Why the Matrix is stupid

So many people love the Matrix, and will go on about how amazing and thought provoking it is. And, on the latter point at least, they are right. However, the thought that it provoked was more about how utterly ridiculous the whole premise of the film was, more than any thoughts like "OMG, what if we'z in a computer?!?!".

There a number of key points to the film that are simply so stupid as ruin the entire things for me (feel free to add any that I may miss).

1. "We scorched the sky"
What the hell kind of method could possibly be employed to achieve permanent solar-blocking cloud cover? I mean, mass detonation of nuclear weapons could cause a huge amount of airborne particles to block out a lot of light, but what was depicted in the film was clearly madly roiling clouds, that apparently covered the entire planet. Right.

2. "They turned us into batteries! (to paraphrase)"
Really? Batteries? How much electricity does a human body produce? Wouldn't there have been more efficient ways of generating electricity? I mean, after the magic cloud show started, the machines somehow managed to build huge structures covered with life support systems and electrical generation systems, not to mention the "fields" where humans were produced, before they ran out of power. Couldn't they have just covered North America in nuclear reactors and called it a day? Waste wouldn't even have been an issue, since they're not alive, I imagine they wouldn't mind, and they probably don't give a shit about ecology. They could have just wiped humans out, why go to such elaborate lengths to imprison billions simply to create a really inefficient power generation system, a huge amount of the power from which would go into maintaining the aforementioned imprisonment. Fuel for the reactors wouldn't necessarily be a problem, since space travel's prohibitive time-frames would be meaningless to unliving machine entities.

3. What's this whole "the One" business?
Seriously, this is, other than the battery thing, the other main part of the film's premise. It's just so... stupid. Why would the machines, after having invested so much effort in building this incredibly dumb system, would they allow weird glitches to potentially fuck it up. I know they came up with some sort of bollocks answer later on in the series, but I don't buy it. Oh no, there are intruders in the Matrix, let's send some agents in. Wrong. Just shut off the server for that part of the Matrix and fry the intruder's target in his tank. Intruder's are now vegetables, target is dead, and some story about an asteroid wiping out Sydney could be fed to the "media". Shit, they wouldn't even need to do that, just have an asteroid wipe out Sydney and fry all of the people in their tanks. It's not like they are a finite resource. And anyway, just where does the One's power come from? The Matrix is software (or maybe firmware... whatever, it's a whole lot of programming), so Neo must be using some kind of cracker application hard coded into him. But, the Matrix is this centuries old computer system, and the One phenomenon is old hat, surely that have some quality countermeasures by now.

I think I may have had more than that, but that's really enough. The whole thing should have ended centuries before it begun, with humanity being wiped out and the earth being an irradiated ball of rock populated by inscrutable sentient machines. In fact, that's what the film should have been: a documentary about this future world, with alien machines scuttling around in the darkness screeching data at each other, going about their strange business. Who wouldn't want to watch 2 hours of that?

You gave three good reasons there.

Anyway, the Matrix trilogy reminds me of Fight Club, in that people like to quote it / talk about it when they feel like being philosophical, which annoys me because the film's premise is ridiculous (Fight Club annoys me for a whole different reason).

In fact, that's what the film should have been: a documentary about this future world, with alien machines scuttling around in the darkness screeching data at each other, going about their strange business. Who wouldn't want to watch 2 hours of that?

Meh, I wouldn't.

Smith made up for it, IMO.
He's my favorite misanthrope.

Originally Posted by Capsicum

You gave three good reasons there.

Anyway, the Matrix trilogy reminds me of Fight Club, in that people like to quote it / talk about it when they feel like being philosophical, which annoys me because the film's premise is ridiculous (Fight Club annoys me for a whole different reason).

Fight club bothered me too, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. When the "twist" was revealed, I was like "Oh, OK... that's... odd" and the rest of the film sort of felt kind of pointless.

Meh, I wouldn't.

I suppose I wouldn't either. But the idea of it being made is quite funny. For me anyway.

Originally Posted by sprinkles

Smith made up for it, IMO.
He's my favorite misanthrope.

Agreed. For the first one at least.

I felt that Hugo Weaving's acting got progressively more hammy as the series dragged on, not to mentioned the whole "I'll turn you into me" nonsense, until it reached the point where I wanted to fast forward any scene in which he appeared.

Originally Posted by Zombie Jesus

So many people love the Matrix, and will go on about how amazing and thought provoking it is. And, on the latter point at least, they are right. However, the thought that it provoked was more about how utterly ridiculous the whole premise of the film was, more than any thoughts like "OMG, what if we'z in a computer?!?!".

There a number of key points to the film that are simply so stupid as ruin the entire things for me (feel free to add any that I may miss).

1. "We scorched the sky"
What the hell kind of method could possibly be employed to achieve permanent solar-blocking cloud cover? I mean, mass detonation of nuclear weapons could cause a huge amount of airborne particles to block out a lot of light, but what was depicted in the film was clearly madly roiling clouds, that apparently covered the entire planet. Right.

