What exactly is the plot of The Matrix trilogy?

Cafe Society
21

**MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW – but I’m going to assume that, since it was so widely viewed so many years ago, that they’re not spoilers any more. **

I’m going to do as I usually do and throw in an exceedingly verbose explanation that’s rather different than the rest. I’m sure you’ll all enjoy kicking it around.

The essential plot of The Matrix is that two opponents are playing a computer game. I’ll speculate that one of the players is a database architect and the other is a professor of some kind of Liberal Arts field. I submit to you that everything boils down to the last few minutes of the last movie. The object of the game is to “prove” the superiority or (at least the equivalence) of humans versus computers. NEO/ONE is really the professor’s only avatar that matters. Any and all of the entities opposing NEO were encoded by the architect. Neutral characters (walk-ons and bit-parts – you know, the cattle-call actors) were encoded by the architect (just like any of the millions of NPC’s in WoW or hundreds of other MMoRPGs) supporting characters were either coded by the architect or they could possibly be avatars of other people who are entering joining the mission/quest along with the professor’s avatar.

The past five (six?) iterations of this game have been played with the architect (i.e. the game he coded) winning. I’d imagine the professor responded each time with something like “Wait. That wasn’t a true representation of Human because…”
The details of the story (and it’s the way a story unwinds that makes it appeal to people – or not – the devil is in the details because the plots themselves have been around for centuries) include a lot more geeky stuff like martial arts (and references to 1970’s Hong Kong fare), PostModernist sociological theory (as well as Symbolic Interactionism and others), stuff taken from George Herbert Mead, Buddhism, computer programming, lots of Anime, Zen, bewildering technology, etcetera.
So after all the mayhem and madness and hacking/cracking/spoofing etcetera (lots of double entendre and inside jokes for geeks everywhere), it comes down to our hero and his nemesis punching it out very much like Anime characters and the question is boiled down.

[It’s been eons since I saw it, so forgive my mere paraphrasing rather than exact quotes…]

Agent: “Why do you keep coming back for more?”

NEO: Because I choose to.

. . .then they thrash around a bit more and Neo gets back up yet again and. . .

NEO: Now I’m just going to stand here. [because he chooses to stand there] You, on the other hand, will do what you’re programmed to do [which is ‘kill’ me and reduce me to nothing more than piled --actually, de-compiled-- code].

You can see the agent’s face twist with more than just hatred for our hero. He’s enraged because he realizes our hero is right and, try as he might, he can’t resist his programming. Even by defeating his opponent’s avatar, the architect has proven his opponent right, and victorious: Humans are superior to machines, no matter how complex or sophisticated their programming, because in the end a machine can’t override or escape its own programming. The professor has shown that she can bring her avatar back over and over and over as many times as she wants [I do this all the time when I’m playing Ghost Recon II], or stop for the night or even stop and never come back, or intentionally kill off her own avatar. The architect’s creations can’t do that. They can only perform as programmed.

Then we get a brief glimpse of the architect/programmer and his opponent:

“Well, that was an interesting twist. Shall we set up the game and play again?”

—G!
The problem’s plain to see
Too much technology
Machines to save our lives
Machines dehumanize

. --Dennis DeYoung (Styx)
. Mr. Roboto
. Kilroy Was Here

22

Yeah, he didn’t “start to believe” until he was alone in the Matrix and squaring off with Smith.

Of course, it still kind of annoys me in Matrix Reloaded when they went for the extended wire-fight sequences that served no purpose. There’s a bit in the Vampire Chateau’s weapons hall where Neo summons, Jedi-like, a couple of Sais to fly off the walls and into his hands. If he can do that, why not have every weapon in the place suddenly zip across the room, dicing the Merovingian’s goons? With his abilities, Neo should be above these vulgar brawls, consider them a waste of time.

23

with his abilities, he should be able to manipulate all matter in the Matrix-verse, and therefore simply disassemble or pick apart anything he likes. it is all code to him after all.

24

Well, I could buy that some parts of the Matrix are less subject to his influence, which is why the scene where the Trainman kicks his ass is impressive and significant, and indicated that the rules are subject to change and clarification.

I daresay the trilogy had a lot of interesting parts, but they were glued together in a rather shoddy fashion.

25

Yup.

Hey, it’s about time for a Matrix/Terminator crossover movie!

26

It’s even more significant when you realize that the Trainman is Zeddicus Zul Zorander , the Mouth of Sauron, Mr. Wall and a pilot in post apocalyptic Australia. Wheels within wheels man, wheels within wheels.

