The Matrix Reloaded

[avram]

The lot of us went off to JI’s green card party to celebrate his permanent resident status. The new green cards are pretty bitchin’, microprinted and hologram-embossed like some ultra-rare collectable sports card. The geek in me was impressed, even as the civil libertarian was a bit creeped out.

Around midnight we got a call from our houseguests asking us along to see a late showing of The Matrix Reloaded. A quick synopsis:

A cool fight scene, then some philosophy, then another fight scene, then some more philosophy, then a bit more philosophy, some dancing and sex, more philosophy, fight scene, philosophy, fight scene, philosophy, fight scene, philosophy, fight scene, philosophy, big fight scene, big philosophy, then some more fights and philosophy to finish it off, to be continued next movie.

The fight scenes were way cool, even if we could tell some of them were all CGI. The philosophy was just awful, badly written and tedious.

The Oracle’s philosophy-dump was the best of the lot, largely because it was the most coherent, and she actually gave us some straight information. The Merovingian’s was fun, but uninformative. The worst was the Architect’s, because it actually contained important info, but the writing was so bad, the sentences so ugly and poorly-constructed, that I’m sure 90% of the audience had no idea of what was being said.

Lawrence Fishburne delivered all of his lines in an odd, stilted manner that I don’t recall from the first movie. In general, the AI characters (Smith, the Oracle, the Keymaker, the Merovingian, and possibly Persephone) were far more compelling than the human characters; this might not be accidental.

Theory: The AIs keep the Matrix going because they like it. It’s the closest they can get to the experience of being human, and they like being able to have sex and taste candy. At least, some of them do.

Much more attention was paid to the visual aspects of the film than to the dialog. Neo’s scene in the Source, surrounded by video-screen homonculi reflecting various aspects of his thoughts, brought to my mind Minsky’s model of human cognition from The Society of Mind, as well as something I half-remember from Buddhism by way of Zen and the Art of the Macintosh about trying to still the ten-thousand impulses and find one’s true inner desire.

William Gibson recently posted a piece on his weblog, a speech he gave at the Directors Guild of America last week. He talks about the future of movies, how computing technology will allow us to casually alter the experience of watching films — programs that can extrapolate the sets into 3D models and give you any viewpoint you want, or morph the characters’ heads into dog heads. It should take considerably less processing power to just wrap the characters’ mouths and voices around new dialog, and then maybe we can get someone competent to rewrite the philosophy for The Matrix Reedited.

Oh, and a preview for the next one is shown after the closing credits.

Comments

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

Watching The Matrix Reloaded, I realized two things:

I like Jackie Chan movies and should watch more of them. He makes the wittiest action sequences.

Smith is the most interesting and unpredictable character in The Matrix's universe. Come the final episode I'm rooting for him, whatever his agenda is.

[batyatoon]

Neo’s scene in the Source, surrounded by video-screen homonculi reflecting various aspects of his thoughts

Is that what they were supposed to be? I read that as probabilities -- different reactions he might have had to what the Architect was saying, calculated by the AIs.

Them being various aspects of his thoughts, that's a different sort of thing entirely. Huh. Reminds me a bit of the "me's" surrounding Tim Hunter in Vertigo's Books of Magic, in the sequence where he pays a visit to Hell.

[avram]

That's another valid reading of the scene. And the two readings are not incompatible.

[ex-mirkwood641.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree with you more. The exposition was awful and the philosophy impossible to follow because it wasn't coherent. I hated the 'architect', that whole scene smacked of 1960's villans, and that whole part made me yawn.I gave up trying to make sense of anything he was saying after the first few lines.
The only dialogue that snapped for me was that between Neo and Smith. That started well, but again the script lead it into nothing. I'm still not sure why Smith showed up at the door to the Oracle. Maybe we'll get more in six months time.

The best characters were the baddies. Compelling certainly was the word, but they were so underused. I hope the next film will exploit them to the full.

Did you actually care whether Zion fell? I was glad to see the back of the eighty's video dancers. And Neo/Trinity? That relationship had all the excitement of a damp wekend in Preston. Persephone, now she rocked.

Apart from all this I really enjoyed the film, but if they want to do philosophy they shoud ask Philip K. Dick.

Neo is the One

[(Anonymous)]

In M3, we will find that Neo created the Matrix for his own survival, since he is the only human left in existance. Morpheus, Trinity, and all those in Zion, are programs. Either that or they are all still plugged into the Matrix, which is actually a matrix within a matrix... how far does the rabbit hole go?

Re: Neo is the One

[(Anonymous)]

it is indeed a matrix within a matrix; this would explain how neo was able to stop the sentinels at the end of the film. also, this would possibly explain how the oracle knew that neo was not sleeping... this extra link would explain why she is an oracle. the architect explains that she was the matriarch in the creation of the matrix, but in order to read ppl's impulses and thoughts she must have a hardwired port to the brain..?

