Wow…after reading this thread for over an hour and a half, I must say that I am really impressed with the amount of thought that has gone into attempting to interpret the movies. Naturally I have had many similar questions and many that I had not thought off. Most of the stuff has been covered, so I’m just writing to express my surprise at how smart some people in here are. 
(and the “Caaaan youuuu dig iiiit” comment almost knocked me right out of my chair…im still lauging :P)
I look forward to checking in here and reading mor eabout it
I 110% agree with you. I loved the music and really want the soundtrack.
Dooku – don’t worry. He didn’t really spoil anything from MIB II, plot-wise. That was just a reference to the sort of thing they did at the ending of MIB (the original) – the zoom-out showing our Milky Way as a galaxy inside a shooter in some other alien’s game of marbles. Well, they do the same kind of thing in the sequel, but it’s totally irrelevant to the plot. Nothing really spoiled.
On this one, wow! Lots of interesting theories. Nothing much new to add, myself… Except I will say that I definitely think it was Neo stopping the sentinels, not the other ship – as somebody pointed out on page 1, an EMP would also disable the ship’s systems also for a time (which I believe was mentioned in the original Matrix).
And also want to say – I totally called it on the spoon… When he was handed the package and told “The orphans wanted me to give you this.” Before unwrapping – Monstre: “It’s a spoon!”
Oooh. I wonder if that is an indication or hint that the Zion world is another level of matrix (which I’ve not been leaning towards, in favor of Zion being real). After all, there is no spoon…
Great replies
LevDrakon, presuming you are seiours in your theroy (and not in jest as I have heard oe other say this before, but they meant it joking) it WOULD make a lot of sense now that I think about it.
Mongrel_8 I agree with your points as well.
Nitek:Definitelly. The video game has more classical thunder music,but it throws in a few of the Techno remixes. I’m suprised how many of the main actors they got to be in the game (technically ALL of them) Just got done with one of the scenes involving the Keymaker, gotta watch it again for some of the philosophical stuff.
So who does the keymaker represent?? In the game, he seems to represent Fate,as one point where he saves Niob and Ghost, he says “you time has not come,you must still fufil your purpose…”
Aslo we got to see “Ghost” as represented by the twins, but you did want to see Vampires right?? Get the game…beleive me,theres a VERY cool fight involving Vampires and a wooden stake…
BTW about ghost and vampires existing (since the Matrix was recreated from 1999) those things have been long thought of to exist and their existence has been “documented” (although not proven) right up to our present time (yes 2003, in fact my concerige at my hotel got a call involving someoe seeing a ghost…wasin’t a prank call either)
Can anybody think of a reason why the Architect couldn’t be just throwing Neo a line of BS to get him to give up? If I were a bad guy, and the good guy had me by the balls, I might try something like that.
Neo: “Okay, Architect. Now I’m going to kick your ass.”
Architect: “Umm… but I, uh… I have you right where I want you! Yeah! This happens all the time, see? The only thing for you to do is walk through that door there, and give yourself up. Yup, no need to fight. Really.”
I’ll be seeing the movie again in a week or so, so I’ll try that theory on for size during my second viewing. I don’t know if I buy that’s what the W Brothers have in mind, but it’d be kinda funny if that was what was happening.
Oh, and I definitely think Zion is real, mostly just because I don’t think the brothers W would do something that trite.
Jeff
I’ve only (“only”) seen the movie once, but if my memory serves correct, GWB is wearing the very 1980s “Members Only” gray jacket that he wore a couple days after 9/11 when he went to NYC to give a pep talk to the clean-up/recovery crew.
If so, the implication could be that the “evil reference” is to Al Quaeda/terrorists, and not to GWB.
I could be wrong about the jacket though…
Well, the Zion matrix isn’t something for the general population. I’d imagine a lot of people might have a hard time accepting the harsh world of Zion, and realize something was wrong.
As it is, the population of the Zion matrix is basically self-selecting. The people who can’t accept the regular Matrix are the ones who feel compelled to discover the ‘truth’ and fight back. Those people escape the Matrix, and go to the Zion matrix.
