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The Matrix: Resolutions
Slappy White writes "For six months, Matrix message boards were aflame with speculation, theories, predictions and outright psychotic guessing about Revolutions. Now the film is here, and this article has a humorous roundup of some of the popular theories, both those that were close and others that were, shall we say, a little off the mark." I still haven't seen this film, so I'll refrain from passing judgment, but I'm ever so happy the matrix-within-a-matrix theories were unfounded. Update: 11/09 02:38 GMT by CN : Some folks who've never seen the Twilight Zone or even the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horrors thought that was a spoiler. If you're one of those people, I'm very sorry.
heh, your so right, everyone that didnt like the movie was expecting some type of hollywood ending like all the machines dieing and Neo becoming a god or something, this is why I LOVED the movie so much, it did totally the oppisite. Most people like walking out of the theater feeling good inside, all warm and fuzzy, like something special just happened. (like in the first matrix)
Also I think another reason people didnt like the movie is because they dont use their imagination. They dont think about what happened, they dont understand the movie. They are expecting everything to be candy coated and spoon feed to them.
Thank you Wacowski Brothers for not doing that!
keanmarine.com
yes, so long as:
1. you don't expect them to be the best thing ever like many people (stupidly) did.
2. your life doesn't revolve around you having a perfect understanding of The Matrix and it all being perfectly plausible.
3. you can enjoy a film even if it doesn't tell you exactly what you want to hear and show you exactly what you want to see.
Simply put, the Matrix-In-A-Matrix theory is dramatically untenable. It undermines any possible resolution in the films because there can always be another Matrix enclosing the last, another dream to wake up from, as it were.
For the movie to work dramatically, there needs to be some sort of possible conclusion, either to be achieved or frustrated. Setting the first two films in some sort of "higher-order" Matrix undercuts this in two ways: first, it tells the audience "hey, you know those first two movies? well, it turns out that nothing that happened in them counts, there's no real payoff, sorry about that", thus abusing the audience's investment in the fantasy world; second, it not only leaves open, but implicitly nods to the possibility that the second Matrix is in fact fraudulent as well, and that no matter how many times our heros "wake up", they'll still wake up in (another) Matrix. So the possible conclusion necessary for the narrative in the movie to function properly disappears, and all we're left with is bad acting and gee-whiz special effects.
I guess I'm in the minority here in that I find the pseudo-philosophical ruminations* of the Watchowskis tiresome and adolescent, but even I recognize that they know how to spin a good yarn, and they wouldn't ruin the dramatic structure in such an obvious way.
(*"But, like, dude, they talk about Plato on their website, and that "desert of the real" line is like, from some French post-somethingorother dude, and besides, it's so, you know, eastern." Exactly.)
I've seen a lot of complaints from people who just didn't like how things were resolved. They didn't have specific complaints about the storytelling, dialogue (which itself is fodder for snide commentary), action or anything but how the story played out. Specifically, they had their own ideas of how things should work out (such as the Matrix-in-a-Matrix) and when these things didn't come to fruition they became horribly disappointed and jaded.
I'm not saying that everyone who hated the movie is like that -- some of them have valid complaints -- but many of the detractors, especially on the Matrix fan boards, have been citing the fact that events didn't work out how they wanted.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
- people start calling each other by nicknames ('merv', 'trin') in an hour's time
'Trin' was not exactly prescedented, but I can overlook it. "Merv" isn't an issue at all; Trinity was making a snide remark.
- the young indian girl and the trainkeeper seem to have no real purpose
The trainman was somewhat gratituous, but Sati has a level of importance that is implied more than explained. The oracle allowed her old shell to be destroyed specifically because she believes that Sati is important to the future of both the humans and the machines. It's just that there really wasn't any way to develop her much in the movie.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Hardly! While they may have been more formulaic, I hated this movie because they didn't really do much of, well, anything! It's all just hand waving and mystic mumbling with no real coherence or depth.
It might be a cop-out just to simply make humans win, robots die....but it's equally a cop-out just to make a lot of vague references to stuff without trying to make any sense of any of it.
