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Analysis of Matrix Revolutions (Spoilers!)

Warning! Spoilers for The Matrix Revolutions below! If you haven’t seen the film, I do also have a non-spoiler review, but do not continue reading this article unless you’ve already seen the film or don’t care if you have it spoiled for you!

Last chance!

Okay, you can’t say I didn’t warn you…

Update 12/5/03, amended 5/12/04: I did some additional research after the comment below, and found some essays by Brian Takle which offer a very detailed alternate analysis to my own. Initially, it caused me to rethink my first conclusion in the next two sections, but now that I’ve finally rewatched some scenes of Reloaded, I’ve concluded that two of my more contentious conclusions are indeed correct and that Brian is misinterpreting one of the Architect’s comments. I’ve made a few refinements and additions, and intend to continue to do so after a few more reviewings, but here’s what I’ve got so far:

Matrix Within a Matrix

So, the unanswered question: why was Neo able to affect the “real world.” I stumbled onto this explanation on one of the IMDb message boards and totally agree: because they weren’t in the “real world.” There was a matrix within a matrix (and perhaps within another one, in another one, etc. to infinity), and they were simply in an “outer” matrix, not the real world. This is revealed in the opening sequence of Reloaded when you pull back from the Matrix readouts to see a fractal and pull out again to see it was all within another Matrix readout, and pull out again to see the clock innards. And Neo’s taking down the sentinels in the “real world” is, of course, a dead giveaway.

This isn’t a particularly complicated subject, and has been done plenty of times before (a memorable one that comes to mind is the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Ship in a Bottle,” where a holodeck character, Moriarty, tricks Captain Picard and Data into thinking they’ve left the holodeck when they haven’t). Indeed, many people were immediately theorizing about that after they saw Reloaded, which is why it’s somewhat of a disappointment. I was kinda hoping for something more original, but perhaps the obviousness of it is why they never did explicitly explain it, hoping to make the film seem deeper (and really, the Wachowski brothers are not Hitchcock and are often rather predictable — Neo turning out to be the One, for example?). But it’s the only explanation that satisfactorily explains why Neo was able to pull his Matrix tricks in the “real world” — it wasn’t the real world, it was just another Matrix.

Note what Neo sees when his eyes are burned out. He starts seeing programs for what they are, much like he did with the Inner Matrix at the end of the first film. This is why he is able to manipulate them, destroying sentinels (and indeed, passing through one of them). Only, instead of green, he sees them in yellow. Indeed, everything within the Inner Matrix is tinted a slight green (the commentary track on the DVD of the first movie points out that they did this purposely to give the audience the feeling that something was a bit off). The color schemes seem to be very important (note there’s a lot of green in the Oracle’s apartment), but I haven’t yet figured out what they all mean.

What Neo Really Is

Anyway, I believe that what the Architect said in Reloaded was true (especially since when the Oracle questions his word at the end of Revolutions, he responds, “What do you think I am? Human?”). To recap, every time they reboot the Matrix, eventually some people break out of it and form Zion. Also, since the equations governing the Matrix are unbalanced, a remainder accumulates that eventually forms into the anomaly known as “The One” who needs to take his code to the source to cause a “temporary dissemination” of the anomaly, allowing the Matrix to restart as before. Presumably, both Zion and the anomaly would continually grow if unchecked, so both need to be destroyed/dispersed periodically to maintain the status quo.

Note, this means Neo is a program. A piece of software, just like the Architect, the Oracle, Merovingian, Seraph, and Agent Smith. What throws Brian Takle off this track is the Architect’s mentioning that Neo “remains irrevocably human,” which he interprets to mean that Neo is not a program. What I interpret it to mean is that Neo is a program derived from humanity (specifically, the Oracle’s discoveries about humanity). Note that the rest of how the Architect talks about Neo (remainder that accumulates) only makes sense if Neo is a program. A program designed to be as human as possible, but a program nonetheless.

Software programs don’t have physical form, so he can’t exist in the real world, only in a computer simulated world. A Matrix. This indicates that the “real world” that Morpheus and Trinity were presented with is actually just another Matrix. An “Outer Matrix” (one with a better screen resolution and color depth!). Of course, in order to be accepted by Morpheus and Trinity, Neo is a program that doesn’t know he’s a program; he thinks he’s human (perhaps a nod to Blade Runner here). It also explains how Agent Smith, a program, can also go into the “real world.”