So, it’s a holding cell for a small part of the population who feel comfortable in a life of resistance and fighting. No reason they’d put everyone in there in general - the system, as it is, if it does work that way, is fine.
Here’s my question: how the hell did one of the TV-monitor Keanus not say “Whoa!” in the background? Or did he, and it was too quick to notice?
I just got back from seeing it a second time. ([Cartman]Who want to touch me? I said who wants to touch me!![/Cartman]) I picked up on a lot of things I missed the first time around. To wit: I understand now what Bane was doing in the Matrix to begin with. I also did not catch the first time that the white and shiny Zion Control Room is actually inside the Construct. It’s pretty obvious now that I think about it, but it didn’t occur to me that those holographic displays don’t exist in the real world. It’s interesting how Link can communicate directly with the traffic controller while she’s inside. (And I see she’s listed in the credits as “Zion Virtual Control Operator”. My :smack: is deafening.)
Here are some things I caught that answered questions from this thread, but I apologize that I’m not going to go through and make sure they haven’t been answered yet:
I’m very bad at distinguishing races, but I got the impression that the racial makeup of Zion was representative of humanity as a whole, not heavily black as many have thought. I could be wrong, though.
The kid who loves Neo (What’s his name? Jax?) says that Morpheus has not filled any of the other crew positions yet, and I guess he’s talking about the ones left vacant by Apoc, Switch, Cypher, and Dozer. He says, “he has his reasons”, so I guess nobody knows why but Morpheus.
The Merovingian without a doubt is a program. The Oracle references him as, “A very dangerous program, much older than most of us.” Er, I could have that older part wrong, but she said something like that.
The Oracle talks about programs that go wrong, that don’t do what they’re supposed to. This clearly applies to the Merovingian’s bodyguards, but it also applies to the Keymaker and to Smith. Smith even explains that he was faced with deletion but chose exile into the Matrix instead, like all the others did. I suppose it may also apply to her, Seraph, and the Merovingian as well.
The Keymaker was at the front of the trailer at all times during the fight between Morpheus and the Agent. I didn’t see any shots that should have included him but didn’t.
23 individuals - 16 female, 7 male. I think most people heard this right.
The Architect says that there were five previous Ones, plus they have conquered Zion five previous times. To me, since the One and Zion are results of the imperfect simulations only, that’s a total of seven Matrices - one utopia and six imperfect ones.
I thought at first that the ship that rescues Morpheus, Trinity, Link, and Neo at the end was Niobe’s ship, the Logos. But it’s not. It’s one of the other ships, from Lock’s task force. So, not all the ships were destroyed by the Sentinels. Bane, however, is the lone survivor from the ships that were destroyed.
According to the credits, the clip we saw was from The Brides of Dracula.
I still don’t understand what the Agents were doing at the beginning. I guess they were there to break up the rebel meeting. It’s weird that they showed up right after Smith did, though.
The shot of the trucks exploding is my favorite. With some of the clips from The Matrix Revolutuions trailer, Smith is becoming my favorite character. He covers the entire emotional spectrum, from anger to seriousness to desperation to downright goofiness. But I also really like the Keymaker. The way he nonchalantly takes Morpheus’s hand and swings up onto the trailer. Whee. 
I loved the first one; I hated this one. It was a stupid, stupid movie.
Okay, everyone in Zion is black except the head leader guy? Oh, and “the one” of course. He’s white too. Nice touch. How’d that happen? I’m not making the ‘R-word’ allegation, I just don’t understand this. Is Zion segregated, and they only showed us the “colored” part? Had they all been Jewish it would have made sense… Zion and all.
Oh and GW Bush is on par with Hitler as a horror of mankind? Had they showed John Ashcroft I’d agree… but come on… dubya? Clearly the Wachowskis are bitter hardline democrats. That was just an unnecessary low blow, IMO.
I kept hearing about how great the special effects were in this. The actors turned into CGI cartoon caracters a la “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” whenever something unfilmable happened on screen. Did they really think we wouldn’t notice that? That’s just completely unacceptable for a live-action film. They should have made the whole movie CGI if they just hadda have that fight scene in there. The effects in the first Matrix were more impressive and revolutionary. By a longshot, too. There’s nothing special about turning the actors into CGI characters and making them do crazy, fast flips. Nothing special at all about it.
