Sorry, I should’ve previewed. Great minds and all that…
You guys are right: I forgot about the three he fought during the meeting. My bad.
Actually, he did fight 3 agents immeadiately prior to the fight with Smith, didn’t he?
The ones that knocked on the door.
What, you mean besides the three that broke the metal door down?
Woops. Forgot to refresh before I posted. Whee.
On second thought, maybe I should press the “refresh” key occasionally…
Regarding the multiple Smiths fight scene, people are commenting that the CGI characters didn’t look real.
I was under the impression that they filmed the actors doing all of the things scene in the film and then digitally spliced all the various instances into one scene.
But everyone seems to be saying it was just pure animation, from start to finish. Is that the case?
I won’t delve into whether or not Zion is another matrix or not, as that is another matter entirely, but what was your impression at the end of the movie? I got that the counter-attack at the upper levels away from Zion had failed and the survivor was the cypher-looking agent smith guy. A friend of mine is convinced that Zion already fell and that smith was the only survivor. I’m strongly leaning towards myself, as Neo mentined a 24-hour countdown to destruction.
Also, did anyone catch the french insult? I don’t know much french, but what I caught was “Our…mother…duck…”, not even sure if those are right. I’d appreciate help on both of these topics.
Yes. They took photographs and 3D scans of the actors’ faces, then merged them onto CG bodies.
I posted a link to a Wired article that explained the technique (which I found on Slashdot) in another thread before the movie came out.
In the last scene, didn’t the crew of the Lobos (?) mention that Zion had fell? I took it that they returned to Zion and everyone was dead- except for Human-Smith, who was in a coma. They took him aboard the ship and then took off from Zion to get Neo and crew (after the Nebuchadnezzar explodes). The movie ends with a shot of Human-Smith, on board, in the real/maybe fake world, and Neo in a coma.
I took it that Zion/“real world” and the matrix were really just two separate matricies- like they were each a partition of one hard drive. For example, Smith could get to the Zion-world, but the technology in Zion wasn’t compatible so he had to get a new “skin”. Maybe I’m thinking too video game here, but I don’t think the matrix HAS to be actually inside of the Zion-world.
Bah, my brain hurts.
Regarding Agent Smith’s Burly Brawl scene, from the Matrix production notes at the Rottentomatoes website:
“Hugo had a lot of injuries on the first one, and in this one he came back and really, really pushed himself in training,” says martial arts stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski. “When you see the scenes, you’ve got to remember that it’s the real Hugo mixed in with twelve of the best martial arts stunt guys around, and he’s holding his own.”
And then: "All of the stunt Smiths had to undergo the process of transforming themselves into replicas of the deadpan Agent as played by Weaving. “They all wanted to ape me, and I kept saying, ‘No, no, no, I’m the one who looks useless, I wanna look like you,’” recalls Weaving. “But they needed to learn to move in the way that I do and to have a sort of Smithian quality about them. He’s not particularly graceful, he’s fairly brutal.”
So the Burly Brawl scene was heavily CGI, but not entirely.
As for Agent Smith finding his way to Zion, sadly I was in the restroom when he pulled that off. But it makes perfect sense to me that an autonomous self-aware program as sophisticated as Smith having directly interfaced with Neo should be able to copy his program into a human brain through the same interface with the Matrix that humans use. As an Agent, he had the ability to take over any human anywhere in the matrix, as long as they were plugged in.
How Neo stopped the Sentinals is a little harder to explain away but I’m thinking his intimate understanding of how the matrix is constructed & works, and therefore intimate understanding of how the machines think, could have “wirelessly” pushed through a stop command. Remember Smith giving Neo his old earplug? I dunno, maybe Neo is now wireless. The coma is just a temporary side effect of the human brain forcing itself to do something human brains have never done before.
Can someone refresh my memory about Oracle? Was she a program designed to explore the concept of hope or was it probability? If her specialty is probability, then it makes sense to me she could reasonably divine Neo’s dreams, etc. She’s been predicting human thoughts & behavior for how long? Long enough to be one of the original programs & the “mother” of the Matrix. She never seems to know exactly what’s going happen, except when it’s not really important (i.e. the vase in the first movie).
Anyway, I tend to think Zion is probably real, but I almost wish it weren’t. Too Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome for me. I kept expecting Tina Turner to jump out somewhere.
I saw this this afternoon. Whee! Some thoughts:
I’m pretty sure that the “survivor” (Smith in another guy’s body) was from the group of ships around the place they planned to attack the sentinels. Smith likely set off the EMP early to disable the ships, and the Sentinels massacred everybody in that battle group. If that’s so, we have no reason to believe Zion’s already fallen.
