Questions about THE MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS

[gastrof]

It just ran this week on the ION "network", and it was the first time I've seen it.

For those of you who haven't seen it, I'll do the rest here in spoiler mode. For those of you who have, help me out here.

Spoiler: spoilers

I still can't figure out how Neo was able to control the machines at the end of RELOADED, and how he was able to "see" after his face was burned in REVOLUTIONS. Are we supposed to understand that he developed such a rappor with the Matrix that he was able to somehow connect wirelessly?

Also, after Neo let himself get covered by Smith's goo and all the Smiths exploded, what was that supposed to mean? Neo allowed Smith to absorb him, but Neo then took over and shut Smith down?

And why did Smith get so antzy just before that? Had Neo already started to take him over and make him say what he said?

Finally, after we see Neo's unmoving, eyes-bandaged body taken away by the machine, we got a glimpse of a crater, and someone laying in water. Was this back in the Matrix? The crater Smith and Neo had made, where their fight ended?

WHO WAS LAYING THERE?

Looked almost like the Oracle to me. Sure didn't look like Neo. If it WAS Neo, why was he still there in the Matrix? Hadn't he just assumed Smith's form and then exploded?
If anyone knows "insider" stuff about what it all means and how to explain this, please clue me in.

Part of me suspects there are no answers and they just wanted us to think there were and we were too dim to grasp it all.

Help me out here, will ya'?

 

[Mr Light]

Smith absorbed the Oracle to become all powerful. It was Oracle-Smith that fought Neo in the final battle. When Oracle-Smith absorbed Neo it destroyed his program. There's two theories on why this happened; Neo was merely the conduit for the Deux Ex Machina to upload a kill virus into Smith. Or that Neo and Smith were both created by the Oracle to be perfect opposites of each other, so that when their programs were combined they canceled each other out. +1 and -1 equals 0. Personally I believe in the second theory, as Neo just being a conduit for the Machines isn't as dramatically satisfying.

 

[Trent Roman]

It doesn't have to be either/or; the films (at their best) operate on more than one level. Physically, the Deus was able to use Neo as a conduit to Smith after he allowed himself to be engulfed by Smith (undeniably, the Deus does something to Neo's body after the merge, before the Smiths start exploding); metaphysically, the battle ends because the opposing forces have united and achieved a new balance, absent both forces.

As to what was going on with Smith before, that was part of the explanation: his unintentional repeating of the Oracle's words allows Neo to realize that something of the assimilated person persists within the Smith program (something the Oracle herself only realized earlier: she claimed she could not see beyond decisions she did not understand, and did not understand her decision to allow herself to be incorporated into Smith until the moment of the confrontation where she discovers that something of Sati persists within the Smith that took her over). Thus, Neo knows to stop fighting and enable the sacrifice required by the unfortunate messianic storyline of the third film.

EDIT: Oh, and yes, it is the Oracle in the crater after the battle, since the Smith Neo had been fighting was the one who used to be her, as you can tell from his limited prophetic abilities and repeating her words. With Smith dead, she--and presumably everyone else, as we see Sati again--are restored to who they were before Smith took them over.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman