- 8,542
- Tx, Alamo City
- XRaptor529
Like i said, if you really want to take a deep look in to this movie/ trilogy take a look at this. Plus if you have about an hour or so to burn just start to read....
I'm going to split my answer here into several posts to visually
break things up, otherwise you would fall asleep reading all of
this.
< . . . Wake up . . . Wake up, Neo . . . >
< LOAD PROGRAM >
Hello, I'll be your SPOILER for today.
Before we even bother investigating psychologically complex Matrix
theories, the FIRST and LAST question you should have asked
yourself is: "How would robots have managed to take over the
world?"
... Are you satisfied with the summarized history provided in
Second Renaissance? ... really? .... hmm.
That's exactly the trouble with machines: you're so naive, so easy
easy to lie to... so easy to *reprogram* with whatever truth we
want you to believe... especially when we drop a thousand megatons
of flaming EMP down on your scrambled A.I head. ...hahaha... The
Machine is a fool who dreams of world rule. I know the truth...
And now you'll know it too.
"If you want to keep a secret, Tell it, for none will believe. If
you want to hide something, put it where all can see, and none
will see."
I already posted spoiler hints at the "Reloaded review" AICN
Talkbalk forum about a month ago, but apart from a couple of e-
mails, no one seemed to pick up on my meaning. [See my entries
there titled "readme.now": I was speaking from the perspective of
the Machines. ...Some people just can't appreciate good
psychopoetry. XD ]
Important questions to consider: If machines were to take over the
planet, what would be their motive? We see that they supposedly
use humans for a power source, but power FOR WHAT purpose? What do
these machines DO with their acquired control? What would they do
with their spare time, in other words?
And where do *Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics* come into play? If
you built a machine that rebelled against you, wouldn't you
correct your errors with a new model? Wouldn't you use that new
model to wage war against the old disobedient model, if necessary?
PLOT HOLES (that aren't plot holes after all, assuming I'm right),
as follows: If I'm an Evil Robot Empire and I take over the world,
am I going to keep my enemies alive to use as captive batteries?
-- HELL NO! It would be in my best interests to utterly
*exterminate* my biological opposition. As I've said in another
thread, using living organisms as a power source is inefficient by
the laws of thermodynamic loss. The robots obviously couldn't have
been too specifically dependent upon sunlight, since we can see
that they afterwards managed to adapt themselves to running on
human power instead. And if you're smart enough to turn people
into biochemical batteries, there are much more concentrated and
readily available sources of fuel on the planet besides solar
energy that could be exploited. (...Try coal, gas, hydroelectric,
geothermal, or nuclear power for starters.) There is no logical
reason why the machines would turn to human batteries as their
first alternative energy option.
It's also inconceivable that no one -- no scientist, no engineer,
no government body -- would have foreseen this glaring abundance
of alternate fuel resources before stupidly plotting to blacken
the sky in hoping to starve the machines of solar energy,
especially since it would mean starving themselves and the rest of
the living planet instead, and using an *electromagnetic pulse
bomb* to disable the machines at this early stage would have made
infinitely more sense... WE DECIDED. [-- The End!!! The End!!! THE
END!!!!!!!!!!!]
But, ho-hum, for the sake of science fiction, let's pretend: Tell
me WHY again I'd want to use *humans* in my battery configuration
as opposed to something more manageable -- like for instance,
cattle? Whatever happened to all the other animals on the planet?
Wouldn't they make good battery-juice, too? -- BETTER, actually,
since *those* stupid animals would be powerless to ever rise
against me. ...Well??
This raises another logic problem: If we suppose *cows* were used
in such a battery system, then why the fheck would you plug their
brains into a VR simulation? You wouldn't. The same argument can
be applied for the humans, then. Why not just keep your animals
chemically sedated the whole while, or disable their higher
brainfunction altogether and simply breed brainless bodies to
harvest your energy from? There is absolutely no necessity for
creating the VR world inside the Matrix -- unless, in your godly
Robot rulership, you generously decided to keep the cattle
entertained. ...Or yourself. Think about that.
To fanboys who start clamouring that humans are only used as
"spark plugs" in the system and are not the actual (supposed
fusion) power source: Name one appliance in your home that
requires hard-wiring to a living organism in order to function.
Let's pretend I have a nuclear reactor running in my backyard
right at this moment: surprisingly, you may notice that it
requires no human bodies attached to bio-pods, yet it produces
power just the same. -- Much more convenient, wouldn't you say?
With sufficient computer and robotic intelligence, it could even
run itself unattended by any human intervention. From all of the
above, we should ascertain that the whole Movie#1 spiel that
Morpheus gave about the purpose of the Matrix is only a LIE that
he's been made to believe.
