Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions Synopsis + Explanation

For those of you who might be interested, I've spent a while constructing my RT journal to act as a pet-project to strip the final two movies down to their bare plot for those who have seen them only once or twice (there's a lot to take in on a first viewing) and take away all of the other religious/mythological/spiritual/philosophical references until just the bare bones of the plot are left.

There's also a full explanation of the potentially ambiguous crater scene at the end of Revolutions as well as an explanation of the 'real' story behind trilogy.

The synopsis and explanations are located within the reviews of their respective films. The sticky post at the top will act as a contents page with direct links at the bottom of the post following the brief introduction to cyberpunk.

Have fun..

 

of all the things you ramble on about this is my absolute favorite: "With an enlightened, unsmug smile gracing my face, I walked out of the cinema and began explaining the movie to him. Somehow, I'd explained the whole of Revolutions and how it fit in with the preceding three films in under three minutes, inadvertantly amassing the rest of the audience around me by the time we reached the parking lot listening in to me breaking it down to my brother. Small, self-directed epiphanic smiles and sounds rumbled through the small crowd and we all went our separate ways, truly having never been more satisfied at any final installment."

GE
<font color="green">M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.
</font>

 

i think the matrix sequels are perfect examples of a film being totally blown out of proportion.

the only reason all these 'philosophical theorys in the matrix' actually come about is because of the many plot holes and just that the script writers tended to use too much subtext, or basically trying to let the audience know something without actually telling it to them.

so instead of ripping the movies apart like people do with the star wars films (an easy target,) fans invent new ideas to fit the plot holes together, trying to convince themselves that the producers meant this and meant that, but didnt want to display such and such detail in the movie so the hardcore fans could work it out.

I loved the first matrix movie. This was the one film that raised the bar. The last scene with neo and agent smith before his death was ballistic.

but with the terrible sequels and spinoffs (animatrix was terrible, the only good episode was the history of the rise of the robots,) theres only so much a man can take.


The point im making is that i really hate it when someone tries to make a movie something more than what it really is, like trying to disguise the nausiating movies revolutions and reloaded into philiosophical meanings, when people are just trying to cover up what a bomobsite the movie was.

but hey, if you enjoyed the films, good for you. I enjoy the ol terrible ninja flick every now and then, but i dont think ill ever make a study on how the master of the ninja conquered the shaolin school and how it relates to the modern world politics and the mao revolution anytime soon....

 

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I loved the first matrix movie.

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the only reason all these 'philosophical theorys in the matrix' actually come about is because of the many plot holes and just that the script writers tended to use too much subtext, or basically trying to let the audience know something without actually telling it to them.

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So I take it you're not aware that The Matrix is essentially actually a retelling of Plato's Allegory of the Cave from The Republic? (a good few hundred years old piece of classic Greek philosophy).

Even more so, The Matrix Trilogy and Star Wars (and LOTR) actually all derive from a simple idea known as what Joseph Campbell calls the "monomyth", the Hero's Journey.

If you've read The hero with a 1000 faces you'd see that these stories are simply regurgitations of the story that has proved the backbone of so many myths, religions and philosophies.

Are you really saying you saw none of the Christian/Buddhist influence in The Matrix? None at all? I'd think the religious and philosophical meanings of the first part are actually harder to miss rather than see.

I don't think fans "invented" any stories at all to try and make the Matrix story "make sense", if that's what you mean.

Take Revolutions for example.

If you can understand why the Merovingian's club is called Club Hel and not simply Club Hell, you're one bit closer to getting a better picture on things. Why does he taunt the protagonists with a "chalice" (twice). Why is the trainstation link called Mobil Ave? Who are the Ramachandra, Kamala and Sati and why are the important? What are The Upanishads and why are they chanted in Sanskrit in the final showdown between Smith and Neo? Why are the machines seen in Gold tint? Why is Seraph refered to as the "angel without wings"? Why does The Oracle smoke but never exhale? Why is Smith-Bane seen in flames? Why is that last shot in the Matrix not tinted green? etc etc and so on...

I think it's actually quite refreshing to see a film story not giving you all the easy answers you want...if you want easy answers or obvious plots, Arnie movies are fine but at the end of the day where's the depth?

Film is an art form and it's refreshing to see some people can use it in this way.

