This goes back a while, but here goes. After the announcement of sequels to The Matrix back a few years ago, rumour was that Joe Pantoliano was approached to reprise his role as Cypher. However, i believe his asking fee (6million dollars) was deemed too high, and his role was snipped from the script. I’ve always wondered what possible part he could have played in the movie, as Cypher is righteously fried in the original. How were they planning on bringing him back? Have Neo wake up and find him in the shower area of the Neb? Or was this all a fanciful rumour? If anyone can help with this…
I don’t believe that it was Joey Pantoliano you’re thinking of.
The guy who played Tank was a bit of a problem on set, and I think he was also a potential leak of spoilers from the set, so they removed his character and replaced him with some other guy who I can’t remember because I thought the sequels were bollocks.
No, it was definatley Joe. I read it in total film at the time.
[This is full of Matrix spoilers.]
Heck with Joey Pants; it’s unclear to me how Smith came back, since he was blowed up real good at the end of Matrix. All of Neo’s actions, including his reaction to Smith’s reappearence in the sequel, suggests that Neo did his damndest to destroy Smith and belives he succeeded, yet Neo never does that “jump into an agent” bit again, even when confronted by three at the beginning of Reloaded. What the fuck?! It was Reloaded’s, and later Revolutions’ repeated use of plot elements that made no sense and were given no explanations (beyond “this is, because it was meant to be”) that tried the patience of the audience. Truth be told, I’m not sure a resurrected Cypher could’ve made the situation worse. Neo/Morpheus/Trinity could have met a “backup copy” of Cypher in the Matrix and it wouldn’t have made the movie any less implausible, but it also wouldn’t have been as flashy as the white rastas.
Actually, there’s a major flaw in how Cypher is portrayed. We see him having a dinner conversation with Smith, but if Cypher is plugged into the Matrix, shouldn’t an Operator be monitoring him and, y’know, freaking out because an Agent is sitting two feet away from him? I can imagine the Operator missing something minor, like Cypher tossing his activated cellphone into a garbage can, but a dinner conversation with the Agent? Alternately, if the conversation is taking place indirectly while Cypher himself is sitting at the Operator station (there is an implication in the “Neo, you scared the bejeesus out of me” scene that Cypher is doing something on the sly), wouldn’t that conversation resemble something like instant-messaging, with Cypher and Smth sending text messages back and forth? It hardly seems like the best medium through which to enjoy a steak.
Put simply, these movies don’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny. Forget all the hokey techno-mysticism and just watch the wire-fighting, car chases, and Carrie-Anne’s supple latex-clad bod.
If Cypher knew enough of how the Operators interact with people in the Matrix, it doesn’t seem that unrealistic that he might have some way of blocking his signal or something. Anyway, the point is that he was the traitor, and all good traitors always have some way of scheming with the bad guys while still being under the good guys’ radar. Note that nobody has the slightest suspicion about Cypher the whole time; they trust him completely.
There are two ways Smith was able to come back:
1.) It wasn’t actually Smith himself who was destroyed, but the body of the homeless man he hijacked. Remember that every time an Agent ‘dies’, their body reverts to the body of whoever got ‘hijacked’ by the agent.
2.) When Neo jumped into Smith, they merged for a very brief time. A little bit of Neo got into Smith, and a little bit of Smith got into Neo. Part of this exchange allowed Smith to keep on living. Remember, Smith shot and killed Neo, but Neo ‘came back from the dead’. So whatever matrix hax that Neo learned, Smith gained when they merged.
Most movies don’t, at least in my experience. Sci-fi are a particular fertile breed for plot holes, but they rarely bother me as I realize it’s just a movie (nothing against you though if you can’t look beyond that, that’s just personal taste).
Well, contrary to my previous post, there are some plot holes I just can’t neglect. Rather, plot elements that were tacked on for the sole sake of marketing. Incubus, while I’m sure one of those is correct, I can’t help but feel that Matrix Reloaded did a piss poor job of creating a cohesive story. All of the plot elements that the first one wrapped up were untangled and ran through a garbage disposal in the sequel. It was clear at the end of The Matrix that Neo killed Smith, there was no other way (imo) to perceive that scene. But then we find out in the sequel, that Smith didn’t “die” he simply became a hobo program or whatever he called it.
I like to pretend that the latter two movies never happened.
