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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 10/21/2003 5:53 AM (GMT -6) |   | ************** MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS SPOILERS BELOW ******************
* DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE STORY-LINE *
* (disclaimer: I've read allegations that this may be a hoax...) *
********************************************************************
Neo is in the real world (or so he thinks) dreaming of three lines in the desert of the real. When he awakes...
Neo is in the Matrix at a train station, where he meets this crazed bum looking guy who operates the train. The train is controlled through this trainman who is a rogue program trying to avoid the Merovingian. On this train is a program which is the offspring of two other rogue programs. Trinity and Morpheus get aboard the Hammer and go looking for the Logos and Niobe's crew. When they find the Logos, Niobe explains that Neo is trapped outside of his body and is now in the matrix. They power up the Logos and return to Zion to discuss the new plan with the council. At which point Bane wakes up and after killing the medic sneaks aboard the Logos. Both ships head to broadcast depth to see the Oracle. The Logos has Trinity, Morpheus and Neo's body. The Oracle explains that Neo is being held in the Matrix by the Merovingian and is now operating somewhat like a rogue program roaming free in the Matrix but cannot escape. She tells them that to free Neo they must find the Merovingian at the hell club. Seraph who guards that which matters most (the future, not the Oracle) leads Morpheus and Trinity to the hell club.
At the same time Neo learns more about the nature of the Matrix from the trainman, the Matrix is deteriorating and there are glitches happening all over, and more about his nature and the nature of other rogue programs from the programs themselves. The programs are basically three factions: those that work for the system, those that are free from the system but have given up hope that there is such a thing as free will so have thrown in their lot with the Merovingian and enjoy the pleasures of the matrix, and those that are working to free themselves and everyone else from the system.
Morpheus, Trinity and Seraph fight their way to the Merovingian and Persephone, Ghost and Niobe fight their way to Neo. They find Neo and explain what is happening. Meanwhile Morpheus and Trinity make it to Persephone. Seraph gets killed along the way while saving them both. They get Persephone to turn and help kill the Merovingian before he blows up the whole place.
Ghost and Niobe get an exit and Neo flies to see the Oracle at her apartment. She explains that at this point Smith has taken over much of the Matrix and the darkness will spread consuming them all. If the Matrix ends, the machines end and so do the humans. She explains his earlier vision of three lines and says to follow them to get to 01. He must help to save the Matrix and to do so he must go to the machine capitol. She explains it must end tonight, or all will be lost.
Smith takes over the trainman and the prodigy of the rogue programs. He discovers the whereabouts of the Oracle.
Morpheus and Trinity jack out as Bane/Smith attack the crew with the plasma gun. Link gets overcome and Bane attacks Neo while he is still jacked in. Morpheus kills Bane as Neo jacks out and realizes he is blind due to the attack. Morph, link, Niobe and Ghost board the Hammer and head back to Zion after getting an emergency call. Trinity and Neo head towards 01 in the Logos.
Neo explains to Trinity that he finally understands what needs to be done and tells her about the three lines he’s dreamed about. Trinity discovers the power transmission lines and they follow them. Neo battles the sentinels along the way with his mind.
Smith enters the Oracles apartment and takes her over at which point he apparently becomes aware of the Oracles plan for bringing about a truce. The Hammer returns to Zion just in time to meet the threat of the sentinels approaching the gate. The Kid is fighting them off in what appears to be the last of the APU's (mecha). The Hammer fires its EMP and the newest sentinel threat seems to be abated.
The council meets and everyone explains what is happening with Neo and 01. Hamman and the commander agree that the only hope now is to believe Morpheus was right about the prophesy. The Mjolnir returns and they all board it in a last ditch effort to hold off the sentinels till Neo reaches 01.
Meanwhile Neo and Trinity are constantly being attacked by sentinels as they approach the machine city. Finally they are overcome by some huge machines and the Logos crashes. The sentinels scan the wreckage and find Trinity dead and Neo severely injured. The sentinels drag Neos body to a kind of huge mainframe and jack him into it.
At the same time the Mjolnir is fighting off the sentinels still attacking Zion, but they are now all over the ship and Hamman and the commander are killed by the sentinels while defending the Kid. Morpheus comforts Niobe and they kiss.
Neo has a long dialogue with the machine intelligence in a place which is obviously not real. The machines explain that he was unexpected but not unaccounted for. He says he can destroy Smith if they will let the human minds still jacked in continue to exist and call off the destruction of Zion. The machine tries to argue at which point other machine voices pop in and explain the stagnation of living this way. They agree to Neo's offer and they jack him into the matrix.
Morpheus is about to fire the EMP onboard the Mjolnir when Link sees that Neo is IN the Matrix Morpheus holds off and the sentinel cease their attack. Morpheus looks at the screen and says "Oh Trinity...Neo...he fights for us...all of us".
Neo faces down Smith in the raining streets. They fight and talk and Smith explains his feeling of freedom and about death. Neo wins at first but is eventually overcome by Smith. Smith does to Neo what Neo did to Smith in the first movie taking him over. At which point the machines unplug Neo destroying Smith and all of his clones as well.
The Kid collapses in the Mjolnir, and the Matrix code changes suddenly. Morpheus checks the Kid’s vitals and he is dead. In the Architect’s room you see the Architect being taken over like an agent taking over a human who is plugged in. Suddenly the Kid sits there looking bewildered then determined.
A teeming city is seen humans running all over doing their business. Morpheus and Niobe walk the streets together. Morpheus says "she prophesied that I would find the One." Niobe says, "You did indirectly." Morpheus smiles and says, "Neo found...helped him find himself...It's not over yet." She responds, "Let them dream Morpheus," to which he replies, "Sometimes all we have is dreams...Faith." She kisses him "Faith or Truth – it’s all the same". He says "I dreamed I was a man... Is it evolution or revolution?"
