Q&A Much ado about Matrix Reloaded...

On May 18, 2007, at 8:20 PM, Richard wrote:

Dear Sir,

I just watched the Matrix Reloaded, and it occured to me that it is nothing.

Nothing was said. Nothing occurred. Often characters (if there were
any) acted, and those actions changed nothing and meant nothing. For
Neo, who was nothing, nothing seemed to be able to stop him from his
relentless pursuit of nothing. It was great the way he saved Trinity
in the end so that together they could do nothing.

I really empathised with the characters. They seemed to feel nothing
and when I watched the film I felt nothing too.

My question is: what exactly was being 'reloaded' if the result was
nothing? If nothing squared equals nothing, that is indisputable
evidance for something.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Richard

To which I replied:

Richard,

Thank you for your thoughtful dissection of Matrix Reloaded. Your willingness to wait four years to watch the movie or to write this e-mail and hold onto it for up to four years before sending it to us shows that you have the potential to really sit around doing nothing professionally one day. No hurry.

The answer to your question is that there were many things being reloaded, 1) the same effects from the original film were "reloaded", 2) the same theatre goers were "reloaded" into theaters to watch the movie, 3) many of the same actors were "reloaded" to make the whole reloading process that much more visceral, 3) the same story lines were also "reloaded" so that it was almost like the same movie was just reloaded into the can. Naturally, all of this reloading resulted in a certain negation akin to white noise and as such would be commonly characterized by a metaphorical "nothing" which is an appropriate topic for this forum.

As for your statement about nothing squared equalling nothing, I'm not quite sure where you are trying to take that. But no, that is not evidence for something (well, it could be evidence of math wasting everyones valuable time, but that can be proved in many other ways). But we also don't need any evidence for something besides its existence. Sometimes, even that seems excessive.

--Xymyl (KON)