The Matrix: Revolutions
I’ll break with tradition and move my spoiler-ful notes onto another page which you can follow by clicking on the link above. I’ll even use the hateful “spoiler” word to warn you. And follow with some notes that are spolier-free:
After Spider-man, Ainsley made the very astute comment that superheroes are ideologically opposed to utilitarianism. Now I’m starting to think that they are instead against shallow utility functions. Yes, Neo chooses to save Trin at the end of Reloaded rather than save Zion, but he also chooses to keep the question of humanity’s freedom open. Revolutions explores the consequences of his choice.
Reloaded and Revolutions were shot together, but I think the latter shows that their post-production was done quite separately. The structural problems of the former are absent in the latter, the story flowing quite nicely. The special effects here are slicker and feel very much more apiece with the film as a whole (though still not surpassing the Starship Troopers/Episode I high watermark to my mind). The two characters I found most annoying from the former are, respectively, subdued (Lock) and replaced (Link, with Captain Roland of the Hammer). Day-to-day Zion is minimised too. The music is unobtrusive for most of the film. And in this final chapter we finally get to see some of the costs of fighting a war.
This is an engaging story, but also a satisfying confirmation and conclusion of the philosophy developed in the previous two movies. I loved it.
By Dave Rogers, 2 hours, 53 minutes after the fact
So, David, what is the difference between knowledge and belief?
By Ainsley, 2 days, 1 hour after the fact
That’s easy. Knowledge has to be true. Belief might be.
I still stand by what I said, re: Spiderman. I seem to recall that David’s response to my astute observation was that the thing that makes the hero the HERO was that they can do both.
By Dave Rogers, 2 days, 10 hours after the fact
Hello Ainsley.
How does “knowing” differ from “believing?”
How do you _know_ that knowledge is true?
By Polly Morgan, 1 week, 2 days after the fact
Hi there! Ah now that’s a different question to what you first asked, and a huge bone of contention in modern epistemology. It used to be that everyone thought it was true justified belief (i.e. your belief was true, and it was a justified belief, rather than being coincidentally true), but that theory got falsified in the 60s buy a philospher called Gettier, who came up with a counter-example to a true justified belief, that wasn’t considered to be knowledge. Here’s a link to the paper (it’s only 1 page): http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html
As for defining how you know you know something - well if Ainsley can do that, forget about honours, just go straight for the doctorate and get tenured
By Alan, 1 week, 3 days after the fact
Hello. I’d just like to say that “the structural problems of the former are absent in the latter, the story flowing quite nicely” is utter balls. Like the worst parts of my latest bete noir (TLotR) - the two plot strands run in parallel but are presented sequentially. While this works for Tarantino, it left me wondering what was up with Trinity and that bloke for about an hour while we saw a special effects battle full of characters who were sufficiently underdeveloped that we had no urge to know their fate.
So, Balls.