Also, we talked about it in the commentary but not here, nobody asks the obvious question when Neo mind-blows-up the Sentinel, "If he could only do that in the Matrix but it looks like he can do it in the 'real world,' then is there a chance that the 'real world' is another Matrix?" Nobody mentions or even seems to consider the possibility, which would seem like the immediately obvious answer.

No, because you can hack a video game. If the simulated world is a video game, and video games can be hacked, it follows as a part of the premise that you can hack the simulated world.

At what point does he have access to the machines in the same way that he has access to the Matrix? He doesn't, and any answer that you can give me is pure speculation and not based on any of the established rules of the movie universe, let alone actually explained by the films.

No, the Matrix has been established, and hacking the Matrix exists as a logical extension of the Matrix. I would not expect Neo to be able to hack outside the Matrix any more than I would expect him to know kung fu or fly.

Not really. At best, the question was IF he was any better at hacking than the rest.

I will grant you that what makes someone "The One" is never adequately addressed in any of the three films, but I don't see how that supports your argument.

Neo requires a direct hardware connection to the Matrix when he does whatever he does to "hack" it. There is no establishment of a remote hacking ability. There is no indication of a remote hacking ability. And even if it could be explained by some remote hacking ability, it isn't explained by a remote hacking ability. It isn't explained at all.

You seem to be misunderstanding the term.

An "as-you-know" scene implies that both characters already know the information being spoken and are repeating it solely for the sake of the audience.

The simple fix to any as-you-know scene is to make sure one of the characters doesn't know, and needs it explained to them as our representative in the scene.

Considering that every moment of the films not filled with an action setpiece involves characters explaining things to each other, because one of them knows more than the other and is trying to bring him or her up to speed. I don't think it would be out of place or an as-you-know scene to have one more, especially one this crucial.

There are multiple explanations for why it happened, the most likely being that the Wachowskis were just making shit up as they went along.

I think where we really differ is that you seem intent on believing that they had a good reason for doing it, and then concocting out of whole cloth what that reason might be. I see no reason to accept the premise that it was a competent and reasoned choice in the first place.

Let me make this clear from the up-front: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

But that said, it didn't bother me when Neo short-circuited the Sentinels at the end of Reloaded. And it didn't bother me when he blew up the artillery-shell-things in Revolutions.

But it bothered the shit out of me that after he'd been blinded he could still "see."

The other stuff? It's at least possible to fanwank that. Neo left a residual "echo" of himself in the Matrix after his encounter with the Architect. (How? Don't care, just roll with me for a sec.) That "echo" manifested itself in the real world as an override directive in the machines' programming. The Sentinels self-destructed or whatever because they were about to harm Neo. Same with the artillery shells. Is this a good explanation? Not particularly, but I would have gone along with it. As Trey likes to say occasionally, "I'm going to allow this."

But the whole "seeing" thing? There's no way that can be handwaved or fanwanked. We're talking about Neo, outside the Matrix, somehow getting sensory input that he should not be getting. It simply can't be explained by the established rules of the universe.

But frankly, even that could have been played with in a way that would have salvaged the sequels for me. Remember Morpheus' speech from the dojo? "It has rules, rules like gravity. Some can be bent, others can be broken." Of course this makes literal sense in the Matrix — Morpheus and the others, and Neo most of all, are in a video game, and they've got the cheat codes. Morpheus teaches him to turn on noclip, and at the end of the movie Neo stumbles upon god mode.

All Neo had to do was say to Morpheus, half-conscious, in a whisper, "Some can be bent, others can be broken." And I'd be like, "Wow, okay. They're expanding the premise of the first movie to tell us that reality is more nuanced and complex than we think it is."

A second magic bean? Eh, maybe, depending on how it's handled on the page and on the screen. Done right, it could have been, there's only one magic bean, but it's larger and more interesting than you thought it was.

But the whole "Neo as the blind prophet" thing was just bullshit, sorry, but it was. Not only was it unsupported — nay, unsupportable! — by anything that came before or after, it was a shameless rip-off of Muad'dib's character arc from the first Dune sequel novel, and yes, I'm a nerd, please kill me. At least in that case it was established early on that the character had powers either supernatural or at least preternatural, and the whole "where we're going we don't need eyes" thing was built upon that. But Neo with his magical spidey senses? Bullshit, I say. Bullshit.

That said, I have to confess I actually like the Matrix sequels. They're not great, but they entertain me. I just don't wanna think about them very hard, 'cause it angries up the blood.

So it's been a while, any chance of the Revolutions Rewritten anytime soon?

I just re listened to the Reloaded Rewritten and totally remembered how bad-ass it was, and really want to know how it ends!

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2010-03-29 08:47:08)

Good, good...and when are you going to make them?

Alright, I was daydreaming today, and I happened to come up with an idea of what this movie should have been.

