The Matrix Rebooted
I loved the first Matrix movie. It's possibly my favorite movie of all time. However, it's harder to watch now - it's been cheapened by the sequels. Now, I didn't hate the sequels. I enjoyed them - but they were just okay popcorn flicks. Sorta like the Star Wars prequels. If it weren't for their legacy, they'd have sold a bunch of tickets, been high on the DVD rental sales for a while a few months later, and gradually faded into obscurity. But their predecessors were such cultural events, their failure to live up to their heritage tainted them.

And in the case of The Matrix, it seemed like a much better movie when you didn't know what Zion looked like, what eventually happens to Neo and Trinity, how cool lame and uncool Morpheus becomes, and when you believed Agent Smith was really obliterated and that the story was actually about the people and not the machines.

So here's my quick, 15-minute take on The Matrix Sequels That Shoulda Been. I've stolen at least one of the ideas here from a rumor that went out on the Internet shortly after the sequels went into preproduction. Now, these story ideas are probably even dumber than what was in the actual sequels - but so what. Nobody's paying me millions of dollars to make these, either.

The Matrix II: Ghosts in the Machine
Neo's ultimatum to the machines at the end of the first movie was no idle threat. In the last few weeks, Neo has been probing the nature of The Matrix, and has made two discoveries:

#1 - The "Crops" of humans are serving some other purpose for the machines: The law of thermodynamics means that they are still consuming more energy than they are producing - the production of energy by the humans is simply an attempt to conserve, not a power source. So what do the machines really want?

#2 - There is some sort of 'central command' to which the Agents are all connected. Neo's growing powers of reconstructing the Matrix in his own image means that, in theory, he could rewrite the programming of everything - the entire machine wold.

This last part has the machines working frantically against him. In desperation, they create a new agent - an agent containing a virus that is released upon the destruction of the host. Neo unwittingly rips open this new agent like a pinata, and shortly thereafter begins to feel ill. After returning to the Real World, he finds himself dealing with a dizzy spell. After a rest, he tries to plug back in --- and finds he cannot. This virus - somehow uploaded to his brain - is now inhibiting his ability to jack in (think Neuromancer).

Morpheus and Trinity go into the Matrix to try and hunt down a cure. They are met by one of the Oracle's "potentials." A harrowing adventure ensues, leading them to the cure program. But now they have to get it to Neo. Meanwhile, Neo brings his old skool hacking talents to bare against the Matrix to help them. Working from the Operator's chair, he begins to unravel some mysteries that he couldn't see before from the perspective of being jacked into the Matrix. With larger search and filtering programs in operation, somethiog horrible reveals itself to Neo...

... and in the meantime, Trinity, Morpheus, and the Potential are in a desperate chase. There are agents guarding every exit, and closing a net around them before they can get the cure to Neo. Trinity tells Neo to jack in. She and Morpheus split up - Morpheus leading the agents on the chase, and Trinity plugging into a laptop in another dingy, forgotten apartment. On the computer, she literally hacks into Neo's brain, uploading the cure program - and her world explodes. Briefly, she is literally inside his head, a pure mind-to-mind meeting.

Then Neo is back. He creates his own connection back to the real world, holding it open long enough for Morpheus and Trinity to make a hair-raising escape, agents hounding them at every turn. Then they are all back to the Real World. And Neo drops the bomb:

The human race wasn't enslaved by the machines. There was never even a war against the machines. The entire human race died out long ago, in a war against nations that escalated to complete armageddon - leaving only their sentient machines to inherit what was left of the Earth. And now, for an unknown reason, the machines are re-creating the human race from old DNA samples.

(Roll credits)

There! Maybe someday I'll take a stab at The Matrix III.

Now if only we could get the whole "Mitichlorian" thing explained away & forgotten about from the Phantom Menace.

And dang it, Han Solo never let Greedo take that shot!!!!
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 AM (Permalink)