I have to hit the "Wake up and smell the coffee button" and declare that The Matrix completely and utterly opens a can of Whupass on The Thirteenth Floor, which did in fact, blow.
Thank you for attention, you will now be returned to your normal programming...
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
If you find the Easter Egg in Revolutions, you can view the deleted scene where he wakes up in Dallas, in bed right next to JR Ewing.
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Okay, I'll try to see it the way you guys see it.
When Mr. Anderson "wakes up" from his desk job simulation and finds himself in the world in which he is the savior of Zion, he is still in the SAME Matrix program, but at a different level (he can still jack back in to the desk job world if he wants).
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
No, when he wakes up in the goo with the tubes and implants, he's in the real world.
This is made clear in both the last two movies and in the Animatrix, and while I see your interpretation of the Architect's words, I'm absolutely certain that it's incorrect.
What the Architect is saying is that the problem with this second Matrix (the first one having been the false utopia that humans jacked into it rejected) is that it periodically spawns a One, who can then go on to free others. The Architect found a solution to this problem by getting the One to merge with the Source (while still jacked in), at which point the machines would then send Sentinels – in the real world – to destory the city that the One had founded. Lather, rinse, repeat each time a new One springs up.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
All that guy does is point out where the Wachowskis got their ideas from. In fact, he makes the point that there aren't any new ideas in the movies rather well.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: What the Architect is saying is that the problem with this second Matrix (the first one having been the false utopia that humans jacked into it rejected) is that it periodically spawns a One, who can then go on to free others. The Architect found a solution to this problem by getting the One to merge with the Source (while still jacked in), at which point the machines would then send Sentinels – in the real world – to destory the city that the One had founded. Lather, rinse, repeat each time a new One springs up.
(Minor Spoilers)
I think more than that he's saying that the One is an artificial creation, and so is Zion. He's saying that though they all exist in the real world, the One is created to control the people who are freed from the Matrix and to refound Zion after it's destroyed. Zion is given plenty of time to rebuild, it starts looking fine and dandy again, and then another One is created and the cycle starts again. It is a way to control the percent of people who are inevitably going to get out of the Matrix. The only reason that it didn't happen again was not necessarily because of Neo himself, but because of the Rogue Smith virus, which threw off the balance so much that there was only one thing to do, and that was to cooperate.
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Okay, I'm with you now. Zion is populated by Matrix escapees and their offspring, not by people who survived the takeover of the machines. That speech by Tank (or was it Dozer) in the first movie about being born in the real world threw me off. I thought that they were the offspring of survivors, not of escapees. Now I can see how Zion can be repeatedly destroyed and re-populated.
Darn, now I've got to go back and watch the whole mess again.
Why is it that all the previous "Ones" ("Neos") are all physically identical (are all Keanu Reeves)?
Are the computers controlling the Matrix somehow cloning him, because they can control him as the "One" (or, at least, they are familiar with how he will respond to a given situation, assuming his "Normal Earth" programming is held constant from incarnation to incarnation?)
I had assumed (having never seen the Animatrix films, either) that Neo's "Waking up" in the goo-pod was also part of the "larger" dream. After all, he is able to exert "programmer" powers in the Zion-based world at the end of "Reloaded."
Zion is not populated by Matrix escapees. Zion is no different than the "Normal Earth" dream. It's a process that runs in parallel to the "Normal Earth" dream, and is a repository (prison, if you like) for all the miscreants who try to escape the "Normal Earth" program.
Neo, Morpheus, etc., are just "cut 'n' pasted" from NE to Zion. Don't any of you know how to code?
"Look, on the inside--it still looks like a stick."
posted
>> Why is it that all the previous "Ones" ("Neos") are all physically identical (are all Keanu Reeves)? <<
As far as I know, they aren't.
>> I had assumed (having never seen the Animatrix films, either) that Neo's "Waking up" in the goo-pod was also part of the "larger" dream. After all, he is able to exert "programmer" powers in the Zion-based world at the end of "Reloaded." <<
They aren't "programmer" powers, they're "messiah" powers, what with him getting blinded and still being able to see and all (Muad'dib, anyone?).
Edit: And yeah, I know a thing or two about programming, but I'm no guru by any stretch. It's certainly not my area of expertise.
posted
What about the train going from The Matrix to Zion?