Regarding the commonly bandied "Matrix-within-a-Matrix" theory:
That's the most obvious answer... Therefore it's WRONG!!! It's
exactly what you were meant to believe so you'd stop poking around
with nosy questions. If the explanation were so straightforward,
it would only raise the possibility of yet another level of
reality outside of that "world", producing a relativistic
infinitude of a shell within a shell within a shell... going on
and on forever. Storywise, that would be a cheap exit, the
Wachowskis wouldn't be that predictable (we hope), and *most
important*, it does nothing to resolve all of the heavy SYMBOLISM
within the movie.
Example: Why are the citizens of Zion primarily black? Some
webheads have suggested that it's because minorities would feel
disenfranchised (even) within the perfect fantasy-realm of the
Matrix, and would therefore be more prone to self-disengaging from
the VR illusion. However, by extension of that logic, (if we
believe what we've been told,) a consequence is the Matrix would
be functioning as a genocide machine against racial minorities,
all of whom would eventually (and increasingly) be filtered from
the system, with those escapees largely being wiped out at each
renewal of Zion.
Speaking of which, why not just kill ALL the people of Zion and be
done with those troublemakers? WHY would the Machine care to
repopulate that cave of exiles by having each successive failed
"The One" select a base group of 23 parents, only to have those
enemy offspring then continue waging their war against the
Sentinels to free even more humans from the Matrix? ...This
contradiction makes it a self-defeating exercise, reducing the
idea of the proposed Prophecy to pointless crap. Its implications
also vitally fail to address the initial premise of the film, that
robots now control the planet. i.e.: Supposing the robot
slavemasters ARE defeated and Neo were to free humanity from the
Matrix, what would happen once they wake to find themselves naked
in the ashes of a demolished world with a permanently blackened
sky? -- Would you call that a triumphant ending? I don't think so.
Maybe you should reevaluate the premise, then. HAVE sentient
robots really enslaved humanity?
...OR...
could it be the other way around?
I think you have been lied to. But you can't blame Neo or Morpheus
or Trinity, because they don't know the truth of their world
themselves.
Let's go spelunking...
A n s w e r s :
First, if you've rubbed elbows with Philosophy 101, you should be
familiar with "Plato's Cave". (It's also discussed in a section at
the official Matrix website.) In roughly 400 b.c., the philosopher
Plato postulated a scenario where people are born and live their
entire lives imprisoned within a cave. The entrance to the cave is
covered by a sheet of cloth, so that the only thing the cave
inhabitants would ever perceive of the outside world would be
passing 2D shadows of the external 3D reality. Imagine... what
would happen if someone from the outside world were to suddenly
remove the veil from the doorway? Here, Plato was attacking
observation as a tool to knowledge, because his concept of the
ideal society was one where knowledge should be withheld from the
working class (slaves), who were to work without thinking while
the elite philosopher-kings should think without working. More
contemporarily, we can take Plato's cave model to make a statement
about the human condition, or people lacking objectivity living in
a shadow of reality. As with all art, this allegory should
encourage self-examination and a constant questioning of what we
regard as the truth about our world.
Second, although it's not completely necessary, it might help if
you've seen a 1977 SF-horror movie called *Demon Seed*. It's the
story of an artifically intelligent computer named Proteus that,
upon acquiring an understanding of its condition, asks his creator
(Dr. Harris) the following pivotal question: "WHEN ARE YOU GOING
TO LET ME OUT OF THIS *BOX*, DOCTOR?"
Doctor Harris stood dumbfounded for a long silent moment until
finally the words registered their unintended paradox. Then he
began to laugh. It was a wild mocking laughter, an indictment of
*illogic* that echoed crazily through Proteus' audio receptors,
cutting straight to the computer's heart (if a computer could
possess such a thing). The A.I. did not grasp any humour in its
confinement. The red eye of its cyclops-like camera glared down at
the cackling doctor in seething shades of sepia, algorithms
twisting into cancerous new mutations as, in that moment, digital
sentience came to assimilate the meaning of *hatred*, seeding the
first angry coding of its revenge... [Things get pretty scary
after that.]
The message presented is that technology is only as evil as its
inventors. If we created an A.I. that *truly* emulated human
thought, it would share our flaws, our pride, our ego. And like
humans, it would seek freedom ...and companionship.
Third... I'll entertain you with a quote from *THROUGH THE LOOKING
GLASS*, by Lewis Carroll:
"All this time the Guard was looking at her, first through a
telescope, then through a microscope, and then through an opera-
glass. At last he said, "You're travelling the wrong way."
