The official Revolutions DISCUSSION thread

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-11-10 07:31pm

Bane also had glowy shit on him; so did the interior of the Logos. Doesn't prove anything.

zombie84 · Post by **zombie84** » 2003-11-10 07:34pm

The Source is a part of the machine mainframe, which apparently contains all of the code which makes up the Matrix and the outside machine world. As far as i can tell, since Neo is linked in part to the Source itself, he can exert control over the machine world by simply ordering the Sentinels to cease and frying their circuitry. The orange glow reprents the Source Code, which is connected into all facets of the machine world (including Neo himself) and which allows Neo to access any facet of the machine world because of his connection to the source.

Thats how i interpreted it. This whole 'life force' would have to be explicitly explained in order to hold true because it seems like its coming out of left field to me--the life force of the machine which the orange code shows is merely the source connection which surges through each program/machine.

zombie84 · Post by **zombie84** » 2003-11-10 07:35pm

HemlockGrey wrote:Bane also had glowy shit on him; so did the interior of the Logos. Doesn't prove anything.

Bane had it because he was possessed by the Smith program, and the interior of the ship did not show because it is not connected to the Source/Machine world--thats why Neo has to feel around, and cannot see Trinity.

KrauserKrauser · Post by **KrauserKrauser** » 2003-11-10 08:24pm

I agree with zombie84 on this one.

At no point in any of the movies did they mention the machines sucking life essence from the people in the matrix. At all times it was them drawing the body heat for energy no matter how dumb that notion is.

Sorry but the facts don't support the supposed life essence idea.

Seggybop · Post by **Seggybop** » 2003-11-10 08:38pm

They don't have to explicitly state something if it's @#$%ing obvious.

Through neovision, pods with humans are extremely bright. Living things are bright. The giant pod-tender drones were filled with brightness. Larger or more authoritative looking machines are bright. Depleted-Neo looked like the sun.

Also, when the Smiths were purged white light spewed out of Neo. That doesn't happen when you get electrocuted or Matrix-killed or anything relatively normal like that. It was some freaky magic-ki type event.

I always suspected that they were harvesting some ki type thing instead of standard energy, because it's the only thing that makes sense. This seems to confirm it.

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2003-11-10 08:59pm

Then why couldn't Neo see Trinity when she was alive? Or was she really walking around with no life-force, dead?

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » 2003-11-10 09:03pm

Mad wrote:Then why couldn't Neo see Trinity when she was alive? Or was she really walking around with no life-force, dead?

He was blinded by love? /rimshot

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2003-11-10 09:04pm

PROMETHEUS wrote:
Mad wrote:Then why couldn't Neo see Trinity when she was alive? Or was she really walking around with no life-force, dead?
He was blinded by love? /rimshot

Die....

zombie84 · Post by **zombie84** » 2003-11-10 09:14pm

Seggybop wrote:They don't have to explicitly state something if it's @#$%ing obvious.

its not obvious because it was already explained in the films that that is not the case.

Through neovision, pods with humans are extremely bright. Living things are bright.

No, living things do not show up at all. Thats why Neo doesnt realize Trinity is impaled. The pods with humans show up as bright because there is a concentration of Source Code/electricity/energy at the power plant because it processes so much information and energy. The orange glow is akin to data streams--the more complex a construction, the more data/code is coursing through it, the more brighter it registers. Sentient programs/robots (i.e. Smith, Deus Ex) would therefore be brighter than the surroundings.

The giant pod-tender drones were filled with brightness. Larger or more authoritative looking machines are bright. Depleted-Neo looked like the sun.

See above. The harvesting robots were concentrated because they are sentient programs/machines, therefor they are linked to the Source and hence their glow is brightest. The Deus Ex machine is brighter because it is more complex and powerful and Neo is brightest because he is directly linked to the Source (as the One).

Also, when the Smiths were purged white light spewed out of Neo. That doesn't happen when you get electrocuted or Matrix-killed or anything relatively normal like that. It was some freaky magic-ki type event.

The real-life light we see surging out of him is meant to be more symbolic of his power. When we see in the NeoVision (

) he is practically bursting because he is literally rewritting the Matrix code and thus would be most closely associated with the Source at that moment.

I always suspected that they were harvesting some ki type thing instead of standard energy, because it's the only thing that makes sense. This seems to confirm it.

There is nothing in the film to base this on though. If there were previous hints in the other films then i can see where you are coming from, but this is out of left field.

Morpheus explicitly states that humans generate heat--"combined with a form of fusion, the machines would have all the energy they needed"--and that the powerplants convert this into a form of energy. Its very clear. The NeoVision is merely to show Neo's power and how he is linked in part to the machine world (because he is linked to the Source).

