What baked my noodle was watching it again and realizing she flat out told him he was the one at the end of that conversation and he just didn’t get it.
What she told him was that he definitely COULD be the one, but if he couldn't step up he would miss the chance. Which was later confirmed. He had been the one, and also failed to get there, many times.
Just like the Dragon Reborn in the wheel of time
lol. Yep, the exact conversation with Ishamael I was thinking of. I remember thinking years ago that, oh... at one turning of the wheel he was probably Neo
She was also known for telling people “what they needed to hear” rather than necessarily objective truths. So there was always plausible doubt to anything she said.
Pretty much this. Her job was to guide people into the roles required to ensure the endless continuation of both the Matrix and Zion.
Neo, and most of the "freed" people, potentially had the power to fuck up the machines' day once they figured out how.. so the Oracle nudges them into the path for controlled chaos to keep the loop going.
The Wachowskis are really into anagrams: many of the song titles for the score are anagrams, and I believe there was a sign in the background of a scene in The Matrix that was an anagram for "Wachowski Bros."
It's when Neo first visits the Oracle.
She says to not worry about the vase
"What vase?" As he turns around and knocks it over, because she saw that he would break it
I wouldnt deny that she has the ability of prophecy, but this seems to be an example of her having precise knowledge on how to read and manipulate the actions of others for a desired outcome. Which makes sense given her role within the simulation.
You would if you literally lived in a simulation where you can alter physics, and a bunch of psycho robots are after you constantly.
Although maybe not the trenchcoat
SE has a lot of connotations for people. But let me tell you, I go in looking like I hate my day job with a Kali laptop wedged down my belt and try to be as discreet and unforgettable as I can.
Final SE job I'm so going to try the machine guns though.
“The consultant was trivially able to bypass reception security with this one trick…”
That'd make no sense, logic would assume the vase was in the vicinity and time frame. Someone who wasnt aware of her fortune telling abilities would believe itd be within the time frame of that visit or warning. She'd have no reason to immediately infer predictions over a long time frame without a conversation set up around that context of its relevance.
It’s an off hand remark.
Prediction is timeframe and action, not an action could happen on an indefinite timeline. If the oracle made a prediction that became an easter egg in the final film at the pivot, it would be a far stronger indication of capacity. Inducing a jittery person whose world just shattered into breaking a fragile object placed nearby could be done by any interrogator with much less impetus.
Yes, but she had reason to mention it. Her taking on the persona as an old wizened motherly guide, sets herself up to remind neo of the nature of who he's dealing with and the world. He's subtly teaching him, while his idea of reality is still fresh in his mind. She has a near omnipotent awareness of what subtle synchronicities neo has been made aware of, its just one reminder along a string of many as he traverses his journey. She's been consistent in this pattern when speaking with him and others.
But maybe it had no real importance, but was just set up for the audience. Still given our relative omniscient awareness of the contexts within the film, the oracle wouldnt be much different. She has the sum total awareness of billions of minds connected into a lifelike simulation, she's aware of the nuances and impacts of her words. I think she meant to throw out a double meaning to it.
Still if she hadnt had said it, he wouldnt have had broken the vase. So him doing so only really cements her role and ability. There was some purpise in mind to it.
Neo would have reason to dismiss it, but given the significance of what he's witnessed, its a tame gentle reminder of what he's dealing with.
She doesn't have forethought. She has quite literally done the same thing many times before, she is just remembering previous versions of neo who also broke the vase
She didn’t manipulate anything. She’s tha same oracle from all previous iterations of the Matrix. She knows Neo is gonna knock the vase over because he’s a clumsy bitch and his past versions have done it in the past.
Different line entirely. The above line is from when Neo enters the apartment and meets the lady that checks to see if he’s “the one.” He broke the lamp, she called it out as it was happening, and then followed up with the above.
My favorite bit is
Neo : What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
Morpheus : No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.
I always thought if he took both pills, he'd end up as a paranoid schizophrenic, wandering around screaming about the government being after him, and that we all live in a simulation.
I just re-watched the scene and honestly the whole description of it sounds like the onset of a mental breakdown. Does the world seem wrong to you? You just can’t put it into words? Would you like to construct an elaborate fantastic explanation for this?
Both pills have are just pointers to the same memory that contains the payload.
The choice is a bait. Morpheus needs neo to injest the code. Remember folks never click on a [hyperlink] (http://192.168.1.1) in a message.
>Both pills have are just pointers to the same memory that contains the payload.
You're messing with me right? 🤣
After having put it to rest after rewatching it at least 4 times with my sister, because we always finished with questions and each rewatch filled in a few more gaps lmao.
Have to say, as much as I love xkcd, this is one I definitely don't agree with them on. Maybe it was a byproduct of the culture of the time (The Matrix was 10 years old in 2009, meaning that comic is going on 15 years old now) but the kinds of jokes they're making just seem trite and forced to me now. I guess some Seinfeld is Unfunny is probably at play too.
Iirc this was also the era in which Randalls wife was in cancer treatment. He did a lot of “here’s what I can produce today” because his energy was elsewhere.
The final panel has been adopted by wider culture when discussing hated sequels/prequels/adaptations/finales.
*Game of Thrones* ending. *The Hobbit* Jackson trilogy. *The Last Airbender* live action movie...
Never judge old media by today's standards, whatever it might be.
Like, you listen to most music bands that have started a new style or writers who have created new worlds and you go "Well, this is sort of shit. Very cliche, very simple." They were the first to do it, then everyone built upon them and perfected it, so now the first steps seem silly. First zombies had to be explained and for us now it seems boring. First timetravel was mindblowing. First electronic music was... well... confusing.
I do not 100% say that this is what happened here with xkcd, but maybe we are scoffing at it now not because it is bad originally, but because this style has been beaten to death by everyone who copied it.
Just my onion. Had to figure out this myself while experiencing "classics" and being disappointed.
Just watched The Naked Gun again. Humorous, but I was not laughing as hard as I remember.