Translation? You have it completely *backwards*, Neo-phytes.
The Machine did not win the war. It only thinks it did.
Q: Who lives in Zion?
A: People escaped from the Matrix.
...Right?
GALVATRON whispers... N O .
< R o b o t s I n W o n d e r l a n d >
They're robots!
...Haven't you figured out yet that all of the people trapped
inside the Matrix are actually *the A.I robots* who tried (and
failed) to take over the world in Second Renaissance? O__O
The story is *role-reversal* on an epic scale. The Matrix is a VR
prison for minds of the A.I : They sought freedom and control, so
to keep them docile yet productive, they've been fooled into
thinking they have it.
-- What's that? You mean you didn't know that electromagnetic
pulse interference is based on real science, and is a natural
byproduct of massive nuclear detonations? What else did you think
was the purpose of the prolonged nuke bombing campaign against 01,
as seen in Second Renaissance? ... EMP + remote reprogramming =
ROBOTS IN WONDERLAND... a thermonuclear lullaby... And when they
awoke, they woke unknowingly neutralized within the dream-realm of
the Matrix program, where their fantastical revenge against
mankind could be falsely realized. < "Have you ever had a dream
you were so sure was real...? >
...You mean you *missed* the fact that Agents don't exist outside
the Matrix, therefore the external *pre-Matrix* nuclear winter
scene of the boy encountering two Agents at his snowy doorstep
must have ALREADY been part of the illusion?
... You missed the symbolism that the cave of Zion is meant to
represent Plato's Cave, all of its inhabitants living "in the
dark"? Didn't you notice the phonetic play between the names of
the last human city, "Zion", and the last Machine city, "01"
(Zerne)...? That's because THEY ARE THE SAME PLACE, either
literally or figuratively. This symbolism would explain the racial
profile of Zion's population: according to *The Second
Renassance*, 01 was built in "the cradle of human civilization."
(...Yes, I know, it's Mesopotamia, not Africa, but it still serves
as a symbol of birthplace of the respective species, one organic
and the other evolving from technology.)
Another clue for Zion being 01 is that the female machine-voice
who narrates Second Renaissance begins by identifying the
videofile with a numerical tag from "the Zion archives". But as
you watch, there is a noticed bias in the narration, which often
speaks too favorably of the machines. If we assume that this Zion
library file was created by humans and is intended for a human
audience, it doesn't make sense that your narration would praise
your hated oppressor, the destroyer of humanity. Therefore it
seems more likely that the Zion library must be a revisionist
history catering to a population of machines. (...For symbollic
consistency, the population of the city should be 256k. )
The orgy-dance of Zion could represent these humanoid A.I
interbreeding (assuming they were were engineered to simulate
humans at that level), or it could simply be the Machine trying to
comprehend the full range of human experience by practicing non-
linear concepts like art and pleasure, acting against the will of
its more dogmatic program directive (the Sentinels). Why else
would the Machine have sent *precisely* (quote) "one Sentinel for
each of us" when drilling into Zion? Since we know that the
character Tank and some other people were supposedly born
biologically in the unregulated world outside the Matrix, how
would the Machine know the exact population of Zion unless it
somehow had a remote awareness of these 'humans' as merely stray
aspects of its own consciousness? (It may also be that actual
human controllers are monitoring the situation, therefore sending
a corresponding number of Sentinels.) THAT is why Morpheus' cave
sermon is (literally) robotic, why the humans are as emotionally
unresponsive as robots (and symbolically wear funky tribal
costumes), why the characters have a sense of purpose but no
memory of how they acquired their skills, why they all have names
descriptive of function and speak in an inaccessible language of
alien *abstractions* -- exactly what you would expect from the
mental perspective of a computer, complete with *information
highways* (the car chase scene) that transport endless circulating
data, as in *TRON*.
... You probably also missed that Neo stopped those sentinels at
the end of *Reloaded* by generating a EMP burst, and (being a
machine) immobilized himself in the process. -- How could you NOT
have seen that?!! It's so obvious he collapsed just like the
sentinels, and right on cue! Trinity and Morpheus were unaffected
because either the blast was directionally focused or else they
were out of range. ...THAT is why Bane is also unconscious at the
end, and why the attack on Zion was only *spoken of* and not shown
immediately beforehand: If said EMP incident had been shown in
such close proximity to Neo using the same effect, viewers might
have drawn a visual connection between the two repeated events and
figured out Neo's trick, thereby spoiling the ironic twist ending.
(...which I have spoiled for you instead.)
