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The Matrix Revolutions: a reviewOkay, I thought I had put the subject to rest (for me) with my parody script, but there was a factor I didn't count on: exposure. The script had tons of reads and links very quickly and I keep getting comments and emails asking questions (generally good-natured, though not always) and I wanted to say what I actually thought about the movie so I could refer people to this and save some time :). Again, spoiler warning. Don't read what follows if you haven't seen the movie or don't want to know what happens. Before we begin: to those that liked the movie anyway and are willing to flame others. All the "defenses" of the movie I've seen are like a comment posted to my script by Daniel: Its easy to make fun of something you don't understand. You did a damn fine job of that.Essentially, the defense boils down to "people that didn't like it are stupid. I am not stupid, hence, unlike you, I understood and appreciated the movie." (I have seen this same theme in a few--very few-- other places. Why assume that people that didn't like aspects (or all) of the movie did not understand it? Personally, I understood Reloaded with only one viewing. Are you telling me this movie is more layered and more deep and complex than Reloaded? And even if it was, saying that everyone's an idiot doesn't really explain anything. Yes, sorry, but unless you actually refute some of what I (or others) say, or unless you offer a clear explanation for some of the ludicrous twists of logic that we have to endure, you are simply clinging on and you are not willing to see the movie for what it is: Just a movie, hollywoodish science-fiction stuff that does not "respect" the basic tenets of science fiction. Saying I (or others) did not understand it is not good enough. "Ah!" One of these critics might say. "But of course it's just a movie. You are the one who put the burden of proof on them to produce your imagined story-of-the-ages." Touche, I'd say then. Very, very true. I think most of the people that were not satisfied with Revolutions were hoping that this would become an all-time SF/Fantasy classic, way up there with the Foundation series and The Lord of the Rings. Most definitely, we put ourselves in that position. But we had good reasons I think, and I'll get back to them in a bit. What the movie was about First, for what it's worth, my take on the movie: it's entertaining. Nice picture. Great battle scenes. I think it's worth seeing in a theater, because it's a cinematic experience. Things can be explained. I have no doubt about that (as I make clear below with my own set of explanations). But... but... it requires too much suspension of disbelief to qualify among the great creations of science fiction. The explanations are not satisfying. Not unlike ID4: Independence Day, or Armaggedon: entertaining, but not self-consistent enough. Sure this one has more twists and turns, and more ideas (not original though as I have mentioned before, the Brothers lifted sequences from Anime, and other classics such as Alien or Bladerunner. I also saw [via Alan] this scene-by-scene comparison of Matrix v. Ghost in The Shell which is very good). The Machine city shots as well as several others reminded me of both Bladerunner and Star Wars. Too much. Waay too much. The plot would seem to be summarized as follows (given information basically present in the last scene of the Oracle and the Architect). The themes are chaos/order as well as religion. The Oracle is Chaos/Creativity. The Architect is Rationality/Order. The Oracle basically instigated this whole revolution because she wanted to see a new kind of balance emerge (Remember the Architect telling her at the end: "This is a dangerous game you're playing". Although it's not 100% clear how this balance is actually achieved in the end. If the machines let the humans go, don't they lose their power? and so on). Similarly, Neo/Smith are Order/Chaos figures, and it's all framed in terms of a battle of opposites. (Which would theoretically explain why Smith could not survive merging with its opposite at the end). The little girl, Sati, is very possibly a representation of the Matrix itself. If not, it's a program that, because it was "born" within the Matrix, can manipulate it at will but more than Neo could (no more than Smith though, since the hellish climate at the end could easily be attributed to Smith expressing himself after taking over all humans in the world). The religious themes are back with a vengeance: Sacrifice, Martyrdom, A new world is born after the death of the Chosen One, the Chosen One dies but not really, (note the Machines taking Neo's bodies at the end, as well as the references by The Oracle), etc. The information given in the second movie amounted to giving us a hint that this is what was happening. That the characters were sort of unwitting players (almost unwitting, since Neo makes it very clear at the end that it's his choice to do what he does) in a game played by the forces of chaos and order, the Gods (in the Platonic sense--there are lots of references to Plato) that play with humanity, a parallel to our "real" world. Neo can "see" the Matrix both in its "virtual" form and manifested through the appearance of the Matrix in the machines that are plugged/depend on it, like in the machine city, and he can affect it even though he is unplugged. Of course, if