Blake

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http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=327962

Mopower

I'm glad I only paid $5 to see this movie. It sucked. The whole trilogy should have ended with The Matrix. Reloaded was ok. Revolutions makes no sense at all. Maybe I'll have to see it again or maybe a 3rd time to get it but I shouldn't have too. I'll just download it so the Wichoski Brothers can't make anymore money from this shit. The only ending I wanted was the machines getting destroyed and the humans taking earth back. Not this co-existance bullshit. And don't get me started about the dialog or acting. When Kid said "Neo, I believe in you!" I just about shit my pants I was laughing so hard of course I was crying to because I knew that I was wasting away 2 hours of my life watching this crap. And did the leader of the mech army say "Fizzzzire!!"?? The whole battle between Neo and Smith was so pointless. And the whole thing with the trainstation and Merv was pointless also. ****! Biggest letdown in movie history. Period.

The Antipodean

...An interesting movie. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. I wasn't wild about Reloaded when I first saw it but then I saw it again on DVD and thought better of it. It's kind of like the W Bros. were trying to make two entirely different movies -- one a balls-out action/sci fi thriller, one a psuedo-intellectual think flick. They weren't entirely successful at either, IMHO, but it was interesting to watch them try. It's funny that for all the mainstream hype these films got, at their core I don't think they're mainstream movies at all. I admire the intentions behind them, while I think the execution was flawed and very inconsistent. Still, at least they tried to make us think a bit (wouldn't have gotten 300+ posts on the subject of "2 Fast 2 Furious" or "Daddy Day Care," would we?)

mookyman

Love is just a word.

Karma is just a word.

Cookies need love.

Cookies need karma.

But cookies is just a word.

So is hogwash.

What a shame. And Reloaded was just starting to grow on me.

Jackskeleton

add crap and Let down to that list.

Ralph Wiggum

Anyone have a link to an interview(s) prior to the release of The Matrix which state that it is intended to be the first part of a trilogy?

jough

I doubt it, because it was never intended to be a trilogy until it started to make a lot of money on home video.

There's nothing in the first one to suggest that it was meant to be a trilogy, no matter what Silver says now.

Caliking

i guess im in the minority...i liked this one a lot. hated reloaded but really liked this one.

Jackskeleton

though I wont say it was suppose to be a trilogy from the get go, but the ending to the first one was a little open ended.

ScandalUMD

I hate to break it to you, but science fiction, generally, is pretty much just a variation on "magic fantasy BS," and Neo is basically a superhero.

It's fans of sci-fi and fantasy who demand exacting sets of rules and painstaking internal consistency for the worlds that these stories inhabit. These rigid and convoluted structures serve the needs of a subset of fans, who live in Matrices of their own imaginary construction.

A few storytellers value the idea of a living, breathing world beyond the narrative. Tolkien did, and the keepers of "Star Wars" have turned what was once a fun cowboy movie set in space into an insanely geeky "universe" with rigidly enforced parameters.

However, such conceits do not necessarily suit the interests of narrative, and are generally beside the point. Obsess about it too much and you end up being the guy writing angrily to Fox because the same planet passed by twice in the background of a scene on "Futurama." It's called missing the point.

Neo is the One, and that's the explanation they give for why he is the only person who can fight Agents. That's the only explanation given for why he can fly in the Matrix. This is not explained.

It also isn't explained how they can call out to their operator using cell phones. It also isn't explained how their ships fly. Nothing, really, is explained because the technical parameters of the world and the scientific rules that the systems operate under it are not the main concerns of the film. Although the world of the Matrix is certainly a world destroyed by technological excess, the hypothetical is unquestionably designed by storytellers whose passions are based much more on the philosophical implications of The Matrix than on its scientific plausibility or its technical specifications.

In short, these guys aren't engineers or programmers. They're more concerned, for example, that the sentinels must look cool, and unconcerned with the technicalities that might govern the flight capabilities giant metal squids.

The fact that giant metal squids probably couldn't fly doesn't diminish my enjoyment of the films, so I don't see why I should be bothered by the fact that Neo can implausibly use his mystical powers to stop these implausible robots.

Here's something else that didn't bother me: How come they had to use the EMP to stop 5 sentinels in the first film, but in the third film, their ship had a bunch of machine guns? The answer: I don't care.

Pauly

A LITTLE open-ended? Uh yeah...Throughout the film Neo is heralded as the one that's going to save them all....it's made clear that the machines are going to have to be stopped....Zion is referred to numerous times and never shown.....and in the last scene Neo states that he is going to defy the machines and has new superpowers to do so. The first movie absolutely SCREAMS "sequel", whether some of you guys will admit it or not. The Wachowski's say they always intended it to be a trilogy and I believe them. As for Revolutions, I enjoyed it immensely and thought it a satisfying resolution to this story. I don't know what it is exactly some of you here wanted to see in this series(I'd like to see someone here write up an alternate ending) but when people in this forum bash this and yet PRAISE Terminator 3?? Please.

