is the matrix reloded worth watching

[Tiberius]

I tend to think of the trilogy in the sense that Neo is always in the Matrix, he just thinks he is out, a la THIS , and then I see the second and third movies as being chock full of metaphor, like the Bible.

Makes for a much better viewing experience.

I read the "insane" fan theory but honestly, I'm unable to see the difference or why it should make a better viewing experience.

The only essential criticism presented here (please correct me where I'm wrong) is that Neo is able to stop the squid in the real world and that he became able to see in the real world though he was blind-folded.

For all we know Neo was or became a mutant with psycho- and telekinetic powers in the real world. Already in RELOADED we noticed that he was able to see into the future while in the real world.

Of course, such abilities would have have been incomprehensible for the machines just as it was incomprehensible for the Borg in "Q Who" that it wasn't Starfleet technology but the "Q Drive" that had brought the Enterprise-D that far.

He was an "anomaly" but far beyond what the Oracle and the Architect expected, thus able to accomplish feats considered to be impossible or felt by many to be exclusive to the virtual reality of the Matrix.

Bob

So you are saying that Q made it so Neo could defeat the squid and see even when he was blind?

 

[Robert Comsol]

So you are saying that Q made it so Neo could defeat the squid and see even when he was blind?

No, I was merely using that comparison to illustrate that any AI, whether Borg or Matrix machines, would probably have only little or no idea about superhuman or supernatural powers.

I rather think that the Force (or a high midichlorian account ) was strong with Neo in the real world, and that this was a potential he was slowly discovering.

I'd say his special powers were already obvious in the first film. By the known "standards" of men and machines he was clinically dead after his final encounter with Agent Smith, yet "miraculously" came back to life through a kiss of Trinity.

Of course you can either dismiss this as happening within the virtual reality of yet another Matrix level or an event in the real world, suggesting there is indeed something very different about Neo, that neither men, machines or his friends were able to understand, yet.

Bob

 

[Tiberius]

So you are saying that Q made it so Neo could defeat the squid and see even when he was blind?

No, I was merely using that comparison to illustrate that any AI, whether Borg or Matrix machines, would probably have only little or no idea about superhuman or supernatural powers.

I rather think that the Force (or a high midichlorian account ) was strong with Neo in the real world, and that this was a potential he was slowly discovering.

I'd say his special powers were already obvious in the first film. By the known "standards" of men and machines he was clinically dead after his final encounter with Agent Smith, yet "miraculously" came back to life through a kiss of Trinity.

Of course you can either dismiss this as happening within the virtual reality of yet another Matrix level or an event in the real world, suggesting there is indeed something very different about Neo, that neither men, machines or his friends were able to understand, yet.

Bob

There is very little place for magic in a sci fi film.

 

[JariM]

I have to join the folks who liked the first film but did not care for the sequels.
The Matrix was a very sf nice movie with some heavy influence from Japanese animation and Hong Kong action films. The sequels felt like afterthoughts. And they had me yawning during action scenes which is something quite remarkable.

 

[Set Harth]

Everyone else does.

No.

 

[Robert Comsol]

There is very little place for magic in a sci fi film.

But still there's plenty and the resurrection of dead people is actually quite a trademark of the genre. I guess it began at the end of 2001 (where astronaut Dave Bowman was reborn as a starchild) and Star Trek is no exception from it (e.g. the resurrection of Spock in ST III).

It's also interesting to note that "we" invent machines doing "supernatural" things for us (i.e. FTL, time travel) but when it comes to the unexplored capabilities of the human mind there's a widespread scepticism.

Another thing in the Matrix films is how the operators are actually able to read the digital "rain" on their monitors which they are instantaneously capable to translate into images they can describe.

I'm really having a hard time to believe that those are skills than can be taught, and rather had the impression you needed to have certain "gifts" to be capable to do that.