he really was a "natural" occurrence of the "choice" flaw in the Matrix, and he is really fully human as they keep saying, then this implies superpowers, but that's ok (within the suspension of disbelief theme). In the end, peace is achieved through balacing of opposites all the way. If you wanted to take the religious analogy further, you could say that there are historical parallels with our own history: First, Christianity and Islam, the age of the Messiahs (the first movie), then deconstructionism, the age of rationality (the second movie) and finally chaos/order or yin/yang, the age of Eastern Philosophy or "new age" beliefs. Though probably close to the truth, this is just one interpretation of what is basically a Rorsarch test of a movie (I would challenge anyone to come up with one that is substantially different though). In the end, You see ... what you want to see. Which brings me to the problems I have with it. But... but... When we walked into theaters four years ago to watch The Matrix, the overriding question was: What is the Matrix? Coming out of that movie, the sense was that we had an answer: a prison for the mind, the Matrix was a device created by Machines to win a war against Humans, creating yet another war, this one just for freedom from the shackles of a virtual world. Then came Matrix Reloaded. The question going into the movie then was: How will humans win the war? (Note: How, not If). The answer was, in essence, "There is no spoon." Or rather, "There is no war." The Wachowski Brothers turned everything on its head and destroyed all our preconceptions. The rebels were actually being controlled. Their revolution was a sham. Another lever of control. We were pulled out of the Christian and even Muslim parables of Neo-as-Savior (Muslim because Neo is much more a "Warrior Messiah" like Muhammad, than a Christ-like character of peace and understanding), into a new level of pure science-fiction possibility. Just as the first movie studiously created a fictional reality, the second dedicated itself to proving the first one wrong. Just as the first one required us to suspend disbelief more than once, the second one gave potentially reasonable explanations for everything that was going on. Reloaded, more than anything else, revived the question: What is the Matrix? And so we start The Matrix Revolutions essentially with the same question as the series begun. We have a lot more information, but there's one big difference. Now we don't trust anything we see. Anything. Every statement is parsed, analyzed. Somewhere deep down, we expect the second movie to be another layer of fabrication as well, and we dread the moment when it might all turn out not to be a fabrication, but the pretense of truth. And we are enticed to pick it apart like few movies before. With all the pretense of "deep meaning", we are told: "this is deep stuff. You have to think damn it!". But then there is no "deep stuff". When analyzed closely, we're left with just bad dialogue, a lot of obvious ideas that are a rehash or outright steal of other things, and a lot of overacting. Let me go back to a moment when I was walking to the movie theater on Wednesday and I thought about something I had just written: And what is up with characters not telling others what they've seen? Example: Neo is all cryptic just after meeting the Architect. Why not tell Morpheus the whole thing? Just because he has condemned humanity to extinction? (Supposedly). Or: When Neo stops the Sentinels at the end of Reloaded. He clearly says "I can feel them" to Trinity. Then he stops them. Morpheus arrives. "What happened?" he says. Trinity replies: "I don't know." You don't know? Come on. "He said he could feel them, and then he stopped them." Is it too hard to say that? It's as if characters play the same game between each other as the one they are playing with the audience.The more I thought about this, the more I thought it was a symptom. Consider that twice in Reloaded we are treated to this drivel from Link. He is watching the Matrix. Neo is flying. Suddenly Link goes "What is that?" or "I don't know what it is, but it's moving faster than anything I've ever seen" when we all know that it's Neo flying, when he has already seen him fly. Etc. He does this both in the freeway chase, and at the end when Neo saves Trinity. Sure you might say that as Neo gets more powerful his Matrix-pattern becomes more difficult to discern, but this happens all over the place, like the Trinity/Neo/Morpheus example I mentioned, with the Sentinels, at the end of Reloaded. Another example is all the "mystery" surrounding the "new" Oracle. Now, I know that they had to come up with something to explain the problem that the original Oracle (Gloria Foster) died while filming was incomplete. I appreciate that. But instead of pointing to something reasonable (for example, they had already hinted at a reason when the Merovingian said in Reloaded that her time was "almost up") the explanation just dissolves into a bunch of generalities that "hint" that something deep happened but it's never fully explained (maybe it's explained in the game Enter The Matrix, I don't know). Why make a mystery out of something that can be explained away easily with a million different reasons? Why not trust the audience? The audience wants to believe, just like Morpheus. :-) My point is, this is a symptom for writing where the mystery is created by making weird