Indeed, this is also explains why Neo is able to manipulate the Inner and Outer Matrix more than any human can. Unlike the humans, he is of the Matrix and knows and understands it better than any human could ever hope to. In a way, he is the son of the Matrix (yes, thus the blatant Christ imagery). And it is why the Oracle says they will probably see him again someday. Since the Oracle will continue to unbalance the equation, Neo will eventually form again.

Plot Holes Explained

Indeed, the Matrix within a Matrix explains a good deal of the plot holes. How the heck does a bunch of humans with no technology at their disposal build a fleet of ships, an army of APUs, and a city run by tons of machinery — all within a hundred years? How could they afford to build such a technologically advanced city, yet not create comfortable living quarters or better clothing? Why did the machines conduct the war so poorly? (After they broke into the dock, they stayed in a concentrated swarm formation, allowing the concentrated fire to be more effective. Why not disperse throughout the whole dock? Heck, why not cut off the APUs supply lines? Just post a few hundred in front of the door holding the reloading crew, game over!) Why? Because none of it was real.

All of this was in the Outer Matrix, so it didn’t matter. Sentinels are just programs and can be duplicated infinitely. And since the machines built the Outer Matrix, they probably have other back-door measures to just kill everybody inside it if they really had to. They may have completely built the city and weaponry in the beginning, and then left it in apparent ruins for the survivors to “discover” and rebuild with the help of The One from the previous iteration (and perhaps other programs as well). Nobody questions where it comes from after the first iteration. They just remember it being there before they came.

Why go through all of this? To make the humans believe they have a chance to win. Because without the element of hope, the humans aren’t so preoccupied with trying to win the “war”. Without this distraction, they might have time to think about how things don’t quite make sense (some of the questions Councillor Harmann brought up in Reloaded might have been paid closer attention if they didn’t have other pressing concerns), which can grow into “a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”

Breaking the Cycle

The theme of repeating cycles was made clear by the Architect in Reloaded (having met Neo and destroyed Zion five previous times), causing some viewers to wonder whether the ending was really just the beginning of the next cycle. Personally, I get the impression that this is actually the first time the Inner Matrix has changed (well, at least since they changed it from the utopia that Agent Smith described in the first film).

Note that one of the key struggles (if not the struggle) in the films is between the Architect and the Oracle. Order vs. Chaos. Stability vs. Change. A cycle that repeats itself endlessly would be ideal to the architect, but not to the Oracle. I think it’s clear that the Oracle actually can’t see the future (she clearly wasn’t sure what to expect at the end). She’s simply one of the few programs that remembers across iterations of the Matrix (i.e., her memory isn’t wiped when the Matrix is rebooted). She’s obviously not the only one, as the Architect and the Merovingian also make remarks referring to previous iterations (the Merovingian probably uses the Train Station to escape being wiped when the Matrix reboots).

However, while the Architect views the cycle as elegant and satisfying, perhaps the Oracle finds it boring and repetitive, which is why she champions the notion of breaking the cycle and introducing choice into the equation. The fact that neither she nor the Architect could predict what would happen is why the Architect tells her she played a dangerous game (and this quote also indicates that this is not just another cycle). The Architect wants things to balance, so unpredictability is anathema to him.

At the end of the film, note that everything in the Inner Matrix loses the green tint and appears in their true colors. The Inner Matrix has now been improved, made more real, and now allows the element of choice (people are free to stay or leave). However, it makes no sense for the Architect to change and upgrade the Inner Matrix with every reboot. That introduces a ton of variables into the equation which may or may not balance out neatly (after all, just upgrading a desktop system today to a new operating system is painful enough). So this new and improved Inner Matrix indicates to me that the cycle was broken, and for the first time in a long time, the future has become unknown. Of course, this doesn’t mean that a new, longer and more convoluted cycle involving peace and war won’t occur, especially since history tends to repeat itself, but we just don’t know anymore.

Anyway, to make it clearer, this is what I believe the cycle used to be:

1. Inner Matrix reboots.
2. Some people are dissatisfied and break out of it into the Outer Matrix (believing it to be the real world).
3. In the Outer Matrix, they meet survivors of the last iteration and rebuild Zion.
4. The Oracle “helps” the resistance by correctly predicting events to help their cause, thus winning their trust.
5. As the Inner Matrix runs for a long time, the equations gradually get unbalanced (due to the unpredictable element of choice), and a leftover remainder accumulates.
6. The Architect gathers this remainder into a program, Neo. He gives this program the ability to function in the Outer Matrix.
7. The Oracle tells a human leader that Neo is the One that she has prophesied.
8. Through the events in the first two movies, manipulated by the Oracle, Neo is brought into the Outer Matrix, realizes he is the One, and meets the Architect.
9. Whether or not he is given a choice or not is not clear. Either he isn’t, or the choice he is given is a no-brainer because Trinity is not in the equation. Either way, he realizes his purpose and saves humanity by returning his code to the Core and picking survivors to rebuild Zion.
10. Zion is destroyed. Neo helps the survivors rebuild it (perhaps with the help of other programs — possibly the old white guys that end up on the Council). The Inner Matrix equations are temporarily rebalanced, and it is rebooted. Rinse and repeat.

