> _The Matrix Reloaded_ would have made sense if the filmmakers had
> posed the following question clearly: are the premises of _The
> Matrix_ -- the idea that Neo is the One who can save humanity, and
> the mode of resistance to the Matrix is to fight within it by freeing
> one's mind from its "reality principle" -- themselves part of the
> Matrix, a simulacrum of resistance that makes the Matrix work?
But that's exactly what you saw. Neo calls down EMP-airstrikes on the Sentinels and goes mysteriously unconscious -- in mass-cultural terms, the moment when the wired age mutates into the wireless age.
Spoiler alert: if you haven't seen the flick... don't read any further.
(1) I was a little afraid the Wachowskis would be corrupted by M1, but instead, they turned up the heat in M2. Good pacing (usually the weakest element of sci-fi flicks), a sharp sound-track, Cornel West throwing down Vibe, and the rabbit hole runs ever deeper. I have a few quibbles about characters who seem to relate solely through serial open-heart massages (though Carrie-Ann Moss simply radiates), but then, my neural net has been warped by extremely dangerous overdoses of Kieslowski.
(2) The One is for All.
(3) Zion: Evangelion's geofront plus Porto Alegre.
(4) Neo-national tropes: vaguely French code-villain, linked to horror films. Vaguely Chinese character guards Oracle, linked to HK films. Vaguely Japanese character makes keys, linked to anime films. Vaguely German entity inhabits the core, linked to cosmology. The ship's operator is a Rasta named Link (reggae signifier). The Kid is the obligatory punk signifier. The anti-Link: the Twins, Brit-sounding avatars of neocolonialism.
(5) The Oracle's key question is also a reference to McGoohan's "The Prisoner": *why*? (the episode entitled "The General").
-- DRR