ahem That would be me. Or I. Whatever.
Yeah, so I’m one of those people who wants to read more into the movies than maybe I should. I am like, the only person on Earth who loved Reloaded (I’ve always said that the second movie in a trilogy is usually the best, and this series is no exception), so for those of you who still care to discuss the higher end crap…
Had a thought: remember in Reloaded, when the Architect said that The One had to go back to The Source to reset the Matrix? Well, isn’t that exactly what happened? Neo went to the source of the Matrix, the machine city 1.0, and as a result, the Matrix was reset. The upshot of this is that no matter WHAT Neo picked in that room at the end of Reloaded, the result was the same, and Neo did as the Architect wished.
So the question is, did Neo ever have free will? Or was it just his fate to save the Matrix, and so he did? It seems to me that he was given the ILLUSION of free will, without which most humans have little motivation to do anything. It also explains why the Architect even gave him a choice, considering the importance of resetting the Matrix-- it was all a ruse. He fulfilled his karma as he must. Excellent.
But this brings up another question for me: at the end, when Smith caught himself saying the same thing to Neo that he presumably said before… what was that? Was it, as someone said, Smith repeated what he has said to previous Ones upon destroying them? I like that idea, but it doesn’t really hold up, since I presumed that the Smith Viral Replication Phenomenon was a first-time unique glitch. So why did he feel he’d said the same thing before? Any ideas?
PS–I’m a straight woman and I still was knocked out by Monica Bellucci’s breasts. She is undeniably hot, but the movies are full of hot women: Trinity, Zee, Niobe, all stunning. The movie is eye candy after all, and I do know that, no matter how much I love to overanalyze.
I’m among those who think that this one left too many unanswered questions from Reloaded. Okay – lots of eye candy – still trying to decide how I feel about the ending.
Two comments on specific instances of acting, though:
-
The Oracle. This lady just wasn’t as good as the original actress. They tried to have her use some of the same lines (“I still like candy”… “You’re just going to have to make up your own damn mind”… etc) but to me they just fell kind of flat. Especially the first scene with the Oracle – sounded to me like she was just reading her lines off cue cards. The lady who played the Oracle in the first two (may she rest in peace) was quite good.
-
Bane. I’ll be damned if he wasn’t channelling Hugo Weaving. I was impressed – he did a great job of acting and sounding like Smith. “MiSSter Anderson…”
And speaking of the Bane scene – my god they made Neo dense in that scene. If Bane was channelling Smith, then Neo was channelling Ted Theodore Logan. The moment that he sees Bane holding Trinity with the knife at her throat, Bane calls him, “Mister Anderson”. And it took Neo the rest of the scene to figure out who he was. Hello, Neo – there’s only one person who ever calls you “Misssster Anderson”.
Tape? Tape wouldn’t hold… Stapled, perhaps?
I was actually a bit disappointed that her character and Merovingian were not used more in this one. He had what would basically amount to a very small part in this one, and her presence in this one had no purpose whatsoever (other than the obvious purpose of drawing my eyes to the right bottom corner of the screen a few times… ;))
At least her character had a point in the last one (i.e. helping Morpheus and the Morpheites get the Keymaker).
Even though I did kind of bash over-analyzing, I’ll take a shot at this one. It also proves that I’m a geek too. I’m just a geek that enjoyed the movie. 
The previous version idea isn’t bad, but my thoughts are that it had to do with the Oracle. The Smith fighting Neo was the one that came from the Oracle being absorbed. You see her in the pit after the Smiths have all come unglued. During the fight, I seem to remember Smith talking about knowing different things were going to happen. He saw this through the eyes of the Oracle. At the end of the fight, he hit the point that the Oracle mentioned earlier that she couldn’t see past. He was kind of going through deja vu until that point in the fight. He then got uncertain and even suspected a trap.
Maybe that’s not explained the best, but I do think it had to do with what he gained from the Oracle. Maybe the Oracle was as much responsible for Smith’s defeat as Neo?
There is one question I didn’t see mentioned yet so I’ll ask it now.
How can
a. crashing into someone at Mach 2 in the air
b. body-slamming someone into the street from about 1/2 mile high
c. kicking someone 40ft into an underground hole
not hurt worse than a punch to the face?
Oh, one more thing. There was not a single shot of Ms. Moss’s beautiful bum in leather. Not one. I was watching.
I don’t think the Architect was at all pleased with what happened. The Oracle saw a way, or a chance of a way based on choices she couldn’t (nor could any of the machines) understand (and so couldn’t know what would happen) to more reliably unbalance the equation, and give humans more power to exercise their will without compromising the machines’ existence. In other words: a way to end the war.