How are the programs with the little girl escaping to the real world?
Doesn't zion HAVE to be another virtual world for that to happen?
And I thought the architect speach was pretty clear that Neo was a program. How the frig else can he "merge with the source"? How else can he carry code? How the heck else can he have god-like matrix powers? (especially in the Zion world) When he was blinded, he saw the zion world just like he saw the matrix! The only difference was a different color and slightly different effects. How else can Smith enter a human brain and take it over? Human brains aren't windows compatible! Not unless the "brain" is actually software itself.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Explain those things for me then instead of pretending my argument is too stupid to be serious...
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Sorry, I was being serious. I honestly wasn't sure. It *is* April Fool's day... or at least it was until recently.
>> What about the train going from The Matrix to Zion?
How are the programs with the little girl escaping to the real world?
Doesn't zion HAVE to be another virtual world for that to happen? <<
You're taking that sequence way to literallly. The train doesn't go from the Matrix to Zion. The subway is a place in between "jacked in" and "jacked out." Neo's consciousness was interrupted on its way back to the real world – he was unable to jack out at the end of Reloaded, and left part of his consciousness in the Matrix.
Being able to feel the machines in the real world is just a further manifestation of his powers. He's different from the Ones that came before.
>> And I thought the architect speach was pretty clear that Neo was a program. How the frig else can he "merge with the source"? <<
He can merge with the Source while he's in the Matrix, because while he's in the Matrix he can manipulate code, and the Source is just code. Special code, but code.
The Architect stated that the "glitch" of the birth of the One in the Matrix is something that has happened before, and that the machines have learned to deal with the One whenever another arises. That doesn't imply that Neo is somehow not real.
>> How else can he carry code? How the heck else can he have god-like matrix powers? (especially in the Zion world) When he was blinded, he saw the zion world just like he saw the matrix! The only difference was a different color and slightly different effects. <<
If Muad'dib can be blind yet see, Neo can certainly do the same. That was a very distinct tip of the hat to Dune, IMO.
>> How else can Smith enter a human brain and take it over? Human brains aren't windows compatible! Not unless the "brain" is actually software itself. <<
Smith can overwrite anything that's still connected to the Matrix. He does this all the time. How else could normal agents overwrite ordinary people in the Matrix? That happens all the time in the first two movies. Agents can occupy any hardware still wired to the system, including human brains. That was established in the first movie, during the sequence with the woman in the red dress.
IMO, the whole *point* of Neo having powers in the real world is to show that he isn't like the other Ones, he's something else.
Edit:
The most telling point against the argument that Zion isn't real, though, is that if it weren't, this would have been made abundantly clear in the movies given that they're by and large very basic and un-tricksy.
posted
>>You're taking that sequence way to literallly. The train doesn't go from the Matrix to Zion. The subway is a place in between "jacked in" and "jacked out." Neo's consciousness was interrupted on its way back to the real world – he was unable to jack out at the end of Reloaded, and left part of his consciousness in the Matrix.
Excuse me? So that was just a dream or something and we should ignore what everyone said about the train and that they actually had to rescue him from it? Isn't that a cop-out?
>>Being able to feel the machines in the real world is just a further manifestation of his powers. He's different from the Ones that came before.
So what you are saying is that Neo is actually some sort of superhuman in the real world too. No explanation at all for this, we are just supposed to accept it? Shouldn't he at least been bit by a radioactive spider or something?
>>If Muad'dib can be blind yet see, Neo can certainly do the same. That was a very distinct tip of the hat to Dune, IMO.
But what the hell. Paul had an overload of spice, something that gives you precognition. Paul had so much of it that he could see the present as memories of the future. Neo had no such explanation beyond some "the One" bullcrap.
>>Smith can overwrite anything that's still connected to the Matrix. He does this all the time. How else could normal agents overwrite ordinary people in the Matrix? That happens all the time in the first two movies. Agents can occupy any hardware still wired to the system, including human brains. That was established in the first movie, during the sequence with the woman in the red dress.
They can REPLACE their representation of people in the Matrix with their one. How does this have anything to do with real brains? Think about it twink. Where would Smith's software be written in the dude's brain? He'd have to replace every neuron physically. There is NO place in a human brain for a personality software program to be written.