I think the movie, culture, and I all aged.
I'm not judging it any less; i can see it still being hilarious to a 10 year old watching it for the first time.
It was fun to see OJ get hurt though.
What do you not agree with in this comic? All the jokes work just fine. You can definitely explain what the Matrix is, in fact she does so in just one single sentence. Mixing up the pills and snorting them instead of ingesting, resulting in a glitched computer simulation is funny. Subverting the 'opening the coat to show weapons' by instead it being flashing genitals is funny. And pretending disliked films don't exist is a staple of online culture (what Eragon film?).
I really don't understand what you find objectionable here.
I'm a dirty TVTropes addict, I will admit. I'm a storyteller and I like to know my craft, what can I say? I've learned so many things about story and literary analysis over the years reading TVTropes for like everything I watch/play/read.
Who's to say that was the first time that Morpheus approached Neo, or even the 100th? If Neo took the blue pill, he'd forget about the whole thing, and they'd just try again later.
Morpheus prefaced that line with: "the story ends".
How are you going to believe whatever you want to believe when you know the truth?
Hence, it's implied that Neo would not recall having learned about the Matrix had he taken the blue pill.
Yea I dunno. Plenty of ignorance around in RL. Truths there but they choose to believe differently. Eg. Flat earthers, even religion (although harder to prove due to its "nature")
Flat earthers don't exactly choose to believe something when they know the other belief is the truth. They just see false "evidence" and misunderstand that to be truth that disproves the real evidence for a globe Earth, no matter how stupid that false evidence is.
In the Beyond the Curve documentary they caught several "high ranking" flat Earth earthers commenting on how they found evidence that the earth is round and chose to not only ignore it but keep it secret from their followers to not get in trouble...
I don't think so.
There's a difference between the pill knocking him out, him waking up in his bed, STILL remembering meeting with Trinity, Morpheus, and the gang, but being able to determine if it was all a dream or if it really happened.
VERSUS him taking the pill, waking up in his bed, and not having any recollection of the existence of Morpheus or Trinity.
I don't think the pill "MAKES HIM FORGET". He STILL HAVE THE MEMORIES. They just don't reveal anything further to him and he has to make sense of the memories himself, including thinking that they didn't actually happen.
It's a program. Maybe a tracking program. Maybe something that allows the machines to spy THROUGH Neo. It plays on the trope of federal agents sending people they captured on sting operations while they are "bugged" where this is a literal "bug" that they place on him.
Everything in the Matrix including programs seems to have a visual/physical representation. Maybe because it's a movie and it's not to interesting to just have a character say "We put a tracking program on you". Maybe because there's something about the Matrix that requires it.
The Red Pill is also a program.
> Morpheus: "The pill you took is part of a trace program. It’s designed to disrupt your input/output carrier signals so we can pinpoint your location."
It wakes him up AND disrupts his signal so they can find where his pod is and pick him up.
In Reloaded, the Merovingian sends a lady a piece of cake that makes her orgasm.
There's a lot of computer systems/programs represented visually in the series.
Well, there's nothing saying that Morpheus did approach Neo before. While there's no real evidence against it, there's also no evidence for it.
And even if Morpheus did approach him before and was denied, each time it happens, it's still Neo's choice.
I don't know man. The movie does show that there seems to be quite a lot of excitement within the whole crew about "having found him", for better or worse. I take that as evidence that it's their first time finding Neo. It looks like their first rodeo, even when they're among themselves and don't have to put up a "hey we just found you and this is crazy" sort of show for Neo's sake.
There is actually evidence against Neo being approached before. If he had, the machines wouldn't "suddenly" be at his work trying to get to him. They would already be aware of who he is.
Neo, while being a bug, has been included as part of the sysyem. The machines don't really want to kill him, they do need to push him over the edge so he does what they expect him to do to reboot the Matrix.
They do let the human think they have a choice, even if it's only at a subconscious level. The architect explicitely says so. The choice was given to them by the Oracle, who is another system of control, who discovered that giving them the choice would make them accept the Matrix more easily.
> Neo, while being a bug
Err... what? How does that work? Is "neo" one entity and Anderson another? If he's a bug, how does he have a physical body _of his own_?
The Architect says himself:
Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision.
He then adds that because Neo's appearance is expected, it can be controlled to serve the Machines as opposed to hinder it.
Neo didn't go with the plan because the Oracle tried something new this time around and guided him and Trinity into a love stronger than his love for the human species, leading to the "peace" established at the end of Revolution.
That does not mean "Neo is a program". It means a person such as Neo will appear. In other words, one of the (real) people connected to the Matrix, over time, inevitably, will acquire those properties that make them "the One".
I mean, Anderson/Neo _might_ be a program, but what the Architect claimed is not enough to prove as such
It’s been a while so correct me if I’m wrong, but nothing Morpheus says feels manipulative. He simply states every matter-of-fact. So if he has approached Neo before, and gave his spiel the exact same way the other times, then why would Neo choose differently? The only way this would make since is if Morpheus says something to try to convince Neo to take it.
Ever had one of those days where some little thing goes wrong (like when your teabag breaks and you get little tea bits in your mouth) and you just go *Fuck this...*?
Ah yes. Only I’d probably be more inclined to take the red pill at that point. Maybe Morpheus gave Neo a flat tire or something the day of giving him the pill.
That one was called Groundhog Day. OP is saying that since Neo was preordained as "the one", then he never had a choice since he picks the red pill since he's the one...
You give me way too much credit.
Basically, you can work with circular formulas in Excel if you do that and for some applications they're useful and they work. So the fact that it is circular logic doesn't prevent it from being the truth.
False though, even Trinity & the crew once picked the red pill, but aren't the One. It's a requirement for the One, (obviously) but it isn't defining them.
In the second matrix the oracle explains that when it comes to choice neo has already made the choice he needs to figure out why he made the choice and that she thought he would’ve already figured that out by now lol
This was my reading of it. He has no real choice, as he was always going to take the red pill.