Will peace last? She cannot say, and neither can anyone else. Humans constantly live in a world of making choices we can’t understand, and so go on a combination of belief and knowledge. The machines are now in a state where they have to face the same thing: they have to have an element there to handle choices they can’t understand—that is, to believe. This is what the peace process will take. Yet can the humans stay at peace with the machines? Will the machines, in their evolution, “learn” the very human art of backstabbing? Since they’re in the middle of choices they don’t understand who can say? But what they can say is that any attempt to bring back the order of the Matrix and a return to war will result in the same situation they were just in, in which case The One will return as he must: a consequence of the order in the Matrix. So, to me, it seems the Oracle believes the peace is only temporary.
IMO, without a doubt. The Oracle was really a revolutionary figure herself: a machine that could believe. She could make choices she couldn’t see beyond, unlike the rest of the machines. Her fiddling in fact might have raised the consciousness of all the machines: in the end, even the Deus Ex Machina had to make a choice it didn’t understand. It couldn’t conceive of how Neo could defeat Smith.
The machines had to appeal to Neo’s ability to exercise choice, and guide or sell him on one, because they couldn’t control him (or any One, for that matter).
Because of consuming the Oracle he could see how she believed things might work out. But Smith didn’t know how to assimilate belief, and so his interpretation of it was simply an indication of fate. As BtVS is fond of noting, “Prophecies are tricky things.”
Monstre
And how. Yikes. But perhaps Neo didn’t recall his interaction with Smith (how long ago was it? And what importance did that really have compared to anything else, relative to his life?) and was more in shock of the fact that anyone would call him Mr Anderson. Still. There’s no hiding that bit of poor dialogue. It might have worked if we didn’t already know that the guy was Smith. Hard to say.
IMHO, the first movie was the best one, and mebbe should have been left alone. I enjoyed reloaded more than revoultions. Same plot content, better action… flying Neo and Smith reminded me of 6 years ago when I couldn’t miss watching “dragon ball”. People in the theater actually laughed when super slow mo Neo’s fist hit Smith. The highway scene in reloaded was like none other. Finally, yes, heavy on the religion, not great on the conclusion.
Ergo. Concordantly. Vis â vis.
I had exactly the same thoughs about him. And not just Neo, but the entire crew of the Hammer (shouldn’t they know Bane well enough to know he doesn’t act like that?).
Apparently Agent Smith is a horrible actor (although the guy playing Bane was a good one), but that’s OK, since everyone in Zion (or at least Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and the crew of the Hammer - the people who’ve dealt most with Smith and Bane) are idiots.
WELL I liked it!!
Few questions/comments of my own:
- You say the Matrix was going to be reset? Probably. Does that not imply it will be used again? I beleive that it was going to be shut down, because they were not at war with humans anymore. But, I guess they would have no more energy…
- At the end when The Architect and Oracle are talking, I think “the others” were every human in the Matrix, and they will all be set free. The best way of gesturing peace.
- Now, the Indian family in the beginning…Didn’t the Father say that only Sati was going to be going on the train? Why did the whole family go?
- Now, the whole train thing was for useless programs to be freed into the real world, right? Just like Smith did to Bane? Or do I have something wrong…?
- Neo going blind was such a cool dramatic effect! I was totally curious as to why he was wearing the blindfold in the previews.
- What is to become of the Marovingian? Or the Oracle? Or the ghost twins? Or the Architect? Probably deleted. Because if I was right about the Matrix being shut down, I suppose those programs won’t be needed.
All in all, I walked out of the theater a changed man.
Teelo:
- The Matrix was indeed reset, and is going to be used again. I’m pretty sure the Oracle said the others were to be freed if they wish. I’m sure there are some people who would rather live in a dream world than Zion.
- No, the train was for going between the Matrix and the machine city. Sort of like writing a computer program on your PC, then sending it to the mainframe where it will run.
- They probably all stay right where they were. The Merovingian and his posse are apparently all extremely hard to delete, so they’ll probably all still exist in this iteration of The Matrix, and the Architecht and Oracle are both neccesary functions of the Matrix.
Why should they know that much about him? He was a crewman of another ship. The Mjolnir (hammer is it’s nickname, I guess, as Link does call it that) picked up Bane after he survived the EMP “accident” talked about at the end of Reloaded.
Two comments:
-
Smith acquires the qualities of those he replicates into. (which is why he knew the “cookies need love” line) He acquired the Oracle’s eyes that the merovingian wanted. So he could see into the future, but like she said, only up to the choices he understood. I also suspect the Oracle “made” him say the line about every beggining having an end. To me it seemed that line was the one that made Neo understand that it was his time to die.
-
Smith got into Bane when he took over him in the matrix. He entered the real world that way but was apparently still connected to his other selves in the matrix.
