So, why was Smith blocking the way to the Source at the end? I mean what was he doing there? How did he get a key into there?
KGS, I beleive Aliyiah’s part was rpelaced by Jada Pinkett-Smith. She was definitely supposed to have more of an action role in it than the seductive master of the Werwolves/Vampires/Ghost cult.
Kalt,read the replies before you posted as we discussed this sorta thing already…although with you it seems to have struck a nerve of some sort…if not, sorry for jumping to conclusions…Your theory of the interbreeding is the same one however that happened in the Time Machne (2001 version) Basically in the far future, the human race mixed so much it became one (again…) It might also have a Genesis chp 1/Genesis Chp 2 type thing going where one line of people came about independently of another type (if you consider Genesis chp 1 and 2 two different creation stories…)
One things, for sure,Stormfront.org will give the movie two Swastiks down…or something like that 
Hey, you read my mind TigoleBitties! When they met Moroviagan for the first time, I thought he said something that hinted towards that he was a previous ‘One’.
Oh and for everyone who thinks that Zion is destroyed when Smith/Bane pops up, check out the trailer for Revolutions. It’s got some sentinal-on-mech action on the causeway at the Zion entrance.
Mahaloth: “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).”
What character did Ian Bliss play in Farscape? I caught Paul Goddard right away. A lot of the filming was done in Australia so I’m not surprised to see some of my favs appearing here and there.
astro:“I wonder how they chose the look for the architect. Hasn’t the notion of supreme being as an older man in a natty three piece Colonel Sandersesque white suit been a little overdone in movies at this point.”
I didn’t get that at all. The moment I saw him I felt like someone somewhere, really screwed up & knocked the movie down a few pegs. It would have been cool if Tim Curry or Eddie Murphy or pretty much anybody had been the architect but that guy, dressed as he was.
Mahaloth:“Someone else said they saw George H.W. Bush, which would make more sense since GWB wasn’t President in 1999/2000.”
The first Matrix movie took place in the far future, but to “us” appears as the present day. But wouldn’t the Matrix be free to make whatever little changes it wants? It’s not like there are any unplugged dopers there that can check the facts & demand a cite, right? I don’t see how the Matrix people could even resemble our present day at all since they’re using humans living then, not now. I’m surprised they’d use anyone living today in the movie, unless that person is a program fullfilling some important historical role in their “present day,” just to keep a sort of continuity going.
watsonwil: “Where do babies come from? Before you explain the Birds and the Bees , let me clarify. When someone new is born in the Matrix, who is controlling that? Is it AI or are they breeding humans in captivity?”
My understanding is humans are farmed. Not sure if they grow babies in test tubes or artificially inseminate the women. But the women must be led to believe they are pregnant, give birth & raise kids. The kids themselves must be plugged in at “birth” and just grow up within the Matrix right along side mom, dad or whomever.
soulmurk: “How, with 23 (or 24) people, does society proceed and advance without becoming inbred and mutated? How, unless the selection of people is made based on practicality rather than personal loyalty, does 23 (or 24) continue society whose survival is based on machines most people don’t know how to operate never mind fix? Do they just start over a la Neanderthals?”
I figure those 23 people are just enough so they can steal some tech & start freeing more people from the Matrix, otherwise they would be hopelessly inbred, right? But don’t ask me how humans get so far down beneath the Earth’s surface, or why the Sentinals have to bore their way down to attack Zion. Aren’t there already passageways big enough to fit hovercraft through? But I guess the machines built Zion anyway & the whole attack is just a recurring game.
Slindorff: “One thing that keeps occurring to me as I read throush these threads: how much of these open issues were really planned out by the Brothers? What I mean is, are we seeking depth that they didn’t even think of?”
I’m certain you’re right. The Brothers threw a couple interesting buckets of paint on the canvas & we’re reading all sorts of things into it. Fun tho, isn’t it?
DEVA: “Regarding the use of so may black actors: I read a review that stated that the biggest fan-base of this movie are teenagers. Teenagers feel that black people represent the “coolest” people of society and gave the movie more appeal. I’ll try to find the cite.”
Probably. I’m not addressing this to you so much as everyone else who has talked about how black the movie is opposed to white, or more specifically how black Zion seemed to be. Huh? Zion didn’t look that black to me. It was a little of everyone, to the extent they could hire a little of everyone as extras in Australia. Don’t know about you, but I saw lots of Aboriginals, Moaris, etc. Maybe it was the lighting in Zion that gave everyone a generic dark looking skin, but I wouldn’t say it was mostly black. Zion should represent an even percentage of the human populace which would of course not be mostly white. It wouldn’t be mostly black either.
Sagasumono: “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.”
Which theory? Heavens, me? Jesting? Never!
