Y’know, if you didn’t find anything worth thinking about in the third movie, couldn’t it be possible that you missed the point?
But it presented it in a way that was accessible to a large audience while providing a captivating landscape for some incredible action sequences. As a “child”, I thought of lots of movie concepts that have gone into effect, but do I hold this against the producers of said films? Nope.
Saw revolutions this evening. I really didn’t expect to like it, having heard so many people voicing their negative opinions(to which they are, of course, wholly entitled) about it, but I was pleasantly surprised - I really enjoyed the film and for me, it was a nice conclusion.
I still think that the first film in the trilogy stands alone and complete and perhaps should have been left that way, but all in all, I think part 3 was better than part 2.
The only bit I found too silly was how long it took Neo to realise that Bane was really Smith.
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He didn’t know, I guess. Or he knew on some level and didn’t want to accept it and wanted to try to fight it out without sacrificing himself.
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He realized it was a message the oracle had somehow forced Smith to express. He then realized what she meant - that he had to sacrifice himself to end Smith, as Smith’s purpose is to destroy him. Once that’s done with, I guess, the equation balances and Smith ceases to exist.
Yes - to tell the One “exactly what he needed to hear” when the time came. Through Smith, in this case.
I have two basic questions–and two observations–that I hope someone can answer:
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When Neo was instructed to return to the “source,” what was the source? Is it the Architect’s command and control center, or is it the Land of the Machines?
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What really made Neo “The One”? Morpheus, Trinity & the Gang all had superpowers. Did Neo develop greater power because he allowed his mind to be freer? (It certainly wasn’t because he was a True Believer, for he doubted more than anyone.)
Observation: I still don’t understand why they built up the Seraph so much in “Reloaded,” but then didn’t deliver the goods in “Revolutions.” The actual actor is a world-famous martial artist. I thought his reappearance in “Revolutions” would find him in an amazing fight sequence, but it didn’t happen. Basically, he and the little girl were just assimilated.
Does anybody see any similarities between Agent Smith and the Borg?
ALSODid anyone make this connection: Zion represented the human id, Agent Smith and the Matrix the superego, and the Architect/Oracle duality represented the conflicted mediating ego. Neo thus represented a godlike divine intercession.
Just an observation. I think The Oracle had planned this from the very beginning. She planned Smith, she planned Neo, everything. Remember where Smith calls the Oracle “Mom”? This would imply that The Oracle was the one who programmed Smith. This varies from the other agents, who seem to show no “emotion” per se, whereas Smith does, via his speech to Morpheus in the first movie, about hating it in the Matrix. One could assume the other agents were programmed by the Architect. The architect understands only equations, as the Oracle says, so the agents he programs are emotionless. However, the Oracle is an intuitive program and thus is able to program this into Smith.
In the past, the Oracle knew that no Smith was need to “balance the equation” because the One always chose to reboot the Matrix. However, in this cycle, the Oracle sets it up so that the One falls in love (remember she told Trinity that she would fall in love with “The One”?), and returns to the Matrix rather than reboot it, thus facilitating the need for a balance to the One that was not necessary before. The balance of which is Smith, who is a special program created by the Oracle. She knew that Neo would make a deal with the machines to eliminate Smith creating peace, and the only way to beat him was for Neo to sacrifice himself, thus balancing the equation.
The Architect knew about the entire plan, in the end at least, as evidenced by his line “You played a dangerous game,” at the end of Revolutions. Whether he was happy about it or not, I have no clue. But it worked, so everyone was happy.
One question though; when Smith encounters Seraph and Sari (the little girl), he calls one of them “the last exile”. In context, this makes no sense for Seraph, because he’s been in the Matrix for a while and it is unlikely that he would be “the last”. So that leaves the girl. I thought she was the program for resetting the Matrix. Since Neo chose to go back to the Matrix, she was unnecessary as a program as the Matrix no longer needed to be reset (or so the machines thought). …Either that or she was just the program for pretty sunsets. One way or the other, I still want to know what Smith meant when he said that.
Oh, and I liked the movie. Sure, the plot was lacking in a few places but overall it wrapped things up nicely. The only thing that didn’t happen that I thought was going to was that Morpheus never beat an agent. He got wailed on by Smith in the first movie, got taken to school in the second movie (sure, he kicked him off the truck, but that doesn’t count)…I was sure he was gonna open a can on an agent in this movie…but no. There weren’t even any agents other than Smith in this movie. Eh. There’s my .02$
Remember the first time we saw an EMP? In the first Matrix, they shutdown all the systems in the hovercraft and then fired the EMP and were able to re-start afterwards? The reality is that EMPs only affect circuitry which is on and insufficiently shielded(quite frankly there are tons of ways the machines could work around EMPs and I’ve never thought of them as believable weapons). If several EMPs were planted around the dock and they shut down the power to the others they could fire in waves without taking down each other. EMP1 is charged, the others are all turned off. Fire EMP1. Signal boy stands up and waves to the crew for EMP2(wetware communications are more reliable if you’re firing off EMPs). Bring EMP2 online and charge it. Fire EMP2. Signal boy stands up and waves to the crew for EMP3. Bring EMP3 online and charge it. Fire EMP3. Rinse, repeat. As long as the controlling circuitry for other EMPs is not active when one blows they won’t take each other out. You can shield Zion proper from the EMPs on the dock with layers of grounded(not hard to do when you’re in the earth’s crust) wire mesh.
