Matrix waste of technology - CNN Review


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So, in other words, you missed the part where the CNN reviewer calls the movie a large video game.

Before you are allowed to comment on something that is written by somebody, keep in mind that you look much more intelligent when you actually give some sign of having read it in its entirety.

In this case, it would've helped if you had read the part that mentions it as a video game.

Oh, no! I didn't read the whole thing! n00B! :o

Good lord. People go crazy over nothing, now.

Drink less coffee.

Yeah, I'm a n00B. Sure. That isn't justified by the fact that I joined Neowin before you. Post count for the most part says very little, in case you considered mentioning that. I just don't post often in General Discussion, and choose to limit my posts to the Operating Systems sections and the Software and Hardware support sections, where they can actually help people.

I'm by no means a n00B. Yes, I was a little harsh in my wording, but I felt it was deseved here. You said yourself that you didn't want to read it all. If you felt hurt, I apologize. I normally don't outburst, but in this case I felt it was necessary. Common sense tells you that you are less likely to say something stupid (relax, everyone says something stupid occasionally) when you actually read the entire text.

Oh, and about the coffee. I'm allergic to coffee, so I have only had it once in my life, making your point moot. :p

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Yeah, I'm a n00B. Sure. That isn't justified by the fact that I joined Neowin before you. Post count for the most part says very little, in case you considered mentioning that. I just don't post often in General Discussion, and choose to limit my posts to the Operating Systems sections and the Software and Hardware support sections, where they can actually help people.

I'm by no means a n00B. Yes, I was a little harsh in my wording, but I felt it was deseved here. You said yourself that you didn't want to read it all. If you felt hurt, I apologize. I normally don't outburst, but in this case I felt it was necessary. Common sense tells you that you are less likely to say something stupid (relax, everyone says something stupid occasionally) when you actually read the entire text.

Oh, and about the coffee. I'm allergic to coffee, so I have only had it once in my life, making your point moot. :p

The n00B comment was meant toward me. Who said anything about post count?

If... you... felt... hurt? :huh: Don't go crazy!

I made a stupid comment. DON'T GO CRAZY!

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The Boston Herald says-

`Matrix' finale: Start the `Revolutions' without me!

Review by James Verniere

Wednesday, November 5, 2003

The cyberpunks have been cyberpunk'd. Four years after the release of their trend-setting, hugely influential, some might even say visionary original film, Andy and Larry Wachowski's ``The Matrix Revolutions,'' the ``final'' ``Matrix'' film, arrives in both 35mm and IMAX, looking like nothing more than a 1980s music video. If I had to hazard a guess which video, I'd say Billy Idol's self-love anthem ``Dancing With Myself.''

As the villainous Agent Smith observes in a final, typically over-the-top and emotionless confrontation with the series' hero Neo, viewers are likely to feel they have been here before and may be right to believe they have been ripped off. These two follow-up films may even have the effect of causing fans of the original film to experience - in the words of this entry's semiliterate screenplay - ``doubt clouded by uncertainty.''

Our three heroes are back - the robotic Neo (robotic Keanu Reeves), chiseled Trinity (chiseled Carrie-Anne Moss) and grave, foghorn-voiced Morpheus (grave, foghorn-voiced Laurence Fishburne). But their ``look'' has become dated. Neo's Jesuitical cassock has a certain timeless appeal. But in her black latex catsuit, Trinity looks like a lewd licorice lollipop, while Morpheus appears to be wearing an artfully cut-up and re-sewn inner tube. What was once so hip is now so lame.

The only difference between ``The Matrix Revolutions'' and the similarly inert and meaningless ``The Matrix Reloaded'' is that now it ends for good, except you'd be an idiot to believe that.

Somehow, the Wachowskis have come up with a plot that is both incomprehensible and simple. The calamarilike sentinel machines are digging toward Zion, the last human outpost, and will arrive soon. Meanwhile, aboard the rebel ship Mjolnir (the name of Thor's hammer), Trinity watches over Neo's inert body. Neo has ``jacked'' into the Matrix (the use of the word ``jacked'' has Idolesque implications), where he finds himself stuck at a spotlessly white subway station with an Indian family.

Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) has replicated himself many times over and appears to be invincible. In a nutshell, Neo must find a way to defeat Smith and save Zion before it is too late.

``The Matrix'' was an admittedly cunning fusion of Hong Kong action films, martial arts movies, computer games, comic books, cutting-edge special effects and themes borrowed from Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Bill Gates. But it has all gone horribly splat. Watching this, you may be reminded of what Gertrude Stein once observed about the benighted state of Cal-ee-fornia, ``there is no there there.''

The Council of Zion still includes a guilty-by-association Professor Cornel West and resembles superannuated fugitives from Woodstock. Scenes in which the ``Star Wars''-like soldiers of Zion, including a so-called Capt. Mifune (Nathaniel Lees), defend themselves against schools of flying, many-tentacled sentinels and giant, phallic augurs are most notable for hyperactive, special-effects overkill. Among the new elements this time are APUs (armored personal units) that are operated by individual Zion soldiers and resemble gigantic Transformers.

