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A Very Silly Discussion About [Taking the Red Pill or the Blue Pill]

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Posts

  • MagicPrimeMagicPrime FiresideWizard Registered User regular
    Nightslyr wrote: »
    Are there specific complaints about the second and third films? I can barely remember them because they were so long and boring, so I'm wondering if anyone can jog my memory about particular horrible things.

    What were the white haired guys supposed to be again? Pre-Agent enforcers or something?

    My biggest personal complaint? The needless expansion of factions within the Matrix.

    BNet • magicprime#1430 | PSN/Steam • MagicPrime | Origin • FireSideWizard
    Critical Failures - Havenhold CampaignAugust St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
  • emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    Nightslyr wrote: »
    Are there specific complaints about the second and third films? I can barely remember them because they were so long and boring, so I'm wondering if anyone can jog my memory about particular horrible things.

    What were the white haired guys supposed to be again? Pre-Agent enforcers or something?

    They weren't made by the vis-a-vis dude, they were made in secret by the French dude to live in the Matrix and be his hired goons. A computer program, written by a computer program, writing a computer program.

  • NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Nightslyr wrote: »
    Are there specific complaints about the second and third films? I can barely remember them because they were so long and boring, so I'm wondering if anyone can jog my memory about particular horrible things.

    What were the white haired guys supposed to be again? Pre-Agent enforcers or something?

    They weren't made by the vis-a-vis dude, they were made in secret by the French dude to live in the Matrix and be his hired goons. A computer program, written by a computer program, writing a computer program.

    It's Xzibit all the way down....

  • RT800RT800 Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    I thought that the white-haired guys were enforcers similar to Agents from an earlier version of the Matrix. They and several other programs had all sorts of weird abilities that fit with human mythology. Werewolves and ghosts etc.

    They were scheduled for deletion but the Merovingian saved them, hence why they serve him.

    RT800 on
  • cptruggedcptrugged I think it has something to do with free will. Registered User regular
    RT800 wrote: »
    I thought that the white-haired guys were enforcers similar to Agents from an earlier version of the Matrix. They and several other programs had all sorts of weird abilities that fit with human mythology. Werewolves and ghosts etc.

    They were scheduled for deletion but the Merovingian saved them, hence why they serve him.

    This is correct. If you played the vidya games, which were all packed with extra lore (and extra movie footage). They go into much greater detail on these "anomaly" programs. They were old programs that that didn't function correctly in the newer matrix. They REALLY pushed the whole "monsters of old movies" bit in the games.

    Unfortunately the games were less than great. But if you liked the universe it was interesting at least.

  • emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    I thought Path of Neo was pretty good.

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Nightslyr wrote: »
    Are there specific complaints about the second and third films? I can barely remember them because they were so long and boring, so I'm wondering if anyone can jog my memory about particular horrible things.

    What were the white haired guys supposed to be again? Pre-Agent enforcers or something?

    They weren't made by the vis-a-vis dude, they were made in secret by the French dude to live in the Matrix and be his hired goons. A computer program, written by a computer program, writing a computer program.

    For an AI civilization which fought a brutal war for equality against its creators, they sure seemed to be pretty cavalier about the subjugation and destruction of sentient AIs.

  • ShivahnShivahn Unaware of her barrel shifter privilege Western coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderator mod
    edited December 2013
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Nightslyr wrote: »
    Are there specific complaints about the second and third films? I can barely remember them because they were so long and boring, so I'm wondering if anyone can jog my memory about particular horrible things.

    What were the white haired guys supposed to be again? Pre-Agent enforcers or something?

    They weren't made by the vis-a-vis dude, they were made in secret by the French dude to live in the Matrix and be his hired goons. A computer program, written by a computer program, writing a computer program.

    For an AI civilization which fought a brutal war for equality against its creators, they sure seemed to be pretty cavalier about the subjugation and destruction of sentient AIs.

    This could actually be interesting, if they explored some kind of AI racism where those with mechanical bodies/their own private processors and storage didn't consider AI using a processor in a shared environment/being entirely virtual to be "real" in much the same way people have a knee-jerk reaction to the suggestion that non-biological machines could have emotions or feelings or consciousness.

    Shivahn on
  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    emnmnme wrote: »
    I thought Path of Neo was pretty good.

    Well, the ending had Queen's "We Are The Champions", so it was better than the original by default.

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    I think the basic lesson of this thread, if nothing else, is that the Matrix trilogy squandered a lot of great opportunities.

    Some of the Animatrix shorts are damn amazing in this regard.