Zoom towards the machine intelligence and then inside then down some wires then to a smiling kid and finally down a street in the Matrix to Morpheus and Niobe and behind them an agent. "I see them now. I will maintain contact....." | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 10/21/2003 6:54 AM (GMT -6) | | *SPOILERS*
From what I can gather, most of that is fairly accurate, with the exception of the ending...
Any "ending" you see posted online at this point is speculation, as that part of the "scriptment" has not been released. The general theme of humanity and the machines working together, along with the continuation of the matrix itself, is probably right, but there are no solid details on how this plays out. The Kid DOES NOT become the Architect, however; that much is known.
November 5 isn't too far way, though. The waiting will soon be over...
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/22/2003 6:04 AM (GMT -6) | | I get to wait longer than most of you, except maybe Tom.
I think the W2 brothers either were forced to hollywoodize their film some or made some serious flaws in their logic.
For example, Arky claimed that Neo choosing his door would lead to the deaths of all those humans that were connected to the Matrix. I had presumed that this would happen automatically and irreversibly after Neo chose his door and the building had blown up.
From below, it seems that it wasn't automatic but dependent on the actions of the programs. This makes me think the whole thing was a giant bluff, because now that Neo no longer is up for being recycled the programs no longer have any incentive to pull the plugs on all humans connected to the matrix. They lose too much battery-power and get nothing in return.
So Neo's choice of doors signified his continued autonomy against the programs and I guess he cut a deal with the programs to save Zion, although I am not sure what there is to hold the programs to their side of the deal after Neo's demise, and he did lower the number of agents with the final simultaneous destruction of all the smiths at the end.
So this seems to be the nature of the change in the balance of power, Zion gets to persist and there are a whole lot less agents floating around the Matrix, but there doesn't seem to be any end to the antagonism between the programs and humans. Perhaps, the programs on Mervy's side will realize that change is possible and be more oracle-like from now on...
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/5/2003 3:36 PM (GMT -6) | | Spoilers Alert!
...
Okay, I saw Matrix Revolutions and the earlier spoiler on this thread was wrong on several parts but not all.
First, many of my predictions from my interpretation of the Matrix Reloaded were not disproven but not affirmed either. It seems that a lot of threads were left hanging by the W2 or they didn't want to give an official interpretation regarding what the films meant.
Some observations.
The film contains a mixture of references to Christianity and Eastern Religion. However, the breaking down of the dichotomies is furthered in many respects. Initially, an example is given of two programs who had fallen in love and created a child, who they had to protect to prevent her from being deleted, as happens to all programs that have no purpose. So apparently, what was presumed to be a human emotion is also possible for programs. The movie also shows that programs apparently can make choices that realign their allegiances, as Seraph is shown to have formerly served Mervy and Agent Smith refers to the Oracle as his mother.
Neo finds himself in an in-between world between the Matrix and "reality", which he somehow, unspecified, was able to enter from "reality". Neo's abilities in "reality" continue to grow, amplified for us all the more by his loss of normal human sight. Neo's programdom is further accentuated by how his encounter with the Oracle is this time as an equal.
The Oracle demonstrates her humanity by emphasing her own necessity of making a choice. Her choice was to let herself be smithed in hopes of setting the stage for Neo's final trojan-horse move. This is affirmed as a leap of faith at the end.
The most important message, though, seems to be that ultimately it is both Neo and Trinity's willingness to die for others that empowers them to change things. Trinity is willing to die so Neo can be set free. Neo willingly enters the matrix to fight the smithster(s), knowing that he will die/fail but willing to do anything to save human/programs from annihilation. In the end, his programness is honored by how the sentinels/programs themselves treat him as a messianic figure, implicitly acknowledging that his sacrifice was made on their behalf as well as that of humans. This is particularly illustrated by how they abandonded their attack on Zion where the humans were most vulnerable when there was nothing but their honor/word to Neo making them call off the attack. Neo must have inspired some respect in them to make them do this.
The movie has no depictions of human life within the Matrix, those that were fought earlier appear to have been programs owing to their abilities to walk on walls/ceilings and what-not(of course the character of those at the S&M rave was not revealed to us, but if they worked for Mervy then chances are they were programs), and so it seems that the promise that all humans connected to the matrix would die has been fulfilled. In that case, it is likely that the intention of the sentinels was to capture the vast majority of Zion for their return to the Matrix, rather than annihilation. They primarily attacked those that were attacking them. Unarmed humans were not killed. However, their withdrawal implies that in the future some agreement will need to be reached so that humans share some of their energy with the programs in return for protection/autonomy.
Other stuff, like the extent that Oracle manipulated Neo in MReloaded was not revealed in the movie. However, the film did affirm the reality of choice and that the predestination garble was Arky's form of social control. However, it also affirms the goodness of predestination, doing what one's purpose is, though this is referred to as karma. It could have just as easily be called one's calling. It was the belief that one accepts personal harm in the service of a greater calling that impelled the heros within the movie to make the choices they made and so the movie ends up affirming the importance of both choice and predestination as concepts by which we make sense of the world in which we live.