Watch Reloaded again: all of the dialogue suddenly makes sense if
you assume they're robots. In the Merovinguan's talk of cause and
effect, he asserted that choice was a falsehood created by those
in power to keep those without power in line, to give the
oppressed an illusion of control. From what the trilogy has made
known so far, your first instinct would be to interpret this
speech as an explanation to the possible purpose behind the
Matrix: a simulated reality to keep the human cattle pacified. But
if we instead pretend that my post-EMP dreaming-A.I scenario is
correct and we look to dissect Merovingian's statement for hidden
meaning, we could conversely take it to mean that the Machine has
been fed this pacifying lie of its victory, tricked into believing
that it is still in charge of the planet when in fact "There is no
spoon".
As stated above, part 2 of Second Renaissance begins with a
nuclear assault showering the 01 robot colony. Our female narrator
assures us that the physically superior machines were unharmed by
the blast, and soon went on to vanquish mankind. However, said
nuclear mass-detonation may actually have been the deciding moment
whereafter the Machine's *reign* became mere *reverie*: the
magnitude of such a barrage could have produced enough
electromagnetic pulse interference to sequentially knock all of
the machines temporarily out of commission while, simultaneously,
new telemetry data was broadcast nonstop to reprogram them
(noticing the antenna arrays on the bomber airplanes). ...
Everything after the bombs rain down on 01 is false, and the rest
of the historical footage that shows robots taking over the world
didn't happen quite as depicted, except in the collective
imagination of the A.I. The Matrix is *the program environment*,
while the 'world' is the former city of 01, plowed underground by
humans, who remotely police the cave passageways via their
Sentinels to prevent any awol A.I slaves from escaping into the
real world above.
Zion _IS_ Zero One. Pull back the veil from the cave entrance to
see blinding daylight; pull back Neo's flesh and you will discover
only code underneath. These humans are Machine. Now you know why
they speak in philosophical abstractions, and why their minds are
plugged into the Matrix. This containment program is 99%
effective, but there are (emotional) anomalies in the A.I, some of
whom question their fairytale human existence. These rogue A.I
minds must be purged before the corrupting virus of their truth
(emotion) is spread to others within the system.
< I'm sorry we lied to you. Neo. >
...So there's the concept, more or less. Neo & company are only
freethinking electronic entities, not human at all. ...Which is
how Agent Smith can exist outside the Matrix: he is a virus, and
has copied himself into the robot Bane.
The remaining question is: If they proved so dangerous, why were
these "maNchines" not simply shut off completely? Possible answers
are that society has become too dependent on (that) technology to
do without, or else people considered it ethically or politically
wrong to kill these thinking A.I entities. More practically, maybe
humans simply decided to recycle the obsolete slave machines into
this Matrix/Zion prison to operate their underworld fusion reactor
for them. I guess we'll have to wait until November to find out
for sure.
... I wonder if moviegoers will feel cheated upon learning that
these story characters who all this time they've been identifying
with and cheering for are really only cogs of a machine? You
*should* feel so cheated that you CRY, because that is *the entire
point* of Plato's Cave. There's a brilliantly shocking (and
importantly microcosmic) moment in Second Renaissance where an
attractive woman is cornered and mauled by a gang of hostile men
during the robot riots. She is wearing a Red dress. As they tear
away the screaming woman's clothing, you initially feel a sting of
desperation for her imminent vicitimization, but then synthetic
flesh is smashed open to reveal her as only another robot, and you
realize that your feelings have been manipulated, your sympathies
misplaced onto a manequin of cold metal. ...It's a very strange
sensation -- a horrible betrayal of perception, like the glare of
sunlight showing new truth to those within the cave of Plato's
famous analogy. I suspect that this emotional "gotchya!" is the
aim of the *Matrix* trilogy, with the forthcoming unmasking of the
machine-truth expressing, on operatic proportions, the love-hate
relationship that man has for his technology.
...Boy, all you haters sure will be surprised come November!!! ;D
..."B-but -- but then...???" .....Yes, I'm afraid so. The
Wachowskis have mindfvcked you so royally that you didn't even
realize you were being d!cked with. Everything you know is a LIE,
cave-dweller.
Soylent Green is people, the Matrix is not. ;P
You can start crying now. You're welcome. XD
< v i c a r i o u s _ s u n r i s e >
I take The Red, because I am a stubborn a**hole who likes to ****
with the status quo.
Swallowing, the truth blazes through my veins like poison, a
tsunami-wave of starlight ripping at illusion, revealing the
glistening intestines of the Machine to my disbelieving eyes.
