Revisiting Abzee’s Matrix piece

THE REVELATION OF THE MATRIX!
A few days after watching The Matrix Revolutions and still reeling from the shock of disappointment, I began talking to a few friends of mine and the discussion answered it all. I’ve tried to briefly analyse the movie for you. It may be a bit long, but the discussion was well and truly over four hours. And factually, nobody can really analyse The Matrix. That’s the beauty of it. So, here we go………….

1) First, a short recap of what took place in The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded.

In the first “Matrix,” Keanu Reeves played Thomas Anderson, a.k.a. Neo, a computer hacker who learns that the reality he knows is, in fact, only a dreamlike construct created by enslaving machines feeding on humankind’s bio-electricity. Recruited by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), an insurgent living below the poisoned Earth’s surface, Neo comes to grips with his new world, and falls in love with Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), a wet-leather, gun-toting rebel. Morpheus believes Neo is “The One,” a prophesied Buddha/Christ-like figure said to bring peace to humankind. And he certainly seems to fit the bill. At the end of “The Matrix,” Neo began to bend the laws of physics within the Matrix, stopping bullets and flying Superman-style. In “The Matrix Reloaded,” Neo’s powers began to manifest in the physical world as he stopped a squad of machine sentinels by willpower alone.

This act wasn’t without its consequences, however, as Neo starts “The Matrix Revolutions” in a coma. Neo’s archenemy Agent Smith, seemingly destroyed at the end of “The Matrix,” returned with murderous zeal in “The Matrix Reloaded,” upgraded with the ability to self-multiply. Now a rogue element, Smith (Hugo Weaving) no longer works for the machines and is fueled by revenge. In the last chapter, he found a way into flesh form, serving double-threat to Neo and the inhabitants of Zion, the last human outpost.
An aristocratic, powerful program within the Matrix, the Merovingian complicated matters for Neo’s gang when they sought information and access. Having defeated him, humanity made a new enemy with more resources than Agent Smith. As he escapes, the Merovingian alludes to the Matrix’s past, telling Neo, “Mark my words, boy, mark them well. I have survived your predecessors, and I will survive you.”

Relied upon by Morpheus as a soothsayer, the Oracle revealed to Neo that he was not, indeed, “The One,” in the original Matrix movie. Then, later, she tells Neo he must understand the choices ahead of him because he is “The One.” Was she wrong? Or lying? Or simply doling out information to suit her own agenda? In “The Matrix Reloaded,” Neo deduced that she, herself was a program, which may complicate allegiances.

In “The Matrix Reloaded,” the Architect, an entity who constructed the Matrix, tells Neo that the Matrix is also far older than the humans know, that the machines have destroyed Zion six times previously, and that many “anomalies” such as Neo have revolted before. He says, “Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision.” Mixing philosophy and technology, the Architect tells Neo that he’s nothing more than a reboot disc, saying, “The function of the One is now to return to the source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program.”

2) Now, let’s understand the concept of The Matrix.

In order for the machines to keep people captive in the matrix, the people must willingly accept it as reality. The only way people will accept it as reality is if they believe that they have free will — Neo’s conversation with the Architect: “The problem is choice.” But giving people free will causes major problems for a program, because humans, given choice, are unpredictable.

By letting players do whatever they want, some of them start doing things that the developers never intended, and the program can’t plan for. People figure out how to fly and lo an behold, the buildings have no solid ceilings! They find holes in the ground, all kinds of stuff. If you’re a prisoner in this world, things start to seem a little strange… the “reality” of the world starts to fall apart…

Eventually, someone comes along who can master all of the flaws and glitches and cheats in the game. He can go places no one else can, can fly all over the place, discovers codes which give unlimited ammo and invincibility and super speed. This person would seem like a superhero to everyone else. Only he could start showing them how it’s done. And people could start breaking through the code all over the place. The program creates Agents to try and keep these things in check, but the reality illusion will fall apart. People begin to stop accepting this as the real world. Some of them start to wake up in their pods. Throw in a bunch of rouge artificial intelligences with their own agendas, and it’s amazing that the thing holds up at all. Left unchecked, chaos will eventually take over.