I agree. I think a lot of people are distracted by the eye-candy and bad dialog. But they're are missing lot of the cool ideas in the film. For example, the idea of choice and freedom:
**Spoiler warning**
The matrix was perfected by giving people choices (Oracle's idea). It took away the perfect controllability, but it made people happier because it gave them a sense of freedom. But it wasn't true freedom, because everything inside the matrix was inevitable--choices can be predicted and acted upon. But the Final Choice, the choice that the ONE makes is the one that could un-do the matrix. It didn't happen for 6 previous matricies, but the seventh one it did.
However when Neo chooses to save trinity instead of the rest of the human kind (in the 2nd film), and also when trinity comes with neo in the third one , they do it out of love, but it means that their choices really weren't free. They're bound to the "inevitability" of love. But at the same time, they *are* free to make the choices that could doom them. So there is a paradox that "inevitablity" and "fate", can both come from having free choice and not having free choice. But which one is real?
Also, having peace and war is also matter of choices. The machines choose to honor their bargain, neo chose to (potentially) sacrifice himself to save the machines. So havin pgeace or war is also choices made by the parties (think Israel-palestine).
There are a lot of hard ideas/paradoxes in the film besides, but people should look past the eye-candy and some bad acting and see it's not really that bad of a film at all.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Just my theory here. Think of Smith as a viral network. It absorbs a person or program and adds it to the network, becoming more powerful in the process. The machines need to hack that network and destroy it but they can't because it is no longer connected to them. Neo and the machine mind agreed to work together to destroy smith. When Neo entered the matrix to confront smith he did it by connecting through the machine mind. At the end of the fight Neo lets himself be absorbed by Smith and becomes part of the Smith network. Smith thinks it has won but doesn't realize that Neo is connected to the Machine Mind. Just before Smith dies you see the cables into Neo light up. The Machine Mind is now connected to the Smith Network via Neo and can destroy it from the inside. The Oracle was the key to Neo realizing that he had to lose the fight to defeat Smith. She knew the Smiths were coming to "assimilate" her but stayed there and let it happen. The Smith that Neo fought was the one who had been the Oracle, this is provable because (a) it said the others were letting it fight him because it had forseen itself winning and (b) when the smiths died it was her body lying there. At the end of the fight the oracle/smith said that had forseen Neo was lying there while it said "Everything has to come to an end", but it seemed confused by this. This was a message for Neo from the Oracle. He understood that he had lose the fight and let Smith absorb him into the network thus giving the machine mind the backdoor it needed. This also fits the messiah theme, he let himself die in order to save humanity
Here's my little "what I might have done" twist on things:
a) The Merovingian would turn out to be in fact a previous version of the one, from "a much older version of the Matrix". Neo is the Matrix 3.0's one, this guy was from an older one. In fact he has better insight into this Matrix than Neo does, as an outsider. He's just decided there's no point to all this.
b) The reason he has is that no one is in fact unplugged - Zion is a spilloff Matrix for the people who must fight the system. In this matrix, the unease they still feel is masked by their fight to save the world, and they are thus rendered harmless. They also remove other disruptive elements from the Matrix, in essence being very unwitting house cleaners. This explains a point never addressed at all - when the one supposedly "work up" and freed the first people, how did they rebuild themselves from the physical state Neo started in? He needed extensive medical help to function again - the first people would have had none. Simple answer - no one has ever really woken up and formed Zion. If someone did wake up, they died. That machine that unplugged them, also took their head off for good measure.
c) Neo, like the previous ones, is in fact a program himself. He has no awareness of this, and his sentient mind fully believes he is human. The Merovingian knows he is a program, and that is a further reason the fight is of little interst to him. Neo, the new one, has no such insight and in any case is built so he will fight for humanity. This is part of his function as the one program. He is "seeded" into the Matrix to bring about a necessary reprogramming, as the system has built to a point of instability where matters must be restarted now in order to maintain full control. (Think Windows box - saving work and rebooting, because you can tell it's about to go unstable on you.)
d) However, the One has a couple unintentional side effects - a) it overwrites a part of an agent program, creating a virus and b) develops a deep relationship with Trinity. Now the @#$@# has really hit the fan, and data corruption begins to take place.
e) The Merovingian, interested in his own existance and well versed in the Matrix, is now under threat from the virus program. He is compelled to prepare for war. He check codes and prepares to isolate certain sections of the Matrix he controls, but then he stops. An amused, ironic smile comes over his face, and he turns toward a door, fishing out a key.
