Neo: You need humans to survive.
Architect: There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept.
It seems to me they CAN survive without humans, but it’d be less comfortable or something. It seems to be in the machines’ best interest to keep the people in the pods.
It seems I say “it seems” quite a bit, it seems.
You’re taking statements made locally to mean something globally.
When one of the programs talks about their purpose, they’re talking about their individual purpose, not the purpose of the machine world as a whole. When the Indian guy talks about his purpose, he’s referring to his job as part of running a power plant (if I remember correctly), and he says that specifically. Each program has its purpose in keeping the machine world running. They do what they do.
Yes. So do I. And what’s wrong with that? Sometimes people read too deeply into films which are purely entertainment, I think.
It’s actually not that complicated if you suspend disbelief long enough to accept that humans are a viable energy source. “Second Genesis” from the Animatrix explains what happened (some of that’s in the comics, too) to lead to the darkening of the sky. When that happened, the machines rounded up all the humans and began using them for energy. However, the humans died when their brains were unstimulated. So the machines created a Matrix.
Possibly the first one was a human paradise like Smith thought, possibly not. Either way, the humans ultimately rejected it and it crashed. The Architect and the Oracle, working together, figured out that humans would reject a Matrix, even a utopian one, because of the human abhorrence of control. So they built a new Matrix which gave humans – but only the dangerous humans – a choice. They could live within the Matrix or they could leave it and live in the real world.
Most humans are aware of this choice only subconsciously and happily live within the Matrix. When a given human is close enough to choosing differently such that he could threaten the stability of the Matrix, the machines arrange for the “free” humans from Zion to find him and offer him the red or blue pill. This is simply a symbol within the Matrix by which the target officially chooses the Matrix or the real world.
The machines see this as a necessary evil for the Matrix. They don’t want people taking the red pill, and they don’t like humans having too much power anyway, so they try to destroy any humans who hack into the Matrix, while at the same time allowing Zion to exist as a haven for those humans who cannot be safely contained within the program.
Eventually, Zion gets too big to control. The machines then raze it. At the same time, they use The One as another mechanism of control. The machines nurture a human (or maybe he isn’t really a human but a program implanted on a human’s brain) to be The One. Eventually they ensure that The One makes it to Zion. Then, while Zion is razed, the free humans who think The One is their messiah (instead of just another machine plot) get him in position to meet the Architect. While there, The One must make a choice. The Architect offers two options – either The One can maintain the status quo, Zion will be razed and all the free humans killed, but the Matrix’s 6 billion souls will continue and The One and a dozen companions will repopulate in a new Zion. Or he can refuse the status quo, the machines will still raze Zion, but they’ll also execute the billions within the Matrix. This is a bad deal for the machines, losing their power source, but they are willing to accept it if necessary. Allowing The One to have such a powerful choice is a necessary part of the revised choice-based Matrix and the only way it can survive at all.
Typically, The One has seen his options and accepted the lesser evil so as to avoid the extinction of humanity. However, in Neo his love and respeect for humanity is not generalized like the previous Ones, but instead is focused on Trinity, who is at that moment being killed by an Agent. Therefore, instead of taking the choice the previous six Ones have made and accepting the lesser evil, Neo refuses to play the game to save Trinity, hoping that he might figure out some way to avoid the extinction of humanity ad hoc.
Fortunately for Neo, the chaos that Smith is creating in the Matrix makes it impossible for the machines to delete it immediately. Eventually the machines and Neo make a deal. See, the machines made The One into the ideal Matrix hacker in order to give him power within the free human community and to ensure that he’ll be successful in reaching the Architect’s room at the appropriate time. (It may also be a side-effect of whatever processes the machines do to make a person The One.) Therfore, he is in a position better than any of the machines to fight Smith. Smith is essentially a virus in the Matrix, ergo, something outside the tainted main program needs to combat him.
Neo is successful in eradicating the Smith virus from the Matrix. Therefore, his deal with the machines goes into effect. They will allow Zion to continue to grow in peace. They will continue to operate the Matrix, but every human will be presented with the choice, and anyone who wants to leave the Matrix will be allowed to, instead of limiting it only to those necessary to bleed off the pressure on the program. This isn’t ideal for the machines because it loses them some fraction of their batteries and, more importantly, it lets Zion grow and become more sophisticated. The machines know the truce won’t last forever, and they don’t want to be in a position to have to sweat the fight with Zion when it collapses. But they will honor the deal.
