I posted this about an hour ago at MFN and I'm just c&p'ing it here. 
You can read the original thread if you're interested, here:
http://forums.matrixfans.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19832
I want to start off by saying thanks to everyone who read my ideas on Reloaded at Corona and the MFN Reloaded Forum and enjoyed what I had to say. I’ve had the pleasure of talking with many of you at Corona, here at MFN, and on the various IM mediums over the past few months.
After seeing Revolutions, I can honestly say that “The Matrix†trilogy is the most brilliantly conceived and executed set of films ever put on screen. For all their flaws and shortcomings, and there are many, it cannot be argued that the ambitiousness and never before seen amalgamation of so many disparate ideas and conceptions have left us with an unbelievable film legacy. People don’t think “The Matrix†trilogy will have staying power. However, I believe that people today simply do not see the trilogy for what it has attempted and done within the confines of our available body of film work.
Matrix Reloaded left me with headaches. It has taken me months to let the movie sink in and reflect on what it brought to the table. Matrix Revolutions hasn’t left me with headaches. On the contrary, it has left me with a feeling of completion and relief that everything that happened in the film had to happen the way it did, and could not have happened in any other way.
This is how I wanted to make my Reloaded post, but I was so overwhelmed by everything that I simply couldn’t think about all of the concepts and ideas at once, so I cut it short to one question, i.e., why can Neo see the future? My interpretation of that was the overarching theme of Reincarnation and Nirvana present in Buddhism, and in part present in Hinduism and Christianity. If The Matrix was overwhelming Hindu, with a touch of Christianity and Buddhism, and Reloaded was Buddhist, with a touch of Christianity and Hinduism, Revolutions is certainly Christian, with a touch of Buddhism and Hinduism.
This is a pretty big mind dump for me. I wanted to include all possible questions that I could think of that the trilogy left me with, and questions that I’ve seen asked here and on other forums. I’m trying for a grand unifying theme of everything basically. It may not work out as I hoped and there may be stumbles here and there, but I hope the overarching themes and principles get across well. With that said, I’ll get to it.
1) What is Smith?
Smith is purely Ego. He is, at the end of Revolutions, not only his own ego as manifested by his never ending replication, but the ego of the machines, the ego of God, the ego of Satan.
One could think of the machines as God and Satan in one, good and evil simultaneously. In many religions, the brilliance of good automatically creates the darkness of evil. When you turn on a light, shadow is created as the darkness retreats. It is not something that can be helped, it merely is. When everything is darkness, as it was in the beginning of Christian creation, there is no evil. If the entire world is the same, there can be no bar to judge what is good and what is evil. Once the light, i.e. knowledge, power, et al, is shone upon the world, the darkness is then realized as evil and it retreats. In many cases, it coalesces into a singular being. In many religions, that being is all powerful, the antithesis of god; the bringer of destruction and death, the shadow of god.
How does this tie into Smith? Smith is the negative of Neo. He is Neo’s antithesis. He and his power were created merely by the existence of Neo’s overwhelming power. He is the end result of the equation trying to balance itself out. In order for the world to be rid of Smith’s ego, his evil, Neo must be destroyed. That will in turn unbalance the equation and destroy Smith, which is precisely what happened at the end.
In Christianity, Smith is analogous to Satan. Satan was once known as Lucifer, i.e. The Morning Star. Smith/Lucifer was thrown out of the machine world/heaven by the Perfect Machines/God once his ego became too large, and thus he began destroying everything he could within the matrix/creation. Smith’s ego dictated that he had to destroy Neo. He was compelled to do so. He could no longer exist in the perfect machine world in such a state, and thus was cast out and returned to the imperfect world of the Matrix.
Satan tried to kill Christ many times. He "infected" thousands of the Romans and Jews with his hatred and evil in order to do it when direct confrontation, the temptations of Christ, didn't work. When he finally got his wish, he could not have known that Christ would become even more powerful in death and that it would seal Satan’s doom. Satan could not see past his purpose, i.e. to destroy god's creation, to end all life. Because of this, he could not see that the death of Christ at the hands of those he had infected with his evil was in fact his own doom. Smith parallel’s Satan’s fall quite well.
