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The Matrix Reloaded

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The Matrix Reloaded is part of the second installment of The Matrix series, written by the Wachowski brothers and released in North American theaters May 15, 2003 by Warner Bros. and around the world during the latter half of that month. The other parts of the second installment are the computer game Enter the Matrix, released May 15, and a collection of nine animated shorts, the Animatrix, released on June 3.

The Matrix Reloaded was largely filmed at the Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia. The climactic freeway chase scene was filmed at the decommissioned Alameda Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. Producers constructed a 1.5-mile freeway on the old runways just for the movie. Portions of the chase were also filmed in Oakland, California, and the tunnel shown briefly is the Webster Tube connecting Oakland and Alameda. Some post-production editing was done in old aircraft hangars on the base as well.

While surpassing the first part of the trilogy in cinematography and special effects budget, some fans have suggested that the sequel adheres more closely to the action genre, with less of a focus on the intricate plot and philosophical musings that made the first film the subject of intense fan devotion. This is not universally held, however: some viewers have argued that the philosophical insights of the first movie were themselves overrated, while many others have expressed satisfaction with the consistent continuation of the original film's plot and metaphysical speculation in Reloaded.

Reloaded earned an estimated $42.5 million on its Thursday opening day in the United States, a new record surpassing the one set in May 2002 by Spider-Man, which took in $39.4 million on its first day. The movie earned $91.8 million over the its first Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, establishing it as the second-best opening weekend ever after Spider-Man's 2002 record of $114.8 million in ticket sales during its three-day opening weekend. Reloaded garnered the biggest debut ever for an R-rated film, topping by far the $58 million for 2001's Hannibal.

The film was banned in Egypt because of the violent content and because it put into question issues about human creation "linked to the three monotheistic religions that we respect and which we believe in."

Pirate copies of The Matrix Reloaded appeared on file sharing networks such as BitTorrent and eDonkey within two weeks of its theatrical release. Unlike some pirate copies of new movies, which are covertly filmed from a cinema screen, the Reloaded copy is high quality, and is believed to have been made from a film print. [1]

Most of the main characters from its prequel, The Matrix, are included in Reloaded, such as Neo (Keanu Reeves), Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), as well as many new faces (such as Link, the Merovingian, and the Architect). Filmed together with the third movie, The Matrix Revolutions (in theaters November 5, 2003), it includes action scenes such as a chase involving over 50 vehicles, including motorcycles and 18-wheelers. In addition, there is finally footage of Zion, the underground city alluded to in The Matrix.

Plot

Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers

The Threat

250,000 sentinels are tunneling towards the underground city of Zion, and Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus have only 72 hours to save the city. Or so it seems...

Commander Lock, in charge of Zion's defenses, orders all ships to return to prepare to the onslaught of the machines. Morpheus defies Lock's directive and orders one ship to remain at "broadcast depth" with the Matrix to await word from the Oracle. Morpheus believes that when she contacts Neo, the Prophesy will be fulfilled and the machines will be stopped.

The Oracle

In the meantime, Neo is having trouble sleeping and is haunted by dreams where he sees Trinity (with whom he has become quite amorous) fighting with an agent, falling out a building, and ultimately shot in the chest on her way down, but he does not see her die. The Oracle eventually contacts Neo and, meeting in a courtyard, they have a characteristically cryptic yet enlightening conversation. She curiously mentions Neo's sleeplessness, which is odd since that was apparently only an affliction affecting Neo in the "real world." In talking with the Oracle, Neo learns that everything in the Matrix isn't really as it seems.

The Oracle is a computer program, a part of the machine world. She offers Neo a red candy that looks like the red pill Neo first took to leave the Matrix and enter the "real world." He does not eat the candy; he merely pockets it. The Oracle says that most programs work as intended and are consequently invisible. On the other hand, programs sometimes go awry and are "assimilated" back into the Matrix. Faced with deletion, she says, programs would rather choose "exile" and be free in the Matrix instead of being removed back to the Source, the machine mainframe. This, it turns out, is where Neo must go in order to stop the machines and save Zion.

