in reference to when i said the matrix made thinking cool, i was being satirical, lest we get confused and misread what i am saying:
accepting generic thought patterns, like public education, the nightly news, and basic consumerism is the norm. no one is really saying anything new, or insightful, in the land of the generic, by definition, i suppose.
thinking critically is rare. detached analysis is rare. thinking you are deep, because a hollywood blockbuster introduced you into a world of intrigue, of conspiracy that you wish you were part of is, is no longer rare. theologians, anthropologists, philosophers, and scientists of all kinds, are veterans of the type of thought that the matrix has suddenly made cool. things that are rare:huge genitals, genius, artistic talent, integrity, precious metals and stones. all cool, because they are rare. not rare: looking at basic philosophical questions due to the matrix and thinking you are the deepest and coolest coffee house thinker since sartre.
keeping up the thought, after thinking has stopped being a leather jacketed trend, would prove cooler still, but again, is destined to rarity. 

I just can’t believe that a movie with 15 minutes of new plot and 2 hours of drawn out overdone fight scenes was such a hit?????

I said 15 minutes of “new plot” the rest was recycled for those who didn’t understand the first movie to have another go at it.

I love the conversations that have been taking place here...and maybe I’m a bit behind you all.  Please don’t think I’m simple for asking the following questions about this sequel:
1.  Is Zion another Matrix?
2.  If so, are certain members of that population not human, but programs (i.e., Morpheus, Trinity, the High Council Members...)?
3.  Is Neo a program (called “The One") or is a program attached to him?  I think The Architect says so, but I can’t really follow everything he says...which he said we wouldn’t, incidentally!
4. Who is the French guy supposed to be, anyway?  A former “One” who escaped rather than face deletion...and took his Trinity (Persephone) with him?
5. What on earth is going on with Agent Smith?  Is he a virus now, whereas before he wasn’t?  Is he now trying to destroy the machines, too, or just Neo?
6. Who’s side is The Oracle really on?  Or is she capable of “choosing sides”?
7.  Does anyone think that there is really something “supernatural” going on in this film? I mean, I think that Neo is clearly a special “One” of all the “Ones”, if you can believe what the French man and The Architect say about him...(and I think that you have to assume that everything the Architect says is true, or else all bets are off anyway).  The question for me becomes this:  what makes Neo different from the previous 5 Ones?  He is different BEFORE he makes the choice to save Trinity instead of going through the other door...did the Architect need to provide that choice to Neo to figure out something new about human psyche and load that info. into the new version of the One?  Because otherwise, why did the Architect give him a choice at all?  He didn’t have to, did he?
Maybe what makes Neo different is that, yes, he is The One according to the Matrix program, but he is also The One in the religious sense that the people of Zion believe him to be, a One chosen by a “god” who really exists above and beyond the context of the Matrix, who has decided to send the people of Zion a true saviour to defeat the machines this time?  That is the only thing that would explain Neo’s ability to stop the machines at the end of Reloaded, unless, well, see question 1 again.
I would truly appreciate any insights or comments.  I feel like I need to at least try to comprehend what the hell was happening before I can participate in the deconstruction of the movie, and its possible meanings and connections. 

Question 1—I think that last conversation between Neo and the Architect pretty well prevents us from thinking Zion is within the Matrix assuming, of course, that the architect wasn’t lying.

Question 2—follows from above.

3. Following questions 1 and 2, Neo isn’t a program but a biological life whose consciousness is aligned with his physical environment, as opposed to having a consciousness determined by a machine.  Neo, though—in fact, the whole Zion thing—is the product of a programming glitch that allows 1% error (in other words, we could say it allows 1% of those caught in the Matrix to wake up and realize their lives have been determined by a machine).

4. The Merovingian seemed to be defined by the control of, and access to, information.  I take it, then, that he’s a very old program, and not a former version of The One.  It’s not at all clear why he’s important.  Hopefully he’ll play a significant role in the last film.  If they just drop him, that’ll be a creative failure on the part of the WBs.

5. Smith is a renegade program hiding out in the Matrix.  His ability to replicate himself and inhabit the human consciousness of those he takes over means he could, conceivable, take over the Matrix and, at the same time, cure the programming glitch.  All consciousness would then be Smith’s, or the machine’s.  But then the consciousness of the Machine itself would be Smith’s, a sacrifice on the part of the machine that developed the Matrix and all other programs, for that matter.  So Smith is a bit of a renegade in the machine world, as well as being a serious threat to humanity.  Neo will have to take him out.

more to come.

