2. Action sequences rocked quite a lot.
3. Cornel West? Fine, as long as he promises not to record any more CDs.
4. I had some doubts about the Council scenes--the speechifying steered dangerously close to Queen Amidala territory. But Mike made the point that the number of people the Architect wants Neo to pick is the same number of people as there are on the Council, thus implying that this Council was picked by a previous Neo. No wonder they are more blase about trying to stop the Sentinels than the Commander is--they know they can't win. Or aren't supposed to. Think back to the one Council member's speech to Neo about people and machines needing each other. Hm.
5. Andrew O'Hehir has a point about Trinity's "little death", which could have come off very Freud-101, but luckily didn't. But he's dead wrong about the Merovingian being "witty." It's the weakest part--the asinine game he plays with the cake, the hackneyed sword-fighting, the lifeless albino dreadlock twins not to mention the bizarre vampire stuff. Now, when the Oracle first mentions that vampires etc. are in fact faults in the program, I understood this to mean that there are blips in the Matrix, and people interpreted and anthropomorphized them into werewolves, etc. This fit together with my understanding of how such creatures were imagined in the first place--one theory being that pre-modern humans were so unable or unwilling to admit the existence of serial killers, that such grisly deaths were explained away as the work of literally inhuman perpetrators. But then Persephone (she married a bad guy! how clever! pfft) shoots one of her husband's henchmen with a silver bullet, implying that they are, quite literally, vampires. Are the vampires rogue elements in the Matrix, or are they legacy elements that were meant to be removed, some of whom have survived the agents' attempts to delete them? And does this really matter?. My understanding of the film (as far as I've thought about it) makes these characters unimportant--really nothing more than an impediment to Neo's finding you-know-who. So I hope and expect that this'll be the end of them.
6. The Architect's speech was the wordiest, most stilted blather I've heard in a long time. Sure, using a lot of long words makes him seem smart and important. But could the writers have looked up the exact definitions and usage in the dictionary, please? Because it all sounded wrong, and distracted me horribly from what he was saying. It felt like Neo's destiny, as broken down by the IRS.
6. How exactly did Agent Smith get to strike out on his own? Why did he have one of his doubles get out of the Matrix and into Zion if it's only to help the Matrix crush Zion--doesn't he have his own agenda? Did he really get to Morpheus? (I didn't think so, but a co-viewer suspected maybe.)
7. I strongly believe that they are still in the Matrix at the end. How else could Neo have that effect on a Sentinel? I don't know what would be more disappointing--a large portion of the story turning out to be, in effect, a dream sequence; or the films turning all messianic and unrealistic and allowing Neo to do magical stuff in the real world. My guess is that something fishy happened when he left the Architect.
8. Here's my idea about the release dates. This film is so convoluted that lots of people will want to see it again before seeing the third. By releasing the third so soon, they are forcing all of the re-viewing to be done in a theatre for $10, rather than at home for $3.95. Sneaky bastards.
Anyways, very very fun...and considering how logical and tight the first film was, I really hope that they manage to bring it all together in the third. And if they don't--well, it'll still be fun to look at.
- Mood:exhilarated
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Comments
Not possible, given the timescales involved. I'll buy that the number is the same because that's how many people the prior One picked, and they were the first rulers of the society that in time came to be the present iteration of Zion, but the very same people? Nope.
It felt like Neo's destiny, as broken down by the IRS.
Well, they are machines, so that makes sense. I loved this part, and I'm going to go see the movie again specifically so I can watch this scene and pay more attention without being distracted by the "Holy. Fucking. Shit," feelings I was having at that point.
doesn't he have his own agenda?
Certainly he does. Notice that his appearence in the corridor towards the end of the film delays Neo from entering the door too early and blowing himself up. And yes, the incarnation of real-world Smith seemed to be trying to kill Neo and help destroy Zion, but I don't think it's safe to assume that the Smith-copies have the same motivation as the Smith-original.
I strongly believe that they are still in the Matrix at the end.
I think that would be a cheap cop-out ending. It's possible, but I'll be disappointed (extremely!) if they go that route.
How else could Neo have that effect on a Sentinel?
Did he? Note that the other ship shows up very soon after Neo gestures magically and appears to knock out the Sentinels; from what we can see, it could as easily have been the ship's use of an EMP weapon that knocked out the sentinels, saving Our Heroes in the theatrical nick of time.
How else could Neo have that effect on a Sentinel?
Well, we know that his seeming destruction of Smith at the end of the first movie was nothing of the sort, and that something flowed from Neo to Smith, freeing him from the control of the machine AIs and turning him into, perhaps, the only entity in the movie with free will. Maybe the information flow wasn't all one way, that Neo obtained something from Smith that allows him to interact with the machines in the real world, and what we saw was an example of this interaction.
My guess is that something fishy happened when he left the Architect.
According to the Architect, Neo's consciousness changed when he entered the Source. 'course, he could be lying, or simply wrong.
2. Yes, of course. Though ultimately not important.
3. Actually, I have no objections to Cornell West retiring from public life...I hope it comes soon.
4. Well this is an interesting point...I'll mull it over, though I agree with Brian about the timescales being difficult to reconcile.