As for the humans, some of them will leave the Matrix. But most of us won’t. On the literal level, that’s the ultimate point of the story – there’s nothing intrinsically better about living in the “real” world than in the Matrix. Life is life. When you’re in the Matrix, there’s nothing about it that’s less moral or less satisfying than experiences of the real world would be, because it’s just as real. Cypher was a bastard who betrayed his friends, but there was nothing immoral about his ultimate desire to be back in the Matrix. The important things in life are about our relationships and being fully actualized. It doesn’t matter a whit how many levels you are removed from bedrock reality as long as you’re successful within your stratum. The first film asked the question “What if none of it was real?” The trilogy as a whole answers that question – and the answer is that is doesn’t matter whether it’s real or not; that is, life is real even if the world we see around us is fake.
–Cliffy
Cliffy, that was an excellent post. I may even save it to refer to from time to time.
I’m not sure what people have against the second two movies. I don’t really think that any of them are better or worse than the others.
Yeah I picked up on this too… and was upset to see it not get addressed in the third film.
I’m amazed at people’s…I don’t know a good word for it…contempt for this movie. I thought the movies were exceptional. Some of the logic was a little hard to buy, e.g. Neo’s power coming from the Source, and being able to manipulate the Source outside the Matrix, but overall, I liked the fusion of philosophy and action.
As others have pointed out, it’s the human batteries “combined with a form of fusion” that makes us desireable power sources. I’m sure the die-hard SF-ers would have liked a more technical explanation, but the target audience is young males, so you have to appeal to a broader selection. I don’t understand why, in general terms, this explanation is thought to be so insufficient.
Another common complaint – don’t people watch the movie? 
As the Architect explains, the Matrix is inherently unstable. It is a fundamental flaw that was necessarily introduced so that the Matrix can contain the largest number of people. The previous Matricies, while inherently stable, were largely rejected resulting in large losses of crops (i.e. humans), which means that the machines lost a lot of power.
The current Matrix is accepted by 99.9% of the population. Those .01% will naturally reject it. However, of that .01%, one of those will be The One. As explained above, since the Matrix is inherently unstable, The One must reintegrate into the Source so that the Matrix can reload. Otherwise, the Matrix will crash and humanity will end (and most likely the Machines as well – I’ll explain this if someone wants me to, but it’s off topic).
From what I’ve seen of the Matrix, finding humans who randomly disbelieve is a arduous task. The Matrix is huge and even the powers of the Architect cannot monitor it completely. That may be arguable, but one thing that was pointed out the Architect is that the The One must choose to reintegrate. Zion is allowed to be created because The One must have something worth fighting for, i.e. a measure of control. In other words, The One is groomed to love humanity and when faced with its possible extinction, The One will logically choose to save humanity (if anything, it’s sort of like another chance to win). This method has been successful for 5 previous iterations of the Matrix.
It is implied that if they are not placated by the Matrix, then they will resist not only the Matrix, but the harness that they are in which reaps their energy, or simply put, die.
I think this thread is pretty good. Also, as I have just discovered on preview, see Cliffy’s excellent post.
The One is made from the Source or derives power from the Source. The Source is the main AI program that gives birth to all the other programs out there. Actually, a more properly worded explaination is that all other programs are derived from the Source.
She is Satiya. I think her name has some significant meaning in East Indian mythology, but I both took the class (on Eastern Asian Mythology) and saw the movies a while ago, so rather than spread ignorance, I’ll just leave it at that. She is also the last exile program. Exiles are programs that are meant to be deleted because they either had their function become autonomous or unnecessary (e.g. the program for the birds), or they out grew their programming (what I like to think as they are starting to think or grow). These programs exist outside of the Matrix but when faced with deletion they leave wherever they were at (like the Satiya’s father) and enter the Matrix for refuge. Another function of the Agents is to delete old programs.
I believe I know to whom you refer, so I’ll make my assumptions: The old lady is The Oracle, and the man is The Architect. The Oracle and The Architect are responsible for maintaining the current version of the Matrix.
This was the machine main frame AI. It probably is the oldest program and probably controls the machine world.
The Keymaker has access to the Architect. The One must meet with the Architect so he can choose to either reset the Matrix or watch humanity die.
As seen in the first Matrix, Smith was already starting to act independantly, i.e. outgrow his programming. When Neo dove into him and made him explode, he altered his programming, causing Smith to become, for lack of a better concept, a virus.