So, what can the machines do? How can they get people to accept the Matrix, yet still give them free will knowing that doing so will eventually make them discover its unreality? The answer is to use the One. This person who becomes a master at manipulating the code can go to the developers and show them everything that he has discovered that is broken. They can take that information and make a new version where building have ceilings and real, solid interiors. In the Matrix, it happens when the One enters the Source. His code is examined and incorporated by the machine mainframe, which has the ability to reprogram itself. Thus a new Matrix is created, one which holds up better to human scrutiny. (Maybe they give it a fresh coat of paint and set it in the eighties). But it can’t be perfect. Humans will still start doing stuff that the program can’t have an answer for… So the cycle begins again…

This all works fine for the machines. They allow a few humans to be free each time, and they are told a prophecy about the One who will be their savior. So the free humans do the job of finding the One and waking him up to his identity. (it’s much easier for humans to do it, since by definition the One would be able to escape any programs looking for him).

Only one problem remains — when the One returns to the source, he must do so of his own free will. He can’t be forced, or else he will be able to hide certain portions of the code from the mainframe. So the Architect offers him a choice, and uses the lives of all humans trapped in the Matrix as a bargaining chip (Just because the One has to make the choice, doesn’t mean he can’t be persuaded to go a certain way.) All previous versions of the One before Neo chose to enter the source and the Matrix was reset. Neo, however, chooses not to because his love for Trinity goes beyond his feelings of basic humanism. Love can be the most selfish of emotions, as anyone who has been in love can tell you.

So, stories about the previous version of the Matrix would have ended with Reloaded… With Revolutions, we are going into uncharted territory. There are two major differences between Neo’s version and the previous ones. (1) Neo chose not to enter the source and reload, and (2) the interaction between Neo and Smith. Neo entering Smith and destroying him in the first movie is the most important moment in any of the movies. Something about the interaction of their two codes created the new Smith, who becomes an AI operating completely outside the boundaries of the program. And he’s pissed. He’s like a computer virus which can spread out and destroy the program. Here the Oracle, for whatever reason, decides that she has had enough of the war between humans and machines, and she sees an opportunity for peace. Since Neo is the only way to destroy Smith, the only chance for peace is to allow Smith to become so powerful that he becomes a threat to the machines in the real world. Then Neo can use Smith as his own bargaining chip against deus ex machina & the machine world.

So Neo goes and makes his bargain. He fights Smith, but it’s clear that in physical fighting Smith is the stronger and more powerful. Again, free will and choice take the major role. The only way for Smith to copy himself to Neo is if Neo chooses to allow it (as he chose not to in Reloaded). This means that Neo is the one who holds power. He must make the conscious decision for Smith to overtake him. Since he is connected directly to the source, Smith becomes exposed, and the mainframe is able to destroy him (and all the others in a chain reaction). Neo sacrifices himself, the matrix is reloaded, Zion is spared. The only thing left is for the humans and machines to come up with a agreement on how and when to start freeing everyone else.

3) And now the analysis of The Matrix Trilogy.

The ending to The Matrix featured a brilliant speech by Neo, claiming that he was going to show us “a world without borders or boundaries… a world where anything is possible”. After this speech, Neo hangs up the payphone he was speaking on, then flies off the screen to RATM’s “Wake Up” (in my opinion, very fittingly done!)
Now this is the part that many failed to interpret.
So, basically, this is what’s happened with the Matrix Timeline.
The stories told in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions happen BETWEEN when Neo destroyed Smith in the hallway and when Neo speaks on the phone at the end of M1. So it’s like this:
1. Watch Matrix 1, up to the point where Trinity kisses Neo in his chair
2. Watch Reloaded
3. Watch Revolutions
4. Go back and watch the final scene of Matrix 1 where Neo is speaking on the phone.
It’s highly likely that Neo was speaking to the Architect because of what he says. It’s obvious he is speaking to someone very important in the Matrix world, and I doubt this could be the Oracle. So it MUST be the Architect.
It makes so much sense if you view the Matrix story in that order. This explains Neo’s second coming and this time he is truly going to set everyone free. Use your imagination for what happens next.