Pauly

Actually Revolutions does make sense. What exactly didn't you understand Mopower? List the things and I'm sure I or others can explain them for you, very slowly if need be.

beefjerky

Look, I don't think the Wachowski brothers pumped the Matrix movies full of religious symbolism and ideas to get people to bitch about needing concrete scientific evidence for how Neo can control machines. Everyone's so pissed off because they wanted every single answer down to how each and every piece of machinery worked spoon fed to them.

Revolutions dealt with the divine, and in religion all of the questions won't be answered. For example, Christianity won't offer you concrete answers on why and how God is so powerful, or how Jesus did the things he did, or why we are here, but it will give you the beliefs that help you to cope with those questions and let you come to your own conclusions about the mysteries of the universe. Revolutions paralleled that, and rightfully so. We won't understand Neo, just like we'll never be able to understand the mysteries of Jesus, or Buddha, or any other deity.

People were bitching about why Neo couldn't stop the sword in Reloaded. That was there to drive in the point that Neo was still a man, no matter what incredible things he did. Just like Jesus and Buddha were still men, even though they both did extraordinary things. They both bled, and they both were mortal. People have lost sight of the true meanings beneath all the fancy scifi imagery. These movies used science fiction as a vehicle to present religious and philosophical thoughts, not to present ultra accurate scientific technology.



I just want to offer my opinions on what happened at the end of Revolutions. Let's have a quick recap from the beginning, and the examples of God and Heaven that I use are not necessarily in the Christian sense. Man created the machines, and from the machines sprung God, litterally "Deus ex machina." I say God sprang from the machines because the machines were far more powerful than man. I mean, the Oracle is a program that is all knowing. If that's not God-like, I don't know what is. For a while, man tried to control God, but that ultimately failed, and when they couldn't control God, they tried to destroy it. Man litterally waged a war with Heaven by scorching the sky and trying to kill God. Eventually God wins, and brings man back to it. The Matrix is created for man, and while it was meant to be an Eden, there were some who kept trying to escape by finding out the truth, like how Adam and Eve wanted to learn the truth by eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Those who ate the fruit, or in this case, the red pill, were banished from paradise into the fiery depths of the earth. While life outside the Matrix was miserable, at least they knew the truth and at least they were free. While the Matrix was this cold, static world, Zion was a world of raw human emotion and feeling, like the much-hated "rave/sex scene" of Reloaded demonstrated. So God banishes the herectics from paradise, but it doesn't end there. The Zionites keep coming into God's world and wreaking havoc and blowing shit up and spreading their gospel of truth. So God keeps punishing these sinners by destroying their world and killing them off, but there will always be sin, so the cycle keeps repeating itself.

Now, what happens to Neo at the end of Revolutions? Okay, so along comes the One, who is a man, but is also the son of God, and is also like Buddha in that he keeps coming back until he has freed all sentient beings from suffering. Why is he the son of God, the machines? Well, in Revolutions, the Oracle mentions that the One's power comes from the Source, which means that his divinity comes straight from the machines. Well Neo is the messiah, the Buddha for everyone, and he comes to end the war between man and God, and end everyone's suffering. At the end of Revolutions, he sacrifices himself, dying for the sins man has committed against God, and ending the suffering of all sentient beings like Buddha would. Neo dies for mankind, and he returns to Heaven (the machine city) to be seated on the right hand of God (shown by the very striking image of Neo's body being engulfed into the city of light), or in Buddhist terms, he frees all sentient beings from suffering and reaches nirvana. Now there are going to be some people out there, especially the Jesus freaks, who are only going to see Neo's journey only as a representation of Jesus's, largely due to the blatant crucifix emerging from Neo's body, but of course, there's so much more than just the Christian and Buddhist aspects of the movie.

Rehevkor

When reflecting on Revolutions, I've discovered that there are two different views that one can hold that will effect your understanding of the movie, and determine whether you think it sucks and makes no sense or that it's ingenious and very good.

The first view is that you assume that the real world as shown, including Zion, the wasteland, the hovercraft, etc, is actually real. If this is the case, Neo's abilities there are unexplained and mystical. Also, agent Smith's ability to enter a human body also seems implausible, although to a lesser degree. For anyone holding this view, the ending of the movie seems flat; not much changed, certainly not enough to call it a Revolution.

The second view is that the "real world" including Zion and so forth is NOT real, but a second layer of the Matrix. Here is some evidence to support this theory:

Neo's abilities and Smith's appearance in Zion are easily explained by this. If they are still in the Matrix, anything is possible. This also explains the implausible flight dynamics of the sentinels for the technical nitpickers. There are also hints to the idea of a dual-Matrix dropped here and there in the dialogue; the one I can think of right now is in Revolutions when the kid yells that the war is over, and Morpheus asks "Is this real?" as he looks around.

Furtermore, when you consider the thinking of a machine, a two-layered Matrix seems more likely than a single-layered Matrix. It would provide a much more effective control in that it would give humans what they lacked in the first version of the Matrix: choice. They could choose to live out their lives in the upper layer of the Matrix, the one aspect the Matrix they are truly aware of, or they could choose to fight the machines and escape to what they believed was the real world, but was in fact just another part of the Matrix. Thus humans would be granted the freedom necessary for their survival, and the machines would still maintain control over them.

