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by James, Suckball.com's One
At the time of me writing this, Reloaded has been out for 3 days. Up until this exact moment, I've seen Reloaded 3 times, the whole Animatrix twice and I've quite honestly lost count of how many times I've seen the first Matrix, but I imagine it's somewhere in the range of 12-15 times, not counting the times that I've had it on in the background while I was using my computer.
Anyway, I see Reloaded as less of a sequel to the original Matrix and more of a prequel to Revolutions. It raises countless questions, while answering very few, putting you in a state of desperation to see Revolutions and ultimately put you out of your misery.
I have to admit that my first impressions of Reloaded were very poor. But after my second and third viewing, I'm finding myself eating my words more and more, so let's get off that and into my discussion on the implications of Reloaded.
Note: This essay may well ruin Revolutions for you, in my writing I may have given away it's plot, and so please be careful only to read it if you really want to!
It is quite possible that Neo himself is a program rather than a human. It's the only way to explain how the hell he is able to appear 5 times previously and still be the same age. Especially when Zion is referred to as being 100 years old and he's still there. That could be why Smith says that they have a 'bond' (both being rogue programs). This also seems extremely plausible, because I doubt that they would want to use the idea that there are multiple layers of Matrices ie. a matrix within another matrix - this would explain why could control the sentinels without having to follow that storyline.
My own feeling is that Neo is a program created by the machines and then injected into the Matrix. They made this whole idea of a prophecy out of nothing, in order to pacify the humans - in that as long as they had a sense of purpose, they would be an obedient little group. Either that or the prophecy was meant to distract otherwise threatening people like Morpheus from doing something that would potentially hurt the machines and lead them on this wild goose chase instead.
Conversely, Trinity could be a machine/program, meant to entice whoever the 'One' is, in this case Neo. She is programmed to enter the Matrix even when Neo explicitly made her promise that she should not enter the Matrix at any cost and because of this, Neo chooses the door that the architect wants him to.
What if the Architect was just a failsafe program ie. a safety program that was a pre-recorded last ditch effort to stop Neo from entering the correct door. Perhaps thats why he doesn't answer Neo's question, because he didn't ask what he expected him to, or because he's pre-recorded to not even answer a question at all, so as to cater for whatever Neo asks him.
The girl in white (Persephone) is rather obviously the 'mother' of the Matrix that the architect mentions. Perhaps she kisses Neo to test him, she says 'kiss me like you would kiss her' so that she can judge whether or not he really loves Trinity, before handing the key maker over, as she knows that if he does love her and he does pass the test, that he will definately choose the correct door. Otherwise she would not allow him to have the key-maker and he would never even have had the 'choice'. Perhaps further symbolised by the French guys's whole gay cause and effect speech - that Neo never had a choice anyway. And AGAIN symbolised by the Oracle telling him that all his choices have already been made.
All the while though, we have to remember that the Matrix is not perfect, we saw in the original Matrix movie that there are glitches, as per, when Neo has a Deja-vu when he sees the two cats. And although I don't think that he's lying, I think that the Architect is actually not clear as to what the truth is. He assumes that everything is going ahead just as it had the last 5 times, but in fact we know that it isn't, even Agent Smith, in the second scene tells us "That went as expected. Everything's happening just as before", "Well, not exactly like before."
In the Merovignian's speech, (among other things) he said that eating something will change your 'code', maybe the candy that the Oracle gave Neo was changing his code which, after 5 loops of always choosing the same door, would make him instead choose the other door. Or perhaps that pill was made to let him know that ssomething was 'different' just as Morpheus' pill in the first movie did.
And do you remember when she gives him the candy? It was red... perhaps that was when he got put into the second layer of the Matrix, as in when he took the red pill in the first movie.
I could be wrong, but my opinion is that the Oracle cannot be trusted. Perhaps Seraph was perhaps trying to kill Neo, but upon realising that he couldn't, he played the bluff of saying that he was testing him. The reason why I feel that the Oracle should not be trusted, is that in the first movie, Neo asks Morpheus if the Oracle made the prophecy, and Morpheus says 'Yes'. After the Architect tells Neo that the prophecy was false, this should mean that the Oracle was on the side of the Machines, as she was the one who started it.