>>IMO, the whole *point* of Neo having powers in the real world is to show that he isn't like the other Ones, he's something else.
But what else is he? You can't add unexplainable powers to a protagonist in the middle of the story and have no explanation.
Except that they did give a likely explanation. The architects speach was the explanation.
Regardless, I thought the second movie was just okay, and the third one downright terrible. Seems to me to enjoy the last one you need to do a fair amount of shutting off your brain. Even the action sequences sucked. The attack on Zion by the sentinals was downright laughable.
posted
There is also the small matter of the Wachowskis having said in interviews pre-Revolutions that they would not do "box within a box." Actually, I think it was Keanu who mentioned it first, in an interview, IIRC.
>> Excuse me? So that was just a dream or something and we should ignore what everyone said about the train and that they actually had to rescue him from it? Isn't that a cop-out? <<
The station is where you wind up if you get stuck in mid-jack-out. The train is the path your consciousness takes on its way in or out. How is that a cop-out? It's what's said in the movie.
>> So what you are saying is that Neo is actually some sort of superhuman in the real world too. No explanation at all for this, we are just supposed to accept it? Shouldn't he at least been bit by a radioactive spider or something? <<
Yes. He is. The end of Reloaded leaves this open to questioning, but Revolutions does not. Throughout the movies, Neo's powers grow and develop. Power over machines in the real world is a natural extension of it.
>> They can REPLACE their representation of people in the Matrix with their one. How does this have anything to do with real brains? Think about it twink. Where would Smith's software be written in the dude's brain? He'd have to replace every neuron physically. There is NO place in a human brain for a personality software program to be written. <<
It's a movie, dude. Suspend your disbelief already. Besides which, he wouldn't have to replace every neuron physically at all. He'd just have to trigger different electrical patterns such that his consciousness was the one that manifested.
>> But what else is he? You can't add unexplainable powers to a protagonist in the middle of the story and have no explanation.
Except that they did give a likely explanation. The architects speach was the explanation. <<
The Architect never said, or even implied, that Neo was a program.
Besides which, if the "real" world isn't real, the whole third movie makes absolutely no coherent sense.
>> Regardless, I thought the second movie was just okay, and the third one downright terrible. Seems to me to enjoy the last one you need to do a fair amount of shutting off your brain. Even the action sequences sucked. The attack on Zion by the sentinals was downright laughable. <<
I enjoyed all three. I didn't think any of them was more or less than what I expected – which is to say, good fun.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: The station is where you wind up if you get stuck in mid-jack-out. The train is the path your consciousness takes on its way in or out. How is that a cop-out? It's what's said in the movie.
What about the family who tells him its the passage between the Matrix and Neo's world? Are they lying?
quote: Besides which, if the "real" world isn't real, the whole third movie makes absolutely no coherent sense.
Exactly .
I am done arguing about it. Why I care how people interpreted a movie I don't even like is beyond me.
Edit: Maybe I am just in the mood to argue tonight. I think that might be it .
quote:What about the family who tells him its the passage between the Matrix and Neo's world? Are they lying?
No, they are telling the truth. The "your world" that the programs are talking about to Neo is the Matrix, and the other world is the machine world. Basically, while they affected the Matrix before the train station, they were not part of it, at least not in the existence sence. They are smuggling her to the Oracle. It is not where they are smuggling to that is never explained, it is where they are smuggling from. The best guess for me would be the machine city or wherever programs are created. There are lots of runaway programs in the Matrix, and the family in the train station was just one of them.
Posts: 346 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote: Why is it that all the previous "Ones" ("Neos") are all physically identical (are all Keanu Reeves)?
They're not. I assume you're making this assumption from the scene in which he's talking to the Architect and there are all those screens behind him. That wasn't footage of the other "Ones," that was all of the possible reactions that Neo could have to being told what he did. I interpreted it as monitors showing the little parts of his mind that were hearing this, all the disbelief and anger and fear displayed simultaneously. It's an effect that shows us how much control the Architect has over The Matrix.
quote:Zion is not populated by Matrix escapees. Zion is no different than the "Normal Earth" dream. It's a process that runs in parallel to the "Normal Earth" dream, and is a repository (prison, if you like) for all the miscreants who try to escape the "Normal Earth" program.
