Stuff about Sati.
Remember when the father said that Sati was not a necessary program? I think that Sati’s programming was to make pretty things. The Matrix didn’t need such trivialities, so the machines kept her out.
Sati is smuggled in. She makes pretty.
I have to agree that they were really shoving the symbolism down our throats. (The water-like patterns under his feet as he was walking towards the confrontation with the machine face thing too.)
I thought that the little girl’s statement at the end about the sunrise was, in some way an allusion to the rainbow god created after wiping out the world that had been overrun by evil (Smith) to start anew (reboot) .
I actually know very very little about the bible, and so I’m hoping that those who do know more about it can provide some insights either supporting or refuting its connection to the movie. But I suspect a great deal of the Matrix saga corresponds (though perhaps quite superficially) to it.
Damn, I have so many thoughts kinda swimming in my head, but I can’t seem to hang on to anything too substantial, and I’m just too tired to articulate anything well at the moment.
Implicit meanings and themes aside though, I have to say I really enjoyed this movie a lot. I enjoyed Reloaded, but much less - between the rave scene at the beginning, Morpheus’ horrible pep talk speech and his prentious attempts at saying something wise and profound (with every frickin word out of his mouth!!), the plethora of ridiculous fight scenes, the needlessly fastpaced dialogue at the end with the architect, etc. it was somewhat insulting the way a movie like Triple X with Vin Diesel is insulting, as if the audience can not be expected to focus their attention for more than 30 seconds at a time without some in your face action.
This movie stripped away much of the cheese that infiltrated the last one, and I’m grateful for that. Yes, the sentinels probably shoulda ripped Zion apart, but the way it was directed I was on the edge of my seat and found it incredibly exciting (and I’m generally a pretty cynical person when it comes to action scenes in movies).
Regardless of the logical problems and lack of closure with so many of the smaller issues, this is one of the rare movies that, for me, was well worth the journey in terms of entertainment value.
Q 1) Why should she be either one, and not just another of the exile programs?
Q 2) As to the Oracle keeping her from being deleted…I gather just getting to the Matrix rather than staying in the Machine world was enough to keep her from being deleted (That’s how I interpretted what Rama said, anyway) - as long as she didn’t make the Keymaker’s mistake and start interfering. (OK, so as it turns out that was rather predetermined in Keymaker’s case, but still…) Which would probably be where the Oracle comes in. But the Oracle’s just taking care of the child, really.
And I see Rubystreak on preview:
Probably didn’t realise anything had. The Machines reset the Matrix pretty quick - Sati and Oracle (the only entities we see in that scene) hadn’t returned to conciousness, why assume any humans had?
As Rama said, she was a purposeless program, and the Machine culture Does Not Allow This. What’s got me confused here is how Rama and his wife (whose name I never managed to catch) created her in the first place…
This part I didn’t understand at ALL.
At first I thought Neo’d sacrificed himself to allow the Machines to destroy Smith. But Oracle, Sati and Seraph are shown to have survived, and the conversation between Oracle and Architect suggests that at least most of the humans Smith had infected had survived, so I’m not so sure. OTOH, he certainly looks dead at the end.
Oh - my major complaint - Bullet-time is a fun gimmick, but…try not to overuse it. >_<
Neo punching Agent Smith and it being in ultra-slow-motion from the moment the punch is thrown to when Agent Smith hits the ground was… Well, it was pretty damn silly. Agent Smith looked like one of the more violent Plymptoons.
I’ve got a couple of takes on this. First of all, to me it felt like the bros. wachowski just tried to cram a course on religious philosophy into three movies. Heavy on Judeo-Catholicism I might add. Neo was carried out arms stretched to his sides, face sideways and downwards and a sort of plataform. Anyone feel like this was Jesus crucified? Seraph was aparently Judas, wich is pretty obviuos since the Merovingian calls hime that. (by the way, merv? hilarious) The merovingian played a pretty good rendition of Poncious Pilate, who washed himself of any sin but still sent Jesus to his death. I kept looking for mary magdalane, but I didn’t find an analogy. Morpheus is an apostle, The Oracle is a prophet, Niobe was St. Thomas (see to believe), the kid was st. Peter who spread god’s word.
