This is a bit longer than I intended, but bear with me.
First--people keep referring to Neo walking through an "orange glow" in the third film. Everyone is trying to explain it in terms of what it might literally be in the film. But I can't help but think that this is meant to represent Buddha's Golden Path. That fits with a lot of the philosophy we've been seeing in the films. There's no way of knowing exactly when in the film we'll see this, but it has the feeling of an apotheosis about it. The trailer shows it happening before we see the golden light enter Neo's chest, but it might actually be after. Something has happened and Neo has entered onto the path of true enlightenment.
Second--at the end of the trailer, very briefly we see a ship (maybe Niobe's, it isn't clear) descending from the sky, and it is a blue sky. You can see the moon in the background. Something very major happens at the end of the film. It's more than simply defeating the Matrix. From that clip, it looks like somehow the planet itself has been saved. That would take something tremendous to do. Which leads to number three.
Three--Neo becomes God, at least in some form. That's not really much a stretch given everything else we've seen in the films. In fact, it seems somewhat obvious. But, there are a number of potential ways that this can happen. The most basic, I suppose is that he simply transforms into it by the end, in much the same way he became the One at the end of the first film. That's a possibility. He moves to the next level where he realizes that the "real" world is simply another level of a matrix (which is one of the big gnostic ideas that's run through the whole story). We've already seen him start to manifest abilities in the real world at the end of the second film (actually, he begins to have these abilities much earlier, but nobody in the film realizes it--he is dreaming of what happens to Trinity, but he is in the real world when he has these dreams. These are not Matrix-born abilities. He is having prophetic dreams in the real world.) I'm guessing, though, that this isn't what happens because it would probably mean the destruction of the Matrix itself along with the billions plugged into it and the good as well as the bad programs. Given that, and the fact that the Animatrix lays much of the blame squarely on human shoulders (we are definitely the bad guys in the Second Renaissance) I can't figure the Wachowskis going that way. Besides, it doesn't fit the idea of man and machine being interdependent on each other that comes up in Reloaded.
The other major possibility is that Neo somehow merges with the Matrix. This is obviously not a new idea. People have been talking about it quite a bit, actually. It might be a merging of equals, in which the two join to form something greater, or Neo might consume (for lack of a better term) the mentality of the Matrix. People keep looking at the consciousness that Neo is talking to in Revolutions as being what he merges with.
But what about this? I kind of hope this is it, actually. What if the scene with the golden light entering Neo's chest is the end of the battle between Smith and Neo which the entire movie is obviously focused around? It would mirror the end of the first film perfectly where Neo dives inside of Smith. Smith fights it, but cannot contain Neo and he explodes. We've also seen touches of it in the second film with Smith pushing his hand into Neo's chest and trying to remake him as another Smith. In both of these, it was one side trying to eliminate the other. What if the end of the third film, and the end of the fight between Smith and Neo is Smith diving into Neo in a complete reversal of the end of the first film (remember that programs like Seraph and the Oracle look golden to Neo, and while agents didn't at the end of the first film, Smith is now much more than an agent and is an exile himself)? Then, following some of the Zen ideas that have been cropping up throughout the films, Neo doesn't fight Smith's presence like Smith did at the end of the first film. What if he accepts it, and incorporates it into himself as a dark side to himself. Smith hints in the second film that they are "the same." What it that's true? What could Neo become if he incorporates this "other side" of himself? (There is a line in the trailer when Neo is confronting the guy that Smith took over in the real world and Smith tells Neo to look beyond the flesh, and see--at which point I can't tell if he says 'your enemy' or 'your inner me.' If it's the latter, it would fit very well.) To reach true enlightenment, wouldn't Neo have to incorporate both the Yin and Yang?
But whatever form Neo's ascension to godhood takes, it seems like that absolutely has to happen in order for the skies to clear over the real world at the end. And if "reality" is simply another level of a matrix (albeit a more metaphysical one, and not simply one controlled by machines), then someone like Neo could have the abilities to remake the world and repair the damage humans did when they darkened the sky. What do you think?
Very nice, Jezrah, esp the path to enlightenment. as for the second, the Logos flies above the cloud cover, but that does or does not mean anything pertaining to the actual end of the movie, they just choose to put it there...As for Neo becoming God, i agree however, i think Neo must OVERCOME his YIN in order to ascend, rather than accept it.
Have to make a retraction. The golden thing going into Neo's chest definitely isn't Smith. If you look closely at the trailer, you see a sentinel crash through the window of their ship and then it cuts to the shot of something crashing into Neo. You can clearly see the tentacles of the sentinel if you look closely enough. That certainly supports the idea that the "real" world is simply another sort of matrix, though. And it doesn't negate the possibility that Neo and Smith do eventually combine somehow. It just isn't in that scene.
Oh, I never thought that he would go quietly. But after his comments in Reloaded about how he is going to do to Neo what Neo did to him, I can picture Smith (who, to put it mildly, has come unhinged) diving into Neo completely in an attempt to destroy him (or change him into another Smith). But I can picture Neo taking him in and incorporating Smith into himself in some way.
What that Glowing/Tenticle thing is...
i think Neo is still in the ship with Trinity when that scene is taking place..if you look in the preview...a squidy is coming right through the window towards Neo before tat scene comes and that glowing thing that goes through him IS the squidy...
i dont know why though...
kinda reminds me of that Final Fantasy movie though...
I agree with you about them often intentionally messing with our heads in the way they edit trailers, but if you download this one on your computer, you can pause it and look at it frame by frame and what crashed into Neo is definitely a Sentinel. You can clearly see the tentacles. So I don't think it is like Daredevil's vision. Something that should be solid actually passes through Neo in this scene. If it were simply vision, it would kill him. Instead this is like the scene at the end of Reloaded where he puts his hand inside Trinity's chest to bring her back to life. He is able to ignore the physical reality of the world because he sees it as it really is. I stick by my theory that he is essentially seeing the "code" of the real world. It looks too much like the things he sees in green code in the matrix itself. I don't think, though, that the "real" world is simply another machine controlled Matrix. The quality of the code is a clue to that. In the Matrix, Neo can see the actual digits of the code. In the real world what he sees is much more complex. The real world is more of a metaphysical Matrix created by God or whatever. What he is seeing is the artificial shell that imprisons our true spiritual beings to this plane. That comes right out of Gnostic beliefs, which have always underscored these films.
Exactly. In similar fashion to the apotheosis at the end of the first film. He is the one in the Matrix. Now he has to become the One for the real world. The second coming of the savior, or Buddha, or whatever. I have a sneaking suspicion that this ascendence is the scene with him in the glowing corridor. There is just something about the way he is walking. Slow and calm. Like he's walking off into the sunset, or into heaven or something.