Oh and BTW Tengu, Hugo Weaving is considered a good actor by many reviewers. He played the part woodenly because he was a machine.
the IMDB says: “Weaving won the Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award for Best Actor in a leading role for his work in Proof (1991). He later on received an AFI Award nomination for Best Actor in a leading role for his work in Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The (1994). He won his second AFI Award for Best Actor in a leading role for his work in Interview, The (1998), he also won best acting prize at the Montreal Film Festival from the same work. In 1998, Weaving won Australian star of the year.”
Not amazing, but not shabby either.
Check him out in LOTR
Chavdrez: I’m pretty sure Tengu was referring to the fact that Smith couldn’t act like he wasn’t Smith while inside Bane’s body, not that Hugo Weaving did a bad job.
Now Keanu Reeves…it’s evident that his face has been replaced by a block of wood.
xgxlx that’s exactly my point, thanks. I know Hugo Weaving’s a good actor. (Actually I think he overacts a bit as Smith, as opposed to being wooden. Which makes sense as Smith is batshit insane - even in the first movie, IMO.)
And thanks, Mik, I’d forgotten Bane was from a different ship.
So, then it’s only Neo, Trinity and Morpheus are missing the boat. Hmm…more Neo and Trinity, as Smith was doing a better job of not being Smith when he was being interrogated than in other scenes when it didn’t matter so much. But the two of them STILL didn’t pick up on it when he was stopping a hair’s bredth short of saying ‘Hey, dumbasses, I’m Agent Smith! Cripes, I expected better of you, Mr Anderson.’
No no no, he’s “Out of his goddamn mind.”
Well, there was Maggie (the doctor) who just sat there and waited for Bane to finish his 10 minute speech before he stabbed her. It’s almost like she had a death wish.
On the whole I was pleasantly surprised. The first hour was pretty weak with most of the same faults as Reloaded. But the second hour was great with some amazing sequences especially the attack on Zion and journey to Machine City. The final battle between Neo and Smith was quite good; it was certainly a lot better than the multiple Agent Smith fight in Reloaded. The ending was better than I had expected after reading the reviews though it’s true that it doesn’t resolve some of the issues raised before.
Overall the three Matrix films have produced two great hours of cinema IMO. I thought the first hour of the first film was superb in the way it sets up a mystery and then reveals what's behind it. And the last hour of this film featured some of the most amazing battle sequences I have ever seen. However the 4 hours in between were pretty weak with several over-long and pointless fight scenes and too much long-winded mumbo-jumbo by the Oracle, Architect and others which doesn't lead anywhere in particular.Sorry tengu, I misunderstood your post.
What I’m starting to feel is that the matrix is sorta like the Star Wars of a newer generation. You have sci-fi, cool fights, revolutionary special effects, and a moral/religious subtext.
I just hope we don’t get a prequel with cloned Smiths… oh wait, that’s already happened. Maybe we could see the Merovingians story. that’d be worth it just to see Monica Belucci again.
Assuming the machines cannot dissemble, you must be right about this, which brings me to a larger question: was Neo’s fate to save both Zion and the machine city an unavoidable one? Because it strikes me that despite the fact that he seemingly chose NOT to comply with the Architect’s wish for him to reboot the Matrix, in order to save Trinity, in the end he rebooted the Matrix and Trinity died anyway.
I quote the Architect from Reloaded: “As you adequately put, the problem is choice. But we already know what you’re going to do, don’t we? Already I can see the chain reaction, the chemical precursors that signal the onset of emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic, and reason. An emotion that is already blinding you from the simple, and obvious truth: she is going to die, and there is nothing that you can do to stop it.”
Neo never really had a choice; either door he picked led to the exact same outcome. Fascinating. I wonder if the Architect knew that? It seems not. OR, he did know and was worried when Neo went left b/c of the threat posed by Smith, which could have been avoided if Neo rebooted the Matrix immediately.
I agree that the machines could not control Neo, and that he had to feel as if he had a choice. My thesis, however, is that his choice was an illusion and that he was compelled, inevitably, to fulfill his role, just as any good program must. Belief, in this case, was necessary only to further the illusion of choice, because the outcome was ineluctable. It was Neo’s karma to reboot the Matrix and save the world; it was Trinity’s karma to help him get where he needed to go and then die before the goal was accomplished, and no amount of choosing could prevent it.
Nihilistic as hell, it is, and lends credence to the idea that even humans who are supposedly free, as Zion is, are laboring under the delusion of rebellion. They also serve their karma, to provide a safety valve until the Matrix needs to be rebooted. That’s the message I took away from this… that humans really aren’t much different from the machines, perhaps in fact inferior because, as Smith said, we reproduce like a virus, behave irrationally, and are capable of deceit.