WOW!
Not only was this a riveting, gripping movie, but my hat is off to the Wachowskis for remaining true to their vision of intelligent action entertainment. The battle for the docks was one for the ages, the hovercraft chase simply amazing, and the showdown between Smith and Neo distinguished not only for its FX but also for its thought provoking exchanges on the source of meaning for life.
Again -- WOW!
The most disappointing thing about the film actually has nothing to do with the film per se: listening to the movie critics (never was a term so richly deserved) as they sought to outdo one another in taking cheap shots or, worse, merely confirming their own laziness and/or ignorance concerning the films. (spoilers ahead)
Some of the stuff I’ve read is just unconscionable. For example, one critic tried to claim that the Wachowski’s ripped off Star Wars for having Smith refer to the Oracle as “Mom.” I guess that particular critic was either asleep or just didn’t understand what was meant when in Reloaded the Architect told Neo that the Oracle was the mother of the matrix. So, no, this was not a “Luke, I am your father” type of moment, merely an acknowledgement of what we already have known for six months. In this case, as in several others, the baseless criticism of Revolutions as derivative (?!?) was firmly rooted in the critics own inattention/inadequacies.
But enough about the idiocies of the chattering class – on to the movie.
Several hypotheses regarding the workings of the matrix were confirmed here:
1) The Oracle was indeed the mother of the matrix (I never understood the rationale of those asserting that the mother was Persephone).
2) The Architect was limited in his ability to discern the future, for precisely the same reasons that he was able to construct the matrix – his mathematically precise mind could not incorporate choice except as a variable. “[T]he Oracle’s understanding of human psychology enables her to see past the current iteration. She sees that Neo will bring change whereas the Architect’s limited understanding of humanity only permits him to envision mutual destruction.”
3) There was no “matrix inside the matrix” -- only one matrix, which leaves the viewer some things to ponder, like: how did Smith assimilate Bane, and how is Neo able to interact with the machines in the real world? The answer, as I fully anticipated at the end of Reloaded, was actually quite simple. Smith, after his tango with Neo at the end of the original film, was able to overwrite Bane in a way not too dissimilar from the way he jumped from human to human inside the matrix, or from the way humans were able to “instantly” learn new skills (‘hey Mikey, he likes it” – Tank) . Overwriting an unplugged human had never been done before, but the premise was not that farfetched. As for Neo sensing the sentinels and then later being able to see the programs (but not humans or inanimate matter), again, the answer was as anticipated. Neo, and all the pod folks for that matter, were already cyborgs. As the One, Neo was predisposed to be more sensitive to the workings of the matrix and the true essence of the programs operating in the matrix (he was after all, even able to “die” and yet reject the programming of the matrix that told his mind that he was dead – in essence “choosing” life). After his tangle with Smith at the end of the original film he could sense the programs within the matrix, an ability that was heightened when he visited the Architect through the door of light. After that, he could feel not only the agents but also the sentinels. What had happened was that he was growing better attuned to how the programs themselves sense one another, how they “see” the world so to speak – a facility that was ultimately fully revealed when he deprived of his own sight, in something akin to being able to see the stars only after the sun sets. At that point he could receive – and had learned how to send – signals via his own cybernetic prostheses in order to “hack into” the very “thought patterns” of the machine world, and hence “see” the true Smith within the cybernetic entity Bane, as well as the cybernetic infants in the pod fields and the very “thoughts” flowing that were the programs in the machine city. He was not seeing energy (else otherwise he would have been blinded by the power source of the Logos in his battle with Bane) but the very patterns of machine/program communication – or to use a human word (like “love” or “karma”) he was seeing the “souls” of the machines.
4) Neo represents the future not only for the humans but also for the machines, which are now threatened by Smith. As I wrote five and a half months ago: “I don't think the machines would relish a future in which all of them are rendered copies of Smith any more than the humans would. Hence Neo is the only answer available for a satisfactory reconciliation for both (far-sighted) machines and humans.”
Some interesting parallels were borne out in Revolutions as well. The Architect and Lock represented mirror images of one another: each was the supreme tactician, but neither could foresee a future beyond war, and hence each was trapped by the logic of war --destroy or be destroyed.
Another parallel was between the role of the matrix for renegade programs the machine world (a haven) and the role of Zion for human renegades from the matrix (a haven). This was exemplified by the exile of Sati, the girl whom the Oracle agreed to watch over. She, like Neo, was forced to flee her home because of what she was (and how she didn’t fit in) and seek refuge – except as a program that refuge was in the matrix, not out of it.
The importance of the scene between Sati, her parents and Neo on the train station was how it exemplified if not the “humanness” of the programs, then at least the fact that their sentience was not devoid of attachments and priorities. It is not surprising that the programs would have adopted the symbols and words of their creators and adapted them to express their own situation. Certainly the machines did not feel “love” or have “karma” but they do have connections and a sense of purpose that, for them, approximates or approaches what humans designate by these words. So although they are different, the fact that they are sentient renders them in certain respects similar, and hence understandable. The programs are not mere monsters, as in so many Hollywood “sci-fi” dramas, but rather others -- different yes, and yet not entirely different.