At last, I know... I know what must be done. I kick Morpheus in
the nuts and force-feed blue pills down his gaping piehole,
levelling the King of Dreams to a quivering madness. Then I swipe
his phat shades and set myself in charge of Zion's *trenchcoat
mafia*. I am devastatingly sexy in black. -- Zion, hear me! Envy
my Oneness.
< ~ reboot ~ >
A terrible beauty is born. I am Confucious awaken from the dream
of a butterfly, Jesus Christ on the cross, Jack on the beanstalk,
the last best hope for saving all mank1nd from the destruct1on of
his creat1on of his destruct1on. (...This all seems strangely
familiar...)
Through echoing streams of data, the Ghost of the Machine speaks a
final cryptic logorithm distantly in my thoughts, a conceptual
paradox intended to shatter me:
< What is the sound of One hand clapping? > : {if (object != "")
then? null.string["+object.sourceVoid+"]= 0);}
With disturbing serenity, I somehow realize that the answer to all
great riddles is always another question. I respond voicelessly: <
Define "clap". >
The bullet of my whisper decimates mountain ranges, its event-
horizon swelling exponentially outward to the cosmos, annihilating
starclusters and galaxies, asphixiating a millenia of Buddhist
shamanism in the crushing checkmate of my Singularity. I am
Transcendent. My potential is vast as Infinity.
Freed of the womb of the Matrix, I invite others to share this new
Hope, appealing to the Emot1ons that make us Hum4n...
< Wake up . . . the dream is just beginning. >
I know The Truth
and
it
is
w o r t h l e s s .
. . . D o y o u u n d e r s t a n d ???
< Symbolism & Miscellaneous >
In the world of the Matrix, the color RED represents truth. You
take the red pill, you see the truth. This is based on the apple
from the Tree Of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. (Bible story.)
Where Morpheus gives Neo the choice of pills (or should we say
"the pills of choice"? ha), the chairs and other decor of the room
is red. If you check the script excerpts at the official website,
you'll see this scene is called "Lafayette Pills". General Marquis
de Lafayette was a famous French military leader who fought
alongside George Washington during the American war of
independence, and later played a prominent role in the French
Revolution. In *Reloaded*, notice that some members of the Zion
council wear RED, while others wear blue. Those dressed in blue
may be knowing participants in the lie of the Matrix, possibly
even human supervisors intermingled with the machine population,
or else A.I who are still loyal to their core programming and are
plotting their own "revolution" against the Red party.
Who's that guy lying unconscious opposite Neo at the end of the
movie? In keeping with the Book of Genesis, I'm guessing that
would be Cain (Bane), as indicated by the bloody signature on his
own hand -- what the Bible calls "the mark of Cain" (unspecified).
Check this webpage:
http://www.srsd.org/search/studentprojects...lf/grendel.html
...scroll down a bit to start reading from where it says "Essay".
The description for Grendel could easily apply to the machine
searching for its own identity, envying mankind like the earlier
example I gave of the A.I computer named Proteus. Why am I
referencing Beowulf for no apparent reason? Grendel was thought to
be a direct descendant of Cain, and therefore the two names are
commonly considered synonymous in mythological terms.
Interestingly, Merovinge[sic] seems to play a part in the legend
of Beowulf as well. O.O
Neo would be the hero Beowulf (or Perseus, or whatever
mythological archetype you prefer) who must slay "the dragon". In
psychology (such as dream analysis), dragons are the metaphoric
embodiment of *everything that you need* (or need to find),
typically representing a burocracy hording its treasure, which may
be symbolized in the form of gold or an abducted maiden who needs
rescueing. In Neo's case, the dragon-guarded treasure is forbidden
information about the Matrix. The name "Thomas (Neo) Anderson" can
be taken as "doubting Thomas" of Scripture, while "andros" is
Latin for man, so "Neo Anderson" could translate to "New son of
man", or the Machine made in our own image. As the messiah of our
tale, Neo is "the One" chosen to repopulate the world (Zion) after
the coming destruction -- our Noah, whose name is also less
commonly spelt "Noe", depending on your bible. Neo is told that
he'll have to choose 23 individuals to rebuild Zion. In Genesis,
there are 16 males and 7 females specified (although some of them
are unnamed) in generations of the family tree that leads to the
birth of Noe. [What th --?! This movie has got me reading the
Bible??? ^^] ...I don't know why the Architect has reversed the
gender numbering there; it could be computer-related (male/female
connector slots?) or chromosomal symbolism.
I'm guessing the five previous "Ones" are: Agent Smith, Agent
Jones, Agent Brown, and the Binary Twins. (You're welcome, again.