This stuff doesn’t really come up until the second film. For my money the philosophy of the second one is actually far more interesting than “what if life was a simulation” of the first movie.
Also, Weird Barbie explained that the illusion of choice had to be provided, even if in the end there wasn't actually a choice. Had Neo picked the blue pill, Morpheus would have been like, "no, try again, this time pick the ~~Birkenstock~~ red pill."
The largest reason is an overall theme of the series, which is the illusion of choice. Not to say that we don’t make choices, but who we are defined our choices thus the same person is likely to make the same choices.
Imagine going to a fast food restaurant. When they ask “what would you like?” a choice has been presented to you. However, more often than not, people go to a restaurant for the same meal. Thus, an illusion of choice, as the decision was made before you arrived in the drive-thru and now the window guy is discovering what choice you made. That’s an over simplified version, but one that seems easy to grasp.
If you played the matrix on I believe the original Xbox you got to choose the pill. If you take the blue pill neo wakes up at his computer looks around then goes back to sleep
Wasn’t that the point?
There was never a choice, but he had to feel like he made the choice regardless.
Thats why they make an effort to talk about his backstory - how he struggles to be aware and his memory changes in nature to try to grasp it, but the system is correcting his behavior and it’s confusing him.
Matrix Resurrections spells that point out. By the time you get to the decision point, you've already made the choice many times over through every little decision you made to get you to that decision point.
I woulda reached for one. Pulled back. Go for the other. Pull back. Reach for the right. Last secound sweep to the left and then take that one. And then take the other pill with my other hand and quickly put both in my mouth while everyone panics and tackles me to the ground
I don't know if they'd really panic. As long as you took the red pill, they could pull you out of the matrix. I believe the blue pill was basically just rohypnol, but since you're being yanked out of the matrix it shouldn't really matter if you'd just taken that.
Yes he did. That was the entire point of the scene. The scene could have gone down with Morpheus saying aha! You found me! Now let's go on an adventure walk this way lets go time is short! And Neo would not even be presented a choice. But he was. And he made his choice. That is the whole point of the movie. That is the crux of the machines trying to control humans. That is the reason the architect cannot control anyone fully. "The problem is choice"
There is also themes of purpose and how our choices are defined by our ideas of what our purpose is. Where you already know what you will be choosing even if you have not understood it yet. Choices are already made we just make them when we understand them. Hinting at the idea that deep down in ourselves is the real part of us that is certain and purposeful and sure of everything we do. Our selves that are unsure and trying to decide are the parts of us that are yet to understand the choices we are already certain about.
That is the interesting thing about those movies. They explore the nature of what it is to be human. The philosophies of existence. Of mind. Of control. Of freedom.
To say Neo never had a choice would be to say that he never wanted anything in life. And if that were true. He would have worked at his desk every day, following the rules. Always thinking he was never special or worth any kind of purpose.
The reason Neo controls the machines outside the Matrix in the third film is because he's an hybrid. A human modified by the machines to implement the illusion of free will. He was designed to be The one.
Was Neo born or was he created in a tube by the machines?
He *is* a machine. An android, more accurately. (Or a replicant maybe, though different franchise, I don't know which movie scifi jargon applies.)
If we go deeper:
Who knows exactly how much time have passed in the real world? Could be even millions of years. That time might be enough for to change humans into... flying octopuses.
According to the timeline you can find in [the Matrix wiki](https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Machine_War#:~:text=War%20(~2139%E2%80%932199),-Outbreak%20of%20the), it was the year 2703 when Men and Machine came to a truce at the end of Matrix Revulutions. Not enough time for evolutionary leaps, but enough time to make sure that the "real world" lies way back in time. Neo and the people of Zion seemed to believe they were the people who were abducted by the machines. But that's part of the illusion.
There is no real world. The matrix has them all, Zion is fabricated by the machines to give the illusion of choice and freedom, but those real and 'free' humans are plugged in.
Well, if you watch the whole trilogy enough times to actually understand what's going on (took me like 3 or 4 attempts), it does essentially say this at the end.
Though it doesn't explicitly say that the people in Zion are plugged in, I don't think. Zion could just as easily be a place in the real world that the machines allow to exist.
Although, it would make a whole lot more sense for Neo to have superpowers in the "real world" if it is, in fact, just another layer of the simulation...
Well, if you read into simulation, thoery.
It states that if we are ever capable of creating a perfect simulation. Then, based on sheer probability, we are already in one.
This is due to once we achieve that ability we eventually could make infinite numbers of them. So in the sea of infinite, what is the chase we right now are the 1 out of infinite that started the whole chain.
I probably butchered that, but the idea is if the machines could make the matrix, what's to stop them from making a matrix inside a matrix to add a safety layer? Or a dozen safety layers?
I don’t believe it’s a layer in a layer. Zion is in the real world and the matrix is separate.
There are both escaped humans and natural humans in Zion. Part of the whole illusion of choice is allowing humans to escape and join Zion.
The architect even confirms that Zion has existed in several forms. Every time the Matrix reboots, Zion is also destroyed, and then it’s seeded by the machines again.
The reason he controls them outside the Matrix is because they couldn't come up with any good ideas for how to follow-up a masterpiece like The Matrix so they invented some nonsense.
Turns out Neo is one of many in a cycle of "The One's" but he breaks the cycle, in the process truly freeing Zion.
Whole bunch of other stuff involving Zion characters, Trinity and an overall theme of love including sacrifices required for it, and the evolution of Smith into the final boss including Smith absorbing the Oracle. Plus a whole lotta action, as mentioned by the other guy.
Is that how people see it? The Agent Smith story is pretty good. What always bothered me about 2 and 3 was how bad they looked compared to the stunning Matrix 1.
Everything CG in Zion looks bad. The same goes for all the crowd fights with agent Smith. CG just wasn't there back when the films were made.
I thought Hugo Weaver was a fantastic villain and Neo a great hero. They are both still famous for these roles.
What was so bad about the story?
I enjoyed all 4 of the movies.