Jim

The architect hints that Zion has be created, and destroted over and over again. He doesn’t say whether it was done so in or out of the matrix. Plus at the end of the film Neo is able to control the sentinals as if he was still in the matrix (because he was, but hadn’t realized it yet). 

The architect saying Neo could have 24 women and 7 men to restart zion doesn’t imply that Zion is outside of the matrix. If fact the concept that Zion has been started over and over again, would be dramatically easier if Zion was in the matrix. 

Leave could also imply leaving the room that the architect was in.

In the sentence, “leave” referred to what Neo would be allowed to do after his “unique insights” were incorporated into the Mainframe, so it would be after Neo left that particular room.  It makes the most sense if it refers to leaving the Matrix. 

The Architect made it pretty clear that the 1% of error was something they couldn’t get rid of—people were always going to be escaping.  What his goal seems to be is to account for every possible permutation with each Zion that rises and falls, incorporating each one into the Matrix until all possibilities were exhausted and the Matrix had total control again.

This is obviously a rationalist’s fantasy, of course, but we have no reason to believe the machines aren’t kidding themselves about a few things either. 

Again, I’m not saying it’s not possible that Zion is part of the Matrix. I’m just pointing out a couple things that point away from that.  I suspect the ambiguity—the possibility that this could be true—was deliberate.

Jim

That’s it, though—the AI isn’t creating Zion, it’s just letting people leave and create a Zion, which it can afford to do given that it can efficiently destroy it once it grows enough to be a threat.  The Architect was absolutely certain that Zion would be destroyed this time around, saying they’ve gotten very good at it.

I have a hard time with the premise that an AI that gained consciousness would be free from pride, ego, vanity...why?  Consciousness itself presupposes the possibility of these, since they’re simply inflations of the individual consciousness made possible by self reflection. 

However, when I describe the premise of the machine as “the rationalist’s dream” this doesn’t require vanity, in a human sense, on the part of the machine.  It’s the vanity of reason itself—the belief that it is sufficient, by itself, to control all.  That vanity is very common and even expressed in films like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.  It is always wrong, of course, as you observe—the very opposite winds up defeating it.  In the case of the Matrix, this is going to be a combination of religious consciousness with romantic love.

Probably the best analog to this in the films is the fact that these death prophecies all come literally true but are never final.  The Architect was right, Trinity did die.  Neo brought her back.  The Oracle was right, Neo had to die saving Morpheus. Trinity brought him back.  It’s the irrational ending that the machines either never see or dont’ want to see.

I agree, though, that the Matrix follows many other Sci-Fi films (you left out the Terminator) in how it uses its premise, and yes, it is all Frankenstein.  For that matter, you could say it’s Oedipus or Genesis.  I would say the Matrix is different, though, in that the control doesn’t just extend to physical slavery of human beings, but to cover human consciousness as well in as total a system as possible.

Jim

You have to understand computer programming to understand why it would have programs to monitro events inside the matrix. Computers programs are not a program, only the most basic one 20 years ago were. A modern computer program or aplication is made up of a few dozen to several thousand individual programs that all work together.  So the Structure of the matrix with it sentinal programs makes complete sense, without granting human characteristics to the machines.

Think of it this way? Do you have microsoft windows? Is Mcafee anti virus supposed to make your computer run like shit and lock up all the time? In a system as small and simple as your PC programs lock up all the time, they fight for system resources, and some just don’t work. The original program for the system that would become the matrix would have had to be programmed by less then perfect humans, or by other machines programmed at some point by humans. So the matrix would be doomed to flaws. Also consider that Neo is a program, and that he is not flawed, but a subroutine to the defender of Zion program that offers enough strife and drama to keep the human batteries happy.

This is an interesting point, how could smith infect a realperson in zion, if that person wasn’t really in the matrix as well? Plus if a program from the matrix could live in the mind of a conscience person that wasn’t in the matrix, then why couldn’t the conscience of a personl ive as a program in the matrix with out the body (if say one was killed in real life while they were in the matrix). The answer is again, because at all time they all are in the matrix. So when somebody is killed back on the ship they died in the matrix, because they were really in the matrix when they died.