Reeves still sounds like he's channeling previous roles, most notably the Buddha and Johnny Mnemonic. Moss and Fishburne have little to do. As the pilot Niobe, Jada Pinkett has a beautiful smile. Weaving - who speaks every line, including the words ``Mr. Anderson,'' as if it were dipped in hydrochloric acid - is the only actor who gives a witty performance. Mary Alice, replacing the late Gloria Foster as the Oracle, makes even the witless Wachowski dialogue sound lyrically benevolent.

But despite all the talk about fate, chance and karma, the moral of this story is that if you can't tell what is going on or why, you are not likely to care. If you're thinking about how cold and wet the actors must have been while shooting a fight scene in a giant puddle, your heart's not in the movie. Like ``Kill Bill - Vol. 1,'' a film it resembles in many ways, ``The Matrix Revolutions'' is a self-reflexive, masturbatory fantasy and an attempt to re-create the blissed-out reveries and pleasures of childhood, something symbolized by Monica Bellucci's breasts, which are served up to camera like a pair of golden apples.

As that image suggests, it's not unpleasant to sit through ``The Matrix Revolutions'' and enjoy the action and often dazzling visuals. But in the end - in the words of someone in the film - this final ``Matrix'' installment is ``the Big Bupkis.''

Me,I prefer Get Smart.

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Okay - here's my theory on The Matrix BEFORE having seen the final movie (I have tickets for the IMAX show tonight).

The story goes that intelligent AI rebelled against humans and that eventually humans were beaten and ended up becoming a power source for the machines. Now combine that with what The Architect said in the second movie... the big question is WHY bother even creating The Matrix? Why not keep everyone in a coma? Why not create humans without brains? Why go to all the trouble of creating not one but 6 versions of The Matrix? It doesn't make sense...

Think about what the Counsellor said in RELOADED... he talked about the power to turn off the machines, to smash them to bits - but then what would happen to their power and lights? So... I think it's all turn-about. I think that humanity beat the rebellious AI but didn't dare, or couldn't, DESTROY that AI because they were dependent on it for survival. I think that the Matrix is a HUMAN construct designed to keep the AI docile and performing their work keeping humanity alive while preventing them from rebelling. In this light, the "real world" is simply an extra control to affirm to the AI the idea of AI domination over humanity.

There are other interesting things:

I've always thought that the term "Programme Writer" used by Agent Smith to describe Neo ("In one life you are a successful programme writer...") was somewhat odd... perhaps that is the PURPOSE (think back to the Oracle and the Merovingian) of the AI called Neo. The Oracle said that you never notice the programmes that are doing their jobs... only the ones that aren't; "Every story you've ever heard about Vampires, Werewolves, or Aliens is some programme doing something it's not supposed to. Look at those birds; at some time a programme was written to govern their motion" (this suggests that programmes are still being written, but the only programmer we've seen was The Merovingian who admitted to creating the dessert). Going back to what The Oracle said, we've already seen werewolves (Persephone shot one with a silver bullet); I'd say Superman-like abilities are a similar thing... Neo is a "programme writer" that is not performing his intended PURPOSE - he's become rogue.

In the first movie Morpheus says, "I can only show you the door, you must walk through it" - he says that a couple of times, the most obvious being in reference to the first visit to The Oracle. However, in a way it also applies to RELOADED; it was Morpheus who got Neo to the doorway leading to The Architect but Neo had to walk through.

The Oracle and The Architect know what Neo is going to do before he does it (breaking the vase in the original movie), know what he is thinking and most importantly, The Oracle says, "I know you haven't been sleeping" and then proceeds to ask him about his dream... HOW? Neo is supposedly not hard-wired into the Matrix so how does she know about things that supposedly happen OUTSIDE the matrix? It also works the other way... Neo's dreams are not just precognitive... they are EXACTLY what actually happens - how can that be? It implies that he has a connection to The Matrix and that other software can directly interact with him. But it's not just Neo... Trinity tells Neo in the first movie that, "Everything the Oracle told me has come true... except this" (of course, "except this" also turned out to be true). SO The Oracle seems to be able to foretell the futures of people other than Neo... so Neo can not be unique and others must also have a connection to The Matrix beyond what we've been told.

In RELOADED when Neo bleeds after stopping the sword with his bare hand, The Merovingian siezes upon it saying, "See? He is still only human" - bleeding shouldn't be an indicator of that as one of The Twins bled when Trinity shot him in the arm and later Agent Thompson bleeds when Morpheus slashes his face with the Katana. Why is bleeding a sign of being human when we know that entities KNOWN to be software also bleed?

In THE MATRIX, Smith is trying to acquire the codes to the Matrix mainframe because he wishes to escape from The Matrix... how is getting into the Zion Mainframe an escape?

In RELOADED, Neo says that he can "feel" the squiddies and stops them with an EMP... then collapses. As a human he'd be impervious to EMP but if he is AI then he would succumb to EMP. This is the one I'm least sure about because they all weathered an EMP at the end of THE MATRIX (or did they? The last thing we saw was the EMP). I'm also thinking the collapse could have been related to the kiss between Neo and Persephone.

Last, but not least... supposedly, the "rogue element" human population lives in a city called ZION; in THE ANIMATRIX they mention that the machine world is called 01... "Zero-One"... sounds awfully similar to ZION.

Anyway, that's it... I could be way off but if not, and in a way, I hope I am because if so then the real story is going to be really interesting if it can account for all this...

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