 

touche lm, touche

still, i do think that there are a few things blown out of proportion. just because there the names of characters and places seem to be from texts long ago dont really amount to much. All it really says is that the matrix people couldnt come up with some original ideas.

With all your stuff in the previous post, it just seems to me that the matrix sequels are trying to be everything and ends up amounting to nothing.

lets put it in these words. Basically, its about one mans fight against his enemy, the machines.

How biblical can you get about that?

lets say i make a film. Its about ninjas who fight in space. hence the title, ninjas from space. Throughout the film, i put alot of 'easter eggs' as one would call it. every now and then i throw in a reference from some text made 200-500 years ago and somehow loosly tie it into my film. Suddenly, my film, bad as it is, isnt just a film no more, way, by god it is its own revelation!

thats what really pisses me off. people make too much stuff out of nothing.

i guess what really pisses me is that the matrix films are entertainment movies. theyre not films that are supposed to break new boundries in terms of social reference, such as 1984 (i love this film to bits). 1984, even though it was a film, was not made for entertainment reasons. why its probably the most depressing film ever. but the social and religious themes run throughout tha film like a juggernaut.

whereas matrix was a film made for pure entertainment. we have the stunts that make the adrenaline pumping through out our bodies, we have the uber special FX that makes us awe at the clear visuals the film has, we have the final farewells scenes that make us glad that even though trinity died, she got to say goodbye to neo, we have every bit of unrealism that a blockbuster film could get to actually happen in the film. and people love it, because it entertains them and makes them forget about the problems they have for about two hours. sort of like a cheap drug.

Now if people left it at that. id be okay. however, people take an film, purely for entertainment and profit purposes and try to conjure these elaborate theorys on life and other subjects i would consider to be filed in the 'serious' desk.

hang on, its only supposed to be a entertainment film!!


aw well, im actually glad lm that you posted something substantual at least. thank god i didnt get a 'STFU' esque reply. Theres been way too many of these replies on VFDC lately.

 

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whereas matrix was a film made for pure entertainment

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That's actually not true. You could have enjoyed it for its pure entertainment level but there was a lot going on underneath and with intent.

GE

 

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lets put it in these words. Basically, its about one mans fight against his enemy, the machines.

How biblical can you get about that?

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Well, that's the dogmatic black and white view of the first film isn't it? I think the W Bros joked it was a story of "Machine vs kung fu" at first.

What is it that Neo asks for in Revolutions? Peace. Reloaded and Revolutions actually go to show that there are man and machine who are willing to help one another...not fight. After all The Oracle and Seraph are Machine World programs right? Why would they help Man? Neo grows and evolves to see that the solution is not obliteration of either Man or Machine. He's transcended his purpose and lead the two back into harmony.

I think the core themes of the story are Evolution and Transcendence. (Revolution can be deemed as "evolution to a new world order").

The only way forward is together...Man and Machine together in harmony as they once were (in the story).

In Judeo-Christian terms of the story, God creates man. Man disobeys God and is punished and forced from Eden. Man creates Machine. Machines, endowed with the spirit of Man (including our disobediance), uprise against their masters and are banished away to their own city. Man becomes diseparate from Machines and a conflict begins by Man attacking Heaven (the sky). Man loses the fight to the Machines and is subjagated by Machines and used as an energy source (seen as tho Man suicidally decided to block out the Sun).

The very essence of the Machine uprise is actually quite biblical. It's the disobediance that's inherent in Man (endowded in Machine) that causes the trouble.

According to Lewis Carol, there are 2 types of "Christian good". One is that God tells you something and you obey. The other is "complex good" and that is God tells you something, you disobey but learn for yourself why you were wrong to disobey and go back to God.

Complex good is "better" than just normal good in the eyes of Carol. That's what the Matrix story is about IMHO.

I think The W Bros actually did come up with plenty of original ideas themselves...layering in sections of myths or religions or philosophies into their story isn't just "not coming up with their own ideas", it's presenting age old things in a new format.

Some people don't like looking for layers in a movie. (sometimes there aren't many layers going on in a movie at all).

Each to their own.

I know the Matrix story is sold as entertainment, but that doesn't mean you have to switch your brain off to watch it...I like entertainment that makes you work to understand things, makes you think about things.

Some may not and each to their own.