Why did Smith survive? Do the Sentinels, and thus the rest of the machines, know that he’s on their side? Then why do other Agents act surprised to see him (“You!?” “Yes, me.”)?
If Smith hates the smell of life inside the Matrix, he must have really been in Hell during his stay in Zion.
Two points that haven’t been covered already: If the new Agents have “upgrades,” why aren’t they a lot more difficult to beat? I’ll let Neo’s fight with three go because he’s, well, he’s Neo. But Smith wiped the floor with Morpheus in the first movie, and on the truck Morpheus pretty much holds his own against the upgraded Agent for quite a while. Why not just take over the body of the driver of the truck and jackknife it (like with the other truck), spilling Morpheus and the Keymaker onto the freeway? Eventually he did take over the driver (after Morphy knocks him off the truck), but he could have just cranked that sucker over and got it done a lot sooner without the fight.
During the Smith melee, there was a point where Neo jumps up and I’d swear that the CG model looks a lot more like French Stewart than Keanu Reeves. That was funny.
Two words:
Dramatic suspense.
Smith is now in exile and not on anyone’s side but his own. I think in the third movie he’s going to be as big a pain in the ass to the Matrix as to Neo & crew.
I’m sure he’s not fond of the smell, but he gained some humanity from his encounter with Neo so he’s probably adjusting, fast.
I thought of that too. My rationale: The Matrix is fake. Based loosely on the laws of physics, but still fake. The agents & unplugged humans can bend the rules a bit. Originally the Agents could bend the rules more. Humans were taught that Agents were pretty invincible, and to run from them. After seeing Neo wake up & bend the rules even further than the Agents could, they must have gained some confidence and maybe the imagination required to bend the rules further. So, they could last longer against them, even with their upgrades.
What gets me still is what’s so special about Neo? Once anyone wakes up & realizes the Matrix is fake & can be manipulated then why can’t anyone do what Neo does? Morpheus always had more presence & discipline of mind anyway, and Trinity was a legendary hacker.
So, did anyone else notice amidst all the chaos of the big car chase scene that one of the cop cars was 1-Adam-12?
I found that highly amusing.
You were correct and your friend was wrong. Bane (the guy taken over by Smith) was the only survivor of the ships that were destroyed in the preemptive attack on the Sentinels. Zion still exists, for now.
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I thought the Oracle was only aware of Neo’s dreams because the previous “One’s” have had dreams as well.
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The Oracle is the mother in the sense that she guides the .01% of people who do not accept the Matrix along the course that will lead them to finding “the One”, then guides the One along the course to rebooting the Matrix.
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Neo chose to save Trinity, thus killing everyone permanently. The architecht even says, “Trinity will die. It is only a matter of how and when.” Well, he says something close to it. Neo chose to take his chances, save Trinity, and lead a real revolution against the machines outside the Matrix.
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Smith took over the guy’s body, but only because he “smithed” him in the Matrix. It’s basicaly electronic take-over of the mind. The connection worked because the computers recognized the body coming through the wire as the real guy, who was already “smithed”.
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I’m pushing the “Zion is real” angle. How he stopped the sentinels is beyond me. Something to do with his connection to the Matrix or something.
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Out of curiousity, for those of you that didn’t catch on that Smith had overtaken that one guy in the real world, did you even realize the cliffhanger ending was a cliffhanger? That was Smith on the table by Neo.
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I believe that the Oracle will be played by a man in Revolutions. I heard this somewhere reliable, but can’t remember where.
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As for the ending of Revoultions, At E3, the video game “Matrix Online” was debuted. The people at the booth told the audience that it takes place after Revolutions, with the Matrix still in tact. Perhaps Neo uses the Matrix for his own purposes, but keeps it running.
Oh, and I’d like to point out another interesting side point.
Ian Bliss, who played Bane/Smith, was in an episode of Farscape. Paul Goddard, who played an Agent in the first Matrix, was also in Farscape(he played Stark).
By the way, what is the logic to hiring two new Agents to be the “non-Smith” agents? Why didn’t they bring back the two guys who ran away at the end of the first one?
I saw an interview with Paul Goddard where he was asked if he was giong to be in the second and third Matrix. He said he was willing to do it, but they didn’t bring his or the other Agents character back.
WTF?
The “story” reason is probably that the old Agents were the same version Smith was and since Neo can dispatch them with ease, they were terminated and replaed with the upgraded agents.
The “real world” reason is beyond me. Someone asked for more money maybe?