and ambiguous statements, rather than having something true to tell. It's very easy to do. Consider: Sam stared at the scopes in astonishment. All the screens had suddenly gone blank. The visual showed a flash, growing, where the Sun used to be. Was it...? "Oh my God."Now, I just made that up, so don't start criticizing the writing :) but I'm trying to show that it's really easy to get off explanations by making characters appear dazed and confused. Think about yourself in real life. Whenever something strange happens, you don't just sit there and say "Well, beats me." You use your experience. You talk with others. In this case, it wouldn't be so hard to think that the Sun had just gone supernova. And we get a hint that a character might have an explanation with the "Was it...?" but then he doesn't say anything. Why? You better have a good reason, because if you don't, it's just an empty device that you are using to create suspense, and eventually it wears out. Just as it does in The Matrix. And even worse trick to pull is creating the suspense for the answer, and then giving it, but the answer raises yet more questions which are never explained. In my example, the Sun (our star) doesn't have enough mass to go supernova. It physically can't. So once the characters survive, and say "Our readings indicate it was a supernova, Captain". And you leave it at that. Why? Why did the Sun go supernova? Apparent plot-holes such as the lack of offensive weapons on the Nebucadnezzar (Morpheous' ship) or not using EMPs to defend Zion can be explained, but only raise more questions that force the viewer to extrapolate with no information whatsoever. For example, we could say that the "Neb" didn't have offensive weapons because it was never assigned to be on the offensive, while the Hammer was. But that was really a last minute change. Lock intended to use every ship in the offense. Morpheus bailed out of that at the last minute. So why wasn't it fitted properly? Sure, you could come up with answers. But at this point, we are already well beyond what the story says, we're just inventing reasons, speculation based on speculation. But I think that's not good enough. And Reloaded raised the bar on the whole story by implicitly saying that it was fully self-consistent. And this is the essence of why we were led to believe there was a cool explanation behind all of this. We were caught by the 'Matrix' created by the Wachowskis you say? We were given a lesson-in-action of how we let ourselves be deceived by appearances you say? Maybe. But if so, if I can see through it so easily, it's a clumsy attempt. And if you're doing that, forcing you to, say, play a PC game just to get part of the story, buy the Animatrix, etc, etc, would imply that all of this relentless franchising of the story is not done by a mega-corporation (Time-Warner), but on purpose by a bunch of guys who don't care about money with too much time on their hands. Which one is right? Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation tends to be the right one. Now, I don't have anything against plots that don't fully make sense. In fact, the first Matrix on its own, had so many holes that it was hilarious. But I liked it. I willingly suspended disbelief to enjoy the ride. And a big part of that was that the first movie was not pretentious. But Reloaded was. Reloaded said to the audience: "See? We've thought about this stuff. There's more levels than you imagine, even though you can't see them all. Here is the depth you sensed in the first movie." And so we got to Revolutions waiting to see the final twist. But instead of a twist, Revolutions essentially goes back to the original Matrix. Why do I say this? Think about the three movies. Now imagine you completely remove the second movie. Ignore all that information. Ignore everything that happened in it. Does it change anything? Be honest. Does it? No. All the flaws of logic and plot consistency are still there. (In fact, I'd say that just the first and third movies on their own work better, and by "consistency" here I mean J.R.R. Tolkien-level of consistency, not "ID4: Independence Day" level of consistency--though both are valid). But at least there is no pretense that there is something deep behind all this. We are not given lectures on causality or whatever. Things just happen, which is just fine. I can ignore all the flaws of logic in making programs have emotions for some things (e.g., Agent Smith is angry or greedy) but not for others (e.g., The Architect saying that he could never betray a deal he made). I can ignore how weird it is to use humans for power (why not cows? or chipmunks? Oh, right, "because the machines create a symbiotic relationship with their enemy through it"). I can ignore the ludicrous explanations of The Second Rennaisance in which we are told that humans nuked the hell out of Zero-One but nothing happened (Nuclear weapons create electromagnetic pulses of the same type of those we've seen "kill" machines time and again in the movie). I can forget about the fact that first the Hovercrafts "only have EMPs as weapons against the machines" (and this is also the case in Reloaded when Morpheus loses his ship to an attack----but by the third movie they have so much ammo (though not many guns!) that you could film Commando all over again with Keanu taking the role of Schwarzenegger. Or I could forget about the other miriad plot holes, many of which