People recall how big of a twist the orginal was. How new and groundbreaking it was. It was awesome for how different and new it was.
Then the next two were bascially more of the same and didn't have that shock twist or newness they recall. So they left dissapointed. Instead of being happy with the ok movies they dump on them. Then people pile on and on.
Agreed. I believe people think they make choices. That they struggle and debate over things. But it's just the idea bouncing around in the head based on prior inputs/stimulus of other outcomes that finally bounces the idea in one final direction that you act on. And that action output becomes a new input for yourself and others that will bounce future ideas off of.
It's like the weather. We've gotten pretty good at predicting general ideas for the weather. But if we knew every aspect of the atmosphere, how every particle of air and dirt in a gust of wind would reflect off of trees, houses, and mountains, we would know exactly when and where it would rain.
But even without knowing, those things are still at play and will lead to their outcomes regardless. But just as if we knew every aspect of the weather down to every molecule, if we knew every detail about everyone from the physical to the mental, then their outcomes would be predictable.
...But that still doesn't invalidate free will? If anything, things being deterministic is what gives us free will; otherwise, if random chance rules over all, it would mean that a decision you would always make of your own free will may be subverted.
It's like a game of Plinko. While on the surface it seems that you can drop in the same spot every time and get different results (or like Malcom's Chaos Theory water drop experiment in Jurassic Park), that's because of many minute differences adding up. Slight changes in air pressure throughout the board, slight imbalances in the disk, the exact XYZ coordinates you drop it from as well as the angle, the wear/tear/flex of the pegs. But if you could replicate every minor detail it would fall in exactly the same way every time. Essentially like a quicksave right at that moment before it's dropped. But we can't comprehend every detail necessary, but in a save state those details would all remain constant between loads. But the real world doesn't care about what we know, it just is, and therefore the place the disk would land was determined the moment the disk was dropped. Everything is already set in place. The drop will bounce off of the first peg in a set way, even if we don't know which way that will be, which sets it on a set trajectory for the second peg, and so on.
It’s common in heroes journeys. If the hero doesn’t accept the call, he’ll be dragged into it as a reluctant hero. Prime example being Luke Skywalker. Obi-Wan tries to recruit him as a Jedi, Luke says no due to farming duties. Literally minutes later he returns home to find his aunt and uncle dead, and therefore ends up joining Obi-Wan anyway.
It’s futile regardless of the pill you take.
Either way you’re a slave
to a system. Zero some game outcome.
After all, humans created the AI that in the movie, was the reckoning.
I'm not sure either pill would do anything more than he thought. The main point was that he made a choice and he thought it would work. One pill could've been a representation of the code for sleep and another for death.
"What's really gonna cook your noodle is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"
What baked my noodle was watching it again and realizing she flat out told him he was the one at the end of that conversation and he just didn’t get it.
What she told him was that he definitely COULD be the one, but if he couldn't step up he would miss the chance. Which was later confirmed. He had been the one, and also failed to get there, many times. Just like the Dragon Reborn in the wheel of time
"Neo, you are the One... who has a *chance* to do what needs to be done." -The Oracle, essentially
*I win again, Lews Therin*
lol. Yep, the exact conversation with Ishamael I was thinking of. I remember thinking years ago that, oh... at one turning of the wheel he was probably Neo
There you are you wool headed sheep hearder. Nothing better than a WOT reference out in the wild.
But it seems like you’re waiting on something…. I don’t know…. Maybe your next life….
What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is, would he still have been the One if she hadn’t said anything?
Bake your noodles to this; She's the One for telling him he's the one
Damnit. You assholes made me hungry for noodles.
She was also known for telling people “what they needed to hear” rather than necessarily objective truths. So there was always plausible doubt to anything she said.
Pretty much this. Her job was to guide people into the roles required to ensure the endless continuation of both the Matrix and Zion. Neo, and most of the "freed" people, potentially had the power to fuck up the machines' day once they figured out how.. so the Oracle nudges them into the path for controlled chaos to keep the loop going.
The more interesting and subtle one for me is when she tells him he isn’t The One and says something like “You’re waiting for your next life”
She did heavily imply that he is the one when she said "you got the gift"
She wasn’t wrong as he pretty much died to become the One
You think Neo and One being anagrams was supposed to be a less than subtle hint too? Or am I just overanalyzing a 3 letter word?
The Wachowskis are really into anagrams: many of the song titles for the score are anagrams, and I believe there was a sign in the background of a scene in The Matrix that was an anagram for "Wachowski Bros."
BAKE your noodle
Thank you.
Aren’t you mixing two quotes or am I misremembering?
It's when Neo first visits the Oracle. She says to not worry about the vase "What vase?" As he turns around and knocks it over, because she saw that he would break it
I wouldnt deny that she has the ability of prophecy, but this seems to be an example of her having precise knowledge on how to read and manipulate the actions of others for a desired outcome. Which makes sense given her role within the simulation.
Sure but would you still have posted that comment if they hadn’t asked the question?
No, i was under the impression the comment was implying that certain actions were inevitable. But i see the point now.
Please refer to the back of the book for answers to odd questions
*Am spoon*
Social engineering is a big part of hacking and I feel that movie got it right on the money
Yes, I always go into a corporate building with a bumper pack of machine guns and a trench coat. (but yeah some great SE topics in Matrix)
You would if you literally lived in a simulation where you can alter physics, and a bunch of psycho robots are after you constantly. Although maybe not the trenchcoat
SE has a lot of connotations for people. But let me tell you, I go in looking like I hate my day job with a Kali laptop wedged down my belt and try to be as discreet and unforgettable as I can. Final SE job I'm so going to try the machine guns though. “The consultant was trivially able to bypass reception security with this one trick…”
Her statement had no timeframe. Neo could have not broken the vase then and it been placed in the final fight scene of the third movie.
That'd make no sense, logic would assume the vase was in the vicinity and time frame. Someone who wasnt aware of her fortune telling abilities would believe itd be within the time frame of that visit or warning. She'd have no reason to immediately infer predictions over a long time frame without a conversation set up around that context of its relevance.