Any more questions? Ask away! 
What’s the REAL deal with the Matrix?
It’s a shrine to S&M, leather fetists, and group sex.
Excellent post, Cliffy. You made completely non-sensical second and third movies into a slightly less non-sensical, but still woefully disappointing, second and third movies.
**Satya ** means Truth. Not truth, with a lower ‘t’, but Truth.
See, I thought that from a philosophical standpoint that they were perfect. As I said, the first film asks the question “What if none of it were real?” (In philosophical terms, this is called skepticism.) The trilogy as a whole provides the answer to the skeptic: “It doesn’t matter.” While I liked the action and style of the original film and the fact that it wasn’t braindead like most blockbusters, when everyone else on the planet was drooling over the philosophical underpinning, I was unimpressed – because I’ve been a skeptci since I was twelve years old. This as nothing new to me. It simply wasn’t that sophisticated a question to ask.
During the hiatus between the films, some guy was arrested for killing somebody and his defense was that we were all in the Matrix. But as I observed at the time, it doesn’t matter if we’re in the Matrix – people still feel as if the world were real; people still suffer. (This is actually an early clue that the free humans in the first film aren’t the heroes even though they’re the protagonists – they’re ruthless killers, and the fact that their victims are in the Matrix isn’t any sort of defense, because the victims are just as dead, and their families are just as griefstricken as if it all were real.)
After the latter films, I was much more impressed, because they actually tried to come to an answer, and it’s the same answer I’ve come to – it doesn’t matter if we’re in the Matrix. We still must strive to alleviate suffering; suffering is the same if it’s the result of something that happes on merely something that you think happens. There’s no difference in your sense of pain. Even if all the people around me are just in jars, so long as they don’t know it, their pain and their joy is real wheresoever it comes. Whereas the first film wasn’t as intelligent or sophisticated as people say, the latter films really try a positive solution to the problem of skepticism. That’s something that takes brains.
–Cliffy
Hey, guess what? I’m that someone! Go ahead and explain it.
I agree. I think that the underlying story is a lot more complex than the typical DESTROY…THE… HU-MONS!! man vs machine fare.
Probably because to anyone with knowledge of thermodynamics it does not make sense. Humans are not an energy source. We still require fuel (IOW FOOD) and that must be harvested by machines. We are only semi-renewable. The net energy output of a million humans must be insignificant to what a nuclear, fuel-cell or even a large wind plant plant can produce.
It’s basically this, combined with several comments made in the Animatrix - The Second Renaissance that led me to believe that the machines desired the symbiotic relationship with humans. In fact, the Animatrix makes it very clear that the machine city attempted to present a stable plan that was rejected out of hand by the humans.
So basically, yes, they use humans as a power source but they didn’t have to if they really didn’t want to.
This guy on the Matrix homepage has some interesting thoughts on the subject:
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/new_phil_warwick.html
Most of this is conjecture, but it’s based on the movie’s logic. As I have stated before, if The One does not reintergrate into the Source, then the Matrix will crash. Think of some crappy Windows O/S, hmmm…I don’t know, Win 98. On my sister’s old machine, if I didn’t reboot like every 3 hours, my screen would freeze (never figured out why). This is the same sort of situation that the Machines are trying to prevent.
The Machines are willing to gamble with that The One will reintegrate into the Source (“There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept”). They think they know humanity, and are willing to bet on humanity’s need for self-preservation. One weak point of the film is that they don’t really stress how important power is. Well, we know that it’s important enough that the humans would blacken the sky, but that showing was sort of passive (the Animatrix makes a little better showing). From what I know from my current stint in the IT industry (mind you, on the legal side, not on the technical side), one of the main things that is limiting computing or processing power is the amount of energy needed to power the thing (and I think the other huge issue is cooling the thing).
Anyway, without this amount of energy that the humans are producing the Machines will not be able to power their environments (where the programs dwell/operate), at least not to the sophistication or level of consciousness (AI) as they are accostomed to. From the Architect’s remarks (“There are levels of survival…”), we are led to believe that their existence from fully-functional, self-aware, AI will be turned into something no more elaborate than a chess game. So, in essence, the Machines, while not technically destroyed, will be no better if all the humans are gone. The Machines need this symbiotic relationship with the humans.
It is this realization that made me think that Reloaded was the best movie of them all. I also agree with Cliffy’s points regarding what one does in their strata, as that resolves the higher philosophical arguments/issues.
