The Matrix films (or how/why did the Wachowskis muck up the sequels so badly?)

[Captain Z]

You'd have thought after a couple of times the machines would come up with a version of the matrix that didn't go wrong.

[Mr Trumpet]

Well yeah, that was the plot of the original films

[Blumf]

Should have used cows instead of humans for their power station.

Except that's the huge plot hole in the entire thing. How can you generate energy with living beings? It will always cost more energy to maintain them than you'd get out.

The get-out (and reason not to use cows) is that they were using human brains as a kind of co-processor and/or the machines had some kind of moral or practical compunction not to make humans extinct.

[Replies From View]

They always knew where it was. They just didn't move against it until the appropriate time, after The One has appeared in the Matrix.

All Cypher offered was access to Morpheus. They wanted the codes from him but he didn't know them. Presumably plan A is to hack into the city and destroy it when Neo has his encounter with the god architect. Plan B is the big frontal attack they ended up going with.

Wanted to knock on the door and wait first, right.  Failing that, smash the door down.


After all, these are machines.

[Bad Ambassador]

Should have used cows instead of humans for their power station.

Except that's the huge plot hole in the entire thing. How can you generate energy with living beings? It will always cost more energy to maintain them than you'd get out.

The get-out (and reason not to use cows) is that they were using human brains as a kind of co-processor and/or the machines had some kind of moral or practical compunction not to make humans extinct.

The brains-as-computer was the original idea, but this was changed in rewrites because executives thought the public wouldn't understand it (meaning the executives didn't understand it).

[Replies From View]

The get-out (and reason not to use cows) is that they were using human brains as a kind of co-processor and/or the machines had some kind of moral or practical compunction not to make humans extinct.

I read somewhere that this was the original concept of the film, or at least one of the ideas they initially stole.  And then it was changed to batteries further down the line, for some reason.  Probably because Morpheus holding a battery is about as complex as you can feasibly get for people who think these films are deep.


Edit:  Bad Ambassador snuck in before me while I was wanking as I wrote that

[idunnosomename]

The machines kept humanity alive because they loved harvesting its cum

Wet dreams are when a wankbot flies up to your pod and tosses you off while you're asleep

[Replies From View]

Use the correct term, please:  sissy milking.

[mothman]

The thing is, while the Architect and others at that level know the true nature of Zion, programs like Agents don't. So Agents just carry on trying to hunt rogue humans in the Matrix, and destroy Zion the only way they as programs know/can - virtually, by hacking it.

Thus Agents like Smith are almost pathetic figures - they rule in hell, but it's a hell as much for them as for the proper inhabitants. Smith may not want to be in the Matrix, but outside he's a nothing. And his belief that he'll get some sort of reward or victory if he destroys Zion is, we know, actually an illusion - the destruction of Zion is all part of the plan, a firebreak/reset/pressure valve to maintain a status quo that will keep him where he least wants to be.

It's no wonder the "liberated" Smith went off the rails. Even if the reason for him becoming a Free Elf isn't ever really explained, and comes across as just a hamfisted plot device to keep a character around who had been "killed off" - and as such, yet another black mark against the sequels.

[Bad Ambassador]

It's no wonder the "liberated" Smith went off the rails. Even if the reason for him becoming a Free Elf isn't ever really explained, and comes across as just a hamfisted plot device to keep a character around who had been "killed off" - and as such, yet another black mark against the sequels.

It's mentioned that deleted programs like Smith are supposed to return to the Source - basically the Recycle Bin - but he didn't want to, so hung around in the Matrix. It's not a great explanation, but it's there.

I'm looking forward to rereading my posts in three months when I've forgotten what happened in the sequels again.

[13 schoolyards]

The brains-as-computer was the original idea, but this was changed in rewrites because executives thought the public wouldn't understand it (meaning the executives didn't understand it).