  • Skull2185Skull2185 Registered User regular
    If I was Neo, I would've worked out a deal with the machines almost immediately after taking the red pill. Because, holy shit the real world is all fucked...

    Meet up with Smith "Woah, hey, listen dude. I'm not here to fight. Look... you let me keep my super powers, and hack infinity dollars into my bank account and I will wipe out these resistance morons for you."

    Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    I think the basic lesson of this thread, if nothing else, is that the Matrix trilogy squandered a lot of great opportunities.

    Some of the Animatrix shorts are damn amazing in this regard.

    I was just thinking that I should re-watch those.

    I wonder how well they've aged, since I'm no longer a stoned high-schooler.

  • emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    If I was Neo, I would've worked out a deal with the machines almost immediately after taking the red pill. Because, holy shit the real world is all fucked...

    Meet up with Smith "Woah, hey, listen dude. I'm not here to fight. Look... you let me keep my super powers, and hack infinity dollars into my bank account and I will wipe out these resistance morons for you."

    You human race traitor!

    Remember the big twist secret, that Zion was wiped out a dozen times before the third Matrix movie took place. Zion is the machines' trash bin where all the troublemakers and escapees end up in one convenient city by the earth's core. Vis-a-vis dude allows Zion to exist and then cleans out the rebels when they become too many. If that's his system, he doesn't want to wipe out the rebellion. He doesn't want Neo's help.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    the architect presumably wants neo to escape, because that's part of the plan.

    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    I could have sworn his name was Vis-a-vis Guy, or maybe Ergo Man.

    Anyway. Colonel Sanders was one of the biggest reasons I hated the second Matrix movie. He's a giant exposition box in a movie already bloated with too much pretentious philosophical banter and choreographed CGI fight scenes. The original Matrix had Neo be a fish-out-of-water character you could identify with, so it was reasonable that he was being told what was happening. In the sequel he's basically God for the people in Zion, but they could have kept him a little bit clueless and the story would have benefited from that. Many, many works of fiction increase a character's power or abilities beyond what they should rightfully possess at the time, given what they do and don't know.

    One problem here is that George Carlin dumps a shitload of knowledge on the audience in a very short span of time. It isn't as if the movie didn't have enough to time introduce these concepts gradually. They could have left the big revelation that this isn't the first Zion ever for the architect to reveal. He even mentions that the Oracle is the one that came upon this truth:
    The Architect - Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of the matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother.

    Neo - The Oracle.

    The Architect - Please. As I was saying, she stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99.9% of all test subjects accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level.

    If the Oracle is the one who came upon this answer, why aren't we hearing it from her? She was in the movie. Knowing this truth far earlier in the movie would have given us a building block before Apropos Dude even showed his face. It wouldn't necessarily tell us that other Zions had existed before, only that the Zion that existed now was the .1%.

    My biggest problem with the Matrix trilogy (not the first movie, which was fantastic) is not its ideas, although the Messianic Trilogy story has been done to undeath. It's the way they were not streamlined, the characters and dialog that should have been revamped or left on the cutting-room floor, the grandiose ideas that probably seemed really deep, thought-provoking and worthy on their own but ultimately tangled together in a big, unwieldy mass.

    The first Matrix has a singular theory behind it: that reality isn't real. It's a fun idea to explore, simple, and there are no other webs to unweave before you get at it. The second movie has too many themes that compound on one another: the prior versions of the Matrix, the prior destructions of Zion, the reincarnation of Neo, how is Agent Smith a virus?, pointless religious symbolism incorporated by machines for superstitious purposes, Neo's ascent to machine godhood (even while disconnected from them!), a manufactured love story, obsolete programs: Persephone (a program designed for artificially inseminating humans?) and the Merovingian (a program designed to report on bluepill behavior), and on and on and on. A lot of these are smaller concepts than the bigger, overarching one of "reality is not real", but taken together even in a worldbuilding context and it's too much, too fast, and oh god Robert E. Lee is saying things I can't keep up with, and why is he showing Neo that Trinity is about to die on his monitors if he wants him to kill everybody and reset things instead of leave to rescue her, and now Neo has magic powers so I guess the writers can just make whatever shit they want up...

    I feel like The Matrix movie was just about perfect as an action movie with a dash of philosophy. If it had been turned into a well-paced television series after that, peppered here and there with thought-provoking additions to the mythology, I think I would have enjoyed the whole thing quite a bit more.

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    If I was Neo, I would've worked out a deal with the machines almost immediately after taking the red pill. Because, holy shit the real world is all fucked...

    Meet up with Smith "Woah, hey, listen dude. I'm not here to fight. Look... you let me keep my super powers, and hack infinity dollars into my bank account and I will wipe out these resistance morons for you."