27

He’s actually two pilots in post apocalyptic Australia.

28

He wasn’t at the time she told him that. The line about “next life, maybe” came true. Neo didn’t really become The One until his rebirth after his ‘death’.

:: Big bong hit ::

29

This is what drives me crazy about The Matrix:

  • Feeding humans to get electrical energy is incredibly inefficient and what are they feeding them? If the sun’s been blocked out then whatever they feed them must take electrical energy to produce. It’s grade A bollocks.
  • When the voice over mentions this he says something like ‘and to supplement the power generated from Fusion’! Fusion! Well, I guess that explains where they are getting the energy to keep all of the human’s alive, but it does beg the question of why the film is lying to you.

The Matrix was a fantastic action film but it should be no surprise that drawing further meaning from fiction with such a flimsy base produces nothing but faux philosophical gibberish and signal noise.

30

As I recall, the original screenplay explained that the machines use the humans’ brains for distributed computing to run their own infrastructure, but the producers thought it was too hard to explain and insisted on the “batteries” nonsense.

31

Dead humans, IIRC.

32

Yup. I would have thrown in a line to the effect that the machines go to great lengths to keep a large number of humans alive, for no apparent reason or benefit.

In my Matrix, the purpose of the Matrix would be to breed humanity to a more manageable, machine-friendly race. And the kicker is, the processor power for the Matrix is provided by the very people of the Matrix, with the Architect being the teacher/guide inserting ideas/thoughts/lessons at the right time and place.

-Or-

The machines can’t quite replicate certain human thought patters (perhaps creativity, imagination, innovation) and need humans to some extent.

33

Plots within plots!

34

Not exactly. The big thing to pick up on is that the Oracle and the Architect are sort of like the two opposing ways of looking at the world and making choice. The Architect represents pure undeniable logic. He calculates probabilities and makes decisions based upon that. The Oracle represents things like intuition, faith, spirituality and all of that. She more sympathizes with humans simply because she’s the only machine that is actually designed to understand that aspect around which we make decisions whereas the Architect, and most other machines, are unable to. For previous versions of the One she works to manipulate them to ensure the survival, and for the Architect that level of predictable survival is fine, but she seeks to find a better solution.

She never contacts Zion. What you have to remember is that this is the sixth iteration. The current population of Zion was generated from those set free by the fifth One as part of the ongoing cycle and they had contact with her the whole time since the previous one had set them free and put them in contact with her. You see, her purpose was to manipulate the human responses of hope, faith, fate, and all of that, so by instilling that hope that the One would return, it gave humans a purpose to drive toward that perpetuated the cycle rather than ending it. Of course, she eventually realized with the emergence of Smith that that really wasn’t sustainable. But she was definitely manipulating those three while having them believe she was on their side, they just assumed she was a human since their only other contact with machines to that point was agents.

No. The One is not a machine creation, rather he is the result of the machines trying to manipulate the uncontrollable variable of human choice. Like the whole money scheme of rounded pennies in Superman 3, where it works just fine but those fractions of a cent eventually add up. It gets to a point where their model of how human choice works, while really good, deviates enough that it creates an anomaly. And this is why he has to go to the source and sort of reset it. That’s why he has to CHOOSE to do it, precisely because it is the result of an unbalanced equation created by human choice. But that’s also why he’s different because all of the other Ones had a very specific attachment to humanity as a whole, where Neo was reclusive and only really cared about one.

And that’s also why the machines had to destroy Zion. Zion is what keeps the freed people in check, but they can’t just keep letting it grow and grow, they HAVE to wipe it out to have that whole spirituality of the One setting them free and then returning again later in check. If they weren’t wiped out, they’d know that it was all a manner of control because they’d know about previous versions of the one.

She does make sure he finds Neo, but I think Neo falling in love is what ruins the whole plan for the machines. All the previous Ones didn’t fall in love, the Architect notes as much. Perhaps that’s why it results in Smith becoming such an agent of destruction, sort of a counter-balance to this new element of love that the Architect wasn’t able to control for. And I think that’s also why the Oracle stops pushing toward just repeating the cycle because those new elements mean it really isn’t going to work because Neo isn’t going to choose to return to the source and Agent Smith is only going to continue to grow more powerful.

Well, it’s Neo that pleads with the machines that he is the only one that can stop Smith. If Smith isn’t stopped, he takes over the matrix and destroys it all which means all the machines and humans are wiped out. The machines were still more or less expecting the cycle to continue and didn’t really know how to adapt to fix the issue of Smith. But that’s why when Smith took over Neo, they essentially cancelled eachother out and brought an end to the whole cycle.

