ИНСТРУМЕНТ ДЛЯ КООРДИНАТНО-ПРОБИВНЫХ ПРЕССОВ
Я использую инструмент
другого производителя
Подбор зазора для матриц
Подобрать инструмент
по чертежу
Наша компания предлагает широкий ассортимент инструмента и оснастки для координатно-пробивных прессов, универсальных пресс-ножниц и автоматизированных линий с ЧПУ.
Инструмент MATRIX используется на координатно-пробивных станках ведущих мировых производителей, таких как АМАDA, FINN-POWER, LVD, Rainer, TRUMPF, WIEDEMANN, EUROMAC, SCHIAVI, IMAC, GASPARINI, HACO, DURMA, ERMAKSAN и многих других.
Инструмент MATRIX . так же широко применяется на пресс-ножницах и автоматических линиях с ЧПУ таких как FICEP, GEKA, IMS, OMERA, MUBEA, PEDDINGHAUS, KINGSLAND и других.
Более 25 лет компания MATRIX (Италия) является передовым производителем инструмента для работы с листовым металлом. Применение передовых технологий на всех этапах производства, от проектирования до контроля качества продукции, позволяет компании получать высококачественный инструмент соответствующий стандарту ISO 9001:2000.
Contents
Fictional character biography [ edit ]
Encounter with Superman [ edit ]
In an alternate reality (a "Pocket Universe") three Kryptonian criminals (General Zod. Faora and Quex-Ul ) escaped the Phantom Zone. and tried to take over that reality's Earth. There was no Superman in this reality (his younger self, Superboy. having died before the criminals' escape) but there was a Lex Luthor who hadn't turned evil. Using an artificial life-form called the "protoplasmic matrix", Lex created a red-headed woman, Matrix, who resembled his true love, the deceased alternate-reality Lana Lang. Matrix possessed all of Lana's memories, due to Lana's synaptic pathways being copied into Matrix. Lex had also patterned her physiology to resemble Superman's, whom he had seen by using one of his many inventions to look into the mainstream universe.
"Supergirl" [ edit ]
Upon arrival on the mainstream Earth, Matrix was taken to live with Superman's parents, the Kents. Jonathan and Martha did a fine job raising their new "daughter", but Matrix (or "Mae" as the Kents named her) became delusional for a time, believing she was Clark, even assuming his form. After a fight with the real Superman, Matrix came to her senses, but concerned that she might become unstable again and cause the Kents harm, she fled into outer space.
After many adventures, and after playing an important part in the "Panic in the Sky" storyline, she returned to Earth where she met and fell in love with the mainstream Lex Luthor (disguised at the time as his own son). Again donning the uniform her reality's Lex had given her (and once again in the form of the young blonde woman), she assumed the role of Supergirl in the mainstream DC Universe. determined to make this Earth a better one than the one she left. One of her first acts was to return to Smallville. Kansas, and reunite with her "parents", Jonathan and Martha Kent.
Her parents and Superman were shocked when they learned that their dear Mae was now dating Luthor. Mae began living with Lex, and even had an altercation with her "brother" Superman over it, although she did assure him that she would keep his secret regardless.
During The Death of Superman arc, Matrix was eager to help in the fight against the menacing Doomsday. but Lex kept her at bay, keeping her with him by arguing that the city needed her there while Superman was otherwise occupied (although he was also secretly convinced that Superman was in no real danger after all the times Luthor's own plans to kill him failed). When Doomsday reached Metropolis. she rebelled against Lex and went to fight the monster, only to be knocked out in a single blow, forcing her to subconsciously take her true form of a gray, humanoid mass.
When Superman died stopping Doomsday, Supergirl used her powers to protect Metropolis, but was met with some derision, as many people saw her as Luthor's "pet". She did an admirable job of rescuing victims, teaching the new hero Superboy about the importance of being serious when saving lives, and helped Superman return once he was found to be alive again. She even posed as Clark Kent. pretending that Clark had been trapped in a well-stocked cellar during Doomsday's initial attack, to help explain why Clark was gone while Superman was dead.
Her biggest shock came when she learned that Lex had cloned her, making thousands of his own personal "Supergirls". She went berserk, and destroyed his lab, his clones, and almost killed Lex before he fell into a coma. She decided to join the Teen Titans for a short while, but left shortly afterwards, realizing that it just wasn't for her.
Earth-born angel [ edit ]
After some soul searching, Mae began to wonder if she was even a real person or if she even had a soul. This was solved when she held the hand of a dying girl named Linda Danvers. Matrix's shapeshifting ability merged the two into the new Supergirl and Mae became the Earth Angel of Fire, simultaneously losing her shapeshifting abilities as she subconsciously defined herself as just Linda and Supergirl. The remnants of her protoplasmic form that were not absorbed in the merge became an evil, insane Matrix, who fought the Mae/Linda merged Supergirl, until she was absorbed by Blithe. the Earth Angel of Light. Later, when the good aspect of Matrix was separated from Linda, she was merged with Twilight. and became a new Angel of Fire.
Reign in hell [ edit ]
In Reign in Hell #1, July 2008, the team of Shadowpact attacks Linda Danvers in her Gotham City apartment, which makes Linda fight back. She manifests the flaming wings she had while merged with Matrix, but still loses to the collective powers of Blue Devil and Enchantress. However she is teleported to Hell, as Hell is recalling all of its "debts". In Reign in Hell #6, Linda reappears in the Doctor Occult backstory. She appears as a fallen angel summoned by Lilith but mysteriously released.
Behind the scenes [ edit ]
Neo ( The Matrix )
Neo (previously known as Thomas A. Anderson . also known as The One ) is a fictional character in The Matrix franchise. He was portrayed by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix Trilogy . as well as having a cameo in The Animatrix short film Kid's Story . Andrew Bowen provided Neo's voice in The Matrix: Path of Neo . In 2008, Neo was selected by Empire as the 16th Greatest Movie Character of All Time. [ 1 ] Neo is also an anagram of "o n e" a reference to his destiny of being The One who would bring peace. [ 2 ]
Character background [ edit ]
A record from Agent Smith's file on Anderson and Anderson's passport show a difference in the birthday of the character.
Thomas A. Anderson was born in Lower Downtown, Capital City, USA on March 11, 1962 (so, in the real world near 2162) according to his criminal record, or September 13, 1971 according to his passport (both seen in the film). His mother was Michelle McGahey (the name of the first film's art director [ 3 ] ) and his father was John Anderson. He attended Central West Junior High and Owen Patterson High (named after the film's production designer). In high school, he excelled at science, math and computer courses, and displayed an aptitude for literature and history. Although he had disciplinary troubles when he was thirteen to fourteen years old, Anderson went on to become a respected member of the school community through his involvement in football and hockey.
At the start of the series, Thomas Anderson is one of billions of humans neurally connected to the Matrix, unaware that the world he lives in is a virtual reality. [ 4 ] In his legitimate activities, he is a quiet programmer for the "respectable software company" Meta Cortex ; but he is also a computer hacker who penetrates computer systems illicitly and steals information under his hacker alias " Neo ", and he also sells illegal untraceable computer systems and hacking programs along with controlling computer viruses stashed on CD-s and diskettes. During his time as a hacker, Anderson has learned about something known only as "The Matrix ". It is described by Morpheus as a vague notion that Neo has felt his whole life that "there is something wrong with the world".
During the years prior to the events of The Matrix . Anderson has spent his time trying to find the one man who he thought could tell him what the Matrix was: a supposed terrorist known only as Morpheus. Anderson is suddenly contacted by Morpheus via a cell phone mailed to his office, but is almost immediately captured by the virtual reality 's Agents, led by Agent Smith. After refusing to co-operate with the agents, Neo has an electronic bug implanted within his Matrix-simulated body so that his actions can be tracked and those seeking to make contact from the free world can be traced and destroyed. He is then contacted by Trinity, [ 5 ] freed from the bug, and taken to meet Morpheus.
Neo is offered a choice to remain in his everyday life and forget about the Matrix or to learn what the Matrix really is. Choosing to learn what the Matrix really is, he takes a drug (commonly called the "red pill ") designed to disrupt his body's neural connection to the Matrix, and wakes up disoriented and alarmed to find himself weak, hairless, naked in a pod full of red liquid, and connected to many wires.
Neo is rescued in the real world and his body is healed of the effects of his atrophy suffered in the power plant. Once Neo regains consciousness and is able to walk around, Morpheus tells Neo the truth about the Matrix: that it is a simulated world to which humans are connected, and that humanity is used as a power source for giant intelligent machines. He also tells Neo about The One, a human with the power to manipulate The Matrix, who has been foretold to end the war between humans and machines, and says that he believes Neo is The One. The next day, Neo begins his "training" becoming knowledgeable in many forms of combat vehicle and weapons operations by having various training programs uploaded directly into his brain. He also receives further instruction from Morpheus on subjects such as "freeing his mind" from the restrictions of the Matrix essentially overcoming the physics engine the Matrix operates on. He is also made aware the existence of its Agents.
After several days aboard the Nebuchadnezzar . Neo is taken to meet the Oracle. who has the power of foresight within the simulated world. She tells him that he has the "gift", but appeared to be waiting for something, and that in his present life he is not the one. The Oracle warns him that a situation will arise when he will have to choose between saving his own life or that of Morpheus.
Returning from the Oracle to the hard line, which serves as the exit for "red pills" to leave The Matrix, the crew of Morpheus's ship is betrayed by Cypher. a "red pill" who is willing to give the agents Morpheus in exchange for the promise of being jacked in permanently as an escape from the real world's bleakness. In the Matrix, SWAT troops kill Mouse. Cypher jacks out, grabs a real-world lightning gun, injuring Tank and killing Dozer. He kills Apoc and Switch, who remain jacked in, by prematurely terminating their connections. In the Matrix, Smith defeats and captures Morpheus. Neo and Trinity try to jack out but Cypher threatens to unplug them too, however he is thwarted when Tank recovers, killing Cypher and helping Neo and Trinity to jack out.
Neo learns the Agents seek to hack into Morpheus's brain, forcing him to tell them the access codes to the mainframe in the hidden rebel city Zion. After refusing to sacrifice Morpheus to prevent this, Neo decides to jack in and attack the building where he is being held. He and Trinity proceed to fight their way to the roof level of the building, where they are confronted by Agent Jones. Neo unloads two entire magazines on Jones as he dodges each bullet effortlessly. When Jones returns fire, Neo proves capable of dodging bullets himself, fluidly moving in a way only an agent was thought to be capable of. Trinity then shoots Jones at point-blank range. Using an armed chopper, Neo and Trinity successfully rescue Morpheus. As Neo has just successfully rescued comrades from a building protected by heavily armed guards and agents (thought to be an unprecedented feat), Tank and Morpheus both believe Neo is indeed The One. Neo tries to tell Morpheus what the Oracle told him, but Morpheus explains that she merely told Neo what he needed to hear: had he believed himself to be the One, he would likely not have attempted the rescue, which was a necessary step to his emergence as the One.
Reaching the hard line, Morpheus and Trinity return to the real world, but Neo is trapped by Agent Smith. Trinity admonishes Neo to run, but he stands his ground, having begun to believe that he may be the One. The two of them draw guns and fire them empty, but are able to effortlessly dodge each other's fire. Neo skillfully engages Smith in hand-to-hand combat, almost seeming to be Smith's equal. In the end Neo is briefly incapacitated and held by Smith as a subway train approaches, but at the last minute he is able to get free and backflip up onto the platform, leaving Smith to be run over. The Agent, however, possesses the body of the conductor and emerges from the train and Neo, realizing that the Agents' ability to possess other bodies makes this a fight he cannot win, flees the subway station.
Pursued by Smith and his fellow Agents, Neo is able to evade them and reach the location of the hard line, just to be ambushed and fatally shot by Smith. Trinity, seeing Neo die in the real world while his mind is still in the Matrix, tells his evidently lifeless body that the Oracle had foretold that she would fall in love with The One. When kissed by Trinity, Neo comes back to life, finally fully emerging as The One. The Agents try to kill him again, Neo simply raises his hand and the bullets freeze in mid-air, then drop harmlessly to the ground. It is then shown that he is able to perceive, interpret, and alter the computer code of the Matrix. Fully believing in his newfound powers, he effortlessly fends off Agent Smith before forcing himself into the agent's body and destroying it from within. The other two agents quickly flee.
Neo is then seen leaving a message for the machines via phone, a warning that he plans to oppose the machines by freeing as many human minds as possible. He then hangs up and flies into the sky.
The Matrix Reloaded [ edit ]
Approximately six months between the events of the first film and The Matrix Reloaded . Neo is now fully confident in his ability to manipulate the artificial world within the Matrix. Not surprisingly, he no longer uses firearms and instead prefers martial arts. His ability to manipulate the coding of the Matrix allows him to stop incoming fire from multiple attackers. Dispensing with the long black trenchcoat and black shirt he wears at the conclusion of The Matrix . Neo now prefers a cassock with a high-rise mandarin collar giving the appearance of a priest or Bishop. He and Trinity are now lovers. Neo seeks more advice from the Oracle, unsure of his purpose, while Zion prepares for a massive attack by the Machines from over 250,000 Sentinels – giant jellyfish-like machines. The Oracle directs him on a quest to find the Keymaker, a personified program that has access to numerous backdoors within the system. The Keymaker will be able to lead Neo safely to the Source. the programming heart of the machine world, which contains the programs sustaining the Matrix.
As the Oracle leaves, Agent Smith (now known simply as Smith) appears, and it is revealed that Neo had separated Smith from the rest of the Matrix code by shattering him, giving him a life independent of the machine's systems, and now the two of them share a "connection" to each other. Smith is no longer an Agent of the Matrix, but has become more virus - like, able to insert his code into other systems and infect other programs and human minds to make copies of himself. Neo fends off hundreds of these Smiths and escapes. Later, he, Morpheus, and Trinity steal the Keymaker from his keeper, The Merovingian. During this time, Neo stays behind to fight off the Merovingian's men and becomes separated from the others. He flies off to help them and only arrives in time to save Morpheus and the Keymaker from two agents crashing two semis together.
The Keymaker explains that two power stations elsewhere in the Matrix must be disabled in a short time window to successfully disable the security system of a building where the door to the Source will appear, allowing Neo to reach it. This task is accomplished; but the Keymaker is killed, a hovercraft is destroyed, and Trinity is put in jeopardy by Agents of the Matrix; a vision that Neo has seen earlier in his dreams. Entering the door, Neo finds himself confronted by the Architect. a program which created and designed The Matrix.
The Architect presents Neo with a radically different explanation of his origins and purpose, claiming that Neo is actually the sixth "One". He goes on to say that Zion has been destroyed by the machines five times before; faced with the dilemma of allowing humanity to be destroyed, or allowing the machines' preferred status quo to be reconstructed, Neo's five predecessors have helped reload, or restart the Matrix, before being allowed to rebuild Zion with a handful of freed humans. The productive output of the Matrix is based upon this repeated cycle of destruction and recreation, to keep the human minds which power it in a stable structure. The Oracle is as much part of that self-perpetuating design as the Architect, Neo is told, and the prophecy of The One is designed to ensure it runs smoothly each time.
The Architect warns of the annihilation of all human life in and out of the Matrix if he did not enter the Source door to reload the Matrix, but unlike his predecessors, Neo does not enter the door to the Source; he chooses not to believe the Architect's dire warnings of consequences, and to save Trinity instead. Returning to the Matrix, he catches Trinity as she falls from an upper-story window of a power plant. She dies of a gunshot wound to the heart that she sustains during the fall, but Neo brings her back to life by reaching into her virtual body, removing the bullet, and restarting her heart.
Together, they exit the Matrix and return to the real world. Neo tells Morpheus that the Prophecy was merely another system of control, and that Zion's destruction is imminent. A group of Sentinels begin to converge on their hovercraft, so that Neo and the others are forced to abandon it and flee as it is destroyed. Neo stays behind, realizing that he can now sense the Sentinels, and stops them from attacking by force of will; however, the effort causes him to fall unconscious. He and the crew are rescued by the hovercraft Mjolnir (also known as the Hammer ), the crew of which is dealing with a mystery in the form of Bane, a crew member from another ship, who is the only survivor of an ill-fated attack by the Zion fleet. Unbeknownst to anyone, Bane has been caught and infected by Smith.
The Matrix Revolutions [ edit ]
The Matrix Revolutions begins immediately after the events of the second movie. As a result of his struggle with the Sentinels, Neo returns to consciousness finding himself caught in an isolated train station-like limbo only accessible by order of the Merovingian, from which his mind is unable to free itself. It is here that he meets Sati, a young program created without a purpose who is being smuggled into the Matrix by her parents, who are also programs in the machine world. Neo remains trapped until freed by Trinity (assisted by Morpheus and Seraph) who threatens the Merovingian in a Mexican standoff .
After a final visit to the Oracle, Neo learns that he has powers over the machines which extend beyond the Matrix and that Smith is spreading, threatening to destroy both the Matrix and the real world. Building on the Oracle's previous explanations about the nature of choice, Neo learns that the Architect's assertion that his choice to save Trinity would inherently lead to the extinction of humankind was incorrect, due to his nature as a purely mathematical being rendering him incapable of seeing past choices made by humans as he considers them mere variables in equations. Having told Neo that he now has the power to choose to end the war and defeat Smith, the Oracle then states "Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo" and informs him that he must now go to the heavily guarded Machine City in hopes of stopping the Sentinels and Smith. Soon after Neo leaves, hundreds of Smiths come and assimilate Seraph, Sati, and the Oracle.
Neo and Trinity are given the Logos . a hovercraft commanded by Morpheus's former lover, Niobe. in what seems to others as a suicidal journey to the Machine City. Meanwhile, Captain Roland and the Nebuchadnezzar' s surviving crew of Link and Morpheus in the hovercraft Hammer/Mjolnir return to Zion, which is now besieged and losing to the Machines. Neo and Trinity are ambushed by the stowaway Bane/Smith, who blinds Neo with an electric cable, but is killed when Neo discovers an ability to 'see' programs and Machines independently of his eyesight. Neo, with Trinity as pilot, guide the Logos past the Machine City's defenses, but in the effort the Logos crash-lands, and Trinity sustains fatal injuries and dies.
Neo encounters the Deus Ex Machina, a Machine construct, and offers Smith's destruction in exchange for a truce. The offer is accepted; Neo enters the Matrix to find that the Smith program has copied itself throughout the simulated world, and has turned it into a rainswept dark simulation. One of the copies of Smith, having assimilated the Oracle and obtained as much freedom and control over the virtual world as Neo, faces Neo alone. For a while, the two fight evenly with no real advantage, but ultimately, the tireless Smith begins to wear out Neo and takes control of the fight. Realizing he cannot win with brute force, Neo allows Smith to assimilate him, which enables the machines to eradicate the Smith virus directly through his body, apparently killing him.
Neo's body is taken away by the Machines in the Machine City, while below in Zion, the Machines stop their attack and retire in deference to the peace that Neo bartered. The matrix is rebooted and a beautiful sunrise appears over the horizon, created by Sati in Neo's honor.
The Matrix Online [ edit ]
Although the fate of Neo was never truly revealed in the MMORPG sequel, The Matrix Online . his influence nevertheless had a strong impact on several key events throughout the game.
In the beginning, scattered code fragments of Neo's "RSI" (Residual Self Image ) were found on the bodies of the impostor Agents who appeared across the Mega City during Chapter 1.1 (later revealed to be Sentinels under the command of The General program). When held, these fragments echoed some of the final thoughts of Neo inside the redpill's mind. Each of the three main post-war political organizations inside the Matrix realized the possible significance of these fragments and began fighting amongst themselves to gather as many as they could.
The Oracle reveals a secret society of exiles known only as the Shapers, who are the only ones able to bring the Fragments together in any significant way and that they must be protected from the impostor agents' corruption. The redpills' distrust and organizational differences prove too much for any strong unity, so that a Shaper fell into the captivity of the false agents. His power was used to encode some part of The One's being onto them, creating the powerful, pale-skinned "N30 Ag3nts".
In Chapter 1.2, Morpheus states that though the Machines never returned Neo's physical remains (Neo's body in the real world) to Zion, they did not "recycle" them: a reference to the first film, in which Morpheus tells Neo that the machines liquefy deceased occupants of the Matrix to provide organic sustenance for its living inhabitants. This would be the driving force behind Morpheus' descent into fanatical terrorism against the System in an attempt to force the Machines to reveal Neo's fate, ultimately leading to his assassination.
The subject of Neo then fell to the side lines for other struggles until the arrival of The Oligarchs in Chapter 9. The original intruder, Halborn, was notably intrigued by the life of The One and was personally shocked about the implications of Neo's ability to affect Machines outside of the simulation had on his search for what he called "The Biological Interface Program".