f) Smith the virus corrupts the system - the Matrix more easily, but subtle effects begin to seep into the more heavliy shielded "real world" environment. Initially Zion appears to be helped by this, since the real world programs like the sentinals are not prepared for this kind of attack and are the first things to fail. No one understands it but the conclusion is Neo somehow did it. Big party starts, but then odd things happen - lights begin to behave sporadically, computer systems begin to show flashes of Smith's face, and the weaker people mentally begin to show faint signs of Smith's personality. Neo, as a program, also comes under attack sooner than the human minds but is better able to protect himself. He contacts the machines directly using his still not understood powers and proposes the deal. It is accepted and he enters the Matrix, to deal with the virus at its source.
g) Big fight. Neo holds his own against one of the Smiths (movie fight was OK here, except after crater impact Neo shows brief program characteristics as he rewrites routines to repair and strengthen himself, and gets up stronger). Both programs are rewriting themselves as they fight, and as the Matrix becomes more and more tasked action outside Smith and Neo slows down.
h. (In reality humans aren't power sources BTY - their brains are the hardware of the Matrix. The brainpower not being used in their Matrix existance is used to power the system - the brain being the one thing beyond the machines to duplicate. As their
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
But it's also said they have "a form of fusion." That would lead me to believe that they know of nuclear technology. They at least have to fake the existence of nuclear technology for the humans, as isn't it a nuke plant that Niobe & crew infiltrate in Reloaded?
It doesn't even have to be nukes. Very large conventional explosives (think MOAB) would probably do the trick, too. Even if you can't kill all the humans with the blast, at least you can bury them and prevent them from ever leaving the cave.
The answer is, the machines didn't use nukes or gas or anything because the writers are dense. It's the same reason the aliens in Independence Day didn't just pelt the next planet they want to invade (Earth) with neutron bombs (or even nukes) from space a hundred years before they arrive. And, why did they need to use the human's satelites in order to communicate with each other? Answer, because it's a lot more exciting to see space ships fighting F-15, and hordes of squid robots fighting 'Mechs.
Oh, and those 'Mechs were the stupidest thing I've ever seen. You've got all this metal and armor...but none of it is protecting the freaking pilot. Also, if the Mechs are only going to be on flat ground....why use legged machines? Isn't that just another easy point of failure? How about treads instead.
Finally, in the first movie, the EMP was "our only weapon against the machines." So, now, sixth months later, they realize, "oh, machine guns can blow them up, too." Huh? And since the EMP is so incredibly effective, lets make sure they're only on our ships, and let's not keep any around the perimeter of our base.
Plot holes abound.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Did the panners SEE this movie? We thought it was great. Confusing to follow -- we purposefully had a movie and then dinner so we could talk about it -- but rewarding and satisfyingly concluding (the whole universe doesn't have to end just to provide closure, people).
The action was awesome, so was the passion and interpersonal storyline. Neo and Trinity, Morpheous and Nairobi (sp?), Link and his wife (names?), Morpheous and Neo and Oracle, Frenchman and his wife/trophy, Agent Smith and Neo, Oracle and Architect, and even Machines and Humanity. Character development was good, too: the young boy rescued by Neo, between I and II, who idolized Neo developed very well, for example.
At the point Neo made his bargain with the Machines and let Smith infect him I turned to my wife, who I met in a 2 year post-undergraduate degree Bible school, and said, "He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf..." (2 Cor 5:21a) and "God, sending His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3/partial): that is, Neo localized Agent Smith and, being physically plugged in, even though he could possibly make it into the Matrix without the plugs, he sacrificed himself to terminate the viral agent of death. BTW, If this doesn't sound familiar, look at this:
And there was much other philosophical treats scattered throughout -- love and karma, just words but given meaning by what they are connected with (the latter so very relevant to Slashdotters, especially those remembering Signal11 and the karma whore wars...In short, once again I think reviews are useless (except in the case of Ben & JLo flicks) and I regret being influenced in the least by the nay-sayers. I think people pan movies like this just because its easier than admitting, "I need to see it again and ponder for a while what it all means."
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
You nailed it.
I'll go even further and say that things were explained. These movies are the most intellectual action movies that have ever been released, and I doubt we'll have the opportunity for such things to be made ever again.
The Oracle said the power of the One reaches to the Source. This is why he can feel anything connected to the Machines, including Smith in the real world. That seemed obvious.