What in the world makes you say this?? If the creators wanted to give us a "box within a box," they would make it patently obvious to us that they were doing that. Like "OH! Look how smart we are, we fooled you!!" Which they didn't do as far as I can tell. However, you're entitled to your own interpretation of the movie...
quote:Neo, Morpheus, etc., are just "cut 'n' pasted" from NE to Zion. Don't any of you know how to code?
This just seems unnecessarily confrontational to me...
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:So what you are saying is that Neo is actually some sort of superhuman in the real world too. No explanation at all for this, we are just supposed to accept it? Shouldn't he at least been bit by a radioactive spider or something?
It wasn't necessary to explain it - the Neo as Christ metaphor was being expanded upon. If they had explained why he could affect the machines in so many words, they would have undermined the work they had done to make him into a Christ figure.
As far as a real explanation goes, I always assumed that since a part of Neo was left back in the Source, he was just exercising his ability to manipulate the Matrix via remote. None of his abilities in the real world didn't involve the machines - either seeing them when his eyes were injured, or shutting them down with a wave of his hand.
Personally, I rather liked the last two movies. They certainly aren't the same experience, but I liked them nonetheless.
quote:IMO, the whole *point* of Neo having powers in the real world is to show that he isn't like the other Ones, he's something else
Or, as I'm proposing, perhaps he's the first "One" to realize that the Zion world is just another programmed world.
But, as I've said repeatedly, I haven't yet seen ""Revolutions," or "The Animatrix," so I could very well be missing critically important clues!
[facetiosness]And it's not a box-within-a-box, it's a box-alongside-a-box.[/facetiosness]
Sorry if I appeared too confrontational about the "Coding" reference. It's a joke
quote:The most telling point against the argument that Zion isn't real, though, is that if it weren't, this would have been made abundantly clear in the movies given that they're by and large very basic and un-tricksy.
We are talking about the same movie, aren't we?
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I can go with "box-alongside-a-box." It explains the train thing and the Agent Smith posession thing.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:That wasn't footage of the other "Ones," that was all of the possible reactions that Neo could have to being told what he did. I interpreted it as monitors showing the little parts of his mind that were hearing this, all the disbelief and anger and fear displayed simultaneously. It's an effect that shows us how much control the Architect has over The Matrix.
And that, of course, is your interpretation. Mine differs.
The question your interpretation also asks is, "Why?" Why would the Architect need to show his "control" over the Matrix in this way? And, BTW, being able to read Neo's mind is not "control," it's "sensing."
If Neo is, at his core (somewhere four or five dreams distant), human, then this is his "spirit" we're watching. WHy do we need to be shown this? What makes this so special, at this moment? It makes more sense (well, to me at least) if it is a playback of the responses of the previous "Ones."
<<Spoiler Request>> By the end of "Revolutions," is Neo even human? Is it revealed (or, does it remain plausible) that Neo is just another independent, coded "agent," (similar, that way, to Smith) but with a specific underlying task to periodically reset the system? This concept is also supported by the scene at the Architects chamber.
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I think anyone arguing about what is real and what isn't real should atleast see the third movie before they make flat out statements of what is going on.
here's my take on it. take from it what you will.
The machines couldn't make a perfect matrix, humans rejected the software. So they created this less than perfect world. Which the majority of people accepted, and only a very small percentage rejected. This small percentage would over time grow and eventually cause trouble for machine supremity. also, given the imperfect mathematics the Matrix would eventually give birth to an anamoly(who is a real person, but with important code written into his matrix self), who would be required to merge with the source so it could be reloaded with it's next version number or somethign like that or the Matrix would go down thus killing everyone jacked in. To get the anomaly(The One) to go along with it, the machines set up this control condition where give the one a choice. merge with us and choose a group of people to restart zion, or we destroy zion AND every human plugged into the matrix dies. This is their system of control. another one. One is the MAtrix, and one is in the real world, where people think they're really free, but it's really all part of this greater plan. The machines have figured out a way to merge the one with the source, and take care of the problem of the percentage of humans that reject the code all in one fell swoop.