If you accept this view, the events in Revolutions tend to make much more sense. In the end the humans believe they have won a great victory, when in fact everything they did was under tight control by the machines. They will relax in victory and become even more controllable, and far less likely to see the truth of the Matrix. Neo saw this truth, but he didn't have enough time to explore what he saw enough to understand it; possibly part of the attack on Zion was to keep Neo busy and prevent him from understanding the nature of Matrix. I'm getting into some deep speculation here though, so I could by guessing blind.

Finally, there's one fundamental thing to consider: What IS the Matrix? This question is central to the trilogy (hell, the website address is the question itself) but was it ever truly answered in the movies? The only way to destroy the Matrix is to understand it; the humans did not understand the truth of the Matrix, and thus they failed to destroy it.

It's somthing to think about, anyway, and a welcome change from the religious and philosophical theories

zero

You'll do what exactly?

ScandalUMD

If Zion is another layer of the Matrix, then the machines have no need to destroy it to keep the free human population in check. Also, it stands to reason that if a percentage of humans become subconsciously aware of the first Matrix and reject it, then all subsequent layers would suffer a similar problem.

As for Smith, here's what happened: Bane is in the Matrix. Smith ate Bane, and then took over Bane's body in the real world by using the phone exit intended for Bane. We don't know whether this is consistent with what had occurred previously because the mechanism of exiting the Matrix through phones was never described in detail. It didn't seem inconsistent to me when I saw Reloaded.

As for Neo's ability, the movie doesn't give us any concept of the nature or limations of his powers. There's no reason to assume a second level of the Matrix because his powers manifest themselves in the real world.

Jackskeleton

You know what it was.. it brought me back to the day I saw Alien 3. the characters I have come to love in the first and second film were killed off, answers were no where and it just seemed to end for no reason and with no purpose. that's how I felt.

wm lopez

All I know is to be fair this 3rd MATRIX movie needs to trashed the same way the last 2 STARWARS movies have been trashed on the net.
When the 1st MATRIX came out in the same year as PHANTOM MENACE all we heard was how PHANTOM MENACE sucked and this new MATRIX movie was awsome.
Well it's time for justice, so layoff bashing the last 2 STARWARS movies and lets really hear it for this crap of MATRIX REVOLUTIONS.

chess

hilarious. there is a seemingly endless amount of foreshadowing in the first Matrix...moreso than would seem plausible for the brothers to have referred back to simply for continuity's sake.

a few off the top of my head:

the architect's monitors

"...way above normal...he's a machine"

the cookie

"...man born inside the matrix...freed the first of us"

"...man is a virus...yadda yadda yadda...i've been infected by it"

"what's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"

"first matrix was a perfect world...a dream you kept trying to wake up from...crops were lost...redesigned to this"

"you're my savior...you don't exist"

the opening screen refers to a "search for anomole" which is not otherwise addressed in the film.

basically, i think denial is an empty argument in this case. if you want to forget the second and third films exist, that's fine, as the first one does stand on it's own...but i for one am glad to have the rest of the story.

Philip Reuben

Your mistake is assuming that these two views are the only two views - or even the only two broad categories of views - when in fact there are all sorts of understandings of the plot, and all sorts of opinions about the quality of the film which don't necessarily related to your understanding of the plot. Basically, people's opinions vary a hell of a lot.

Personally I think the whole "Matrix in a Matrix" idea is a big crock of shit - there's practically nothing in the movie to support it, and the "evidence" you have provided is extremely thin and, at best, proves that the movies don't explain things as well as they could. I can understand the viewpoint that "Matrix in a Matrix" is a possibility that hasn't been explicitly confirmed or denied, but acting as if the movie makes it absolutely clear and then commending the movie for it just seems silly to me.

Besides, the reason they didn't destroy the Matrix is because thematically a peaceful resolution is the only ending that makes sense. It would be deeply unsatisfying if the humans won using the same kill-or-be-killed mindset that got them into this whole mess in the first place. IMHO, of course

In any case, we can commend the movie for making us think a little, right?

God I love this movie...

Pauly

What are you 12 years old?

Groucho

I drag myself to see this over the weekend. A little better than Reloaded, but still pretty BLEH. They should have combined both movies together as one.

On a positive note, it was great to see Sinistar in his big screen debut.

PixyJunket

How did I *NOT* make that connection when I saw it?

chanster

I really love "Matrix in a matrix theory" It makes absolutely no sense and is just a way for people to see more into the movie then is there.

If it really was a matrix in a matrix - WHATS the point of watching the 3 movies?

The whole point of creating an "artificial reality" in drama is to show how a character breaks through that "reality" to discover the real world. If it really is a "matrix in a matrix" the movies have absolutely zero point - because no one has ever discovered the real reality

Of course, after seeing Revolutions, there is much of a point to it, even if Zion is real.

Groucho

It's pop deconstruction, and it's very popular in this forum. Several films have been "reinterpreted" with the "it was all a dream" explanation, even with nothing in the film to support the theory.

I didn't think much of the "MiaM" theory after Reloaded, and after seeing the second movie I'm shocked that people are still putting it forward. But to each their own...whatever makes people happy and keeps them entertained gets a from me.