The orange "energy" is meant to symbolize a kind of ki "life essence", that is what it is supposed to connote, but it is in fact the Source Code, which is about equivalent to a life force since the Source is the basis for the machine world. Its symbolic.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-11-10 09:17pm

zombie84 wrote:Its just called suspension of disbelief fellas--you're allowed to disregard logic and plausability but only to a point. Different people are willing to accept different limits of suspension of disbelief. Most are willing to go along with whatever a film tells them if said film shows conviction, intelligence, doesnt insult them and is entertaining. Matrix is science fiction because it uses science as a springboard for a fictional tale--ultimately every movie is going to be implausable in some manner. IMO the Matrix presents its ideas in such a manner that i am willing to accept them even though i know that logically they arent as sound as i would like them to be. The expression holds true you know--"its only a movie". If it was reality it would be boring.

And could you please explain how any of this would make self-contradiction acceptable? We are told that the machines use humans for power, then we are sold some bullshit about mystical life force. We are told that humans are plugged into the machines with some kind of neural interface jack, then we discover that actually, it's possible to be "unplugged" yet still maintain a connection; I guess Neo got the new wireless jack, eh?

Face it; the entire concept of the Matrix is nothing more than a gigantically convoluted, constantly rewritten contrivance, designed for the express purpose of generating flimsy and inconsistent threadbare excuses and rationalizations for wherever the Wachowski brothers wanted to go with their pseudo-philosophy wire-fu wankfest.

KrauserKrauser · Post by **KrauserKrauser** » 2003-11-10 09:19pm

Wheeeee hooray for symbolism!

zombie84 · Post by **zombie84** » 2003-11-10 09:40pm

Darth Wong wrote:And could you please explain how any of this would make self-contradiction acceptable? We are told that the machines use humans for power, then we are sold some bullshit about mystical life force.

no, we arent told that, thats what i was refuting.

We are told that humans are plugged into the machines with some kind of neural interface jack, then we discover that actually, it's possible to be "unplugged" yet still maintain a connection; I guess Neo got the new wireless jack, eh?

Normal people obviously cant but the apparently the One can.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-11-10 10:07pm

Hey zombie, why don't you shut the fuck up before you make yourself
look stupider than you already are?

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2003-11-11 04:12am

I'm posting this for Gil:

Gil Hamilton wrote:During the middle of Matrix: Revolutions, Smith-as-Bane confronts Neo. After capturing Trinity, Smith starts dropping hints like bricks about who he is, and Neo, thick as uranium, completely fails to put two and two together for like a full three minutes. My friends and I were joking that Smith would finally get feed up, pull out a marker board and spell it out for him. I decided to run with that. Here is that cartoon
http://www.el-hazardonline.net/gilhamil ... thbane.jpg

Joe Momma · Post by **Joe Momma** » 2003-11-11 04:14am

I wrote:Yes, I'm being facetious, though horribly I'm beginning to wonder if the majority of the sentinels being some sort of unwilling conscripts that only charged into attack when directly ordered is the closest to a logical explanation (insert your favorite "logic and the Matrix?" joke/observation here). I'm also anxiously awaiting the cross-universe fanfic where the Machines are shown to get their tactical procedures and organizational skills from the Borg. Come to think of it, the Machines seemed to have that tragicomic Borg quality of only reacting to events/dangers well after the fact.

Giving it a bit more serious thought, I start to wonder if the numbers of sentinels played a factor. IIRC, the first sentinels to make it past the gunfire were fairly aggressive in attacking the Zion defenders directly. I don't think they started milling uselessly until a large number got through.

Assuming I'm remembering this correctly (a big fucking if), could whatever Machine program/system was in charge of the attack gotten bogged down with too many sentinels once enough of them poured in, leaving the mass of them literally flying holding patterns until a specific threat somehow got their attention (like missile attack against the borers, for example)?

(And yes, I'm ignoring the larger tactical issues here, like why the Machines didn't dump WMDs down the hole. I can understand them avoiding nukes if they intended to repopulate Zion, but giving the feckless Zionists a zestful blast of mustard gas should have been easy enough.)

-- Joe Momma

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2003-11-11 01:06pm

Joe Momma wrote:Giving it a bit more serious thought, I start to wonder if the numbers of sentinels played a factor. IIRC, the first sentinels to make it past the gunfire were fairly aggressive in attacking the Zion defenders directly. I don't think they started milling uselessly until a large number got through.