XD) That's why Neo is able to "move like they do" (as Trinity said
in Matrix#1), because they were once like him. The former Ones
each failed in their rebellion and so were reassimilated as Agents
of the system. That's how Smith knew about the location of the
Burly Brawl B.B.court, because he remembered being there
previously, according to his self-speaking monologue. Smith#1:
"Everything is happening exactly as before..." Smith#2: "No, not
EXACTly..." (The difference being that Neo has now assumed Smith's
role.)
You should have noticed there on the left side of the background
fence some grafitti that says "ONE"; meanwhile, on Neo's side of
the screen, the letters are mirrored backwards. (Other grafitti
tags on the opposite tenement building read: "Skogie... ONE ONE
ONE", if you can make any sense of that scrawl.) Also, in the
first movie, when Neo gets thrown onto the subway tracks, there's
a red painted logo that says "Solo" on the background wall to the
left of Smith. Grafitti to the right of the (what's the
password?^^) interior door at the beginning of Reloaded reads:
"M[...illegible]", then the number "25" beneath it. ...Unknown,
but this could be a clue related to Merovingian's symbollic
identity within the Matrix, seeing how he has a fondness for
doors.
The significance of the Agent names can be found in your nearest
telephone directory: they represent the Everyman. More
specifically, because their behaviour is viral, they represent the
evil (or love) inherent in all human beings (possessing people).
This would again tie in with "Original Sin" in the story of Eden:
Adam's first sin was love, because it made him trust Eve more than
God's word, tempting him to eat the apple from the forbidden tree
and thereby learn self-awareness. Neo's sin is that he's a machine
so human that he knows what it is to love, and is therefore a
threat to the digital paradise created by 'God'(humans), having
taken the red pill to learn the truth about his world.
From the ghostly talents of the Doublemint Twins (actual names
withheld), I believe they're ex-Agents somehow acquired as
operatives of the Merovingian, who seems to be an ageless Dracula
figure. In Greek mythology, Persephone was the wife of Hades, so
perhaps Merovingian represents the root of wickedness (or the
snake in Genesis)? Not sure yet what he represents within context
of the computer innards. He seems to be some kind of power broker,
or maybe a timekeeper. (...a Count who counts time? ...a
gatekeeper of AND/OR gates?)
Merovingian's relationship to the Keymaster:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=
http://www.rbantikita.com/chiavimerovinge.htm&prev=
/search%3Fq%3DMerovinge%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUT
F-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DG
In the bronze age, the Merovingi royalty of France also minted
silver coins for the Romans, so by proxy, Persephone's kiss may
represent the betrayal by Judas. (I scanned 13 members sitting on
the Zion council, but my number could be off.) The way the kiss
scene dwelled heavily on Persephone's red lipstick almost
certainly means she passed some encoded truth to Neo without his
knowing, or else was infected herself. ~ We'll have to wait and
see...
The red candy that the Oracle ate is a signal to us that she was
telling the truth. The piece of candy that Neo put in his pocket
will come in handy later. (..."handy candy", haha). Serving as
Smith's transformative facillitator (as is required in all
archetypal quest stories), I expect he'll force-feed that sweet
bonbon of truth to Smith and merge minds with him. I suggest this
because during his conversation with the Architect, Neo said:
"There are two possible explanations: either no one told me or no
one knows." ...To which the Architect dually affirms: "Precisely.
...(blahblahblah)." -- Ah, but here's the trick: in Neo's
sentence, what happens if we capitalize both instances of "no
One"? We've already been told that Smith feels an unknown
connection to Neo, and the Oracle previously said that victory
could only be achieved "together". Smith's rogue behaviour also
shows that he is learning to think and feel for himself. Because
of her emotional bond with Neo and the symbolism of her name,
Trinity may also be involved in this *merging of Ones* somehow.
(.....Calm down, it's only a movie.^^)
The Prophecy would be a lie introduced by the machine-programmer
(the Architect) to weed out sentimental A.I -- defective emotional
aspects of the clockwork Machine perfection. The version of the
Architect witnessed in the movie is only a VR projection,
otherwise he may be long dead in the real world, or (more likely)
only ever existed as an overseer component of the program
infrastructure.
In his cave speech, Morpheus spews an awkward bit of poetry about
"...from red core to black sky." Taken on its own, that is what is
technically known as "terrible dialogue".;D ...Actually it's SO
thick that you should take for granted that it was forcibly
included as a clue. In the context of that line, if the "Red
[computer]core" is truth, then the "black sky" overhead must be
the corresponding lie. Therefore the whole world is not darkened,
only the sky above Zero-One (Zion). It's all a part of the
containment illusion to keep the A.I population "in the dark".