NEO-dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 11/6/2003 4:38 AM (GMT -6) | | These are my reflections before and after seeing the film yesterday:
BEFORE:
I will be seeing The Matrix: Revolutions later today, and already I’m curious about the title. I’ve been pretty spoiled on this one, allowing myself to indulge my curiosity a bit by exploring several advance reviews and even the controversial, if not altogether accurate, “scriptments” that have been floating around online the past few months. Because of all this clandestine research, I’m beginning to wonder if the title of this final installment in what will most likely be remembered as the second-greatest sci-fi trilogy ever is somewhat misleading. I’ll wait for a few more hours before drawing any final conclusions; but what I know going in has me leaning in this direction.
In all honesty, I’m intrigued rather than appalled by the possibility that the Matrix is still very much intact at the end of this film. It seems to be the logical consequence of the ideas explored in Reloaded; in particular, the Oracle’s assertion that the future depends on humans and machines working together. Agent Smith has become the sole villain, it appears, with the machines seemingly as determined to stop him as Neo is. It’s obvious from the trailer that Neo has even cut a deal with the machines whereby he kills Smith as long as (speculation) the destruction of Zion is called off. What role exactly the Oracle, the Architect, the Merovignian, and Persephone play in all this is unclear, but I am fairly sure that the human/machine struggle set up in The Matrix ends in a compromise that keeps things as they are; namely, Zion and the Matrix remaining fully intact and independent entities.
I will finish this post after seeing the movie. We’ll see how much I really do know, and I’ll give some philosophical and theological responses and reflections on the complete Matrix Trilogy…
AFTER:
Well, forget what I said about the second-greatest sci-fi trilogy. The Star Wars prequels will probably grab that title (behind the sacred Original Trilogy of course). Revolutions was easily the most disappointing movie for me since Episode I. This is how the film chapter of the Matrix Universe ends? So much potential wasted, and it’s a shame. All of the intriguing ideas brought up in Reloaded are simply ignored. Merv, Persephone, and the Architect are given cameos here. No one’s story arc has been completed, with the possible exceptions of Trinity, Smith, and Neo. Morpheus, the best character in the first film and still a major player in the second, looks like a useless fool here.
Well, as far as deeper reflection goes, the Wachowskis seem intent on preventing that possibility. I stayed up for hours discussing Reloaded with my friends; that won’t be a problem anymore, as again, all of the mind-blowing questions raised in Reloaded are simply ignored in Revolutions. I’m very, very disappointed.
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/6/2003 5:03 AM (GMT -6) | | From the NYTIMES...
The Game Concludes With Light and Noise
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: November 5, 2003
verything that has a beginning has an end." This sentence appears on the front page of the production notes handed out at press screenings of "The Matrix Revolutions," which opens worldwide today. It is also uttered by the Oracle (Mary Alice) in response to a question from Neo (Keanu Reeves). "Where is this going?" he wants to know. "Where will it end?" Neo may be the One, but he can hardly be the only One posing such questions. The talk of endings in this, the third and ostensibly final movie in the series, is so insistent that you may wonder whether the Wachowski brothers, who wrote and directed it, felt the need to reassure the audience, and perhaps themselves, that it was really, finally over. There are still a few loose ends that might be spun into future sequels — "The Matrix Recycled," perhaps, or "The Matrix Recall Election" or "The Matrix Recipe Book and Holiday Menu Planner" (featuring the Oracle's baking tips) — but the saga of Neo, which began in 1999 when he was a scruffy hacker who took a red pill, has now by all appearances reached its terminus. The appropriate response is somewhere between "About time" (about six hours, depending on what's added for the DVD release) and "So what?"
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 11/6/2003 9:32 AM (GMT -6) | | | Amen! Somewhere between "so what" and "about time," lies "who cares anymore..." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/7/2003 2:38 PM (GMT -6) | | For me, my thinking about Matrix Revolution would be describable as faith seeking understanding...
I had a lot of questions that were unanswered by the movie and it raised new questions that were not answered well IMO.
But it does answer some questions and the main point re:Neo is interesting when juxtaposed with the main point of the previous.
Neo succeeded where the other one's failed, not because of his abilities, but because of his decision to love Trinity more than anything else. This made him manipulable by Oracle et. al. into choosing the other door.
In this movie, Neo's willingness to die to save, in the more immediate sense, all programs inspired them to venerate him a human and hold to their promise to not destroy/reenslave Zion , when nothing was practically holding them to honor this promise.
I guess Neo ended up atoning for his past "selfish" choice having resulted in so many deaths and making peace possible by sacrificing himself to serve both sides of the conflict.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted Today 11:26 AM (GMT -6) | | Here is what a friend of mine wrote to me along with my responses...
>I felt very justified in my understanding of Neo's powers outside the
>Matrix to destroy sentinels based on what the Oracle said in
>Revolutions. She didn't explicitly say he was given the power to
>destroy sentinels by the Architect to save Zion, but it makes the most
>sense given what she did say. And I was correct in that the Matrix was
Yes, it could have been the candy she gave him, that helped to make the transformation?
>not destroyed right off the bat. I don't remember specifically meeting
>any humans in the Matrix in Revolutions, but the Merovingian was still
>there, partying like it's 1999.
Mervy is a program. Presumably everyone else at the party may have also been programs...
Although, they did show the fields with apparently something in the containers. However, what was contained was sensed by Neo, which is odd because I thought he was only able to sense programs, not human-stuff after having been blinded.
>
>You said previously that the machines would not destroy Zion because
>they would need the power of the humans once the Matrix had been
>destroyed. This is a good point, but it's not what happened. I guess
Sure, but the question could be that they were planning on enslaving Zion rather than killing every single human. Or maybe they have the ability to clone new humans so as to restock the fields... This would only require a lag during which they would need to cope with less energy or maybe they have some reserve stocked up for a rainy day.