I mentioned in my parody script. But I can't. Again, these plot-holes depend on your expectation of the movie. Not on the movie itself. The movie never promised explicitly to match our expectations. But in my opinion, there's a sort of "contract" that happens when you dive into fiction of any kind. For example, in ID4 or Indiana Jones the contract is "shut down your brain for a while and we'll show you a good time". The first Matrix walked a fine line between deepthink and pure entertainment. But the second one, with all of its pretentiousness, did not. The second one cemented the promise of the first one, which was "Look, I know there's tons of philosophical dialog and repetitiveness, but it's all for good reason. Just hold on there." And so the washed-up explanations of the third, basically in line with the first, don't add up. Why? Because all the repetitiveness is to explain something simple, not something complex, and that amounts to telling the viewers: "See, you are too stupid to understand this. So we'll say it over and over again. We will put Neo in the guise of a martyr, bandages and all, so you can see how much he suffers and don't miss the Jesus analogy. We will make you questions words like "Love" by making machines say "they're just words". We will make obvious references to everything under the sun until you can't ignore them." But I think that people would rather see something that is a) either simple and to the point, or b) something non-obvious that can not be fully expressed, but hinted at. The Matrix, as it stands, is just a bunch of obvious points driven into our heads with a sledge hammer. And that's not what the "contract" specified. Furthermore, all the ideas have been used before. Nothing new here. It's all one big cop-out. Entertaining? Yes. A Masterpiece? Most definitely not. Treating your audience like idiots is not a very good idea. As Smith said in the first movie. "[Humans] refused the program. Entire crops were lost." Or: Don't try and bed the spoon. That's impossible. Instead, realize the truth. There is no spoon. So it is not the spoon that bends. It is only yourself. Replace the world "spoon," by "rational explanation" or "self-consistent plot" and you're in business with The Matrix. Phew! Okay this should do for now. :) In closing, a line from Futurama: ... and so life returned to normal... or as normal as it gets on this primitive dirtball inhabited by psychotic apes.Heh. Categories: art.media Posted by diego on November 7 2003 at 1:16 PM Comments (please see the comments & trackback policy).
Excellent review. Entertaining from an eye-candy point of view but certainly doesn't deliver on promises made in the second. The characters were turned into bare sketches used to deliver the fight scenes.... sadly disappointing. Posted by: iNeo - Mac Version at November 7, 2003 5:09 PMnice Hey, Very well stated. I concur with every bit of what you said. Its unfortunate I had such high expectations for Revolutions. Your "spoon" to "plot" analogy was great. Posted by: Ian at November 8, 2003 7:54 AMBest review by far of this utterly disappointing movie. Your contract analogy is perfect. The first movie set up a world, the second movie explored the world and revealed some unique and confusing surprises. At this point we're scratching our heads, but the contract that goes with this story comforts us by reminding us that the answer is out there and will find us. The third movie breaches the contract and decides that it's too important and self-righteous to be bothered to give us any sort of cohesive answers. And this is why this movie is a failure. Not because the story isn't what I wanted. Heck, I'm still not sure I like the idea of Darth Vader defeating the Emperor instead of Luke, but at least there was an end to that story that gave us answers to questions posed in the first two movies. And I will always love Return of the Jedi because it is a true ending to an epic struggle. Revolutions should have been the pay-off to this story, but was a cop-out instead. So the fanboys will tell us that this was really just the story of Morpheus, Neo and Trinity instead of about the Matrix itself. In that case, how come they were barely even in the last movie? We came to these sequels because we liked the characters from the first movie. They were cool, and we had a vested interest in them. In the sequels, Morpheus ceases to be cool and all-knowning, Trinity stops being strong and independent, and Neo is never fully realized as The One. All of these things were the entire basis of the original movie, thrown to the wind in the sequels. We didn't like these movies because of Zion and its cliched characters, but that's what we got in the sequels. Why do people need answers to their questions so much? Because these questions drive the plot. The world was set up where people had super powers inside the matrix, but were vulnerable in the real world. Neo defies this basic principle of the first two movies. That's fine, but give us an explanation. Instead, we get an answer that only poses more questions. And worse, the real world power never truly pays off as an important plot device. Its only purpose was to create a major cliffhanger. Kudos on that job. "But the Force is never explained and you're fine with that." The Force is a mystical thing which can't be explained. Power that comes from the Source, a mainframe computer, can be explained. I don't buy some