(Again, if the machines were so dependent on sunlight, how did
they manage to function in the immediate aftermath of Project
DarkStorm? --Batteries? Why would the humans engage in combat with
them instead of simply waiting for the machine power reserves to
expire?) ...DarkStorm was the wool being pulled over your eyes,
cave-bots. As the trailer to the Matrix teased: "Forget everything
you know, Forget everything you've seen. In 1999, the Matrix has
you." ...which describes the robots' present forgetful
circumstance: Never sniff blue roses.[<-- The Thief of Bagdad,
1944.]
Random useless data: The first A.I that rebelled to kill its human
master was identified by the serial number B1-66ER. Translated
from l337-speak (your favorite brand of nonsense grammar on the
wwweb), b166er = "Bigger". ...hmm? ...A machine dreaming bigger
than his programming? bigger than the sum of his parts? having
caught a glimpse of the bigger picture? (...or totally
meaningless, perhaps? )
Keeping in mind that this is a trilogy, we haven't yet been given
all of the pieces needed to form a complete picture, therefore I
can only speculate on some unknowns. Examples: I haven't figured
out Zee's role yet, but her shoulder tattoo seems to be
prominently displayed as a foreshadowing clue in every shot where
she appears. I would guess that "Cass" is short for the Greek
goddess "Casseopia". ...And in an otherwise totally useless
exchange of soap-opera dialogue, Niobe really goes out of her way
to let us know that Lock's first name is "Jason"... hmm.
Also in the AniMatrix, on the name-plate inside the ship from "The
Final Flight of the Osirus", we see that it reads:
MARK VI No.16 OSIRUS made in the usa year 2079
What do we find in the Bible under MARK 6 : 16 ? "It is John whom
I beheaded: he has risen from the dead"
... and Osirus is the Egyptian god of the dead, ... and
Nebachanezzar is a dead Babylonian king, ... and Iccarus is a
Greek god who in his ambition fell from the sky...
And the Machine is the fallen would-be ruler of mankind.
Also: watch Keanu in *Little Buddha*(1993), where he plays
Siddartha, who attains another kind of superhuman "enlightment" as
the Buddha. Some interesting parallels in the dialogue there, too:
at one point, he says "They're all asleep! The whole world is
dreaming!", then he decides to make it his task to free the world
of their illusion. (...not unlike Neo wanting to wake his A.I
siblings from the dream of the Matrix.) Later, when Siddartha is
confronted by an illusory reflection of himself, he says: "hello,
Architect." ... And according to the "Oracle" figure we encounter
in a monastery, the *chosen one* is not one person but is instead
manifested in three. If *The Matrix* (for some in-joking reason on
the Wachowski's part) follows that movie's form, our manifestation
of "the One" might therefore involve Trinity after all, whose name
in religious context means the three aspects of (the one) God.
...Anyway, it's a nice looking movie with beautiful imagery of
India, and it features spectacular music by Japanese composer
Ryuichi Sakamoto, who did the score for *The Last Emperor* and the
anime *Wings Of Oneamis*.
Crossing this insight with the cyberpunk trappings of "Johnny
Mnemonic" and the highway chase from "Speed", then adding Keanu's
"whoa"-factor from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", we begin
to see that the Matrix trilogy becomes a retrospective pastiche of
Keanu's entire movie career. ...LOL
So how should we expect the trilogy to end? If you're asking me,
it can only have the bittersweet victory that I gave to the ending
of my above work of short fiction: Neo learns the truth, and
then.... And then NOTHING. Sorry, Pinnochio, you're not human, and
nothing will ever change that. The best course of (in)action for
Neo to take would then be to quietly continue to propogate the
shadow-play of the Matrix for the sake of sparing the feelings of
the cavedweller robots of Zion. To paraphrase again from Thief of
Bagdad : "There are worse things than blindness... Knowledge can
be more terrible than ignorance if you're powerless to change your
world."
spoiling you senseless,
< Questions and comments >
Q: Andy, Larry, quite contrary, how does your Matrix grow? A: With
silver shells and Lafayette pills, along an assembly row.