Enjoy,
Steven
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, but I don’t remember it like that.
After the EMP went off, the whole ship went dark. Neo and Trinity have their little scene, and then they cut to Neo in the phonebooth. No mention is given as to how much time was between those two scenes. It’s quite possible that the Neb needed a jump start (like the Logos in Revolutions), but they didn’t want to slow the ending of the movie down to show it.
Then again, I suppose it’s possible that none of the ship’s components were damaged, but the EMP drained the ship’s battery. I don’t remember them swapping components out of the Logos or anything. Presumably, Zion’s batteries would be quite a bit larger.
I agree. Mtgman is probably misremembering the scene where they introduced the EMP. They never fired it during that scene, though they were prepared to.
Nope - EMP fries all wires of a certain length, it doesn’t matter if they’re on or off.
As for not being a believable weapon - certainly not. It seems the machines would be able to build sentinels with EMP shielding, as the military designs fighter jets. And unless the ship’s systems were shielded, it would cripple their vessel too - but if it was shielded, it wouldn’t be shown shutting down and then powering up - it could simply continue as it was.
Favourite line in this entire thread.
I have to say, I read almost all the posts in this thread, and I barely see the issue of Neo’s superpowers in the real world being brought up, much less a satisfactory explanation of it. IMO, it is the biggest unanswered question.
Well they said he now had some sort of direct link with the machines - I thought that was supposed to explain it.
They said something about him being connected to the source, but that was it. How, they didn’t say. Leaves a lot to interpretation.
Holy jeebus…thanks for the hour long read rather than working on my essay 
Well I finally saw MRev. and i have to say that after all the negative reviews I went into it not expecting a whole lot. It was probably b/c of that, that I was satisfied with the movie…no more, no less. My friends had said that the movie did not really have an ending. I tend to disagree and think that it wrapped things up quite nicely leaving me with only a few questions (unlike reloaded where i had a million questions :|)
I have only 2 questions to ask (and I apologize if they have already been asked…but damn that was a lot of reading and I have probably forgotten some of it already)
- What did the sign above the Oracles kitchen say when Neo went to see her for the last time. I could have sworn it said something along the lines of ‘Timet Nostra’. My latin is a bit rusty but wouldn’t that mean It/he/she fears our/us???
- At the end when Neo and trinity are approaching the machine city, one of the squiddies hovers infront of the craft and then the view changes and it seems to just go into/through NEO…what the hell did that mean???
So that having been said, the good–cool effects as usual, although the sentinels should have wiped out Zion within 2 min of breaching the docks. The Bad–the lack of mindtingling/thought provoking ideas present only in the Matrix1, and the ugly—the absolute disgusting dialogue at times which would have been more suited to a Brendan Fraser or Vin Diesel movie.
All in all, I almost wish that the W. Bros would have stuck with just the first one…they prob would have received a lot more praise, b/c for whatever reason, the 2nd and 3rd movies are severely lacking compared to the first one (for whatever reason, new writers, lack of time, etc.(.
I just feel ‘bleh’…decent 3rd one…but b/c of the mediocre quality of the 2nd and 3rd, it almost makes the 1st one seem worse.
A dissapointing end to teh Matrix saga (although grateful that we got introduced to it)
Enough rambling…sleep time
-Mith
Methos:
The sign reads" Temet Nosce" and is Latin for “Know Thyself.”
As for the sentinal passing through Neo, that confused me as well. One guess is that Neo physically destroyed the Sentinal using his new powers but the sentinal’s energy (or “soul”) continued forward. Since neo was seeing the energy of the Sentinals in the first place and not their physical form, I suppose this makes sense.
Barry
I don’t get the whole “machines don’t lie” thing. What is The Matrix save a gigantic, sophisticated, and expensive (in terms of time and resources) lie? A huge chunk of what The Oracle says is dissembling at absolute best, lying at worst. The same could be said of The Architect’s speech in Reloaded, assuming you don’t just write that whole speech off as meaningless babble. When Smith arrests Miiiiiiiister Anderson the first time, he lies to him about several things. In fact it’s hard to think of a ‘program’ we meet that doesn’t at best dissemble and at worst outright lie.
Given all of this, why would the Ravers of Zion have any inclination whatsoever to trust the machine’s word? There’s plenty of evidence that the machines are no more honest and no more likely to keep their word than humans are and that machines are just as adept, if not more so, at justifying their actions however they like.
Myria
That’s a good point, but I can’t think of any time the Merovingian, Persephone, Seraph, the Keymaker, the family in the train station, or the Trainman lies. I agree with you about the Oracle and Agents and Smith. But why would you think that about the Architect? He seemed pretty sincere to me.
godzillatemple
Thanks for the translation. One quick follow up. nosce is the singiluar imperative of cognosco, -ere, -ovi, -itum, (if I remmember correctly), but I was having trouble with ‘temet’. Can you help me with that.
And as for the soul/energy of the machines. I don’t know if it would be the soul, because when it goes through him, it seems to give him a good shot, so maybe it is more likely that it is the leftover energy of the sentinel.
-Mith
Actually, I’m pretty sure they did fire the EMP in M1, the squiddies were in the ship when they fired it.
First – there is a difference between lying and keeping your word. The Machines deceived, but I don’t recall them breaking a promise.
Secondly, the Oracle always told Neo the truth. It just wasn’t always what he was expecting, and sometimes it took him a while to understand her oblique statements. Yet, as Trinity pointed out, everything the Oracle tells them comes true.