The Matrix Reloaded
…or overloaded. [Spoilers]
While as a movie, The Matrix: Reloaded failed on several counts, it’s still interesting as philosophy. Javageek answers the deep question, Why 23? and Ken Mondschein explains the Reload as theology. He even links a brief summary of the fake book from the original movie and explains why Keanu Reeves can’t act.
His most interesting point for me wasn’t all the gnosticism, or even the idea of a deity making love under an arch, but a more obvious detail that slipped past me completely: Neo’s power over the squid-machines implies that the “outside” world of Zion is also a simulation. He also mentions that the true status of Zion - real-world or meta-Matrix - isn’t important. I certainly agree in principle that if you can’t tell whether or not your brain is in a meta-vat, then it doesn’t matter whether or not your brain is in a meta-vat - but it does matter for the plot of the next movie whether the world of Zion and pod-people and squid-machines is real or just another Matrix.
This theory may even explain why the spinal buttons which were removed in the first movie reappeared on Neo’s back in the second - you see, it’s not his real back. And technically, he’s not the One, he’s the Six.
May 30th, 2003 at 1:47 pm
Google for a transcript of the Neo/Architect dialogue and read it carefully. It answers what you ask.
May 30th, 2003 at 3:10 pm
Javageek links a transcript, but it didn’t answer the button question for me. I find the Architect’s crazy-man-on-the-subway dialect of English gets grating after the first thirty seconds or so, especially the incorrect usage of terms like vis-a-vis and apropos. I’d rather wait for the next movie than go over his speech with a fine-tooth comb.