the end of the Matrix trilogy, something funny (spoilers)

[tthor]

Warning, obvious spoilers about the Matrix trilogy;

I just finished watching the whole Matrix trilogy for the first time. I gotta say, the beginning (the first movie) was pretty awesome, but the ending was pretty shitty. To remind you, The end of the third movie was Neo talking to the giant robot creature, and out of nowhere was able to convince the robot to agree to a complete truce between the humans and the robots (saying that the robots couldn't stop rogue agent Smith, and that only Neo could). This seemed like a complete asspull on the writers' part to me.

Then, as I was watching the credits, i noticed something that made me burst out laughing; Apparently, that final robot was named "<link=http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Deus_Ex_Machina>Deus Ex Machina". The term deus ex machina is latin for 'god out of machine'; it would be an elegant name for the head robot, but what makes it so funny and ironic (if you don't already know) is what the modern meaning of the term 'deus ex machina' is; http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeusExMachina ,
<quote=tv tropes>A common form of Ass Pull or Writer Cop Out, a Deus ex Machina is an outside force that solves a seemingly unsolvable problem in an extremely unlikely (and, usually, anticlimactic) way. If the secret documents are in Russian, one of the spies suddenly reveals that they learned the language. If the writers have just lost funding, a millionaire suddenly arrives, announces an interest in their movie, and offers all the finances they need to make it. If The Hero is dangling at the edge of a cliff with a villain stepping on his fingers, a flying robot suddenly appears to save him.

for discussion value, have you ever noticed something very ironic in a story, similar to this situation?

 

[VladG]

Well, it's not really just the modern definition of Deus Ex Machina, it's basically what it used to be in Roman and Greek theater as well. Literally some random figure (usually a god) would pop up and resolve a situation. Not much has changed it seems. People just liked that kind of stuff back then.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Everyone knew about the terrible ending to the Matrix trilogy. The 2nd and 3rd films really aren't that bad, they just look like a steaming pile of poo-poo next to the first film. Also, I'm pretty sure that they knew perfectly well what they were doing and named it because of that.

There was an amazing example of Deus Ex Machina in a game I played but fuck knows if I can remember which one it was. Can't remember much in the way of irony though.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

That's pretty funny.
I haven't seen the whole Matrix trilogy; I watched and enjoyed the first one, but couldn't get past the 25 minute mark of the second. It was just so dull and pretentious. And judging by the ending of the 3rd film, I'm glad I didn't watch that far.

 

[Duol]

It just felt like they created a force so powerful that there was no way that it could be stopped, even with Neos powers. Would have liked to see an unhappy ending, or an inception style ending, where Neo is back in the Matrix, with his normal life, or something like that.

 

[Thaluikhain]

How is that ironic? That's just a fairly joke on the creatorrs part, not unlike much of the rest of the film.

 

[Citrus]

Reloaded was pretty awful, but I didn't mind Revolutions.

Neo convincing the machine that only he could defeat Agent Smith didn't come out of nowhere. Remember in the second movie how Smith kept making clones of himself out of the system's agents (and everyone else)? That's what the rogue virus thing was about. Two movies' worth of build-up is more than enough for that.

If you're looking for a deus ex machina, that'd be more like in Reloaded, when Trinity dies, Neo squeezes her heart, and then she gets better.

 

[midshipman01]

Well, it's also sort of important to understand that the Matrix trilogy was in very many ways a Christian allegory. Setting up a fight between Neo the the anti-Neo at the cusp of the matrix's apocolypse was pretty much a requirement. As per pretty much any allegory, sometimes the details, or worse, a sensical plot, take a small hit in the name of preserving the message. I actually think that over the course of the series they did an excellent job of including very obscure and intelligent references.

It's also not that crazy to assume that the machines might have needed Neo. It's repeatedly established, most so during the architect scene, that the machines do not by any means have full control of the matrix. This is mainly evidenced by the One's existence and the need for the Matrix to feature choice, but it comes across in other ways as well. We also know that should the One choose to fight rather than give in and save Zion, the machines are actually going to lose their entire human power source system. By contrast, one stipulation of the truce was that humans who WANTED to be free could be free (yet another Christian analogy). This, to me, assumes that there may be some who remain in the matrix and we do see the matrix being rebuilt at the end, likely to allow this possibility. Based on the established "machine thinking" that is often referenced in the series, it would certainly be better to save some of the matrix rather than take a chance at losing it all. "Sounds exactly like the thinking of a machine to me".

So, I really don't think it was that out of whack at this point in the story to introduce the idea that Smith had some sort of power beyond the machines control. There's no good explanation for it, sure, but it doesn't fly in the face of everything we know either. A little suspension of disbelief justifies it fully in my perspective.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

too many to list.

although i would like to point out; that first 3 films, the scenes outside of the matrix all happened inside a second matrix.
thats why neo could see the code while blind.
fighting the machines within the second matrix gave the humans a purpose, distacting them from the fact they were still hooked up.
the easy truce between the machines and the humans was all part of improving the paradise scenario created in earliermatrix versions

 

[Bobbity]

The first one was awesome, the second had a couple of memorable bits, and the third put me in mind of this:

[sub]PRESS EEEEET! PREEEEEESSSSSSSS EEEEEEEET![/sub]

It was just that awful.

