I saw the MATRIX 2 thread SPOILERS ABOUND

[RolandOfGilead]

Merovingian...

You all might be interested to know that the merovingians are also closely linked to a "Jesus - Mary Magdalene" rumor.
this rumor is discussed at length in the book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". Essentially, the idea is that Jesus was in fact a member
of the jewish nobility under roman rule.. who naturally rebel. The jewish people formed a society.. called "Zealots".. whom Jesus would then be a member of. Jesus wasnt crucified because the jews wanted it, but because pontius pilate was punishing a known rablerouser. The scene of Jesus's first miracle, the transforming of water to wine, takes place at a wedding. We are never privy to the specifics, but the authors conjecture that the wedding MUST be Jesus's own, because only the groom would be required to provide wine for the guests. Further, Mother Mary acts imperial to the servants at the wedding, implying that she was held in honor at the wedding. Who would Jesus marry? Well - Enter Mary Magdalene. WE know her as the prostitute that annointed Jesus's feet in the bible, but in fact, this could be because the disciples, who wrote the collective stories about her, were actually jealous of her relationship to Jesus. Also - Barrabus - is very similar to a word in hebrew meaning son of the rabbi, so the implication is that Barrabus was the son of jesus, and pontius pilate was cruelly asking the crowd.. "Do I crucify the father or the son?".. now you understand why the crowd chose Barrabus. The book also contends that the entire crucifixion was a sham... an agreement by jesus and pontius pilate to appear to punish him, but to allow him to escape.. to france. where he and his wife, Mary, sired a line of french nobility, the merovingians. The method they arrive at these assumptions is fascinating, and while the whole thing is just a galactic guess, there is some evidence that supports everything they are saying. Its a great read, and you'd do well to check on it, if you want to know more about Merovingians and "Secrets".....

 

[RolandOfGilead]

Another point I forgot to mention:
If jesus was a rebel, you ask, why does he say "render unto caesar"?

Well, simple. After his crucifixion, his disciples were left in terrible fear. They wanted to appear as a peaceful sect, because they didnt really want to die on roman swords. So they ABSOLVE pontius pilate of all guilt in the deed, by saying the jews demanded jesus's sacrifice. And in writing the scriptures, they knew they were writing to a largely roman audience..so all mention of rebellion against roman rule was removed.

Neat, and tidy.

 

[Starman]

Am I the only one who thought the Architect was either lying abouit some things or not telling the whole story in order to manipulate Neo? I just got the feeling he was hiding something.

Starman

 

[Grue]

I thought the subtext of the fundamental flaw of the Matrix was that the system was not truly random. Falling into predicable patterns and eliminating 'Free Will' (the Merovingen's cause and effect discussion).

I'm not sure Neo has 'Free Will' but the Architect sets up a choice for him to make to determine the shape of the future. I'm not sure how much of a choice it was however. Zion (apparently) was set up as a spillover for the rebels of the system (though Zion's population of 250,000 and the suggestion that 1% won't accept the Matrix also suggests the world's population is a lot less than 6-7 billion). The Architect also comments on Neo's emotional\biological state determining that he has already made the choice (back to the scene with the Merovingen in the restaurant and the women's response to the dessert). Given that Neo the rebel has already been told, "Hey the last five guys that were here went through the Right Door," and the woman he has the strongest emotional response to is through the Left ("Hey but you have No Hope of saving her.... and Hope definitely isn't a heroic trait.") I'm not sure Neo actually exercised free will.

Regarding the predicability of the Matrix, it isn't a system where butterflies in China are randomly creating tornados in Kansas. The Oracle comments on the ravens (if I remember correctly) and the wind being a program... all aspects of the system are programs. I think the Oracle's prophecies come from her near total understanding of the human psyche and fact that the Matrix is not random. I think Neo's foresight\power comes from the fact his subconsious can assimilate and predict the pattern.

I'm pretty sure there is at least another level to the simulation. The 'humans are batteries' thing on the Zion reality could just be device for the Zion humans to do all sorts of horrible things to the humans on the Matrix reality level and not suffer all sorts of psychological damage. I have no idea what the relationship between humans and the machines\matrix is though. I think it was somewhat foreshadowed in the scene with Neo and the old councilman on the machine level in Zion (where he talks about the codependency of humanity and the tools of civilization). I'm not sure where it's headed though I sortof suspect humans (not machines) created the Matrix.

 

[Olive]

Re: Re: I saw the MATRIX 2 thread SPOILERS ABOUND

My only complaint was that the "rave" scene was a bit too long.

a BIT long?

good movie, plot/spiritobabble was just as dumb as the first one, lots of good blowing things up/fights.

thinking about the matrix to hard is like thinking about star wars to hard: a waste of time IMHO.

 

[Wayside]

Re: Re: Re: I saw the MATRIX 2 thread SPOILERS ABOUND

thinking about the matrix to hard is like thinking about star wars to hard: a waste of time IMHO.

Haha, this is true. That's what Dune is for . Still, it's fun to speculate, though every conjecture I've seen here so far makes me wince. If there's another twist I'm praying it's something out of left field that we couldn't possibly predict with the limited information we have so far.

