f1shf00d

after reading/watching all the coverage this past week, I wonder if I need to think about the Matrix more than the usual movie??? maybe it's because the media missed the first one; panned it, overlooked it.......I can't help thinking that I had to think special thoughts about Reloaded, but no, after it was over, no special thoughts, nothing......

now the spoiler-matter:

We learn that Neo has dreams about Trinity's death, so from the start we need to find out if she really dies.....the truth is that she is in the Matrix, and we should remember that in the Matrix, anything is possible...

We learn that the Matrix improves itself with new programs and new versions of older programs...can Neo control this new environment?

We learn that Agent Smith is back as some form of rogue program, or virus, self-replicating and infecting others--is the Zion guy he infects, the one who is the bad guy later??? the guy with the beard? I missed whether it was him. Agent Smith has a personal beef with Neo because Smith is not as free as he thought he would become when he "died''

We learn that life in Zion is really lame with idiot "raves" where everyone looks like the Matrix' core demographic (except I didn't see any 40-ish bald, fat white guys invited to the party)

Anthony Zerbe (Caribe!) tells us that we need machines to survive--hmm, is this a clue to Revolutions??

We see that so far, Reloaded looks very much like the Star Wars trilogy....don't ask me to explain, but for the first 45 minutes, all I could think was "Star Wars".....

Ultimately, we begin to realize that this 2-hour movie is really padded with needless scenes and fights that go on too long...

about now I give up on whatever I may have read or seen on the news and wonder if this movie is going to suck......

but then we see the oracle (or should I say, Yoda) again who helps Neo understand things and we meet the French guy program who is an amazingly original character--very cool--we learn about these programs who just like to screw with the Matrix for their own amusment

Now for the parts that make me like Reloaded----I like the social structure of the Matrix--the politics, the way programs interact--the true sci-fi core of the movie, so I begin to ignore what I dont' like and look for what I like.......I actually become bored with the action sequences (!!!!) except for Neo flying when I thought that now would be a great time to make another Superman movie...

and now we get to the boffo ending where we find out that Neo is like the Prisoner (#6), and we get some explanation which is just as unsatisfying as the explanation for the village in the Prisoner, which is why I really like this part. It was so convoluted and unnecessarily complicated that I could only embrace it as genius!!!! I loved that scene----

anyway, I didn't get much satifaction from typing all this out---just doing my job since every paper and magazine has overanalyzed the Matrix this past week---I wouldn't them to think no one paid attention........

f1shf00d

I'm old enough to remember speculating on what would happen in Star Wars ROTJ after ESB, so let's think about Revolutions ......saw a review of Reloaded where the critic wondered why Neo was still using Kung Fu: if Neo can stop bullets with his will, why doesn't he use a force field to stop all attacks? Why doesn't he just stand there while enemies swing at him helplessly? Besides being visually boring to watch, it would ruin the surprise of Neo's transformation in Revolutions (speculation). Neo still fights because he hasn't learned that he doesn't have to fight. This is way traditional stories like this have played out, and I wouldn't be disappointed if this is the way this goes.

audrey

Oh my...I can't think of two more dissimilar sci-fi flicks. The two are nothing alike in terms of style, story, theme, etc.

f1shf00d

don't tell me that the "rave" scene doesn't make you think of ewoks.....

Daytrip

man you too? i thought i was the only one

DeputyDave

I assumed the reason everyone was young was because Morphius was the first person the last "one" freed after the last version of Zion was destroyed. Therefore EVERYONE must be younger than Morphius. A young crowd would most likely react by dancing and simply celebrating life before the last stand. A point was made about how old the council looked so I assumed the council was the original 23 humans picked by the 5th "one" before Zion was destroyed.

As for fat... did you see the crap they had to eat? I couldn't see super sizing your order of phlegm.

vivarey

Not me! But to explain the demographics, I'm guessing only the young people stayed for the party. Looking at the scene- there's not anyone near 250,000 bodies there. Most of them are probably at home freaking out.

It would take at least 200 years to repopulate Zion from a small group of 23 people. But even if it was only 100 years (as Morpheus suspects), that's still too long for the original group of 20-something-year-olds to survive. I don't think the council is THAT old.

DeputyDave

I figured a majority of Zion is populated by freed humans. They made a coment about how big the population had grown in just the last six months because of the excelerated number of people "waking up".

Edited to add: Zion can't be 100 years old. Maybe not even 20. Morphius said the "first One" (meaning the 5th One, the only other one he knows about) freed him. If the last one also destroyed Zion, then this incarnation is not that much older than Morphius.

vivarey

Are you sure? I just watched M1, but I could have missed that...

jaeufraser

As far as I understand it, MOrpheus doesn't know about all the other ones, so the "one" who freed them was in fact the fifth "one".

Regarding the original topic this thread addresses, does the popularity and media attention warrant more analysis? Well, the attention really has no relevance to the overall depth and meaning in the movie. But it does point to a possible social relevance within the scheme of pop culture that could quite possibly be relevant in looking at our society as a whole. Star Wars can be looked at in the same way. The actual relevance of the movie isn't the importance, it's the way society embraced it.