing flashbacks and thematic devices so
we get to know them better. The presence of Lost actor Naveen Andrews
may be a nod to that inspiration (Straczynski was a fan of Lost, as the
producers of Lost were big fans of Babylon
5). However, the central mystery in Sense8 is nowhere near as
all-encompassing as Lost's, or Babylon
5's for that matter. Sense8 is the product of an older and more
mature writer, with Straczynski employing surprising restraint in his
storytelling. The show's mythology and main story arc are fairly low-key until
the last two episodes, with most of the season's twelve episodes instead
focusing on each character and the local struggles they are facing.
To achieve the authentic tone they wanted, the
writer-producers made a decision which I can imagine appealed massively to
Netflix's PR department, right up to the point it was costed and the budget
presented to them. Usually most "international" shows are filmed in
one city, with a mixture of set dressings and CG used to make that city look
like another. For example, Lost visited
Frankfurt, Seoul,
London, Guam
and Sydney whilst almost never
stepping foot outside of Hawaii. Sense8 has no truck with that: to film
scenes in nine different cities, the production simply filmed in those cities.
And yes, this meant the production had to move between San
Francisco, Chicago, Mexico
City, Reykjavik, London,
Berlin, Nairobi,
Mumbai and Seoul for real. This
immediately adds a huge amount of authenticity to the project. They also timed
shoots to coincide with major street festivals and events (such as San
Francisco's Pride march and religious celebrations in
Mumbai) to add a sense of scale to events. They even filmed several live
childbirths for one particularly memorable scene in the series. Although they
often look expensive, a lot of Netflix's original productions are quite
modestly-budgeted. Not so much Sense8. This is a big-budget production
that looks like a huge amount has been spent on it, but no so much that they
producers can get lazy and rely on effects or explosions to make up for good
storytelling.
The one thing Sense 8
had to nail, and nail absolutely correctly, is tonal variation. Sense8 is a comedy; it's a martial arts
movie; it's a soap opera; it's (briefly) a Bollywood musical; it's one of those
gritty crime dramas that turns into a ludicrous Jason Statham action film
halfway through. And it has to be able to move between all of those hats easily
without blowing the viewer's sense of disbelief. For this viewer, it worked
brilliantly. It even sells the tonal variation by inserting "less
serious" characters into other storylines: Wolfgang's hardcore Berlin
gangster shtick turns into outright lunatic farce when Mexican action thesp Lito
helps out, resulting in a sudden escalation into rocket launchers and comical
quips whilst gunning down an improbable number of enemies. Similarly, Lito's
story is mostly played for laughs right up until the moment when Wolfgang jumps
in to help him in a fistfight, when it suddenly becomes bloodier and more
serious. Later on, Lito's difficulties with self-identity and sexuality become
emotionally raw and real when transgender hacker Nomi relates the story of her
own difficult upbringing and coming to terms with who she wanted to be. In such
ways bonds are formed between the characters, initially in pairs and trios, and
later on between all of them.
There are several key scenes which help with this, perhaps
the best of which is the characters simply sharing a musical karaoke moment
together at the end of the fourth episode (yes, you will have 4 Non Blondes
"What's Up" rattling around your brain for the next few months as a
result). Later on the characters witness the moment of each other's birth
(featuring some actual live births filmed for the purpose) as a piano concerto
wells up in the background. Another scene has a character evading pursuit with
each of the other seven characters jumping into her body and steering her
between obstacles using their skills. Another scene has all eight of the
sensates coming together in one moment soundtracked by Sigur Ros, because Sigur
Ros automatically makes everything awesome. There's another scene in which the
gang get their wires crossed when several of them are, er, enjoying amorous
moments at the same time. And so forth.
Some of the actors are established faces: Daryl Hannah as
Angelica and Naveen Andrews as Jonas are the most immediately recognisable,
whilst Doctor Who fans will
recognise Freema Agyeman as Nomi's girlfriend Amanita. Agyeman was a reasonably
good actress on Doctor Who, but in Sense8 she's an absolute revelation.
She has some pretty challenging scenes to handle, but blows each one out of the
water.
Of the main cast, Tuppence Middleton brings both street-savvy
steel and emotional vulnerability to the role of Riley, whilst Will Gorski does
an excellent job as all-American cop Will who rapidly has his horizons
expanded. Will and Riley's connection forms both the emotional lynchpin of the
season and also results in the actual storyline being pushed along the most, so
it's helpful that their chemistry is highly convincing. Wachowski regular Doona
Bae is both highly intelligent and adept at violence as Sun, although her
character arguably suffers a little in the late season period from only showing
up when arse needs to be kicked and disappearing for long stretches (although
given her character's circumstance, perhaps that's not too surprising).