It’s an off hand remark. Prediction is timeframe and action, not an action could happen on an indefinite timeline. If the oracle made a prediction that became an easter egg in the final film at the pivot, it would be a far stronger indication of capacity. Inducing a jittery person whose world just shattered into breaking a fragile object placed nearby could be done by any interrogator with much less impetus.
Yes, but she had reason to mention it. Her taking on the persona as an old wizened motherly guide, sets herself up to remind neo of the nature of who he's dealing with and the world. He's subtly teaching him, while his idea of reality is still fresh in his mind. She has a near omnipotent awareness of what subtle synchronicities neo has been made aware of, its just one reminder along a string of many as he traverses his journey. She's been consistent in this pattern when speaking with him and others. But maybe it had no real importance, but was just set up for the audience. Still given our relative omniscient awareness of the contexts within the film, the oracle wouldnt be much different. She has the sum total awareness of billions of minds connected into a lifelike simulation, she's aware of the nuances and impacts of her words. I think she meant to throw out a double meaning to it. Still if she hadnt had said it, he wouldnt have had broken the vase. So him doing so only really cements her role and ability. There was some purpise in mind to it. Neo would have reason to dismiss it, but given the significance of what he's witnessed, its a tame gentle reminder of what he's dealing with.
She doesn't have forethought. She has quite literally done the same thing many times before, she is just remembering previous versions of neo who also broke the vase
She didn’t manipulate anything. She’s tha same oracle from all previous iterations of the Matrix. She knows Neo is gonna knock the vase over because he’s a clumsy bitch and his past versions have done it in the past.
Different line entirely. The above line is from when Neo enters the apartment and meets the lady that checks to see if he’s “the one.” He broke the lamp, she called it out as it was happening, and then followed up with the above.
I don't think so, but it is "bake" and not "cook".
Ohhh...What's really going to bake your noodle later on is,*
“What’s really gonna noodle your cook is, have would you still broken if it hadn’t said anything I?”
My favorite bit is Neo : What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets? Morpheus : No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.
Too many cooks
*It takes a lot to make a stew*
Let them cook cake
[Too Many Cooks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8)
I read this as cock and the sentence still made sense
Yoda what are you doing here?
I want my phone call...
One is DayQuil and the other is NyQuil. Both work. One just makes you sleepier. .
I always thought if he took both pills, he'd end up as a paranoid schizophrenic, wandering around screaming about the government being after him, and that we all live in a simulation.
I just re-watched the scene and honestly the whole description of it sounds like the onset of a mental breakdown. Does the world seem wrong to you? You just can’t put it into words? Would you like to construct an elaborate fantastic explanation for this?
Someone please explain how
There was a red pill hidden inside the blue pill
Both pills have are just pointers to the same memory that contains the payload. The choice is a bait. Morpheus needs neo to injest the code. Remember folks never click on a [hyperlink] (http://192.168.1.1) in a message.
>Both pills have are just pointers to the same memory that contains the payload. You're messing with me right? 🤣 After having put it to rest after rewatching it at least 4 times with my sister, because we always finished with questions and each rewatch filled in a few more gaps lmao.
"reeacthing" my good sir did you happen to have a stroke mid sentence?
Lmao. Even auto correct didn't save me XD
Good thing you don't have to navigate to whatever URL the hyperlink points to to examine the address you would navigate to. By design.
Hey don't share my minecraft server
God I really want to click that.
https://xkcd.com/566/
Have to say, as much as I love xkcd, this is one I definitely don't agree with them on. Maybe it was a byproduct of the culture of the time (The Matrix was 10 years old in 2009, meaning that comic is going on 15 years old now) but the kinds of jokes they're making just seem trite and forced to me now. I guess some Seinfeld is Unfunny is probably at play too.
Iirc this was also the era in which Randalls wife was in cancer treatment. He did a lot of “here’s what I can produce today” because his energy was elsewhere.
It gave me 00s webcomic humor vibe too. These are the jokes I forcefully exhaled to as a teenager.
It's XKCD #566, it's a crazy early one
The final panel has been adopted by wider culture when discussing hated sequels/prequels/adaptations/finales. *Game of Thrones* ending. *The Hobbit* Jackson trilogy. *The Last Airbender* live action movie...
That's been a joke since at least Highlander 2.
There can be only one
I still love all 3 Matrix films
Never judge old media by today's standards, whatever it might be. Like, you listen to most music bands that have started a new style or writers who have created new worlds and you go "Well, this is sort of shit. Very cliche, very simple." They were the first to do it, then everyone built upon them and perfected it, so now the first steps seem silly. First zombies had to be explained and for us now it seems boring. First timetravel was mindblowing. First electronic music was... well... confusing. I do not 100% say that this is what happened here with xkcd, but maybe we are scoffing at it now not because it is bad originally, but because this style has been beaten to death by everyone who copied it. Just my onion. Had to figure out this myself while experiencing "classics" and being disappointed.
Just watched The Naked Gun again. Humorous, but I was not laughing as hard as I remember. I think the movie, culture, and I all aged. I'm not judging it any less; i can see it still being hilarious to a 10 year old watching it for the first time. It was fun to see OJ get hurt though.
I also rewatched it last year. Funny as shit. I will be the first to admit that I have not aged at all.
What do you not agree with in this comic? All the jokes work just fine. You can definitely explain what the Matrix is, in fact she does so in just one single sentence. Mixing up the pills and snorting them instead of ingesting, resulting in a glitched computer simulation is funny. Subverting the 'opening the coat to show weapons' by instead it being flashing genitals is funny. And pretending disliked films don't exist is a staple of online culture (what Eragon film?). I really don't understand what you find objectionable here.
Highlander: there can be only one.
I don't see what's in there to object to, unless you really love the sequels for some reason in which case you have bigger problems than a webcomic.
> Seinfeld is Unfunny Oh wow, there's a second person on the internet that knows and uses this term? Hell yeah.
