ah, david poland has interesting stuff on matrix.
http://www.thehotbutton.com/today/hot.button/2003_thb/030513b_tue.htm
"We?ve all seen the movie now, right? You know this is a page of SPOILERS and there is no way to read between the SPOILERS. Do not read this if you have not seen the movie or do not want to know so much that it will SPOIL the experience.
Okay?
Ready?
Spoiled again!
I?m just going to jump from moment to moment from beginning to the end, pointing out what I think might be significant.
The Opening Dream ? The dream indicates one thing, but what we see is not actually misleading. It happens very quickly, but the body smashing the car ends up being the agent?s.
The Group Meeting In The Matrix ? We meet Niobe for the first time and see that there is something going on between her and Morpheus. More importantly, we see Morpheus operating with humans other than his shipmates for the first time. They do not have the unyielding faith in him that his crew ? other than newcomer Link ? does. We get the first sense that not everyone agrees about the prophecy and that Neo is The One.
One ship is left behind to wait to hear from The Oracle.
Neo senses the agents? who are markedly not led by Smith. This is a skill he did not have in first film. The first instinct is to assume that this is just a function of his Oneness. But it foreshadows his increasing connection to the machines.
Smith announces that he is no longer part of The Matrix. We will later get an explanation about rogue programs that go off on their own rather than accepting deletion. Smith is clearly one of those. But he has also come up with tricks that no other rogue program has.
Back to Zion ? The gates of Zion are opened and closed. They will be the scene of a major battle in the third film.
The triangle between Morpheus, Niobe and Lock is established, but ends up not being a major part of the story? yet.
Background on Names - Morpheus? name signifies his as the lord of sleep. But that seems to be a Part 1 issue. However, the new character of Niobe is marked in mythology by a dangerous arrogance? one that seems likely to cost lives in the third film. Her loss ? in mythology, her 14 children - is so great and unexpected that she cries away the rest of her life.
Neo is established as a religious figure to a lot of humans. His role as The One in the original has been much talked about, but the Wachowskis push the issue by sticking him with an unwanted following, looking upon him as a power greater than themselves. They carefully make sure that costumes representative of many, many religions can be seen in this group.
Combine the deification of Neo with the sexual energy that is shown in the elevator and later on and the argument that Trinity is a kind of embodiment of Mary Magdalene can be made.
That evening is the gathering of all of Zion?s inhabitants to listen to their leaders. Morpheus? role as a leader is redefined once again. We learn that the war has been going on for 100 years. We also get the impression that despite the disparate opinions about following Neo within the leadership, the regular Joes and Josephenes of Zion are ready to be led wherever they may.
Meanwhile, the Oracle gets in touch with the ship that was left behind, sending some kind of hardware to Neo as a message to meet her. The guy with the hardware escapes. The second guy is assimilated by Agent Smith. But then, he still manages to be pulled through the phone and put back in the human body. How this works is never explained in the course of Reloaded. But it clearly is what it seems. Agent Smith joins the ?real world.? That leaves the question... how?
Word From The Oracle ? The hardware from The Oracle reaches Neo and he goes to see her. Is the piece of hardware a construct program, as we remember it from the original film? Is it simply a way of pinpointing her location in The Matrix, since we have already seen Neo go to the existing apartment where he met her the first time?
Neo arrives in a teahouse and meets Seraph. In mythology, the Seraphim were much like the Cherubim, but they guarded only the most important members of the hierarchy.
After they fight, Neo meets with The Oracle. Here are the details:
The Oracle is a program.
The Oracle could be a computer failsafe, designed to keep Neo from freeing mankind.
The Oracle did not necessarily believe in Neo the last time they met, suggesting that perhaps she is not all knowing and all seeing.
When the Oracle gives Neo a candy, he takes it, but does not eat it. She takes a matching candy out of her purse and throws it in her mouth. It is identical to the red pill that Neo took in the first place.
The Oracle explains about older rogue programs, running amuck in the system.
The Oracle suggests that Neo will have to choose between Trinity?s life or death? by the end of the film, he will do just that. But the question remains, does he know why?
?You can?t see past the choice you don?t understand.?
The Oracle sends him to find The Keymaster, telling him to be at a specific place at a specific time.
When The Oracle leaves, Smith and The Smiths show up in the same space just seconds after her exit. Why?
Is fighting The Smiths a part of what Neo needs to do to get to the next part of his journey? Seraph seems to almost clear The Oracle out of the space in anticipation of Smith?s arrival. Yet, Smith is no longer an agent and she should have seen him coming before Seraph, no?