Of course, the sixth iteration is the one we are presented with, and this is the one which breaks the cycle. This time, the Oracle influenced events so that Neo faces Smith instead of running, resulting in Neo’s code mingling with Smith at the end of the first film. Smith explicitly says so in Reloaded right before the scene where Neo fights off a horde of Smiths. Since Neo is written to interact with the Outer Matrix, Smith’s program learns this and realizes there is more to reality than what he was previously aware, and using this knowledge, avoids deletion and finds a way to duplicate himself and make his way into the Outer Matrix (Smith may have recognized the Oracle’s hand in his rebirth, which is probably why he called her mom).

Perhaps using Smith as leverage, the Oracle convinces the Architect to allow personal choice into the equation, giving Neo a chance to choose between the two doors. Since she brought Neo and Trinity together in the first place (by telling Trinity she’d fall in love with the One), he chooses Trinity. And of course, Smith gives Neo the leverage to force the machines to grant them peace (and I was pretty annoyed that one of the trailers gives away this plot point), resulting in Zion not being destroyed and an upgraded Inner Matrix, unlike previous cycles.

And that’s just the literal meaning of the movies.

Political Themes

Well, the first Matrix was pretty straightforward, mostly getting people to question reality, since it just might be shadows in Plato’s Cave. The whole order vs. chaos opens up other interesting questions. For instance, change vs. stability is a constant struggle in our politics between liberals and conservatives. I’m not talking the economic left/right as in the Political Compass, but in social liberalism and conservativism (a dimension missing from the Political Compass), where liberals perceive unfairness and injustice in our society and want to fix it, and conservatives fear society will be harmed by drastic unpredictable changes and want things to stay the same or go back to the way they were. So it’s no coincidence that the Oracle was a woman of color and the Architect was an old white guy (or that most of the inhabitants of Zion are blacks and Latinos).

So yes, this is yet another case of Hollywood promoting a liberal agenda, pointing out that the way things are can sometimes be stupid (in Reloaded, when the Architect talks about making the matrix less perfect to match the imperfections in humans, look closely at the screens behind them — near the end, you can make out Reagan, Bush, and Dubya from left to right). There is no reason to keep the Inner Matrix so imperfect. What probably happened is that it was as good as they could make it with their available technology, and eventually they got skilled enough to create a much better one. But they stuck with the old software running the Inner Matrix instead of upgrading it because they had figured out a system that worked just fine and why fix something that isn’t broken? One of the morals of the trilogy is that this not a good reason to avoid change. There were plenty of obvious solvable problems with this system. The solutions involved risks, as any change does, but in the end, they ended up with a society that was better off for everybody. Which is pretty much what idealistic liberals strive for in our society.

Philosophical Themes

Aside from the political angle, order and chaos is also a key concept concerning the nature of time. For example, time is all about chaos eventually winning out over order. The Thermodynamic Arrow of Time points in the direction of increasing entropy (or chaos). So everything that has a beginning (is created — order) has an end (is destroyed — chaos). If everything kept repeating itself over and over again, time would never progress. Thus, change and chaos is inevitable with time.

This ties into the “everything that has a beginning has an end” theme. Why does there need to be an end to everything? Because otherwise, nothing would have any value. Without death, life wouldn’t be worth anything. Without loss, love would not be worth anything. Because how would you know how much anything is worth unless you knew what it was like to not have it, and knew that there would or could be a time in the future where you wouldn’t have it anymore?

The theme in Reloaded was choice. Whether or not we merely serve a pre-ordained purpose and plan dictated by cause and effect. Or whether we have a free will that cannot be predicted. Is the universe deterministic or not? This is a theme I also explored in this rambling philosophical musing (which I’ll also eventually revise and rewrite extensively).

I’m sure there are other layers to explore, especially the Christian and Hindu references, but I probably need to rewatch the whole trilogy a couple more times to really fully appreciate them all. But hopefully I’ve given you plenty to chew on.