The Matrix Reloaded (full spoilers)

Who says the computers / we have soul?

the possibly great/bad thing about The Matrix is that it may actually kill off the whole 'gung-ho dystopian future sci-fi' genre, taking it to its peak visually if nothing else. there may be a few more Philip K Dick adaptations to be made perhaps, but with The Matrix seemingly aiming to corner the market by encompassing so many divisions (sci-fi, kung-fu, general action) its currently hard to imagine future films being able to match this for thrills alone. certainly they could offer more intricate stories with better characterisation, dialogue etc. and genuine suspense/mystery in a tradition of horror, sci-fi horror and more psychological thrillers (because you're never actually really SCARED when watching The Matrix, unlike Alien or even Event Horzion or whatever). and while stuff like X-Men and Star Wars will be able to survive, what about another 'from nowhere' success like the Matrix happening? have the Warchowskis spoiled it for everyone/anyone else in this respect?

I think we will see from nowhere stuff again - of course we will. Its hard to get by the current studio system, but any film which was initially produced by Joel Silver will never be from completely nowhere.

They fail hugely, there are now about 20 people left IN THE WORLD (or is it 23?)

No, that was the other door. There's sill a quarter of a million left.
And the movie's not over.

will Neo and the Architect really never meet again as the Architect states?

how will the Oracle appear in the next film as the actress who played her has died?

if the Agent Smith phenomena never occurred in previous matrices, what has changed? and that bit where he says to Neo 'I watched you die...' was interesting, he was surprised Neo was still alive just as much as Neo was surprised Agent Smith was still alive. there must be something in this, especially as it has not been explained HOW Agent Smith survived...has it?

so i eventually figured the guy at the end on the table adjacent to Neo was Bain (i know i'm fick but bear with me)...but is this the same guy who cut his hand and was going to kill Neo in Zion? they look different...and Bain looks a lot like Cypher (some people have been saying it actually IS Cypher) but really it is Agent Smith who possessed Bain's body via the telephone at the start yes? so now one Agent Smith is in the 'mezzanine Matrix' while all the copies are still in the official Matrix...yes?

Bain is also the guy who tried to convince his captain (to volunteer to follow Morpheus?).

What has happened to the hundreds of Smith clones? What does he want with Neo.

but why is it not towards the end? esp. as the fight scenes after are inferior. there are genuine logical reasons for this fight happening at the time it did in the film it would seem - i hope so anyway

Both Neo and the Agents being faster than bullets also provides the only good reason ever for a fight to start with guns and end with punching.

Yes, there is a reason. It's called pacing a six hour film. These two movies are one long film that is cut in half. They were shot as one film. They were edited as one film. They were written as one film. Therefore, anything that seems inconsistent or unsatisfactory or unexplained, will probably be explained at the conclusion of this one film (esp. seeing as how the wack-owskis are fond of exposition).

That shitty shitty dialog (dude, I've read Plato too), the unconscionably horrible soundtrack, and the fact that the movie spent 60% of its time shoring up plot holes -- the 40% action scenes were pretty cool, I'll admit, but that hasn't saved the Star Wars movies from sucking either. I'm convinced that they didn't originally mean there to be a sequel, otherwise this pile would've been enjoyable.

Smith is trying to stop Neo from getting to THE DOOR because he's trying to kill Neo. If Neo makes it to THE DOOR, he gets away. Surely that was patently obvious...? Why is Smith trying to kill Neo? Because Smith hates Neo and has been trying to kill him since the first movie.

Aaron: In most movies, taking time to explain the world the movie takes place in is looked upon as "exposition" and "character development", not "shoring up plot holes". Really, the only plot hole I can think of was never explained (Where did Neo's precognitive dream about Trinity's shooting come from? How is it that what happened was EXACTLY what he dreamed about?); everything else was consistent with what both movies have presented to us so far (and they might explain the dream thing in the next movie, seeing as they explained the Oracle in this one and she was the only part of the first movie that I had problems with).

And since the thrust of the initial movie seemed to be to free people from the Matrix, they don't seem to be doing it much (except in a bit of backstory exposition).

But the first film goes out of it's way to point out that he's not just doing his job: he really hates them. The sensual world is having an effect on him.

(except in a bit of backstory exposition).

I don't think you'd be happier if they added another 10 minutes of Neo freeing someone else. I could be wrong.

Though I think the Wachowski's are cheating by using stuff outside the film to fill in gaps: I think the kid who idolises Neo was freed in one of the Animatrix shorts.

Agreed. My hypothesis works, though, and I will stand by it until the movie explicitly tells me something different.

When Neo "destroys" Smith in movie one no mention is made of how hard this is - indeed it is seen as the fruition of his powers.

Don't you see the contradiction inherent in that statement? If it's so easy for Neo to destroy sentient objects in the Matrix, why did it take him until the end of the movie to figure out how to do it? Furthermore, why didn't he hunt down the Agents that ran away and blow them up, too?

Equally Smith's attacking Neo in the first film cannot be called hatred, he is doing his Matrix defined job.

??? Did you sleep through the scene in the first movie near the end where Smith is torturing Morpheus, telling him that humanity is a sickness, that he wished that the machines didn't have to sully themselves by living off of the humans, etc? Smith's entire character is a bundle of xenophobic bile directed at the human race.

After being resurrected, free himself from his own programmed constraints and with new abilities it would seem less likely that he would want to destroy Neo, as Neo may have the answer to why he is the way he is.

