****SPOILERS**** I saw it twice out of obligation, and I maintain that the ending was crap. It's clear enough what happens, it just isn't good. Yeah, the cycle had a different resolution this time than it did the last five times, but it continues. So in the "big picture" nothing was resolved. I don't think the crappiness of it had anything to do with the deaths or fates of the characters. It had to do with sheer stupidity. When the Smiths light up like Christmas trees and start to explode I was inwardly saying to myself "the real reason the Wachowski brothers never go on camera is because they are five and six years of age respectively, and cannot legally work in the united states". It was utterly childish. "Everything that has a beginning has an end"? WHAT ended? The cycle could begin again at any time. The happy little computer program family at the film's conclusion? Could you get any more trite? Worthless. I won't even go into how one armored robot with two 30mm cannons was able to hold off 25,000 flying death machines at a time, or how the sentinals flew around endlessly without doing much of anything, except getting shot. Or how the dialogue stank to high heaven. Or how stupid Neo's conversation with the giant Wizard of Oz face was. Or how Trinity took 20 minutes to die impaled in three places by random, apparently sharp cables. I don't think anything about the movie was unclear. Just really fucking horrible.
Ok, I can accept the ending. I'm still not at all clear on how Neo was able to be in the matrix without being plugged in, or how he was able to use his powers in the real world.
Thanks.. Sorry about jumping down your throat like that. I just didn't seee what everyone was so confused over and why people were beeging for another one. To me, it seemed like they had wrapped things up pretty well.
Well, it all depends on what you look for in a movie. If you like fight scenes half full of badly animated CGI cartoons running around, and a plot which plays at being insightful by throwing around philosophical jargon- this movie is for you. In my opinion, the two sequels are good examples of pretentious garbage.
I think the wire fighting is great. My problem is with the ditzes that they strapped onto those wires.
Mephura, I've just gone over the dialogue transcript for Matrix Reloaded and I couldn't find anything in the Architect's speech that would throw a light on Oracle's comment about seeing Neo again. Could you perhaps enlighten me a bit?
Actually we never see Neo use his powers in the real world. The only time we see Neo use his powers is in the matrix. We see him fly, we see him do kung fu, and we see him sense things. Never in the real world do we see him do things like that, except sense things. He can sense the sentinels because they're machines. He's got a freakin wireless connection in the back of his head! It's blue tooth tech man, I swear!
umm coffee, how about the stopping of the sentinels at the end of two and when he blows up all the bots towards the end of three by waving his hand?
Coffee, I think there were two instances where Neo demonstrated he had the power to stop the Sentinels in the real world - one during the end of the second film and another one towards the end of the third film where Neo was in a ship with Trinity flying towards the machines. I thought this was quite obvious...unless I mis-read those two scenes.
No kidding. I think at one point in the movie Neo specifically asks the oracle how he was able to stop sentinels in the real world. She gives a completely nonsensical answer about 'the one being connected to the source' or something like that. It's never actually explained. The first movie was great because it had a lot of philosophy and religious allegory in it and it made sense. They actually had a rational explanation for everything that happened. I am HUGELY disappointed that they resorted to 'it's magic' in the third movie. It's like the W brothers couldn't figure out a way to locically resolve the situation they had created, so they just gave up on having their story make sense.
I mistated my late night post, my bad. The real reason why Neo can sense the robots is because... Hey look, a dog with a puffy tail! No really. Neo can't fly in the real world. The only power that we see him use is his power to stop sentinels. Other then that he has no matrix-ish powers in the real world. Like I said before, he has a wireless connection that doesn't extend that far. (If his connection went any further couldn't he just blow up the machine city?)
I agree. I'm still trying to come up with a better answer for the wireless bit. I mean if he had wireless, why bother having him jacked in in the first place? Most of the stuff had reasonable, if not realistic (but who really cares. Its a movie), explanations. That one thing just bothers the hell out of me. Hmm.... I feel like the answer is right there in front of me and I am just looking way too hard for it.
Hey Meph, etc, I think the reason is easy and mentioned amongst these: http://www.msnbc.com/news/980793.asp?cp1=1
Face it people....the brothers got too excited with reloaded and created too many questions to be answered in one movie......they did the best they could with one ending but it'll follow with merchandising to explain the whole story. Coming to a comic book store near you.
Actually, Neo is Johnny Mnemonic. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! See. After realizing that the real world is really a second matrix, Johnny M. wakes up in the real real world. Oh ah.
What baffles me about Neo being able to blow up sentinels/see in the real world with no explanation given is that it wasn't at all critical to the plot, they could have just not had him blinded, and have them escape the sentinels without him blowing them up. Its like they intentionally created a hole in their plot where none was needed.
**Spoilers** Mephura: If you remember the first film, a lot of the plot was Neo's journey to becoming the One, and Revloutions/Reloaded involve Neo choosing to stop simply knowing the path, and start walking the path. So when his journey began, he didn't have wireless...or at least wasn't aware of it. The Source was described as the "machine mainframe" in the second movie, which means that if his power "reaches all the way back to the source" as the Oracle stated it did in Rev, he would have considerable power over/against machines in both the Matrix and the real world. jps: I think the whole sentinel-shorting thing was necessary to show that Neo DID have power in the real world. If we didn't have some other demonstration of his "super powers", I'm sure his "wireless connection" would have seemed even MORE weird and out of place. The Buddha anaolgies and Platonic references are rampant throughout the trilogy. Keeping this in mind, it would make sense that Neo would have to transcend/elevate his conciousness beyond the world of illusions (The Matrix) and that this would also give him power in the real world. BTW, Neo uses his "wireless connection" to disable Sentinels in the 2nd film. In the 3rd he uses in to disable sentinels, prematurely detonate TOW bombs (launched from the Machine city), "see" energy without the use of his eyes (neovision) and enter the Matrix without being jacked in. It also seems to me that he uses his power to diffuse/deflect the explosive effects of the TOW bombs and plasma blasts when he and Trinity fly through the Machines' defenses in Revolutions...I don't think the Logos could have flown through those fires without his help. Interesting also that their ship is called the Logos...according to Platonic theory the logos is the part of the mind that reasons, and is able to transcend the illusory, physical world. Whether or not the rabbit hole ran that deep or I'm just making shit up, I guess we'll find out when they publish "The Matrix and Philosophy: Volume II". It still doesn't make Revolutions less lame.
Yeah, but none of those things were particularly important to the plot. Why include the whole flying through the fire thing? Why not have them just come up through a tunnel into the city, have him beat smith(in the real world) without getting blinded, and get away from the sentinels on their own. The movie would have been little changed without the wireless aspect. That being so, its apparent that the writeres went out of their way to include it, but failed to explain it in an adequate way. Perhaps they were leaving it to be explained in the online game, or perhaps it was some sort of statement about mind over matter not being a principle confined to the matrix, or something totally different. Either way, as I see it, it moved the matrix out of the realm of improbable science fiction and into the realm of fantasy needlessly