About smith. He was a Daemon, a computer program that works outside the main system and performs certain functions. He was also a Demon, as in the epitome of evil.
I know this seems a bit presumptious and some people might say that I’m finding things becuase I want to finde them, but there are too many coincedences. I wish I knew about other religions so I could catch other refernces.
The only other thing I can add is that Aztecs believed that the world is created and destroyed in cycles, and that we are currently living in the fifth sun, or cycle.
I hope I didn;t offend anyone, I didn’t love it but I certainly liked it.
P.D. Jesus Resucitated… the oracle says she thinks we will see him again, that seems to be par for the course.
The first movie puts the concept of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the idea that everything we see and know is just an illusion masking another reality, into beautiful relief. Great action, stunning and totally original visuals, and that tasty mind bender to top it all off. The dialog is somewhat cheesy, the plot is threadbare at places, but all in all an instant classic.
Reloaded, I believe, is underpinned by the philosophical argument of free will versus determinism, meaning are our choices really ours to make or is some higher power calling the shots? A tougher question and less subtly or skillfully revealed by the film. People left the Matrix thinking, “what if we really are plugged into some machine?” I don’t think anyone walked out of Reloaded thunderstruck at the possibility that God (or the machines or whatever) was actually in control of their actions. But the visuals were cool again, albeit less novel this time, and the action still intense, so even though it wasn’t as good as the original it left hope for a dramatic and fully satisfying conclusion.
Instead I got a big old meatball.
This thing is just garbage. Setting aside the plot holes, (okay I have to mention just one; why the fuck was the most important job in the dock defense, bazooka-ing the legs of the drill machine, given to the volunteers?) this movie lacked any coherent ideological foundation that I could discern. My friend insists the idea behind this movie is that there are no answers so all you can do is pick something to believe in and run with it. Harry Knowles at aintitcoolnews seems to think the Machines represent American capitalism, Neo is Osama bin Laden, and Smith is communism, which is a bit of stretch, but I’m sure it would be downright insightful after several bong rips. Frankly, I think it was just a steaming load of crap shat onto a sliver platter, shellacked with glitter, and served cold. I’m left with no burning questions, too much nonsense to keep the suspense of disbelief from interrupting my enjoyment of the still cool wire-fu and special fx, and a story about the power of love and belief so clichéd it made Jerry Bruckheimer look like Orson Welles. For shame Wachowskis, for shame.
Wow, just read through the whole thread carefully. Not a lot of you liked it. Color me unsurprised.
I have a comment on the “plot hole” of not having an EMP at the dock. First of all, the Commander makes is quite clear he does no like the idea of doing it and only does so when he is left with absolutely no choice. Second, it was their own EMP that foiled the surprise attack at the upper sewage system, why take a chance again? If an EMP coul render all things unfunctioning all the machines had to do was find a way to activate it and then come in for easy pickin’s.
And I do agree that the machines should have just nuked Zion.
What a fucking awful movie.
I agree that Zion should’ve died, and I think deserved to die for being such stupid, annoying, goddam idiots. Why couldn’t the machines just dropped a nuke through the drill hole?
For the half of the movie Trinity spends impaled and dying, the entire audience was cheering for her death, sharing the wish that Neo would snap her neck. When she finally did die (you know, after the point where it looks like she’s dead but then comes back to life for another 20 minutes) the entire audience applauded.
What the Hell was the point in the Merovingian scene besides indulging the Wacheeky’s bondage fetish? Though that Monica whats-her-name was hot, but still not worth it if there’s no nudity.
All the fight scenes were boring. Hell the whole movie was boring. Ohh! Slow-motion bullet time! Look, they’re flying and punching! Ooh. What a stupid end fight. Are machines and computers that dumb? All the Agent Smiths should’ve just jumped Neo and gang-raped him.
And really, who gave the least bit of shit about the tunnel-ship chase?
Oh, and good thing human-Smith on the ship took his careful time to explain his whole plan to Neo on he ship, otherwise e would’ve easily killed him and ended the movie much earlier. Thanks!
This is easily the worst movie I’ve seen this year, and that includes League of Extraordinary entleman.
I just realize something… I wanted the spoon kid to return… I want to see him bend the spoon. After that I wan’t to know what the hell he was on when he did that.
Of course, a leftover flaw from the first movie remains unresolved. At the (first) climactic moment, Neo goes all One-ish, deflects Smith’s attack with about as much boredom as I felt while watching Reloaded, then jumps into him and blows him up real good. At that point, it seemed reasonably clear to me that Smith was toast, and that Neo believed Smith was toast, and the two other agents who saw Smith get toasted believed he was toast because they ran like French bunnies.
Anyhoo, if no-one disagrees, I’ll declare that Neo acted to destroy Smith and had no reason to suspect that his attempt failed.
Now, at the beginning of Reloaded, Smith starts to drift back in, turning over his earpiece to a human and whatnot, but that doesn’t matter, because Neo gets tangled up with three more Agents, beginning what be the first of many stupid vapid fights in that movie. It should be clear in the first ten seconds that Agents are indestructable, so all knocking them around does is waste time.
Why, then, doesn’t Neo do the “jumping-in” bit and cause these Agents to blow up, since as far as he knows, this destroys them. The final battle with Smith is just draaaagged out with a lot of pointless punching and kicking. Heck, if I could twist the Matrix’s rule of physics, I wouldn’t bother with some stupid brawl. I’d be getting all “Scanners” and blowing things up just by concentrating.
The mechanism by which Smith survives (and becomes dramatically more powerful) alse remains unexplained. It’s vaguely hinted at when he calls the Oracle “Mom” but… meh. I don’t believe the Wachowskis had a coherent trilogy plot in mind. I think they thought that if they just threw enough pseudo-mysticism and violence at the audience, the audience wouldn’t ask too many questions. Heck, most of the AniMatrix shorts had better plots than Reloaded and Revolutions.
Meantime, I won’t think of this as a trilogy at all. Just one good movie followed by two weak ones.
The loaders were volunteers (at least Link’s GF was). Maybe the shooters were trained and they used volunteers to load. That lets the trained shooters get off more rounds.
Well, it looks like it will be more enjoyable discussing this movie than it was watching it.
The only part of the fight scene I liked was when they showed Neo’s finger pattern imprinted in the side of Smith’s face during the slo-mo punch.
Quick question: if the machines were extremely short on energy, what makes you think they’d have the resources to spare to put together a nuke?
Criminy, even forgetting for a moment that the story is allegorical, the premises of the first movie alone explain why that’s not a possibility.
Why nuke Zion ? Zion is part of the cycle that renews the matrix and the machines. In this age of total war it seems limited objectives and victories seem out of place ?
The machines need the humans in order to get not only their energy… but also a chaotic element that allows for renewal. This seemed to me a strong premise of the film. If you don’t have a reboot every once in a while things get corrupted or the merovignian gets too much power.
The oracle says she is there to unbalance things… to mess things around. (forgot the exact words). Smith represents conformity. order and law… so much that he transforms everyone to his image. (thou in the end he breaks the rules by flying, etc… )
Neo is the random, chaos and renewal. So Smith and Neo cancel each other out when they "fused". Neo knew this and even not managing to out punch Smith he would end the conflict. (He tell the machines he would win anyway). Trinity being dead meant his fate wouldn't be so bad... no girl waiting for him.
I hadnt given that much importance to Sati... but I seemed to have undersestimated her importance from the posts in this thread. I agree she is the "useless" but pretty that gives life its flavour.
The film was lacking in respect to the other versions... but the action compensated IMHO. I like the series and I am prone to forgiving their less than good directing. Watch the first one more times to compensate and be happy... otherwise you won't provide enough battery power.As for why the machines didn’t use a nuke, here’s a possibility:
If what the Architect said in the last movie can be believed, the Matrix has been “reset” numerous times in the past, and each time a select group of humans was allowed to rebuild Zion. Zion is necessary to the machines since it (a) provides a holding pen for dissatisfied humans who would otherwise muck up the Matrix from the inside and (b) provides humans within the matrix an unconscious sense of free will (“Do I accept the Matrix and choose to live within it, or do I rebel and go to Zion?”).
The machines have also supposedly “destroyed” Zion numerous times in the past, but presumably they left the infrastructure intact so that the next group of select humans could rebuild after the Matrix is reset. Using a nuke would have been counter-productive, since it would have rendered the city radioactively uninhabitable, and it would be too much to ask the core group of “star-up” humans to create a new underground city each time.