4) The understanding of Neo’s death.

Neo had to become whole again by letting Smith copy himself into Neo to complete the whole yin yang thing( note the oracles earings yin yangs), but it goes a little farther than that. Smith was a virus in a network .
Neo had to let Smith copy himself into him so that he coud become part of the network that Smith had infected so that he could “clean” the virus that was Smith and rid the matrix of Smith. when Neo let Smith “get in him” so to speak , he had access to that network that he essentially “hacked” because if you remember Neo was in fact a hacker and he cleaned the virus out of the network and destroyed Smith .
The part when Neo dies at the end was a classic metaphor in movies and in life about the hero sacrificing himself for the good of the many . Trinity had to die so that Neo would have no attachments to the real world any linger so that he could meet his destiny . He had to die to make things whole again .
He entered the matrix and his ” code ” or his “anamoly” had to be reinserted into the matrix ( like the architect said it would ) to save the matrix and all the people in the matrix.

It bascially came down to this , Neo had a fate that was predetermined ( which he didnt believe in as stated in the first movie ) that he had to live up to it . The only thing was that he had to realize it and make the choice to accept it for the good of the world ( real / matrix ) . He had to live up to this fate and along the way understand it and the choices he HAD to make . He had to make hard choices to make things right .

5) So what is the matrix?

The matrix is a virtual reality world with a beginning and an end. It is cyclic, everytime it ends it starts again. Neo represents the end of the cycle, and his return to the source restarts the program. That is why the architect mentioned in reloaded that Zion was cyclic too. Everytime the matrix ended, the machines destroyed Zion, and the legend of the ONE was retold.
The Oracle mentioned that Smith got his powers from the same place Neo did, from the source. Since Smith was the way the equation balanced itself out, the disappearance of Neo represented the disappearance of Smith, so balance could be restored. By dying, Neo returned to the source, and the Matrix was restarted with its two original programs the Architect and the Oracle.

The reason the Oracle mentioned that she hoped to see Neo again, is simply because Neo is cyclic. In every Matrix there is a Neo, whose purpose is to restart the Matrix. Since Neo couldn’t remember the previous Neos, the new Neo that might appear would probably know nothing about Trinity, or his earlier incarnation.
The difference this time was that Zion survived, so when the New Neo appears, a new reality can be created.
As long as the Matrix exists, there will exist that anomaly that is inherent to the programming of the it. That anomoly is The One. Now the people who are defiantly claiming that Neo is dead, think again. The Architect is unable to solve the One anomoly, so it’s a bit logical to assume that Neo can never die. It’s irrelevant if he actually died or not at the end of Revolutions. Truth of the matter is that the Matrix and The One cannot exist without each other. The Neo who supposedly died at the end of Revolutions was the Sixth One. The Neo we see that flies off frame at the end of M1 is the Seventh One.

Finally, not to bring religion into this equation but this story line in very similar to ( if you believe in it ) the bible story of Christ and the theory of creation in the Rig Veda. Like Christ, he had the same choices to make , he had fate to live up too , and he had to understand the choices he HAD to make. The future of the Matrix, the machine-world and the war is Sati(anagram of Sita and since SETI is Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, SATI can be alluded to the anagram of Search for Any Terrestrial Intelligence.

Creation
There was neither non-existence nor existence: There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. what covered it, and where? And what gave shelter? Was there, an unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there anything immortal: no sign was there, the Day’s and Night’s divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that One.
Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart’s thought discovered the kinship of existence with non-existence.
Transversely [across the universe] was their dividing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.
Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows it not.

These lines of the Rigveda clearly open you to the theory of The Matrix.