Two or three of the coming attractions prior to the movie were for plotless, inane movies about “cool” guys doing crazy stuff with shiny, fast cars with loud background (more like foreground) techno and hiphop music. Lots of crashes and 'splosions. Lots of orgies. Yeeeeeaaaahhhh. Fast cars, sex, some fighting, and lots of explosions. That’s all people want nowadays. “More Fast, More Furious” (groan) … That’s all Matrix 2 was.
When I walked out, I didn’t care about the plotline at all, as it seems blatantly obvious to me that they’re just trying to one-up the first one. First one = real world isn’t real – it’s the matrix! Second one = the “real” word in the first one isn’t real – again! That’s just not profound, sorry. No, when I walked out the only thing perplexing me was the question of why Zion is all-black, except for the few important/powerful white guys. And I don’t even care about an answer to that anymore…
Okay, now this has got to be facetious.
Yes. Absolutely everyone in Zion is black. Except Counsellor Hamann and Neo, like you said. Oh yes, and Trinity of course. And Soren and Bane, don’t forget. And, I guess, Councillor Dillard. And Jax and Ice and Tirant and the Zion virtual controller. Anyway, did it ever occur to you that maybe Zion is not located in the United States?
I’m still reading this thread but I wanted to comment on that site, because the documents shown are VERY misleading. For one, Hugo Weaving and Joey Pants are far more “bankable” stars, both have credits outside the Matrix (LOTR & The Sopranos, most recently) – what has M. Chong ever done? Plus, they did NOT recast the character, they wrote him out, so the chart on the “advocate” page is totally pointless. (Compare instead: Terminator #1 vs. #2, First Blood vs. Rambo, etc.)
And how do we know there weren’t any more letters? Chong’s counteroffer didn’t seem that excessive, but clearly by not using an agent (haha) he went against the “rules” of Hollywood. (And what did the movie say about programs which don’t toe the line??)
And how much did Keanu/Fish/Carrie-Anne make anyway? I heard that Keanu took a $3million pay cut to build that life-size freeway set, which probably amounted to 10% of his salary…
Ok about the plot…
Achernar, yeah some of the important guys are white. if you look at the orgy scene, everyone dancing around is black. That’s fine, i have no problem with that whatsoever, I just wanna know why. Sure, it’s not the US, but… they do all speak american english so I assume they’re descended from us americans. I
I guess the only explanation I can think of is that the sole surviving humans (or the 23 selectees?) were not all white (which would probably be the case) and after 200 years, they all just … well… reproduced until everyone is the same color. I suppose a small group of humans living underground would eventually become the same color. No sun though… no need for dark … ahh screw it.
Someone else posted this…and I think he is on to something so I am reposting it
the previous “ones” are not killed…they use the information they get from their data, reconstruct the matrix coding so that they improve it so there isn’t that one percent that rejects the code, thus improving it until all the specimens accept the coding. then, everything is recycled back into the matrix and it all starts another loop in it’s cycle…my theory on this is that all the previous “ones” are still in the matrix…but since there is a new “one” those who were the previous ones have to go into hiding to escape from deletion…that leads me to believe that all the “programs” or people that are in hiding are previous “ones”. i’m not positive on who all these could be except that i believe that the guy who was holding the keymaster was one of those previous ones. just take his speech about choice and the why…same stuff the architect said…and if you take what the chick said about him used to be like neo…but now he’s changed, that makes me believe that he was a possible “one” that got recycled and changed because he has been replaced and now has to escape deletion. this is just a small theory that i’ve been thinking about all day long…haven’t seen his speech again to fully see if this all fits, but as of right now, i think it all does.
the only problem is that i don’t really know who the other four could possibly be.
Plausible…and I think Moroviagan may have been the first “One”.
Wait a minute. That bad guy in the Real World was Smith? How do you know that? Did the version I saw have a reel missing?