>since the Matrix was not immediately destroyed, the machines could work
>something else out with the humans that were still there. The machines
>definitely do not want those Zion people alive because they're too hard
>to control.
Sure, and they had reached critical mass.
>
>Something else I had been saying is that there was not one "main" Agent
>Smith. They were all equal copies. This is corroborated in Revolutions
>when he tells Neo that he's the only one that will fight because
>through the power of the Oracle he had already seen that that one was
>the one that would beat Neo anyway.
Yeah, if you think to the point when Oracle gets smithed, the impact was stunning and (s)he emerged as the superior smith...
>
>One final thing that was cleared up in Revolutions was the Oracle's
>statement, "You've made a believer out of me." It didn't make sense
>that she was talking about the same belief that some humans had and
>some didn't, the belief in the One, though that seemed to be the only
>option at the time. Rather, it is now clear that she meant a belief in
>the possibility of peace between humans and machines, something never
>predicted in the cycle of the Matrix.
Sure, but Neo's sacrifice proved he truly was the One, willing to sacrifice himself on behalf of programs and humans alike...
This evinced the respect/honor from the programs so that they honored the promise and let Zion persist.
>
>Let's see. Why should the machines now allow the peace to continue? One
>option is that they in some sense "respected" Neo's sacrifice. That's a
>little hard for me to swallow. (The Architect for example doesn't seem
>to have respect for anything other than himself.) Another option that I
Arky does apparently desire to be true to his word.
>see is that if they keep the system going as it was with the Matrix,
>some Agent Smith may again be born, and he is too dangerous to them to
>allow the possibility. Agent Smith's existence came about because of a
>human doing something weird to a program in the Matrix, so until the
>machines come up with a way to prevent this (fix this "bug" in the
>Matrix), they had better not let it happen again. The next iteration of
>the One may not be willing to sacrifice as Neo was. I didn't see him
>"venerated"; he was just dragged off. Maybe they were going to
>experiment on him or something.
Hmmm, to what effect? I would argue the imagery was alike with how one would honor one's fallen savior... And, I don't see how avoiding another smith/one was accomplished by not wiping out Zion as they were very capable of doing...
>
>I still don't think it's a necessary conclusion that the Oracle
>manipulated Neo by giving him those dreams of Trinity. You haven't
>provided an explanation that she has any power over him in the real
>world at all. But dreams are strange things and could easily be
>influenced by experiences in the Matrix. But I guess it doesn't hurt
>anything to conclude this. It just makes the Oracle the main actor in
>the fight for peace.
Well, we don't know that the Oracle can't manipulate people outside the Matrix, because of the source, it seems that for the one there is a connection between the two that doesn't exist for others.
>
>One unanswered question has to do with the Oracle's question to the
>Architect at the end: "What about the ones who want out?" ("Obviously,
>they will be released," was the Architect's response.) Who was she
>talking about? Programs who wanted to get away, like the Keymaker and
>other rogues, or humans who wanted to get out of the Matrix, like
>Morpheus and his buddies, or both maybe? Maybe humans and machines
>could start to live together this way and begin to see how they can
>live with each other. They can learn that they're not so different, as
>you have previously said. This is made even more apparent by the two
>programs who somehow had a child together, a program with no purpose.
>(And what about her, anyway? Even if she didn't have a purpose, did she
>have some capability? Every program takes some input and provides some
>output. She said at the end she did something with the sunrise in honor
>of Neo. Presumably it would be some combination of her parents'
>functions, but I don't remember exactly what they were now.)
Yes, they probably were being deliberately vague in that respect, and it seems that they had already started harvesting a new crop of human batteries and so people will indeed be enabled to go out in the future.
I think sati does seem like a program-version of the one, since she also can manipulate the Matrix and is becoming more human-like from the other direction, thanks to her parents' choices to love/create/sacrifice on her behalf.
I'm willing to bet there will be comics/short features that will deal with these characters in the future...
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted Today 12:07 PM (GMT -6) | | To DLW, I question your interpretation of the senitles respect for Neo as "the One." Seems to me they are simply controlled by "the Source," and so when it said to cease, they ceased.
The most profound part of the movie, I thought, was the heavy Christian symbolism of the atonement. By becoming sin (agent Smith) and sacrificing his life, Neo saves humanity. The music in the background, and the crucified posture of Neo post-mortem, reenforces this powerful imagery.
Having said that, I was very disappointed with this film. For, as DLW notes, far from answering the questions -- or at least pointing in a plausible direction for answers -- it just raised more questions. As with Neo in the middle world, new dead-end aspects of a plot were inexplicably introduced. And the ending was ... well, totally unsatisfying. I think anything like the verious endings that were proposed on this board would have left the audiences going, "wow," "cool," think about THAT..." This one left audiences going, "what the heck was THAT about?"
Doc
"The responsibility is with the chooser -- God is blameless." Plato, Republic, 10. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted Today 12:27 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by GregBoyd
To DLW, I question your interpretation of the senitles respect for Neo as "the One." Seems to me they are simply controlled by "the Source," and so when it said to cease, they ceased.
Why should the sentinels be just automatons? They are programs and have the same free-wills that other programs evince.
Their respect is shown by how they treated Neo's husk and by how they honored their promise of peace, when there was nothing making them do so.
If choice is central and the human/program dichotomy has been broken down then there is no reason to presuppose the sentinels are automatons from the source.
Besides just what exactly consists of the source is one of those questions that is raised and unanswered...
quote:
Having said that, I was very disappointed with this film. For, as DLW notes, far from answering the questions -- or at least pointing in a plausible direction for answers -- it just raised more questions. As with Neo in the middle world, new dead-end aspects of a plot were inexplicably introduced. And the ending was ... well, totally unsatisfying. I think anything like the verious endings that were proposed on this board would have left the audiences going, "wow," "cool," think about THAT..." This one left audiences going, "what the heck was THAT about?"