crazy mystical explanation, because the Matrix was always about technology. Even if that was the explanation, we're never even offered that in the movie. So, I should watch the movie again so I can figure it all out, because the answers are there. Sorry, they're not. There aren't even hints of answers. I completely understood The Matrix the first time I saw it. Rewatching it only helped strengthen that and let me see nice subtle elements. The Matrix answers a lot of our important questions and still makes us think. I love to think, but the sequels don't make me think. They make me have to buy the video game, the Animatrix, and watch all the movies multiple times just to hope to create some wild speculation as to why things happened the way they did. When the cohesiveness of the story relies on me supplying the answers, that's a bad story. Then there's the ending. So Neo wanted peace. I'm all for peace, just give me a logical reason. Neo wasn't interested in peace when he made his famous phone call at the end of the first movie. But after meditating he decides that's the only way. Fine, but why would the machines accept this? Why would Zion accept this, with their fellow humans still enslaved in the matrix, despite them being able to get free? The ending could have worked if they'd actually shown us what happened. Instead we're left to wonder just what the Oracle and Architect were up to all this time, and just what the peace and the Architect's promise entail. Bad storytelling. So Revolutions fails because it's not a logical pay-off to the story we were all involved in. It comes out of left field to end the thing in a rush, and doesn't even attempt to be original. Instead it hijacks the story of Jesus, who could not be farther from what Neo is. I'd like to think Neo made a huge difference. Too bad the movie never showed us what this was. Posted by: Cory at November 8, 2003 10:16 AM'Why would Zion accept this, with their fellow humans still enslaved in the matrix, despite them being able to get free? " I think it is because the earth's surface was totally covered with machines. It was 99.999 percent uninhabitable. Given that, what's there to wake up to? I forget his name, but the villan in the first movie wanted to go back into the Matrix so he could experience the taste of food and have a life that was comfortable. The deal Neo made with the machines was that if he destroyed Smith there would be freedom for "anyone who wanted it." I thought that the only way the machines could enslave the human race was by giving each person a CHOICE to enter the Matrix or not. The body became unviable if the mind was FORCED to live in the Matrix. And Morpheus explained to Neo in the first movie that most people did not want to wake up and did not want to be "liberated." What was so much better about the life lived in Zion than one in the Matrix? Living in a cave with lousy food to eat. Big woopdidoo. So freedom for anyone who wants it meant that the machines would survive because there would always be humans that wanted to live in the Matrix. Beyond that I was wondering if the thing with the cookies and agent Smith meant something. Neo ate the cookies but Smith threw them on the floor. The little girl helped to make them. Did that mean anything? Posted by: Theresa at November 8, 2003 6:11 PM
The concept of using humans as 'batteries' because the machines could not get solar power was so stupid. It violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I had a hard time buying ANYTHING as there seemed to be no real reason to keep humans around. Why wouldn't machine AIs just go into a Mercury orbit and use solar power? There's no need to live in a gravity well if you're a robot. This stuff has been dealt with FAR BETTER by many science fiction authors. Especially Dan Simmons in his Hyperion Saga. These movies just captilized on GothGeek culture to make a shitload of money. Plain and simple. Of course this movie was just made to make a shitload of money. Everything in this country is made in order to make money. That doesn't mean that anyone is in the wrong for making such a thing. You pay 7 + dollars to be entertained for two hours and then you can go back to your life and think about it and discuss your ideas. This is just one of the explanations that was talked about but the reason the Neb didn't have guns could have possibly been that the Neb almost never comes back to dock. I guess you could say that lock could have forced them to stay long enough to get guns, but he couldn't do it in this movie so why could he before. The real question i want answered is what happens to the operator of the Logos? Sparks was a really interesting character in enter the matrix, and is in Revolutions for a few minutes but then he dissapears. That is really confusing. And as for the ending. It is pretty obvious that they are leaving it open for the video game that is coming out next year. The matrix online is going to be an everquest type of online game where you can play one of two different types of inhabitants. You can play a free person who wants all humans to be free from the matrix, or you can play a person that thinks people should stay in the matrix because of the conditions of the real world. To me, all three movies were about Neo. Even in the fight scenes they were either fighting for neo, or felt neo was going to save them. All except Locke that is. That is my thought at least. Sati. Did sati