Question: What happened to Tank? Every time he is spoken of it is as if he is dead. Well he survived The Matrix so how did he die?
Answer: Marcus Chong wanted a large salary increase to return as Tank. Since he was a fairly minor character, the producers refused and he was written out. Thus his character must have died between the Matrix and Reloaded.
Question: The Burly Brawl doesn't make sense in this movie. Neo as "The One" knows he can win a fight against hundreds of Smith agents , but he does not need to fight. He is not defending anyone at that moment, or fighting for his own survival. Since he is now a super hero, he could simply fly away. Besides he had the important mission of looking for the keymaker in order to save Zion in the real world. The burly brawl was only a waste of time for him. Am I right?
Answer: Technically, he could have flew away sooner...but the Burly Brawl is a sort of introduction to him of the millions of Smiths. He probably thought if he could just destroy the first 5 or 6 then they would be gone forever. After several hundred start attacking, he doesn't really get a decent chance to get away before the end of it. He keeps having to fight them off to get away, and as soon as he can, he does.
Question: When Smith tries to infect Bane and then Neo, they don't seem to be in a lot of pain when Smith plunges his hand into them. (They look more startled than anything else. Also, we are shown that the rebels' digital selves can suffer pain, remember when Trinity got shot?) Wouldn't it hurt if someone pushed his fingers into them, breaking their breastbone/sternum?
Answer: It's not explained in the film but it looks like Smith doesn't physically punch through the sternum; since it is just a digital world his hand melds with the persons body when he punches, and then proceeds to infect. He can control the matrix in some aspects this way.
Question: So how is Neo able to control (or just disable) the machines in the real world? I mean, what's this "source" talk about?
Chosen answer: By picking the left door when meeting the Architect, he has been forever connected with the "Source," the machine main-frame. As such, he can tap into it at will to disable any machines in the real world.
Question: The movie seems to suggest that Link has an ulterior motive for being on the Nebuchadnezzar. Early in the movie, Morpheus says "Given your situation, I can't say I fully understand your reasons for being here", and later Link tells Zee that he made a promise. Is he talking about Tank? What is going on here?
Chosen answer: He has no ulterior motive, he's simply taken over as the ship's "operator" because of a promise that he made to his brother-in-law Dozer before his death in the first film. Given he's married, that his wife has already lost two brothers under Morpheus' command and that, at the beginning at least, he's clearly sceptical about Morpheus' beliefs, it's not unreasonable that his commander would question his presence. Link, however, takes the attitude that a promise is a promise; if others don't entirely understand that, that's their problem.
Question: Minor question, when Trinity and the Keymaker steal the bike, there's a shot of the driver and in the back of his cab is a picture of what looks like a model. Who is she? It seems someone from the art department or set decorator put thought into putting up the picture in the first place, so it seems there might be some significance or inside reference. But it's also seen so briefly I could believe it's just random too.
Answer: Personally I think it's not meant to be significant in any way. A lot of truck drivers have pictures of models in their cabin I'd expect, just added for the stereotype. I don't know who the model is though. BTW, this is a scene from Matrix Reloaded.
Question: Who or what exactly is the Frenchman?
Answer: The Frenchman, aka The Merovingian is an old and powerful program from an older version of the Matrix. He exists in exile and appears to be the most powerful program there. He manipulates other programs, people, and the Matrix to, as the Oracle states, gain more power.
Question: Why can't people jack in when they are in Zion?
Answer: Because Zion is deep underground and apparently the broadcast equipment they use to hack in to the Matrix doesn't work over large distances (or through kilometers of earth).
Question: This may sound like an odd question, but why do Trinity and Neo seem so desperate to see each other alone once they get back to Zion. They seem to have enough time for private moments while they are on the ship. Is sex on the Nebuchadnezzar forbidden?