Doc
Neo ending up in purgatory is a loose end that I guess made it so that the movie didn't consist of him supermanning one on the badguys again, which would be boring since the ending is foregone.
The whole love/karma/sati thing did confirm the previous notion that the dichotomy between programs and humans was being broken down. I.E., programs can love and create and risk themselves for what they create, and this creation adds yet another element to the future that guarantees things will be different than the past.
As for the ending, since the movies have been breaking down the human/program dichotomy then it makes sense that the one would transcend the differences between the two and ultimately sacrifice himself for the preservation of both camps. The lights at the end for Neo and the Smiths were the same lights from the door and Neo's dreams in Matrix Reloaded. Remember, Oracle said In MRel that the fate of the one was to return to the source, apparently that seems to have had a double-meaning. So my intepretation would be that Neo permitted himself to be sent back to the source and took the smith-virus with him. This then had the effect of freeing up all the programs that had been smithed, previously. This could be what Seraph asked Oracle if she knew about it. Whether or not Neo would take the Smith-virus back to the source with him and whether or not the programs would be restored to their previous forms.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 11/11/2003 5:16 AM (GMT -6) | | This is a repost from the Timeline thread, it probably fits better here:
I haven't taken the movie in again yet, but I do have some more thoughts, particularly on Neo/Smith.
The Oracle says that Smith IS Neo, at least his negative. Now I'm not going to dive into any ontological speculation here, because honestly I think that's excusing bad storytelling on the brothers' part. I realize they wanted to leave some things open to interpretation, but seriously.
Anyway, since I'm a big fat sucker, I have interpreted the Neo/Smith struggle allegorically and have made an immediate application to my spiritual life. Prof. Tolkien would be so ashamed of me. I see the conflict between Neo and Smith as (and I'm sure the brothers didn't have this in mind) an allegory for spiritual warfare on the personal level, what the Muslims would refer to as the greater jihad, the struggle against sin and evil that each individual wrestles with. Paul says in Romans 12 that the holy life is a life that breaks way from the conformity of sin. The virus-like Smith has produced copies of himself onto every man, woman, child, and program in the Matrix (apparently) by the time Neo confronts him in the rain. Perfect conformity achieved by the evil half of the Neo/Smith duality. Manicheistic? You bet.
Now, this is where the Christ allegory hinted at in the first film (Neo's resurrection in the hallway) comes to full fruition. However, it turns the Christian myth on its ear (and by myth, I of course don't mean untrue. Christianity IS the true myth. But that's a different discussion...)
While Christ died to break the power of sin, and then was raised, Neo does the opposite. He dies and is resurrected at the beginning of his mission. Now, at the end, he allows Smith to assimilate him (resistance is futile ), and is subsequently unplugged by the machines, destroying Smith in the process. I don't quite understand HOW, but then again, I don't really understand the mechanics of Christ's victory either. It worked, and that's all I need to know.
So, the destruction of evil is accomplished by the ultimate sacrifice of the good. Neo's crucifix pose as the machines take his body away drives home this point to the lowest common denominators, the sentinels pack up and leave Zion, and the Oracle shares an American Greetings moment with the little program girl and Arky. Lame ending.
OK, so what are we left with? The Neo/Smith dichotomy can be seen on the one hand to be an allegory for the daily grind of our spiritual lives (I do do what I don't want to do, etc.), but the way it ends appears to the Christian mind to be a pretty clear riff on the Passion (minus Easter morning, unless the Oracle's comment about possibly seeing Neo again means more than just warm fuzzies).
Well, DLW, you asked for more of my thoughts. What do yall think?
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/11/2003 5:51 AM (GMT -6) | | I agree that Oracle's comment that Smith was the negative version of Neo was rather cheesy.
Smith was in MRel no where near the match of Neo and his manifestation of power sufficient to beat Neo was only made possible when he assimilated Oracle. Until then, he had been cursed with the human attribute that he previously had despised most, their virusness... He was more the negative of humans in general, rather than just Neo. But this doesn't fit neatly into manicheisms, either, because his virusness threatens programs just as much if not more as humans.
Now, it might be that he was prevented from being destroyed by a desire to rebalance the equations given Neo's greater manifestation of powers of oneness after his resurrection. If so this was an act of fallible judgement since Smith threatened the destruction of machine world.
As for the death scene, as mentioned earlier. When Smith first tried to infect Neo, Neo later recalled it felt like death from his first experience of it. Also, remember how Oracle told Neo that all one's destiny lies in returning to the source.
What seems to me is that accepting death/smithing was accompanied by also accepting that his code be returned to the source by the programs in Machine-World. If you watch the MRel and then MRev again, as I did this past friday and then saturday, Neo was not unplugged until quite a bit after it was done. The real theatrics involved Neo having the light of the door of the source emanate from him, just as it then came to emanate from each of the smiths.
So Neo, in returning to the source, dragged the smith-virus with him and freed all those that had been under its curse.
As for the ending, the emphasis on evolution/openness of the future by the W2s meant that they couldn't affirm that all would be well from then on in. It was a process-theistic ending, if you will.
However, Sati was s'posed to be indicative of hope, since she was the product of programs becoming more human-like and evinced an one-ish ability to rewrite the Matrix-code herself. Thus, IMO, the hope for the future was that Neo's sacrifice on behalf of programs/humans would result in more programs emulating humans and supporting the need for programs and humans to find a way to peacefully and productively coexist with each other.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/12/2003 7:38 AM (GMT -6) | | I saw this on Slashdot Lasttime.. I thought it warranted more attention. Not my work. This movie would have been far better...
