And the second one can be excused by the fact that this is Japan and it was the only American movies in cinemas and I was girl-less and bored.

I was certainly playing some Solitaire on my iPhone during the non-giant robots parts.

I saw this movie two times in theaters.

I look forward to being told how horrible a person I am.

David Mamet is the Wallace Shawn of theater.

oh wait

I wish this guy would write a book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VseQe4TFsg

Wrong thread?

Good post, Dorkman. I think I'm on board with you, at least for the most part. I'll need to watch the films and see if what you say holds out.

I think our main points of disagreement are over what the first magic bean is in the first place. You seem to be willing to excuse anything at all that happens in the Matrix.

The first magic bean is that the world we live in is a video game. OK, swallowed.

But then Morpheus tells Neo that the rules can be bent, and even broken. In what video game can you bend and break the rules just because you know it's a game? The only way I know to bend the rules in a video game is to hack. Hacking, then, is the second bean, is it not? Or if it's not the second bean, if it's connected to the first bean, then why can Neo only hack the Matrix? Why can't he hack the machines themselves?

As you say, if something doesn't violate the established rules, than it's OK. Hasn't hacking already been established? And wasn't the overarching question of the first film WHY Neo was so much better at hacking than the rest of them? Why can't this be explained by Neo having some sort of remote hacking ability?

You seem to be begging for an as-you-know scene to explain it. My argument, I guess, is a prima facie one. It happened, there's only one explanation, so there you go.

So you have the same complaint about Empire? According to the first film, Vader is an evil guy who killed Luke's father. In the second one, we discover that he actually IS Luke's father. The only way you can reconcile that is to forget what you had assumed after watching the first one, and believe something that makes sense in light of what comes later.

Also, please note that I'm not disagreeing with you that there are two magic beans, I'm just saying that the second one comes out much earlier than you're saying.

I think I mostly agree with you, Dorkman. But I still stand by my assertion that The One can do things no one expected.

The things Morpheus and Trinity can do are explained by their being able to understand that the world they're in is fake, so they can manipulate gravity a bit, run a little faster, that sort of thing. But the things that The One does are WAY beyond any of that.

And there's no sign from the others that they think they could ever be like him. He really is rewriting the code as he goes. There's something fundamentally different about the way he manipulates the Matrix.

And so this is a bit of a thought exercise. I want you to forget the explanation for Neo's powers that you had at the end of the first film. Only allow explanations that also explain what he does in film 2.

The only explanation that explains all of it is the one I presented before, that he's been manipulating the machines all along.

This doesn't require retconning, doesn't require us to assume an Airport card.

Instead of telling me how this contradicts what you thought after the first film, tell me how this doesn't logically follow from what we've seen onscreen.

Just for the record, everyone except Teague was wrong on the trouper/trooper debate.

http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&a … ;q=trouper

/braces for Trey's over-reaction

I certainly make an effort to watch along with my listening, but I can't say that I've done that for more than a fourth of the shows.

Certainly if I haven't seen a movie yet, I'll listen to the commentary without watching, and if the commentary makes me interested to see it, I'll watch it without the commentary.

The odd instance has been with 2001, where I first listened to the commentary, and then listened to it again while watching the movie, and then went back and watched portions of the movie again without commentary.

What point did I miss? Apartheid bad, everyone being the same good.

00:39:45
"The ultimate way to solve the problem is for people to not be different anymore."

00:40:05
"The melting pot only works when the melting starts happening. You get to the point where you've eliminated the different because everything's blended and everyone's on the same page."

Cultural genocide has been defined as:

"Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities"

You don't fix the problem by making everyone the same. You fix the problem by Whitey no longer having a problem with people being different.

It's like saying you're going to solve the gay marriage 'problem' by turning all gay people straight.