Sion & Zion

Having watched most of the last sad Matrix movie on an international flight I was once again irritated by the total ineptitude showed by both sides militarily in the human/computer war. The humans congregate into a one-centre bunker society presumably in order to develop an industrial production capacity that enables them to produce enormous quantities of unshielded exoskeleton gun platforms totally specialised for a single battle in a single location and impossible to use in any other context. They then back up this unnecessary walking capacity - the exoskeletons are only going to be operating in a space a couple of hundred yards across; why aren't they fixed gun platforms? - with ammunition suppliers who push small barrows with small wheels across free-fire zones that are covered with rubble. When this tactic fails they have no better idea than all to assemble in one room so that the machines needn't have to hunt for them down those thin passages that they seem to find so difficult and can kill them all in one operation. Haven't they ever heard of the term 'disperse'? Or 'decentralise'? Or 'guerilla'? or indeed 'Flee'?

And then in response the machines
(a) don't hold off their drills so that both can make simultaneous entries:
(b) don't immediately descend to ground level so that the Walkers would shoot each other:
(c) don't use gas, shrapnel, or any other way of taking out the unprotected Walker drivers other than by rather ineffectually scratching at them with long arms.
This both
(1) reminds us what a great movie Seven Samurai was, as if we needed reminding - the only movie battle to make military sense; and
(2) raises the question of whether Sion is in fact modelled on Israel.

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