Going To The Merovingian ? The Merovingian were French kings who claimed to be direct descendents of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Most modern Christians, obviously, claim that this was untrue since they do not accept the idea of Christ being married. Nonetheless, this is the history of the name
His wife, Persephone, was the daughter of Zeus and the wife of Zeus? brother, Hades. This took place when Hades kidnapped and raped Persephone. In time, she came to love him. But her mother was so enraged that she made the earth barren until her daughter was returned to the land. As the story goes, Persephone eventually split time between the earth and Hades? underworld and thus, the seasons were created.
In the context of Reloaded, The Merovingian is one of the oldest existing programs. He speaks specifically of surviving Neo?s five predecessors. Neo is the sixth The One. The Merovingian may be the first version of The One? which would make Neo a program as well. Since we already know that it is possible for a program to cross over into the ?real world,? anything is possible.
The Merovingian introduces the idea of cause and effect as the driving force of society, machine and human, above and beyond the ?illusion? of control. But even as a program, The Merovingian still says that we are all animals. Curious.
Another indicator that The Merovingian was once The One is that he knows the role of The Keymaster, who he keeps locked up in a room without a keyed door.
And when Persephone decides to tweak her roaming husband by leading Neo & Co to The Keymaker, she craves the truly loving kiss of The One, saddened by her inability to feel much of anything. After the kiss, she tells Trinity that a love like that is not meant to last. Apparently, she knows.
Persephone kisses one of Merovingian?s bodyguards from earlier matrixes with a silver bullet, reflecting the earlier comment from The Oracle that odd events like vampires and UFOs were all just rogue programs being reabsorbed into The Matrix.
The freeway chase ensues.
Next, the assault on the core of The Matrix. Trinity is drawn in, etc.
As Neo, Morpheus and The Keymaster make their way to the core, Smith is there. How? Remember, he is not a part of The Matrix anymore. He is free. Yet he seems to be turning up at the same places Neo is trying to go, just missing both the Oracle and The Architect. Coincidence?
The Keymaster serves his very specific purpose before dying. This seems to be another indication of balance in the system.
Somehow, Morpheus is able to take an alternate door out of the core and, perhaps, out of the Matrix and back to his ship, without the phone call.
Neo?s conversation with The Architect seems to create most of the architecture for the final film. Again, the indication from the cast is that what The Architect says is accurate.
This is the 6th Matrix.
?The One? is a mathematical anomaly ? presumably pi ? that challenges The Matrix with the possibility of human choice. Five times, The One has come. Five times, Zion has been destroyed. Each time a new Matrix is built, the current The One picks the humans who seed the next Zion, a group of 18 (?), 12 women and six men.
The Architect tells Neo that Zion will be destroyed. But Neo takes the door to choice, which does not seem to surprise or particularly bother The Architect, even though he claims that the choice will lead not only to the destruction of Zion, but of all human life on the planet.
The Architect makes a comment to the effect that part of the process of reseeding Zion is that The Matrix has to reassimilate Neo?s ?code.? So, is Neo a program, like The Merovingian? If so, didn?t The Merovingian have to make the same choice Neo does? not to be re-assimilated? After all, it is repeated throughout the film that most programs will choose to ?run? rather than allow themselves to be deleted. The Merovingian is a rogue program, not controlled, but understood by The Oracle.
When Neo decides to take the ?red? door, choosing choice over reintegration into the system, he is left in the middle of nowhere. He exceeds all of his previous feats by flying at 2000 miles an hour or so and catching Trinity, who is falling to her death. He then removes the bullet from inside of her. Then, after she dies, he shocks her heart and brings her back to life.
When they return back to The Nebuchadnezzar ? whose mythological history of destroying Zion seems to be beyond possibility now ? the Sentinals are waiting. When they attack, The Nebuchadnezzar is abandoned and destroyed. As Neo, Trinity, Morpheus and Link travel away from the ship by foot, Neo feels the Sentinals coming, as he felt the agents before the film?s first fight scene. And now, he can stop them with much the same way he stops bullets in The Matrix. The effort causes him to collapse. But he does it. How?
Meanwhile, Morpheus, after being told that the prophecy was a lie, has lost his faith completely. This does not manifest itself into anything, but you get the sense that it will.
The final image of the film is the knocked out Neo and the knocked out Smith, now in a human body, the sole survivor of an attack on his ship. Therein lies the future of Revolutions.
Tomorrow? questions and ideas about The Matrix Revolutions?"
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