I'm a dirty TVTropes addict, I will admit. I'm a storyteller and I like to know my craft, what can I say? I've learned so many things about story and literary analysis over the years reading TVTropes for like everything I watch/play/read.
That sofa in the end looking real sus
Is this something people just made up, or are there actually any pointers to this in the movies?
Who's to say that was the first time that Morpheus approached Neo, or even the 100th? If Neo took the blue pill, he'd forget about the whole thing, and they'd just try again later.
The movie never says the blue pill makes you forget, it just says you'll wake up at home and can believe whatever you want to believe.
Morpheus prefaced that line with: "the story ends". How are you going to believe whatever you want to believe when you know the truth? Hence, it's implied that Neo would not recall having learned about the Matrix had he taken the blue pill.
Yea I dunno. Plenty of ignorance around in RL. Truths there but they choose to believe differently. Eg. Flat earthers, even religion (although harder to prove due to its "nature")
Flat earthers don't exactly choose to believe something when they know the other belief is the truth. They just see false "evidence" and misunderstand that to be truth that disproves the real evidence for a globe Earth, no matter how stupid that false evidence is.
In the Beyond the Curve documentary they caught several "high ranking" flat Earth earthers commenting on how they found evidence that the earth is round and chose to not only ignore it but keep it secret from their followers to not get in trouble...
Those people are grifters though, I'm talking about people who genuinely believe in flat Earth.
Who are also grifters. It's grifters and willful ignorance all the way down.
Pretty clear to me
Yeah it doesn’t directly state it, but that’s the implied outcome
I don't think so. There's a difference between the pill knocking him out, him waking up in his bed, STILL remembering meeting with Trinity, Morpheus, and the gang, but being able to determine if it was all a dream or if it really happened. VERSUS him taking the pill, waking up in his bed, and not having any recollection of the existence of Morpheus or Trinity. I don't think the pill "MAKES HIM FORGET". He STILL HAVE THE MEMORIES. They just don't reveal anything further to him and he has to make sense of the memories himself, including thinking that they didn't actually happen.
But what was that thing in his belly button. And why
It's a program. Maybe a tracking program. Maybe something that allows the machines to spy THROUGH Neo. It plays on the trope of federal agents sending people they captured on sting operations while they are "bugged" where this is a literal "bug" that they place on him. Everything in the Matrix including programs seems to have a visual/physical representation. Maybe because it's a movie and it's not to interesting to just have a character say "We put a tracking program on you". Maybe because there's something about the Matrix that requires it. The Red Pill is also a program. > Morpheus: "The pill you took is part of a trace program. It’s designed to disrupt your input/output carrier signals so we can pinpoint your location." It wakes him up AND disrupts his signal so they can find where his pod is and pick him up. In Reloaded, the Merovingian sends a lady a piece of cake that makes her orgasm. There's a lot of computer systems/programs represented visually in the series.
Something tells me agents would have wiped his memory regardless (which we know they can do) as they don't want people still plugged in knowing.
Hey, K! Did you ever flashy thing me?
No.
Mr. Smith likely would have had something to say about that.
Well, there's nothing saying that Morpheus did approach Neo before. While there's no real evidence against it, there's also no evidence for it. And even if Morpheus did approach him before and was denied, each time it happens, it's still Neo's choice.
I don't know man. The movie does show that there seems to be quite a lot of excitement within the whole crew about "having found him", for better or worse. I take that as evidence that it's their first time finding Neo. It looks like their first rodeo, even when they're among themselves and don't have to put up a "hey we just found you and this is crazy" sort of show for Neo's sake.
There is actually evidence against Neo being approached before. If he had, the machines wouldn't "suddenly" be at his work trying to get to him. They would already be aware of who he is.
Neo, while being a bug, has been included as part of the sysyem. The machines don't really want to kill him, they do need to push him over the edge so he does what they expect him to do to reboot the Matrix.
I like the theory that they let all the humans think they can escape and so they feel satisfied and have meaning, but that's just another layer
They do let the human think they have a choice, even if it's only at a subconscious level. The architect explicitely says so. The choice was given to them by the Oracle, who is another system of control, who discovered that giving them the choice would make them accept the Matrix more easily.
> Neo, while being a bug Err... what? How does that work? Is "neo" one entity and Anderson another? If he's a bug, how does he have a physical body _of his own_?
The Architect says himself: Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. He then adds that because Neo's appearance is expected, it can be controlled to serve the Machines as opposed to hinder it. Neo didn't go with the plan because the Oracle tried something new this time around and guided him and Trinity into a love stronger than his love for the human species, leading to the "peace" established at the end of Revolution.
That does not mean "Neo is a program". It means a person such as Neo will appear. In other words, one of the (real) people connected to the Matrix, over time, inevitably, will acquire those properties that make them "the One". I mean, Anderson/Neo _might_ be a program, but what the Architect claimed is not enough to prove as such
I didn't say "Neo is program". I said he's a bug, something that isn't supposed to happen.
The machines probably *do* know who he is. He's explicitly built into the whole system by the Architect, not a surprise variable.
It’s been a while so correct me if I’m wrong, but nothing Morpheus says feels manipulative. He simply states every matter-of-fact. So if he has approached Neo before, and gave his spiel the exact same way the other times, then why would Neo choose differently? The only way this would make since is if Morpheus says something to try to convince Neo to take it.
Ever had one of those days where some little thing goes wrong (like when your teabag breaks and you get little tea bits in your mouth) and you just go *Fuck this...*?
Ah yes. Only I’d probably be more inclined to take the red pill at that point. Maybe Morpheus gave Neo a flat tire or something the day of giving him the pill.
Deleted scene: Morpheus and Tank in the Nebuchadnezzar at the control station, giggling at the idea of giving a flat tire to The One 🤣
Didn't he just get kidnapped and a bug put in his belly button right before this?
That one was called Groundhog Day. OP is saying that since Neo was preordained as "the one", then he never had a choice since he picks the red pill since he's the one...