Smith entering Bane is less obvious, but I figure if they can download training programs or connect to a virtual reality, programs can also hijack a brain through those same ports.
As for how Neo actually destroyed Smith, it is implied, not explained...things aren't spelled out for the idiots. You can draw endless conclusions. The Oracle said Smith is Neo's opposite, his negative...1 + (-1) = 0. Or you can say once Neo was destroyed, the equation had to "rebalance" itself again, killing Smith.
Hell, look up what the name Sati means and find out the deeper meanings of that ending.
But people don't look at it that way. The thing I find most interesting is that most reviews say it's better than Reloaded, yet give it a worse rating than Reloaded (RottenTomatoes has Reloaded at something like 76%, compared to the 36% of Revolutions).
People just didn't like that it wasn't a Hollywood ending. I will say that this movie has the most hidden religious and philosophical imagery I've ever seen...it's all way more subtle than Reloaded (who noticed the glowing cross and wings when Neo was killing Smith? Who noticed the Fibonacci sequences in the intro, and the reveal of the Machine City? Who noticed that bizarre "goathead" symbol in the Matrix code when the intro finished?).
"Sufferin' succotash."
Ok, first of all, let me just feed my ego and post this link. This is the post that I made on the subject right after Reloaded, and in it I pointed out that they *would* do the god, Christ, and reunification of man and machine plot. There, now I feel better. :)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=65437&cid=60 36 019
That being said, let me just point out the main reasons this Trilogy has been ruined as a major piece of sci-fi. Note that I didn't say it made the thing sucked completely and horribly; there is a difference. The series is still awesome for what it offers, but there were many (including myself) who had expectations of sci-fi (logical) purity. Those expectations simply weren't met.
Some will argue that the Trilogy put forth the ultimate in depth and philosophy, and that the reason so many complain is because they aren't smart enough to get it. This is utter crap. People who believe this have missed the boat, and I encourage them to read something like "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" in order to see what true sci-fi is.
In my view the difference is this: while true sci-fi asks you to believe something extraordinary, it takes great care not to break the rules that it lays down for itself. And once you accept the principle thing they are asking you to believe, you can then pursue the rest of the story as if it is more or less true science. *THAT* is, in my opinion, *true* sci-fi.
My contention, and the contention of many others, is that this Trilogy is nothing more than a collection of very cool concepts drawn from mythology and philosophy, wrapped up in an attractive action/marital arts/special effects shell. Again, this is a winning combination if you accept it for what it is, but it should *not* be mistaken for true sci-fi genius. Here's why:
1. The energy source issue is lame at best. It just doesn't work. You can keep a human vegetable alive for years with very little going on in their brain. THEY DON'T NEED THE MATRIX to keep bodies alive. If you grow humans and make them into idiots with a minimal amount of brain activity, you can just feed them for decades and they will produce all the power that they would in the Matrix. The fact that they are living out a 9-5 job in the Matrix isn't going to generate the machines any more juice than just keeping them alive. Hell, even if it DID generate more energy, would it be so much that it offset the expenditure of maintaining the Matrix? I think not. Either way, this power source issue is the ENTIRE reason for the movie. Without the use of humans as batteries there is no Matrix, no Neo, no Zion (read on to see why there would be no Zion). The entire Trilogy rests on the energy issue, and it doesn't hold water.
2. The second major problem lies in the fact that you can't build a f*cking city that deep inside the earth. Ask any scientist who's versed in the matter; it's not possible. Again, they are asking quite a bit of the viewer in this regard.
3. They never covered how Neo, a flesh and blood human, is able to exert control over machines in the real world. You see, what they did was switch everything up on us. This started as a sci-fi movie - the scorching of the sky, the underground city, and the war vs. the machines. This was the plot originally, and I think it was a good one. The fact that there was a false reality where the computers kept humans was very cool, and the fact that you could do cool shit while in the Matrix was cool. But the whole thing was laid out as science. Morpheus asks if Neo thinks he's breathing air in the simulation. Logic guided that. The fact that you have to "believe" about the jump program, again, guided by logic. At that point, they hadn't broken their own rules (even though the initial things they were asking you to believe were massive). The problem, however, is that they ended up, in the third movie, with Neo as a Christ figure who could blow up machines with a mere thought. Huh? How so?
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