
Explanation of The Matrix - ptn
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/g9ps7/does_anyone_really_understand_the_matrix_trilogy/c1lydxs
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Jun8
What great movies, sadly such mainstream movies are getting rarer and rarer (I
thought _Inception_ was one, but, boy, what a disappointment).

The more you watch them the more new stuff you discover, e.g. it recently
occurred to me that the Zion control mechanism is very similar in spirit to
"the book" in 1984, called _The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical
Collectivism_ supposedly written by the anarchist mastermind Emmanuel
Goldstein, leader of the Brotherhood. It is later revealed that this book was
indeed written by O'Brien, the member of the thought police that eventually
arrests Smith. I believe other sophisticated autocratic regimes, like China,
have similar multilayered control mechanisms in place.

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dreww
in sophisticated, autocratic regimes, you need a fake anarchist mastermind.

in non-autocratic regimes, all you need is People magazine and TMZ.

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Jun8
Excellent point! That is the control, based on sex and soma, described in
Huxley's _Brave New World_ (hmm, vodka was heavily subsidized by the Russian
government and they are one of the most sexually open societies I know of, so
maybe the Russian Party wasn't so 1984ian after all).

It has often been commented that out of the two futuristic scenarios, Huxley's
is much closer to the reality we are experiencing now.

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nazgulnarsil
sorry, but the matrix was a mess of ideas. it shouldn't take DVD commentary,
supplementary material, etc. to make any sense. The second two films should
have been thematically simpler rather than try to cram everything into
monologues (Ayn Rand anyone?).

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icey
That's only true if you want someone to watch a movie exactly once and not
think about it again.

Sowing confusion creates a ton of follow-on merchandising opportunities in the
form of special editions, additional cuts (directors cuts, unrated cuts,
extended editions), explanatory books, etc because the people who enjoyed the
movie will want to continue to learn more about it.

That kind of narrative vagueness allows people to fill in the missing bits
with their imagination, which is a very powerful way to get people to like
something.

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ck2
I feel there is a large part of that explanation that is missing or wrong.

The secret is near the end of the 1st film. Neo was not supposed to try to
destroy Agent Smith with his newly discovered realization of power-over the
matrix. That was the difference "this time around" that the Oracle realized,
and perhaps triggered unexpectedly by causing him to care about Trinity and
wanting to protect her.

He overreacted and went too far. By trying to destroy Smith in the way he did,
he instead cloned some of Smith's code and Smith took some of his. That was
never supposed to happen in the Oracle's scheme.

Then they became two parts of same force trying to cancel each other out, each
gaining an awareness they were not supposed to have, Neo gaining deeper
control of the matrix and the machine world, Smith an awareness of the human
world and physical existence.

The Oracle can predict the future because she's seen the five previous
versions of the Matrix and knows the permutations. But she cannot completely
predict the current version of Neo because of how he's changed the rules by
taking some of Smith's code. To get her scheme back on track, she has to
sacrifice herself to Smith in this permutation, which never happened before.

ps. The Merovingian was not the first Neo (second itiration) he was the ruler
of their version of hell, a "fallen angel" from the first/second version of
the matrix and Seraph was his "right hand man" an Agent enforcer that left to
protect the Oracle from him instead - hence "the prodigal child returns" when
he takes Neo to the nightclub.

pps. By the way, isn't the Architect the same guardian that told Neo to
"SPEAK" in the _realworld_? Because the Oracle asked the Architect if he was
going to "keep his promise". In his Architect form, he never made a promise to
Neo. Only the guardian's physical form made a promise to him. Aha?!

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lukifer
For more in-depth explanations:

<http://www.wylfing.net/essays/matrix_reloaded.html>

<http://www.wylfing.net/essays/matrix_revolutions.html>

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DennisP
I really wanted the third movie to say that Neo could stop machines in the
real world because the real world is actually another matrix, and the machines
didn't know it. By transcending the first matrix, Neo learned to transcend the
next.

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ilcavero
are we still doing this? go watch other movies, the matrix was mostly about
bullet time fights and sophomoric philosophy