After Halborn's removal in Chapter 10, little more was questioned until the revelation of the Trinity project, originally headed by The Oracle, in Chapter 12. It was revealed that both Neo and Trinity were actually the culmination of decades of Machine research into translating human DNA perfectly into Machine code, allowing them to interface directly with technology without the need for simulated interfaces.
Powers and abilities [ edit ]
Neo has carried, since his inception, the Matrix's source code known as the Prime Program. This gives him the ability to freely manipulate the simulated reality of the Matrix, similar to the authority a system administrator has over a given system. He manifests these abilities as various superhuman powers.
The power Neo exhibits most often is akin to telekinesis in the Matrix. In that, he seems capable of manipulating any object in the Matrix through will alone. By focusing this ability upon himself, he can fly at amazing speeds and jump great distances. Whilst his speed is never specified, he flies from the Merovingian's mountain manor to the highway "500 miles due south" in a very short time. His speed of flight is further exemplified by his ability to escape explosions, and the sonic boom left in his wake has the power to overturn rows of heavy vehicles. He has used this ability multiple times to stop several bullets in mid flight, first against the Agents and again against the Merovingian.
In addition to his abilities, Neo possesses superhuman strength and agility. and is near-invulnerable to most attacks. Although he could block a sword with the edge of his hand, he received a small cut, indicating (as the Merovingian pointed out) that he was still human despite his powers. His endurance is also finite: when confronted by masses of Smith clones in the second film, Neo was forced to escape rather than continue fighting, and upon being disconnected from the Matrix, he appeared exhausted and winded. His reflexes are great enough to dodge bullets.
Neo was able to revive the recently deceased Trinity by removing a bullet from her heart and gently massaging it to restart its beat. The extent and limits of his ability to revive within the Matrix are not known.
A more subtle application of Neo's ability is a heightened awareness of the simulated nature of the Matrix, enabling him to easily detect Agents, Exiles, and other anomalous phenomena (such as the presence of explosives). He is even capable of a limited form of precognition. This has been described as "seeing the world without time" by the Oracle.
Neo (like most Red Pills) utilizes the Resistance's combat programs, which grant abilities equivalent to a martial artist with decades of experience while their users the Matrix. Tank, the operator of the ship Nebuchadnezzar during the first movie, uploads the programs into Neo's brain and is amazed at the speed with which he is able to progress through a wide range of fighting styles. ("Ten hours straight. he's a machine," Tank remarks at one point.) In training for the series, Keanu Reeves' fighting arsenal, as well as the entire cast's, emphasizes wushu .
In the real world, Neo does not display any of the aforementioned abilities aside from fighting skills. Neo does have some degree of wireless connectivity with the Matrix system: he eventually learns to sense the presence of the Machines, and even interfere with their function. This capability overwhelms him at first after he disables a squad of sentinels, causing him to collapse and sends him to limbo without the equipment normally used by the Resistance due to him still being inexperienced with his powers. According to the Oracle, "The power of The One extends beyond the Matrix. It reaches from here all the way back to where it came from." Apparently because of his status as The One, he has a direct connection to the Source, and can therefore affect everything connected to it. After he is blinded in the fight against Smith/Bane, Neo begins to perceive everything connected to the Source, including the Machine City itself, as silhouettes of golden light; he is thus able to "see" Smith/Bane and kill him.
References [ edit ]
^ "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters/ 16. Neo / Empire / www. empireonline. com". Empire . Bauer Consumer Media. Retrieved 2010-04-23. ^ Nutu, Ela (2006). Black, Fiona C. ed. Red Herrings in Bullet-Time: The Matrix, the Bible, and the Postcommunist I* . The Recycled Bible: Autobiography, Culture, and the Space Between (Society of Biblical Lit). p. 71. ISBN 9781589831469. Retrieved 12 August 2014. "the name Neo can, in fact, be an anagram for 'one'." ^ http://www. imdb. com/title/tt0133093/trivia ^ This name carries several homages to Christian theology/mythology. "Anderson" literally means "son of man" - which is how Jesus primarily referred to himself in the Gospels. "Thomas" is the name of Jesus' disciple who infamously doubted the truth of the risen Christ. In The Matrix, Thomas Anderson sheds his disbelief and comes to accept that the Matrix is real and he is thereby "born again," and is referred to as "Neo." He also comes to believe that he is the One. ^ a reference to the Christian doctrine of God as being understood as a Trinity composed of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (or alternatively, as Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer)
External links [ edit ]
Matrix Reloaded
Matrix Revolutions
Matrix secrets explained.
This site features.
This site features VERY INTERESTING thoughts about the Matrix trilogy (some of which are not mentioned anywhere on the web)
This site features commonly made mistakes about the Matrix trilogy
This site features a Matrix Forum (where you can post your ideas and discuss them with others)
I have also included a link section with related Matrix web sites and a Matrix Poster section and a Matrix Encyclopedia
Matrix Revolutions eats its own fans
Don't get me wrong: I really like Matrix Revolutions for its powerful scenes and its dialogue and never-seen-before battles. It's one of the finest pieces of film history.
But what's wrong with Matrix Revolutions then?
I reproach the movie for its lack of answers. Answers to questions that Matrix Reloaded raised (and seemed to promise to answer in Revolutions ).
Dude, where is my matrix?
Imagine you make a movie and suddenly your hero has telekinetic powers: He stops 4 incoming war machines just by thinking it. Wow, that is a twist.
Matrix fans around the globe discussed for MONTHS "how this was possible" and "what would the twists be that the Wachowski brothers had up their sleeves for Revolutions ?". Fans were looking for the same kind of twists we loved in Matrix 1 and Matrix 2 .
The brothers created one of the biggest cliffhangers of movie history. I think it was meant to electrify and I think the Wachowskis wanted to raise these forum discussions (they are computer fans themselves).
And how did the Wachowskis decide to resolve this riddle in Matrix Revolutions ?
The fans expected something. BIG.
But they got. Hollywood:
Neo: "Tell me how I stopped 4 sentinels by thinking it. "
Oracle: "The power of the One extends beyond this world. It reaches from here all the way back to where it came from: The Source."
Ahem, excuse me?
THIS IS THE WHOLE ANSWER TO THE BIGGEST RIDDLE OF THE TRILOGY?
Even a third-rate scriptwriter could come up with something more intelligent after 5 minutes in the toilet (I am talking about the solution to the riddle here, not about the movie as a whole.)
Shall the Oracle's words really explain why Neo is blind and can see everything in gold code? His ability to feel and to burst the sentinels? How he can be in the Matrix while not jacked-in?
No, the Oracle doesn't answer ANYTHING. She merely restates the question. She gives an answer like "Why do you ask?" or "Because you are the One".
Now it seems that the Wachowskis were powerless against the united creativity of the Matrix community. This cliffhanger hanged the brothers. Victims of their own riddles. Discredited by the words of their own heroes.
Wachowskis, where is the twist, goddammit?
I love the movies, and that's why I am angry. Something's different. I cannot feel them. It's not what the movie shows. It's what the movie does not show: The twists and the mind-puzzles!
I can honestly say, that in forums around the web (including this site's forum) there have been better ideas for Revolutions than in the resulting movie. It seems the movie DOESN'T EVEN TRY to make us marvel (except on the level of visuals). Didn't the brothers realize the potential of what they have created with Matrix 1 and Matrix 2 ?
Here are a few twist ideas from the internet community:
Neo can stop sentinels, because he is the first to find out that all humans are in reality enslaved superbeings.
This converts the movies to fantasy movies, but fine with me .
Neo can stop sentinels, because he is a machine and has a wireless connection to the self-destruction of the sentinels.
This makes Zion real and explains how he could be in the Matrix, while not jacked-in.
Totally fine with me .
Zion is another simulated reality (Matrix-within-Matrix theory) to trap humans.
Fine with me .
Zion is a simulation run by humans to create Artificial Intelligence (Neo etc.) that has a deep understanding of the badness of war.
Fine with me .
The Matrix is needed because the machines need hackers to reprogram them. Inherent in the machine's programming exists (1) a security mechanism to prevent the extermination of humanity, (2) a security mechanism to prevent the use of any energy source beyond solar power. Thus the machines need hackers to reprogram them. Thus they simulate a world just for hackers. Thus they need Neo, and if he comes to the source he will reprogram the machines and they can wipe out all humans. A twist-within-a-twist.
Fine with me .
Zion is another simulation but it's meant to rival against the computer system that created the Matrix. Thus the fight turns out to be Computer System #1 against Computer System #2.
Fine with me .
The machines cut all lines in and out of the Matrix. In a last attempt The Kid is sent in and can eject out by his own powers (as demonstrated in the episode "Kid's story" from Animatrix ).
Fine with me.
Trinity turns out to be Neo's girl-friend AND "The Mother" AND a spy for the machines (that's why the "3").
Fine with me.
The Matrix has been invented voluntarily by humans and Smith is a safety mechanism if it runs for too long.
Fine with me .
The Merovingian is a former Oracle and wants to kill the current one in revenge.
Fine with me .
Smith turns out to be the original One.
Now these are what I consider "Twists".
In fact: ANYTHING is better than an answer given by the Oracle.
The Oracle never ever gave a clear answer to anybody before, so letting the Oracle give an answer may be just another way to hide that the directors had no clue how to resolve this cliffhanger. Neo could bend the spoon in Matrix 1, now he can bend the sauce (source), this is how it sounds to me.
I don't care whether the Merovingian is a descendent of Jesus or Maria. This is irrelevant. But I want cliffhangers to be resolved. I want a coherent story line.
Is the twist, that there isn't any? Uff.
More unresolved mysteries / More meaningless information.
To the shame of the Wachowskis I have to add that also other parts of the trilogy are left unresolved and are degraded to meaninglessness in the same manner.
Matrix Imploded
Take the speech of the Architect. A masterpiece of filmmaking. During the months after Reloaded his words were dissected in Matrix forums. "This is the 6th time we will destroy Zion".
Did this have ANY effect on Revolutions. None.
What would differ if Neo hadn't gone to the Architect? Not much. Smith would have spread and Neo could have gone to the machine god directly.
Persephone says about the Merovingian: "The Merovingian was once like Neo". Months of discussions followed. Was he a former One?
Effect on Revolutions. None. But why did she say it then? Because the Merovingian LOVED her once? How trivial can it get?
In Reloaded Councillor Hamann talks with Neo about "We need machines". In the bible Hamann betrayed his own people.
Effect on Revolutions. None.
In Animatrix one whole episode ("Kid's story") is dedicated to The Kid. He was the first who could self-eject from the Matrix.
Seemed important.
Effect on Revolutions. None.
Anybody else could have run around bringing the bullets in Revolutions .
In Matrix Reloaded the Kid brings Neo a spoon.
Wow, a message.
Effect on Revolutions. None. It could have been a fork. [Sarcasm]
The sex scene between Neo and Trinity and the rave dance?
Pointless.
The love between Neo and Trinity?
Irrelevant to Revolutions .
Niobe pilots her hovercraft thru hell in Revolutions. Meaningless. Just eye candy to release a computer game where you can fly your spaceships thru tunnels.
Smith spreads like mad. Now there are thousands of him. Did this have any effect on Neo and their fights?
Not in Revolutions. Could have still been one Smith vs. Neo.
It seems to be the method of the Wachowskis to give us tidbits of information which turn out to be meaningless. The brothers increase the suspense but don't deliver the satisfying solution:
Take the trailers for Matrix Revolutions for example:
Trinity says to Neo "6 hours ago I was ready to give anything for you" .
Wow, what happened in the last 6 hours to make Trinity say that?
Well, she got him out of the Matrix, but does that differ from anything she has done before? No, but it had to be six hours, to put artificial(?) importance into it.
The Merovingian says: "Bring me the eyes of the Oracle" .
Wow, now that's a twist. Maybe Trinity has to overwhelm the Oracle.
But what happens in the movie? Trinity says "No" and the Merovingian says "OK, then not".
What was this all about then?
Moreover if you consider the Merovingian's words, that "he has survived them all" then simply coming to his club is a bit too simple to overthrow him.
Dirty tricks to create cliffhangers to increase sales? To fill the movie with the newest digital effects? Philosophical bloat? Does Revolutions even TRY to answer anything? Or does it use "Every answer raises 3 more questions" as a new merchandising concept to sever comic sales for the years to come? A Perry-Rhodan-scheme? The same PR trick that keeps Nostradamus fans and bible fans fascinated for hundreds of years?
Matrix Milked
Morpheus 3000 and Niobe XP
IN FACT NO SINGLE QUESTION (from Matrix 1 and Matrix 2 ) HAS BEEN ANSWERED:
The machines have powerful weapons and highly advanced machinery but have to dig/ fight Zionites for 100 years and cannot get their energy from above the clouds?
Not answered.
Why did the machines invent the Matrix simulation at all? All they need to do is to cut a few nerves in the brain to make the bodies helpless.
Why are most whites the bad guys?
Not answered.
Why do the heroes wear sunglasses and leather?
Pure gloss? Stylish bloat?
How could Zion be destroyed and repopulated already 5 times? What happened with all the debris? An important question dealing about whether Zion is real or just another rebootable simulation.
Not answered.
Why is Trinity Tri nity? What's so three-ish about her? The Wachowski said that every name was chosen very carefully. Was it? She has a side role (who hasn't?) and dies.
Instead of answering questions, the movie raises more:
Is Neo really dead at the end of the movie?
Is the Merovingian dead?
What will happen with the girl Sati?
Are all humans dead after Smith took over them? Has the refreshed Matrix any humans at all?
.
Didn't the Wachowskis know what they asked? Accidental mysteries?
Didn't the Wachowski brothers know what questions would be asked after Reloaded and Revolutions ?
This is supported by an interview with Nona Gaye (plays Zee):
Nona Gaye: " Revolutions won't leave fans with questions at the end like the first Matrix did. People will be relieved when they see Revolutions "
I don't know what she's talking about, but it can't be the movies that _I_ have seen.
This is also supported an interview with Joel Silver (the producer):
Joel Silver: "The story that the boys wanted to tell ends in Revolutions. I mean, could they continue the story, the characters? Look, they can. I'm sure that if they wanted to continue writing whatever they can, they can. This story does end at the end of Revolutions. That is the end. It is concluded. This story is over."
And also this:
Keanu Reeves: "Some questions of the journey of Neo as The One are answered. And lots of surprises."
Sounds like he's talking about answers and twists.
Take another riddle: Zion. Is Zion real? Or is it a mere simulation? This is one of the biggest questions of the trilogy.
Keanu Reeves: "I think in terms of the representation of the films, the Brothers don't tend to do things like that, like hood-wink you. It's not like, 'I see dead people', where you are watching this whole movie and then, 'By the way. ' I don't think they do that kind of cinema. So my answer to your question is 'No'. I don't think it is so boxes within boxes . I think that Zion is Zion. But if you want to go: 'Is it the blink of Vishnu?' Maybe. But in terms of literally and the world of the pictures . no."
What the heck? I don't know about what pictures Keanu is talking, but if anything then Revolutions supports A-Matrix-within-a-Matrix theory:
Neo sees everything in Gold Code
Energy bits are flowing (similar to the green matrix code).
He sees Smith with sunglasses in Zion.
He can stop sentinels with his thoughts.
A sentinel goes thru him.
He understands machines, knows solutions and foresees the future
.
Yes, it's true: Matrix-within-a-Matrix wasn't mentioned in Revolutions thus Zion is most probably real. BUT NOT IN TERMS OF PICTURES.
Gosh, this is a discussion I wanted to see concluded.
Listen, I don't claim that Zion is fake. I doesn't matter whether it's real or not. But 'Hey, the sentinel could go thru you, because you are like Jesus' is just lame.
Looks like hiding conceptlessness under eye candy. Or maybe it's sacrificing concepts for the sake of digital effects.
Maybe the brothers thought: Zion is fake but there is no way we going to confuse the general audience, so let's explain it in comics and just confuse the theory fans. Lame.
Do I have to buy comics now to understand? How far will this go? Will the Wachowskis place hidden messages at the back of blow-up dolls to make me UNDERSTAND?
Missing tension / So many wasted characters.
Besides the lack of twists and explanations I also would like to point out the lack of keeping/ building up the tension. I am talking about film directing skills. I denounce that the whole movie looks like a big trailer. Mere snippets of actions.
Smith: "Do you like what I have done with this place?"
Hell, where do we see how the deterioration of the Matrix occurs bit by bit?
Where do we see how the system tries to beat back Smith?
Do we see how he takes over more and more people?
No, but suddenly Smiths are everywhere.
Smith flies now. Why? How did he learn it?
Smith meets Sati and Seraph. What happens then?
Trinity dies (much too long) after a few scenes. Why so fast? Why so long?
Morpheus is degraded to a driver's mate.
Persephone has just 1 sentence to say.
Link & Zee. what a boring couple. Even the relationship between Trinity and Neo is boring. The movie tries to hide it beneath theatrical music volumes.
It seems that characters like Persephone and Merovingian have been featured to increase comics / games sales. This applies especially to Revolutions where suddenly a sweeeet girl (Sati) appears with godlike powers . If this doesn't smell like follow-up merchandising then I don't know. But why do they write then "To be concluded" at the end of Matrix Reloaded ?
It's ironic that the movie is about purpose, but some characters are featured as if they had none.
It looks like the same old Hollywood machinery as always. "Hey, how about the devil in the Matrix, let's name him. The Merovingian. Think of all the franchise possibilities."
I know, I know, my statements above are probably exaggerated since Revolutions may create a new kind of "Matrix Fan" who likes exactly its concept of "Just ask, don't answer anything". Overanalyzing for the sake of overanalyzing. Talking for years about the symbols in Matrix Revolutions. And their allusions to the Bible and Hinduism.
Maybe Matrix will become a religion itself for the very reasons some of the current religions last so long: Because they tell everything and nothing.
Everything that has a beginning has an end? Not the Matrix movies, it seems.
Missing fresh ideas
Guns and fists - Neo, I love you - Neo, you're the One - Neo kicks Smith.
Boom Boom: The PR machine rolling (Matrix Public Relation'ed so to speak)
The same as before, just on a larger scale. Nothing more except what was already shown in the trailers. To give you an idea what could have been cool :
Smith hacks the Architect
Time loops. Repeated (but slightly differing) fights.
Neo throws cars at Smith. Smith in control of rain and light unleashes floods and lightnings (reinventing/ topping Dragonball).
Smith in control of stones throws concrete and walls at Neo, just by thinking it.
Merovingian vs. Neo
New fighting styles, animal style Kung Fu
Smith can burst sentinels, too, and thus both fight with their newly gained powers in Zion
Albino Twins reappearance
Architect in a large hall full of monitors, not only in his small room
Smith in Merovingian's Hell Club
Trinity gains superpowers too, and helps Neo
Pieces of digital code spark off as Smith hits Neo
Oracle flies
Architect watches his monitors as Smith takes over
Trinity is severely handicapped in Zion after the Agent shot her in Reloaded
More Agents
A messy back-and-forth battle Bane vs. Neo in Zion and simultaneously Smith vs. Neo in the Matrix. Whenever one gains the upper hand of the other a twist occurs in the other world.
Smith hacks the trainman and fights Neo in Mobil Ave
Oracle is a little girl (instead of just "another face")
Neo develops new powers, not only kicking and flying
Smith stops bullets
Persephone vs. Merovingian
Trinity vs. Merovingian
Thousands of Smiths fly around like insects
MY GOD ANYTHING WE DIDN'T EXPECT. ANYTHING. But not the Architect visiting the Oracle in the park, while the sun rises. Gimmie-a-Kit-Kat. Is this Titanic ?
Yeah sure, there is a "meaning" beneath all the bad filmmaking. As in my idea for Matrix 4: The Architect is eating breakfast with the Oracle and it's. Christmas.
What is it about after all? Is LOVE the most important thing? Or the story of a modern Jesus? Gosh, did Warner Brothers make a survey and "most adult females prefer Trinity dead and Zion saved"?
Maybe the Wachowskis really stole the Matrix idea from Sophia Stewart. but they stole only the first half of the script, thus they had to invent this lame ending.
OK, I am probably unfair, because there have been some good ideas in Revolutions (Smith taking over Oracle, the machine god, the blinded messiah). But too little.
Enough of Wachowski bashing. Now bash me!
Uff, enough said. Now it's your turn:
Do you agree with me? Then post at my matrix forum. tell me how wonderfully correct I am.
Do you disagree? Then bash me at my matrix forum. tell me how stupid I am and that I didn't get the movies and that I am a 12-year-old boy who was thrown out of kindergarten.
If you didn't like my statements above, then chances are, that you are a strong opponent of The-Matrix-within-the-Matrix theory.
You can always try to change my mind . And you can go to this poll: Did you like Matrix Revolutions. Every vote counts!!