finally find her purpose. Is sati's new purpose to create the morning sky? Posted by: Randy at November 9, 2003 5:33 PMI agree with all of your comments, I am tempted to go back and see the movie again, just to see if in the "sun rise" there is super imposed the wachowski brothers laughing at me for spending more money. I loved the Matrix! Reloaded, I was disappointed but sae it twice too see if maybe I was being over critical. I was so hyped to see Revolutions, I was desparately hoping for some wrap-up, realizing that it wouldn't have a nice clean ending due to the fact that they are going to be releasing the on-line game and needed to have a lead-in for that, but this just a poor attempt to finish the trilogy. I can over look overacting and bad dialog (I am a huge Star Wars fan so that's easy), but it was hard to do. As they dragged away Neo's body I was like OK, so this isn't exactly what I expected, but the ending is gonna be good. Then the Sunrise thing happened. It was like a bad western...All they need was the four of them riding off on horses. I guess I was just happy too see I wasn't the only one alittle dismayed at the whole thing. Posted by: Kim at November 10, 2003 2:19 AMThe time they spent repeating the same holistic crap they started in Reloaded could have been spent better filling in details on the many half exposed characters. The Merovingian, Persephone, Seraph, the new and improved Smith, the Oracle, the list is almost endless. They didn't even explain the actions of their main character well. Neo goes to his bunk to think for ten minutes and comes back ready to go to the machine city. What the hell was he thinking about? Come to think of it, the whole series does a pretty poor job of explaining his transition from unbeliever to messiah. The only way to enjoy this movie is to sit back and look at all the explosions, people walk on walls, and how good CGI has become at generating sentinels. I enjoyed that. But, the promise of a multilayered sci-fi/philosophy/sociology epic was left for some future project. Two hours of Yin and Yang later, I still don't know what was different about this revolution, if anything. Do we always get a period of peace that breaks down? Neo sees the real/machine world as gold code. Is this something beyond the machines capabilities. They say in effect that it is. But they really don't answer the question "What is the Matrix?" in my opinion. For a fraction of the cost of maintaining all these humans the machines could float a few solar panels above the clouds and rid themselves of this whole freedom mess. Why didn't the brothers have them formulate a plan like that and the main objective is for Neo to convince them to keep the humans around. Or take control of a part of the system to maintain humanity. That would have been a fight for survival. This was all one big pretentious tease. My thirteen year old son enjoyed it. I was a little disappointed that I had to shut down so much of my mind to get into it. After the train station scene I kind of realized that it was just an action flick and nothing more. Reoladed promised so much. I still like the series as an action sci-fi adventure, but it's not a fiction masterpiece by any means. Posted by: doug powell at November 10, 2003 7:26 AMI will tell you what I believe... I believe that The Matrix Trilogy, one of the must interesting of history, would not, by any chance, finish so simply and no sense... I believe the W. Brothers are really smart and that they give their final lance of geniality, making everybody believes in one thing (the apparent or explicit final) that isn't true!!! Just like in the Matrix!!! Makes completely sense to me and the other guys that believe like me... I believe many will deny the truth, just like the majority of people deny that the Matrix isn't the real world in the first movie and are still plugged and will stay like this for the rest of their lives... Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of Matrix Trilogy and here goes the Theory that makes sense to me!!! As you will see, the theory bellow fixes so many wierd things that aren't satisfactory explained by the explicit theory of Zion being the real world... I know for sure that almost 100% understood, or at least interpreted, Zion like being the real world and Neo really becoming a truly superpower guy in this real world just like in the Matrix, but this theory sounds just too ridicules to me, just trash, too pathetic, a big packet of 100% shit. It doesn't at all fits to the idea that I have about the geniality of W. Brothers. What a trivial solutions, it sounds to simple to me, it sound like ok, I lost myself and I can give a sci-fi satisfactory conclusion to my series and "appeal" to triviality. Too sad to me if the Wackoschi were so ingenues like this. I really don't believe that the explanation of everything could be so much simple!!! In our to keep my believe that the Matrix Trilogy was something but just a pure waste of my time, I believe that there is something behind the obvious that few people are really seeing and that avoid the pathetic superpower of Neo in the real world (or the equivalent bullshit of "wireless" connected and giving orders to self-explosion to sentinels from inside of Matrix) without speak about that ridicules "last hour trick" about gain, from one time to other, the "infrared" type vision. The solutions that it is given by the "default" (but in my opinion