Assuming I'm remembering this correctly (a big fucking if), could whatever Machine program/system was in charge of the attack gotten bogged down with too many sentinels once enough of them poured in, leaving the mass of them literally flying holding patterns until a specific threat somehow got their attention (like missile attack against the borers, for example)?

If the squids are too intelligent without specific tactical programming (and bad training), then the concept of "diffusion of responsibility" may come into play... basically, the squids may feel some other squid can risk their life and attack, they'll just stay in the group. It's poor tactically since spreading out and attacking a target from all sides would increase survivability by giving the APU too many targets from too many angles and greater chances of missing.

Still, neither can explain why the whole group can't jump from target to target... swarming around in a swirly pattern aimlessly serves no purpose other than to get shot up.

At the very least, the group should've been constantly attacking something. Even if the rest follow like some giant Nibbles emulator, the head should be fulfilling some task.

El Moose Monstero · Post by **El Moose Monstero** » 2003-11-11 01:54pm

To quote BBC Radio 4's The Now Show...

A sketch aboard a pirate ship wrote:
Arrr, has anyone seen a Keanu Reeves on board, I saw a man acting suspiciously, so we know it aint him...

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-11-11 04:35pm

The real reason the machines act so stupidly: They are not trying seriously to win. They have the resources of the entire planet to draw upon, with a hundred years or more of build up between battles. They can flawlessly restore Agents after their death, there is no reason the same could not be done for Sentinel intelligences. What the machines are doing is the cruelest act that they can perpetrate upon the humans, they are giving them Hope. Since the machines are undoubtedly the ones givng the humans the blueprints for their war equipment, that stupidity makes a kind of sense as well, there is probably a contest between the Machines for getting the Resistance to accept the most ludicrous combat strategies and equipment.

And my personal belief is that they have another Zion in a different location waiting to be brought online, and that they slag the Zion they are attacking, to limit possible clues to the people the One brings out.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2003-11-11 05:07pm

His Divine Shadow wrote:I'm posting this for Gil:
Gil Hamilton wrote:During the middle of Matrix: Revolutions, Smith-as-Bane confronts Neo. After capturing Trinity, Smith starts dropping hints like bricks about who he is, and Neo, thick as uranium, completely fails to put two and two together for like a full three minutes. My friends and I were joking that Smith would finally get feed up, pull out a marker board and spell it out for him. I decided to run with that. Here is that cartoon
http://www.el-hazardonline.net/gilhamil ... thbane.jpg

Heh heh heh.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-11-11 05:13pm

I still don't remember *any* of this 'life force' crap.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2003-11-11 06:31pm

Problem #861

Neo is one hell of a hard man. Seriously, after the scene where Bane/Smith shoves that sparking power cable in his face and fries his eye sockets Neo is standing there talking to trinity. "I'm ok." Neo says as he's standing there dripping blood and occular fluid from his charred and blistered eye sockets.

You'd think he'd be in just a wee bit more pain.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2003-11-11 06:34pm

Spyder wrote: You'd think he'd be in just a wee bit more pain.

Presumably the charge destroyed the affected nerves?

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-11-11 06:36pm

You forget, Neo is so slow it took him until the end of the movie to feel the pain from that.

KrauserKrauser · Post by **KrauserKrauser** » 2003-11-11 07:45pm

It's the Jeanu Reeves effect.

When watching any movie and you ask yourself a question why someone on screen did something stupid just remember that the star of the show is Keanu Reeves. No is allowed to be any smarter than him, even the bad guys at some point will have to be dumber than the main character to be beaten.

Why did the machines fly around stupidly? Because Reeves is the star.

The oracle or architect piss you off because they said something that made absolutely no sense? Hey Keanu is here, lowest common denominator and all that.

I forgave all the stupidity that was Revolutions once I saw the light that is the Keanu effect.

Think the W Brothers made a bad decision? They hired an idiot to play their main character, duhh what do you expect.

Embrace the light, hug it till it permeates your brain and you can again watch Speed 2 without wanting to shoot yourself. Bill and Ted's bogus adventure no longer makes me drool like a mental patient, now I just laugh because everyone has to be brought down to the kindergarten level that is the Keanu effect.

Nuke the World! Kill all Humans! Keanu for President!

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2003-11-11 08:03pm

Nahh.. People don't realise Keanu's actually a really good actor. One of the best, in fact.

Only trouble is, he's a mite deaf, and didn't hear the director yell "Cut" at the end of Bill & Ted, and he's been playing Ted "Theodore" Logan every day of his life, flawlessly, since..

It's an achievement we should salute...