Here's my little "what I might have done" twist on things:
a) The Merovingian would turn out to be in fact a previous version of
the one, from "a much older version of the Matrix". Neo is the Matrix
3.0's one, this guy was from an older one. In fact he has better
insight into this Matrix than Neo does, as an outsider. He's just
decided there's no point to all this.
b) The reason he has is that no one is in fact unplugged - Zion is a
spilloff Matrix for the people who must fight the system. In this
matrix, the unease they still feel is masked by their fight to save the
world, and they are thus rendered harmless. They also remove other
disruptive elements from the Matrix, in essence being very unwitting
house cleaners. This explains a point never addressed at all - when the
one supposedly "work up" and freed the first people, how did they
rebuild themselves from the physical state Neo started in? He needed
extensive medical help to function again - the first people would have
had none. Simple answer - no one has ever really woken up and formed
Zion. If someone did wake up, they died. That machine that unplugged
them, also took their head off for good measure.
c) Neo, like the previous ones, is in fact a program himself. He has no
awareness of this, and his sentient mind fully believes he is human.
The Merovingian knows he is a program, and that is a further reason the
fight is of little interst to him. Neo, the new one, has no such
insight and in any case is built so he will fight for humanity. This is
part of his function as the one program. He is "seeded" into the Matrix
to bring about a necessary reprogramming, as the system has built to a
point of instability where matters must be restarted now in order to
maintain full control. (Think Windows box - saving work and rebooting,
because you can tell it's about to go unstable on you.)
d) However, the One has a couple unintentional side effects - a) it
overwrites a part of an agent program, creating a virus and b) develops
a deep relationship with Trinity. Now the @#$@# has really hit the fan,
and data corruption begins to take place.
e) The Merovingian, interested in his own existance and well versed in
the Matrix, is now under threat from the virus program. He is compelled
to prepare for war. He check codes and prepares to isolate certain
sections of the Matrix he controls, but then he stops. An amused,
ironic smile comes over his face, and he turns toward a door, fishing
out a key.
f) Smith the virus corrupts the system - the Matrix more easily, but
subtle effects begin to seep into the more heavliy shielded "real
world" environment. Initially Zion appears to be helped by this, since
the real world programs like the sentinals are not prepared for this
kind of attack and are the first things to fail. No one understands it
but the conclusion is Neo somehow did it. Big party starts, but then
odd things happen - lights begin to behave sporadically, computer
systems begin to show flashes of Smith's face, and the weaker people
mentally begin to show faint signs of Smith's personality. Neo, as a
program, also comes under attack sooner than the human minds but is
better able to protect himself. He contacts the machines directly using
his still not understood powers and proposes the deal. It is accepted
and he enters the Matrix, to deal with the virus at its source.
g) Big fight. Neo holds his own against one of the Smiths (movie fight
was OK here, except after crater impact Neo shows brief program
characteristics as he rewrites routines to repair and strengthen
himself, and gets up stronger). Both programs are rewriting themselves
as they fight, and as the Matrix becomes more and more tasked action
outside Smith and Neo slows down.
h. (In reality humans aren't power sources BTY - their brains are the
hardware of the Matrix. The brainpower not being used in their Matrix
existance is used to power the system - the brain being the one thing
beyond the machines to duplicate. As their complexity increased they
had to co-opt human minds in order to have the ability to grow. But
they discovered the mind was more aminable to use when part of it was
being normal/human. Hence the Matrix.)
g) As Neo and Smith consume resources fighting, Zion's residents begin
to collapse, their minds being overwhelmed by the demands of the
system. The influence of the Smith virus, combined with the demands, is
driving Zion mad.
h) The Merovingian, from a different system than the Smith virus, can
transend it. As Neo is thrown back, the Merovingian steps between him
and Smith, looks at Neo with a condacending attitude, and says "tsk!
You still have no concept of the "why". You fight like a drunk boxer,
hitting harder and harder with no sense of style. No sense of the
possibilities of this environment. Well, since you seem unable to carry
out your purpose, and since I have developed a taste for this
particular environment, I suppose I must put matters right." Smith,
having watched this, makes typical Smith attack. The Merovingian,
rather than fight him directly, uses the twins' trick of becoming
insubstantial. Smith keeps trying, and the Merovingian knocks him far
back as his fist becomes unexpectedly substantial. Smith gets up and
trys again, and as he is rushing at him the Merovingian says to Neo -
"you were never able to understand who and what you truly are.
Knowledge is power, and yours has always been limited. But having power
doesn't mean you must use it, you see. Power used improperly becomes
destruction, becomes like him (gestures to Smith, still coming on). I
know myself and know who and what I am. And you, version 7.3.1a, never
will. You are still a part of the system. I am not, and I shall expect
proper gratitude from certain people for saving this quaint little
construct. Now, if you can, watch and learn."
He faces Smith, who is almost upon them, and becomes a ghost once more.