A third parallel could be discerned between the guidance offered by the Oracle and by Morpheus. Through the first two movies both of these characters were rock solid in their vision of the future: the Oracle because she could see the future, and Morpheus because of his faith in the Oracle’s vision. Both were depicted as fallible and unsure (and perhaps a bit scared too) in Revolutions, because both had to come to grips with the essence of the future: its ultimate dependence upon human choice. Such a future can never be predicted, even though the various paths that spring from such choice may be anticipated. Morpheus had certainly lost any faith he had in the future; damn, for most of the movie he wore an expression like a beat dog! And Lawrence Fishburne did a great job of conveying both white-knuckled fear and dogged perseverance during the chase scene on the hovercraft. Likewise, there were several clues that although the Oracle still had a good idea of the stakes of the game she was playing, her ability to predict events during this chaotic time was not what it had been: she didn’t have the cookies ready for Neo, she couldn’t predict the fate of Zion, she didn’t get Sati out of the way in time (although it is doubtful that it would have done any good, since by the end the entire matrix appeared to have be “Smithed”). At the very end the Oracle, when asked by Seraph if she had always known, had to confess that she hadn’t, but rather she had believed.
So… was the Oracle waiting for Smith purposefully? Yes, I believe she was. Her sacrifice was foreshadowed in her conversation with Neo, when she tells him that she was willing to do as much as she could to save the future, as much as Neo himself. By allowing herself to be assimilated into Smith, she also knew that she would be able to grant Neo a clue or sign as Smith, a sign as to how he could be defeated. (I don’t believe she knew exactly how this would happen – otherwise she could have possibly told Neo – just that she needed to make the sacrifice to help Neo.) When Smith tells Neo that he had seen the end and spoke the words “everything that has a beginning has an end” – echoing the Oracle’s previous statement to Neo, it served as a clue to Neo about how he could destroy Smith, because his assimilations of others were never entirely complete, a residual element always remained.
Just as when Smith was an agent, and when hopping from body to body he left the previous body (and consciousness) intact, so too when he overwrote programs and humans in the matrix: the core remained under a veneer of “Smithness.” Not every element was as easy to assimilate for Smith, however. While he could assimilate Sati (and through her assimilated abilities alter the weather?) and hence mimic back to the Oracle her previous statement to Sati (“cookies need love”), Smith was not so successful at assimilating to Oracle, as we saw when he blurted out the future at the end of the fight with Neo. That was the key to destroying Smith. Neo, by willingly allowing Smith to assimilate him (remember, he could successfully resist such assimilation in Reloaded) thereby introduced into Smith’s program the one thing he could not assimilate: the free will, the “power of choice” that the One possessed in so powerful an incarnation that it could have successfully rebooted the entire matrix and quelled discontent for several generations.
The one thing Smith could not understand, indeed, could not even literally tolerate, was the concept of choice, of will. Hence his tirade at the end of the battle, when he asks Neo “why fight?” In the end we are all dead – the truth that Smith does grasp (as related in the warehouse earlier in the fight) – that the end of life, for Smith and any consistent materialist, is death. Yet when confronted with the litany of ultimately false answers (in the sense of “ultimately we are all dead”) of why to fight, Neo gives the only answer that Smith could not anticipate because it is utterly alien to him and his conception of the universe: he fights because he chooses to. Neo has chosen another end, an end apart from the one dictated by the cruel necessity of physics, matter, and time. Neo’s answer is the perfect existential answer to the question why; nothing is justified by what we are, by our essence so to speak -- because there is no essence within us, no relationship we share that will ever escape the ultimate doom of time -- for in the end we all die. But Neo chooses to fight and so his life is given meaning through that very choice and the action it entails. Neo’s embodiment of this alien thought pattern proves to be indigestible for Smith.
It was not a surge from the Source that destroyed Smith through the portal provided by Neo’s body, but rather the unleashing of Neo’s “code” of free will, of the free choice exercised by Neo in the very moment of sacrifice that ultimately destroys Smith. (This is in a sense the very mechanism that would have rebooted the matrix had Neo chosen the door to the right in the Reloaded, so we should not underestimate its power.) Smith cannot assimilate or even understand Neo’s choice and in the attempt he in a sense dies a psychic death (he literally tears himself apart, like what you might expect in a vintage Star Trek when asking a machine to divide by zero). And with Smith’s death – propagated through each and every one of the Smiths in the same fashion that allowed them to share the same identity – the veneer of “Smithness” was wiped clean from the original programs or people previously assimilated.
Action packed existentialism that unfolds at a torrid pace – this is definitely one not to miss on the big screen.
5:38:08 PM 
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