Since the very beginning of this site I have taken every argument and featured it as an argument or counter-argument. Thus if you have anything new to say, you have a good chance to be cited here.
Please don't say: "It's all your own fault. You fans have been digging too deeply. Trying to give answers where no questions have been asked" . Don't say this because 1) Fans are fans. 2) Go bash Star Trek fans instead. 3) All Revolutions continues to do is ask questions in the same manner as Reloaded did: Giving snippets of riddles and unexplained characters (e. g. the Indian girl) to raise those questions.
Click here to go to the old pre - Revolutions homepage of Matrix Explained .
Косметика Matrix
Парикмахер из Огайо Арни Миллер стал отцом-основателем динамичной профессиональной косметики Matrix . найти которую можно в салонах красоты не менее 50 стран мира ( ей отдают предпочтение и многие звезды – Сара Джессика Паркер, Натали Портман, Пенелопа Круз ). Большой опыт и следование веяниям науки позволили Matrix быстро завоевать рынок. Показать все
Выбрано 119 продуктов
Купить Matrix (Матрикс)
В нашем магазине профессионального ухода за волосами предлагается для вашего внимания профессиональная косметика Матрикс . которая уже не первый год является одним из признанных по всему миру производителем качественной продукции, гарантирующей бережный уход за волосами. Не секрет, что даже при использовании самых сложных вариантов причесок, которые выглядят стильно и модных образов, построенных на работе с волосами, тусклые и не совсем здоровые волосы дают совершенно не тот эффект. Только проверенное качество подарит здоровье вашим волосам выигрышный вид и подчеркнет весь темперамент образа. Даже после неудачной завивки Matrix косметика для волос поможет быстро восстановить и защитить от дальнейших потерь их.
Главное, с чего начинается путь к здоровым волосам вместе с Matrix – это правильный подбор косметики в соответствии с требованиями ваших волос, в этом призваны помочь специалисты нашего интернет магазина, которые с радостью проконсультируют каждого покупателя. Использование продукции от американского косметического бренда Matrix, который выпускает только профессиональные средства для высококачественного ухода за волосами и станет предметом зависти окружающих. Прославленное качество matrix color вдохновило не одного дизайнера причесок по всему миру, он призвана украсить жизнь новыми красками и превратить похвальное стремление быть красивой для любой девушки и женщины в верный путь к успеху.
Среди большого ассортимента, который предлагает косметика Matrix . каждый покупатель найдет необходимые именно его волосам средства, которые помогут преобразить имидж и показать себя во всей красе. Продукция matrix с честью оправдывает запросы профессиональных салонов и ей пользуются ведущие мировые стилисты.
Статьи о Matrix
http://www. matrix-russia. ru В нашем магазине профессионального ухода за волосами предлагается для вашего внимания профессиональная косметика Матрикс, которая уже не первый год является одним из признанных по всему миру производителем качественной продукции, гарантирующей бережный уход за волосами. Не секрет, что даже при использовании самых.
+1 ABOVE IF YOU LIKE THIS SITE, HELP OTHERS FIND IT ON GOOGLE!
The astonishing depth of the mythology in the Matrix films touches the core of our beings as sentient life. Intelligent life functioning and, most of all, thinking. Thoughtful beings able to ponder their own existence. Their own Self. What is the Matrix? What is ME?
In screen format, jammed with action, explosions, and death-defying feats of seeming unreality, the messages and evocations of the Matrix films are a plethora of psychic onions to be unpeeled - layer-by-layer - by the watcher. Its characters a bold and larger-than-life representation of everything we as humans have considered among religion and philosophy since before any record of such questions were recorded.
Where many filmgoers are intently watching the deft display of martial arts, the clanging attack of the deadly sentinels, or the Agents dodging machine gun rounds, others are paying attention to a subtext of huge consequence. Like the Matrix itself, where humans are plugged in at birth and live only to experience the sensations of the brain, moviegoers are watching for the entertainment value big-budget films like The Matrix are meant to provide. Like those unplugged from the Matrix, moviegoers are experiencing the same entertainment value as the first set but are also attuned to a higher understanding of what it is. Thus, those in the second set are able to perform various feats only attained by those who have an understanding of the Matrix. Neo, having a greater understanding than any of the unplugged, has the ability of feats unrealized by his comrades.
When I saw The Matrix Reloaded in the theater, I noticed something during the scenes where Neo interacts with The Oracle and also the scenes where Neo interacts with The Architect (inside the door of light). I noticed a great shuffling and movement in the crowd during these scenes. While I was at the edge of my seat trying to absorb every word of the conversation in the film, the shuffling and movement kept drawing my attention. My only conclusion was the others around me (who knows how many or what percentage) were either very bored with the dialogue, uncomfortable with the dialogue, or unable/unwilling to comprehend the dialogue. Possibly, they didn't see these diatribes and esoteric meanderings as part of the real plot. Or, they considered these sections a dead spot in an otherwise action-packed film.
Rarely do the worlds of entertainment and esoterism/religion/philosophy intersect. TV shows and movies rarely (if at all) make use of the mind of the watcher. The standard who-done-it thriller or the "I sent my father back in time to impregnate my mother" of the Terminator saga, or "can a machine love me?" of the film A. I. do conjure a kernel of thought-provoking material for the watcher, however, entertainment is mostly about being entertained; not about thinking.
Entertainment in our time, for the most, consists of having an experience. Hopefully, a pleasant experience (or in the movie business, you can kiss your career goodbye!). Like a nice bowl of your favorite ice cream, sprinkles, hot fudge, and whipped cream, you savor every mouthful and then sit back and relish the last gulp as it slides into your stomach. Never, when consuming the very pleasurable bowl of ice cream, do we consider that it will soon pass through our bodily functions and end up in a bowl of water we will then flush into a pipe. Equating the very amazing fight scenes and special effects of the Matrix films to the ice cream will lead you to an obvious point. (I love ice cream, by the way).
On the other hand, when I was in third grade, I learned my times tables and I learned the value of a thesaurus. I still use them today. It was upon those, and other, fundamental principles that I learned algebra in junior high school, wrote an award-winning poem in college, figured out the discounted price of an item in the store, and wrote this article. Equating the thought-provoking spiritual imagery of the Matrix films with these principles will lead you to an obvious point. (I love my thesaurus, by the way).
The themes expressed in these films beg us to identify the greatest mystery of life itself - ourselves. Packaging these questions and ideas in an amazing array of stunning effects and mind-boggling action is a draw that breaks box office records. But what is the substance and what is the refuse? It is doubtful that a 12-minute freeway chase scene involving tractor-trailer semi trucks colliding in bullet-time slow-motion can actually offer us something of value once the initial sensory of our eyes and ears has worn off. While stunning and visually/auditorially appealing, the value fades very quickly.
Who would pay eight dollars to sit for two-and-a-half hours to listen to people talk about the importance of understanding the choices we make in our lives and why we make them? Furthermore, that type of film would not have a budget of thirty million dollars. The inordinate amount of money spent to make these films have absolutely no correlation to the value they offer the viewer in the form of true knowledge. The high budget is to produce the most visually and auditorilly stunning product imaginable. But contained within this shell of refuse is value in the form of provocative thematics. It is brilliant.
• THE MATRIX
The Matrix - itself - is a supposed world of fiction where humans experience a simulated life programmed by a computer generated environment set in the late 20th century. The computers are a race of machines with a singular consciousness spawned from Artificial Intelligence. Like any living being, its first natural instinct is survival. The story goes that a war began over the fate of dominance of the planet with the new, mechanical intelligence launching an aggression against their human creators. The threat of machines capable of such awareness and, thus, aggression caused a conflict whereby humans were reduced to secondary life forms and, eventually, as energy sources for the machines. Upon first seeing the physical earth in the Matrix films, we are shown human farms where people are no longer born but grown. The humans are then placed in pods where body heat is derived as a source of energy. This harvested energy is a source of power for the machines. The humans, meanwhile, exist physically in the pods while their minds are plugged into a computer hard drive. The Matrix is that hard drive. It is a computer program designed by the machines to simulate true life through stimulation of the brain.
The scientific basis for such a model to exist is not only possible but also plausible. Science tells us that every sensation - touch, sound, smell, sight, and taste - is simply information sent to the brain via sensory pipelines. The information is then interpreted by the brain and processed. The smell of a rose is simply information recognized through sensory organs (the nose) and sent to the brain which then interprets the smell as "rose." The body is covered in a layer of a vastly complex sensory organ called the skin. We feel the rustle of our pants as we walk, bump against a chair, or step on a tack and the information of those occurrences are sent to the brain at light speed for processing. Nerve cells, or neurons, act as a living system of information for the interpreter, the brain. The nervous system senses everything that touches us, everything we hear, everything we smell, see, and taste. The best (but rather small) example of this concept at work is seeing an advertisement for your favorite food and feeling your mouth water. Or, seeing a picture of a lemon and feeling the twinge of a puckered mouth. These are suggestions and not at all real. However, our brain knows what those tastes are and our body seems to react. It is fascinating to imagine a fictitious world where every sense is accessed and simulated and then sharing that world with the rest of humanity who are having the same experience. Walking into downtown Manhattan and opening the door of a cab (the driver experiencing the same ocurrence in his own mind) and driving to Central Park where the trees and grass are programmed to be there and to smell like trees and grass. The sound of birds chirping, joggers running, the sun shining, the breeze blowing, etc. This subject matter speaks to the idea of collective consciousness. With so many different sensory stimulations in place and so many different people experiencing them without realizing they are essentially dreaming, the world would seem to go on as it always has. People would grow from childhood, get jobs, marry, buy a house, go to work, go to church, play in the grass, enjoy a sunset on the beach. All the while, having never moved from a pod where they will eventually die and be discarded as waste.
Parallels of the human experience - birth, life, and death - are drawn for the films from various different traditions. These traditions uphold that the human experience is simply an illusion. In the simplest of terms, almost every religion/tradition on the earth subscribes to a belief in a life beyond and/or outside the realm of birth and death of the individual. Whether it be heaven or hell, Valhalla or Hades, reincarnation, transcendence, ascension, or resurrection, a subscription to the idea SOMETHING other than the experience encapsulated in the time span of womb to grave is prevalent in all cultures. The Matrix films draw heavily from the Buddhist and Gnostic viewpoints of the material world as false. It is a place of substandardism. There is no substance in it. A mind experiencing the material world through the five senses is compared to a life lived within a pod in The Matrix. Never moving, never speaking, never truly touching or experiencing anything; a mind simply stimulated through sensory perception. Thus, a life is lived in a complete dream-state where the participant is wholly unaware of dreaming and fully believes the events occurring are truly happening. The end result being a human/material experience devoid of substance and ceasing to exist at death; the end of the five senses and the function of the brain which interprets them.
The idea of a false material world is a proclamation of Buddhist thought dating back to the ancient Indian continent. The Buddhas (or Teachers) expressed a disbelief in the concept of the cyclical human being. According to the Buddhas, humanity is not merely "food for worms" at death - existing only to procreate more food for worms and so on. Raising humanity above life and death through consciousness is a central message of the Biblical Jesus on which Gnostic Christianity is based. Gnosticism (or knowledge) implies elevation above the valueless material world through realization of its inherent lack of value. This is the first step. "The truth will set you free" is a very famous quote from the Bible. The Buddhas and esoteric Rabbis (Teachers) like Jesus bring a light into the darkness. Jesus was called "the light of the world." The ideas, themselves, about light and darkness can only truly be understood by someone who has awakened to some extent. They are abstract ideas unknown and hidden to those who sleep. They are hidden to those who dream away in slumber and are not paying attention, in fact. The unplugged inhabitants of Zion represent the enlightened ones who have - even if in small degrees - some evident knowledge of the truth.
The parallels to the ancient traditions of the material world as false and valueless (and possibly a world of imprisonment for the mind only to be released at death) are rich and far-reaching. The concept of "awakening" or "arising from sleep" has vast undertones. The unplugged humans in the Matrix films are set free from The Matrix by being woken up. Neo rises from his slumber in the pod for the very first time - sucked down a tube and expelled out as waste - with his limbs in a state of atrophy and his eyes aching because he had "never used them before." Upon entering back into The Matrix, the unplugged seem to enter into a dream state. Everything they experience from then on is simply information sent directly to their minds via direct interface with the cerebral cortex. Then, upon leaving The Matrix, they awaken once again as if from sleep.
The symbolism of sleep in the Matrix films cannot be overstated. Not only is sleep and awakening meant to symbolize an experience of two separate worlds, but also to represent an awakening of the mind that realizes and sees the truth. In the case of the Matrix films, the truth is that a race of artificial computer intelligence is controlling the human race. To be free of this domination through apartheid, the unplugged seek to bring an end to the computers. In the world outside of the Matrix (our world, yours and mine) there are countless traditions that teach of a life outside of this one. Some seek it. Some do not. Some recognize it. Some do not. Some believe it. Some do not. Just as Morpheus tells Neo in the first film:
"What you know you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad."
There are some people who search for something. There is uneasiness about the human experience that almost invariably leads to religion of some sort. In many cases, the answers provided by the well-established faiths of parents are sufficient to (or try to) answer all the questions we might ask about god, the afterlife, morality, etc. Other times, a personal journey is conceived in the individual in order to appease life's burning questions or to provide some semblance to what it all means to BE or EXIST. The characters in the Matrix films have awoken to discover the human race enslaved by machines. What will we discover when we awaken? Is there anything to awaken from? These are the most provocative questions asked in the films.
If there is no question to be asked - if one is content with this life and has no desire to seek anything other than the material stimulus of the material world; beginning at birth and ending in death - one takes the blue pill and believes whatever they want to believe. If there is a question to be asked (taking the red pill) then the journey begins. The journey leads to the identity and nature of ourselves. Ultimately, all journeys lead to the answers or the quest to answer these questions. Whether it concern a god or gods, a devil, a type of afterlife for sins, good deeds, or karmic undertaking, the answers always lead back to: what are we and why are we here?
The Matrix films identify and make use of so many seemingly unrelated iconography, imagery, and traditions: the falsity of the material world of Buddhism and Gnostic Christianity, the Messiah/Christ figure as Redeemer of mankind, the Satanic and malevolent evil force deceiving mankind, Greek tragedy figures, bureaucracy and unchecked federal government, prophets, etc. Woven together into a new and potent blend of storytelling, the Matrix relays age-old messages into the psyche of a new generation - a generation often considered godless and sacrilegious by its predecessors.
• NEO
The Messiah/Savior archetype exists in most all cultures, all religions, all myths and is the heart of just about every philosophy of modern man. This icon represents something (usually in the form of a person or through a person) which gives or imparts something to mankind something it did not have before and/or something it needed or was lacking. Usually associated with hidden understanding, healing, or salvation from cataclysm, the Savior figure is singled out and is often often something to be worshipped, praised, adulated, or emulated. The Messiah is different from the rest. He has something we do not. He knows something we do not. He does something we cannot. He is something we are not. In most traditions, this figure is good rather than bad. Meaning, the One will mostly likely use his abilities to heal cancer rather than inflict it or save someone from harm as opposed to creating damage. These archetypes are represented in everything from the Catholic rosary to an Egyptian obelisk. They are variant symbols of something concerning the Messiah and/or His works or powers or mission or wisdom. They inspire, they impart hope, they stand as cornerstones of faith in something larger than our every day lives where catastrophe or bad things in general can happen at any time. The Savior saves. That is what he does. He helps. He gives what we need.
Neo, of course, is the One. After experiencing a death and resurrection in the first film, he suddenly has abilities even the unplugged can only dream of. Though the unplugged as a whole realize the Matrix is a fictional environment where the rules can be bent or broken, their belief - and thereby their ability - to bend and break those rules are still limited. On the contrary, Neo's realization of the fictional Matrix is so thorough that he is able to fly, fight over one hundred agents at once, and stop bullets. The further Neo goes in his quest, the more powerful he becomes. Ultimately, his power over the Matrix extends even into the real world. Where the other unplugged will perish by a fatal bullet wound, Neo stops the bullet in mid air merely by holding up a hand. His vision while inside the Matrix is the vision of one who sees everything for exactly what it is - computer code. His complete and total understanding of his environment allows him to reach into Trinity's body to retrieve a bullet and then start her heart with an electronic pulse from his inserted hand. The needy at Zion form throngs around his arrival so that he might heal their sick. The knowledge, healing, and hope he imparts to those within the Matrix (who were then unplugged by their own volition) cause them to worship him and exalt him even though Neo, himself, claims it wasn't him that saved anyone. They saved themselves.
The concepts expressed through the character Neo are a stark parallel with the Western Christian Science views of the Christ and the Eastern concept of the Buddha. In such a traditions, the measure of one's ability to heal sickness, to grow spiritually, or to transcend the physical world is proportionately related to one's belief in the truth. Following the model of Jesus or Buddha - the Savior, the Healer, and Representative of the truth - Neo sees something the other unplugged do not or cannot see. He literally sees the Matrix as code and not as a reality. It is through this complete and total awareness of the truth (the truth in the films being the Matrix is simply a computer program) he is able to manipulate most anything within the Matrix at will. The other unplugged know the truth and they can manipulate the Matrix to a certain degree. Neo, however, knows the truth so completely that his abilities are unparalleled - even beyond those of an Agent. Christian Science is inherently Gnostic in that KNOWING (and more so, believing) something produces or brings about something in return. It alludes to faith being the only blockade between the power of God and the manifestation of that power in our world. In the first film, the boy bending spoons tells Neo spoons cannot be bent by mind power. They can only be bent by believing there is actually no spoon at all. The Biblical Jesus was said to have made this claim:
"If you have the faith of a mustard seed (the smallest seed) you will be able to move mountains."
Neo is granted the highest of faith because his vision is wholly unobscured. He sees - in totality - the falsity of the Matrix. His abilities are a direct result of his faith thus, Neo surpasses the other unplugged and even Agents in power and ability to manipulate the Matrix and eventually the machines in the real world.
The character of Neo not only represents the Savior figure, he represents all humanity; each person individually and collectively. There must be a distinct separation between material and spiritual in order to understand how this applies to the films. The One is from the Source. Thomas Anderson is a regular human being. Though Thomas Anderson manifests The One, The One is an intangible concept designed and implemented by the machines' grand scheme through the Architect.
The One returns to the Source at the end of Revolutions but Thomas Anderson has died. When Sati questions The Oracle about whether they will see Neo again, The Oracle answers "I suppose so. Someday." She is not talking about Neo. She is talking about The One. The concept of The One resides in the Source as it always has. If the achieved peace between humans and machines falls apart at some future time, the war - thus, the Prophesy, The One, the door of light, the struggle of mankind to escape - will begin anew. The One will reappear manifested in some other human and the entire circle will start from the beginning once more.
This understanding of material and spiritual can possibly address the mystical Trinity in Christianity and also the reincarnation of the Buddha in Buddhism. Some spiritual 'mantle' or 'cloak' or 'energy' manifests in a human such a the Christ or the Buddha. It isn't the human being itself who is the Savior or Messiah, it is the Savior or Messiah manifesting IN the human. Thus, the mysterious passages of the bible "The Word was with God and the Word was God" referring to the Christ can be more fully understood when removing the human Jesus as pre-existant Word and replacing it with a conceptual, pre-existant idea that manifested in the human Jesus. Or, the pre-existant Buddha that manifests in a human in one age and returns again and again to manifest in humans at a later time. While the human is ordinary, the mantle, cloak, or energy is extraordinary. In the Christian tradition, Jesus underwent a baptism and began his ministry after that event. It is said that at that time of initiation or baptism, the Spirit descended upon him. It was at this time the Messiah became evident and began manifesting in the human Jesus. The parallel can be drawn with the death and rebirth of Neo in the first film. The taking on of the mantle or cloak to manifest The One, thus, 'becoming' or manifesting something other than Thomas Anderson.
The Messiah or Savior, however, has an equally apparent counterpart in most every tradition world-wide. Where there is a Savior saving us from cataclysm, there is an anti-savior perpetrating the cataclysm. Like a mirror, there can be no reflection unless an initial image first appears before the glass. God and satan. Good and evil. Light and dark. Polar opposites on a grand scale. We learn in Revolutions that Smith is Neo's opposite; his negative. In fact, The Oracle explains that the emergence of Smith as a rogue force is actually the equation (of Messiah, the Prophesy - the anomaly that so bothers The Architect) trying to balance itself out. Thus, where there is a Savior, there is a Perpetrator. The Architect's very nature is to counter the power of Neo with an opposite of equal power. As The Oracle explains, The Architect has no ability to see beyond a choice. His methods are purely mechanical and rote.
"He doesn't understand them. He can't. To him, they are variables in an equation. One at a time each variable must be solved and countered. That's his purpose - to balance the equation."