Bob

 

[DonIago]

I wonder whether the operators were "enhanced" in some undisclosed manner in order to be able to read the glyphs.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I'm really having a hard time to believe that those are skills than can be taught, and rather had the impression you needed to have certain "gifts" to be capable to do that.

Intelligence?

 

[Tiberius]

There is very little place for magic in a sci fi film.

But still there's plenty and the resurrection of dead people is actually quite a trademark of the genre. I guess it began at the end of 2001 (where astronaut Dave Bowman was reborn as a starchild) and Star Trek is no exception from it (e.g. the resurrection of Spock in ST III).

But there was no invocation of supernatural forces to do it. No magic. They gave an explanation for how Spock could have been resurrected.

But Neo suddenly being able to see again makes no sense. It is impossible in the real world, there's no technological explanation for it. The only possible explanation is "magic" - an explanation which does not follow from anything else that has happened.

It's also interesting to note that "we" invent machines doing "supernatural" things for us (i.e. FTL, time travel) but when it comes to the unexplored capabilities of the human mind there's a widespread scepticism.

Because it is extremely unlikely that the brain is able to do things despite the fact that it has not done these things for millennia. Natural selection would tend to favour those whose brains don't spend the extra resources to develop an ability that makes no difference to the survival of the individual.

Another thing in the Matrix films is how the operators are actually able to read the digital "rain" on their monitors which they are instantaneously capable to translate into images they can describe.

How is that any different to reading a computer code and knowing that a particular section of code brings up a map, or plays a video?

 

[Set Harth]

There is very little place for magic in a sci fi film.

Arthur C. Clarke might have had something to say about that.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Clarke mentioned advanced technology being *indistinguishable from* magic. Not actual magic itself, which his stories were generally not concerned with.

And about Chrysalis' spoiler:

Spoiler: extended universe

The Matrix 2.0 being HELL? What the flying fuck were the machines thinking when they came up with that one? Did they actually expect humans to accept a world which was, literally, hell? Who'd want to live in a world like that? No fucking WONDER the humans didn't accept that one! I hope that this version of the Matrix was never actually shown...

As for Neo: The Matrix Wiki suggests that Neo may have actually been a machine himself - like a failed prototype and/or hybrid. Is this any more realistic than what happened in the films itself?

 

[Set Harth]

^ Clarke mentioned advanced technology being *indistinguishable from* magic.

Yeah, that was the point. What is being attributed to "magic" in these films does not actually have to be considered magic. It's just that some find it indistinguishable from magic.

It is impossible in the real world

Like a lot of things in ST.

Well firstly the films may not say it but the "expanded universe" actually shows the current Matrix form was the 3.0 series.

Reloaded says that, though it doesn't go into much detail.

 

[Kemaiku]

^ Clarke mentioned advanced technology being *indistinguishable from* magic. Not actual magic itself, which his stories were generally not concerned with.

And about Chrysalis' spoiler:

Spoiler: extended universe

The Matrix 2.0 being HELL? What the flying fuck were the machines thinking when they came up with that one? Did they actually expect humans to accept a world which was, literally, hell? Who'd want to live in a world like that? No fucking WONDER the humans didn't accept that one! I hope that this version of the Matrix was never actually shown...

As for Neo: The Matrix Wiki suggests that Neo may have actually been a machine himself - like a failed prototype and/or hybrid. Is this any more realistic than what happened in the films itself?

Spoiler: 2.0

You have to remember what was happening at the time.

Machines had no idea how humans thought, they'd tried for decades to live side by side, and even after they were expelled they tried to help humanity, and were nuked for it. It was only after the destruction of the original Zero One that they had enough and wanted to humble humans. But their pettiness knew no bounds, they burned the sky to spite the machines, killing themselves in the process.

The machines needed to buy time to build a new city and the fusion power to survive the nuclear winter and nanite sky. They built a grotesque series of pillars that they strapped all of the human survivors too, cut their skulls open and stuck wires right into the centers of the brain to upload a virtual world that was far less sophisticated than the Power Planet would be later.