Re: Neo is the One

[(Anonymous)]

I like your idea that Neo is "the one" being that he is really the only one. I do like the idea of how deep does the rabbit hole go. I think the whole movie series will tie back into the real life conundrum, which is that no one really can explain the origins or future of anything. I think that there is definitely a matrix within a matrix (and so on down the line, because something had to create the first one, and something had to create that). It is the existential dilemma that i do not think they will try to answer, even though it is only a movie. Neo's ability to control the sentinels at the end of the movie suggests that there is a matrix within a matrix, but....think how convoluted and encrypted the messages were regarding philosophy during the movie. Why would they go to all the trouble of confusing the audience about the matrix and its origins, and then give a glaring clue (really just give it away) by allowing neo to control the sentinels in the 'real world'

Revolutions should explain it all, but i predict that it will end much the same way our lives end every day, which is: we will still never know the origins of existence, and we will still not know the future of that existence.

Re: Neo is the One

[(Anonymous)]

While surfing around, I came across the site for Warner Bros. & Ubi Soft's MMORPG, "The Matrix Online." According to the site, the game takes place after the events of the third movie, and involves you assiting the human cause against the machines. Does that give away the end of the third film? I'm afraid that it might.

Check it out for yourselves... www.thematrixonline.com

Re: Neo is the One

[(Anonymous)]

the website says that the game does not take place in the "real world" at all. So how is giving away any hints on the movie?!?

Re: Neo is the One

[(Anonymous)]

The refutable scene of matrix into the matrix is that Neo did not control the sentinels: They were shorted by a EMP from the Hammer (shuttle that rescues Neo/Trin/Morf). Remembering that the shuttle just arrived after the baked sentinels. The real question is why neo is in comma by the EMP? Which drives me to another question: Why didn't he were in comma by the first movie (last scene) EMP? Why he feels the sentinels?

Our brain is a database, could the Oracle read it and now that he was not sleeping?

Neo is a program (too human)? Remembering that Smith is now in a human body and BOTH are in comma (by EMPs?).

What a mess, huh?

Re: Neo is the One

[(Anonymous)]

The Hammer could not have used it's EMP to shut down the Sentinels. Remember from the 1st movie where Morpheus was trying to hold on until the last possible moment to use the EMP? The EMP shuts down everything powered by electricity, including the ship itself. That's why they had to wait until everyone that was currently hacked into the Matrix was out before activating it. Had the Morpheus activated the EMP it would have killed those still inside the Matrix. Had the Hammer used its EMP to stop the sentinels, it would have shut down itself in the process.

I'm still of the mindset that there is indeed a matrix within a matrix. It's the only thing that explains how Neo is able to stop the sentinels, how Agent Smith is able to "hack" into human beings and transfer himself into the real world. Another question that would be answered is how is Zion so technologically advanced? If the machines have tunneled down and destroyed Zion 5 times before, how is it that there is anyone left to rebuild Zion to its "pre-destructed" form? Personally I think the whole "Save the World" scenario was created by the Architect as a means of controlling the One anomaly.

Philosophy

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, I liked the philosophy in Matrix Reloaded.

I mean, how many movies really address determinism? Most people seem extremely unwilling to think about the obvious consequences of physical laws on the human nervous system - which is of course a deterministic machine, or so would seem evident. It gets very messy trying to insert free will into such a scheme; causality is what screws it all up. I won't go into detail here, but I imagine at least some of you have gone over this before.

I'd summarize the philosophy as dealing with three key issues: free will, causality, and purpose, and how the three can be reconciled. Different characters choose different ways to combine them. And it's great, because it's not just abstract for them - it really matters to them as they contemplate the meaning of their lives. It's wonderfully done; not just the writers using characters to babble pseudo-philosophy, but instead compelling characters being convincingly wrapped up in basic questions such as these. Fantastic.

Granted, the Merovingian's example wasn't the best, because you don't really see the eradication of free will there. Now, circuit-mapping every neuron in her head and showing how they fire predictably ... that might work. But hey. I think it's more the Merovingian's style to do the cake thing. I don't think the character was really interested in enlightening the others, he just liked to have fun and flex his power.

I can't help but be intrigued by the Neo as AI theory. It would make sense in a few ways. He does stuff that only AIs seem capable of doing - "You moved like they did." And all kinds of circumstantial evidence/suggestions, like Persephone's wistful, "He used to be like you." Imagining the Merovingian as a previous One ... probably not, but you know, I could see it.

The movie certainly leaves a lot of questions, but I thought it was fantastic. Even the action scenes seemed to express the characters - for instance, Neo's prescient, almost supernatural power and grace. Also, there was something very smooth and fitting with the fights, that somehow meshes with the ethos of the movie.

Just to let you know whats really going on :p

[(Anonymous)]

There is no matrix within a matrix.. Too predictable.

Instead, all the so called "Humans" are machines. Thats why neo and bane (Smith) are in commas. This also explains how smith is able to infect Bane (bane is a machine and is infected by the virus that is Smith).