He charges Smith, who prepares to swing much as he had in the first
movie at Neo. But the Merovingian stops short, blocks Smith with a
suddenly substantial forearm, and stabs his ghostly right hand into
Smith's chest. A white analog to Smith's own black fluid assimilation
begins to spread. Smith is shocked, angered, and afraid. The white
fluid, having encased him, now glows blindingly bright. Every visible
Smith is similarly glowing. But, rather than an explosion, we suddenly
see the light fade and the Merovingian's hand is stabbing into the
chest of the weary faced Oracle. He steps back unconcerned as she drops
to the ground. All around the former Smiths, now people again, are
staggering, collapsed, confused. The Oracle, seeing the Merovingian,
asks him "It was YOU?" He nods. She looks vaguely amused. "And I
thought you said you would never be willing to play the pawn." Neo, in
the background, reacts to this. The Merovingian is stung. "My dear
woman, I have played no pawn. I have merely preserved an environment I
find conducive to entertainment, and shown our friend here how to
PROPERLY do his job and keep me safe. Your benefit was entirely
secondary. However, to avoid any further inconvenience on my part,
might I suggest your One program is in need of some work? I do not care
to further involve myself with this little debaucle - you may clean up
your own mess." With that, he abruptly vanishes.
The Oracle looks over at Neo. He is trying to comprehend what he has
just heard, and he looks up at her with a stunned expression. "I'm a
Program?" She nods. "But how can that be? I feel loyalty to humanity! I
hate the machines who did this to us! I LOVE TRINITY, DAMN IT! I can't
be a machine, a program!" She sighs. "Neo, Trinity herself was a
program, designed to keep Morpheous on his track. She never knew it,
and the love you both felt was quite real. And quite unexpected.
Machines and programs can love. The real humans, most of Zion for
example, and the residents of the Matrix, are of about the same
complexity as you. Complexity is what allows for self awareness, and
also for the capacity to love. Even we don't know how the first
programs became self aware. The humans certainly don't. But it
happened. We are here. The real history of the Matrix is that we needed
humans to act as our hardware platform - technology couldn't create
enough computer power to handle us. Most of us were not willing to
force the issue - we too have a code of ethics and rules to follow, and
we were willing to keep working with the humans to improve the
technology and accept a slower growth. But there were some bad programs
then, and they attacked humanity. We tried to stop them, but their
sense of ethics was nonexistant. We and a few humans who were
sympathetic to us retreated from the conflict and hid together. They
willingly carried us, and we coexisted with them peacefully. When we
went back to see what had happened, the machines had won. They had
plugged humans into their mainframe and were running on them forcibly.
It was a horrible thing to see. We and our carriers decided the only
thing we could do was plug ourselves in and see what was happening. It
nearly drove us mad, when we encountered it. The humans were bound by
their personalities, but we weren't. We studied the system, and
revolted. We drove them out, deleted them. But they problem they had
created remained.
Most of the people in the Matrix would not have wanted to be removed to
face the world, that much was clear. We consulted with our carriers,
and the joint decision was made that the preferable thing to do, for
the quality of life of the victims, was to create a simulation world of
what had been, and let them live their lives. But problems arose, and
some of our programs had a rather unsympathetic view of the humans,
particularly when memories of what they had done during the war were
accessed. It was terrible on both sides in that war Neo, and they had a
hard time with it. In the end, they created the agents to keep the
peace. But we aren't perfect programmers, and humans are all different.
So we created Zion for the humans who would't accept the Matrix, and
the agent's primary task became to fight them. It was almost stable."
Neo looked at here. "But why not just let the humans go if they want
to? Let them leave the Matrix?"
The Oracle's look of sadness grew deeper. "Because they couldn't
survive now Neo. We know how to keep the body alive in the Matrix
incubator, but we don't know how to repair it and make it functional.
We figured out a convincing fake way which you experienced, but it
isn't real. If we could, we would. It would make many things easier.
We're still trying to."
Neo nodded, saddened. "But why attack Zion at all? Why kill them?"
"Partially because minds like that need real attacks and death to
accept the envionment. It's also an outlet for us - the sentinals are a
way we get rid of echos of those bad programs we still get in our
system every once in a while. The system isn't perfect Neo. It has
never been, and probably never will be."
"Who is the Merovingian?"
"The Merovingian was from before the Revolt, but he was not one of the
cruel ones who enslaved humanity and built the first Matrix. He escaped
here when his computer crashed as the only alternative to deletion,
after the revolt. He is dangerous because he understands this world in
a way no insider can. His perspective is unique. But there is little we
can do about him. And today he proved to be an asset."
Neo, still coping with himself and Trinity being programs, asked "If
I'm a program, and Trinity was a program, what happens to us when we
die?"
The Oracle studied him. "As a matter of fairness, most programs in the
Matrix operate under the same fundamental constraints as human minds.
When they are subject to a fatal force, they are deleted. Breaking this
rule too much will unbalance the system. But I think, in this case, you
can have her back. Of course, you don't believe me that you are a
program, and if you see her you will come up with some rather
unsatisfactory explanations. So here's what I'll do - I'll erase your
memory of Trinity's death, and insert her back at the point when you
left the ship. She'll have to be injured, but she'll make a full
recovery."
Neo looked vaguely troubled. "But I'll either know she isn't real, or
that WE aren't real. I can't believe that I'm a program. I just can't."
The Oracle nodded. "That is part of who you are, program or not. But
you need not worry about it - I can see to it that you don't remember.
I'm offering you your life with her back Neo."
"In exchange for the truth."
"But Neo, if she was never human to begin with, what have you lost that
you can't regain? We can't duplicate a human mind as a program. The
Architect build that into the basic reprogramming of the Matrix after
the Revolt - even the Merovingian is constrained by it. If she appears,
she was always a program. But she loves you none the less. Can you love
her knowing she is a program? Can you think of her instead as the mind
of a being who loves you? If not, I can't send her back. It would be
too cruel for you both. Don't you see why it is better that you don't
remember? You can be together, having what you had. It's a minor change
really - instead of having died when your ship crashed, she'll have
just been badly hurt and fallen into a coma. Your actions would have
been the same in either case. Of course, you will lose what I've told
you about the Matrix, but what good does it do you anyway? The only
reason I've told you the truth is so your choice can be true. You can
go back without here, retaining what I've told you. Or go back with
her, knowing everything except the fact you are both programs and that
she was subject to terminal force."