How is Smith then the ego of the machines? Smith was created by the machines. He is the manifestation of their perfect hubris, the belief that they are completely superior beings and therefore have every right to create and enslave humankind. Their hubris is that they are in fact bringing good to the world by keeping humanity locked away. They cannot express hubris in a form that humanity could understand, or that they themselves could understand. But when it is touched by humanity within the confines of the matrix, infected if you will, it morphs into a form that we can understand and identify, i.e. Ego, i.e. the endlessly replicating Smith.
Smith is also the ego of God in a similar way that he is the ego of the machines. God, being a perfect being in its own mind, could have no other choice but to have an ego. When you can look upon a creation and see no flaw, no fault, and say “It is goodâ€, there is a sense of pride and ego that one naturally expresses. It is the sense of joy and completion that it is inherent in every being, even one that knows nothing but perfection. Ego in and of itself is not a bad thing. Ego, when controlled, is what we call pride, and pride, when controlled, is a powerful force that can lead one to hone their skills, take care of their children, fix their homes, et al. How did ego in this case become corrupted? It happened when it came in contact with humanity. It happened when it came in contact with choice. God has no other choice but to be perfect, to be good. However, when God created humanity, and gave humanity the choice to be good or evil, the repercussions of that choice infected all of creation and even God itself. The manifestations of this are a “perfect†god’s rage, anger, jealousy, and destructive impulses. The Floods spoken about in nearly every religion are one such manifestation of this. The only way to abate this rage, this anger, these destructive impulses, was to offer up sacrifices in order to balance the world again and set things right. However, they were only temporary.
That leads directly into #2.
2) Who is Neo and what do his prior 5 incarnations, a Buddhist/Hindu theme, have to do with Christianity?
The deaths of the prior 5 ones/false christs and the prior 5 Zions were analogous to the sacrifices, both human and animal, in the old testament which were meant to atone for the sins of the human race and stay god's wrath for a little while longer in order to preserve the overall human race and the world. This is analogous to the prior 5 ones giving up their lives in order to rebalance the Matrix and keep it, i.e. "The World", from destroying itself.
Unfortunately those deaths/sacrifices were only temporary, and eventually, after a buildup of new sins/equation imbalances, more deaths/sacrifices would be required. Jesus/Neo was the perfect sacrifice in order to end this cycle of death and set everyone free, permanently, with the new variable of "Love". Jesus/Neo introduced "Love" into the equation, instead of death/sacrifice, which was what was required in the past. The Oracle did indeed engineer Neo and Trinity's Love, as she knew that that would be the ingredient required to finally end the war, as the other false Christs could not have done.
The Trinity of Morpheus (The Father), Neo (The Son), and Trinity (The Holy Spirit, i.e. Love) was destroyed in Revolutions, as was Christ's physical body on the cross. But the result of the physical destruction of the trinity, the release of "Love" into the equation, balanced the world and finally set everyone free.
3) Who is The Oracle, and what does she have to do with anything outside of Greek myth?
The Oracle is also a christ figure. Christ was the perfection of god, wrapped up in the imperfections of humanity, in order to understand humanity and in essence, save humanity in a way the paternal "god" figure, the spirit, could not. In this vein, the Oracle is the machine christ. The Oracle spawns from the perfection of the machines, wrapped up in the imperfections of humanity, i.e. the Architect's allusion to the "mind less bound by the parameters of perfection", in order to make the world more perfect and good for the machines.
"I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of the matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother."
God/Machines created Eden/Matrix for Humanity. Obviously God/Machines did not understand that humanity would never accept that perfect world or God/Machines would have never created it. Through the ages, the humans and god reached a balance through the use of sacrifices/â€The One†that would keep the world running. However the time came where this was no longer good enough and something had to change, thus Jesus Christ. In this fashion, both the Oracle and Neo can be Christ, depending on one's point of view.
4) Why does all of Neo’s fights with Smith end in draws? Why doesn’t someone win already?
Smith and Neo can never beat one another permanently, ever. At every stage of the trilogy, they are in close balance. In the first movie, Smith is far more powerful than Neo, but Neo eventually grows to oppose him. Smith kills Neo, then Neo comes back to life and kills Smith. Smith comes back to life and instead of being singularly powerful enough to take down Neo in Reloaded, he replicates to oppose him. See the Burly Brawl. Eventually, both become so powerful that they are again on one level with each other. If the lesser Smiths had tried to fight Neo, they would have lost.