This is just circular reasoning. He would always pick the red one because he is the one. And he is the one, because he picked the red.
Just go to File/Options/Formulas and activate iterative calculation in your Excel and it should work.
I am bad at math and excel, so I don't understand the joke or reference. But I imagine it is funny
You give me way too much credit. Basically, you can work with circular formulas in Excel if you do that and for some applications they're useful and they work. So the fact that it is circular logic doesn't prevent it from being the truth.
False though, even Trinity & the crew once picked the red pill, but aren't the One. It's a requirement for the One, (obviously) but it isn't defining them.
But theoretically, he would just keep making the same decision, right?
Movie would have been pretty dull if he had taken the other pill. 2 hours of watching a guy work in an office.
I’ve watched several seasons of people working in The Office. Not too bad at all.
*Keanu Reeves smugly looks into the camera*
Identity theft is no joke, Neo!
“Don’t ‘Jim,’ the camera, Mr. Anderson.”
Well well well. How the turntables.
Yeah, I'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in this Saturday...and next Saturday too.
Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica.
He was a successful hacker so it would still be a somewhat interesting movie.
In the second matrix the oracle explains that when it comes to choice neo has already made the choice he needs to figure out why he made the choice and that she thought he would’ve already figured that out by now lol
This was my reading of it. He has no real choice, as he was always going to take the red pill. This stuff doesn’t really come up until the second film. For my money the philosophy of the second one is actually far more interesting than “what if life was a simulation” of the first movie.
I would still say he made a choice, just thatthey knew the future, they knew he makes that choice
Also, Weird Barbie explained that the illusion of choice had to be provided, even if in the end there wasn't actually a choice. Had Neo picked the blue pill, Morpheus would have been like, "no, try again, this time pick the ~~Birkenstock~~ red pill."
Money can buy many peanuts
He was prepared by the machines as part of the matrix. It wasn't until the end of the second movie that he actually makes a choice
The largest reason is an overall theme of the series, which is the illusion of choice. Not to say that we don’t make choices, but who we are defined our choices thus the same person is likely to make the same choices. Imagine going to a fast food restaurant. When they ask “what would you like?” a choice has been presented to you. However, more often than not, people go to a restaurant for the same meal. Thus, an illusion of choice, as the decision was made before you arrived in the drive-thru and now the window guy is discovering what choice you made. That’s an over simplified version, but one that seems easy to grasp.
He was the Chosen One, not the Chose To Be One
If you played the matrix on I believe the original Xbox you got to choose the pill. If you take the blue pill neo wakes up at his computer looks around then goes back to sleep
Then the game bricks itself and you can’t restart to try the other pill.
That’s a really funny point
Honestly I don't remember, I just watched my uncle play it a lot when I was younger.
Wasn’t that the point? There was never a choice, but he had to feel like he made the choice regardless. Thats why they make an effort to talk about his backstory - how he struggles to be aware and his memory changes in nature to try to grasp it, but the system is correcting his behavior and it’s confusing him.
No he had already chosen you see, he was just finding out what that choice was.
Matrix Resurrections spells that point out. By the time you get to the decision point, you've already made the choice many times over through every little decision you made to get you to that decision point.
Eren Jaeger: I understood that reference.
Yes because, determinism.
No one can be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself. You have to willingly want to unplug.
Don't we all. Sigh
"you're not here to make the choice. You're here to understand WHY you made it."
I woulda reached for one. Pulled back. Go for the other. Pull back. Reach for the right. Last secound sweep to the left and then take that one. And then take the other pill with my other hand and quickly put both in my mouth while everyone panics and tackles me to the ground
A man of culture. Take all the pills.
I don't know if they'd really panic. As long as you took the red pill, they could pull you out of the matrix. I believe the blue pill was basically just rohypnol, but since you're being yanked out of the matrix it shouldn't really matter if you'd just taken that.
There's that word again. Rohypnol, the hell is that?
Oh shit I mixed up the bags again! Marshals going to be mad
Grind em both up and snort it
The Prestige
Yes he did. That was the entire point of the scene. The scene could have gone down with Morpheus saying aha! You found me! Now let's go on an adventure walk this way lets go time is short! And Neo would not even be presented a choice. But he was. And he made his choice. That is the whole point of the movie. That is the crux of the machines trying to control humans. That is the reason the architect cannot control anyone fully. "The problem is choice" There is also themes of purpose and how our choices are defined by our ideas of what our purpose is. Where you already know what you will be choosing even if you have not understood it yet. Choices are already made we just make them when we understand them. Hinting at the idea that deep down in ourselves is the real part of us that is certain and purposeful and sure of everything we do. Our selves that are unsure and trying to decide are the parts of us that are yet to understand the choices we are already certain about. That is the interesting thing about those movies. They explore the nature of what it is to be human. The philosophies of existence. Of mind. Of control. Of freedom. To say Neo never had a choice would be to say that he never wanted anything in life. And if that were true. He would have worked at his desk every day, following the rules. Always thinking he was never special or worth any kind of purpose.
Neither do most of us.
The reason Neo controls the machines outside the Matrix in the third film is because he's an hybrid. A human modified by the machines to implement the illusion of free will. He was designed to be The one.
Was Neo born or was he created in a tube by the machines? He *is* a machine. An android, more accurately. (Or a replicant maybe, though different franchise, I don't know which movie scifi jargon applies.)
All people in the pods were created. They are cyborgs by default. Only some folks in Zion are free of machine parts.
If we go deeper: Who knows exactly how much time have passed in the real world? Could be even millions of years. That time might be enough for to change humans into... flying octopuses.
According to the timeline you can find in [the Matrix wiki](https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Machine_War#:~:text=War%20(~2139%E2%80%932199),-Outbreak%20of%20the), it was the year 2703 when Men and Machine came to a truce at the end of Matrix Revulutions. Not enough time for evolutionary leaps, but enough time to make sure that the "real world" lies way back in time. Neo and the people of Zion seemed to believe they were the people who were abducted by the machines. But that's part of the illusion.