1.0 was Heaven with the Architect being "god", as he assumed he should be to them, and was given carte blanche by the machines to do whatever the hell he wanted. They were too busy over 100 miles away building a new home, freezing and depowering to death.

Humans had no control over their motor function, and played out a preset life they couldn't consciously control, like a dream, poorly rendered, bodily paralysed in a sense. Seraph and his angels patrolled and tried to comfort the humans, but the neural connections were poor, their bodies explosed to the elements on the real world surface.

Thousands of them woke up and discovered they were pinned to a metal tree trunk and being dissected, most of them died instantly from the shock. They lost nearly all of them in only a couple of years.

When they had bred enough doped up humans to try again they thought sticking more wires in, making hell give actual pain responces, unhappy "realistic" events that they wouldn't wake up. Wrote the Merovingian as the sauve, darkly dressed devil. It worked too well, the Merovingian was far too sadistic a program and loved tormenting humans day and night.

Most of them died through torture, pain, shock, etc, many died without waking up this time, though a lot still did.

The machines got fed up with the Architect, moved him to the Source where he remained as they finished the three superconductors, built the Power Planet and wrote hundreds of new programs themselves, established a link to their cities mainframe, which the Merovingian used to hide in until the new Matrix 3.0 was written.

The Oracle may have perfected the code to allow human minds to accept the Matrix anyway, but it wasn't until the machines assumed direct control and kicked the Architect out that things weren't so messed up.

 

[stj]

There are several major errors in the discussion.

First, most upsetting but still true, The Matrix just is not a classic movie. It had some novel for its time FX, and introduced some relatively unused semiphilosopical notions it did nothing with.

Second, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are one movie, with a more or less arbitrary division. Every approach with somehow finds the one to be tolerable or good in parts, while the other is boring or bad is wrong.

Third, it is not even certain that Zion is materially real. How does the computer program the Oracle predict even "real world" events? Or, even given willing suspension of disbelief, how do blue sparks make your phallic symbol fly? Indeed, insofar as Zion really is a giant hole in the ground, the machinery that sustains its life is evidently run by...the Machines. Most of all, is it really important whether Zion is "real," given the themes expressed? Most condemnations of the sequel (again, two parts is one movie,) are evidently based on not understanding, hence valueless.

The philosophy and ideas in The Matrix movies is not acceptable as a guide to the real world, but most movies are equally irrelevant and much more cliched.

 

[Mr Light]

Where is the world is all this information coming from? Is it from the MMORPG game or something? Is that canon?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Not from the films, I know that much. Agent Smith's comments in the original film suggest that there was only one Matrix - the paradise - prior to the one we were shown.

 

[Hound of UIster]

The Architect's lines in Reloaded referenced the fact that there were multiple incarnations of the Matrix including the Paradise and Hell versions. Seraph and other programs being leftovers I think was from the game Enter the Matrix directed by the Wachowskis.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I did some more checking on the Matrix wiki - apparently Matrix 2.0 wasn't literally Hell, i.e. fire and brimstone and all that, it was more like a grade-Z horror schlock film. Which makes it a little more understandable.

 

[Kemaiku]

I did some more checking on the Matrix wiki - apparently Matrix 2.0 wasn't literally Hell, i.e. fire and brimstone and all that, it was more like a grade-Z horror schlock film. Which makes it a little more understandable.

Yup, think more along the lines of his club, not the biblical one.

As for the Architects line about multiple versions, the Matrix Online wiki explains that this refers only to the "proper" or 3.0 series.

1 - 3.0
2 - 3.1
3 - 3.2
4 - 3.3
5 - 3.4
6 - 3.5

But as to what it is now, 4.0, 3.6 or 3.5.5 or something, I don't know.

 

[Set Harth]

As for the Architects line about multiple versions, the Matrix Online wiki explains that this refers only to the "proper" or 3.0 series.

But he says "The first Matrix I designed". So that would mean he didn't design 1.0 or 2.0.