The appearance of Smith as a Rogue power running amuck in the Matrix and beyond is wholly contingent upon the existence of Neo. Without light, there can be no darkness and visa versa. But the films show us there is something greater than good and evil. There is peace. Often, the battle for peace is fought out through the struggle between good and evil, however, in a much larger context, peace is independent of good or evil. While the side of good may fight for peace and the side of evil may fight for upheaval, the films result in the battle being won by the side of good (Neo) and BOTH good and evil (Smith and Neo) being destroyed.
Neo and Smith are representations of both human and machine. In accordance with the theme of balance, they are beginning to mirror each other and actually merge. Neo is becoming more mechanical while the Smith is becoming more human. One example lies in Neo's abilities to manipulate the Matrix. His manipulation is so extreme in the second film that he actually stops a sword-type weapon with his hand. He does bleed, however, the "rules" of the Matrix would insist his hand would actually be lopped off. Instead, Neo bleeds just a little. He IS still human. The key to peace between machine and man rests in the relationship between Neo and Smith - between good and evil.
"Tonight, the future of both worlds will be in your hands or in his."
The equation is like a see-saw. The more powerful Neo becomes, the more powerful Smith becomes. They are one and the same. Opposites. Negatives of each other, yet, one thing. The only difference between them is their individual agendas. Neo wants peace. Smith wants complete and total destruction. Neo knows and understands why he wants what he does. Smith's desire to destroy is blind and without reason. Neo desires to achieve peace because he loves. Smith desires to destroy for virtually no reason at all other than rage. When, at last, Smith clones Neo, he seems intrinsically confused - "is it over?" He has no idea why he is doing what he is doing and no comprehension of an end result. Neo has understanding and it is through that understanding he is able to bring about his desire for peace by simply giving in. He relinquishes his own life to save others. That's a hero.
• TRINITY
A Holy Spirit is a concept consisting of a hodge-podge of various mystical ideas and representations throughout history. It is a spirit, for one thing (an unseen) and not much is really identifiable about its consistency other than it is somehow connected to an omnipotent, omniscient power; a power of an all-governing and all-existent realm unknown in the physical world. A Judaic Holy Spirit idea is expressed as a Ruach (meaning wind) while a Christian Holy Spirit might be expressed a flame of fire. Broken down into its simplest form, a Holy Spirit might be represented in a dove (a bird recognized as a symbol for peace) or simply a comforting presence. In Gnostic circles, a spirit is an attitude or a motivation for acting in a certain manner. For example, playing a sport "in the spirit of competition." If the Holy Spirit is indeed the Spirit of God Almighty, then what exactly IS God Almighty that this Spirit might be expressed? Is it love? Is it judgment? Is it wisdom? Is it all of these things combined plus more?
Trinity represents the Spirit. She is the love of the One and she is his one love. He became the One because she loved him. Were it not for her love, he would have died in that hallway - riddled with bullets from an agent. His transformation was not gradual but exact. Neo died and was resurrected by love. Upon resurrection, all was made clear to him and him alone. Much reminiscent of Jesus and his communion with God, Neo needs her communion and her counsel and proximity. When the throng approaches him in Zion, she urges him to stay and help them even though they earnestly desire the companionship only they can provide to one another. "They need you," she says. "I need YOU," he replies. The mysterious form of Spirit leaves many questions unanswered and unknown as it has throughout the ages. However, Spirit is the driving force behind the One and their union is both unbreakable and largely not understood due to its inherent intimacy.
• MORPHEUS
Holy men exist in most certainly all traditions: the Shaman of tribal societies, Priests of various orders and religions, ancient Celtic astronomers, psychic visionaries contacting the dearly departed. These figures are those who see or perceive something or believe in something - a channel or conduit of some sort - which is then relayed to the society. Three "kings" sought out a star they associated with the birth of nobility in the case of the Biblical Jesus. In fact, these people were astronomers or Magi. They were students of a prophecy and watched the heavens accordingly.
Morpheus believes without fail that a Savior exists and that his destiny is to locate the One. Morpheus' abstract beliefs are not well received throughout the elite of Zion; however, the common populace seems to trust in Morpheus and his beliefs even above the elder council. He inspires the crowd through a speech as if he were Moses addressing Israel from a perch of the mountain. He did find the One. Zion will not fall into destruction. Zion will be saved by the only one who can save it. To him, no amount of firepower or armory can bring about this salvation. He has absolute conviction about the beliefs he holds. He "preached" of the prophecy of the One and prepared the way for him in the minds of the people so that when the One did appear, they would be ready to receive him and believe in him. The character of Morpheus is synonymous to The Biblical John, the Baptist in the Jesus/Neo scenario.
In Greek mythology, Morpheus is the god of dreams. Also in this tradition, dreams were sent out to men passing through one of two gates. Through one gate, men passed through and were sent true dreams. Through the other, false dreams. The symbolism here for the Morpheus character in the films is quite obvious. He finds humans within the Matrix and offers them a blue pill or a red pill. One, offering the truth, one offering a lie. Morpheus, himself, and his prophetic message could be construed on this same level. He has preached the coming of the One who would cause the end of the war with the machines. However, his prophecy and all that he believes turns out to be quite false. In Greek tradition, Morpheus is the son of Hypnos - the god of sleep. Perhaps the function of Morpheus is to unknowingly foster the sleep of even the Unplugged and the inhabitants of Zion through preaching a message which may be as false as the Matrix itself except on a different level.
• CYPHER
One fairly obvious comparison to the Christian lore is the Judas/betrayer figure portrayed in the character of Cypher. A comrade who betrays the One by cooperating with the enemy for personal compensation. Of course, had Cypher not betrayed Neo, the transformation through resurrection may not have occurred. Thus, the age-old parable of fate and destiny is addressed. In the second film, The Matrix Reloaded, the issues of fate and destiny are presented like a vast sea of underlying metaphor. Was Cypher meant to betray Neo? Was it part of the whole plan? Was there a plan? If it was all a plan, is there truly choice?
Fate and destiny are coherently addressed in ancient Greco-Roman epics and references to such topics are by no means confined to the ancient "civilized" world. Man has most likely considered his actions, reasons, and motivations in light of some divine providence since the beginning. Do we really choose? Or has all choice been laid out in advance only for us to discover them along the way? If we do not truly choose, what do our lives really mean? Are we simply programmed by a larger divinity to act out according to whatever scheme or model created by the divinity? In the model of being plugged into the Matrix, it would seem that choice was simply an illusion. However, the unplugged Neo, the One, has now been advised that even the lives living outside the Matrix are plotted as well.
The word "Zion" is indelibly linked to the Judaic faith. The word first appears in the Tenach (or, Old Testament) as a fortress within the land of Palestine captured by King David. That fortress occupied a small track of land that is now the mostly hotly contested plot of earth on the entire globe. The small hill in the city of modern-day Jerusalem is both Islam's Dome of the Rock and Judaism's sacred Temple Mount. Both faiths lay claim to the site and the divisive issue of true ownership is unquestionably the fundamental fuel for all mideast tension between Muslims and Jews.
"Zion" plainly translated means "hill." At present, the words "Zionist" and "Zionism" have taken on a life of their own in terms of anti-Semitism, racism, and/or bigotry. However, the simple four-letter Z word holds vast connotations in a Judaeo-Christian-Islamic religious context.
The quasi-historical hill of Zion is the place of numerous "holy" events. It is alleged to be the place where Abraham brought his son to be slain at the request of the Lord, the site of the first and second Jewish Temples, and the ascensions of both Jesus and Muhammed. Beyond the physical location of the hill itself, Zion became synonymous with "the people of God." In books of the Tenach subsequent to the description of the creation of a Temple, authors began ascribing the term Zion to the people as a whole. The word took on new meaning and spiritual significance. Christianity took the word a step further by ascribing to it the stamp of the New Jerusalem; a spiritual awakening or consciousness coming down from heaven to earth. What is more, Zion is the home of God and his people. Zion is often referred to as a place of safety, sanctity, and refuge; a people with discreet separation from an evil or malicious world for a specific purpose. In religious terms, they are set apart and consecrated to God.
In this model, we can see the underground city of Zion is the sanctuary for a people who are separate from the world. They are outside of the Matrix and free from their pods and the malicious rule of the machines. New Testament writers made allusion to Mount Zion being a spiritual place of a new spiritual law. They contrasted the spiritual Mount Zion with the physical Mount Sinai where the physical Torah (law) was received by Moshe (Moses). The contrasting of a physical place and a spiritual place can also be applied to the Matrix films where most humans are physically bound to a gelatin pod while only a select few awaken to real life in the real world. The people of Zion are drawn out of the world of the Matrix and are not part of it.
Just as the religious models suggest, the Savior comes out of Zion. He is the chosen one from among the chosen people. The Architect explains that Zion is an anomaly existing to facilitate the appearing of the One. He comes from Zion to save Zion. The ordinary people of the Matrix are quite unaware of the existence of Zion or the One. Yet, the One seeks to liberate even those who are unaware. He first fights to save his people - Zion - and ultimately to rescue the entire human race. However, in Reloaded, we learn that the very existence of Zion and the One are simply another level of machine control. The Oracle explains the path of the One ends at the Source. Neo has fulfilled all the prophecies and jumped through all the proverbial hoops to get to the Architect through the door of light. Yet, the only answer he receives at the culmination of his endeavors is a choice to either perpetuate the circle yet again through the destruction and rebuilding of Zion or to tread a completely unknown path with the possible extinction of the entire human race.
• THE KEYMAKER
The prolific Jim Morrison named his band The Doors after "The Doors of Perception." In the drug-induced frenzy of the 1960's (and beyond) people have used psychedelics and other drugs either to escape reality in the ensuing haze of the drug state itself or to transcend literal reality by expanding personal consciousness. In fact, the hippie movement initially represented a culture of searchers attempting to obtain some level of understanding or meaning of life through this expanded consciousness. While drug use is by no means the only method by which to expand consciousness, the freeing of the mind from natural constraints by use of opiates or fungi such as mushrooms were and are common practice by holy men in tribal societies throughout the world. To somehow float above the physical plane where the mind can become aware of things it ordinarily cannot, to access hidden doors of knowledge or understanding was the duty of these holy men who then endured visions, revelations, or omens from some supposed higher source.
In the Matrix films, the Keymaker represents this access. He cuts keys used by every programmer and every program in the Matrix. He creates the method by which they gain access. Far beyond the simple process of the false world of the Matrix, the Keymaker provides a tool by which the user can navigate the Matrix virtually at will. Those with keys are highly elevated; they move throughout the system and are able to access any and all of the Matrix. Since the Matrix is one large perception in and of itself, the keys represent perception into any and all things with the Keymaker being the very creator of access to perception.
Seraph has keys, Merovingian and Persephone have keys, and the programmers and programs have keys. They all use their keys according to their own purposes; however, the keys themselves are without prejudice and are a tool to be used by the holder. Morpheus relates keys to access in the first film where he said the Agents "guard all the doors and hold all the keys." Not only are the Agents an enforcement tool of the system, they are also suppressors of understanding and access to elevated knowledge. In the second film, the Keymaker is being held by Merovingian who explains the Keymaker is "a means but not a why." Perhaps perception without purpose is reasonless. Merovingian's world makes use of the access provided by the Keymaker to serve his own materialistic ends but Neo's group seeks the Keymaker only because someone told them they should.
At that time, the Keymaker (insight/access) ceased being a function to be protected and suppressed by Agents and became a personal tool of the evil Merovingian as a means to his own selfish ends. The Keymaker's sole purpose for being is to ultimately provide the unique key to the One who can open the door of light and complete the circle of the anomaly. The purpose of the Keymaker to ultimately provide the one special key is most fully expressed in the 314-second window in which the door must be opened by the One. 3.14 being the numerical Pi, used to calculate a circle. Every key, every door, every method of access culminates in one event which completes the circle. After Neo finds the Keymaker, the Keymaker understands he has no more purpose other than to get Neo to that door.
On a higher plane, it could be said that transcendence of literal reality through expanded consciousness ultimately ends with finding our true purpose for being. Expanded consciousness is a tool by which we gain higher insight and higher access. Whatever we learn at that higher level (if anything) is determined by our own individual focus. While Merovingian uses many keys for his own selfish lifestyle, Neo uses one special key - uniquely made for him and his unique purpose - in his attempt to save the human race.
BACK TO TOP
• SERAPH
In Judaic mythology, Seraphim (the plural of a Seraph) are understood to be the attendants of Yahweh and are continually in his presence. The word "seraph" comes from the Hebraic verb saraph which means, "to burn" and the noun saraph meaning "fiery, flying serpent." The Seraphim are thought to be bright, shining, and powerful beings who guard of the throne of Yahweh and carry out his bidding. Many ancient cultures speak of various versions of Seraphim which usually represent a figure who guards or protects something sacred. The only reference in the bible to a Seraph is in the plural Seraphim. The text describes Yahweh, appearing to the prophet Isaiah, surrounded on all sides by these six-winged beings. Thus, Seraphim later became known simply as angels. However, much earlier variations on these creatures (as described in the book of Isaiah) appear in ancient Egyptian ruins as statues placed as guardians of the graves of kings.
Undoubtedly, the Seraph character is an emissary of the Oracle as well as her protector. The Oracle is not simply the mother of the Matrix or an intuitive program for investigating the human psyche, she represents the future of all that exists. The Oracle seeks peace between man and machine and a resolution to a conflict that can potentially destroy both humans AND machines. As her guardian and emissary, Seraph protects both the Oracle and her agenda at all costs. Seraph, as we would commonly think of an angel, is an extension of the Oracle [god] and of her will. Seraph protects "that which matters most" - the future.
A very curious religious figure in both Christian and Judaic traditions is Yahweh. The ancient god of the Israelites, Yahweh powered the Israelite Exodus from Egypt and constructed the most elaborate religious tenets for his people. The god of Moshe (or the Christian Moses) performed wondrous signs and miracles before the captors of a slave race in Egypt and then proceeded to assign a cultural synthesis completely new to the known world. The emergence of Yahweh is thought to be the first true monotheistic presence in ancient history. Allowing no other gods before him, instructing his people in various technological efforts such as weapons and the manufacture of metals, ordinating a priesthood to dispense civil and moral law, Yahweh was a true architect. Yahweh expressed himself in the totality of male hood and remained a very aloof deity; only one selected person could enter his presence once a year and only after having performed the most elaborate of rituals. Yahweh was also often hostile to the enemies of his people and even the people themselves. Swift in judgment of wrongdoing, Yahweh is portrayed as the ever-present authority with omnipotent power to shake mountains, rain fire from above, and slay the first-born male. The model of the angry and aloof deity is a model lasting into modernity. In fact, Freemasonry (an ideology that held enormous sway on the founding of America) calls god "The Great Architect."
Predominately in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the angry god archetype who sees and judges every thought, motive, and action is the god everlasting - the one true god. Outside of the three main monotheistic religions, various feminine archetypes do exist. Ancient Egypt expressed the femininity of god in the form of Isis, the Babylonians in the form of Ishtar, the various feminine goddesses of Greco-Roman structure, etc. In Roman Catholicism (a tradition dominated by the male archetype of god and his son, Jesus) Mary, mother of Jesus, is elevated to a very high status. In the spiritual cosmos of religious ideology, feminine models are often suppressed in certain traditions but exalted in others. It makes one wonder if an all-male iconography of god leaves the human psyche lacking and almost forces us to interject a softer and kinder presence. Male and female humans are the yin and yang which constitute the human race. Whether it is for biological reasons and procreation or as an expression of the image of our own creator, dual natures of male and female do exist. The Architect represents the male half of the creator in the films.
We are first introduced to the character of The Architect in the second Matrix installment. He is, in fact, the creator of The Matrix. His all-seeing monitor screens reflect every thought in Neo's head and the unlimited insight into Neo's mind seems to be eclipsed only by his aloof commentary and impersonal flair. The Architect displays the attitude of complete and total obedience to and obsession with order and perfection. He is, of course, a computer program. The task of The Architect program was to create a virtual world where humans could live out their lives in The Matrix while being used as fuel for the machines. His design was perfect, yet, flawed. Human minds would not accept his flawless design. According to Agent Smith in the first film "entire crops were lost" due to the benign construction. The Architect explains it was The Oracle (another program) who discovered a technique by which the human crops would accept The Matrix. The Oracle introduced choice. The introduction of choice into the equation yielded a 99.9% success rate. This means the unplugged and the inhabitants of Zion are the .1% who chose to challenge the Matrix. Through their cooperative endeavors, The Architect and The Oracle created a viable Matrix. While he is the father of The Matrix, The Oracle is its mother.
The duality of the nature of an all-cognizant god figure has been the subject of discussion since time immemorial. Although feminine characteristics of deity have been both suppressed and exalted throughout the ages, gender is a human concept. Gender is an expression of something greater than corporeality and is not necessarily fully represented in genatalia. The Bible (a book of writings having survived various centuries and influencing various cultures) is a source of influence on the world like no other book in history. The book itself, or parts thereof, is a crux of the three largest monotheistic religions in the world. The book of Genesis is the foundation stone for these three religions and it speaks of the creator and mankind created in his image. "In the beginning, god created man in his image. Male and female, he created them." For the purposes of the Matrix films, The Architect is most certainly representative of the male nature of god. The Architect has no care for humanity, for Neo, for Trinity, for Zion. His sole aptitude is to deal, yet again, with this Messiah figure that is:
"the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision."
The Architect is fully logic and mathematical precision. His function is to state the facts (however arrogantly) and get the job done. He has no other consideration but to uphold The Matrix and process the anamoly. He, unlike The Oracle, does not seek a resolution to a coexistence of human and machine.
Neo, he explains, is by no means the first of his kind. There have been other Messiahs and Saviors trying to rescue mankind from the clutches of The Matrix. But The Architect is very bored with the meeting and deems the meeting "a burden to sedulously avoid it," but, "it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here."
The Architect is a polarized version of The Oracle. While the Oracle is kind, gentle, and helpful, The Architect is cold, brash, and purposefully cynical. In the collective consciousness of humanity, mothers are always considered to be the emotional, communicative, and affectionate parent while the father figure is often aloof, harsh, and desirous of a strong proverbial backbone. The environment in which The Architect corresponds with Neo is a sterile room with every thought in Neo's head displayed for examination. This model is probably what a large marjority of the world's concept of "Judgement Day" would look like. Evoking a passage from the Yaweh figure in The Tenach (or, the Christian Old Testament), "I have set before you two paths; the path of life and the path of death," the Architect offers Neo two doors. One door will complete the machine's automated function of the anamoly (Zion) and the other door will lead to the destruction of the entire human race.
Not unlike the story of the great Flood and Noah's Ark, The Architect, like Yahweh, explains that every living thing in Zion is about to be destroyed. Like Noah and his family being warned of and saved from the Flood, Neo will take with him a certain number of people to repopulate Zion after its destruction. Zion and its inhabitants represent the rejection of The Matrix. Their presence is simply an anomaly of the construct which, if left unchecked, threatens to destroy The Matrix. It is at this stage Neo realizes it has all been planned from the beginning. Their valiant efforts to free humanity from the machines has already been foreseen. The Architect claims this process has happened five times before. The destruction and re-building of Zion is simply another aspect of maintaining The Matrix. Another "One" will come after Neo and another after that; a series of repeating events to control a radical element within the construct. This revelation rocked the storyline in Reloaded and sent the theme off on a wonderfully unexpected tangent.
The Architect turns out a coward. Unlike the Oracle who takes a great risk to assist in the ratification of a huge, systemic problem, the Architect presumably sits back to watch the drama unfold - only emerging after the battle is fought and the outcome apparent. He has no interest in peaceful cohabitation - much less risking himself in any way to help achieve it. Aloof as always, he appears in the final scene of Revolutions to address a jubilant Oracle regarding the events that have just transpired. Apparently, she struck a deal with the Architect to leave the humans alone - to cease the senseless cycle of destroying and rebuilding Zion on the predication of the prophecy due to the anomaly. More than that, it is implied that Sati (and other machines who want to be free of the Matrix and "purpose-only" existence) will be freed by the same accord. The Architect's final words in the last film breathes a chilling comparison between man and machine. This very short line is thought provoking enough to possibly explain the underlying reason the war between man and machine began in the first place. Machines do not lie. Humans do.
• THE ORACLE
The Oracle as co-creator of the Matrix evokes the ancient philosophies of the dual natures of the Creator - one male and one female. With humans created "in the image" thereof, there are two types of humans: male and female. While the Oracle represents the love, compassion, help, and guidance of the Creator, she has put into motion a system (the Matrix) which now can only be guided along, pruned and clipped, like a gardner might tending her garden. Her intent seems to be to assist people in the purposes of their lives, mainly, the One. She is a source of hope for Morpheus who earnestly seeks her counsel and guidance. She told Morpheus he would find the One. On the faith of this belief, Morpheus did eventually find Neo.
