It isn’t the main problem, but I wonder about Jake’s surviving human allies. The voiceover tells us that “only a few [humans] were allowed to remain.” By my count, this consists of precisely 2 people: the Indian guy, and that other avatar guy (whose avatar died in the final battle). All of Jake’s other human allies are dead by the end of the movie.
OK, these guys get to stay behind, because they’ll be considered traitors if they return to Earth. Then what? Humans can’t breath the air on that planet, so they’ll be stuck wandering around the base, alone. Jake might come to visit occasionally, but he’ll presumaby spend most of his time with the Navi.
It sounds like those two guys have nothing but crushing loneliness to look forward to. Like being the last survivors in some kind of post-apocalyptic calamity.
The Matrix Revolutions is Exhibit A for this issue. The machines aren’t defeated or stripped of power, they just change their minds about eradicating the final remnants of humanity in Zion at the last minute, and everyone starts celebrating that “the war is over.” It’s not even said that the Matrix itself is going to be shut down, or that the machines will stop harvesting humans for energy! :smack:
Basically, if the machines decide to come back tomorrow and finish the job, humanity is still completely fucked. Ugh.
Precious: Yeah, she’s liberated from her abusive mother. But she’s a teenage single mother of two, one with downs syndrome. In the ghetto with minimal education.
Ferris Bueller: Granted, it’s a secondary plot line, but I see no way Cameron’s confrontation with his father ends well.
I never got that early death for Charlie Gordon was likely to be a consequence of the regression after the Nemur-Strauss process failed. Algernon died because he was a mouse. Charlie was just going to leave town and find another village that needed a new idiot.
The fact that the Algernon-Gordon affect led to the inevitable death of the first test subject indicates that Charley Gordon’s problems will eventually be solved by terminal neurological deterioration.
I doubt the OP intended to include tragedies or dystopias in this category. These are stories that, almost by definition, leaves a central problem unsolved, not by oversight but by design. Colossus: The Forbin Project is a dystopia, as is Soylent Green. Paths of Glory is a tragedy, as is Charley.
I dunno, that seems like saying you don’t need to retrieve a bunch of plutonium from the terrorist guys because the first group opened the box and became ill. Hitler presumably knew he had a submarine base there and the submarine presumably was in radio contact – someone from Nazi HQ would have come by and eventually more intelligent minds could have figured out not to open the box (according to the movie/Bible, armies were invincible just for having it; touching it was forbidden). If anything, THAT would have met the OP’s request. Having it lost in a warehouse was at least it lost among the good guys.
I love Robot Jox, and the feel-good ending where Achilles and Alexander reach the realization that they are both “dead men” and decide to halt their aggressions as the Frederic Talgorn-written score rises in the background makes you wanna stand up and cheer.
But the Market and the Confederation will still have their differences. We’ll still be in this bleak “one match away from losing Alaska” situation, won’t we?
It’s funny… Joe Haldeman, author of The Forever War, wrote the screenplay for Robot Jox, and he was trying to paint a pretty depressing scene where Achilles is the Market’s last hope. The air is filthy, and the remaining human population is so desperate that the government will give you a bigger apartment to live in if you help repopulate by having more children.
Meanwhile, director Stuart Gordon is on the set claiming, “No, no … we just want to make a fun movie where the kids can see the giant robots duke it out!”
The survivors formed R-S squares and methodically shot the zombies in their heads as they approached. Geez, Cal, don’t you know anything?
Oh. OK, I assumed Sr Siete was taking a shot at people who only enjoyed the cinematic beauty of this film (it is great, isn’t it?) and had not read the book it was based on, which does actually involve an alien invasion of sorts.
True, but then again, you could argue that if we were willing to finally make peace that the machines might as well. After all, originally the inhabitants of 01 were willing to live side-by-side with Humanity.
The whole theme of that story and movie is ambiguity and paranoia and that ending fit perfectly. I love this movie BECAUSE of the dark ambiguous ending. Ok, not JUST because. I loved it for a lot of reasons, but the ending is certainly one of them.
It doesn’t matter if he dies or not. The arc of the story is such that he is back to where he started - which makes it a tragedy.
The problem of whether they can increase intelligence is solved - the answer is no.
Might as well say the problem in Hamlet isn’t resolved since the hero is dead.
To give an example from a Broadway musical, in Kinky Boots they to to Milan to a shoe show, and at the last minute they put on a great dance celebrating the shoes.
Whether they actually get any orders for the shoes is not mentioned. Kind of a big hole.
Silver Linings Playbook - At the end of the movie Pat, Sr. gets out of debt by winning his bet on the dance contest. The problem is that this won’t solve his money problems: since he’s an unreformed gambling addict, he’ll turn right around and get himself in trouble again. His problem isn’t really money - his problem is his addiction.
If we go by sequels the Louisville outbreak was not only contained, but successfully covered up. Despite being nigh-indestructible the zombies in the RotLD series are containable. The cause is a chemical, not a biological pathogen or Divine wrath. They don’t produce more 2-4-5 Trioxin in their bodies, electrocution kills them, and cremation works as long as crematorium has the right filter.
You must’ve missed some stuff. The Machines promised to let the Zionists tell people that they were in the Matrix and to allow them the choice to leave (as revealed when the Architect talks to the Oracle at the end). And the Machines didn’t “change their minds at the last moment,” Neo negotiated a peace with them. He would help them (by fighting Smith) if they would stop attacking his people.
The ending has Zion allowed to exist for those who want it, but anyone who would rather stay in the Matrix (which, BTW, is most of humanity) still gets to stay.
The only thing I was worried about was creating a bunch of Ciphers. A lot of people would rather not know they had a choice at all. Yet the Machines do not appear to be able to rewrite memories–at most, they can make something seem like a dream.
So I do see further conflict as more people find out about the Matrix. But there was a definite win here. No, it’s not impossible it’s all an elaborate lie–if not for us seeing the discussion between the Oracle and the Architect at the end. But we did, so humanity won.
Well, yes, but that’s the point of the book. It’s a tragedy. He becomes an asshole as he gets smarter and smarter, and gets karmic retribution when it gets taken away from him. Man should not be so careless in trying to thwart nature. We are not ready for someone as smart as Charley becomes.
The book clearly set up Charley for a fall from the beginning. There was no other way the story could have been carried out. That’s not the same as what the OP is asking for. The OP is “happy ending that isn’t as happy as it seems.”
What you describe was the state of circumstances in the Matrix Online MMO… both Zion and the Matrix continue largely unchanged, but there’s no more active warfare between the Mainframe and Zion. Instead, it’s degenerated into a multi-faction cold war.
As I understand, the game was considered canonical in extending the movies, so in that sense, all the plot lines were wrapped up by continuing them in the game.