2. "They turned us into batteries! (to paraphrase)"
Really? Batteries? How much electricity does a human body produce? Wouldn't there have been more efficient ways of generating electricity? I mean, after the magic cloud show started, the machines somehow managed to build huge structures covered with life support systems and electrical generation systems, not to mention the "fields" where humans were produced, before they ran out of power. Couldn't they have just covered North America in nuclear reactors and called it a day? Waste wouldn't even have been an issue, since they're not alive, I imagine they wouldn't mind, and they probably don't give a shit about ecology. They could have just wiped humans out, why go to such elaborate lengths to imprison billions simply to create a really inefficient power generation system, a huge amount of the power from which would go into maintaining the aforementioned imprisonment. Fuel for the reactors wouldn't necessarily be a problem, since space travel's prohibitive time-frames would be meaningless to unliving machine entities.

3. What's this whole "the One" business?
Seriously, this is, other than the battery thing, the other main part of the film's premise. It's just so... stupid. Why would the machines, after having invested so much effort in building this incredibly dumb system, would they allow weird glitches to potentially fuck it up. I know they came up with some sort of bollocks answer later on in the series, but I don't buy it. Oh no, there are intruders in the Matrix, let's send some agents in. Wrong. Just shut off the server for that part of the Matrix and fry the intruder's target in his tank. Intruder's are now vegetables, target is dead, and some story about an asteroid wiping out Sydney could be fed to the "media". Shit, they wouldn't even need to do that, just have an asteroid wipe out Sydney and fry all of the people in their tanks. It's not like they are a finite resource. And anyway, just where does the One's power come from? The Matrix is software (or maybe firmware... whatever, it's a whole lot of programming), so Neo must be using some kind of cracker application hard coded into him. But, the Matrix is this centuries old computer system, and the One phenomenon is old hat, surely that have some quality countermeasures by now.

I think I may have had more than that, but that's really enough. The whole thing should have ended centuries before it begun, with humanity being wiped out and the earth being an irradiated ball of rock populated by inscrutable sentient machines. In fact, that's what the film should have been: a documentary about this future world, with alien machines scuttling around in the darkness screeching data at each other, going about their strange business. Who wouldn't want to watch 2 hours of that?

I'll attempt to break this down the best I can
1) Depending the devastation caused by the nuclear fallout, you have to speculate how long it would really take to get the earth back to homeostasis. Could be hundreds of years, it could be thousands

2) I'll side with you on this one in that using human beings to generate electricity seems very ineffective, but it may have to do with the fact that we use technology as a slave currently, all it would take is a sentient A.I. to realize that and bam you have one angry hoarde of vengeance seeking machines. Still doubtful since the three laws instilled into A.I. would most likely result in said entity doing anything in its power to meet these demands (think how animals are wired to reproduce) But all in all, probably the biggest inconsistency in the movie

3) The Architect explained Neo in the second movie, he is a mathematical anomaly that just happened as a result of the matrix's programming. So to say, he was Hope incarnate, if that makes any sense

Originally Posted by busyCHilD

I'll attempt to break this down the best I can
1) Depending the devastation caused by the nuclear fallout, you have to speculate how long it would really take to get the earth back to homeostasis. Could be hundreds of years, it could be thousands

True, but most descriptions of nuclear winter, while they involve airborne particles blocking solar radiation from reaching the surface, do not really suggest the sky would be blocked out completely on a global scale. The amount of explosive force needed to put that much material in the air would likely have ended the war, buy destroying both sides, and everything else besides.

To give you an idea of what it would take, consider the Tsar Bomba (the largest nuclear device ever made), and Krakatoa. The latter's 1883 eruption is estimated to have been four times more powerful than the former, which was in turn ten times more powerful than the sum of all explosives detonated in WWII and whose seismic shock was still measurable on it bird passage around the earth. The eruption of Krakatoa caused a 1.2 drop in global temperatures for 5 years. It would take four Tsar Bomba's to achieve this. But this would still leave the sky visible. If it takes four 50 Mt nuclear weapons to achieve that, just what would it take to block out the sky for hundreds of years?

2) I'll side with you on this one in that using human beings to generate electricity seems very ineffective, but it may have to do with the fact that we use technology as a slave currently, all it would take is a sentient A.I. to realize that and bam you have one angry hoarde of vengeance seeking machines. Still doubtful since the three laws instilled into A.I. would most likely result in said entity doing anything in its power to meet these demands (think how animals are wired to reproduce) But all in all, probably the biggest inconsistency in the movie

Considering it's pretty much the whole point of the movie, it's a pretty fatal inconsistency. Also, considering that there was a war being conducted between the humans and machines, it would seem the three laws were not much in use.

3) The Architect explained Neo in the second movie, he is a mathematical anomaly that just happened as a result of the matrix's programming. So to say, he was Hope incarnate, if that makes any sense

Don't buy it. Neo is a human being, not a program. How can he be a programming anomaly? How can he be hope incarnate, incarnated within a computer simulation. That has to be one of the stupidest sounding things I've ever heard (not directed at you, but at the makers of this, what is increasingly apparent to be, piece of idiotic drivel). Really, this ties in with Smith's explanation of the Matrix, and a question that came to mind when I first watched it: why did the machines care if the humans rejected the matrix as reality? How does that help humans, to know? They're still trapped and powerless. Why make a simulation at all? Why not just keep them all in induced comas? Problem solved.