Sense8 - Netflix, Wachowskis, and social issue sci-fi

It’s a big series he wrote for. I think his next TV project after Crusade was Showtime’s 2 season post-apocalyptic comic adaptation Jeremiah, with Luke Perry from Beverly Hills 90210 in the lead role and Malcolm Jamal-Warner from the Cosby Show as his best friend. I’ve only seen one season because they never brought season 2 to home video that I am aware of (though Netflix had it at one point and I never got around to refreshing so I could watch season 2) but I fucking loved that one season.

WOW! I would be happy to see another couple of seasons

Huh. I’d forgotten that show existed, because I never saw it. It’s kind of funny that Perry and Skeet Ulrich were both in post-apocalypse shows in the 2000s (Jericho and Jeremiah) and now both on Riverdale.

Finished Sense8 today. It ain’t perfect, the pathos is way too heavy at times, but I loved it. Such a celebration of humanity. Let’s defeat the evil by shooting it with a bazooka and then let’s clusterfuck!

I am also impressed by how much this show was basically 24 hour long AAA hollywood movie.

Wachowskis and Straczynski and Tykwer still got it.

Looks like the Wachowskis have no projects going forward.

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/commercial-real-estate/matrix-filmmakers-closing-listing-chicago-studio-building

They’ve owned and used this space since 2007 as their HQ.

“This has been a dream space for us,” Karin Wachowski. With the end of production on “Sense 8” and no new productions scheduled, the family decided to close the facility, she said.

I don’t see it, but maybe they’ll double down and make it much more obvious in the upcoming 4th movie so it won’t just slip by unnoticed right under my nose.

It was gonna be more blatant but the studio wouldn’t sign off on it, apparently.

So when someone jacks into the matrix, they’re a different sex? As a gamer who does the modern equivalent every day, I wouldn’t even blink.

For the one character, Switch, or the whole movie? Because I feel the Jesus/superhero origin story vibe for Neo was a lot stronger.

It’s not a read I would have gotten either, but I suppose I’m not trans.

This sounds like a retcon to me, but I certainly wouldn’t know. Either way, cool that the movie could resonate for trans people.

The first one wasn’t, but the second one definitely had a lot of vague subversive and dead end material that was more concerned with stuff like experience and identity. The whole weird and not completely relevant cake-gasm scene was basically an allegory of having a female orgasm without having a female body (since the point is that it’s all in her head). Maybe the reason Zion felt stupid was because instead of a community of hardaz survivors it felt more like a queer rave.

Ahhh. I’ll be honest, I only really remember the first Matrix. The next two I watched once and forgot about, mostly. So when I read the article, I was only thinking in the context of the first movie.

It looks like the Sense8 cast is getting a bunch of roles in the new Matrix film as well: Daniela, Will, Wolfgang, and the second Capheus are all in the cast.

It probably never would have occurred to me to view it as such either, but knowing about it now, I can’t unsee the Matrix as a trans allegory. I barely remember the sequels, but that reading is well-supported in the first film as well. There are articles about it of course, but to summarize some points here: there is deadnaming by a patriarchal figure (“My name is Neo” is response to being called Mr. Anderson), the whole story being about finding and realizing your true identity, and even the red pill can be read rather literally as a stand in for a common pill taken during hormone therapy.

Plus, that the Wachowskis are trans suggests that it is autobiographical to an extent—Lana considered suicide in a subway, the setting of the part in the movie where Neo nearly dies, overcomes it (his suicidal ideation, same as Lana overcame hers), but is still running from his identity (Smith returns from the tracks and Neo scurries off). Shortly after, Neo is seemingly killed by Agent Smith only to be ‘resurrected’ when he embraces his identity as ‘the one’ and defeats Smith.

For me, the trans-allegory reading elevates it from a movie I enjoyed mostly for its action set pieces to something meatier.