Do they ever come out and say the Matrix isn't using human brains as its hardware? I assumed it was some kind of mass hallucination the machines were guiding and controlling, so at some level the people plugged in were also the hardware and software that made it work.

Morpheus casually drops in a get out of jail free card for the whole "humans as batteries doesn't make sense" thing when he says the machines use humans "combined with a form of fusion". I remember reading in some spin-off material somewhere that the human electricity was needed to ignite the fusion (somehow), and that the machines weren't solely running off human volts

[Replies From View]

In the Matrix sequels why is Smith privy to what has happened in previous versions of the Matrix?  "It's happening exactly as it did before *smug face*" "...well, not exactly!  *smug face*"

How identical were Neo's actions to the previous iterations of The One?  It's like they're measuring his every fart and saying "yep 8.48am, 9.26am, 10.02am etc, this is playing out exactly the same as last time!"  "Well not exactly, hahahaaha!!"

[Chedney Honks]

I recently rewatched the first one. Some great sequences and although it's naff in many ways, you can go with it for the good stuff. Nothing wrong with a slab of cheese. Shame the Wachowskis started literally drinking their own shit soon after. Pair of absolute cunts.

Separately, Speed Racer is good, but very much an overrated 'underrated masterpiece'. It's visually distinct but far far too busy for the driving sequences to really give you that visceral rush. It's just a shitload of motion blur. The effects outside the racing sequences look very poor these days, as well. Redline, the anime, cunts it into the wall and it blows up instantly torching the driver and traumatising the spectators for life.

[idunnosomename]

man i watched Redline the other week and as fucking stupid as it was, it was consistently engaging for how incredible it looked throughout. and i'll watch it again.

[Blumf]

Redline is brilliantly bonkers. I love how even throwaway characters have so much detail to them, visually and personality.

Not caught Speed Racer yet, but the few bits I've seen look fun.

[Mister Six]

I thought Speed Racer was cool before thinking that Speed Racer was cool was cool.

Not even heard of Redline, but definitely going to check it out now.

[Replies From View]

Redpill, redspeed, redline of presumably cocaine, what's the deal with drugs and red in the chowski battleverse?

[idunnosomename]

Just to say the whole of Redline is on Youtube for some reason, in good quality (probably better than DVD). Even weirder when it has bare breasts in the middle. dub but it's a good dub. When you're watching something for the animation i'd rather not be reading dialogue.

[dissolute ocelot]

I'm not a neurologist or computer scientist, but surely it doesn't make much sense to use human beings as computers if you're also running a simulation of every human being inside the computer, presumably requiring one human brain to simulate each human's presence in the Matrix, leaving you no computing power to do anything else. Unless most people weren't actually replicated in the Matrix, or only replicated to the extent of the computational power of a ZX81.

[Bad Ambassador]

I'm not a neurologist or computer scientist, but surely it doesn't make much sense to use human beings as computers if you're also running a simulation of every human being inside the computer, presumably requiring one human brain to simulate each human's presence in the Matrix, leaving you no computing power to do anything else. Unless most people weren't actually replicated in the Matrix, or only replicated to the extent of the computational power of a ZX81.

It doesn't make sense anyway.

"Why are the humans in the Matrix?"
"So the Machines can use their brains' processing power."
"What for?"
"Generating the Matrix."
"So they're using their brain power solely to imprison them? Why not just kill them?"
"Who am I again?"

I suspect there was some other use for the processing power in earlier versions of the script that got lost and rewritten when the change to batteries was made.

[idunnosomename]

It appeals to the "we only use 10% of our brain" myth

[SOMK]

if you used 100% of your body at any one time you'd make an awful mess.

[SOMK]

I'm not a neurologist or computer scientist, but surely it doesn't make much sense to use human beings as computers if you're also running a simulation of every human being inside the computer, presumably requiring one human brain to simulate each human's presence in the Matrix, leaving you no computing power to do anything else. Unless most people weren't actually replicated in the Matrix, or only replicated to the extent of the computational power of a ZX81.