 

[lordlillen]

Reloaded was pretty awful, but I didn't mind Revolutions.

If you're looking for a deus ex machina, that'd be more like in Reloaded, when Trinity dies, Neo squeezes her heart, and then she gets better.

actually he removed the bullet(s) inside here.

 

[Citrus]

Reloaded was pretty awful, but I didn't mind Revolutions.

If you're looking for a deus ex machina, that'd be more like in Reloaded, when Trinity dies, Neo squeezes her heart, and then she gets better.

actually he removed the bullet(s) inside here.

He removed the bullets, then she died anyway, so he grabbed her heart and she came back to life.

 

[Radoh]

If you're looking for a deus ex machina, that'd be more like in Reloaded, when Trinity dies, Neo squeezes her heart, and then she gets better.

He manually defibrillated her. Not exactly hard science but normally when you get a person's heart to beat that's more or less a good thing for their health.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

The first one was awesome, the second had a couple of memorable bits, and the third put me in mind of this:

[sub]PRESS EEEEET! PREEEEEESSSSSSSS EEEEEEEET![/sub]

It was just that awful.

You are being evil. Very, very evil. Continue.

OT: Heh, well isn't that funny. The more you know

 

[Death_Korps_Kommissar]

too many to list.

although i would like to point out; that first 3 films, the scenes outside of the matrix all happened inside a second matrix.
thats why neo could see the code while blind.
fighting the machines within the second matrix gave the humans a purpose, distacting them from the fact they were still hooked up.
the easy truce between the machines and the humans was all part of improving the paradise scenario created in earliermatrix versions

Well you just blew my mind all over the place.

 

[Indeterminacy]

Well, it's also sort of important to understand that the Matrix trilogy was in very many ways a Christian allegory...

That's actually quite a good explanation for why the later movies didn't really take off. A face-value analysis of Christianity is generally good enough for people to decide they either like it or don't. But people are too cynical to want to participate in its deeper issues, and no amount of dressing it up in interesting allegory or happy songs are going to persuade them to do so, even those who liked the easier and more aesthetic initial stories.

 

[Indeterminacy]

thats why neo could see the code while blind.

I think you can make this point without assuming Neo himself is "in" the outer Matrix. The idea is that as "the One", grown within the inner Matrix as having the ability to engage with the Source, has a connection to the network of machines that make up the outer Matrix. The "reality" that composes the outer matrix is still artificial, but only in the sense that machines (that Neo can directly interact with post-Architect-meeting) impose themselves as an enemy to the humans in Zion rather than simply destroying them (which they could easily do); it's not another computer program.

 

[midshipman01]

Well, it's also sort of important to understand that the Matrix trilogy was in very many ways a Christian allegory...

That's actually quite a good explanation for why the later movies didn't really take off. A face-value analysis of Christianity is generally good enough for people to decide they either like it or don't. But people are too cynical to want to participate in its deeper issues, and no amount of dressing it up in interesting allegory or happy songs are going to persuade them to do so, even those who liked the easier and more aesthetic initial stories.

The point of an allegory is not necessarily to get people to like or dislike whatever the hidden meaning is. You could enjoy the Matrix trilogy without ever thinking of it in terms of Christianity and it still would be fine. In fact, I would guess that most people didn't even know it was an allegory at all. To me, it's just an elegant way of retelling a classic story.

It's my personal belief that the later movies were not as successful for 2 reasons: First, the initial movie had a valid beginning, middle, and end. It could easily have ended right there, and it would have been a really tight and very interesting storyline. Dragging it out just diluted it.

The second is what I'm now calling "Mass Effect Syndrome", and that is where you blow your load in the first outing and give away all the coolest and most intriguing details about your fictional world too early. Mass Effect 2, for all it's improvements, just didn't have a Sovereign or Vigil moment in it like the first. The kind of epic exchange that your audience can really latch onto and become excited about. Similarly, the first Matrix told us all about how the matrix works and all that other stuff. That was the interesting part. For the second two films, they lost the ability to really "wow" us again, and the films became a lot more about watching people fight in cool scenarios than they were actually providing us with more meaty and intriguing storyline. Watching how Zion falls is not nearly as interesting as uncovering the mystery about why it exists in the first place.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Yeah, the ending was badly executed. The point, I think, is that the machines were afraid of Smith becoming to them what they had been to the humans, i.e. a self-replicating, unstoppable creation bent on conquering its creator. Kind of makes sense to me.

 

[Darks63]

too many to list.

although i would like to point out; that first 3 films, the scenes outside of the matrix all happened inside a second matrix.
thats why neo could see the code while blind.
fighting the machines within the second matrix gave the humans a purpose, distacting them from the fact they were still hooked up.
the easy truce between the machines and the humans was all part of improving the paradise scenario created in earliermatrix versions

It would be pretty awesome if that's what they were going for but sadly it wasn't.