The Matrix Reloaded (full spoilers)

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!

1. Where are all the animals? Why don't the computers just use cows for energy, rather than go to all the bother of having to make a fake world for humans?

2. What year was the Matrix set up? I know it represents 1999, but in the real world when was the big war fought? 2020 or something?

3. Okay, so if the Matrix began in 2020, allowing for population growth (even minus casualties of war) plus the way those mechanical brutes breed us, wouldn't there be too many subscribers? Like, if you have more than 6 billion battery farmed humans, there won't be room in 1999 for some of them. What happens then?

4. Also, is it always 1999 in the Matrix. In the real world, in the film, isn't it something like 200 years after that? So they've looped the same year nearly 200 times?

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

A bit of both. 23 will be saved. Or, after Neo's choice, not.

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

If you mean that the simple duality of the first film is part of a Larger Plan, then I don't see that as a problem. But then, I'm still appreciating it as The Invisibles: The Movie.

Anyone want to bet a massive glass of beer (i've just finished work) that Smith will "turn good" in the next one.

Yes.

I am puzzled about the complaints re: no obivious intelligence behind the machines. Zion is a safety valve for the 1% of people who reject the Matrix; once it gets to a certain size/power level, they inject "The One" into the system to trigger a reboot, where "reboot" means "wipe out all of the dissidents, pick some new breeding stock and rebuild the system. (IOW, the Matrix runs on Windows.) (Haha so there really isn't any intelligence behind it.)

If Smith become a "good guy" I will vomit blood out of my eyes.

Smith already IS a good guy!!! This is SOOOO obvious!! In the first one he tries to get Neo to reject his "The One" persona and just forget about it: if this happens the Matrix can't get perfecter, the iterations stop, the contradictions/fractal/chaos theory/anomaly/whoo-look-at-the-time whatever-hooey ends up demolishing the system: voila no Matrix. Smith HATES the Matrix, the very smell of it! (Smith is NOT just a program, otherwise what could he possibly have to compare the Matrix with?) Neo gives him the finger early on because Morpheus has been pumping the messiah thing into his brane (which is part of the Master Plan!!) So plan B for Smith = try to stop Morpheus/get the codes to the Zion mainframe, so that Zion may be destroyed in toto. Zion is what ensures the Matrix's continued existence vis a vis its function as safety valve so again, voila, no Matrix. Dunno if Smith particularly cares about the humans he just hates his job: i.e. faff about in the Matrix.

MORPHEUS = GOD OF SLEEP!

Well, not entirely...

Those agents will be as fast as lightning.

Fucking Oracle. Costs an arm and a leg and you don't even get the documentation! </EXTREME GEEKINESS>

another possibility: Neo learns that the reality he was freed from in the first film, our reality, is itself a matrix constructed by a higher power (that would be God then...) and not the machines, so like a fractal the machines were replicating what was already there for humans - a shell within a shell. this might be a bit of a dead end tho, because there would not seem to be a system that makes more sense for humans to live in than this reality...unless, as with the machine-constructed reality, it is not true freedom. the point is, humans are technically no better off in reality than they are in the matrix - they are identical...so will be interesting to see if the next film goes beyond the mere escape from the inner shell back to the outer shell

Reading that transcript that teeny found, it appears that the sentinels are indeed going to kill everyone in Zion, and 23 new people in the matrix will be ejected to form a new one. So, we're probably talking about hundreds of years between versions.

stevem, why "the machines" need the humangs to be anything more than sessile vegetables remains a mystery to me.

a) Neo
b) a chimp
c) all of the above

"Why am I here?"

entire audience: groans

oh my god, best film ever