Plus, there’s an official explanation within the Marvel universe: Cyclops’ eyes are windows to another dimension or something, and the particle beam (or whatever) flows from there, it is not generated by him. The glasses act as shutters, shutting of the continuous flow of this energy.
I know it sounds silly, but Marvel is more fantasy than science fiction, IMHO, and alternate universes pop up a lot throughout their stories. You don’t expect Marvel stories to be realistic.
“The Matrix”, on the other hand, relies on some expectation of reality, or else the story would lose its tension “if anything goes”.
It’s supposed to depict some human future, after all.
But The Matrix isn’t designed to be some fanciful world that never existed, complete with it’s own idiosyncratic laws of physics – it’s a simulation, specifically a simulation of the late '90s. The Matrix emulates gravity and the laws of thermodynamics because those rules are part of the real world – the same real world inhabited by the machines and their human-energy-pods.
No one is complaining that the laws of thermodynamics are being violated inside the simulation. Anything can happen inside the simulation, because it’s a made up world, and it doesn’t defy the laws of physics.
We’re talking about the real world - all those little capsules that they store humans in - not the simulation. If the motive for that whole setup is humans as power plants, well, that’s just silly.
Yes, but the point was that the machines were using them as power sources. You put a lot more energy into a person in the form of food than you’d ever get out through that electrical signal.
There are some micro-ecosystems on Earth that aren’t solar powered at all. Some bacteria – and the critters that feed on them – live off of the heat and chemicals released from deep-sea volcanic vents. Perhaps the evil Matric comupter guys are feeding all of their unwitting human slaves with volcanic biota.
Of course, then you’d have to ask why the evil Matrix computer guys don’t just use geothermally-powered electric generators to begin with.
That movie, technically-incorrect though it may be, made more money in a year than all of us who have commented, COMBINED, will ever make in our lives.
If someone offered to give YOU the money that “The Matrix” made, on the condition that the Laws of Thermodynamics would be permanently removed from your mind… would you take it?
Right! I made a mistake! I didn’t mean Kzinti, I meant Glig! from Gligstith[click]tcharf!
How do you know you can believe the story that Dorpheus told? Certainly you don’t believe what the agents of the machine said, do you? Are you drinking your PowerAde? On the other hand, maybe he was trying to tell the truth, but didn’t have the words. The words “special electricity” and “catalyst” are metaphoric. Using “aura” would have been worse, no? Or Kirlian Field?
Anyway, hiring a real scientist to make up a believable explanation would have taken away from the special-effects budget, and we couldn’t have that, could we?!?!?