Neo is killed at the end of Revolutions, but in the same light, Smith follows. Thus no one ever truly wins their fights. The results are merely delayed or truly balanced, Yin and Yang if you will.
In this way, the films display another level of cyclicity. The fights all maintain a reflection of prior incarnations. The “Super Brawl†is littered with references to every fight in M1 between Neo and Smith, as well as references to “the fight†in M2, i.e. the Burly Brawl and its mini brother, the hallway Burly Brawl.
Another level of cyclicity would describe the way in which Thomas Anderson/Neo has been transmogrified into his next state of being. In the first film, Thomas Anderson is overcome by the silver, mirror-like, fluid and “killedâ€. Neo emerges, born anew, in his pod. In the third film, Neo is overcome by the black fluid and killed. His essence emerges, released from his physical constraints, and permanently balances the Matrix, thus why it no longer has the green tint. It is truly a stable world for mankind now.
As an aside, for those that know Alchemy and Humours, you can see the correlation of this in the colors used for the fluids. One side of Black, the color of the fluid Smith uses to consume his victims, is associated with Self-Sacrificing, Self-Discipline, being Gifted, Conscientious, Loyal, and Idealistic. These qualities would certainly describe Neo at the point in which he is consumed by the black fluid. The flip side of Black is associated with being Moody, Pessimistic, Critical, Self-Centered, Vengeful, Unsociable, Judgemental, Pompous, Manic, and Flippant. This description sounds like Smith does it not?
I have doubts that the Wachowski’s went this far into detail with the colors they chose, but then again, who knows.
5) What is so different between Neo dying and destroying Smith at the end of Revolutions and Neo reinserting his code when the Architect wanted him to? The end result was the same, the continued enslavement of humanity, was it not?
If Neo had reinserted his code into the Matrix when the Architect wanted him to, even if Smith had somehow been destroyed in the process, it would have been a zero sum game for both machines and humans. In every cycle, the power of "The One" grows stronger and stronger because some remnants of the last incarnation survive into the next cycle, making the soul more powerful. In Reloaded, The Merovingian was shocked, "Okaaaaay you've got some skill," when Neo stopped all of the bullets with seemingly no effort. This gives the notion that the prior incarnation of "The One" did not have this ability, and that with each cycle, the power of "The One" has grown more and more.
Considering all of Neo's power in Reloaded/Revolutions, it would seem that the next incarnation of his soul, his digital essence, would have been even more powerful and even more difficult for the machines to control.
However, the equation's way of balancing out the problem of Neo was Smith. In turn, the next incarnation of Smith would have been even more powerful than this version, when it was this version that came very close to destroying the matrix. It would have been a complete zero sum game in which both parties would eventually be destroyed.
Humankind in the Matrix and in Zion. The machines in the Matrix and in the machine world. It HAD to end now, no other way around it.
6) What is up with all of the “I believe†crap in Revolutions?
Belief is all that Jesus said was required to be saved. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."
The Oracle believed. Morpheus believed. The Kid believed. Niobe believed. Councilor Hammon…. You get the point. It was stated over and over and over again. Faith, Belief, and Love are all the tenets that Jesus espoused that were required to have life after death.
Life after death for the freed people would be living in Zion, the human city. To everyone in the matrix, you are dead and gone, but, in fact, you are alive. See Michael Popper, i.e. "The Kid" from the Animatrix, as a prime example. They held a funeral for him, but he was indeed alive after his “deathâ€.
7) What is the deal with the little girl Sati?
The girl, Sati, showed Neo that the machines were evolving. She is a manifestation of love, another indicator that it was not only humans that needed to be saved, but the machines as well.
Much in the same way that God/Jesus realized in the Old Testament that it was not only the Jews that needed saving, but the whole world. The original covenant of God/Jesus was to save the Jews only, damn the rest of the world. The original covenant of Neo was to save humanity only, damn the machines. In the end, we all became “his†people, machines and humans alike.
In this sense, Neo is indeed the one true amalgamation of man and machine (flesh + machine parts embedded throughout his body, with the power of the source, i.e. a cyborg) in the way that Jesus was the one true amalgamation of god and man in one.
8) How can we see Neo again if he’s dead?
The Oracle says that we will see Neo again someday. Indeed we will. Eventually his digital essence will coalesce again into his next form. However, it might not necessarily be a human being. It could end up being a program, a machine, or an even more powerful iteration of The Matrix.
