I know, I know…you’re sick of Matrix questions. Well, too bad.
I recently watched it again on TV, and there are 3 things I’m having trouble with (besides all the obvious continuity problems and the premise itself):
Why exactly did the Oracle tell Neo that he was not “the one”? IIRC, she said something like: “Maybe you’re waiting for another life”. It seems pretty obvious that they were going for a Jesus allegory, and that Neo had to die and be reborn; and in fact, that’s what happens near the end of the movie. But in another scene, when Neo confesses to Orpheus what the Oracle told him, Orpheus says (again, IIRC): “She told you exactly what you needed to hear”.
But earlier, Orpheus kept telling Neo things to the effect of “Stop thinking you can do it, and know that you can”. In other words, Neo needed to believe that he was “the one”, right? So how would telling him he’s NOT “the one” be consistent with what he needs to hear? The obvious explanation is that the writers kept it up in the air so that the movie would have some suspense - but the explanation offered in the movie seems to fall flat. Did I miss something?
What is the device that locates Neo and first unplugs him from the Matrix? It’s too small to be Orpheus’ ship; did Orpheus have some sort of homing robot that could leave the ship? Or was that one of the “machines”? It was probably explained, but I found the dialogue pretty tough to follow at times, so I may have missed it.
The electromagnetic pulse that Orpheus used to disable the machines that attacked his ship - why didn’t that disable all the electronic components of Orpheus’ ship as well?
Oops, forgot part of my first question. I was going to point out that Jesus knew he was the savior, so the way they did the Matrix doesn’t really fit the allegory.
Okay, now, first of all, it’s MORPHEUS. Not Orpheus.
Second of all, what obvious continuity problems?
The Oracle does not tell Neo that he’s not the One, but she strongly implies that he’s not the One yet. I was hoping she’d be less of a cryptic cop-out than the classical Oracles, but at least it’s not inconsistent.
The EMP does disable the electronic components on the ship. That’s why they couldn’t hit it while people were still inside the Matrix.
Neo wasn’t unplugged by a machine. Taking the red pill “woke” him up and the matrix rejected him. A monitoring machine came by to look at him and verify that he was awake, and Neo was then flushed. Morpheus’ ship then came to pick him up in the sewers.
The ship was powered down at the time. We’re to assume that EMPs affect powered up electical components, not just any electrical components.
Before we get started: The guy’s name is Morpheus, not Orpheus.
My take on it was that he needed to believe of his own volition, not because someone else told him that it was fact. Actually, if the Oracle had told him that he was The One, what do you want to bet that he wouldn’t’ve believed her? Telling him that might have pushed him further from the path he was supposed to take.
It was never explained, but it’s obvious that it was one of the “machines”. Once Neo had been awakened from the Matrix, plugging him back in would probably have been a waste of time. It would be more efficient to clear out his pod for use by a newly born human, and flush Neo down the drain to his death (after all, they don’t expect him to be able to swin with his atrophied muscles).
My guess would be that it’s a Sci-Fi EMP™ that only damages powered circuits; thus the fact that they have to get Neo out of the Matrix before they can use it, because it otherwse it will damage the equipment he’s hooked up to and kill him.
I understood that it disabled the chairs, but since the ship was a hovercraft, wouldn’t it take a nosedive? And did they have to repair everything after using the EMP?
Oh, and is it too much to ask that people answer my questions without being hostile?
EMP disables electronics that are ON. They had to turn the machines off, or they’d be damaged. The people in the matrix had to return before their machines were turned off, otherwise it would be just like Cipher unplugging them mid-matrix… Instant death.
The robot thingy that unplugs Neo is a part of the machine. It isn’t mentioned in the dialog, except something about fibrillation or something, but I always assumed that Morpheus’s team deliberately gave Neo a heart attack to convince the machines that he was dead. The automatic machinery treated neo exactly like a dead human: It unplugged him and returned the protein to the pool of decaying flesh that feeds the living humans in the machine.
I don’t know how to answer that. Didn’t confuse me, though.
Ah I see. Good question. They do dock with a rock or something whenever they dial into the Matrix; I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying that you can see this effect more clearly in The Matrix Reloaded. They only have to hover to get around. And yes, I imagine there would be some maintenance whenever they use the EMP. That’s why they didn’t use it the first time the Sentinels came by.
Sorry if I came across as hostile in my first post. I really didn’t mean to be!
I think its different means to the same end. I think the Oracle probably realizes what she’s got, and knows he will, “die” and at that moment realize what he is. So she gives him a task that will not only save Morpheus but allow Neo to realize his potential.