Achernar: “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,”
Hmm, this isn’t important really, but Marcus Chong is an adopted son of Thomas Chong, who is himself half chinese, half white, and I’ve heard Marcus is part white/chinese.
Didjall know Keanu is 25% Hawaiian, 25% Chinese, 50% English?
If you buy the Matrix-within-a-Matrix answer, then the humans as batteries need no longer be the truth. Just a story told to justify Zion’s resistance to the Matrix.
Personally, I do buy the layered Matrix answer. It may be the obvious route, but that doesn’t mean that something can’t be done with it (or not unique, the story being told isn’t really all that original in its particulars, it is just being told well).
It answers many questions.
A) How the architect could coordinate events in the Matrix with events outside the Matrix.
B) How Agent Smith could transfer to the real world (though the “uploading into the human brain” is possible).
C) How the Oracle knew of Neo’s dreams. Though, if she didn’t know if his specifically, but just knew that all the previous Neo’s had them, then it would explain how all the Neo’s had the same dreams.
D) It would explain the moment where the kid brings Neo the spoon from the orphan. The orphan is telling him that “still, there is no spoon.”
E) It explains how Neo was able to stop the drones (and if that was actually an EMP blast from the ship, it explains how Neo was able to sense them).
F) It could explain the coma. If Neo woke up in the next layer out and unplugged, it might appear as a coma to the others. Was it ever shown in the first movie, how the humans in the Matrix interpreted the unplugging of a person? Did they just disappear, or did they appear to die (note, when the crew of the third ship explodes (presumably unplugging them), the crew didn’t disappear inside the Matrix, they just died).
G) It would explain how people in the real world could be the solution to instability in the software world.
H) It would explain how Zion was even possible. Even if there was a Neo prime would could see through the Matrix, and wake up in the real world. He wouldn’t have had the technology to re-enter the Matrix to awaken others.
I don’t think it is necessary to explain either Neo’s resurrection in the first movie, or Trinity’s in this one. The whole idea is that dying in the Matrix kills you in the real world because your brain is convinced.
In the first, Trinity’s kiss was enough to give Neo the willpower to ignore what his brain was telling him. In this one, he didn’t resurrect her, he started manual palpations of her heart. Once it started beating in the Matrix, her brain would have told her heart in the real world to beat.
Also, if human occupy the world Earth in the Matrix and not just a small fraction; and the Architect was being precise when saying 99.9% of people accept the Matrix, then Zion is terribly under-populated. You would expect about 5,000,000 people to reject the Matrix with each generation. And yet there are only 250,000 people in Zion.
*Also, if human occupy the world Earth in the Matrix and not just a small fraction; *
This should more clearly read:
Also, if the entire population of Earth in the Matrix is real humans, and not just a small fraction . . .
Or maybe your attention was missing. Bane and his teammate were in the Matrix, getting a message from the Oracle. His friend travels back with the message but Smith comes in and takes over Bane. When the Smith-copy goes back into Bane’s mind, he takes him over. Later, Bane is shown cutting scratches on his palm with a knife, apparently to see what it feels like. and then almost kills Neo.
Originally posted by Shalamese
Its interesting to not how the issue of humans as batteries was interestingly side-stepped. The response could be construed as either humans as batteries of humans as processors which might make an interesting plot point for the third.
I don’t think it was completely side-stepped. The Architect did say in response to Neo’s statement that “machines couldn’t survive without humans” something to the effect that the machines were prepared to accept a certain level of existence, or something like that.
I took that to mean the brothers have realized their humans as batteries idea was kinda silly & the machines can in fact come up with other sources of energy. Now the Brothers have had to concoct some reason why machines & humans need each other.
That’s your opinion. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because you believe it means it’s true.
You saw Aborigines? Australian Aborigines tend to have very distinctive features and I didn’t spot anyone that looked even vaguely like one. Plenty of men with Maori-style face tattoos though.
A few miscellaneous thoughts:
I caught a snippet of an interview with Monica Bellucci on TV this morning. She describes her character and the husband of her character as vampires, “feeding off emotions”. (Which didn’t make much sense until I saw the movie this arvo. :)) I liked her performance and the French guy’s too.
As was mentioned earlier, the timing of the scene where Niobe and her crew try to disable the power planet is confusing. I was forewarned and was concentrating on the scene, but the editing still confused the heck out of me.
I’m not one for nit-picking CGI scenes, but when Neo was fighting all those Agents Smiths there were several instances where his clothes (chest area) were too shiny and too smooth to be convincing. The overall scene was fun though.