The reason, i believe, that neo can affect electrical systems in the real world is because part of himself was still left in the matrix at the end of reloaded. part of himself is still connected to the computer mainframe, and thus he can still affect machines that are also all connected to the main frame. it looks like he's putting his hand up and stopping them. what he's actually doing is probably along the lines of sending a command from the central computer telling them to shut down.
posted
As Argent said, the train was a connection between the machine world and the Matrix. The Matrix is the simulation where the people live (along with a few programs, like agents, the Merovingian, and escaped programs like the Indian family). The machines mostly live in a different computer world, though the two are connected. I don't think the train station is an intermediate spot between jacked in and jacked out. It's just a spot between two different computer worlds, and Neo happened to end up there by accident.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Well I watched Rovolutions last night and I enjoyed it very much thank you.
I also agree with the summations by Strider and Jon Boy just above me.
I also agree with the premise that the Trainman and his gateway is a rift beween matrices: one for the Humans to exist in and one for the machines to "live" in. With so many programs emulating humans in the matrix we became most familiar with, this theory makes the most sense to me.
What is so complex is the evolution of Neo from a human who is plugged into the matrix to this godlike persona.
Maybe he is called Neo for a reason...
Anyway, I feel compelled to say that for a pair of movies that supposedly sucked big time, they sure do evoke much thought and debate. As a writer/director, that is what I would most hope for.
Also worth mentioning is Agent Smith's conversation with the Oracle, and their proposed Mother/son relationship. I found that to be a nice tie-in.
Obviously, there are more players than just the Architect, the Oracle, Neo, Agent Smith, and the humans who do not stay suppressed in the matrix. The most enigmatic was the computer overmind-like presense that Neo made a deal with for a truce.
Again, the movies left much to interpretation, and in a good way. Too bad the sequels suffered from the same pressure that George Lucas had with his sequels to Star Wars, and at this point, I would wager that everyone here believes they could have written a better movie than Episode I.
posted
I sort of assumed that the giant talking face robot at the end was physical embodiment of the Architect. Maybe I was wrong. I think I need to see it again.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I know Jon Boy and assuming anything with these movies just seems like "going out on a limb" when trying to decipher anything from the movies.
If the giant face were the Architect, would the architect be so willing to grant peace with humanity in his grasp? Was Agent Smith really such a threat? Those are tough questions to answer. I would like to think Neo was right in dealing the truce and using his ability to defeat Agent Smith as leverage, but surely the machines have dealt with rogue programs before. Look how many rogue programs hid within the matrix that we were introduced to. They tended to cower in fear from the agents. Surely, the machines have a bigger watchdog than Agent Smith to clean their software...
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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When Neo takes the pill and wakes up in the tank full of goo with all the wires in him, that's the real world. Every time you see anyone in that world, it's the real world.
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posted
Just go see Revolutions. And maybe watch the Animatrix – which is actually much better than I thought it would be.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
...because he's the freaking Messiah! Suspend your disbelief already, it's only a movie.
Edit: And these are not deep, philosophical movies with multiple interpretations. They happen, the action is great, and then they're over. Pretty much everything is clear and straightforward. I think that's what I don't understand about this thread.
quote:...right up until blind Neo discovers that he can still see.
Would you prefer that they took 45 minutes of unnecessary explanation about how the mind-body interface and dozens of generations of cloning, which is where all Matrix-born humans come from, Neo exhibits a rare mutation that doesn't allow him to see without eyes, but allows him to see energy by using his mind, which also happened to connect to the Source briefly in the second film.... you know, when he met the Architect. All of these things happenning in just the right succession and because Neo is such a uniquely advanced human, due to the mutation, gave Neo the abilities and powers that enabled him to affect things that were connected to or directed by the machine world himself, but only on a very basic level. This explains why he can make them overload and explode, but not much else. Given time, he and his offspring would probably have been able to completely affect and control machines without ever physically touching them. That Neo sacrificed his life for peace instead of trying to take over the machines is figurative of many religious ideas of defeating aggression through passivism. Because a peace and continued existence would remain mutually beneficial for the humans and machines, this peace was possible.
However, all of that is so much more boring than just watching the movie. Posts: 346 | Registered: Jan 2003
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