The second two movies were simply different. People who were stuck in the first film probably wouldn’t like the other two. However, as a fan of The Animatrix, I liked all of them. The first film had a lot of unresolved points. Before Reloaded, we don’t know that Zion has more than just the Nebachunezzar flying around. Heck, they didn’t even need to MENTION Zion at all- why does Smith need the mainframe codes of Zion when the machines are just going to drill there way into it anyway? Its pointless for him to torture Morpheous; that in my opinion was more tacked-on than anything in reloaded because really the whole point to ‘Agents want mainframe codes’ story arc is to see what a crazy nutball Smith is, and that he’s more than just an android wandering around. But like I said, they could have just captured him under any premise, never even mentioned Zion, and nothing would have changed.
Matrix I is about the Matrix itself, and bringing up the possibility that All is Not As it Seems.
Matrix II clues us in as to what is actually happening in the real world, and the complex way that programs interact with people. The first film was through the prespective of an ordinary person; someone who accepts the Matrix as reality. In Matrix II, we see that the Matrix is not real, and so things get really wacky. Maybe the people that didn’t like the sequel haven’t gotten unplugged yet, maybe they’re not ready! 
What might appear as plot holes are really red herrings. Do people have a choice or don’t they? They keep jumping back and forth between the two, constantly hinting “Maybe the machines want us to do this all along”. A lot of people thought Zion wasn’t real, it was just a trick the Machines made to keep humanity content with the though that they WERE rebelling. A noble theory, but that’s looking too deeply into it.
Matrix III shows that people have to just take things as they are, and not expect anything to fall into a prearranged place. Niobe says, “I never believed in the One. But I believe in [Neo].” It is also about the war at its most literal level, and we kind of get a glimpse into how terrible the first war between man and machine must have been like.
I think that The Animatrix helps fill in some of the gaps.
Hey, why don’t you shove that red pill right up your ass!
Just kidding. Reloaded relies far too heavily on “it is because it is meant to be”, personified most significantly by the Keymaker, who makes speeches to that effect: “I know because it my purpose to know / We only do what we are programmed to do” yada yada yada. There were some interesting elements, including the tantalizing potential of a conflict between the Architect (who seeks only seamless, flawless control) and the Oracle (who recognizes that humans are inherently unpredictable, though she kept spouting nonsense like “You’ve already made the choice, now you have to understand the choice you’ve made”) with the Merovingian opportunistically using this conflict to build a power base and his “wife” becoming increasing disatisfied (while staying smokin’ hot, natch) with the corruption this instills, etc. Establishing that the programs have developed personalities of their own and are trying to build little fiefdoms within the Matrix was an intriuging idea, so what’s with all the predestination crap? And that whole Morpheus “I believe in providence, three targets/three ships, what if the war could be over, isn’t that worth dying for?” speech to be a huge waste of time.
On Cypher specifically, the Oracle presumably knew that he was bad news, and that Trinity would eventually love The One, and that The One was Neo (though he had to “earn” it, so if the Oracle’d told him flat out, he would have dismissed the idea), but the chain of events depends on things that happen outside the Matrix, in the “real” world (I tend to dismiss the idea that the “real world” is just another, larger Matrix, because it makes a largely pointless trilogy completely pointless). Some of these events are mere flukes, like Cipher zapping Tank not-so-much, allowing Tank to counter-zap him. The Oracle could predict that? Nice trick. Weak story.
I don’t know whether the Wachowski’s ever planned to bring Joe Pantoliano back but he definitely expressed an interest in coming back, which is probably where you got this impression. I remember an interview with him where he said that you couldn’t rule him out of a sequel – based on the number of body bags on the Nebecunezzar after Neo and Trinity return to it. he’s right – it’s one short – but it’s pretty flimsy and was likely nothing more than public campaigning for a job.
I think the latter two films are much more intelligent than the first, but to answer one particular question from upthread:
Neo attempts to do the same thing to the agents at the beginning of Reloaded, but they block his attack (“Hm. Upgrades.”), forcing him to fight them physically. It’s just as well, too, because as we soon see, Neo didn’t destroy Smith, he just liberated him from the control of the Matrix.
–Cliffy
I was so sure that Persephone and the Merovingian (being holdovers from previous incarnations of the Matrix) were manipulating Neo to make the “right” choice, and that Persephone’s lipstick (applied right before she kisses Neo) contained a program not too dissimilar from the cheesecake program. Did anyone else hear the modem noise when she kisses him?
Anyhow, it’s a shame the Wachowski Bros. and all of their footage were consumed in that freakish warehouse fire before the third one could be finished. Now we’ll never know if the trilogy would have ended well or just completely sucked.