Think of it this way, Morpheus is convinced Neo is the one, so his job as he sees it, is to “free his mind.”
The Oracle see’s this as well. But knows Neo is a skeptic and plays to that angle. Her way ended up working as it was really what she said that sparked what Morpheus had been telling him about moving within the Matrix.
I’ve always wondered about this. It can’t be a part of “The Machines”, otherwise you’d think it would just thrash Neo on the spot. I believe its some sort of device sent in from Morpheus’ ship to unplug him from his little cell-like thingamabober.
That’s a good question, I can only suspect that it did, or at least disabled quite a bit of the ship. Because they don’t seem too willing to just use it. Plus, it was extremely important that Neo was back before they used it; indicating to me that they would at least lose access to bringing him back in to the real world once they used it.
Thanks, that’s much better. So flushing him was sort of an automated maintenance procedure, then? Did they explain how Neo’s physical location was known to this maintenance machine, yet ostensibly unknown to the “agents”, who obviously would have wanted to ensure that Neo be killed and not be rescued?
No problem, Achernar. And thank you all for the excellent answers.
FWIW, EMP’s only affect operating electronics, and not all of those, either.
NATO scientists had a good laugh back when they discovered the newest Soviet jet fighters had vacuum tubes in their electronics. They were all smug until they realized that vacuum tubes are immune from the effects. Then, they realized it wasn’t quite so funny to think of F-15’s and B-1’s falling out of the sky while Su-27’s and MiG-29’s were still tooling around.
It’s been a while since I saw that movie, but IIRC there were two pills he could choose from. This may be unanswerable but what would the second pill have done? If nothing, why would a second pill be needed? Sorry if my memory of this is vague.
OK you guys have to bone up on what EMP exactly is. ElectroMagneticPulse is what happens when a nuclear bomb is detonated in high orbit. It produces a massive (albeit very short) magentic surge that affects anything that can induce electricity. That means ANY metallic object. An H-bomb detonated in high atmosphere can induce enuf electricity in a 1 foot pipe to shock a person. Now an EMP would produce surges in any electric and electronic system. Anyone who knows what a static spark can do to a CPU knows what can happen when that spark is multiplied a few million times. They turned off all systems so they would not be detected, not to protect from the EMP.
Yes, the EMP shouldve affected their ship and their systems, but i would assume that anyone building that capability into a ship would also safeguard against it. They probably have all essential systems shielded. The EMP may have blown the monitors and low level servers that connect them to the matrix but the ship wouldve still run. And it couldnt take a nose dive when it was parked in that giant pipe.
Now the fact that the sentinels (giant octopuslike robot thingies)werent shielded probably means that they hadnt used this little trick on them before (and were hoping it would work) or the sensors on the sentinels prevented them from being shielded.
The robot thingy that unplugged NEO from his chamber is a caretaker. It makes sure the system is running smoothly in its area. It flushes out any unit that was dead or awake. A conscious person would cause too much damage to the chamber and be unstable if immediate return to the matrix was not achieved. The caretaker examined Neo, determinied that he was better off removed, unplugged him from the matrix and flushed him.
The red pill is actually a disruptor virus program injected into the NEO avatar. The disruption triggers an error code that sends out the physical location (in the power cell farm) of where NEO was stationed for the caretaker to diagnose. Morpheus and Apoc followed that error signal to be where NEO was flushed into.
Its just a physical manifestation of a choice. Saying you choose A over B isn’t as meaningful as doing A over B.
Also, some have said that the pill gives him a heart attack or some other condition that leads to death, which the machines expel you from the Matrix for. Obviously he was treated in the Nebechednezzer.
We don’t totally know what the blue pill does. Most likely I think it would have drugged him and erased some of his memory so that they could have returned him to his previous life.
Presumably the blue pill would have been some sort of powerful knockout drug that would knock him out, probably to wake up a few days later with a fuzzy, if any, memory of the past day or two.
Thematically, they were drawing a parallel between Neo’s choice and Alice’s choice in Alice in Wonderland.
OK i got a question. Everyone in the Nebucahenezzer pretty much agreed that real food sucked. It was one of the points brought up by Apoc when he was talking to agent smith.
They can simulate a matrix like environment that was apart from the real matrix. They use it for training. Why couldnt they adapt feeding tubes in the real world and then go into a simulation program to eat whatever food they desired? It will at least get rid of the unpleasantlness of harshly adapting to the real world. It would beat the cold turkey way they used on Neo.