The Matrix Reloaded (full spoilers)

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!

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.