5. Yes, the Merovingian is a big dork. Admittedly, if I could make chocolate cakes that would give women orgasms, I'd pass them out pretty freely myself. But I'm not a terribly nice person, so I'd discount me as a role model for the world. I'm also not married to Monica Bellucci, which I'd like to think cuts me a little slack.
6. Actually, it's a very good and elegant statement of a very complicated idea. Short version: Zion's an error handler and it's time to clear the stack.
6. Not sure where Smith got his freedom certificate...but I'm betting it's because of his interaction with Neo. Why is Smith moving into Zion?
Smith wants to control everything that exists.
Zion exists.
The conclusion will be left as an intellectual excercise.
7. I do not think Neo is still in the Matrix.
How does he do what he does? We know information can cross the boundaries of the Matrix, right? That's why people know about the Oracle.
We are further getting the idea that information in the form of "programs" can now be passed across the Matrix boundaries by some entities: namely Smith, who "rewrites" Blaine with his own personality.
We suspect there may be a strong link between Smith and Neo now.
I submit that as Smith can transfer "program information" out of the Matrix computers into people, so Neo can transfer "program information" into computers out of the Desert of the Real.
8. Sigh. No dear. The Wachowski's would have released the third movie earlier if WB had let them...it's in the Salon article.
The third film will get released at a predetermined date and time that has been desinged and calculated to benefit from maximum revenue. It has nothing to do with who says what, the film industry is a business the same as everything else.
The council members being pre-selected is a certainty, whether these existing council memebers are the original selected is anybodies guess, but if they are, is it not correct to say that one of them must also be a previous "the one"? Seeing as "the one" will also continue to survive to help rebuild Zion.
I agree that if Neo is in the Matrix, it will be the biggest cop out the film industry has ever seen.
The EMP theory is good, but Neo notices something 'different', and unless he can sense EMP (which the others seem not to be able to) i doubt this theory.
The playstation 2 game announces in a cut scene about Neo's body being seperated from his brain somewhat and a part of his consiousness is still in the Matrix. Again i think this is a cop out theory.
A theory i like is Neo being Jesus - think about it, im sure youve all heard and read this before, but look into it, it makes sense.
Whatever the theory is, i cant wait to see the third installment.
LONG LIVE THE MATRIX!!!
> out to be, in effect, a dream sequence; or the films turning all
> messianic and unrealistic and allowing Neo to do magical stuff in
> the real world. My guess is that something fishy happened when he
> left the Architect.
In general there are a number of reasons to believe that the "real" world and the matrix are converging.
Plot wise, both Agent Smith's "crossing over" into the real world and Neo's ability to stop the squids (it wasn't an EMP, he makes this cryptic comment before he does it that there is something wrong and that he can feel them) indicate this.
This is consistent with the philosophy that the directors claim underlies the movie. Baudrillard is supposed to have complained that he was misunderstood after the first movie; his objection was to the existence of a "real" world. I suspect they want to make the point that there is no real world, and that we're always trapped.
It also makes good story telling sense. Having our hero be able to do cool things only on the astral plane means that we lose the ability to use cool effects in the real world. Remember when he comes to Zion, and people are lined up asking him for boons ? This wouldn't make sense unless Neo could do something outside the matrix. Having the two levels bleed together also takes care of an issue that was raised at the end of the first movie -- most people wont actually unplug from the matrix, so how will they be saved ? If you eliminate the distinction between those inside and outside the matrix, then all can be equally saved in the end.
There are two major possibilities for how this will play out. One of these is the star trek scenario (there was a Moriarty episode in which he captured the crew, they turned the tables on him by making him think that he had left the holodeck when he was actually only in a deeper level of the program). This is emily's suggestion about something being different when Neo leaves the architect.
I'm inclined to believe that the outside world is also a simalcrum as well. This explains Agent Smith in the beginning, and it just feels more consistent to me.
Will this ruin the story ? I'm a bad person to judge since I was lukewarm about the first one. I think these are fun movies, and very pretty, but overall they leave me cold. Malena moved me, the matrix doesn't. It's a fun action movie.
I guess we'll see soon, but I'll be dissapointed if there isn't some bleeding between the different levels.
I’d like to think that the Wachowskis are refining both their notions of a Messiah from the first movie and their notions of programming, that Neo may turn out to be a savior after all, but that he picked up some of Smith the way Smith was affected by him. Action-Reaction, as the Merovingian so clumsily expounded. If humans are really just a system of extraordinarily complex biochecmical electrical circuits, then what's to prevent a program in 2099 (or whatever year they are actually) from overwriting humanity’s operating system a little bit, even if inadvertently?
Or wouldn’t it be a kick to find out that Smith was invested with “humanity” and that Neo was fatally trojan horsed with machineness, and that Smith and Neo, by destroying each other, are equally the saviors, freeing humanity from both reliance on machines and reliance on reified suprahuman saviors? God is within and all that.
As for the blather and grammar, I’m willing to put up with it for the chestnuts that do exist therein. Sorta how I really liked Kevin Smith’s Dogma for at least trying to bring some reasonably refined arguments about the nature of a Roman Catholic God and the religious manifestation of same to the general level.