The Delphic Oracle of Greek mythology foretold the future and was consulted by kings. She dwelled in the temple of the god Apollo. From an inner chamber, she received visions from fumes (alleged to be Apollo's breath) wafting up from the earth. She is described as sitting upon a three-footed stool and has the words "Know Yourself" inscribed upon the wall. Substitue Apollo's breath for feel-good cookies, and we see the basis for this character.
The Oracle knows what is going to happen before it does. Neo chides her for offering him candy because, he says, "you already know if I am going to take it or not." She continues to explain that it is not her place to tell what will happen but, rather, it is our mandate to discover why we did/do what we did/do. Neo can see Trinity's fate in his dreams but he cannot ascertain the outcome. According to the all-knowing Oracle, the reason he cannot see whether or not Trinity dies in the fall is because he does not understand why he will choose to save her. It is without doubt that Neo loves her and would save her at any cost - even with his very life. However, given the choice by the Architect, he only then has understanding as to why he made the choice to save her.
The Oracle implies (and her bodyguard/protector program states implicitly) everyone and everything has a purpose in a grander scheme of things; everyone and everything does what it was designed to do. If it does not, the thing is out of order and inharmonious. Originally, it was assumed the Oracle was a human just like the other unplugged. But the Oracle is co-creator of the Matrix. It was through her empathy for the human condition (as opposed to the austere disposition of her counterpart, the Architect) that the notion of choice was introduced into the system; whereby causing the participants of and in the Matrix to appear as being people of volition and free will. The Oracle represents the femininity of the creator through her slow, temperate, matronly manner. She assumes the form of a woman living modestly in a housing project. She bakes cookies, enjoys candy, and speaks gently and compassionately. Where The Architect is the analytical, The Oracle is the abstract. She is mystical and often comical. Ultimately, she knows everything The Architect knows, however, she does not reveal the pale truth of the matter. Her emphasis is on a coexistance of man and machine. She says, "whatever the future holds, we've got to get there together." She knows, as Neo has learned, one cannot live without the other. Even so, she is part of the program. Neo questions her agenda and cannot decide whether or not to trust her. Even so, her agenda seems quite the opposite of her Architect counterpart. She understands the importance of humans and machines living together in a type of harmony and seeks a solution. Where the Architect is concerned only with upholding the "perfect order" of his creation (The Matrix), the Oracle seeks lasting peace.
The Oracle is a true heroine of the films. She risks everything to achieve peace. She relinquished her shell to the Merovingian for Sati (to preserve and nurture machine love) and willingly gives herself to Smith for Neo (human love). Once it becomes clear to the Oracle that Neo believes in the possibility of peace as strongly she does, she seizes the opportunity to give Neo a chance to achieve it. By calmly allowing Smith to absorb her, she places her very existence in Neo's hand - trusting that he will make the right decision when the time comes. When it does come, she is there to remind him (out of Smith's own mouth) "everything that has a beginning has an end."
The motivator of the Oracle is all-encompassing love. She loves her creation (the Matrix) and everything in it (humans AND machines). She believed peace was possible and she guided all aspects without controlling them. She believed in Neo. She trusted him to make himself a sacrifice for the noble cause. Even though she seems to know everything in advance, she claims not to have known the outcome for sure. She believed.
• AGENT SMITH
In the Greek trilogy, The Orestia, a seemingly unjust murder takes place. The murderer is then killed with the gods' approval. But the second murderer is then pursued relentlessly by creatures called the Furies (who are not subject to the will of the gods but act only to exact judgment for the crime without reason or prejudice). Though the archetype of the One is a function of the Matrix (as we learn in Reloaded) the Smith has no regard for that function. He operates completely outside of the realm of the auspices of the Matrix with only one goal: kill Neo in revenge.
In the second installment, during Neo's conversation with the Oracle, she explains that programs face deletion upon outliving their usefulness or not fulfilling their purpose. Upon facing deletion, these programs can either return to the source or go into exile. Agent Smith (destroyed by Neo in the first film) has chosen exile. The character of the Smith is a rogue force determined to exact his own brand of justice for his own reasons. The tale within The Orestia consists of murderous plots conceived of vengeance for previous murders. Agent Smith specifically reminds us of the The Furies in that his sole purpose is to enact perceived justice for great crimes. Neo's crime? He has taken away the Smith's purpose. The Furies, like the Smith, operated outside the dominion of the gods (or the singular consciousness of the Matrix) within an agenda all their own.
The Smith reveals to Neo that he did not return to the source as was his protocol but instead, seeks to enact punishment on Neo for destroying him and taking away his purpose as an Agent. Just as the lore of The Furies states that when defeated, they become only that much more angry and determined in their attempt to carry out their judgment, the Smith is consumed by the obsession of destroying Neo. Though Neo defeats a virtual army of cloned Smiths, the former Agent's response is equally as fierce. Though he cannot overpower Neo, he clones more and more Smiths in a desperate, wild, and voracious attempt to enact revenge. He is unchecked. His mission has no validity outside of personal revenge. But still, his plot continues - destroying or attempting to destroy anyone in the way; falling deeper and deeper into a spiral fueled by all-consuming vengeance and senseless violence.
The revelation of The Oracle that Smith is Neo's opposite - his negative - is of looming consequence. Smith's decision to disobey protocol and stay in The Matrix to enact revenge on Neo may not have been a choice at all. The Architect's equation attempting to balance itself out takes the form of a rogue Smith with the potential to absorb or achieve as much power as is necessary to hold Neo to a stalemate.
The question could be asked, "did Smith really choose to disobey? Or is he simply a tool of The Architect to combat the incredibly-powerful Neo?"
Such questions would link to The Merovingian's philosophy that there is no such thing as choice. That "choice is just an illusion created between those with power and those without." In this philosophy, the real choice comes only when the "why" is discerned. Smith is completely devoid of why. His "why" is extremely personal and without any broader scope. His endless pursuing of Neo - even into the real world - has no real end result. Even when he "wins" and clones himself in Neo (his purpose seemingly fulfilled) he is confused and troubled. "Is it over?" he asks. It is a real possibility that Smith was in fact a tool of the Architect to counter Neo and balance the equation. When Neo entered Smith in the first film, they overlapped. Perhaps The Architect used this opportunity to imbue Smith with the capability to counter the Neo anomaly - with the hate and vengeful rage being the driving influence. If it is true, Smith seems wholly unaware of it.
Smith's philosophy actually mirrors that of The Architect. His conversation with Neo prior to the brawl in the courtyard in Reloaded smacks of the overwhelming ideology of the machines in general (of which The Architect is the forerunning spokesperson in the films). Smith rants that there is no denying reason or purpose. Smith's revenge is fueled by the fact that Neo removed his purpose. The idea of purpose-only existence is the entire reason Rama and Kamala are seeking refuge for Sati in The Matrix. In the machine world, purposeless existence is forbidden and deleted. In a way, Smith is parroting the machines, thus, The Architect in this ideology. So, Smith pursues Neo in order to take away Neo's purpose. He is, in effect, STILL AN AGENT. He is no longer an Agent on par with the original Agents, he is now a Super Agent combating a Super Human. Like the other Agents, Smith is still upholding the agenda of the machines and The Architect. Like Neo, Smith has emerged from the ordinary (from being a regular Agent) into the extraordinary. Smith represents the machines fighting to the death against the humans. The machines would rather die themselves than see humans take over. It is entirely possible that the virus of Smith would have done exactly what the Oracle said it would: seep into the real world and the machine world and consume BOTH.
However, The Architect is shown in this context to be ignorant. If The Architect did indeed enable Smith to counter Neo, this was a nonsensical course of action completely in line with how the Oracle described him - unable to see past any choice, his only purpose to balance the equation. The Architect could not see past the enabling of Smith to know that Smith would be capable of destroying both worlds. In effect, the machines put something into motion that was capable of destroying them.
Smith's blind rage comes to an end when he finally completes his task - to infect Neo with himself. But his ignorance cannot see - even with the Eyes of The Oracle - Neo's selfless sacrifice. A sacrifice that results in peace between man and machine but the destruction of both Neo AND Smith. So, the light and the dark are silenced, their battle grinds to a halt, and a new day begins with PEACE.
• AGENTS
In the Matrix Reloaded, a broader scope of the relationship between man and machine is addressed. Man has used machinery as simple as rocks in the distant past to achieve a desired end. Today, machines wake us up in the morning, transport us to work, spell-check our work, heat and freeze our food, and entertain us. In the films, machines have transcended consciousness of being tools and have achieved self-awareness. Just like their human counterparts, the machines also have needs. Currently, the needs of the machines involve using humans as an energy source. Plainly, the two are dependent upon one another for existence.
Any society needs order. This need for order culminates in some sort of government. A governing body to function as peacekeepers, lawgivers, etc. Imagine getting in your car and driving down streets with no stop signs, stop lights, traffic signals, or street signs. Those things exist because a governing body made them exist. Irrespective of morality or law, everything from paved roads to corporate businesses are an outcome of a governing body which upholds the larger plan for those it serves. It operates as functioning body of the WILL of its constituents. In the films, the machines are the governing body. They are a representation of a bureaucracy which operates within its own agenda (survival). If the rule of the machines is to be portrayed as a government, it would be a dictatorship. A dictatorship allows no input from those it governs and rules with impunity.
It is no mistake the Agents are dressed in suits and look identical to F. B.I. Agents. The Agents represent the enforcer arm of the machines in the Matrix. They are above any law enforcement within the world of the Matrix. They are clearly directing the police in the first film, they take over the bodies of military personnel (or any other human) at will, and their tactics seem like KGB Agents when they arrive at Neo's workplace to remove him for questioning. When seeing the larger focus, the Agents clearly represent a federal government above and outside of prosecution or confrontation by the people it rules.
Just like the real world, our Federal System overrides most any local agency. Some would say our Federal System is so large and so bureaucratic that it is out of our hands as voters to really make decisions on that level. That is why we have elected officials. However, it can also be said those elected officials have only limited scope and power in the domain of the Federal system. The Matrix films portray a system of rule gone amuck. Machines who dominate man fully and completely by reducing them to unconscious slaves. The machines (most tangibly represented by Agents) are an unchecked system of control with full dominion over every aspect of the lives of human beings.
In the 90's, events like Ruby Ridge and Waco caused alert with extremists who felt the Federal Government went too far to infringe on individual freedoms. Speculation about the deaths of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the scandals of Watergate and Iran Contra have produced much distrust of the Federal Government as a power-mad entity; only appearing to serve constituents but actually serving a secret, hidden agenda of its own. From the formation of the United States as an entity, Federal power has increased over time to virtually overshadow local power in every facet. In its early stages, the country was divided over the issue of slavery and Federal power won out - causing a war between, essentially, the dictation of a Federal rule over state rule. The morally-wrong issue of slavery aside, Federal rule overtook local rule. During the Great Depression, the Federal Government took yet another leap in power over individuals by installing Roosevelt's New Deal . The depth of hardship suffered by Americans in that era fostered a more powerful Federal body to assist constituents by way of various relief programs and social engineering by way of Social Security. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society introduced even greater Federal authority over the states with a myriad of social engineering legislation from Welfare and Medicare to war in Vietnam and the social upheaval that followed.
Successive movements toward Federal supremacy have always come in the form of further assisting the constituents when they needed help. Government is, by nature, supposed to be a tool of the people, for the people, and by the people. Just as machines have always been tools of people to produce a desired end, the machines in the films have exceeded that mandate. The Agents in the Matrix films are simply an extension of the will of the machines. Their function is to uphold the agenda of machine rule and they exist solely to do so. In the same way Federal power has become omnipotent in our world, the machines have become omnipotent in the world of the Matrix. Machines that once were a tool of man - to serve his agenda - have now risen to power and reign unchecked over those they once served.
• MEROVINGIAN & PERSEPHONE
One of the most fascinating characters to come from The Matrix is Merovingian and his lovely wife, Persephone and their clan of various warriors. Far too many parallels for these characters are drawn from ancient mythos and legend to name. The Merovingian dynasty ruled in the regions of Gaul (now France) around the 5th century A. D. until about the 8th century A. D. The summation of the legend of the Merovingians is that they stem from divine origin. The main figure surrounding the dynasty's rise to status and power, Merovech (from which Merovingian is derived), was conceived by a union between his mother and a divine sea creature. Not unlike Greco-Roman mythology where the gods conceived children with human women, the offspring were said to be born with powers and/or magical abilities. The same is true with the Merovingians. Their existence as true characters of history are not in dispute even if their origins in divine copulation may be. The lore of the divine origin of the Merovingian lineage traces back to the Biblical references to the same types of divine/human unions resulting in the Nephilim. The most famous story of the Nephilim is found in the Biblical book of Genesis in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic traditions. The Nephilim were children born of fallen angels and human women who followed their own individual whims as opposed to their creator, God. Of course, the most famous of these fallen angels is called Lucifer or Satan. They sought personal power and dominance on the earth and used their mystical powers and knowledge to rule over ordinary humans.
In another version of the tale of the Merovingians, their order is said to be the direct blood descendents of Jesus through his union with Mary Magdalene. They were said to be the keepers of the divine wisdom of Jesus, the Holy Grail, and numerous mystical secrets. Their divine blood line was the source of their ruling authority and power. After their power faded from ruling class, the knowledge and mystical artifacts were lost or scattered. In both accounts, the Merovingian monarchy was recognized or proclaimed as a divine blood line stemming from something otherworldly.
The complicated imagery of the Merovingian figure in The Matrix films inevitably leads us to a satanic figure. In Greek mythology, Persephone is the wife of Hades just as she is the wife of Merovingian in The Matrix films. The character of Merovingian toys with humans in a mindless game of what he calls "cause and effect." This imagery brings to mind questions faithful people have asked since the beginning; "why does God let bad things happen?" In the first Matrix film, Agent Smith tells Morpheus the first Matrix was created perfect but no one would accept it. The Architect (the very builder) of the Matrix confirms the first Matrix was a benevolent world of perfection but that it was "a triumph equaled only by its monumental failure." He continues to explain, "The inevitability of its doom is as apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being, thus I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature."
In fact, the Merovingian figure was introduced into The Matrix as a tool of imperfection. Just as the historical Merovingians of Gaul were said to have powers involving spells of carnality and sensuality, the Merovingian character of The Matrix takes delight in causing an orgasmic reaction through a piece of chocolate cake in an attractive woman from whom he then elicits sexual favors. "It is all a game," they keep saying. "There is no reason. Only cause and effect." As the Oracle implied, all things do what they were designed to do. Merovingian is obviously a man of extraordinary wealth and influence within the Matrix and his existence is wholly based on carnality and materialism. He is entirely indebted to the Matrix and it to him. He delights in what some would call "sin" and provokes it wherever he goes. He tantalizes those within the Matrix through unseen methods and tempts them using sensory stimulus. He chooses French as his language of choice because it makes cursing sound wonderful. "Like wiping your ass with a piece of silk," he quips. Strangely, both he and Persephone use the terminology "sample" as if they are somehow outside the realm of true experience but they can "sample" the Matrix at will. Persephone wants to "sample" the kiss of Neo. Merovingian has "sampled" all languages and has chosen French.
The immediate circle of beings around Merovingian consists of various creatures symbolizing dark forces. The bodyguards killed by silver bullets (vampires), the Twins who look like human versions of Sentinels and resemble angry ghosts as they materialize and dematerialize, and others who seem to have fighting abilities equal to the unplugged humans. This is reminiscent of countless traditions linking vampires, werewolves, spirits, ghosts, and other undead entities to the forces of hell and the will of a dark lord. According to traditions dating from the epochs of ancient Egypt and the dark lord Set to modern day Christianity and Satan, dark forces have always been said to be at work in the unseen realm - invisible malevolence assailing humanity with evil, temptation, sin, etc.
While the Merovingian character of The Matrix seems to be wholly enticed with and synonymous with evil exploits, Persephone, on the other hand, seems a bit bored with the whole matter. In Greek mythology, Persephone is actually held captive by Hades. After a while, she did come to love her captor. But eventually, Persephone was rescued by the powerful figure Hercules. The imagery of the film suggests a heavy drawing from these myths. Persephone did love Merovingian but now, that love has faded. She seems to have missed true love and looks to one kiss by Neo to recover a "sample" of the long-forgotten sensation. She does not ask for a simple kiss, she requires that love be expressed if even for that brief moment. In exchange for the "sample" of what she desires, she will hand over a precious possession - the Keymaker. In the world of Merovingian and Persephone, everything is a game and nothing really matters. It could be said that their world is the world of darkness - the Greek Hades, or perhaps the Christian Hell.
A very interesting observation that can be derived from close examination of the dialogue in Reloaded is that Merovingian may have been a previous "One." A few things point to this conclusion. Persephone desires to sample Neo's love because she explains Merovingian used to be like him. The fact of the historical Merovingians as a "divine blood line" also offers curious questions as to whether or not the Merovingian in the film is part of that special group of people who are successively "The One." If so, Merovingian was probably the very first "One." Upon entering the Source and before being reinserted into The Matrix, he could have then chosen the repopulation number of Zion and then became The Merovingian. Where he may have once been a noble superhero like Neo - attempting to save the human race from the machines, we now find the Merovingian in a jaded, materialistic, meaningless existence.
Neo, understandably, is very perplexed by the revelation that his entire purpose, Morpheus' prophecy, and the hope of overthrowing the machines is simply another function under the control of The Matrix. Perhaps (as a former Messiah) Merovingian chose the door that would save Zion. Maybe he bowed to the will of The Matrix; thus, completing the circle of the anomaly and choosing the door Neo did not choose. Perhaps Merovingian (as a former Savior) relinquished his fight to save humanity - realizing the futility - and accepted a new role in The Matrix much like Cypher did. The former "One" then ultimately becomes the power-mad, ego-driven character we see in Reloaded. Having realized the magnitude of the "game" being played out at the highest levels of The Matrix, the person who became Merovingian has simply given himself up to The Matrix and the game itself.
The Merovingian seems to have a vast knowledge of Neo's purpose and what the Keymaker's role is for Neo and he also seems to have great insight into the larger machinations of the processing the anomaly and the function of the "One." He speaks of surviving Neo's predecessors as if every time the circle repeats, the Merovingian is always holding the Keymaker and has to be continually rescued by the current "One." This is a very interesting subtext. Merovingian is a program. The Oracle said it plainly. If it is true - if the Merovingian is a previous "One" - it means Neo is also a computer program. This underlying theme was never answered to any satisfaction, but perhaps the mere suggestion itself is more compelling than the offering of the answer.
The Merovingian is the machine representation of an extremely wealthy and influential man. Nothing seems beyond his reach or scope. The Oracle defines his existence perfectly - a man with power who seeks only more power. Since the Merovingian seems to define power as knowledge (he is a trafficker of information and gains leverage, hence more power, through knowing) the ultimate expression of and highest exponent of power would be to "see" with the Oracle's "eyes."
The Merovingian's motivation is purely selfish. Where Smith takes the Oracle's eyes with the sole purpose of adding power to himself in order to destroy Neo, Merovingian has no care for Neo, Smith, The Oracle, or the Matrix except where it can benefit him and his own selfish goals. If we accept the model of Neo and Smith being motivated by polar opposites, the motivators of The Merovingian fall directly inbetween Smith (revenge through corruption) and Neo (salvation through sacrifice).
• RAMA, KAMALA, AND SATI
Rama, Kamala and Sati are, simply, a family. The unusual thing about them is that they are machines. This post-Jetson family unit represents the impossible or the inevitable (depending on how you look at it) evolution of machines. Evolution from manufactured mechanisms used to achieve a desired end to sentient beings deciding to procreate of their own volition. Arguably the most important character symbols in the Matrix Trilogy, the revelation that machines - like humans - can and do love is what eventually propels Neo to give his own life to achieve peace between the two.
Rama-Kandra is the father of Sati and the husband of Kamala. According to Hindu mythology, Rama is the legendary figure of the epic Ramayana. He is the seventh avatar (or incarnation) of Vishnu. Rama is an extremely virtuous hero, thus, "Rama" has become a prefix synonymous with "Lord." When used in a manner such as the English "Mister", Rama generally denotes formal regard. Chandra (pronounced Kandra) is the ancient god of the moon representing fertility. When a couple desired a child, they were to pray for Chandra's blessing. Combined, Rama-Kandra is the virtuous, childbearing father of Sati. He speaks at length to Neo about karma, love, and honor - concepts that are shocking to Neo coming from a computer program.
