[Standback]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]First of all, let me preface this by saying that my disrespect on this subject is aimed entirely at the film's creators, and not at all at you. Not that I'm intending to be saying anything insulting or rude, but if I get too sarcastic or something - if at any point you believe I am being in any way insulting - I apoligize in advance, and please point it out, so I can apoligize in particular and avoid doing it again.

Sorry about that.

[quoteost_uid0]A) Didn't you see how much trouble he had fighting Smith? [/quoteost_uid0]

Didn't you see how easily he kept a hundred of them off him a few days earlier? Think back to the merging scene in the original. Neo wasn't even fighting. He let the bullets drop; time literally stood still. When he merged with Smith, it wasn't an attack Smith could just dodge - it was the One, an unrelenting force he could not avoid. Somehow, though, he seems to have lost that, because it would be awfully inconvenient for Neo to blow up all the bad guys before they could spend all their SFX budget.

[quoteost_uid0]Smith was a good match anyway. Why? Because he used the Oracle's power, so he knew what Neo was going to do before he did.[/quoteost_uid0]

Possibly. That's an interesting idea, and could easily have been inserted into the film. But it wasn't. All Smith said was that "he already knew he was going to win." There's no attribution of Smith's victory to the powers of the Oracle - only of the knowledge that he will be the victor. It seemed he won simply because he was stronger and faster and more in control. You could say, "well, he *might* have used the Oracle's power," but you certaintly have no sign in the film that he *did.* I wish you had.

[quoteost_uid0]B) My guess, because he was overwritten. Then again, so was the Oracle.[/quoteost_uid0]

My point exactly.

[quoteost_uid0]But was it really Smith who killed him? The Machines disconnected him from the Matrix, and aren't they supposed to go to one of those cell phones before they log out?[/quoteost_uid0]

Again, an interesting theory. And again, absolutely no pointing to that in the film. It's like a horoscope - they explain so little, that you take whatever they give and try to fit what actually happens to fit their vague little prediction. It *feels* like Neo dies fighting Smith; saying the machines stabbed him in the back requires actual stressing of such an event.

Your responses to the other people's ideas I won't answer; I just gave them as examples of stuff other people saw as obviously as you do your solution. Feel free to take it up with them.

[quoteost_uid0]
[quoteost_uid0]"Why do you want to go to the Machine City."[/quoteost_uid0]
He didn't answer that question to anyone, because he probably didn't know back then. Or he did but he knew he was going to die and didn't want anyone to stop him. However, if you've watched the end, it seems pretty clear to me why he went.[/quoteost_uid0]

It's perfectly clear to me why the writers needed him there - that's where they need him for the grand finale. Neo suddenly deciding, "My god, I need to go somewhere insanely dangerous and get myself killed," on the other hand, makes no sense whatsoever. It's heavy-handed plot-forcing and nothing more. It *could* have been done if we'd seen Neo get an actual vision some kind... or better yet, if Neo *had* a smattering of a reason why he wanted to go. But nooooooo...

I'm reminded of one of R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books, where one character proudly announces that he's discovered a wonderful spell, "Create Plot Device." Well, he doesn't *call* it that, but describes it as "getting you where you [iost_uid0]need[/iost_uid0] to be." By which he means, "Where the good Mr. Salvatore needs you to be so this plot actually goes somewhere." So of course moments later a shipload of people appear at the next major plot event. Subtle, dude. This is exactly the same. Plotting and motive are too hard, let's just get to the bit where he blows stuff up.

[quoteost_uid0]If there was no mystery, then why do you have so many unanswered questions? You want mystery, yet you want all the answers to your questions presented on a silver platter. Something doesn't fit here.[/quoteost_uid0]

All right, [iost_uid0]this[/iost_uid0] is just wrong. "Unanswered questions" and "mystery" are far from the same thing. When twelve guests at a secluded vacation home discover their host dead, that's mystery. When the twelve simultaneously have a heart attack and die, and one of them spends his dying minutes scrawling "It was me, I'm sorry, I'm secretly a Priest of the Bovine Order" on the wall, I'm asking "what the heck?" That's an unanswered question, but it sure isn't a mystery.

"How did Neo kill Smith?" is not presented as a mystery. It's presented as a long fight, at the end of which, Neo wins. They just skip that tiny little stage in which he actually, like, does the winning. "What is the Matrix?", "Who are these guys chasing me?", "What's going on in the real world?", and "Is Neo the One?" are mysteries - they're presented as something that at the beginning we don't know, and lo and behold, as the movie goes on, we find out. That's what a mystery movie is *about.*

Simply saying "we won't explain to you what the h*** is going on, neener neener neener" does not qualify.

That's all.[/colorost_uid0]