Chapter 154: Mecha vs. Robot

Originally, the box office performance of "The Matrix" in the mainland market could only be described as decent, but it was far from being a hit.

The first film was released in 2000 and grossed $1700 million, ranking ninth in the year.

The second and third films were both released in 2003, also grossing around 4300 million, ranking third and fourth for the year.

It ranks behind "Cell Phone" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets".

There are many reasons why the box office performance did not reach the same level as Titanic.

Firstly, the original version is an authentic Hollywood movie after all, and some viewers subconsciously don’t want to watch it.

For example, in the Transformers series, the Lord of the Rings series, and The Hobbit, you can tell from the trailers that the special effects will be great, but because the characters and actors are all foreigners, some viewers will subconsciously not want to watch them due to a lack of immersion.

If it was changed to "Havoc in Heaven", many Chinese people would buy tickets without thinking too much.

For example, the 14 film "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" directed by Andy Lau had a terrible plot and a Douban score of 4.4, but it still earned 10.45 billion yuan.

The film's huge box office success proves that "Journey to the West" is indeed the number one IP in Chinese-language films.

And in this world, this IP temporarily belongs to "The Matrix".

In fact, many viewers still don’t quite understand the setting of the film, but they are proud of its huge success in the global market and like it.

Just like after "The Three-Body Problem" won the "Hugo Award" and was sought after by the Western world, more and more people liked this work.

Even if you find it difficult to watch for the first time, you won’t think it’s a problem with the work.

The same is true for Jiang Heng's version of "The Matrix" series. Most of the audience in the venue are waiting to watch the movie with excitement.

At the beginning of the film, the plot continues from the previous part, with Neo and Bane (the person possessed by Smith) lying head to head. The scene has a bit of an allegorical feel.

At the beginning of the story, Neo and Smith are mortal enemies, and in the end they have to fight it out.

Neo is trapped in the train station, which is the passage between the Matrix and the real world. He is controlled by a program called Train Man. The boss of Train Man is none other than Merovenga, the villain in the second part, who offers a huge reward for the capture of Morpheus and others.

Neo couldn't use all his abilities at the train station and was trapped there.

Morpheus and Trinity went to see the Prophet, and then went to see Merovenga with the Prophet's bodyguard Seraph.

As the "underground emperor" in the Matrix world, Merovenga is very powerful, and even wants Morpheus and others to kill the prophet in exchange for Neo.

Naturally, Morpheus and others could not agree to such conditions. After a fight, Trinity pointed her gun at Merowenda's head, and the bodyguard pointed his gun at Morpheus and others.

Trinity is simple and brutal. Either hand over Neo or everyone will die together.

Melowinja naturally didn't want to die, so he quickly compromised.

Trinity took the train to the station and picked up Neo.

Neo was unwilling to leave the Matrix and wanted to see the prophet.

He wanted to know why the prophet didn't tell him about the other saviors, and why he could kill the robot octopus with his mind in the real world.

The prophet's answer was that he would not tell you about other saviors, but that the time had not come yet. As for killing the robot octopus with the mind, it was because the power of the savior did not only come from the matrix, but from the source.

The prophet also told Neo that Smith was his opposite and that he wanted to destroy everything, and only Neo could stop him.

After Neo left, Smith found the prophet and assimilated him. Smith became more powerful and laughed wildly.

After seeing this part of the plot, the audience was somewhat confused. Could it be that the real world that humans think of as Zion is actually also a matrix?
If this is the setting, the idea is too grand.

At the same time that Neo returns from the Matrix, Bane (the man possessed by Smith) also wakes up.

After that, there is a long scene of the human army preparing for the battlefield, including the launch of spacecraft, which was quite shocking to watch in 03.

Bane tampered with the spacecraft, preventing it from taking off.

Trinity went to check alone and was held hostage by Bane. Neo came to rescue him, only to find that his teammate was possessed by Smith.

Although Ben was killed in the end, his eyes were burned.

The robot army finally arrived, and the human base also gathered a large number of mecha troops.

In terms of appearance, it is similar to the mecha in "Pacific Rim", but it is much smaller, only about three meters tall.

When thousands of mechas were dispatched together and opened fire on the octopus robots that poured in from the passage that had just been drilled, the audience in the venue were all excited. After all, this was a shocking scene that had never been seen in a Chinese-language movie.

Even Chen Kaige thought that this scene was well shot and could be used as a reference when making some war movies in the future.

There were so many octopus robots that they covered the entire place and made people's scalps numb. The destroyed robots and mechas were piled up like mountains.

This plot fully demonstrates the cruelty of the war between humans and robots, which is an effective counterattack against the claim that "The Matrix" is "pseudo-sci-fi".
Before this, some media both in mainland China and abroad said that "The Matrix" was actually a "pseudo-science fiction" movie, but it was just disguised as a "science fiction" movie, with the main action scenes still being fists and gun fights, and it could only be regarded as an upgraded version of a Hong Kong movie.

The emergence of this plot has dispelled the rumors.

On Zion's side, Morpheus drove the spaceship back and used an electromagnetic pulse cannon to kill a large number of octopus robots, allowing humans to gain a brief period of peace. However, it didn't take long before another overwhelming number of octopus robots came to kill them.

The male protagonist Neo and the female protagonist drove a spaceship to the Machine City together, and saw a huge human power station with countless humans still sleeping inside. The scene was both shocking and sad.

Soon, a group of mechanical monsters flew towards the spaceship. Neo used his mind to repel the octopus robot again, which further proved that the so-called real world is likely to be another matrix.

In order to get rid of more and more octopus robots, the spacecraft broke through the lightning layer, and the hero and heroine saw the real sky for the first time. The scene was similar to the one in "A Chinese Ghost Story 3: Dao Dao Dao" where the female ghost Xiao Zhuo carried the little monk Shifang on her back and broke through the dark clouds, with Buddha's light shining everywhere.

After the spaceship crashed, the heroine Trinity was seriously injured and died.

Neo meets the Machine Master and tells him about Smith's problem.

Smith is no longer controlled by the matrix and begins to threaten the safety of the matrix. If he is not eliminated, the matrix will soon collapse and everything will be destroyed.

Neo proposed that he enter the matrix to destroy Smith, and then the Machine City would give up the attack on Zion and everyone would live in peace. The Machine Master agreed to Neo's proposal and linked Neo to the matrix.

Neo, who entered the matrix, soon met Smith, but found that all the people in the matrix had been assimilated by him. Smith was the only one in the matrix, just like a super virus infecting all files.

(End of this chapter)