To return to the Source, Neo must first go to the Keymaker, another program/person with "keys" to everything. He is held captive by the Merovingian, a dangerous program/person among the oldest of the Matrix. The keys correspond to "backdoors" to all the computer programs of the Matrix. The door to the mainframe, under intense security, can only be accessed for "just over five minutes" (until an alternate security system kicks in), or as the Keymaker puts it "exactly 314 seconds." This of course is a reference to pi, the only "anomaly" in an otherwise "perfect" system of numbers.

Smith

The Oracle wishes Neo good luck and exits the courtyard just before Smith (formerly Agent Smith) arrives. While it appeared that he was destroyed at the end of The Matrix, Smith explains that he and Neo are now somehow connected. Smith realized that he should die, but understood the rules and chose not to. Now he is free from the rules of the Matrix like Neo, and he tries to exact revenge. To up the stakes, he has managed to replicate himself and can now team up against Neo. After an extravagant fight scene dubbed "Burly Brawl" in which Neo eventually takes on over 100 Smiths, Neo uses his new ability to fly (alluded to at the end of The Matrix) to flee the fight and confront Smith at a later date. We also learn earlier in the movie that Smith is able to "leave" the Matrix. He can clone himself through touch, and he takes over the body of Bane. When Bane exits the Matrix through the phone line, he retains his appearance, but his mind has been hijacked by Smith, and Smith's consciousness enters the real world.

The Merovingian & The Keymaker

Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus leave to visit the Merovingian who is accompanied by his wife Persephone and the Twins, his two silvery bodyguards who can become translucent and move through solid objects. After a discussion about cause and effect and the nature of the world, the Merovingian denies them access to the Keymaker and bids them adieu. After puzzling over what went wrong, the trio is unexpectedly led by Persephone, who is upset with her husband, to the Keymaker. Trinity and Morpheus escape with the Keymaker and are eventually chased onto the freeway by the Twins who are later joined by a slew of agents in a 15 minute freeway chase scene. Neo is left to fight a half dozen of the Merovingian's lesser bodyguards.

Meanwhile, the machines continue burrowing and are a little over nine hours away from reaching Zion. In response, several hovercraft are strategically placed for a surprise counter-attack when the machines approach closer. Back inside the Matrix, after surviving the freeway chase, the Keymaker explains how to reach the source: "There is a building. Inside this building there is a level where no elevator can go and no stair can reach. This level is filled with doors. These doors lead to many places--hidden places. But one door is special. One door leads to the Source." To access the building, its alarm must be disabled and to do that the electricity must be cut. In addition, the core network of the electricity grid must be accessed and the emergency fail-safes deactivated. For 314 seconds, the mainframe can be entered, and the Keymaker says, "Only the One can open the door, and only during that window can the door be opened."

The Architect

Neo enters a room surrounded by television monitors and stands opposite a man dressed all in white who identifies himself as the Architect, the creator the Matrix. He explains that Neo is the eventuality of an anomaly which the Architect has been unable to remove from the near mathematical harmony that is the Matrix. The Architect reveals that the Matrix is much older than Neo knows. He says this is the sixth version of the Matrix and that Neo has had five anomalous predecessors. The first version of the Matrix was designed to be perfect but failed due to the inherent flaws in every human being. Subsequent versions were designed whereby nearly 99% of subjects accepted their world. Still, a certain fraction rejected the Matrix, creating a "systemic anomaly" which if left unchecked threatened the stability of the Matrix. Those minds were allowed to leave the system and live in Zion to preserve the stability of the system. Now Zion is to be destroyed, Neo's anomalous existence is to be merged into the mainframe Source, and the Matrix is to be "reloaded" or reset.

After Neo's code is assimilated, he is to choose 23 individuals (16 female, 7 male) to rebuild the next version of Zion. If he does not comply with all this, a catastrophic system crash will result, killing everyone plugged into the Matrix, which combined with the destruction of Zion would mean the elimination of the entire human race. The Architect tells Neo he can choose between two doors. One leads to the Source and the salvation of Zion. The other leads to Trinity, which as his dream predicted, is being chased by an agent falling out of a building. Neo chooses to save Trinity, apparently at the expense of the human race, and the Architect admonishes him, "Hope: it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness."