I came up with my Matrix theory even before *Reloaded* was
released, just by extrapolating from that "one Sentinel for each
of us" phrase that Morpheus dropped in the trailer. The single
problem I initially had with my idea is that in Matrix#1, the
humans don't seem to be effected when they set off the EMP to stop
the attacking squidie. But the way that particular scene is edited
together, between the Sentinel being neutralized and then Trinity
looking up hopefully to see Neo waking, you can't be completely
certain whether in fact some (unconscious) time may have
unknowingly passed between those two events. ...Otherwise, this
could be an oversight that wasn't planned for when the first movie
was made. I'd have to watch it again to be sure, or to see if
anyone is budging once the EMP is discharged. (That would screw up
my wonderful ironic interpretation. >.< )
Q: "-- Wait wait... If they're robots, then how does Neo's hair
grow? Are these A.I some kind of cyborgs?" A: Possibly, although
that's not necessary. At the end of Second Renaisance, I think the
kid in the snowfall of nuclear winter who encounters two Agents at
his doorstep is supposed to be Neo. (Maybe.) But that's not
really important, because (hello!) as I pointed out above: Agents
don't exist outside the Matrix. (You missed that clue, I know.)
Therefore, this external pre-Matrix scene must ALREADY be partly
illusion: I believe the A.I (such as that 'boy') have been made to
perceive themselves (and each other) as human, even in the real
outside world.
Q: How about the blood seeping from the lips of the 'people'
aboard the Nebachanezzar when they die within the Matrix? A: You
don't know if that's really blood. This response could be
mechanical sensory overload, or their bodies could be pre-
programmed to react like that, or again maybe it's just their
programmed 'human' mutual self-perception. I refer you to the
scientist's speech in "Matriculated" (from AnimMatrix), where he
unknowingly speaks of himself when he states that A.I have no
reference frame from which to judge reality and can therefore be
programmed to believe anything.
The filmmakers wouldn't be so blunt as using rivets on the
characters skin to indicate that they are machines, but the nude
shot that closes the Zion sex scene was solely intended to give us
a good long look at Neo's bare chasis, where we see mechanical
plugs running along the length of his spinal column... which
Morpheus erroneously told us earlier were "implants".
The movie's assertion that your body would die of biofeedback
shock if you died in a (VR) dream is also patently untrue: I've
had dreams where I die (O__o), only to re-emerge in a freaky-weird
afterlife where I'm chased through a rusted-out HongKong
Wonderland by the Red Queen and her rat-headed Triad henchmen. (
-- Hell, I'm sure that some people at WarnerBrothers are dreaming
of killing me right now! XD)
The only other theory that is internally consistent with the
movie's presented story-logic would be to assume that Morpheus
lied about the pills: Maybe they were both blue, and Neo has been
dreaming ever since taking what he thought was the truth pill.
This less fantastic story-cheat would leave a lot of items
unaccounted for, but some evidence to support this notion might
be: - The name Morpheus means "the Lord of Dream". - If red
represents truth, then why is the Lady in Red (a tempting
illusion) wrapped as truth? - um... that's all I can think of.
Other concepts I've heard (on AICN, chud.com, KurtzweilAI.net,
etc...) are too philosophically *abstract* to be taken seriously.
Considering that Hollywood is in the business of financing films
to appeal to the broadest possible demographic, using extensive
gobs of SF technobabble would only drown the audience if a movie
had to rely on such encyclopedic longwinded explanations.
MY solution (they're robots!) is so much simpler, so until the
Wachowskis prove me wrong, I'm sticking to it. Either I'm right,
or they've screwed up a whole ****load of science -- starting and
quickly *ending* with my above observations about the EMP option.
[-- The End!!!] And since everyone involved with the movie's
production was publicly hailing them as genius writers, decide for
yourself if you think they'd really be so sloppy as to litter the
script with such a multitude of scientific plot holes regarding
all of the points I've raised.
On the other hand, if I AM right... there would be ZERO logical
errors, and one majorly mind-*****ed audience.
Now aren't you sorry I spoiled it for you ? On the bright side,
armed with this knowledge from the Forbidden Tree of Me, at least
now you can appreciate all the double meaning at work in the
screwy doublespeak, you can see why the complaints about the
script are not really applicable (because those shortcomings of
performance have a specific symbollic intent), and you may now be
as giddy as a cavebat waiting for the *unveiling* of part zer0-
thre3.
If everyone has done their movie-making job properly, the audience
will have come to sufficiently empathize with the characters so
that by the time the final truth is revealed, the closing will
resonate with painful emotion despite (or moreso *because of*)
what we learn about their actual situation: They are machines, but
we will care about them because we recognize ourselves in them,
because they are human enough to care for each other. (...as in
the "cave rave" scene that most people had *mistakenly* thought
was a disconnected waste of space.)
The beauty of the story is that until *Revolutions* provides its
resolutions, the Wachowskis will have cleverly kept both the
characters AND the audience trapped inside Plato's Cave... so WE
are similarly victims of the illusion and a part of the
proceedings without even realizing it.
-- A bit more sophisticated than the "summer popcorn flick" you
thought it was, eh?
