Don’t get me wrong, I loved “The Matrix”, but one thing about the movie really bugged me a lot, and that was the fundamental premise of the movie: That human beings were enslaved, by machines and their "life force’ or energy or whatever was being used to feed the machines. What was that all about?
It bugged me because it clearly violated one of the Laws of Thermodynamics. You need to feed people and most of that energy you used to feed them is going to be given off as waste heat and there is no net gain in “energy”, so what are the “machine” intelligences really getting out of the deal?
They could have had a much cooler premise in The Matrix.
They could have had everybody unknowingly hooked up to the computer from birth because, centuries ago, it was so freakin’ addictive that everybody wanted to be immersed in it 24/7. That would’ve left no one on the “outside” to act as sysops, so they eventually built a system that could run itself.
But noooooo, they had to make up some ridiculous conservation-of-energy violating excuse about using the high voltages (but incredibly low amperages!) of the human nervous system to power their computers. Bah. Bah, I say! BAH!
Would make a lot more sense if they had the humans being used not for our energy, but for the computing power of our noggins. Seems like a simple plot tweak that would make the whole thing relatively plausible.
That’s what I thought. It makes me wonder if we’ll find out that the people are wrong about why the machines keep humans. Perhaps the machines made up the explanation that they use humans for power cells, because if we found out that they were using our minds for their computering power we could figure out how to corrupt their data. Perhaps that’s what humans who know what the Matrix are already doing - they can shift the AI’s reality because the AIs are actually residing in their heads.
Yeah, I caught the flaw with biological batteries o’ mankind producing more energy than it took to feed them. I also thought it was a bit plot breaking that the ever so efficient machines o’ tha future flushed Keanu down the proverbial toilet when he awoke instead of efficiently snapping his head off first.
What really did it for me though was Keanu. Gods what a horrible actor. I kept on holding out hope for him because I liked him in River’s Edge, not realizing that his role in that movie was the entire scope of his acting ability.
No offense, but come on, really, we are not going to the Matrix to watch Neo delve into scientific theory, we are watching him to kick butt with Morpheus, Trinity, fighting badass Agents in dark suits and Ray Ban sunglasses.
In movies like these, sometimes we just have to buy into things…and how many moviegoers really think about science laws when going to a movie for entertainment, if they know any laws at all? I for one think the premise is very creative, very philosophical. All that metaphysical stuff.
One question to ask is “How do the humans know what the heck’s going on?” Deep in Zion, how much to the humans know about the workings of the machines? If they’re just looking for answers, perhaps they came upon the battery concept and didn’t bother to keep thinking. Maybe there’s a whole panel of theorists who constantly argue about it, and Morpheus just happens to believe the copper-top line?
Didn’t Morpheus say that one man managed to escape the system on his own at one point, then went back to recruit others? Imagine: he escapes from his tube, makes his way to other people, and they ask him how he feels now that he’s out. His answer? “Drained.”
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It seems to me that the best way to break the Matrix would be to start worldwide nuclear war in the simulation. Kill as many people as you can, and when the machines start dumping the bodies either they’ll run out of juice (if we’re using the battery reason) or the program will freeze when the number of processors falls too low (if we’re using the brain reason).
Besides, if/when the Matrix goes down, what are you going to do with the six billion people who crawl out of their tubs and need food, clothes, shelter, mental rehabilitation, etc?
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I was considering starting an identical topic. I saw half of The Matrix on TV on Friday, but stopped watching because I couldn’t get over that mistake.
Okay, I admit that using humans as a power sources is rather ludicrous. But citing the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a bit dramatic. Aong those lines, consider Star Trek. They use a matter-antimatter reaction to power their warp core. But you can’t get more energy out of antimatter than it took to create it. Thermodynamics says Star Trek is wrong! (Okay, I know Star Trek breaks a lot of laws of physics even if you allow for FTL stuff, but this isn’t one of them.)
Morpheus never says that the machines get more energy out than they put in. He just says they use body heat. Next time you eat anything other than sunlight, consider how inefficient you’re being. If they made a movie about you, people would pan it.
I’m gonna give the Wachowski Bros some credit, with one minor fix the plot would pretty much be flawless:
There are two movies left to come, maybe they delve into this and make the whole plot more solid. Sure no one goes to the movies for scientific enlightenment, but it would be sweet if Hollywood did make an effort to tie all the ends up for once.
Actually the Matrix doesn’t contradict the laws of Physics. All energy sources convert one form of energy into another. The idea is that the output energy is more convenient and valuable than the input energy. It’s possible that the aliens have invented some technology where the nutrients that they supply to the humans are less valuable than whatever energy they can harness from the humans. Nothing here contradicts the laws of physics. If you think about it some farm-animals like horses are a way of doing something similar: using a living being to convert one form of energy into another.
OTOH something like faster-than-light travel does contradict the known laws of physics. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have good science fiction which uses the concept.
The point about the machines using the humans as power sources didn’t ruin the first movie for me. It was the fact that every other single point made in the entire movie was just as stupid, if perhaps less obviously so, as that point that ruined the first movie for me.
First of all, the reason for the enslavement of humanity (i.e. electrical power), is what you call a McGuffin. To be sure, one of the largest I’ve seen, but a McGuffin nonetheless. The matrix of humanity is essentially an excuse for the Wachowski to create original superheroes that can defy the normal laws of physics without the need for the normal method of mutation through radiation or whatever.
Secondly, the power that the humans provide is not directly what powers the machines. “A new form of fusion”, driven by the energy that humans provide is what powers the robots. Again, the new form of fusion is also a McGuffin.
Third, if you look at a film and say that you don’t like it because it defies physics, then nearly all sci-fi, action, and superhero films would become pointless.