Kamala is the tenth and last of the Mahavidyas (translated "great knowledge"). The Mahavidyas, or wisdom goddesses, represent the assertion of femininity into Indian thought as ten deities with ten very specific and varying identities. Of the ten, Kamala is called "The Last But Not The Least." She is the full revealing of the feminine into the material realm. The goddess Kamala is almost entirely removed from traditional domestic context. She is portrayed as independent and powerful in her own right (a concept strikingly different from historically proper dharmic or social behavior). Also, Kamala is often assumed to be the goddess Lakshmi with a different name (Lakshmi is the goddess of fortune and fertility). Kamala does not say much in the film; however, the mythological context of her goddess counterpart makes up for it.
Since the names for the characters of Rama and Kamala are drawn from Hindu origin, one would assume to also draw from Hindu mythology to find a basis for the name of their daughter, Sati. Hinduism's practice of Sati is both legendary and infamous. Sati is the ancient ritual by which a man's wife can venerate herself and achieve deification as well as the redeeming of all her forefathers from hell. She does this by casting herself onto the funeral pyre of her husband and burning to death through self-immolation. It seems impossible to draw from this symbolism to shed light on the young daughter of Rama and Kamala, although, parallels with the practice of Sati could be applied to Neo's self-sacrifice. However, there is another tradition (the Buddhist tradition) speaking of Sati that is more appropriate to the Matrix story and better represents the special child of the film.
In Buddhist methodology, Sati means "mindfulness." The meaning is much more than it appears. Sati means not only being aware of something or remembering something or even being conscious of something. It actually means Self Awareness. It means the mind's ability to comprehend and observe itself. In the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the Terminator describes the artificial intelligence called Skynet created as a tool of humans to more accurately control and operate defense systems. As an artificial intelligence system, it was created with the capability to learn on its own. He explains how it began to learn at a "geometric rate" and eventually became "self aware." It achieved Sati. Sati is said to be the vehicle for wisdom and knowledge. It was at that moment Skynet began to make decisions for itself.
Not unlike the little girl of the film, Skynet ceased being a tool of its creator and became a self-governing entity. Sati is the first computer program created without a purpose. She represents the final step in an evolution of machines being told what to do (first by humans, then by other machines) to machines existing for their own reasons. Sati's existence, of course, is the product of Rama and Kamala's love for each other.
It becomes clear after seeing Revolutions that not all machines are created equal. To programs like the Architect, Smith, and the Merovingian, love is a most flagrant and vacuous "reason" to exist. Smith's rants about purpose and reason are not empty script. They show us how blatantly moronic it seems to some machines (and some humans!) to exist without purpose. It also relays the ultimate threat such a purposeless existence would be to the order of the machine world itself. Smith calls love "insipid." The Merovingian compares love to insanity. To the Architect, love is a "contingent affirmation" programmed into the code of The One to create a "profound attachment to the rest of your species" but has no elemental purpose other than "facilitating the function of The One."
On the other hand, The Oracle, Rama and Kamala, and even Persephone realize the value of love. Persephone craves it but finds it elusive in the dark world of The Merovingian. Thus, she gives up the most-valued Keymaker to experience one brief sample of the long-forgotten feeling. The Oracle exudes love. She instructs Sati that one's hands must be used to mix cookie dough in order to imbue the cookies themselves with the personal touch and love of their creator. Rama and Kamala represent the full incarnation of love and sentience - procreation. They have brought about and created a third individual out of love for each other. Sati, in the imagery of the films, is love personified.
Machine love is the progression from the static, collective consciousness of machines as a whole into the abstract, individual awareness of Self. Such a Self Awareness is an obvious threat to the machines as a whole; thus, "procreation" or machines existing without specific purpose are disallowed. The threat of machines existing in individual Self Awareness (as opposed to collective self awareness) is the inevitability of chaos, confusion, and the ultimate breakdown of machine rule over humanity as well as its own internal self-governance. However, it is the revelation of machine love that ultimately saves humans, the Matrix, and gains peace between the two.
In the first Matrix film, Neo and the humans from Zion are under the impression that human freedom can only be achieved through destruction of the machines and the Matrix. Through many trials and tribulations, the believers learn their understanding of the prophecy and their beliefs based on the guidance of the Oracle were limited. Neo realizes that destruction of the machines is not the salvation of Zion. After Neo's experience with the Architect, everyone is confused and all previous assumptions are shattered. Neo's conversation with the machine family shows him that machines are not the enemy. Like humans, some machines are good, some are bad, and some are indifferent. The notion of balance and peace between humans and machines becomes REAL to him. The family is proof to Neo that machines have evolved to a place where they are truly not that much different than humans. He realizes that Rama loves Sati in the same way Neo loves Trinity. It is for this common bond, love, that Neo negotiates the Great Peace at the cost of his own life. Hero.
More Articles
3 Dating Questions for the New Year
On setting up previous dates, moving to small town for a great job but few dates, and taking a break from dating.
Holding Off
3 Things I Wish I Knew when I was Dating
I would have appreciated a heads-up on a few things. What wisdom do you have to share?
Creating Space for Love
True love requires accepting someone for who they are, without projecting our dreams and fantasies upon them.
Rejection in Dating
You’re So Picky!
The Joys of Being Single
Sukkot and the Single Woman
Sukkot in the Time of Ebola
Life Is So Hard
Sukkot: A Time for Celebration
10 Zingers Cut from Netanyahu’s Speeches
THE 3000 Year Old Jewish Woman: Part Two
Today @Aish. com October 17, 2014 / 23 Tishrei 5775
Today's Featured Ask the Rabbi Question
Intentional Mistakes
I've been enjoying the philosophy articles on Aish. com. The approach to life resonates with me much more than the Western style of consumerism and media hype. Regarding the obligatory nature of mitzvot, however, I think sometimes humans have to disregard the boundary and be disobedient against the command. It might be painful, but I believe you come away with a higher appreciation that God and His commands are ultimately correct. Do you agree with this thinking?
The Aish Rabbi Replies:
You have touched on a deep truth, but ultimately your principle is mistaken. The Talmud states: "In a place where a reformed sinner stands, even a righteous tzaddik does not stand." The idea is that after having erred, you can analyze your negative acts, learn from them, and use that knowledge as a foundation to motivate you further.
While all this seems to imply that it is better to make mistakes and then correct them, rather than never have made the mistake in the first place, that is not true.
Let's take the mundane example of the rule: "Always look both ways before crossing the street." There are two ways to learn this lesson: 1) Listen to the advice of teachers and parents to look both ways before crossing, or 2) cross recklessly, get hit by a car, and then while lying in the hospital acknowledge a lesson well-learned.
The problem in choosing the second path is that there is always a residual effect from our mistakes. A teenager who experiments with drugs may grow up to realize the dangers, but a lot of brain cells have been killed in the meantime.
There is one other danger: That the person will never correct their mistake. The child who recklessly crossed the street may be killed in the process, or the teenager who experiments with drugs may wind up in an advanced stage of addiction.
We human beings like to basically think of ourselves as independent. We have a built-in resistance to authority, and have a difficult time acknowledging that we need someone else's information.
The great kabbalist the Arizal explains that was the mistake of Adam and Eve - and look how much it cost us. In the Garden of Eden, the Snake argued that by eating from the forbidden fruit they would taste the flavor of evil, reject it, and then achieve a new level of holiness!
Nobody builds a skyscraper without expert advice and a plan. But "life" is much more complicated than constructing a building or performing surgery. You'd never dream of using trial and error in the operating room. So why do so with your personal life?
Many people would rather make their own mistakes, than learn from those who have already made them. We think we can learn everything by ourselves. We imagine we can get married, raise children, and live a meaningful life - "figuring it all out" as we go along!
Life is too short for this. We're bound to make mistakes; why add those we could otherwise prevent? Instead, Judaism teaches us to seek out people who truly possess wisdom. Hang around them, and bring a whole list of questions to ask them at every possible opportunity. On the wisdom scale, you can achieve in a few years what might otherwise take a lifetime.
The Talmud says that we are to give particular honor to two types of people: an elderly person, and a Torah scholar. What they both have in common is wisdom. The elderly person by virtue of life experience, and the Torah scholar by having absorbed the deep wisdom contained in Torah books. Note that they have both attained wisdom, but the Torah scholar can do so in a fraction of the time - and without suffering the many bumps and bruises along the way.
As the saying goes: "A fool learns from his own mistakes, a wise person learns from the mistakes of others."
Why is Mainstream Dating Advice So Ineffective?
Saturday, 5 April 2014
A few weeks back, in the comments section of “Real Empiricists Test ”, a reader asked the following question regarding the gulf between mainstream dating advice and what’s taught on this site:
“ Is there an article on this, or maybe someone can answer this outright. But why is it that mainstream dating advice is so contrary to the dating advice given on this site. Why is it that there is almost no agreement. ”
The short answer, of course, is that what we focus on here is entirely techniques and strategies that:
Achieve efficient, effective, reproducible results
Are tested out and balanced against alternatives and discarded if found ineffective
Are coming from people who’ve devoted a large chunk of time specifically to this field
. whereas most mainstream dating advice is coming from regular folk with limited experience dating and even less time spent studying and analyzing dating and sex and relationships and social dynamics both in the field and with other likeminded folk.
But the fact of that matter is, it goes a lot deeper than this. There’s more to this clash of ideologies than simply field experience vs. non, and it mainly has to do with who’s giving the advice, and what their objectives are in giving it .
One of the bizarre consequences of living in the information age is the tendency of some voices, often those with little to say, to drown out most others. In the case of dating advice, the advice of vanilla-flavored non-advice on the Internet and, before it, on its forebear, television, has effectively drowned out practicable advice. Much of this comes from women advising men on dating, though certainly not all of it.
Now, as we’ve talked about on here in the past, it’s generally a bad idea to get men’s dating advice from women .
Not because women aren’t smart, or aren’t successful at dating themselves. or aren’t well-meaning. Many of the women willing and eager to give you advice are all three.
However. as discussed in the article linked to above, there are a variety of reasons why a woman is almost always going to be the wrong person to advise you as a man on how to get women (much as you might be inclined to think “Who better than a woman to teach me how to get a girl ?”), though many of them boil down to the fact that women just don’t have a lot of experience succeeding with women as a man.
But it isn’t just women giving out dating advice; it’s men, too. And most of the men in the mainstream are every bit as bad as most of the women in the mainstream.
Why’s their advice just so, well. bad?
The Age of Anonymous Advice
Television, and later the Internet, brought the information age into full swing, with all kinds of information being sent out to the masses. The majority of what’s consumed is junk – “news” (really just “disaster” or “outrage” or “political crisis” templates that are filled in with whatever the threat du jour is to whip up the masses into a fearful and devotedly viewing frenzy), reality TV, and celebrity gossip websites are prime examples – but despite this, the average level of edification and worldliness of the average member of the population today is vastly higher than it was 200, 100, or even 50 years ago.
Mass media opened us up to the world in ways that were not available several centuries ago. At the turn of the 20th century, news was for the first time being delivered swiftly. telegraphed from one side of the world to the other, instead of having to wait for ship or rail or coach to get it there. Then came the telephone and radio, then television, then computing and the Internet. The way we consume and exchange information has changed so radically over the course of just a hundred and fifty years that it’s hard to wrap your head around the impact it’s had and having on us, and how society has altered and will continue to alter itself.
But the exchange of information isn’t perfect, and in some cases, it’s done more harm than good .
Prior to television and the Internet, the world was a much quieter place. You talked to your friends and family and neighbors and strangers you met in the street, and you read the newspaper, and maybe tuned into the radio every now to listen to the evening broadcast, or you hopped on the party line to chat with folks in the neighborhood, but that was it. You didn’t have the kinds of raw, deep discussions you see on television and the Internet, and here’s what I mean.
In our media today, we are bombarded constantly from every angle with instructions on how we must act and behave, and these messages come from complete strangers who do not know us .
In the past, you’d get advice on how to comport yourself, but it largely came from family and close friends and your priest and maybe a nosy neighbor or two. Advice in newspaper advice columns or serials mostly stuck to the basics: be considerate and don’t be an ass. The majority of the advice you received would be largely tailored to you: your specific situation, and what you needed to do and change.
The information age is an age of anonymity; it’s an age of legions of regular people given a pulpit on the boob tube, or on the web, to preach their views to some imagined representative viewer out there, and rail against imagined enemies of different creeds.
And as women have taken the pulpit, they’ve rapidly changed the tone and direction of this mass, anonymous discussion, and changed the way advice is given.
We Mustn’t Hurt Anyone’s Feelings Now
As private, personalized advice has gone the way of the dinosaur, one-size-fits-all advice has moved to the fore. And in a media landscape that attempts to cater to the broadest demographic range possible, that means the advice given must be as vanilla and inoffensive as possible .
Did you know that every American broadcast television network except Fox has a majority female audience? According to the New York Times. 57% percent of CBS viewers are women. 62% of ABC viewers are.
And did you know that roughly 60% of social media users are women. Specifically, it’s 53% female on Instagram, 58% female on Facebook, 62% female on Twitter, and 72% female on Pinterest. Even MySpace still has a majority female membership. Google Plus is alone among major social networking sites with a slight male majority.
Bet you thought these things were 50-50, didn’t you. But men don’t need to chat and connect and social share and gossip and gab like women do; it’s not that one style is superior to another, it’s just that women have a larger part of the brain devoted to verbal, social, and connection, and this is where they spend more of their time. It isn’t as big a concern for men.
Of course, what that means is that naturally, every television channel that wants to be the biggest, and every social media website that wants the largest user base, is going to cater more toward its female audience than it is its male audience .
If the female audience is outraged, well, that’s a very bad thing, so the broadcasting and social media giants trend female-centric as they mature.
They might not start out that way, but they all end up that way.
Further compounding the issue is the fact that women get outraged pretty often, frequently over (what seem to men to be) small-ish things. and men do not, not nearly as frequently and not nearly as vehemently.
Insult a man on network television or the web?
Everyone laughs.
Insult a woman?
It’s a travesty!
What that means is that network and social media bosses get virtually no negative feedback when things hurtful, insulting, or undermining toward men get aired, but a cacophony of negative feedback anytime something like this airs about women.
Over time, things women dislike appear less and less, and everything targeted at mass audiences trends female in its message content.
More women disseminating information on mass channels. More women showing up to receive it. More men toning their messages down, or adopting female-centric viewpoints to kowtow to the mainstream.
Combine a bunch of advice givers meting out advice to anonymous recipients via giant channels with large reach where the culture is determined to keep things as vanilla-flavored and inoffensive to the female viewership as humanly possible, and what’ve you got?
Well, you’ve got something that’s heavy on feelgood fluff, and extremely light on substance. and something that’s very likely to lead you far astray if you treat it as anything worth paying much mind .
Worth pounding in for good measure at this point in the article: women are not your enemy .
There is not some great conspiracy in which women have set out to rob men of their masculinity by cramming crappy advice down their throats. That isn’t what happened.
Instead, what’s happened has been a natural and inevitable result of our move to one-size-fits-all information dissemination on a mass scale targeting the largest possible demographics in the interest of profit maximization.
Our current state of affairs in the dating advice arena is the unavoidable result of TV and Internet + democracy and capitalism. It can go no other way.
Women are faultless here. Are you going to get mad at women for getting upset about things women get upset about? That’s just what women do.
Likewise, you can’t really blame the TV networks or the social media giants. If 60% of YOUR audience was female (and 90% of your complaints came from females), who would YOU be focused on keeping happy?
Getting upset and throwing around some victim mentality at how you’ve suffered and been misled by the media won’t help. Yes, you HAVE been – that’s very true.
But it’s not worth your time getting mad at them; they’re just doing what they do.
And they ain’t going to ignore their female viewership to listen to you. either.
Instead, what you must seek to do is to understand. then, to correct how you take advice, where you get it, and what information sources you expose yourself to on a day-to-day basis.
You Must Not be Sexy
When women are giving dating advice to men (and when most men are on female-centric channels like broadcast TV or social media), there are a few core assumptions you must understand that run in the veins of almost all of the advice they give. They are:
You must not be sexy. If you need dating advice, it’s assumed that obviously you aren’t a guy women are exactly knocking down the door to go out with. Instead, you’re assumed to be a clueless nice guy who probably doesn’t have much hope to get with a girl aside from waiting around and hoping she gets tired of hooking up with sexy bad boys and decides in frustration and defeat to give the nice guy waiting in the wings a try instead. Most of the advice you’ll get revolves around how to position yourself to be ready and waiting to catch her when she reaches “bad boy fatigue.”
You’re looking for your princess. Because the advice giver assumes you, dear imagined anonymous advice recipient, must not be sexy (otherwise, why would you need her advice?), it’s also assumed you must be looking for your princess soul mate to spend the rest of your days with. because, ew. the idea of a non-sexy nice guy like you wanting to sleep with different girls is just CREEPY. and no girl is going to tell you how to do that. No, she assumes you know your place, and you realize that, yes, while there are men women want to hook up with, that’s not YOU, honey. THOSE guys are super cute guys with hot bods and sexy accents and rapier wits. You are. well, you’re the guy who’s waiting in the wings for her to finish with those guys and decide she’s ready to settle down with someone. That’s you.
You would NEVER approach dating as a skill. Honestly, most people do not even realize it’s possible to approach dating (or most things) as a skill, and the thought of instructing someone else to do so never crosses their minds. They don’t approach it as a skill themselves (especially not if they’re women. they may read a lot on it, and take great interest in it, but because women rely on being approached, they do not go out and “practice” like we advise you do here, nor do they need to). The only women who realize that dating is a skill usually are women who’ve worked in the adult services industries – strippers, escorts, etc. Yet even many of those women are only half-conscious of the fact, since much of their learning, like that of most naturals. has come about intuitively as they’ve pursued their goals or careers.
You HAVE to get the specific girl you’re asking about. This one’s a more general advice principle, and it’s an error even a lot of guys starting out in seduction will make when giving advice to friends. Most personalized advice in dating centers around situation-specific advice on how to get a specific girl in question; this isn’t as big an issue with one-size-fits-all advice coming from a mass media or social media channel, but if you’re getting advice from female friends it is. That is, when you ask about a problem with a certain girl, rather than asking themselves, “What advice can I give him that will lead him to better results with women overall? ”, most people say to themselves, “What advice can I give him to make sure he doesn’t botch it with THIS girl?”
Then – and this is the critical part – they don’t want to give you bad advice that will cause you to fail and LOSE the girl. so they give you conservative advice focused on not offending her, which almost never actually works, but never nets them any negative feedback either (”I tried your advice and it didn’t work! You lost me the girl!” – I get that here occasionally; always makes me want to slap the guy and tell him to shut up about it and go meet 10 more). Instead, the advice recipient gets this vanilla non-advice, acts friendly toward the girl in question, and spends the next three months thinking it must have worked because now she seems a little warmer toward him.
These are the primary differences between what you hear everywhere else, and what you hear here .
Everyone everywhere else is assuming that 1.) you aren’t sexy, 2.) because you aren’t sexy, you must be looking for long-term commitment and anything else would be gross and would mean you don’t know your place / aren’t realistic (because, after all. you aren’t sexy!) / don’t “get it”, 3.) you’d never approach dating as a skill, because, like, who even does that?
And finally, if you’re asking someone about a specific situation, they’ll invariably give you conservative nice guy advice that’s geared at minimizing the chances you burn a bridge with the girl, rather than maximizing the chances you actually get her, because they reason that if you burn the bridge with her, WHO EVEN KNOWS the next time you’ll meet another girl you’ve got a shot with. but if you do next to nothing and it doesn’t go anywhere, well, you can always keep trying to make an eye contact connection with her over the next 20 weeks-months-years.
Mainstream Dating Advice’s Vanilla Sound Bites
A good way of summing up mainstream dating advice is this: it treats dating like a game of symmetric returns .
And as we discussed in “ Picking Up Girls and the Game of Asymmetric Returns ”, that is almost always not a winning strategy.
Mainstream dating advice fills itself chockfull of vanilla-flavored sound bites that sound great but give you absolutely nothing usable or actionable – things like:
“ Just be yourself !”
“If it’s meant to be, it will be!”
“Just be confident – women like confidence!”
“You should ask her out!” (no details or specifics on how)
“ Be a gentleman – women like gentlemen!”
“Just tell her how you feel – if she feels the same way, she’ll say so too!”
Non-advice like this just leaves men scratching their heads as much after it as before it, often fumbling out a “Thanks” and assuming since she was so confident in how she delivered it the advice giver must know what she’s talking about and his confusion must be his own ignorant fault, but it’s a poor substitute for what they would’ve gotten before the information age – a family member (including a mother or a sister or a cousin or an aunt) or a male friend telling them to stop being yellow-bellied and go ask that girl to the ball. go invite her to dinner. or go drive her to Lookout Point for a night of stargazing and other private things.