I didn’t like the first 40 minutes or so of the movie. Zion didn’t seem real to me. Too much over-the-top industrial chic. I giggled when I saw the man walking in that big robot suit. Morpheus’s speech to the crowd made my eyes glaze over. Lawrence Fishburne was also unconvincing when he was talking to the other captains.
Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves make a good screen couple. The attraction between them in the first movie wasn’t really worked out, but I liked them together in this one.
Neo fighting the Asian bloke who leads him to the Oracle seemed to be a terribly gratuitous scene. OTOH, I noticed this guy in the trailer to “Revolutions”, so maybe the scene was there to establish some kind of ground for the character.
Was that blonde girl eating the cake (that cake) the same actor as the woman in the red dress from the first movie?
The image of the two trucks crashing into each other on the freeway was astonishingly good.
Oh. I didn’t make the link - everyone who wasn’t the main cast kind of looked alike to me. Especially when they wear black and dark glasses.
Did you? I grinned from ear to ear—I loved it and I can’t wait to see those suits fighting the sentinels in Revolutions.
Neither, according to the IMDB, which lists that Aaliyah was originally cast in the role of Zee, who was played in the film by Nona M. Gaye. I don’t remember exactly which character Zee was, though.
Yeah, all I could think after Morpheus’ speech was… “Welcome to the Rave in the Cave!”
This was the notion I had also (and mentioned – see page 3), and I am increasingly thinking more and more that this is the case. If it does turn out to be a matrix-within-a-matrix (which I didn’t think at first), the spoon then becomes an obvious clue. In fact, this is the main reason/clue that is making me rethink and consider the Zion-is-part-of-a-matrix angle.
Very interesting tidbit regarding Aaliyah’s intended role as Zee (played by Nona Gaye). Zee is the woman that played Link’s wife. I mistakenly thought that Aaliyah was also to play Niobe.
The musings in this thread are awesome and compelling me to drag my husband out to see it a second time.
As for you few who have expressed a dislike for the film and not discussed the plot…wrong thread. Go start your own “Why Reloaded sux” thread and let the rest of us continue to amuse ourselves with the depth of our Matrix knowledge 
As for the number of black people in the film: someone said most accurately a few posts back. It’s not so much that all or even a majority of people in Zion are black. It’s just that a near equitable representation was finally done in a movie and it’s an obvious culture shock for many movie-goers. I truely believe that since Zion was so grimy, everyone looked like someone of color. And a big THANK YOU to whoever pointed out that Keanu is not 100% caucasion.
I am really wondering about the children of the matrix that are saved. This is what I’m thinking: My husband and I have two sons. Well, if a crew in Zion rescues or “unplugs” me from the Matrix then I am naturally going to be like: Where the hell is my family? GO GET THEM TOO! Do my children really exist or are they just programs?
My take on the spoon is that the orphan has budding psychic powers and sent the spoon to Neo in order to save him from Bain / Smith.
Also, the Oracle gave Neo a stick of candy to protect him from a Smith copy operation in the next scene. But maybe that’s just my whacked out theory.
Strangely enough, the Oracle’s red licorice stick seemed to turn into a hot tamale like “red pill” when she put it up to her face.
Here’s a notion regarding Agent Smith/Bane, and why he cut himself. He needed “physical” contact in the Matrix (or at least the Matrix that has been presented to us as “The Matrix”) to virally replicate himself. Perhaps he figured that cutting himself would allow him to replicate himself in Zion (by shoving his hand in a wound to mingle blood with the victim). It’s probably a long shot, but maybe it’s the way Smith has gotten used to operating.
Sometimes I wonder if people watch the same movie I do:
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There is no Matrix within a Matrix. Zion is a real city, it is the only way the plot makes any sense. The fact that Neo was able to stop the sentinels means something very very different. I don’t think it was mere coincidence that Agent Smith was found in the same state as Neo. It might mean he has the same ability in the real world as Neo does.
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Agent Smith was definetly the strange guy in the real world. How anyone missed this is unexplainable to me.
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He (agent Smith -real world) cut himself because he was never able to feel pain (to bleed) in the matrix. Remember that bleeeding in the matrix is something only humans did. This was a new senstation to him. Nothing more, nothing less.
I can offer a practical reason why the dancers appeared to be almost all black. In the credits a dance troup is credited as the dancers from that scene. So they dancers appear black because the dance troup they got to do the scene is a black dance troup.
Naturally, I meant the Merovingian’s mansion, not the Architect’s mansion. Apart from that, I screened it again last night and the mosaic actually depicts three swordsmen in a sort of symmetrical arrangement, all attacking. So… …never mind.
I thought that the spoon was the directors’ way of saying “Sometimes there IS a spoon”, i. e. that there IS a “real world” that is not simply another Matrix.
Hahah, it would have been funny if the orphan had sent him a fork and a knife instead.