wrong) interpretations of the movie is in huge contradiction with laws of Darwin theories (where to evolution is made slowly after millions of years), biological and physical. It is a too hard to accept this so trivial and ridicules solutions. Remember how precise was the explanations in the first Matrix??? It is beautiful and the Reloaded and Revolutions should, by any chance, have the same beauty, If Neo doesn't have really superpowers but just he can connect "wirelessly" to Matrix and give inside commands of self-destruction to sentinels, why did he need in the end of the move to be full connected by the Deus Ex-Machine to fight Smith??? Why it even needed to went to the "machines city" to talk to Deus Ex-Machine??? Think of Smith taking the Bane body in the real world is also a little forced too me, but it is the limit of my acceptance... If the orange vision was just the Neo new "miracle" "infrared or something" vision (I hate to use miracle solutions in sci-fi movies), why we see sometimes he inside of the image of the orange vision and even worst, why we have seen the "orange vision" even when he was dead??? Why during the fuck there movies, the oracle offers to Neo, repeatedly, red candy's??? Why the Oracle seems always to Know what is going to happen but doesn't the fucking true clearly??? She, and the Architecture, are manipulating everything!!! Why Morpheus ask in the and of the movie if it was real??? Why the Seraph wanted so much to fight against Neo in Reload??? Because the Humans and the Machines agreed about a peace??? It doesn't fill well to me... Did you remember in Matrix Reloaded how Neo saw Seraph just before he fight against him??? He saw Seraph the fucking orange think, just like repeatedly in revolutions!!! Do you know where Neo was??? He was inside the Matrix!!! So, this makes a complete connection analogy that the orange things that he saw so many times in Matrix Revolutions, are in fact, inside a some kind of Matrix and Zion isn't the real world in fact. As the times goes by, he becomes deeper into the understanding of the Matrix (this represents the orange view) and he finally realize that Zion is in fact another Matrix. Otherwise, what is the proposal of, inside of the Matrix, to show in the same shot a piece orange and another green if the Neo's orange view is suppose to happen in the "real world". Remember Software is cold and cold is blue, not orange!!! Orange is hot, Human are hot. My vision of the movie that, at least to me, saves Matrix trilogy to be completely no-sense and ridicules is that Zion is, in fact, the second level Matrix and the real wold is the world is the world that appears in the end of the movie during the conversations between the Oracle and the Architecture. Neo was the first man that ever understood this and become to see this second and last level of Matrix in a orange color!!! This is why he stop the sentinel into the air just like he did with bullets inside of the Matrix!!! This is why the Oracle offers him repeatedly during all the movies, the fucking red candy's!!! She is trying to weak Neo to the real world, not that bullshit of Zion, but the beautiful real world that exist actually into the and of the movie. No war between Machines and Men did happening in fact, the men in the future live a normal live without bigger problems!!! They just went to play like god sometimes in their own worlds. Isn't that funny??? The Architect and the Oracle, in a distant future, created the Matrix and they also created Zion to the guys that notices that the Matrix wasn't, in fact, real!!! Zion is a second and last level of the Matrix and sometimes the Architect needed to destroy it to avoid people in Zion to wake-up the real world, the world of the end of movie, where himself, the Oracle, Smith and Seraph are real Human. You should notice that the Architecture and the Oracle seems really to familiar, really true friends in the end of the movie, they don't look at all like truly adversaries, they look like "playing a big game"!!! They look like they just finish a cheers game and they are "guessing" what is going to happen or not from know on!!! Oracle play with men and the Architecture with Machines, who wins??? Who loses??? They are having a fairly fascinate "god" game!!! All that shit about the prophecy that Oracle trying to make the men believe it, it is just a way to do her arm, the men, more confident and strong. Actually, Neo is the best result that she gets with this strategy and he possibilities to her to obtain a temporally "peace" in her game against her friends in the real world, the Architecture and he just accept the peace because her designed Matrix was in problems with the program Smith that was completely without control!!! Oracle avoid the reloaded in the second film because this represents the dissipation of her arm, the men of Zion, and need to again "free" minds of the Matrix Architecture world to rebuild your arm and fight again. How does she avoided the reloaded??? She makes Neo loves Trinity in such a way that would make her prefer to save her instead of do the reloaded. Point to Oracle!!! What out the free will, one of the main topics of the trilogy??? Very simple, the Oracle and the Architecture did in fact created the Matrix and Zion world, but world the real funny if they could inexorably make choice for your guys??? The real challenger of both creators was really trying to give them the most