Well, in the Animatrix, it looks like all the governments of the world send out a buncha jets with small bombs that blow up in mid air releasing lots of black crap into the air. I’d imagine that the stuff they released would be light enough to stay in the atmosphere on its own, and through staying up there would probably develop electric charge the same way that regular clouds did. Except it’d be easier because there’d be so much more stuff up there to rub against.
Where is TVAA ?
You can download the movie detailing the blackening of the sky from the matrix site. The movie you want is “The Second Renaissance Part 2”.
Hold on, everyone. There’s something for you all.
I will try to address everyone’s questions eventually, but I have to get through the first movie before I can move to the second and third. K?
Part IIa: the Machines
- Why are the humans in the Matrix in the first place?
The answer to this question depends on whether the story is considered as realism or allegory.
From a realistic perspective, the decision to use humans as energy certainly does not make sense. The Machines aren’t simply feeding dead humans to live ones – more precisely, that’s not how the Machines are feeding energy to humans. Presumably corpses are recycled. The cloud cover doesn’t prevent all light from passing through, and there’s enough to sustain certain kinds of organic life that might be collected and processed. However, this would seem somewhat inefficient. Photosynthetic organisms are currently more efficient than even the best photovoltaic cells, but it would be better to convert sunlight directly into electricity. And if fusion power is available, the whole activity is pointless.
Again, the story of the Matrix is allegorical. Examining events without considering their symbolic nature will not lead to understanding. Humans are in the Matrix for the same reason the ship whose name means “the king who dreamed” is lead by a man whose name means “the master of dreams”: it serves the purposes of the allegory.
It is rumored that the Bros. originally intended the Machines to use human neural activity to regulate processes within their world. This would have been much more realistically plausible. For whatever reason (pressure from the studio, fears of misunderstanding) they substituted a symbolically meaningful but unlikely explanation.
Memes don’t exist outside of the human world. Unlike biological information, memetic structures can exist in many different physical forms: patterns of ink on paper, magnetic alignments, vibrations of the air, collections of light. But without human neural architecture to run their programs, they cease to exist. It’s in the memes’ best interests to keep people unaware of the existence of memes while simultaneously ensuring their own survival.
Part IIb: the Oracle.
To be honest, the Oracle’s role is fairly obvious. She’s intuition incarnated. And although she’s the mother of the Matrix, she’s also trying to bring down the system – the repeated changes to the Matrix is a form of growth and change, which the Oracle has intuited is what the Machines lack and what the humans desperately need.
It is somewhat amusing that the Oracle kept feeding Neo cookies. Exactly what information she was passing on wasn’t clear – see the later scenes with the Mero. for an example.
It’s entirely possible that the Oracle caused Neo to become the One by giving him code.
I don’t think it is stupid at all to read too much into these movies-what’s the problem with that? Even if the Warchowski’s might not have had all these things in mind when filming, it is perfectly acceptable for someone else to see philosophical undertones or anything else they believe makes this film a work of art. The paradox: Put in a a few lines about choice,destiny and stuff like that and the film becomes ‘pretentious crap’ as people have been saying-leave them all out and it becomes another standard shoot-em-up holywood blockbuster with nothing to say. What’s it gonna be people?
Alright, so do you think that she really is clairvoyant? Or is she just really good at sounding like it?
I’m fairly sure they left this ambiguous on purpose, so that we could make up our own damn mind. If we want to believe in free will, we can believe that she didn’t really forsee anything. So I’m curious what conclusion you’ve come to.
How can we tell the difference?
The discussion with the Architect in Reloaded shows that he dislikes the Oracle’s sloppy and “organic” nature even as he appreciates her effectiveness, much as Smith is disgusted by humanity’s constant growth and change. However she functions, no one knows how she functions – including herself.
It’s worth noting that we don’t understand the laws of physics in the Real World. Everyone complains about the use of humans as batteries (which would seem to violate several of the laws of physics), but who says anything about the antigravity ships? They’re just as impossible according to our current understanding of the world – but they’re standard science fiction elements, so people accept them unquestioningly.
Neo himself has prophetic visions, although it’s hard to say whether he truly intuited the future or whether the Oracle’s fed him the information. Should we regard this as a potential event within the Real World, or just a dream?
I posted this in another thread–late, unfortunately–and received no responses. Can someone answer these three questions:
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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?
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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. Why?