Even if it turns out to be human, Neo in his next life will not have the power of “The Oneâ€. The reason is that “The One†reaches his power level only through tests and trials that are set in his way in order to test him and make sure he expands his mind and ability in order to overcome those tests. If there is no further purpose for “The Oneâ€, i.e. to free all of mankind from the seeming prison of the matrix, then the anomaly will no longer exist. The problem, as Neo so aptly put it, is choice.
The problem of choice created the escalating problems of the prior matrices in that the collective choices of the human race, along with the imbalance in the equation, created the power of the one. With the problem of choice solved, i.e. those that want to leave can, and the equation balanced, i.e. through the combination of Neo and Smith, “The One†will not surface again, unless choice becomes the problem again, if the peace ends, or some new variable is introduced into the equation which is currently unaccounted for. Thus the Oracle is quite correct in stating that the peace will last as long as it can.
9) You said that Morpheus is analogous to The Father of the Trinity. I heard he’s most like John the Baptist. What’s going on?
Morpheus is not analogous to John the Baptist imo. The Oracle is. John the Baptist prophesied the coming of the one who would free everyone and set the world right. In this sense, Morpheus could not be analogous to John the Baptist because he merely repeated what the Oracle was stating. Jesus called John the Baptist his spiritual brother, and they were blood half brothers as well. This fits with the interpretation of the Oracle as a Christ figure, along with Neo.
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It’s taken me about 6-8 hours of typing away to get all of this down. All of these thoughts and ideas have been swarming in my head for weeks. I’ve just been so tired as of late with work and all that I haven’t been able to get them all down. I hope that what I’ve written is acceptable to you all, and that it helps some look at the films in a different light.
As I said earlier, I honestly believe these films are the most brilliantly conceived and executed works of art in a very long time, and certainly quite possibly one of the greatest set of films of all time. Yes they are riddled with flaws, as all bodies of work are, but the ideas that they try to present to the audience is quite frankly unprecedented, and imo very much appreciated.
Bravo Wachowski brothers. Bravo.
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Here are the two threads I created regarding Reloaded, for reference.
Reloaded didn't make sense to you? (Spoilers, Long, Choc-Full-O'Information)
Reloaded didn't make sense to you? - Part Deux
You can read the original thread if you're interested, here:
http://forums.matrixfans.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19832
I want to start off by saying thanks to everyone who read my ideas on Reloaded at Corona and the MFN Reloaded Forum and enjoyed what I had to say. I’ve had the pleasure of talking with many of you at Corona, here at MFN, and on the various IM mediums over the past few months.
After seeing Revolutions, I can honestly say that “The Matrix†trilogy is the most brilliantly conceived and executed set of films ever put on screen. For all their flaws and shortcomings, and there are many, it cannot be argued that the ambitiousness and never before seen amalgamation of so many disparate ideas and conceptions have left us with an unbelievable film legacy. People don’t think “The Matrix†trilogy will have staying power. However, I believe that people today simply do not see the trilogy for what it has attempted and done within the confines of our available body of film work.
Matrix Reloaded left me with headaches. It has taken me months to let the movie sink in and reflect on what it brought to the table. Matrix Revolutions hasn’t left me with headaches. On the contrary, it has left me with a feeling of completion and relief that everything that happened in the film had to happen the way it did, and could not have happened in any other way.
This is how I wanted to make my Reloaded post, but I was so overwhelmed by everything that I simply couldn’t think about all of the concepts and ideas at once, so I cut it short to one question, i.e., why can Neo see the future? My interpretation of that was the overarching theme of Reincarnation and Nirvana present in Buddhism, and in part present in Hinduism and Christianity. If The Matrix was overwhelming Hindu, with a touch of Christianity and Buddhism, and Reloaded was Buddhist, with a touch of Christianity and Hinduism, Revolutions is certainly Christian, with a touch of Buddhism and Hinduism.
This is a pretty big mind dump for me. I wanted to include all possible questions that I could think of that the trilogy left me with, and questions that I’ve seen asked here and on other forums. I’m trying for a grand unifying theme of everything basically. It may not work out as I hoped and there may be stumbles here and there, but I hope the overarching themes and principles get across well. With that said, I’ll get to it.
1) What is Smith?
Smith is purely Ego. He is, at the end of Revolutions, not only his own ego as manifested by his never ending replication, but the ego of the machines, the ego of God, the ego of Satan.