important rule of the game: Your guys has to have free will!!! This is a big challenger!!! How to create something and give it a real free will??? Why do you think the sky is blue above that black clouds??? Do you really think it would like that way that if Zion was real??? Truly this would not be the case, much more probably the ozone should be gone and the sky should not more be blue !!! Where the hell the fucking Zion sky is blue??? Just because the little girl did it!!! She is smart human and will probably succeed the Oracle... Why did Seraph fight against Neo in reloaded??? Did you believe in that shit of "to really know someone, you have to fight him". I didn't. He fight because he want to how it is to fight against the best, that is a real challenger to the human that he is. It is really interesting!!! Why the Sentinels can cross through Neo in that orange scene inside of that aircraft when he was going to the Machine city??? Don't tell that this is also possible in the real world because if it the W. Brothers really think this, just put the holy movie into the wastebasket... I do really believe that this explanation is wonderful, really bright and satisfactory, at least to me (that is what really matters for each one) and I am really convinced that the Brothers know that some few guys will understand of this point of view. I am think the trilogy is amazing it interpreted in such a way. What I think it is most unbelievable is that the all trilogy is about that question of what is real and what isn't, and that almost the trick (makes the virtual seems real) was done in the last chapter of the trilogy (of course the W. Brothers were very less explicit this time) and such a few people really understand the message!!! The play all the time with the phase "Few will see that true, the majority won't even realize that they are plugged" That's the way it is and they, in fact, really show they were right. If they do think like this, I do really congratulate them for their unbelievable smartness!!! We (I and my friends) are really having at the top of our mind lots of others suggestions that confirms more and more this implicit and wonderful theory and I will keep updating it frequently... The last thing that is not really clear if the Zion guys are just programs of the virtual universe of the Oracle and the Architecture or if they are true humans that are in fact connected to the hole Matrix plus Zion system and just Neo realize the real truth and became free... FREE YOUR MIND That's a theory that has been discussed to exhaustion. I think I understand most of your message. You simply cannot ignore the many holes and conflicting facts within the world the W Brothers have created, if you insist on seeing a coherent message in these films. If you see the setting as a fictional fantasy world that is the setting for a sociological message, (anti-slavery, objectifying sentient beings and the costs that result from techno & genetic arrogance), then the series will work. You just have to ignore the soft facts and the bending of the rules for the sake of the story they wanted to tell. But, if you want to treat it as a serious semi factual message on reality, then it just doesn't work. A previous post mentioned the physical laws that are broken. Diego correctly mentions the affect that nuclear weapons would have on the machines. There are plenty of problems with this story as a serious metaphysical theory. 1) After the sky was destroyed a new ice age would ensue. Forget about towers of explosed humans, we're talking about a planet surface that is a block of ice. 2) Why not use nuclear, geothermal, hydro-electric, or wind power for that matter. The only reason for the story as presented is to make the social points and tell a story of human struggle. (and a lot of money to boot) 3) Look no further than the intro to each film for evidence of the code within code message. Now, here's the problem with all that code, even trying to follow the bogus rules they give you. Seraph. He was gold in the matrix in Reloaded. If gold represents the real world (seen by Neo in the machine city) then how did a real (physical) person show up in the matrix? And even worse, How did Smith just take him over? You see, they pushed it all too far and got caught in their own creation. In order to get out they ask you to forget all these previous things and take them at their revised word. Fine with me if it's a sci-fi action flick. Complete bullshit if it is to be a coherent statement of their worldview. We could go on and on about all the loose end and contradicting plot elements. Don't get too carried away with a flashy presentation of half baked pan-psychic, holographic universe, Yin/Yang psuedo scientific bullshit. Take it as the entertainment that it is and enjoy it as such. Posted by: doug powell at November 10, 2003 4:23 PMDiego-So sorry to see the discussion closed. Great review and spoof script. Much hilarity. Have you ever seen the very rare "Star Wars Holiday Special?" It featured all the original actors and was horrendous. I feel like that's what the Matrix franchise is headed for. Please continue to write satire; I'm sure you'll have more than adequate fodder with SW Episode III. Jay This discussion has been closed due to spamming. Thanks to all who participated. Posted by: System at November 10, 2003 11:33 PMCopyright © Diego Doval 2002-2007.
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