At what point in the movie did Smith appear unclear as to what he was or, more to the point, care about what he was beyond knowing the he was a self-replicating virus?

Why is he trying to kill Neo - especially as he has now found out (from film one) that this in all likelihood cannot be done.

He's trying to kill Neo because he hates humanity. He's trying to kill Neo because he didn't finish the job the first time around. Notice that Neo never had to fight off a gigantic swarm of Agents before this movie; it's not clear at all that the right number of Smiths couldn't take him out, particularly if they could keep him from flying.

None of what you have said above has been told to us you have mad ethe assumption as to why Neo doesn't use his powers in certain ways merely from observing him not using them, which therefore cannot be used to justify it.

There's a strong possibility that Neo has been exploding Agents willy-nilly up until this movie and it's only after being confronted by Agent Smith saying, "Thanks for turning me into a virulent virus!" in the playground that he stopped.

And since the thrust of the initial movie seemed to be to free people from the Matrix, they don't seem to be doing it much (except in a bit of backstory exposition).

Deeply unfair criticism; they explicitly say in the movie that they've freed more people in six months than they have in six years and that's what the humans the primary justification for the attack on Zion is. Furthermore, Neo has that kid whom he saved following him around like a mad prohpet, all of those people in Zion keep sending him offerings, at least one of the kids from the first movie has been brought out of the Matrix and is in Zion (hence the spoon), etc. The entire point of the second movie is the setup of the final confrontation, not the (comparatively) mundane tastk of busting people out of the Matrix; we saw how that all worked in the first film, who needs to see it again?

I mean, in the first movie there were a lot of great visual ideas--the super-scary shot of the humans in the pods, the telephone stuff, the bullet-dodging--and in reloaded they really didn't come up with anything to match that, or even bother to show us again the stuff that made the matrix universe fun to watch.

Wouldn't that spoon kid already have been rescued from the Matrix prior to the first film? Wasn't he at the Oracle's house as a potential One? Wasn't Neo's real body rescued before he went there?

And the freeway sequence wasn't?

Anyway, they DID show the telephone stuff and the bullet-dodging, plus they added the ghost programs, the flying sequences and its attended buggering of Matrix physics and the endlessly multiple Agent Smith.

Wouldn't that spoon kid already have been rescued from the Matrix prior to the first film?

That occured to me after I hit "Submit", yes.

jUST LOOK AT zION, THEE PLACE IS LIKE A JAIL!! WTF, iT SUx0r big-time!!!! zION MUST BE DESTROYED B/C IT IS THE PRISON FOR HUMANz0r! mORPHEUS IS THE FIERY ORATOR WHO KEEPS PEEPS BELIEVING IN THEE CAUSE, WHICH WE NOW KNOW IS FUTILE ANYWAY! JUST DANCE AND FUCK YOU STUPID HUMANGZ, THERE'S NO 'pROBLEM' HERE IN YOUR JAIL!!

HE MUST BE DESTROYED!!!!!

hAHAHAHA CORNEL WEST!

It is unclear what "the machines" will do when they get to Zion. Destroy it, or try to somehow re-enslave them.

I suppose this may be my big problem ith the whole affair now we've got to the second film. There is no obvious reasoning behind the intellignce. Where's the bad guy?

I agree about the humans in pods: it was the standout shot of the first movie. They may have been hoping for the same effect looking down the bore of Zion with all the crossing pathways: nope.

As far as visual spectacle goes, I'll have to repeat myself: irrespective of plot reasons for the Burly Brawl or issues with CGI, if you thought the fight was boring, you were watching a different movie.

(bah crosspost)

You mean Slimer?

Thanks for the thought! I just started wondering why I compared Matrix Reloaded to The Hidden upthread.

Color me jumping-to-conclusions but I assume the takeover process is fatal. I think Smith definitely wants access to Neo's powers but it's unclear whether subsuming Neo would leave his abilities intact.

I didn't think the first takeover was handled poorly at all; he kept popping enough at enough intervals to remind the audience that he was still there and still a potential source of trouble. (In fact, the end was a complete anti-climax in the sense that I knew who the survivor was going to be.)

I like the idea of Agent Smith as anti-hero, and am sort of hoping for that in the next film. Or to be surprised. Which is why I like this film: unlike the first one, I had no idea what the Big Suprise was when I entered the cinema.

Straight up hero, surely. (This is about the time I just need to admit I'm a Hugo Weaving fan.)

In the end I though poorly paced, poorly organised, little natural flow from the previous movie (starting with a dream sequence / really long flashback/flash forward was clumsy) and the ball park shifted without the average viewer being give the chance to ask why.

ALSO!@!!! Totally Agreed re: Agent Smith being the most interesting. SO - fans of the interesting, tell me this: why duz he say "to himself", upon replicating thee guy w/the phone (who we assume he has "taken over" somehow in Zion later?) "It happened just like before." "Well, ALMOST." * grins wickedly *

I thought it wasn't great. Yeah yeah we get another one soon to explane questionZ0r but eh? Are you kidding?? We are talking about THIS ONE! Thee problem was no suspense. In the first one we get Mr. Anderson crouching in his cubicle, or the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar trying not to sneeze, classic farce stuff: I hope they won't find me/us! Nothing like that here.

I think it would be funny if Neo had to go back to thee Matrix every once in awhile to call his Mom. I mean WTF, he doesn't care at all?? Maybe it's all a game, but that's still a real humang being "playing the part" of his mummy!