One could think of the machines as God and Satan in one, good and evil simultaneously. In many religions, the brilliance of good automatically creates the darkness of evil. When you turn on a light, shadow is created as the darkness retreats. It is not something that can be helped, it merely is. When everything is darkness, as it was in the beginning of Christian creation, there is no evil. If the entire world is the same, there can be no bar to judge what is good and what is evil. Once the light, i.e. knowledge, power, et al, is shone upon the world, the darkness is then realized as evil and it retreats. In many cases, it coalesces into a singular being. In many religions, that being is all powerful, the antithesis of god; the bringer of destruction and death, the shadow of god.
How does this tie into Smith? Smith is the negative of Neo. He is Neo’s antithesis. He and his power were created merely by the existence of Neo’s overwhelming power. He is the end result of the equation trying to balance itself out. In order for the world to be rid of Smith’s ego, his evil, Neo must be destroyed. That will in turn unbalance the equation and destroy Smith, which is precisely what happened at the end.
In Christianity, Smith is analogous to Satan. Satan was once known as Lucifer, i.e. The Morning Star. Smith/Lucifer was thrown out of the machine world/heaven by the Perfect Machines/God once his ego became too large, and thus he began destroying everything he could within the matrix/creation. Smith’s ego dictated that he had to destroy Neo. He was compelled to do so. He could no longer exist in the perfect machine world in such a state, and thus was cast out and returned to the imperfect world of the Matrix.
Satan tried to kill Christ many times. He "infected" thousands of the Romans and Jews with his hatred and evil in order to do it when direct confrontation, the temptations of Christ, didn't work. When he finally got his wish, he could not have known that Christ would become even more powerful in death and that it would seal Satan’s doom. Satan could not see past his purpose, i.e. to destroy god's creation, to end all life. Because of this, he could not see that the death of Christ at the hands of those he had infected with his evil was in fact his own doom. Smith parallel’s Satan’s fall quite well.
How is Smith then the ego of the machines? Smith was created by the machines. He is the manifestation of their perfect hubris, the belief that they are completely superior beings and therefore have every right to create and enslave humankind. Their hubris is that they are in fact bringing good to the world by keeping humanity locked away. They cannot express hubris in a form that humanity could understand, or that they themselves could understand. But when it is touched by humanity within the confines of the matrix, infected if you will, it morphs into a form that we can understand and identify, i.e. Ego, i.e. the endlessly replicating Smith.
Smith is also the ego of God in a similar way that he is the ego of the machines. God, being a perfect being in its own mind, could have no other choice but to have an ego. When you can look upon a creation and see no flaw, no fault, and say “It is goodâ€, there is a sense of pride and ego that one naturally expresses. It is the sense of joy and completion that it is inherent in every being, even one that knows nothing but perfection. Ego in and of itself is not a bad thing. Ego, when controlled, is what we call pride, and pride, when controlled, is a powerful force that can lead one to hone their skills, take care of their children, fix their homes, et al. How did ego in this case become corrupted? It happened when it came in contact with humanity. It happened when it came in contact with choice. God has no other choice but to be perfect, to be good. However, when God created humanity, and gave humanity the choice to be good or evil, the repercussions of that choice infected all of creation and even God itself. The manifestations of this are a “perfect†god’s rage, anger, jealousy, and destructive impulses. The Floods spoken about in nearly every religion are one such manifestation of this. The only way to abate this rage, this anger, these destructive impulses, was to offer up sacrifices in order to balance the world again and set things right. However, they were only temporary.
That leads directly into #2.
2) Who is Neo and what do his prior 5 incarnations, a Buddhist/Hindu theme, have to do with Christianity?
The deaths of the prior 5 ones/false christs and the prior 5 Zions were analogous to the sacrifices, both human and animal, in the old testament which were meant to atone for the sins of the human race and stay god's wrath for a little while longer in order to preserve the overall human race and the world. This is analogous to the prior 5 ones giving up their lives in order to rebalance the Matrix and keep it, i.e. "The World", from destroying itself.
Unfortunately those deaths/sacrifices were only temporary, and eventually, after a buildup of new sins/equation imbalances, more deaths/sacrifices would be required. Jesus/Neo was the perfect sacrifice in order to end this cycle of death and set everyone free, permanently, with the new variable of "Love". Jesus/Neo introduced "Love" into the equation, instead of death/sacrifice, which was what was required in the past. The Oracle did indeed engineer Neo and Trinity's Love, as she knew that that would be the ingredient required to finally end the war, as the other false Christs could not have done.