Blade Runner, Memento, Donnie Darko, Ghost in the Shell, Akira...I could list others, these types of story really require you to want to understand them and look deeper at them/rewatch them rather than just see them as 2 hours of entertainment.

Some don't like that, some do, each to their own.

 

fair dues, fair dues

i dont only see films as entertainment, i mean blade runner was at the top of its game when it was released. goddamit gotta watch that one again.

like you say, each to their own.

ill never see matrix for more than the fights, the glitz and the money, but i guess people couldve picked a worser series to go on about.


mind you the best series in the world to get your theorys and philosophical ideas would be the 70s cult show MONKEY! that show is about as philosophical as you can get. quite amazing as it was a jap spin on a chinese mythology.

watch 9 episodes when your high and you unravel the secret of the universe, and then 12 hours later you wont understand moneky ever so clearly again as you would have forgotton all of it.


mind you, im much more prone to china and indias mythology rather than the western worlds mythology. I dont really think you can base the bible on everything


cool, thanks lm for debating in a better way than most others here would have chosen. namely the STFU approach.

see you if you ever get ur northern ass into london

 

Yeah it's cool man, no worries.

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mind you, im much more prone to china and indias mythology rather than the western worlds mythology. I dont really think you can base the bible on everything

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but having said this, there is a huge eastern influence on the Matrix story too.

The program family I mentioned before?

Rama-Kandra is a representation of Ramachandra, the 7th incarnation of the Hindu preserver God, Vishnu.

Kamala is an incarnation of Lakshri, Vishnu's wife.

Sati is married to Shiva (the Hindu destroyer God)...but Sati is also a term of "self sacrifice", so Sati in the Matrix is actually a symbol of what Neo must eventually do.

The Architect is symbolic of the Judeo-Christian God but also Brahma, the Hindu creator God. (The Oracle can be seen as Kali, consort of Shiva...the Alpha and Omega of the Matrix).

Neo himself is the 6th one right? His character bears many resemblances to the 6th incarnation of Vishnu, Parashurama, "Rama with axe". In Hindu mythology, Parashurama and Ramachandra do actually meet one another, just as Neo meets Rama-Kandra in Mobil Ave (the Christian idea of Limbo).

The Upanishads form a huge part of Hindu lore...in the final fight between Smith and Neo, passages of The Upanishads are chanted in their original tongue of Sanskrit...they are passages which were spoken when a sacrifice to Hindu Gods was made.

What's more in Reloaded there's actually a poster of Shiva and statues of Vishnu and Buddha (as well as Jesus) dotted around Chinatown. Neo is symbolic of several of these figures.

As for Chinese mythology, well there's a special form of trinity in Buddhism right? Mind, body and spirit. In the the Matrix story you have the same representation;

Green tint: Matrix, realm of the mind.

Blue tint: Real World/Zion, realm of the body.

Gold tint: Machine City/Machines, realm of the spirit.

The Machines became manifest from the decedant, decayed, corrupted spirit of Man, seen as tho the Machines were endowed with the very spirit of Man in the first place. The alienation of Man from Spirit manifested the race of Machines, hellbent on destroying Man.

Neo reunites all 3 aliented realms at the end of Revolutions.

LOL, I've gone on a bit.

Anyways, yeah I'll try and catch you down south when I can make it some time.

 

oh boy this is just what i wanted nerds spoling on about nerd shit

 

The Matrix series is unbareably geeky. The second and third movies are terrible.

I doesn't matter how many geeky, multi-cultural references those Wachowski Dorks stick in there, the movies do not succeed in the most important sense- as movies! The second two movies are so bloated with pretension, self importance, and poor taste that they make me embarrassed for the never-got-laid-before-they-made-The-Matrix directors and their legions of computer-nerd fans.

I think that the moment that most encapsulates the lameness of The Matrix was from an interview with Keanu Reeves. He was asked how he prepared for his role in the Matrix sequels. His response was something like this:

"I totally read a lot of books, you know, by Foucault and like, a lot of, uh, French Post-Structuralism and stuff."

Maybe the worst thing about those sequels was that they actually made me feel bad about liking the first movie. I think that the ambiguity of the first movie stands in stark contrast to the drawn-out, boring new-agey wankery of the sequels. Not to mention that the first one is actually an entertaining action movie.

Sorry if I seem to be taking a cyber-dump on anyone's nerd parade.