If we remember the first movie, the Oracle tells Neo that he isn't the One. It's because of this that he risks his life to save Morpheus, as he obviously would not have if he had thought he was as precious to the resistance as being the chosen one, who would ultimately end the war. Also, in the first movie, Neo asks Morpheus if she knows everything, to which Morpheus answers "She would say she knows enough" - perhaps because she isn't psychic, she just knows what has happened 6 times previous, which is quite obviously, 'enough'.
When Neo is given the spoon, perhaps that is the kid telling him that the 'real world' isn't real. As in, "there is no spoon" and perhaps there is no real world? It would have been impossible to send Neo a bent up spoon if it was in the real world, as he would have been able to mess with it in the first place.
My feeling is that the 'Real World' is not another Matrix. I've discussed the idea, but I don't really believe in it. My reason for this is that we never actually see Neo and the crew return to the Matrix, and also simply because I feel it's too far-fetched an idea that would potentially wreck the story line. I need to watch Reloaded again to see whether or not Neo and the rest have their plugs all over their body when he stops the Sentinels, as that would prove this.
It's also difficult to believe that after freeing themselves from the Matrix, the inhabitants of Zion would be so naive as to just accept it as the 'Real World' without scrutiny. If people watching the movie could come up with that theory, surely people who lived there would be able to too?
Before I give you what I think will happen in Revolutions, here is a final idea:
The architect said that Maths and prediction had failed the machines in the past, so why not now? He said that if Neo chose to save Trinity, that the whole of Zion would collapse, but this hasn't happened yet. Neo is the One, as the architect said, an anomoly, because of this, he can't be outside of the estimations of the machines and outside the laws of the Matrix at any one time. Therefore he should clearly have the potential to disprove the architect, as it is impossible to account for every single decision that Neo is liable to make, even less so for the uncharted powers that Neo has in the Matrix.
As I said before, we never see the crew actually return to the Real World, we simply assume that they have, and so my feeling is that although Zion is an actual 'Real World', the place that they are in at the end of Reloaded is still just a different sector of the same Matrix.
Further still, what if the Agents are actually the 5 previous 'Ones' who have been put under control of the Matrix and then re-released into it to keep it in order, perhaps that is why Morpheus and the rest of his crew (minus Neo) cannot defeat them?
Anyway, as you can see, there is a lot to stomach! But my overall feeling is that Neo is a program inserted into the Matrix by the machines along with the Oracle's prophecy, to pacify any humans that seek to set people free from the Matrix ie. Morpheus and his crew. However, unlike his 5 predecessors, he has chosen to fight for the humans, and this must be something to do with Agent Smith.
From what I can see, there are two pieces of evidence that this has not happened before, as the Architect had said:
1. Agent Smith is now a rogue program within the Matrix, with the ability to replicate himself, this cannot have happened before, otherwise (and I think that this will happen in Revolutions) the entire Matrix would be full of Agent Smiths.
2. The Merovingian was flustered when he couldn't defeat Neo. He said he had lived through his predecessors and that he would live through Neo too, but he was unable to kill him by using the methods he had used before.
I think that what the Architect said was true, the indications of this are that a lot of people atone for this, such as Agent Smith saying that everything is happening as before etc and I also think that the Council are the members of by the last Zion, which the last One had chosen to re-build Zion, which is why there are only old people there and why they seem content to depend on machines.
Furthermore, my own explanation for why Neo was able to control the Sentinels at the end of the movie is not that there is a Matrix within a Matrix - I really doubt that. What I think is that it is all to do with the Merovingian and Persephone. The Merovingian gave us a massive long speech about causality, the absence of choice and that anything can be embedded into anything. I think that Persephone applies her lipstick before she kisses Neo, because there is a program embedded within it, which will allow him to control the Sentinels. This shows why he feels differently after he returns to reality from the kiss.
The final thing I will say is Congratulations to the Wachowski Brothers on creating a financial juggernaut of a movie, not only does it get people dying to see Revolutions, but it's got them watching Reloaded more than once just to try and uncover as much about it as they can.
I hope you enjoyed my essay, and that I didn't wreck Revolutions too much for you! And I guess we'll all know the truth in November! Thanks :)
Thanks to: Louis for watching the movie with me, Rachel for asking me to write up my thoughts and Deena for being all round nice person :) // Download the Matrix Revolutions trailer here
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