The squiddies are used precicely because they can grab individual humans and kill them one by one without having to use a weapon of mass destruction. That is why the machines sent so many squiddies to do the job in the first place. Now, perhaps this time the machines didn’t really care about saving Zion, since the Matrix was likely going to be destroyed instead of reset. However, since sending the squiddies worked every other time they destroyed Zion, they had no reason to do things any differently this time.
Just a thought…
Barry
Darn it – Rashak Mani beat me to it…
But no one knew that Zion was destroyed & rebuilt 5 times. Only “The One” would know. If they walked into a fully developed underground city, wouldn’t they suspect something. Even if the original 16+7 (or whatever it was) knew and didn’t tell, wouldn’t future generations pretty quickly figure out that a couple dozen people probably couldn’t have built Zion themselves?
I guess they could say that it was built by humans before they were enslaved.
Ah, who cares?
I have not seen the movie yet, and I will not be reading this thread till I do, but I just thought I’d add this in (in case nobody else has before me). For all I know, it may be of help in your analyses.
I am told that there is an Indian girl named Sati in this movie. Sati is a Hindi word that is used to describe the (outlawed)practice of a Hindu widow immolating herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. I believe the literal meaning of the term is something like “virtuous lady”.
I did not like this movie.
So, the Matrix reset, isn’t this essentially what has happened time and time again (with the other Ones)?
When the Oracle says something like we’d be seeing Neo again, doesn’t that mean that he’ll have to do the same thing again and again and again?
Essentially, IMO the Oracle wasn’t really helping humanity. She just reset the Matrix, the thing that we all thought NEO rejected when he chose Trinity.
I’s a repeating system. That’s why Smith realized that he had said some of those lines over and over again.
Also, why the hell would they need humans as batteries if the sun was shining up above all the clouds and crap (as Neo and Trinity saw). Couldn’t the machines have pierced the veil surrounding the earth to get to that sunlight?
S’okay, here we go.
I agree - meh. It was okay. Although I did lean over to Mr. Snicks at the end and say "Spiky machine man face got the line wrong. The correct line is: ‘It is finished.’ "
Mr. Snicks and I brought up the “why the hell don’t they have more EMPs” idea. Think about it: we know that an EMP is “the only weapon we have against them.” So why not have thousands of 'em? Zion humans turn off all electrical stuff they have at the dock and wait for the machines to come. When you get a good set of machines in, set off an EMP. Lather, rinse, repeat, as many times as necessary. Eventually the machines might figure out not to attack that way, but still. You could starve 'em out.
Why the drilling? Why not attack at the weakest point of the dock, namely the doors? You know, the doors all the human ships come through? The ones with the access tunnels or whatevers leading right up to them? Certainly a couple of those could be cracked open much more easily than drilling through however many miles of rock and stone.
About this Zion thing - it’s my husband’s understanding that when the Matrix is rebooted and the One chooses 23 humans to restart Zion, the One must choose them from among those plugged in. In other words, present company was excepted. It was my understanding that the One had to choose 23 others, but that they could be anyone, meaning that in Neo’s case, he’d choose Trinity, Morpheus, Link, Zee (maybe), Niobe, and so on. If this is the case, Zion is woefully undefended. Think about it - humans can pass a lot down. Even oral history is capable of being passed down for thousands of years. Don’t these people have memories? Doesn’t the One, at least, who restarts Zion and would remember previous goings on, say “you know, maybe we should have 103 40-foot thick iron rings around this city, just in case?” once or twice? Why don’t they remember that Zion’s been destroyed before (if we can take the Architect at his word, which nothing seems to indicate otherwise) and take steps? Or do they all get their memory wiped?
About Neo - he carries some sort of code within him that allows him to interact both with the Matrix and with machines outside the Matrix. Why doesn’t he then just turn Smith off? I kept waiting for him to say, “too bad for you, deleted!” and poof! Done! No more Smith. I was really hoping he’d do this during the silly fight scenes. Take a punch, then hold up a hand and wink! Smith gone. Nutz.
Snicks
Well, my mind is made up now…I’m waiting for DVD.