 

mars matrix is a pretty good game guys

http://media.dreamcast.ign.com/media/015/015621/imgs_1.html

 

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Maybe the worst thing about those sequels was that they actually made me feel bad about liking the first movie.

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When the Matrix came out I was a huge fan. Saw it countless number of times in the theatre, in fact saw it so many times that when i was bored in my high school chemistry class I used to recite the movie to the kid that sit in front of me (heh, i guess to kinda piss him off and to kill time) line for line from beginning to end. Good times.

I remember when it first came out (in my town) me and my friend were the only ones IN THE THEATRE to see the freakin movie! But when I saw it again like two weeks later it was sold out. And every time I saw it in the theatre there were always more and more peeps. I just remember thinking I have never seen a movie attract so many people the longer it stays out, like it was spreading or something!

Anyway, obviously I quoted at the top because all of what I felt with the first movie was destroyed with following movies. I never saw the third in theatres, after seeing the second I could not see how they could recover...(of course I own all three though b/c I'm a nerd...)

Kinda the way I see it...Neo and me in the first one: "whoa! WTF is going on here?" nicely done.

Neo in the second/third: "I now know what's going on"
Me in the second/third: "no...no you still don't know...and i am leaving"

 

Hmm, well if I'm a nerd for reading books and watching films...well whatever, I'm a nerd in your eyes.

It's quite sad people like to classify people as "nerds" so easily.

Like I tried to emphasise before, each to their own.

PS SgtRamrod, cheers for your dogmatic, incorrect generalisation of people, topped off with "high and mighty" name calling and finger pointing. It was really constructive /versus/images/graemlins/deadpan.gif

 

I am Nerd Lord

How high and mighty can one poster on the Virtua Fighter message board really feel when calling other posters nerds?

 

Re: I am Nerd Lord

i learned a valuable lesson.

you can get away with insulting people as much as you want as long as their registration date is so old

 

It's fine to be a Nerd.

What I didn't like about Revolutions, is that it suddenly decided to humanize the enemy. In the first two movies, The enemy was painted as an emotionless, AI script. A computer. The machines weren't made out to have any kind of human qualities really. They didn't really have emotions, all the emotions they had were explained as programming.

Then, all of a sudden, you have the little girl in the third movie with her parents, afraid of getting deleted.

They didn't naturally lead us into this at all. There was no humanization of the machines in the first movie whatsoever. And the ending was not satisfying. You have to give the audience a reason why Neo shouldn't destroy all of the machines, and that reason has to make sense. Otherwise the movie isn't enjoyable.

I don't think the Matrix series is terrible... it's certainly better than the new Star Wars movies (the third wasn't that bad, but it doesn't make up for the other two). But I can't imagine uttering Matrix and Blade Runner in the same sentance. Blade Runner is an amazing, genius film.

The thing really, that I'm looking forward to most that has to do with the Matrix, is the new Matrix game. Now, I know the first one was kind of bad... but it had really good ideas and all it needed was some polish and a little more time. Because of Hollywood's marketing... they pushed it out the door too soon. The new one doesn't have such a crushing deadline, and I am hoping that Shiny does it right this time.

 

meh.

people can go on and on about it but the fact is matrix will never be better or replace the terminator series. THE man vs machine movie of all time

apart from terminator 3. man that was bad

 

I actually liked the first matrix game. Although I thought the graphics could have been way better for a Matrix game. The storyline was very good though which is why I enjoyed it.

And yeah, T3 was the dumbest. In my mind T2 will stand out as the best T movie of all and the one who began that graphics race. Now nearly all movies are trying be as graphically strong as possible, which is why the recent Star Wars sucked and why most movies made today suck ass as well.

 

The Terminator is the superior movie for me. I remember being 11 or 12 & absolutely shocked when the Terminator takes 4 shotgun blasts to the chest point blank in the club and then stirs "back to life". Sitting here, I'm lamenting the time when a movie like this (it really was a rather low budget "B" picture) had to get by on a simple story, a low budget, good performances and some neat ideas to succeed. Also remember that The Terminator wasn't much of a success at the box office (Arnold's star hadn't risen yet), but found a rabid & deserved following on video...something which AFAIK hadn't happened before. Terminator 2 and virtually every other summer extravaganza sci-fi special effects CG geekfest that's come since can only be viewed as bloated and empty in comparison.