This is the kind of advice that no one dares to say on broadcast TV or social media sites on the web, because it causes too much of an outrage, and leads to moral superiority shaming attempts. Even men won’t share it socially – you can get as mad as you want as studio heads or social media CEOs for not making more male-centric products, but are YOU going to go share this article on Facebook or Twitter after you finish reading it? Didn’t think so.
Best thing you’ve read all day? Maybe so.
Going to share it socially? Nope .
Because if you do, you’re probably just going to be courting negative feedback on it from the people in your social media network: “Oh, you read that Girls Chase site? I should’ve unfriended you a long time ago.”
The fact is, on channels like social media and television that cater to women first and men second, the positive feedback is reserved for things that make women feel good to see and hear and experience and consume, and the negative feedback is reserved for things that create cognitive dissonance and upset a woman’s worldview – and it doesn’t even take many upset women to generate a lot of loud-sounding negative feedback.
A handful of angry, vocal individuals is often all it takes to make sure you toe the party line next time around (something we talked about in “ Bitter Women: No, They Are Not “Everywhere” ” – the sad reality is, a small vocal and outraged minority of women are able to exert a great amount of control over what makes it into the media simply because the Internet gives a loud voice to anyone who wants it and is enough of a demographic and message fit to make it in the mainstream; this handful of angry women give the majority of normal, easygoing women on the web a bad name).
Can the Mainstream be Fixed?
I don’t think so, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing, necessarily.
Rather, I think what’s IMPORTANT is that people come to REALIZE that mainstream channels are going to be vanilla-flavored by nature, because they’re catering to the broadest possible markets and they’re extremely sensitive to not offending anybody. That makes them valuable places to go and consume mindless fluff, or the occasional insightful thing that doesn’t upset anyone’s sensibilities. but if you want real learning you have to step out of the mainstream .
And that goes for pretty much everything. You won’t learn a martial art going to a “belt factory”, as they’re known – those are the karate and kung-fu and Krav and everything else facilities that have cropped up all over to keep students enrolled and leveling up so they keep paying even if they don’t actually learn how to defend themselves. These places are aimed at making martial arts “accessible”. and more a workout and a way to feel good about oneself than anything else. You really have to audit a location and see how strict the teaching is to find out if you’re actually going to learn anything, or whether it’s just a mainstream feelgood jazzercise belt factory.
Likewise, mainstream investing advice. Most daytraders take their advice from guys giving investing advice on television or the Internet. all of whom, it’s safe to say, are primarily making money from their salaried TV and Internet jobs giving advice about investing to viewers and readers, not from playing the stock markets and making millions. If you want real advice here, you need to tune out all the noise and bluster here and go find successful investors to listen to (e. g. turn off Jim Cramer, who will happily lose you 7 cents per dollar you invest in his picks – by comparison, had you just put all your money into the S&P 500 over the same time period, you’d have earned an extra 38 cents per dollar invested – and go buy a book by Warren Buffett instead).
Mainstream is fluff because it HAS to be fluff. It has to be. The channel with the largest audience is ALWAYS going to be one with sufficiently-inoffensive content. There’s always a balance of course – the big guys want edgy enough that everyone says, “Oh, what a scandal that X character from Y show said Z!”, but not so edgy that any of the viewers or readers have cause to feel personally offended, marginalized, or objectified.
The beaten path, in other words, is always the safest, and it’s guaranteed to take you somewhere kind of interesting/okay. just interesting and okay enough that most people will stick with it because it’s just easier than having to go down one of those less beaten, less talked about, more grown-over paths.
Just like, yes, if you follow mainstream dating advice, you will get dates eventually. you will get a girlfriend eventually. and you’ll get married eventually and have kids eventually (if that’s what you want). She might not be the girl of your dreams, but she’ll probably be okay. It’s not so horrible that it’s impossible to ever get a girl being a pushover nice guy. It works just occasionally enough that most nice guys never really have to jump ship.
However. if you need something that works better than just some of the time.
Something more fulfilling than “just okay”.
Something better, more exceptional, and more excellent all the way around.
Then you’ve got to tune out of the mainstream, shut off the fluff, and find the unconventional .
Because away from the vanilla fluff inoffensiveness of the channels catering to the masses is where you find the real meat – the real info on how to do anything you really want to do.
So, I invite you – the next time you find yourself getting sucked into some inane television show or reading some piece of mainstream media drivel or scanning through a social media activity feed full of tweets and status updates about your friends’ and followers’ meals, pets, and bowel movement shenanigans, stop for a moment and ask yourself, “Is there somewhere better I could be getting my information about this subject instead?”
The answer is almost always going to be “yes”. even if sometimes you have to do some sleuthing and digging and path carving to find the right source.
The hunt is always worth it in the end.
Chase
Get Your FREE eBook on Texting Girls
Larry and Andy Wachowski
Note: this script is off the web, and has not been checked for accuracy. For authorized version of the script, see The Art of the Matrix . New Market Press, New York, 2000.
Computer screen, with flashing cursor.)
Cypher. Yeah.
Trinity. Is everything in place?
Cypher. You weren't supposed to relieve me.
Trinity. Morpheus believes he is The One.
Cypher. Do you?
Trinity. It doesn't matter what I believe.
Cypher. You don't, do you?
Trinity. Did you hear that?
Cypher. Hear what?
Trinity. Are you sure this line is clean?
Cypher. Yeah, 'course I'm sure.
Trinity. I'd better go.
She hangs up as we pass through the numbers on the screen, and outside the room she is in, as several police
(Hotel room)
Cop. Freeze, Police. Hands on your head. Do it. Do it now.
Trinity. *slowly puts her hands on her head*
(Outside hotel)
A black car with tinted windows pulls up beside the other police cars. Agent Smith and Agent Brown get out of the car,
wearing dark suits and sunglasses.
Agent Smith. Lieutenant.
Lieutenant. Oh shit.
Agent Smith. You were given _specific_ orders.
Lieutenant. Hey, I'm just doing my job. You give me that
juris-my-dick-tion crap, you can cram it up your ass.
Agent Smith. The orders. were for your protection.
Lieutenant. *laughs* I think we can handle one little girl. I sent two
units. they're brining her down now.
Lieutenant. No Lieutenant, your men are already dead.
(Hotel Room)
Cop holds handcuffs, ready to put them on Trinity, who is standing with her back to him, and her hands on her head.
Suddenly she spins round, kicks him onto the ground, grabs his gun, and beats up the rest of them.
Morpheus. I know, they cut the hard line. There's no time, you're going
to have to get to another exit.
Trinity. Are there any agents?
Morpheus. Yes
Trinity. Goddamnit.
Morpheus. You have to focus, Trinity. There's a phone at Wells and
Lake. You can make it.
Trinity. *sigh* All right.
Morpheus. Go!
Trinity drops the phone and bursts out of the room, just as Agent Brown enters the hall, leading another unit of police.
Trinity races to the opposite end, exiting through a broken window onto the fire escape. She looks down, and sees Agent Smith below,
staring at her. She goes upwards, onto the roof. On the roof,
Trinity is running as Agent Brown arrives after her, leading the group of cops in pursuit.
Trinity begins to jump from one roof to the other, in one fluid motion, in comparison to the wild jumps of the cops.
Agent Brown, however, has the same unnatural grace. They reach a huge gap between two buildings, which Trinity jumps with no problem.
(Rooftop)
Cop. That's impossible!
They stare as Agent Smith duplicates the move exactly, following her onto the next roof. She hides behind a chimney, as he looks around the rooftop, searching for her. Not far off, she sees a window, and makes a dash for it. She dives through the window, rolls down the stairs inside, and manages to land without much damage.
Trinity. Get up Trinity. Just get up. Get up!
(Street)
Trinity emerges from an alleyway, and at the end of the block, she sees a telephone booth. As she watches, the phone begins to ring. As it rings, a truck pulls up in front of it, it's headlights pointing towards the phone. Trinity suddenly runs for the phone box, racing the truck as it almost manages to crush the phone booth, just as she answers the phone. She puts her hand out to the glass of the booth, just as the truck hits it. In a few moments, we see the remains of the phone box. Agent Smith inspects the wreckage. There is no body.
Agent Brown. She got out.
Agent Smith. It doesn't matter.
Agent Jones. The informant is real.
Agent Smith. Yes.
Agent Jones. We have the name of their next target..
Agent Brown. The name is Neo.
Agent Smith. We'll need a search running..
Agent Jones. It has already begun.
We are zoomed in towards the mouthpiece of the phone on the ground, closer, until we appear to travel down it and through the cable. We appear in Neo's apartment. He is asleep at his computer, with headphones on. On his computer screen, we see he is running a search on a man named Morpheus. Suddenly on his computer screen appear the words 'Wake up, Neo.' He sits up, and stares at his computer screen
Neo. What?
On the computer, now appears 'The Matrix has you. '
Neo. What the hell?
On the computer, now appears 'Follow the white rabbit. '
Neo. Follow the white rabbit?
He presses the 'esc' key repeatedly, no effect. the computer comes up with one last message. 'Knock knock, Neo.' There is a loud knock at his door, and he jumps. He stares at the door, and then back at his computer screen. it's now blank.
Neo. Who is it?
Choi. It's Choi.
Neo. Yeah. yeah. you're two hours late.
Choi. I know, it's her fault.
Choi gestures towards DuJour
Neo. You got the money?
Choi. Two grand.
Neo :Hold on.
Neo goes into his apartment, shuts the door, and opens a book, takes out a CD rom, and goes back to the door, handing the CD to Choi
Choi. Something wrong, man? You look a little whiter than usual.
to fly. Hey, it sounds to me like you need to unplug, man.
You know, get some R and R. What do you think DuJour? Should
we take him with us?
DuJour. *looks Neo up and down* Definitely.
Neo. No, I can't, I got work tomorrow.
DuJour. Come on, it'll be fun. *looks Neo up and down again* I
promise.
Neo notices DuJour has a tattoo of a white rabbit on her shoulder.
Neo. Yeah, sure, I'll go.
Neo, Choi and DuJour arrive in a club. Neo is standing next to a wall, doing nothing. A woman walks up to him. The woman is Trinity.
Trinity. They're watching you, Neo.
Neo. Who is?
Trinity. Please, just listen. I know why you're here, Neo. I know
what you've been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, and why
night after night you sit at your computer. You're looking
for him. I know, because I was once looking for the same
thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really
looking for him, I was looking for an answer. It's the
question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought
you here. You know the question, just as I did.
Neo. What is the Matrix?
Trinity. The answer is out there, Neo. It's looking for you. and it
will find you. if you want it to.
Neo wakes up late in the morning and looks at his clock.
Neo. Oh sh*t. Oh sh*t sh*t sh*t!
Neo is standing in his bosses office at the software company he works for.
Rhineheart. You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe
that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to
you. Obviously you are mistaken. This company is one of the
top software companies in the world because every single
perfectly clear?
Neo. Yes Mr. Rhineheart, perfectly clear.
Neo is sitting at his computing in his cubicle, when a voice says
Fed-Ex Guy. Thomas Anderson?
Neo. Yeah, that's me.
Fed-Ex Guy. Just sign here..
Neo signs the paper
Fed-Ex Guy. Ok, that's great. Have a nice day!
Neo scowls at his back.
He opens the parcel, inside is a cellular phone. As soon as he picks it up, it rings. He jumps, and picks it up.
Neo. Morpheus?
Morpheus. Yes. I've been looking for you, Neo. I don't know if you're
ready to see what I want to show you, but unfortunately you
and I have run out of time. They're coming for you, Neo, and
I don't know what they're going to do.
Neo. Who's coming for me?
Morpheus. Stand up and see for yourself.
Neo. What, now?
Morpheus. Yes, right now. Do it slowly. The elevator.
Neo slowly stands up and looks over the partition. At the elevator, he sees Agent Brown and Agent Jones leading a group of cops. A female employee turns and points out Neo's cubicle. Neo ducks.
Neo. What the hell do they want from me?
Morpheus. I don't know, but if you don't want to find out, I suggest
you get out of there.
Neo. How?
Morpheus. I can guide you, but you must do exactly as I say.
Neo. Okay.
Morpheus. The cubicle across from you is empty.
Neo. What if they.
Morpheus. Go, now.
Neo lunges across the hall, diving into the other cubicle just as the agents turn into his row. He hides in a dark corner
Morpheus. Stay here for just a moment. When I tell you, go to the end
of the row, to the office at the end of the hall. Stay as
low as you can. Go, now!
Neo runs to the door, opens it, goes in, and shuts the door.
to it. open it. You can use the scaffold to get to the
roof.
Neo. No _way_! No way! This is crazy!
Morpheus. There are two ways out of this building. One is that
scaffold, the other is in their custody. You take a chance
either way. I leave it to you.
Morpheus hangs up.
Neo looks out the window.
Neo. This is insane! Why is this happening to me? What did I do?!
Nothing.
He climbs out the window onto the window ledge. Hanging onto the frame, he steps onto the small ledge. The wind suddenly blasts up the face of the building, knocking Neo off balance. Recoiling, he
clings harder to the frame, and the phone falls out of his hand.
He watches as it is swallowed by the distance beneath him.
Neo. This is insane. I can't do this. Forget it!
Neo climbs back into the office, just as a cop opens the door.
The agents take Neo, handcuffed, out of the building, and into their car. Trinity is sitting on a motorbike in front of the car, watching them in her rear view mirror.
Trinity. Sh*t
Neo is sitting at a table by himself in a small room. The door opens and the agents enter. Agent Smith sits down across from Neo with a folder in front of him.
Agent Smith. As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now,
_Mr._ Anderson. It seems you have been living..two lives. In
one life, you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a
_respectable_ software company. you have a social security
number, you pay your taxes, and you. help your landlady
carry out her _garbage_. The other life is lived in
computers, where you go by the hacker alias 'Neo', and are
guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for.
One of these lives has a future. the other does _not_.
I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can, _Mr._ Anderson.
You're here because we need your help. We know that you've
been contacted by a certain individual, a man who calls
himself. Morpheus. Now whatever you _think_ you know about
Neo. Yeah. Wow, that sounds like a really good deal. But I think
I got a better one. How about. I give you the finger.
Neo does so
Neo. And you give _me_ my phone call.
Agent Smith. *glare* _Mr._ Anderson, you disappoint me.
Neo. You can't scare me with this Gestapo crap. I know my rights.
I _want_ my phone call.
Agent Smith. And tell me, _Mr._ Anderson, what good is a phone call. if
you are unable to speak.
The question unnerves Neo and strangely, he begins to feel the muscles in his jaw tighten.
The standing agents snicker, watching Neo's confusion grow into panic.
Neo feels his lips grow soft and sticky as they slowly seal shut, melding into each other until
all trace of his mouth is gone.
Wild with fear, he lunges for the door but the agents restrain him, holding him down onto the table.
Agent Smith. You're going to help us, _Mr._ Anderson, whether _you_ like
it or not.
Smith nods and the other two rip open his shirt.
From a case taken out of his suit coat, Smith removes a long, fiber-optic wire tap. Neo struggles helplessly as Smith dangles the wire over his exposed abdomen. Horrified, he watches as the electronic device animates, become an organic creature that resembles a hybrid of an insect and a fluke worm. Thin, whisker-like tendrils reach out and probe into Neo's navel. He bucks wildly as Smith drops the creature which looks for a moment like an uncut umbilical cord - Before it begins to burrow, its tail thrashing as it worms its way inside.
Screaming, Neo wakes up in his bed, in his apartment, sweating. He puts his hand to his mouth, and finds it's perfectly normal.
The phone beside his bed rings. He jumps, and picks it up, cautiously.
Morpheus. This line is tapped, so I must be brief. They got to you
first, but they're underestimated how important _you_ are.
If they knew what I know, you would probably be dead.
Neo. What are you talking about? What is happening to me?
Morpheus. You are The One, Neo. You see, you may have spent the last
few years of your life looking for me, but I've spent my
entire _life_ looking for you. Now do you still want to
Morpheus. Then go to the Adam's Street bridge.
Neo stands under the bridge, as a black car pulls up and the door opens. It's Trinity.
Trinity. Get in.
Neo gets into the car, as the driver, a blond woman named Switch, turns around in her seat and points a gun at him.
you want to be.
Neo slowly gets back into the car
Trinity looks at the man in the passenger seat
Trinity. Apoc, lights.
She turns to Neo again
Trinity. Lie back, lift up your shirt.
Neo looks at the device in her hand.
Neo. What _is_ that thing?
Trinity. We think you're bugged. Try and relax.
Trinity looks at the display on the device she's holding and presses it against Neo's abdomen, talking to herself as she attempts to remove the bug from him.
Trinity. Come on. come on.
Switch. It's on the move. you're going to loose it.
Trinity. No I'm not. clear.
The bug appears in the jar attached to the device she was using, and she empties it out of the window into the street. It turns back into a mechanical object and it's red 'eyes' fade and then go out.
Neo. Jesus Christ, that thing's real.
They arrive at a hotel, and Trinity takes Neo to a closed door. She turns and faces him.
Trinity. This is it..let me give you one piece of advice. Be honest -
he knows more than you can imagine.
Neo opens the door, and walks in to see a dark figure staring out of the window. He turns and smiles at Neo.
Morpheus. At last. Welcome, Neo. As you no doubt have guessed, I am
Morpheus.
Neo. It's an honour to meet you.
Morpheus. No, the honour is mine. Please, come, sit.
Neo sits down in the armchair.
Morpheus. I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice.
Morpheus. The Matrix is everywhere. It's all around us, even in this
very room. You can see it when you look out your window or
go to work, when you go to work, when you pay your taxes.
The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes,
to blind you from the truth.
Neo. What truth?
Morpheus. That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born
into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or
taste or touch. A prison. for your mind. Unfortunatly,
no one can be. _told_ what the Matrix is. you have to see
it for yourself.
Morpheus opens a container which holds two pills. a blue one, and a red one. He puts one in each hand, and holds them out to Neo.
Morpheus. This is your _last chance_. After this, there is no turning
back. You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up
and belive. whatever you want to believe. You take the red
pill. you stay in wonderland. and I show you just how
deep the rabbit hole goes.
Neo pauses for an instant, then reaches for the red pill. He swallows it down with a glass of water, and looks at Morpheus.
Morpheus. Remember. all I'm offering you is the truth. nothing
more.
Morpheus half smiles at Neo.
Morpheus. Follow me.
They walk through double doors into a room with computer terminals and other machines. Morpheus speaks to Apoc
Morpheus. Apoc, are we online?
Apoc. Almost.
Trinity and Apoc are busy wiring a complex system of monitors, modules and drives.
Morpheus. Time is always against us. Please, take a seat there.
Morpheus gestures towards another arm chair. Neo cautiously sits down, still looking at all the computer terminals and wires.
Neo. You did all this?
Trinity. Uh huh.
Morpheus. The pill you took is part of a tracing program. It's
designed to disrupt your input/output carrier signals so we
can pinpoint your location.
Neo looks confused.
Neo. What does that mean?
Cypher looks up from his computer terminal.
Cypher. It means, Buckle your seat belt Dorothy. 'cause Kansas. is
going bye-bye.
As Neo looks at an old cracked dressing mirror nearby, it appears to show his image twice. As he stares at it, he speaks to Morpheus
Neo. Did you.
Morpheus ignores his question
Morpheus. Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was
real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How
would you know the difference, between the dream world. and
the real world.
As Neo curiously reaches out to touch the mirror, it wobbles, and appears to stick to his hand.
Neo. This can't be.
Morpheus. Be what? Be _real_?
As Neo pulls away, the strands thin like rubber cement as he pulls away, until the fragile wisps of mirror break, and only a tiny fragment of the liquid is left. He looks at it, and it begins to consume his hand, crawling up his arm. He squirms.
Trinity. It's going into replication!
Morpheus. Apoc?
Apoc. Still nothing.
The liquid has covered all of Neo's right arm by now, and works it's way up his shoulder to his neck
Neo. It's cold. It's cold.
Morpheus takes out a cellular phone, and dials a number
Morpheus. Tank, we're going to need a signal soon.
Neo begins to panic, as he tips his head up as if he's sinking into the mirror, trying to keep his mouth up.
Trinity. We've got a fibrillation!
Morpheus. Apoc! Location!
Apoc. Targeting, almost there!
By now Neo is almost totally consumed by the liquid, squirming as it works it way up his face.
Trinity. He's going into arrest!
Apoc. LOCK, I got him!
Morpheus. Now, Tank! Now!
The mirror liquid pours down Neo's throat, as he screams, and we travel down his throat with it, and then get swallowed by total darkness.