Again, not created by the machines, he’s the inevitable result of an imperfect model of human behavior and choice. The whole real underlying of the Matrix is an exploration of free will, karma, and all that sort of stuff. The thing is, he can either correct for that error in the calculations by making that choice to sacrifice himself to correct for it or the errors will continue to compound and exponentially grow out of control until the entire system just messes up.

The code is the part of human choice that their understanding doesn’t cover and correct the deviation in calculations. Perhaps each time is like another sample and the calculations get more and more accurate? It’s hard to say, but the underlying point is that it’s ultimately impossible to perfectly model what makes us human and that’s what’s causing the problem; there’s something more to us than just the sum of our parts.

It went perfectly 5 times before, but each of the other 5 Ones were different, that none of them had fallen in love and were willing to sacrifice themselves for humanity. Neo wasn’t like that, and it’s that that created Smith and it’s the issue of him and Smith that threw the whole cycle out off kilter. If he hadn’t fallen in love, he never would have had that encounter with Smith that made him into what he became, he would have ended up at the source and not been face with the choice to save Trinity, just with the option of saving humanity or letting them die and he would have chosen to sacrifice himself to save humanity.

The interesting part is that he still ends up sacrificing himself to save humanity, it is his karma after all, but he does it by cancelling out Smith and bringing an end to the cycle rather than just perpetuating the cycle to keep everyone alive.

35

I dunno, that whole final conflict was so deliberately vague in its application and effect that any interpretation will do. Smith and Neo fight, Smith knocks Neo down, Smith absorbs Neo, Smith freaks out, Smith explodes… wtf?

36

Well, that’s sort of the whole point. I think they did a decent job in the first movie with exploring some spiritual concepts like predestination vs. freewill, karma, the nature of reality, and all of that without going over the top, but by the end of the trilogy, the symbolism is so over the top that it essentially becomes the plot. Smith specifically says that he realizes the purpose of life is to end, he’s obsessed with absorbing the Oracle because he wants her ability to see into the future, but he still only sees the future as some sort of inevitable outcome. Even when he has her power, the only machine that has any understanding of that which makes humans different from machines, he never actually grasps that concept of freewill, and Neo personifies freewill. Neo’s whole journey is that he has a destiny, but he refuses it because he wants to choose his own destiny, but he realizes that his destiny is only his destiny because it is the culmination of this choices.

Early in the first movie, when Neo goes to meet Morpheus and he almost walks out of the car, his understanding of freewill is more or less simply not doing what he’s supposed to do. To him at that point, free will is as much a cage as the matrix is itself but its only when he embraces that feeling that something is different that he is led on a path and it is only in denying his very being the one that he is actually able to free is mind and make the choice to be it.

By the same token, the whole time Smith represents oppression of freedom. He appears as the superior and most powerful of the agents in the first movie and he comments about the cage that is the matrix and the whole time has been being played as a pawn in the game as well as any others. And after his conflict with Neo, he ends up taking on that rebelion for the sake of rebelion. He has a false sense of freedom and ends up taking over the whole of the matrix, he ends up not just comfortable but desiring the very prison that he detested at first, and champions it, but it is still a prison.

It’s much for of an exploration of sort of Eastern thought I think, but it’s very much about how obsessing over the material world, as much a prison to our souls as the matrix is to their minds, that it spreads and it ultimately destroys us, whereas Neo and the others had transcended that prison and sought only freedom. It’s when Smith takes over Neo while Neo’s body is in the possession of the machines that they can then disseminate the code that will undo all the harm that he caused the cycle to end, just as the only way for our cycle to end is to embrace our nature as both physical and spiritual beings.

37

I like you.

38

And don’t forget that Agent Smith runs Rivendell.

39

I will declare first up that I haven’t read this thread because I absolutely love these films. Explaining the slightly opaque wider plot that underpins them, which turns them from action flicks into genuinely provocative and stimulating philosophical works of art, is something I enjoy doing too much to risk realising it’s unnecessary. :smiley:

The first bit is essentially right (it’s not so much a civil war as the Oracle deciding to throw a spanner in the works), but not the second. The prophecy is part of the cycle that the humans are trapped it.