    You human race traitor!

    Remember the big twist secret, that Zion was wiped out a dozen times before the third Matrix movie took place. Zion is the machines' trash bin where all the troublemakers and escapees end up in one convenient city by the earth's core. Vis-a-vis dude allows Zion to exist and then cleans out the rebels when they become too many. If that's his system, he doesn't want to wipe out the rebellion. He doesn't want Neo's help.

    But that's basically what happens in the first movie.

    Also, why didn't they see that betrayal coming? They basically watch everything that happens in the Matrix via monitors.

  • SiskaSiska Shorty Registered User regular
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    If I was Neo, I would've worked out a deal with the machines almost immediately after taking the red pill. Because, holy shit the real world is all fucked...

    Meet up with Smith "Woah, hey, listen dude. I'm not here to fight. Look... you let me keep my super powers, and hack infinity dollars into my bank account and I will wipe out these resistance morons for you."

    You human race traitor!

    Remember the big twist secret, that Zion was wiped out a dozen times before the third Matrix movie took place. Zion is the machines' trash bin where all the troublemakers and escapees end up in one convenient city by the earth's core. Vis-a-vis dude allows Zion to exist and then cleans out the rebels when they become too many. If that's his system, he doesn't want to wipe out the rebellion. He doesn't want Neo's help.

    But that's basically what happens in the first movie.

    Also, why didn't they see that betrayal coming? They basically watch everything that happens in the Matrix via monitors.
    The dinner with Agent Smith was odd. Did he somehow hook himself up while no one was looking and also somehow left an exit "open" so he could leave again? The ship really didn't seem big enough for him to be able to sneak away and do that unnoticed.

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    Siska wrote: »
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    If I was Neo, I would've worked out a deal with the machines almost immediately after taking the red pill. Because, holy shit the real world is all fucked...

    Meet up with Smith "Woah, hey, listen dude. I'm not here to fight. Look... you let me keep my super powers, and hack infinity dollars into my bank account and I will wipe out these resistance morons for you."

    You human race traitor!

    Remember the big twist secret, that Zion was wiped out a dozen times before the third Matrix movie took place. Zion is the machines' trash bin where all the troublemakers and escapees end up in one convenient city by the earth's core. Vis-a-vis dude allows Zion to exist and then cleans out the rebels when they become too many. If that's his system, he doesn't want to wipe out the rebellion. He doesn't want Neo's help.

    But that's basically what happens in the first movie.

    Also, why didn't they see that betrayal coming? They basically watch everything that happens in the Matrix via monitors.
    The dinner with Agent Smith was odd. Did he somehow hook himself up while no one was looking and also somehow left an exit "open" so he could leave again? The ship really didn't seem big enough for him to be able to sneak away and do that unnoticed.

    It did seem to have downtime though - a natural day/night cycle. Presumably it's not uncommon for people to be jacked in for personal reasons (the women in red).

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    I know there are a 100 logical reasons why they didn't see the betrayal coming, I just don't remember the film giving one.

    Also ELM, you stated knowledge downloading as a reason to go red. If you could go red, stab the resistance in the back, then live in the Matrix with knowledge downloading would you?

    Cause knowing every thing seems fun, but I would rather live in the matrix with that ability than live in Zion with it.

  • The EnderThe Ender Registered User regular
    Siska wrote: »
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    If I was Neo, I would've worked out a deal with the machines almost immediately after taking the red pill. Because, holy shit the real world is all fucked...

    Meet up with Smith "Woah, hey, listen dude. I'm not here to fight. Look... you let me keep my super powers, and hack infinity dollars into my bank account and I will wipe out these resistance morons for you."

    You human race traitor!

    Remember the big twist secret, that Zion was wiped out a dozen times before the third Matrix movie took place. Zion is the machines' trash bin where all the troublemakers and escapees end up in one convenient city by the earth's core. Vis-a-vis dude allows Zion to exist and then cleans out the rebels when they become too many. If that's his system, he doesn't want to wipe out the rebellion. He doesn't want Neo's help.

    But that's basically what happens in the first movie.

    Also, why didn't they see that betrayal coming? They basically watch everything that happens in the Matrix via monitors.
    The dinner with Agent Smith was odd. Did he somehow hook himself up while no one was looking and also somehow left an exit "open" so he could leave again? The ship really didn't seem big enough for him to be able to sneak away and do that unnoticed.

    There's a subtle hint in the film regarding this:

    The scene where Neo walks in on Cipher doing something with the Matrix program loaded in front of him. Cipher is badly startled... and then relieved when he sees that it's just Neo - one of the few people on the ship who can't read the Matrix program code - smoothly suggesting that he's just being a pervert.