Chosen answer: I doubt it is but from what we gather from the reaction of Link's girlfriend/wife, the Neb seems to see far more action than any other hovercraft in the fleet. It's likely that they spend most of their time jacked in rescuing people, or fleeing from sentinels. The neb's crew is also small, compared to its usual size (only four people compared to its original eight) so they'd all be involved in the piloting and gunning of the craft.
Question: Why didn't Neo kill the Architect before he left to save Trinity? The Architect seemed important to the machines.
Answer: The Architect, is the father and creator of the Matrix. Not only is he important to the machines, he is important to the Matrix itself. Killing him would most likely affect the Matrix in some way.
Question: Maybe I'm missing something, but why is it such a big deal that Trinity and Morpheus have to take the freeway when they're trying to escape with the Keymaker? Link reminds them that it's never been done, suggesting it's an incredibly risky manoeuvre, but why is this?
Chosen answer: Well, when they're on the freeway everybody in the cars are potential agents...the reason it's so dangerous (as opposed to, say, going by foot) is that agents in large vehicles are obviously more dangerous than agents on foot. The agents fear nothing, which is shown when the two agents in the lorries collide with each other. There are also fewer avenues of escape.
Question: When Neo is talking with the Architect, he mentions there has been 7 matrix's including this one. But later he states that it will be the 7th time they've destroyed Zion. So is he hinting that there has been 7 Zion's too? that doesn't really make sense and how has there been time for 7 huge cities to be constructed/populated when its i think around the years 3000, its not a lot of time since the original matrix was made.
Answer: Actually it's the 6th Matrix and the 6th destruction of Zion. Since no one knows what year it is (the freed humans are guessing and the robots aren't telling) you can't say anything about how long it has taken to construct and populate the 6 Zion's. For all we know it can have been going on for 1,000s of years.
Question: What sort of fabric is Neo's trench coat made of? I would guess wool, but can anyone be more specific?
Answer: It was a custom-length black wool garbardine coat. In an interview with the costume designers, they stated a need for a lighter fabric, but still light and sleek for the actors to wear. About half of Morpheus's crew wear black wool gabardine when they jack into the Matrix. The rest use PVC, leather, or a combination of both.
Question: I don't understand why Persephone let one of the guard go, instead of killing both of them when they're saving the Key Maker. Wouldn't they have made a clean escape that way?
Answer: Persephone wants to really stick it to her husband, the Merovingian. By letting one of the guards go tell him she is assuring that he will find out what she did, but it will be too late to stop her.
Question: This might be regarded as some as an obvious question, but I can't figure it out. In the first movie, when Neo is rescued, it is 1999 in the Matrix, and Morpheus tells him that humankind was taken over by machines sometime in the near future of the Matrix. Now, obviously the machines don't want the humans to find out about this, and they've kept history pretty much accurate so far (with minor alterations to explain the existence of 'agents,' 'rebels,' and so forth) so obviously they can't cycle too far into the future. But they can't stay where they are (if people were born, aged, and died in the space of a few calendar years a lot more people would reject the Matrix) or 'reset' things (same outcome.) They presumably have a way of dealing with this problem; what is it?
Answer: There is no reason to assume that history inside the Matrix would bring about the exact same events as happened in the real world. Even if the humans did start to make the developments that, in the real world, gave rise to the mashines and the Matrix, the machines can simply avoid that end result inside the Matrix. For all we know, the machines were planning to have the humans in the Matrix follow the timeline presented by Star Trek rather than what actually happened. Bear in mind too that the Architect mentioned previous Ones and Zions - every time the matrix is reloaded they start at the same point.
Question: When Neo fights the Merovingian's lackeys in the hallway, is the person dressed in white male or female?
Answer: It was Tiger Chen. The man who trained Keanu for the Matrix trilogy.
Answer: I had a hard time with this too, but to answer your question the actor is indeed a male.
Answer: Neo's abilities, like anyone else in the Matrix, are limited only by his mind and his ability to concentrate. If he is extremely stressed he may not think to use his powers quickly enough.