Haven't heard anybody mention the trailer for Matrix Revolutions yet.. did people just not know to stay through the credits to see it?

 

[EricNoah]

Over at Nutkinland someone posted a theory that food is programming (the red pill, the cake) and pointed out that Neo was offered food by the Oracle in both movies.

---

The Oracle was either misleading or wrong in the first film (misleading is my vote) as she flat out said that either Morpheous or Neo was going to die -- and neither did.

Didn't the same thing happen re: the Architect? Didn't he say Trinity was definitely going to die? Yet she didn't.

So either they do know the future but lie about it to sway "the One" or they are genuinely surprised when he is able to find a way around the "binary" choices he's been given.

 

[Truth Seeker]

Spoilers, moilers......

May I ask this one thing.....do spoilers have their worth to be posted?

Seeing Matrix at 11:00 a.m. on discount. Today.

No spoilers from me......

 

[Tsyr]

My thoughts thus far, after a 4-hour car ride discussing this with a friend:

1) We are really heavily leaning towards the "It's another matrix" hypothesis. First, it doesn't really make any SENSE for the machines to not do that. And the whole zion/tunnels matrix is a lot smaller and (probably) easier to manage/secure than the main matrix... It's a holding program for people who have figured out what the main matrix is. Also, the logistics of recreating zion time and time again with 23 people, and them not knowing about it, are just silly... unless it's all a computer program. Then it would be easy.

2) As an extension of that, we have high hopes that the whole humans=batteries thing is a lie... though we havn't found a good other explanation, unless it's one of these two things:

a) They (the machines) are using us as a case study for
something... perhaps trying to improve themselves.

b) The Matrix might not be what we (and they) think it is. If we accept that Zion exists in a second matrix, perhaps the entire story is false... Perhaps we are not imprisoned by the machines as we thing. I'm borring a bit from a Stargate SG-1 episode, but... What if we did that to ourselves? Say we did destroy the world, somehow... nuclear war, something... What if we put as many humans as possible into a sort of protective existance... Maybe the machines are trying to keep us there for our own good, or perhaps the machines have gone haywire over the years...

3) Assuming the Architect was right about there being 5 prior iterations of Neo, then there have probably also been 5 prior iterations of the matrix... After each cycle, the world is probably reset... Think about it... If we assume this happens every hundred years (I think it's probably longer), then the world would have started in the 1500's, because it exists at about the year 2000 in the matrix. How did people from the 1500's hack out of the matrix and so forth? When The One rebuilds Zion, and returns his code to the original source, the matrix probably resets, and is down for updates, if you will... Humans might be shunted to a seperate matrix, or possibly the planned upgrades are worked on over those 100 years, and done really quickly during the restart.

4) As an extension of that... The other program-thugs... The twins, the "werewolf", etc... I had an interesting thought. We saw several iterations of them, right? Like, 3-5? What if they are left-over agents from earlier iterations of the matrix? From what we know of the Merovingian, I could easily see him keeping relics like that around as body guards... programs that didn't want to be deleted when the Architect came out with Agent 2.0, etc.

4b) Said friend questioned why they would abandon the twin-type agent, as they seem so good. Well, we don't really know that. All we know is they are tough in a fight. Perhaps they aren't very smart, or something? More than that, though... We know that when things are massively changed in the matrix, it causes glitches, right? The deja vu? What if their ability to go ghost-like, considering how much they do that, causes a lot of glitches, leading to instablities in the matrix in the area they do stuff in? Or maybe something else, I don't know...

5) Though, on the rogue programs... That information is suspect. For all we know, the Oracle is working with the Architect (Very possible, actualy), and thus we can't trust any of the stuff she told Neo. Like was said about her... She tells you exactly what you need to hear. It's in the Architect's best interest that Neo realize what he is and complete the established cycle, so if the Oracle is working with him, she would tell Neo whatever he needs to hear to that end.

6) Smith. Smith... What is Smith? I'm thinking he himself is an anomaly himself. His words to Neo... "I must thank you for setting me free", or something like that... We thought at first it just meant that Neo somehow lead to his ability to brain-jack people... But remember the very beginning, Smith gave Neo his ear-plug, in a symbolic fashion... In the first movie, I got the impression that the ear-plug was sort of a link to the over-mind of the matrix... When Smith didn't have his in, he didn't know what was going on, and the other agent actualy almost seemed to show some disaproval at the fact that Smith was disconnected from the Matrix. Smith is, in all probability, no longer working for the Matrix... He is whatever he is, another rogue program, I guess. And he might very well be the wild-card... The flaw in the great equation that the Architect uses.

Just some initial thougths.

 

[Tsyr]

The Oracle was either misleading or wrong in the first film (misleading is my vote) as she flat out said that either Morpheous or Neo was going to die -- and neither did.

Didn't the same thing happen re: the Architect? Didn't he say Trinity was definitely going to die? Yet she didn't.

Actualy, Neo did die... And I think Trinity did too. All the Oracle said was that they would die... Not that they wouldn't be brought back to life. Neo brought himself back with Trinity's urgings, and Trinity was brought back by Neo, but both of them did die.