Max Riemelt is a well-known and very busy German actor, but I
wouldn't be surprised if we saw more of him in English-language productions
after Sense8. He is excellent as the
safe-cracking, Conan the Barbarian-quoting
criminal Wolfgang. Tina Desai is likewise excellent in the role of Kala,
although her storyline of family drama feels a little undercooked compared to
some of the rest. However, it comes to life later in the season when Hindu
religious tensions in Mumbai spill over and her previously underplayed
abilities with Science! are called upon to help her fellow sensates.
Ami Ameen brings tremendous, infectious energy and
enthusiasm to the story of Capheus, which probably has the widest range of
tonal variations. Ameen is excellent. Unfortunately, due to a falling-out
between Ameen and the producers, he's been recast for Season 2. Hopefully the
new actor will be able to bring a similar level of commitment and passion to
the role.
Jamie Clayton - a transgender actress playing a transgender
character - is tremendously, emotionally honest and real when playing her
character of Nomi, especially touching on storyline and character moments that
clearly derive from her real life (something Straczynski, in particular, is
renowned for). However, she struggles a little more in her role as a font of
exposition. Nomi is the group's resident "hactivist" (groan) and
starts accumulating data on what's going on by hacking the bad guys' internets
and bringing down their firewalls and doing all that TV hacking stuff. To be
fair, it's not actually that bad
compared to a lot of shows, but it feels like a bit more authenticity was
needed to overcome the IT cliches.
One of the most impressive performances comes from Spanish
actor Miguel Angel Silvestre as Lito, the closeted Mexican action hero deeply
in love with his boyfriend Hernando (a likewise accomplished performance by
Alfonso Herrera) who then reluctantly ends up with a "beard" in the
form of fellow performer Daniela (Erendira Ibarra). At first glance Lito's story
serves as the comic relief only to take a turn for the more dramatically
intense later on. In fact, this is the story that sounds the weakest on paper
but on screen ends up being one of the best. It also features a hilarious
moment where the Wachowskis completely take the mickey out of their own past
work, when it turns out even cheap Mexican action films are still stealing
ideas from The Matrix.
The performances, then, are brilliant. The writing is very
effective for the most part, moving between genres and tones with accomplished
ease. There are some monster action scenes across the season and, without their
usual infinite buckets of money and six months of CGI rendering to fall back
on, the Wachowskis resort to giving us some in-camera, practical stunts, wire
work and gunfights that are more real and convincing than anything they've done
since the original Matrix.
Where I think people will fall off or on the Sense8 bandwagon is the pacing and
structure. Sense8 is, for most of
its first season, almost an anthology show, just with characters from one story
able to help out briefly in another. The focus is clearly on each character's
own up-front problems in their own immediate vicinity. The story of what is
going on with the sensates, why they can do what they do and who is trying to
capture them unfolds very, very slowly in the background and occasional moments
of rising to the fore. This slow-burning fuse to the story can be frustrating,
but only if you view the series through the prism of "What is the answer
to this mystery?" If, on the other hand, you engage with the characters
it's not a problem. Viewer patience is eventually rewarded in the final two
episodes of the season when the ongoing mystery explodes into prominence, a
very nice car is set on fire and two of the sensates finally actually meet for
real.
Other problems? Er, the main title sequence and music are both pretty underwhelming, which is odd as Netflix actually had a great potential one they used in their trailers (the one set to Weshley Arms's cover of "Need You Tonight") and the rest of the soundtrack is pretty good. That's about it.
The first season of Sense8
(****½) is messy, weirdly-paced and sometimes misses the profundity it is
aiming for to such a degree that it is inadvertently hilarious. It's also
phenomenally well-written, often beautifully-directed (this is easily the
Wachowskis' best directing job since the first Matrix film) and
tremendously human. It's bold, experimental and offbeat in a way that none of
Netflix's other shows - no matter how well-made - are, or have even tried to
be. Sense8 shoots for the stars and perhaps falls short, but its
ambition is breathtaking, its scale epic and its characters both charming and
compelling. It is available to watch through Netflix now. Season 2, which is
wrapping up production now, will air on Netflix in early 2017.
Sense8 got an initially tough reaction from reviewers who only had access to the first four episodes. However, subsequent reviews of the entire season were much stronger. This slow-burn approach hasn't worked for all viewers, but the show has picked up more viewings thanks to word-of-mouth. Creators J. Michael Straczynski and the Wachowskis have indicated that the show could last for five years in total.
I'm still yet to sample the series, as I've been waiting for the home media release, but this is good news for the fans.
Netflix release all 12 episodes of Sense8 tomorrow. This new series is a collaboration between the Wachowskis (The Matrix Trilogy, Bound, Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending) and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5 and way too many comic books to count).
Early reviews are promising, praising the performances, mystery and premise but warning against a slow opening episode.
Straczynski claims that the show has a projected five-year story arc but that the first season is self-contained enough to satisfy viewers.