To Be Concluded...

Back in the real world, Morpheus is dismayed that the Prophecy has been unfulfilled. Neo tells Morpheus that the Prophecy was just a lie, another system of control. The Nebuchadnezzar comes under attack by sentinels and the crew must abandon the ship. Outside in the sewers, they run from the sentinels, but Neo senses something different. He can "feel" the sentinels' presence, even though he is no longer in the Matrix. He manages to overpower the sentinels with willpower but falls unconscious and enters a coma. The crew is subsequently rescued by another hovercraft. The film concludes with the news that the surprise counter-attack has failed. Someone set off an electromagnetic pulse early and five hovercraft were immediately disabled and they were quickly overrun by the machines. There was only one survivor: Bane, the man who has had his mind taken over by Smith in the real world. The film ends with an ominous "To Be Concluded...", referring to The Matrix Revolutions.

Discussion

In this film, Neo returns the favor to Trinity by bringing her back to life this time. The scene used special effects which some see as illustrating a healing energy, apparently coming from Neo, that merges with the rapidly fading energy of lifeless Trinity; but it could also be seen as Neo's ability to perform surgical repairs by manipulating items (in this case, a human heart) within the Matrix yet another way.

At the end of the movie, when the crew is forced to abandon the Nebuchadnezzar due to a sentinel attack, Neo uses his abilities to destroy the sentinels in the "real" world. This twist has sparked a flurry of discussions, many of which suggest that the "real" world that Neo and the rest of Zion occupy in is another Matrix inside the Matrix. Or similarly, they never really escaped from the first Matrix and it's all been an illusion.

Another theory states that Neo's ability to produce an electromagnetic pulse in the real world is the result of receiving programming from digesting a piece of candy given to him by the Oracle, although we never see him consume it. Receiving programs via foodstuffs is demonstrated by the Merovingian earlier in the movie (orgasm-cake scene) and the fact that Neo is actually a cyborg whose purpose is to create electricity for the machines lend credibility to this theory. The cyborg factor also is called into question when considering that agent Smith has somehow imprinted himself onto or is Bane, a questionable character introduced here. The argument is that if the matrix can bypass the connection from the senses to the brain and make the wired individual experience a different reality might it be possible that the brain could be bypassed/suppressed in a Borg-like fashion. Most viewers believe the former theory (simulated Zion) to be true. The answer is expected in the third installment of The Matrix series.

A very interesting observation in Reloaded is the appearance of more mythical figures like Seraph (highest of Angels), Persephone (wife of Hades) and others which testify a replay of mythical earth history and supporting the view on evolution that Smith mentioned in the first movie. The Matrix could indeed be an experiment in artificial evolution working for AI-development in the field of computer science. Neo's search for freedom - a plan to teach an AI-Network emotions like love while avoiding an unstable breakdown.

Characters throughout the movie continually remind us that Neo is still only human. At the beginning the agents say, "Only human." The Merovingian says, "You see, he is just a man," when Neo's hand bleeds brifly. The Architect tells Neo, "You remain irrevocably human..." Whether these are meant to guide the viewer or mislead remains to be seen.

A few other interesting observations include the televisions in Architect scene. Some of the screens show images from Neo waking up in the real world. It is unclear how these images supposedly from outside the Matrix could be known to the Architect inside of the Matrix, unless perhaps the Architect can read Neo's memories.

Cast

The cast of The Matrix Reloaded is largely the same as The Matrix, with only minor additions. Character names which have a philosophical or historical significance beyond the movie are linked below.

Notes

The character of "Tank" from The Matrix did not return, reportedly due to actor Marcus Chong's salary demands and conflicts with the Wachowski brothers. The character's role of ship pilot is taken over by newcomer Link, Tank's brother-in-law. In passing, Tank is mentioned to have been killed, but no details are provided.

Also, actress Gloria Foster died during the editing of this movie. Her role of "The Oracle" is reprised by actress Mary Alice in subsequent sequels and video games. Her change of appearance is specifically addressed as a programmatic quirk in Enter the Matrix.

Additionally, Aaliyah was originally cast to play the part of "Zee" until her untimely death in the summer of 2001.

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