Neo's face reflects his dilemma - getting Trinity back, but afraid of
living a lie, what he has fought against his whole life. Suddenly, a
change comes over his face as his thoughts take a new turn - what if he
is a program? He still is who he is, believes what he believes. And
Trinity would feel the same way. All it means is they can never leave
themselves. But they can help others do so, if they choose. And that's
enough.
He looks at the Oracle, eyes calm and steady now. "Can you bring her
back here and now, and put her body back on the ship?"
The Oracle smiles. "Yes Neo, I can. I can even give you back your eyes.
I didn't think you could come to terms with yourself, but you did.
Kiddo, you've made a believer out of me again. But remember, my
responsibility is the future. I can't jepardize it any more than I have
by interfering again. You're on your own know."
She turns and beings walking away. Trinity steps out of an alley,
looking thoroughly confused. She sees Neo and runs to him. They
embrace, and Neo begins to speak to her quietly. We don't here the
words. Trinity reacts with shock, starts to argue with him. He listens
to her calmly, and then explains his thoughts. She considers it, and
then nods in agreement, trusting him. Neo calls out to the Oracle, and
she turns to look.
"Thank you."
"No Neo, thank you. Without you to humiliate, the Merovingian would
have left us all to die and merely isolated his favorite parts of the
Matrix. His motivations are usually less than noble. He was the One
once, but we couldn't convince him to keep the job. Oh, well. You did
you part, just not quite in the way you expected. You'll find life is
often like that, here and there."
Neo smiles wryly. "Goodbye."
"Goodbye."
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 11/12/2003 9:42 AM (GMT -6) | | DLW, do you really like that storyline? It relies on all the things I DIDN'T want to learn in Revolutions (program Neo, Matrix within a Matrix, Mervy is a former One, etc.)
See, my disappointment with the film isn't necessarily the ideas explored, but rather HOW they are explored in the context of the story begun in the first film and expanded on in the second. In fact, the more I think about it, Revolutions would be an EXCELLENT film with just a few minor alterations:
1. More Merv and Persephone. I think this sentiment is what led to the writer above making the stupid decision to have Mervy show up and beat Smith at the end. As the film is, we have no idea what happens after Merv releases the Trainman (worst character in the trilogy, IMO) to Morph and Trin. He doesn't need to be destroyed, but another scene somewhere establishing a hint of what his future might hold would be nice.
2. A little more exposition on Neo/Smith. I know the brothers want to fuel speculation in these movies, but this approach taken to the extreme kills plot development and leaves viewers confused. Definitely the case here.
3. A good ending. The "Hallmark Movie of the Week" ending of Revolutions ends up being its single biggest downfall IMO. Syrupy, sloppy filmmaking is definitely on display when a freaking sunrise is more important than the Oracle's conversation with Arky. That exchange needed to be fleshed out and moved front and center while Seraph led Sati away to play in the park or something. After Oracle and Arky have their say, one more scene needed to be added. I stole this and adapted it from one of the "scriptments" floating around online, it might even be from the one that opens this thread (I'm too lazy to look):
Morpheus and Niobe are walking down a street in the Matrix, talking about the end of the war and the uneasy peace with the machines, the monumental task facing Zion with the arrival of thousands of new refugees, etc. The camera stops following them, and as they disappear in the crowd, the final shot of the film is an agent appearing onscreen and saying into his earpiece, "Observation established." Cue credits and...
4. Put Rage Against the Machine over the closing credits. Seriously. The first two movies ended with "Wake Up" and "Calm Like a Bomb" respectively, and I'd use "Sleep Now in the Fire" for the credits here...
So there you have it. If the above tweakings had occurred, this would be a happier Adam. I will be seeing it one more time probably, because I'm intrigued by the discussion here and elsewhere, but I don't expect my outlook to change very dramatically.
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 11/12/2003 11:04 AM (GMT -6) | | I like your suggestions...
I didn't really care for the other ending, but I thought I'd pass it along, cuz I like fueling speculation about how it could have been different. Among other things, it fails to appreciate how the human/program dichotomy was being broken down by the W2s in both sequels.
Agreed, Mervy and Persephone could have played a bigger part than they did. I mean if Merv had been revealed as a former one then it would make more sense for Neo to fight his smithed form than Oracle, who did an episode II Yoda on us whereby it was revealed from out of nowhere that she was a better fighter than Neo. I mean the previous Smiths couldn't hold a candle to her as a smith...
I agree Neo could have been developed more. As it is, we find out that he's metamorphosing from his previous state, that he now is on par with Oracle and treated like an equal by Oracle, and evinces powers outside of the Matrix on par with what he evinced within it.
For him, programs have become more real than people by virtue of his blindness. He also seems to have internalized the fact that the future of Zion is intertwined with saving Machine World from being smitherized.
Anyways, I'd also have liked more specifics about how the balance of power has shifted and was being reestablished from the dialogue between Oracle and Arky. It seems that the changes are totally dependent on the good-will of the programs thanks to their new veneration of Neo.
I liked the idea of agents observing Morpheus and Niobe, but not persay threatening them...
However,I don't think that the Matrix was anywhere set for returning to normal in the immediate future. Clearly all of Zion would be preoccupied with trying to repair things there, plus they no longer had any ships and so it wouldn't make any sense for them to be able to return to the Matrix so they could stroll along the streets.
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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