You can keep Reloaded, I have no problem with it...aside from the last sixty seconds. The "twist ending" is anticlimactic and it makes no sense. Have Neo be knocked out after (yes) disabling the Sentinels. Instead of the ending being the reveal of Bane as a bad guy, Neo wakes up on a steel bed in an enormous warehouse. Disoriented, he staggers around, and sees on the bed next to him...AGENT SMITH.

OH SHIT, THEY'RE IN A SECOND MATRIX.

You see, the machines created two Matrixes (Matrices?). They knew that the program was flawed, and that people would eventually break out. So they made the "real world" one of constant conflict, so that people would be too distracted to consider the obvious possibility that the "real world" wasn't real at all. The Agents were actually real people, programmed to play the part of the villain in the game that the machines had set up. Now, I know that the phrase "Neo and Smith work together to stop the bad guy" sounds terrible, and that's where someone else might take it, so I won't. Smith wakes up too, and he feels totally betrayed. He worked hard to attain his goals. He trusted his reality. Now, he's a pathetic human, no better than the ones he mocked and tortured for years. While Neo goes to find the true creator of The Matrices seeking answers, Smith goes to find him seeking revenge. It becomes a cat-and-mouse game between the two of them, and eventually they become less concerned with the true Architect than each other. Throughout, Neo explores the desolate, horrifying world that humanity has left behind. At the end, Neo reaches the true Architect, only to find him dead, with Smith waiting. Neo defeats him (somehow, still haven't worked out a battle scene in the real world). Neo comes to realize that there is nothing for humanity in reality. We lost. He uses his computer skills (you know, the ones that they set up in the first film that had no impact later on?) to personally reprogram the Matrices, making escape from either of them impossible. He assumes the role of the Architect, doomed to watch over his creation for eternity.

Whoa, don't know where that came from. I was just hoping to explain the orange code, and Neo's powers outside the Matrix, but then...THAT.

And then he wakes up and discovers what he thought was the real world was actually...a THIRD Matrix.

Then he wakes up again.

And AGAIN.

...

It's Matrices all the way down, is what I'm saying.

I always thought it would have been an interesting dynamic to contrast Neo's invincibility inside the Matrix with his extreme vulnerability outside it. That's got to screw with anyone's head a bit.

I'm not sure, I hope so. I'll be looking into all the leftover missing episodes as soon as I get some time to do it.

Sorry and thanks. 

I am deeply curious to try this.

So, after rewatching the OG Matrix on the big screen for the 20th anniversary early this month, I did the sequels for the first time back-to-back. At the time I refrained from posting because I hadn't listened to the commentaries for them in ages, but.

I liked Reloaded, fucking loved Revolutions. I think that they're beautiful and meaningful and honestly made stronger by their imperfections. And more than anything else the thought that keeps going through my head is We didn't know how great we had it.

Just LOOK at these things, guys. Remember when sci-fi tentpoles had honest-to-god setpieces that were painstakingly conceived and executed? Remember when they were allowed to look like something besides grey mush? Remember when there was a visual ethos beyond "What's gonna be the easiest angle for the VFX team to be altering shots at the last second?"

They set up a bunch of questions they don't answer? OH MY GOD THANK YOU. The universe is so much richer for it—compared to the Pirates sequels where the entire edifice collapses under the weight of its own intricate bullshit mythology, or the MCU where the stated ethos is to make things "CinemaSins-proof," it feels so refreshing.

Trinity's death is overly sentimental and earnest? Yes please. Remember sentiment, guys? That thing you get when you don't undercut your emotional beats with jokes? (And this was honestly the biggest surprise for me, because my one major sticking point on the first film is that I don't buy that Trinity has fallen in love with Neo by the end of it at all. And yet, watching Reloaded and Revolutions, I found myself moved at how tender and REAL the relationship between the two of them is—love communicated through the smallest of looks or gestures. I remember the podcast ripped on it for being awful because Reeves and Moss are both wooden, but I think there's a difference between wooden and reserved. The way they deliver dialogue doesn't mean they aren't expressing feeling in tons of other tiny ways.)

I do have to wonder how much my gleeful reaction to the trilogy as a whole stems from how creatively bankrupt so many tentpoles are today vs. how they were even fifteen years ago, but god, I just loved these so so much and I'm very glad that the revisionist "They're good, actually" camp seems to be sliding into the majority. Fingers crossed the upcoming fourth one is a home run.

I could never understand why many people compared The Matrix sequels with the Star Wars prequels. The sequels aren't flawless, but at least they've got some interesting ideas behind them.

I saw those on the big screen when they first came out (good old 35mm prints in a cozy single-screen cinema; it went out of business in 2005 right after Revenge Of The Sith) and I still have the postcards they gave away with the tickets.

https://imgur.com/a/vj8wkjk