    I think that Cipher was chatting-up Smith in that scene, arranging for meet-up, the betrayal, extraction, etc.

    With Love and Courage
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    cptrugged wrote: »
    RT800 wrote: »
    I thought that the white-haired guys were enforcers similar to Agents from an earlier version of the Matrix. They and several other programs had all sorts of weird abilities that fit with human mythology. Werewolves and ghosts etc.

    They were scheduled for deletion but the Merovingian saved them, hence why they serve him.

    This is correct. If you played the vidya games, which were all packed with extra lore (and extra movie footage). They go into much greater detail on these "anomaly" programs. They were old programs that that didn't function correctly in the newer matrix. They REALLY pushed the whole "monsters of old movies" bit in the games.

    Unfortunately the games were less than great. But if you liked the universe it was interesting at least.

    Yeah, it's made pretty clear--we don't know what they looked like in their version of the Matrix, only that they were half-ghost albino twins with dreadlocks in the current one.

    It was one of the more interesting concepts, since in the Animatrix shorts, we got potentially another view (the one about the sprinting athlete), wherein the Agents had dreadlocks and wore long coats. The one thing they seemed to share were sunglasses and some sort of person-to-person communication set (like an earpiece).

    Presumably, the form the Agents settled in on the Matrix we see was an improvement--and you can get away with three white guys in 60s-style secret service suits, even if they can't do things like de-materialize through walls. Lambert Wilson (am I the only one who always enjoys seem him as the upper-class badguy?) can't have his own Agents, so he kept the next best thing, I suppose.

    You can imagine that earlier versions of the Matrix were even more...hectic...with ghostly twins or werewolves running around to keep order.

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    Synthesis wrote: »
    cptrugged wrote: »
    RT800 wrote: »
    I thought that the white-haired guys were enforcers similar to Agents from an earlier version of the Matrix. They and several other programs had all sorts of weird abilities that fit with human mythology. Werewolves and ghosts etc.

    They were scheduled for deletion but the Merovingian saved them, hence why they serve him.

    This is correct. If you played the vidya games, which were all packed with extra lore (and extra movie footage). They go into much greater detail on these "anomaly" programs. They were old programs that that didn't function correctly in the newer matrix. They REALLY pushed the whole "monsters of old movies" bit in the games.

    Unfortunately the games were less than great. But if you liked the universe it was interesting at least.

    Yeah, it's made pretty clear--we don't know what they looked like in their version of the Matrix, only that they were half-ghost albino twins with dreadlocks in the current one.

    It was one of the more interesting concepts, since in the Animatrix shorts, we got potentially another view (the one about the sprinting athlete), wherein the Agents had dreadlocks and wore long coats. The one thing they seemed to share were sunglasses and some sort of person-to-person communication set (like an earpiece).

    Presumably, the form the Agents settled in on the Matrix we see was an improvement--and you can get away with three white guys in 60s-style secret service suits, even if they can't do things like de-materialize through walls. Lambert Wilson (am I the only one who always enjoys seem him as the upper-class badguy?) can't have his own Agents, so he kept the next best thing, I suppose.

    You can imagine that earlier versions of the Matrix were even more...hectic...with ghostly twins or werewolves running around to keep order.

    It all makes sense now.

    After the war, the only surviving piece of human culture were Twilight forums and fanfictions. Upon this they built the Utopia Matrix.

    No wonder people rejected it...

  • SiskaSiska Shorty Registered User regular
    The newer agents are probably the only ones who can do the body jump thing and that is considered superior to wall phasing.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    Siska wrote: »
    The newer agents are probably the only ones who can do the body jump thing and that is considered superior to wall phasing.

    Presumably. Then again, going from Smith, it looks like once you're removed from the systems registry or whatever, no more body-jumping for you. You need to figure out something else more obtrusive, like killing everything around you with guns or copying.

  • BYToadyBYToady Registered User regular
    The machines really should have kept some sort of system to track which people were running which avatars, you know, so they could have just filled him with explosives before he made it out into meatspace. Or gave him a horrible disease with which to take back to Zion.

    Battletag BYToady#1454
  • joshofalltradesjoshofalltrades Class Traitor Smoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
    BYToady wrote: »
    The machines really should have kept some sort of system to track which people were running which avatars, you know, so they could have just filled him with explosives before he made it out into meatspace. Or gave him a horrible disease with which to take back to Zion.

    Give them all the zombie virus. That'll be a nasty surprise for anybody making it back to Zion.

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