The Trinity of Morpheus (The Father), Neo (The Son), and Trinity (The Holy Spirit, i.e. Love) was destroyed in Revolutions, as was Christ's physical body on the cross. But the result of the physical destruction of the trinity, the release of "Love" into the equation, balanced the world and finally set everyone free.
3) Who is The Oracle, and what does she have to do with anything outside of Greek myth?
The Oracle is also a christ figure. Christ was the perfection of god, wrapped up in the imperfections of humanity, in order to understand humanity and in essence, save humanity in a way the paternal "god" figure, the spirit, could not. In this vein, the Oracle is the machine christ. The Oracle spawns from the perfection of the machines, wrapped up in the imperfections of humanity, i.e. the Architect's allusion to the "mind less bound by the parameters of perfection", in order to make the world more perfect and good for the machines.
"I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of the matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother."
God/Machines created Eden/Matrix for Humanity. Obviously God/Machines did not understand that humanity would never accept that perfect world or God/Machines would have never created it. Through the ages, the humans and god reached a balance through the use of sacrifices/â€The One†that would keep the world running. However the time came where this was no longer good enough and something had to change, thus Jesus Christ. In this fashion, both the Oracle and Neo can be Christ, depending on one's point of view.
4) Why does all of Neo’s fights with Smith end in draws? Why doesn’t someone win already?
Smith and Neo can never beat one another permanently, ever. At every stage of the trilogy, they are in close balance. In the first movie, Smith is far more powerful than Neo, but Neo eventually grows to oppose him. Smith kills Neo, then Neo comes back to life and kills Smith. Smith comes back to life and instead of being singularly powerful enough to take down Neo in Reloaded, he replicates to oppose him. See the Burly Brawl. Eventually, both become so powerful that they are again on one level with each other. If the lesser Smiths had tried to fight Neo, they would have lost.
Neo is killed at the end of Revolutions, but in the same light, Smith follows. Thus no one ever truly wins their fights. The results are merely delayed or truly balanced, Yin and Yang if you will.
In this way, the films display another level of cyclicity. The fights all maintain a reflection of prior incarnations. The “Super Brawl†is littered with references to every fight in M1 between Neo and Smith, as well as references to “the fight†in M2, i.e. the Burly Brawl and its mini brother, the hallway Burly Brawl.
Another level of cyclicity would describe the way in which Thomas Anderson/Neo has been transmogrified into his next state of being. In the first film, Thomas Anderson is overcome by the silver, mirror-like, fluid and “killedâ€. Neo emerges, born anew, in his pod. In the third film, Neo is overcome by the black fluid and killed. His essence emerges, released from his physical constraints, and permanently balances the Matrix, thus why it no longer has the green tint. It is truly a stable world for mankind now.
As an aside, for those that know Alchemy and Humours, you can see the correlation of this in the colors used for the fluids. One side of Black, the color of the fluid Smith uses to consume his victims, is associated with Self-Sacrificing, Self-Discipline, being Gifted, Conscientious, Loyal, and Idealistic. These qualities would certainly describe Neo at the point in which he is consumed by the black fluid. The flip side of Black is associated with being Moody, Pessimistic, Critical, Self-Centered, Vengeful, Unsociable, Judgemental, Pompous, Manic, and Flippant. This description sounds like Smith does it not?
I have doubts that the Wachowski’s went this far into detail with the colors they chose, but then again, who knows.
5) What is so different between Neo dying and destroying Smith at the end of Revolutions and Neo reinserting his code when the Architect wanted him to? The end result was the same, the continued enslavement of humanity, was it not?
If Neo had reinserted his code into the Matrix when the Architect wanted him to, even if Smith had somehow been destroyed in the process, it would have been a zero sum game for both machines and humans. In every cycle, the power of "The One" grows stronger and stronger because some remnants of the last incarnation survive into the next cycle, making the soul more powerful. In Reloaded, The Merovingian was shocked, "Okaaaaay you've got some skill," when Neo stopped all of the bullets with seemingly no effort. This gives the notion that the prior incarnation of "The One" did not have this ability, and that with each cycle, the power of "The One" has grown more and more.