Oh, I agree. I thought the whole questioning reality pop philosophy of the first one was overrated and tired. Head in a box and all that. Been there done that.
This was one of my problems with the movies also. Collateral damage, the murder of humans in the Matrix, etc. all seemed of little consequence to the “heros” of the story.
See, I would disagree. First, I never got that lesson, almost the opposite. It always seemed that the people on the highway, the people in the buildings, the people in the Matrix didn’t matter to the protagonists. A person only had worth if they were in Zion or they had joined the resistance. Secondly, the only intriguing part of the second and third movies, from a philosophical standpoint, was probably unintentional. I thought the change from a circular, cyclical tradition (The regeneration of the Matrix every so many years, the decision of The One), to one of a linear tradition (we’re done repeating history) was an interesting subtext, especially when considering the judeo-christian overtones throughout the movie.
My problems with the second two movies are both philosophical and just plain hating it. The constant barrage of leather, the affect of the protagonists, the orgy scene in Zion, the idiotic Neo v. 1,000,000, etc was all just plain poor filmmaking. I couldn’t watch the movie I was so annoyed with the direction and scenary.
But more than the unwatchability, I had huge problems with the overall premise of the second and third movies. I had absolutely no problem accepting the premise that machines use humans as batteries and need to keep their minds occupied so they made the Matrix. Fine. A bit of a stretch, but I can handle it. But when they introduced the concept of subconscious choice of remaining in the Matrix and the concept that only certain special people get to make a conscious choice, which, to my mind, distorts the idea of free will, they lost me. I also had a huge problem understanding why the machines needed a Zion, why they needed The One, the transparency of decisionmaking, and others just bugged me the entire time I was watching the movie. I wanted, and expected, so much of a better explanation for the whole thing.
And, finally, because I’m not so sure I’m making much sense, I was pissed when you combine the two things I described above: The movies didn’t make sense until you had it explained to you in other media, including your description. By no means am I an idiot, but watching the expositional scene with Neo and the Architect, I’m sitting there horribly frustrated because it was poorly explained, it was incomplete, and it was just plain poor filmmaking. Any time your movie cannot stand on it’s own and requires external sources or multiple viewings to get the most basic premise of the movie, you’ve done something wrong.
Sorry, this ended up being an incoherent rant. I actually had an entire piece from an email I wrote that described why I was so disappointed in the second two movies, but I have no idea where it is at anymore.
But still, thanks for the information.
True, but not in an action movie that would be watched by millions. Hopefully, one or two of them [them being the types that normally don’t think about them] would think about it.
Nothing wrong with that in my book.
[quote]
This was one of my problems with the movies also. Collateral damage, the murder of humans in the Matrix, etc. all seemed of little consequence to the “heros” of the story.
A) collateral damage is to be expected and b) they’re essentially enemy agents.
At first, they were fighting for survival. When that was accomplished, they could fight for freedom.
I certainly don’t argue that the movies were poorly directed and degerated into cooler-than-thou posturing (both physically and meta-), I can only imagine the number of complaints that we’d have heard if the film was openly didactic and upcoming about its themes.
I notice that in these discussions, the scene between Neo and Colonel Sanders is usually the foundation for the explanations. But I’ve never seen any reason to consider anything said in that scene reliable. Before that scene, the assumption is that if Neo continues what he was doing, the Machines would be defeated and the humans victorious… And nothing happens in that scene to change that assumption. Yeah, we have a program telling Neo otherwise, and eventually convincing him not to continue on his original plan… But isn’t that exactly what a program would do (or at least, try to do) if Morpheus et al were right the first time? Of course the Machines are going to lie to save themselves.
Ok the only thing I am going to address is “why don’t the machines use better sources of energy?”
I just want to say that the physics don’t matter that’s not what the movies are about. The fact the machines are using humans to survive is an irony, because it is a reversal in the relationship between man and machine. A similar idea pops up in Fight Club when Tyler says, “the things you own end up owning you.” In the Matrix they just take the idea to a more literal level.
Asking how it is possible to use humans a as an energy source is about as pointless as asking what is recorded on the microfilm in North by Northwest.
I don’t get why people have such a hard time with what’s happening in the story or with what the films are about. In fact I would say that the fault of the films is that the themes and plot are explicitly stated in the dialogue.
I mean really, how many times dose Neo have to be told that he is going to make a big choice to get across the point that one of the themes the films is freewill.