The film is set in the Matrix v3.6 - v1 was essentially heaven created by the Architect as a perfect holding pen for humans whilst they had their energy harvested. However humans couldn’t accept this because it was too perfect, they kept trying to wake up from it and it became unviable. V2 was intended to be like reality, warts and all, but there was something not right about it that the Architect couldn’t figure out. Again, people weren’t accepting it, even though it was effectively like real life. The Oracle was designed to understand the human condition and find a way set up a system that would work, although a by product of that was that it wouldn’t be completely stable and had to work in cycles. In v3 of the Matrix humans were put into a world like reality, but they were given a choice about whether they accepted it or not. For most people the choice was subconscious and they never questioned what they were seeing, but for some people who simply couldn’t this choice had to eventually manifest itself as to whether they stayed in the Matrix or not (the red/blue pill decision). Blue pills accept the status quo and stay in the Matrix, red pills are ejected and picked up by the free humans who then go and live in Zion.

That’s right apart from the last sentence.

Originally I thought this was a plot hole - why not simply kill those who take the red pill? I eventually realised that this would mean there wouldn’t be any free humans to give people the ultimate choice in the first place, so those who chose to reject the Matrix had to have somewhere to go, and this is Zion. As far as the humans know this started off when someone gained the ability to manipulate the Matrix, jailbreaking them and allowing them to found Zion (this was undoubtedly something the machines facilitated). The Oracle, who they think is human, predicts that this will happen again and the One will be reincarnated, and this person will lead to the destruction of the Matrix and the freedom of humanity. In reality Zion is destroyed after a century (presumably when it gets too full), coinciding with the emergence of a One individual who goes back to the Source of the Matrix and is, again, presented with the choice of doors. They pick the door that makes the save humanity, the cycle begins again (with them “jailbreaking” a new set of people and founding a new Zion). This happens 6 times, hence v3.6.

There is a secondary need for this to happen, which is the system isn’t stable. It needs to be reset periodically by the code in the one or it will lead to a series of system failures which will bring down the Matrix and kill everyone in it. Whilst the machines absolutely don’t want this to happen as humans are their main source of food, they can survive without it if they must at a lower level of sophistication.

Right. Where the film gets really interesting is that it explores the point at which free will and determinism meet. The founding principle of the Matrix is choice, but for the majority of its occupiers they don’t even get to actively make that choice, they just accept the way the world is and leave it at that. Those that don’t take that further and, potentially, to the pill test. The people doing this absolutely have free will, its just that some aren’t choosing to exercise it.

Indeed, the Oracle decides that this system can’t continue forever, maybe because she’s designed to understand humans and so cares more, or because she’s immortal and has seen enough humans die to think there has to be an alternative. She engineers events so that Trinity and Neo will fall in love (prophesying to Trinity she will fall in love with the One), so that when he reaches the Source he will choose to save Trinity. Again, Neo absolutely has free will here and can choose either way, but like in the scene where Neo is offered a sweet and the Oracle says she knows what choice he will make, it’s not because he isn’t free but because she understands what drives him. Neo is so hopelessly addicted to Trinity that he can’t do anything but choose her, even though it means the end of the world.

Regarding Smith, this is absolutely intended to happen, because…

Quite. The Oracle knows that Smith will be let loose and will become so powerful he’ll take over the Matrix, meaning the machines will have no choice but to ask Neo to help because he is connected to Smith. When Neo talks to the machines you can hear how angry they are at humanity, that the events of centuries past (“Animatrix” shows that the aggressors in the war between man and machine were the humans) are still raw for them. But they have no choice, they have to treat with him, and Neo knows this means that he’ll die in the process, but it’s an end to the cycle. For once, the prophecy really does come true.

Right, now to read the rest of the thread :slight_smile:

40

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

The concept of free will really fascinates me - do we really have it? If so what are the limits of it? And if it has limits is it really free etc etc. The bit that interested me the most was “you’ve already made the choice, now you have to understand it” which one reviewer I watched who was discussing the Matrix called bullshit on, but it is completely sensible. Every time you’re presented with a choice in life it’s part of all the others you’ve ever made, and those choices make you who you are (and vice versa) so you can easily reach a point of having chosen to do or not do something even before it has happened.

I was discussing this with some friends at the weekend and pointed out that I was totally free to pick up a knife on the table and stab the person next to me in the neck and kill them, but I’d never pick that choice because it’s so massively opposed to every aspect of who I am. It doesn’t mean the choice isn’t there, and that I’m not free to make it, just that you can say with certainty that I never would. Do I have free will? Of course. Is that freedom boundless? No, because there are choices I won’t make.