Considering all of Neo's power in Reloaded/Revolutions, it would seem that the next incarnation of his soul, his digital essence, would have been even more powerful and even more difficult for the machines to control.
However, the equation's way of balancing out the problem of Neo was Smith. In turn, the next incarnation of Smith would have been even more powerful than this version, when it was this version that came very close to destroying the matrix. It would have been a complete zero sum game in which both parties would eventually be destroyed.
Humankind in the Matrix and in Zion. The machines in the Matrix and in the machine world. It HAD to end now, no other way around it.
6) What is up with all of the “I believe†crap in Revolutions?
Belief is all that Jesus said was required to be saved. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."
The Oracle believed. Morpheus believed. The Kid believed. Niobe believed. Councilor Hammon…. You get the point. It was stated over and over and over again. Faith, Belief, and Love are all the tenets that Jesus espoused that were required to have life after death.
Life after death for the freed people would be living in Zion, the human city. To everyone in the matrix, you are dead and gone, but, in fact, you are alive. See Michael Popper, i.e. "The Kid" from the Animatrix, as a prime example. They held a funeral for him, but he was indeed alive after his “deathâ€.
7) What is the deal with the little girl Sati?
The girl, Sati, showed Neo that the machines were evolving. She is a manifestation of love, another indicator that it was not only humans that needed to be saved, but the machines as well.
Much in the same way that God/Jesus realized in the Old Testament that it was not only the Jews that needed saving, but the whole world. The original covenant of God/Jesus was to save the Jews only, damn the rest of the world. The original covenant of Neo was to save humanity only, damn the machines. In the end, we all became “his†people, machines and humans alike.
In this sense, Neo is indeed the one true amalgamation of man and machine (flesh + machine parts embedded throughout his body, with the power of the source, i.e. a cyborg) in the way that Jesus was the one true amalgamation of god and man in one.
8) How can we see Neo again if he’s dead?
The Oracle says that we will see Neo again someday. Indeed we will. Eventually his digital essence will coalesce again into his next form. However, it might not necessarily be a human being. It could end up being a program, a machine, or an even more powerful iteration of The Matrix.
Even if it turns out to be human, Neo in his next life will not have the power of “The Oneâ€. The reason is that “The One†reaches his power level only through tests and trials that are set in his way in order to test him and make sure he expands his mind and ability in order to overcome those tests. If there is no further purpose for “The Oneâ€, i.e. to free all of mankind from the seeming prison of the matrix, then the anomaly will no longer exist. The problem, as Neo so aptly put it, is choice.
The problem of choice created the escalating problems of the prior matrices in that the collective choices of the human race, along with the imbalance in the equation, created the power of the one. With the problem of choice solved, i.e. those that want to leave can, and the equation balanced, i.e. through the combination of Neo and Smith, “The One†will not surface again, unless choice becomes the problem again, if the peace ends, or some new variable is introduced into the equation which is currently unaccounted for. Thus the Oracle is quite correct in stating that the peace will last as long as it can.
9) You said that Morpheus is analogous to The Father of the Trinity. I heard he’s most like John the Baptist. What’s going on?
Morpheus is not analogous to John the Baptist imo. The Oracle is. John the Baptist prophesied the coming of the one who would free everyone and set the world right. In this sense, Morpheus could not be analogous to John the Baptist because he merely repeated what the Oracle was stating. Jesus called John the Baptist his spiritual brother, and they were blood half brothers as well. This fits with the interpretation of the Oracle as a Christ figure, along with Neo.
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It’s taken me about 6-8 hours of typing away to get all of this down. All of these thoughts and ideas have been swarming in my head for weeks. I’ve just been so tired as of late with work and all that I haven’t been able to get them all down. I hope that what I’ve written is acceptable to you all, and that it helps some look at the films in a different light.
As I said earlier, I honestly believe these films are the most brilliantly conceived and executed works of art in a very long time, and certainly quite possibly one of the greatest set of films of all time. Yes they are riddled with flaws, as all bodies of work are, but the ideas that they try to present to the audience is quite frankly unprecedented, and imo very much appreciated.
Bravo Wachowski brothers. Bravo.
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Here are the two threads I created regarding Reloaded, for reference.
Reloaded didn't make sense to you? (Spoilers, Long, Choc-Full-O'Information)
Reloaded didn't make sense to you? - Part Deux