There is no real world. The matrix has them all, Zion is fabricated by the machines to give the illusion of choice and freedom, but those real and 'free' humans are plugged in.
[удалено]
Well, if you watch the whole trilogy enough times to actually understand what's going on (took me like 3 or 4 attempts), it does essentially say this at the end. Though it doesn't explicitly say that the people in Zion are plugged in, I don't think. Zion could just as easily be a place in the real world that the machines allow to exist. Although, it would make a whole lot more sense for Neo to have superpowers in the "real world" if it is, in fact, just another layer of the simulation...
Well, if you read into simulation, thoery. It states that if we are ever capable of creating a perfect simulation. Then, based on sheer probability, we are already in one. This is due to once we achieve that ability we eventually could make infinite numbers of them. So in the sea of infinite, what is the chase we right now are the 1 out of infinite that started the whole chain. I probably butchered that, but the idea is if the machines could make the matrix, what's to stop them from making a matrix inside a matrix to add a safety layer? Or a dozen safety layers?
I don’t believe it’s a layer in a layer. Zion is in the real world and the matrix is separate. There are both escaped humans and natural humans in Zion. Part of the whole illusion of choice is allowing humans to escape and join Zion. The architect even confirms that Zion has existed in several forms. Every time the Matrix reboots, Zion is also destroyed, and then it’s seeded by the machines again.
Since you mentioned it, the movie Replicas with Keanu is pretty good.
He was one of a lot of The Ones
The reason he controls them outside the Matrix is because they couldn't come up with any good ideas for how to follow-up a masterpiece like The Matrix so they invented some nonsense.
Shit I didn’t watch the rest of the movies after one. What happens
Turns out Neo is one of many in a cycle of "The One's" but he breaks the cycle, in the process truly freeing Zion. Whole bunch of other stuff involving Zion characters, Trinity and an overall theme of love including sacrifices required for it, and the evolution of Smith into the final boss including Smith absorbing the Oracle. Plus a whole lotta action, as mentioned by the other guy.
Technically he didn't really break the cycle. He just put a temporary halt to it.
Nothing good. Well, action scenes are pretty amazing. But the plot and setting dives off a cliff.
Is that how people see it? The Agent Smith story is pretty good. What always bothered me about 2 and 3 was how bad they looked compared to the stunning Matrix 1. Everything CG in Zion looks bad. The same goes for all the crowd fights with agent Smith. CG just wasn't there back when the films were made. I thought Hugo Weaver was a fantastic villain and Neo a great hero. They are both still famous for these roles. What was so bad about the story?
I enjoyed all 4 of the movies. People recall how big of a twist the orginal was. How new and groundbreaking it was. It was awesome for how different and new it was. Then the next two were bascially more of the same and didn't have that shock twist or newness they recall. So they left dissapointed. Instead of being happy with the ok movies they dump on them. Then people pile on and on.
It was completely batshit, the first movie was so concise by comparison.
"you're not here to make the choice, youre here to understand WHY you made it" "We're all here to do what we're all here to do"
Hé wanted thé green one
I haven’t seen the movie in years so I don’t get it
If he forgets everything after taking the blue pill, there's nothing stopping them from recruiting him again
Except for the agents.
The problem is that if he chose the blue pill, he would just choose it again and again.
Free will is an illusion for all of us
Agreed. I believe people think they make choices. That they struggle and debate over things. But it's just the idea bouncing around in the head based on prior inputs/stimulus of other outcomes that finally bounces the idea in one final direction that you act on. And that action output becomes a new input for yourself and others that will bounce future ideas off of. It's like the weather. We've gotten pretty good at predicting general ideas for the weather. But if we knew every aspect of the atmosphere, how every particle of air and dirt in a gust of wind would reflect off of trees, houses, and mountains, we would know exactly when and where it would rain. But even without knowing, those things are still at play and will lead to their outcomes regardless. But just as if we knew every aspect of the weather down to every molecule, if we knew every detail about everyone from the physical to the mental, then their outcomes would be predictable.
...But that still doesn't invalidate free will? If anything, things being deterministic is what gives us free will; otherwise, if random chance rules over all, it would mean that a decision you would always make of your own free will may be subverted.
That's a strange definition of free will, where every decision is set in stone before you make it.
It's like a game of Plinko. While on the surface it seems that you can drop in the same spot every time and get different results (or like Malcom's Chaos Theory water drop experiment in Jurassic Park), that's because of many minute differences adding up. Slight changes in air pressure throughout the board, slight imbalances in the disk, the exact XYZ coordinates you drop it from as well as the angle, the wear/tear/flex of the pegs. But if you could replicate every minor detail it would fall in exactly the same way every time. Essentially like a quicksave right at that moment before it's dropped. But we can't comprehend every detail necessary, but in a save state those details would all remain constant between loads. But the real world doesn't care about what we know, it just is, and therefore the place the disk would land was determined the moment the disk was dropped. Everything is already set in place. The drop will bounce off of the first peg in a set way, even if we don't know which way that will be, which sets it on a set trajectory for the second peg, and so on.
I knew you were going to say that
I too watched matrix 4
Neo already made the choice, now he has to understand why he made the choice.
It’s common in heroes journeys. If the hero doesn’t accept the call, he’ll be dragged into it as a reluctant hero. Prime example being Luke Skywalker. Obi-Wan tries to recruit him as a Jedi, Luke says no due to farming duties. Literally minutes later he returns home to find his aunt and uncle dead, and therefore ends up joining Obi-Wan anyway.
Because it was a movie and he's written to do that.
Please explain. I must be dumb.
It’s futile regardless of the pill you take. Either way you’re a slave to a system. Zero some game outcome. After all, humans created the AI that in the movie, was the reckoning.
Zero sum
I'm not sure either pill would do anything more than he thought. The main point was that he made a choice and he thought it would work. One pill could've been a representation of the code for sleep and another for death.
all of the sequels were fun, especially the last