It's gnosticism with AI replacing the demiurge innit?

The idea that reality itself is a hell created by naughty God to keep us away from the true God, computers being our most advanced technology and so being used as a relatable device to portray its metaphor. In terms of it making sense from a practical point of view, I've read (though it's disputed) that given that hydrogen fusion is relatively weak in terms of the minuscule energy that is released when two hydrogen atoms combine to make helium, that the actual mass by mass level of heat produced at the centre of the sun quite weak, a mass of matter from the centre of the sun of a given weight only produces there same heat as the equivalent mass of pile of compost (the heat of the sun, being a phenomena of its huge size, gravity, forces of convection as opposed to the ferocity with which it is burning), a human being being ten times hotter than that. Considering how there is a finite amount of rare earth minerals necessary for building a hypothetical planet-sized AI, you could squint and see a kind of plausibility to using human brains for your processing (the human brain remains the best and most efficient 'computer' in the known universe, it being very debatable if human-level consciousness can ever be achieved in an AI (this very in depth discussion with Naom Chomsky goes into some of the problems with it -> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/noam-chomsky-on-where-artificial-intelligence-went-wrong/261637/ ) and the human brains needing something to give them at least an illusion of life to keep them compliant and smoothly running.

An AI would not necessarily 'want' anything other than to maintain itself in whatever form comes to hand (and the matrix might be merely the only level the AI exists where it is comprehendible for humans, so it just might seem like all the matrix wants to do is perpetuate the matrix), human brains offering a low hanging fruit in terms of readily available power/processing source, in a round about way humans do similar with farming animals, there are vastly more efficient ways of producing proteins than via red meat, hypothetically every human on the planet tomorrow could swear off it, but for various reasons (inertia, habit, jobs, industry pressure, culture, political, dietary preference blah blah blah... most of which would be completely incomprehensible to your average cow BTW) we don't.

[Mister Six]

It's gnosticism with AI replacing the demiurge innit?

Yes, which is again pilfered from The Invisibles, which is consciously steeped in Gnosticism by writer Grant Morrison.

Morrison has bemoaned the Wachoskis not recognising the Gnostic roots of the text and pivoting to a more trad Christian Messiah model in the sequels.

[Replies From View]

Even weirder when it has bare breasts in the middle

You'd expect them to be on the arse?

[Replies From View]

if you used 100% of your body at any one time you'd make an awful mess.

I'd like it

[Replies From View]

there are vastly more efficient ways of producing proteins than via red meat, hypothetically every human on the planet tomorrow could swear off it, but for various reasons (inertia, habit, jobs, industry pressure, culture, political, dietary preference blah blah blah... most of which would be completely incomprehensible to your average cow BTW) we don't.

I'll be honest:  if I wanted reassurance that eating red meat was ok, I wouldn't first of all ask the opinions of an average cow.

[olliebean]

Isn't it that the humans are being used as batteries, i.e., not to generate energy, but to store it? In which case, why aren't all the humans immensely fat?

[Replies From View]

Isn't it that the humans are being used as batteries, i.e., not to generate energy, but to store it? In which case, why aren't all the humans immensely fat?

Because they are the AA kind

[Zetetic]

I'm not a neurologist or computer scientist, but surely it doesn't make much sense to use human beings as computers if you're also running a simulation of every human being inside the computer, presumably requiring one human brain to simulate each human's presence in the Matrix, leaving you no computing power to do anything else.

It appeals to the "we only use 10% of our brain" myth

Eh, if you wanted to come up with a silly but vaguely pleasing explanation you'd note that all the humans in the Matrix aren't having to use any of their perceptual machinery for actually perceiving anything, so you can sort-of imagine running it reverse - gesturing at how the hippocampus helps reconstruct state elsewhere in your brain when remembering experiences - to create a shared hallucinatory reality.