Actually, you may be on to something here, I think. Even though you probably don’t feel like thinking about it, I’m going to go into it, if you don’t mind. 
With the exception of Councillor Dillard, all of the non-blacks I mentioned were definitely first-generation real-worlders. On the other hand, Tank, Dozer, Zee, Link’s niece and nephew, and probably Link himself are all black, and all “children of Zion”, that is, born in the real world. The operator on the Valiant was white I think, but operators don’t necessarily have to be children of Zion, do they?
The fact that they speak English is a pretty tenuous association with America, though, I think.
Did anyone else pay attention to the symbolism of numbers & other messages in the background? I always watch for that stuff. For instance, “101” appeared twice, first at the restaurant where they met the Frenchy guy (was that the Merovingian?) then as the freeway they did the chase on (which was shown as Interstate 101 – GRRR there IS no I-101, it’s U.S. 101, yes I know it was clearly meant to be fake but I REALLY hate when maps make that mistake, which is about half the time I think…[/rant mode off]) What does “101” represent? The only thing I can think of is from the novel 1984, in which (and since someone already freaked out about MIB2 I’d better spoiler this):
Winston is brought to Room 101 for the ultimate torture, rats eating off his face, which is his greatest fear and causes him to shout out, “Do it to Julia!!”, thus betraying his one and only love (hmm, a Trinity-Julia parallel, perhaps?)
…which basically represents one’s greatest fear. Dunno how that applies to the restaurant, but Trinity did mention the matrix-freeway as “too dangerous”…and as someone who’s driven U.S. 101 every day of his life for the last 30 years, I can heartily agree!!
And when Neo met the Oracle, I could swear I saw “ONE” in graffiti somewhere. I was pretty stoned, though. Did anyone else see it? And what about that Japanese/Chinese character next to the door Neo came through, what does it mean?
Saw “996” fairly prominent on the motorbike, don’t have a clue what that means…
About vampires/werewolves/etc. – wasn’t Persephone the one who was supposed to be played by Aaliyah? Who was “Queen of the Damned” in her first (and only) movie. Plus that vampire movie on TV when she whacked the “werewolf” guy, made it fairly obvious that she’s supposed to be a vampire.
As for the ending, I really did get the impression that Zion had been destroyed, the Smith-infected guy was the only survivor they found, and they had 24 hours to save the Matrix itself, which they are just now realizing. (Everyone seemed pretty shell-shocked and confused all of a sudden, after Neo’s revelation that the prophecy was a lie and the war was not over.) Maybe I got that wrong, but in the “Revolutions” preview, where Neo & Smith were standing in the rain, did give me the feeling that the Matrix itself was “breaking down”, like a pre-Cambrian volcano blowing up or an asteroid smacking the Earth. I can definitely see the humans & machines working together in the 3rd movie, to save the Matrix they both depend on…probably from Agent Smith, who has GOT to be as big a nuisance to the machines as he is to the humans!
I think that’s exactly what they’re doing. But remember, Monet and Renoir rank right up there with Michelangelo and Da Vinci. So many powerful images get thrown into the mix – from Christ to Buddha, “1984” to “Alice in Wonderland” – that everyone who sees it comes away with a different interpretation. That’s why it gets debated so much, after all!
Same goes for the visual style of the movies, which on the surface is just a hodgepodge of cyberpunk, kung-fu, and the Standard Hollywood Car Chase. It’s the style, how it all gets mixed together, which is enduring.
I didn’t realize those other letters were there. Chong really did need an agent in this case. In his letter he comes across (IMO) as a slightly goofy, not all that literate crank, in over his head and trying to craft his own deal. It’s not hard to understand why the War. Bros. moved on and washed their hands of him after they saw that response letter. Makes me appreciate the value of agents.
I’m amused by people who don’t like the “matrix-within-a-matrix” theory because it’s trite, cliche, etc.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I thought those words perfectly summed up this series of films so far. The theorizing and philosophizing, imho, is ludicrous…there’s just not that much there. It’s the good old free will argument, in the end, and it’s been done much more interestingly. This is simply mediocre sci-fi.