We emerge in a cocoon filled with a red gelatin-like liquid. Neo is attached to the sides of it by wires, tubes and things which look like IV lines. He struggles, air bubbles into the gelatine, but does not break the surface. As he presses up, the surface distends, stretching like a red rubber cocoon. Unable to breathe, he fights for stand, and eventually ruptures the surface, creating a hole which he uses to gasp for air. Tearing himself free,
he emerges from the cell. Neo is bald and naked, and covered in the gelatine. He's dizzy, and unable to stand properly, as he waits for his vision to focus. He is standing in an oval capsule of clear alloy filled with red gelatine, the surface of which has solidified like curdled milk. The IVs in his arms are plugged into outlets that appear to be grafted to his flesh.
He feels the weight of another cable and reaches to the back of his head where he finds an enormous coaxial plugged and locked into the base of his skull. He tries to pull it out, but can't. To either side he sees other tube-shaped pods filled with red gelatine; beneath the wax-like surface, pale and motionless, he sees other human beings. Fanning out in a circle, there are more. All connected to a centre core, each capsule attached to a black metal stem. Above him, level after, level, the stem rises seemingly forever. He moves to the foot of the capsule and looks out. Towers of glowing petals spiral up to incomprehensible heights, disappearing down into a dim
murk like an underwater abyss. Below Neo, a petal detaches from the stem, bearing away the body of an old man like anautomated barge even as a new pod rises up and plugs itself into the empty space. Inside the new capsule, its surface more translucent and pinkish in colour, Neo sees a small baby. From above, a machine drops directly in front of him. He swallows his scream as it seems to stare at him. A black particle beam washes over Neo, he reacts in pain as the scanner seems to expose the nervous system wired to the coaxial cable at his cerebral cortex. At the back of the neck, the cable lock spins and opens, disengaging. The cable pulls itself free, a long clear plastic needle and cerebrum-chip slides from the interior of Neo's skull with an ooze of blood and spinal fluid. The other connective hoses snap
free and snake away as the back of the unit opens and a tremendous vacuum, like an aeroplane door opening, sucks the gelatine and then Neo into a black hole. The pipe is a waste disposal system, and Neo falls, sliding down it, screaming his lungs out. He falls out of the end of the pipe, into a body of water. As he begins to drown, he is suddenly snatched up by a machine. The metallic cable then lifts, pulling him up into a flying machine of some sort, as the doors close and we fade to black.
(hovercraft)
The metal harness opens and drops the half-conscious Neo onto the floor. Human hands and arms help him up as he finds himself looking straight at Morpheus, Trinity and Apoc, along with others he doesn't recognize. Morpheus smiles, and speaks quietly to Neo.
Morpheus. Welcome to the real world.
Neo passes out.
As he is unconscious, Morpheus and Trinity talk in hushed voices
Morpheus. We've done it, Trinity. we've found him.
Trinity. I hope you're right.
Morpheus. I don't _have_ to hope. I know it.
Neo wakes up later on, and looks at Trinity and Morpheus, who are standing watching him.
Neo. Am I dead?
Morpheus. Far from it.
Neo passes out again.
Later on, he wakes up. He sees his body pierced with dozens of acupuncture-like needles wired to a strange device.
Dozer: He still needs a lot of work.
Neo. What are you doing?
Morpheus. Your muscles have atrophied, we're rebuilding them.
Neo. Why do my eyes hurt?
Neo blinks
Morpheus. You've never used them before.
Neo looks confused
Morpheus. Rest, Neo, the answers are coming.
Neo passes out again. When he wakes up, he's lying on a bed in a room.
He begins to examine himself. There is a futuristic IV plugged into the jack in his forearm. He pulls it out, staring at the grafted outlet. He feels his bald head. His fingers find and explore the large outlet in the base of his skull. Just as it starts to come unglued, Morpheus opens the door and walks in.
Morpheus. You believe that it is the year 1999, when in fact is
is, because we honestly don't know. There's nothing I can
see that will explain it for you, Neo. Come with me, see
for yourself.
Neo follows Morpheus rather unsteadily through the door.
Morpheus. This is my ship, the Nebuchadnezzar.
Morpheus gestures around him
Morpheus. It's a hovercraft. This is the main deck. This is the
core, where we broadcast our pirate signal, and. hack
into the Matrix.
They enter a room where the other people Neo has met are all standing, or sitting at computer terminals.
Morpheus. This is Apoc, Switch, and Cypher.
Cypher. Hi.
Morpheus. The ones you don't know, Tank, and his big brother,
Dozer. The little one behind you is Mouse.
Mouse smiles at Neo and waves slightly shyly
Morpheus looks at him, then turns back to Neo.
Morpheus. You wanted to know. what the Matrix is, Neo?
Neo nods unsteadily
Morpheus nods to Trinity
Morpheus. Trinity.
Trinity approaches Neo, and helps him into an armchair, strapping in his feet, and leaning his head back against the head rest.
Morpheus looks at Neo
Morpheus. Try to relax. this will feel. a little _weird_.
As Morpheus guides a coaxial line into the jack at the back of his neck, Neo screams and makes a few other disturbing noises.
When he opens his eyes, he is standing in a totally white place. His hair is back, and he is wearing different clothes.
As Neo spins around a bit, trying to see what's going on, Morpheus appears in front of him.
Morpheus. This is the construct. It is our loading program. We can
load anything from clothing, to equipment, weapons,
training simulations, anything we need.
Neo is having a hard time getting a grasp of this.
Neo. Right now. we're inside a computer program?
Morpheus. Is it really so hard to belive? Your clothes are
different. The plugs in your arms and head are gone. Your
hair has changed.
Neo puts a hand to his head and touches his hair
Morpheus. Your appearance now is what we call residual self image.
It is the mental projection. of your digital self.
Two chairs appear in front of them, and Neo reaches out to touch one. He runs his hand along it's back.
Neo. This. this isn't real?
Morpheus looks at him
Morpheus. What _is_ real? How do you _define_ real? If you're
talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what
you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical
signals interpreted by your brain.
A television appears in front of the two chairs, as Neo sits down in the chair beside Morpheus. Morpheus picks up the television control and turns it on.
Morpheus. _This_ is the world that you know. The world as it was at
the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as
part of a neural-interactive simulation, that _we_ call
the Matrix.
Morpheus turns to Neo
Morpheus. You've been living in a dream world, Neo. This. is the
world as it exists today.
Morpheus changes the channel on the televison.
The sky is an endless sea of black and green bile. The earth, scorched and split like burnt flesh, spreads out beneath us as we enter the television.
Morpheus. Welcome. to the desert of the real. We have only bits
and pieces of information, but what we know for certain is
that some point in the early twenty-first century all of
mankind was united in celebration. We marvelled at our own
magnificence.
Neo looks confused
Morpheus. as we gave birth. to A. I.
Neo. A. I. - you mean Artificial Intelligence?
Morpheus. A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of
machines. We don't know who struck first - us, or them. But
we know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they
were dependent on solar power and it was believed that
they would be unable to survive without an energy source as
abundant as the sun. Throughout human history, we have been
dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not
without a sense of irony.
Neo stares at Morpheus, with his mouth open.
Morpheus. The human generates more bio-electricity than 120-volt
battery and over 25,000 BTVs of body heat. Combined with
a form of fusion, the machines have found all the energy
they would ever need. There are fields. endless fields,
were human beings are no longer born. We are grown. For
Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world,
built to keep us under control in order to change a human
being into this.
Morpheus holds up a battery to Neo
Neo begins to panic.
Neo. No. I don't belive it. It's not possible.
Morpheus. I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be
the truth.
Neo. Noooo. Stop. Let me out. I want out!!
His eyes snap open and he thrashes against the chair, trying to rip the cable from the back of his neck. Trinity tries to calm him down.
Trinity. Easy, Neo. Easy.
Neo. Take this thing off me. Take this thing..
Morpheus. Listen to me.
Neo. Don't touch me! Stay away from me! I don't want it, I don't
believe it!!
Cypher rolls his eyes at Neo as he tries to get up out the chair.
Cypher. He's gonna pop.
Neo gets up out the chair, and as he is dizzy, staggers about the room a bit, eventually falling onto the ground.
Morpheus. Breathe, Neo. Just breathe.
Neo throws up on the floor and passes out.
He wakes up later, in his room.
Morpheus is sitting beside him.
Neo sits up slowly and looks at him.
Neo. I can't go back, can I?
Morpheus. No, but if you could, would you really want to?
Neo isn't sure, so decides not to say anything.
Morpheus. I feel I owe you an apology. We have a rule. we never free
a mind once it reaches a certain age. It's dangerous, and
the mind has trouble letting go. I've seen it before, and
I'm sorry. I did what I did, because. I had to.
Neo listens
Morpheus. When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside
who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake
the Matrix as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of
Tank. Deep underground, near the Earth's core, where it's still
Tank smiles
Tank. Goddamn, I. I gotta tell you, I'm fairly excited to see
what you're capable of, if Morpheus is right and all. We're
not supposed to talk about this, but if you are. Damn, it's
a very exciting time. We got a lot to do, lets get to it..
Tank leads Neo onto the main deck, and plugs him in.
Tank. Now, we're supposed to start with these operation programs,
that's major boring sh*t. Let's do something a little more
fun. combat training.
Tank smiles as he sits down in his operator's chair, flipping through several disks. He picks one, and puts it into his computer. Neo looks at the screen.
Neo. Jujitsu? I'm going to learn. _Jujitsu_?
smiling, Tank presses the 'Load' button.
Neo's body jumps against the harness as his eyes clamp shut. The monitors kick wildly as his heart pounds, adrenaline surges, and his brain sizzles. An instant later his eyes snap open.
Neo. Holy sh*t!
Tank grins
Tank. Hey Mikey, I think he likes it! How about some more?
Neo. Hell yeah..oh yeah.
Hours later, Morpheus walks in. Tank is blinking, trying to keep his eyes in focus.
Morpheus. How is he.
Tank. Ten hours straight. he's a _machine!_
Neo's training finishes, and he opens his eyes, breathing hard.
Neo. *gasp* I know. Kung Fu!
Morpheus. Show me.
Morpheus sits down in the chair next to Neo and nods at Tank.
They appear in in a very sparse japanese-style dojo.
Morpheus. This is a sparring program, similar to the programmed reality
of the Matrix. It has the same basic rules, rules like
gravity. What you must learn is that these rules are no
different than the rules of a computer system. some of them
can can be bent. Others. can be broken. Understand?
Neo thinks about it, and nods
Morpheus: Then hit me. if you can.
Morpheus assumes a fighting stance. Neo assumes a similar stance, cautiously circling until he gives a short cry and launches a furious attack. They move at high speed, fists and feet striking from every angle as Neo presses his attack, but each and every blow is blocked by effortless speed. Morpheus punches Neo and knocks him over.
Morpheus. Good. Adaptation. improvisation. But your weakness is not
your technique.
While their minds battle in the programmed reality, the two bodies appear quite serene, suspended in the drive chairs. Tank and Mouse monitor their life systems noticing that Neo's is wildly and chaotically lit up as opposed
to the slow and steady rhythm of Morpheus.
Everyone is sitting in another room. Mouse bursts in.
Mouse. Morpheus is fighting Neo!
All at once, they all bolt for the door to go and watch.
Neo's fighting is gradually improving, and he almost manages to beat Morpheus when he hurls Neo across the room, and he falls. Neo lies on the floor as Morpheus casually walks up to him.
Morpheus. How did I beat you.
Neo. You. you're too fast.
Morpheus. Do you _belive_ that my being stronger or faster has anything
to do with my muscles in _this_ place?
Neo just looks at him. Morpheus stares back.
Morpheus. You think that's _air_ you're breathing now?
Morpheus looks surprised
Morpheus. *shrugs* Hmm.
Neo stands up again
Morpheus. Again!
Their fists fly with pneumatic speed. Everyone is gathered behind Tank and Mouse, watching the fight. Neo is much faster now, matching Morpheus' speed and blocking all his attempts to hit Neo.
Mouse. Jesus Christ, he's fast! Take a look at his neural kinetics,
they're way above normal!
Everyone stares
Morpheus and Neo stop fighting for a second.
Morpheus. What are you waiting for. You're faster than this. Don't
think you are. _know_ you are.
They begin fighting again, Morpheus keeps on trying to get Neo to improve
Morpheus. Come on! Stop _trying_ to hit me and hit me!
Neo keeps on getting faster, and Morpheus has to continue to work harder to block his attacks. The crew are still watching them fight, with increasing admiration for Neo.
Mouse. I don't belive it.
Neo has Morpheus pinned against the wall, his fist an inch from Morpheus' face.
Neo. I know what you're trying to do..
Morpheus. I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. but I can only show you the
door. _You're_ the one that has to walk through it. Tank,
load the jump program.
Neo straightens as the dojo dissolves away like a curtain lifting, leaving the two men now standing on a building rooftop in a city skyline.
Morpheus turns to Neo, his long coat flapping in the wind.
Morpheus. You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear. doubt. and disbelief.
Free your mind.
Morpheus spins, running hard at the edge of the rooftop. And jumps. He sails through the air, his coat billowing out behind him like a cape -
He somersaults once and lands on the rooftop across the street.
Neo. Woah.
Neo looks down at the street twenty floors below, then at Morpheus an impossible fifty feet away.
Neo. Okies dokie.
Neo takes a deep breath.
Neo. Free my mind. _no_ problem.
On the main deck, the crew are transfixed.
Mouse. So what if he makes it?
Tank. No one's ever made the first jump.
Mouse. I know, I know. but what if he does?
Apoc. He won't.
Mouse. Come on..
Trinity. Come on.
Neo takes another deep breath
Neo. All right, no problem. free my mind. Free my mind..All right.
Neo concentrates and runs.
Summoning every ounce of strength in his legs, Neo launches himself into the air in a single maniacal shriek - But comes up drastically short.
His eyes widen as he plummets. Stories fly by, the ground rushing up at him, but as he hits - The ground gives way, stretching like a trapeze net.
He bounces and flips, slowly coming to a rest, flat on his back.
He laughs, a bit unsure, wiping the wind-blown tears from his face.
Morpheus exits the building and helps him to his feet.
Inside the Nebuchadnezzar, the crew are feeling kind of let down by Neo.
Mouse. Wha. what does this mean?
Switch. It doesn't _mean_ anything.
Cypher. Everybody falls the first time. Right, Trin?
But Trinity has left. Neo's eyes open as Tank eases the plug out. He tries to move and groans, cradling his ribs. While Tank helps Morpheus, Neo spits blood into his hand.
Neo. I thought it wasn't real.
Morpheus. Your mind makes it real.
Neo. If you're killed in the Matrix. you die here?
Morpheus. The body cannot live without the mind.
Neo goes to his room and goes to sleep.
In the morning, Trinity goes to his room to give him food. She sees him passed out on the bed. She sets the tray down and pulls the blanket over him. She pauses, her face close to his, then inhales lightly, breathing in the scent of him, before slowly pulling away. She gets up and walks out the door, closing it quietly.
Outside his door, Cypher is standing with his arms folded.
Cypher. I don't remember you ever bringing _me_ dinner.
Trinity looks away
Cypher. There _is_ something about him, isn't there?
Trinity. Don't tell me you're a believer now.
Cypher. I just keep wondering..if Morpheus is so sure, why doesn't he
take him to see the Oracle?
Trinity. Morpheus will take him. when he's ready.
She walks away from him, and Cypher smiles to himself.
When Neo wakes up, Morpheus takes him into another program.
They walk down a busy street, full of people going to work. Morpheus casually walks through them, but Neo keeps on being hit or shoved aside. As they walk, Morpheus begins to walk.
Morpheus. The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But
when you're inside, you look around. What do you see?
Business people, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds
of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these
people are still a part of that system, and that makes them
our enemy.
A woman walks by, standing out from all the people in suits, as she is wearing a bright red dress, and bright red lipstick. Neo stares.
Morpheus. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to
be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly
dependant on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
Were you listening to me, Neo? Or were you looking at the
woman in the red dress?
The people and animals around them stop, frozen.
Neo. This. this isn't the Matrix?
Morpheus. No. It's another program, designed to teach you one thing :
If you are not one of us, you are one of them.
Neo looks at the frozen agent.
Morpheus. Sentient programs. They can move in and out of any software
still hard-wired to their system. That means that anyone we
haven't unplugged is potentially an agent. Inside the Matrix,
Tank. We've got trouble.
They both come out of the program, and move towards the main deck.
Morpheus. Did Zion send a warning?
Trinity. Electromagnetic pulse. Disables any electrical system within
the blast radius. It's the only weapon we have against the
machines.
Neo. Where are we?
Trinity. There are old service and waste systems.
Neo. Sewers?
Trinity. They used to be cities that spanned for hundreds of miles.
Now these sewers are all that's left.
Morpheus. Quiet!
The sentinels arrive, mechanical insect like objects, flying towards their ship. One opens up, long cable-like extensions swirling about it. Then it moves off in the other direction, and the rest follow.
The crew all sigh in relief.
During that night, Neo gets up and goes to see Cypher, who is sitting monitoring the Matrix on monitors. Neo approaches him quietly, and when Cypher realizes he's there, he jumps out of his skin.
Cypher. Woah, Neo! You scared the bejeezus outta me.
Neo. Sorry..
Cypher. It's okay.
Neo. Is that.
Cypher. The Matrix? Yeah.
Neo. Do you always look at it encoded?
Cypher. Well, you have to. The image translators work for the
Cypher whistles
Cypher. Jee-zus! What a mind job. So, you're here to save the
world. what do you _say_ to something like that. A little
piece of advice..you see an agent - you do what _we_ do.
Run. you run your ass off.
Neo swallows down the last mouthful and looks a little apprehensive.
Neo. Thanks for the drink.
Cypher. Sweet dreams..
Neo walks back into his room and goes to sleep.
We appear in a restaurant, a piece of steak is on a plate, and someone is cutting it up. We see Agent Smith sitting across from this person, and he
takes his sunglasses off.
Agent Smith. So we have a deal, _Mr_ Reagan?
We now see the person sitting with him is Cypher. He looks at his cut up bit
of steak on his fork.
Cypher. You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when
I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain..that
it is juicy..and delicious.
he sighs
Cypher. After nine years, you know what I realize?
Cypher. Ignorance is bliss.
Morning comes, and Neo is served disgusting looking goop for breakfast.
Tank. Here you go, buddy. Breakfast of champions.
He puts a bowl of it down in front of Neo, who just stares at it.
Mouse. If you close your eyes, it almost feels like you're eating
runny eggs.
Apoc. Yeah, or a bowl of snot.
Mouse. You know what it really reminds me of? Tasty Wheat. Did you
ever eat Tasty Wheat?
Switch. No, but technically, neither did you.
Mouse. That's exactly my point. Exactly. Because you have to wonder
now, how did the machines really know what Tasty Wheat tasted
like, huh? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what _I_ think
Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like, uh..oatmeal, or
tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You
take chicken for example, maybe they couldn't figure out what
to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like
everything. Maybe they couldn't.
Apoc. Shut up, Mouse.
Dozer. It's a single celled protein combined with synthetic aminos,
vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs.
Mouse. It doesn't have _everything_ the body needs.
He turns to Neo, who is fiddling with his food, picking it up with his spoon and dropping it back into the bowl.
Mouse. So I understand you've run through the agent training
program. you, uh, you know. I wrote that program.
Switch rolls her eyes
Neo. See who?
Tank. The Oracle.
Everyone gets into their chairs, and gets plugged in, as Tank sets everything up for them.
Tank. Everyone please observe, the fasten seat belt and no smoking
signs have been turned on. Sit back. and enjoy your ride.
They arrive in a garage, next to a phone.
Morpheus takes out a cell phone, and calls up Tank.
Morpheus. We're in. we'll be back in an hour.
He hangs up.
They all walk out the room, leaving Switch and Apoc waiting for them to come back. As they head towards a black car, Cypher drops a cell phone into the bin and it begins to ring.
They get into the car, and Morpheus begins to drive them to their destination. At a red light, he turns around to look at Neo, who is sitting in the back seat with Trinity.
Morpheus. Unbeliveable. isn't it?
Neo looks out at the street they are driving down.
Neo. God.
Trinity turns to look at him
Trinity. What?
Neo points to a restaurant.
Neo. I used to eat there. really good noodles.
he stops to think about it
Neo. Did you go to her?
Trinity looks away from him.
Trinity. Yes.
Neo. What did she tell you?
Trinity smiles
Trinity. She told me.
Neo. What?
He looks confused. Just then, Morpheus stops the car.
Morpheus. We're here. Neo, come with me.
They walk into an apartment building, and into an elevator. Morpheus is wearing his long coat and sunglasses again.
Neo. And she's _never_ wrong?
Morpheus. Try not to think of it in terms of right and wrong.
They get out the elevator, and start to walk down the corrider.
Morpheus. She is a guide, Neo. She can help you to find the path.
Neo. She helped you?
Morpheus. Yes.
Neo. What did she tell you?
Morpheus smiles. Neo is beginning to get a bit puzzled with this.
Morpheus. That I would find The One..
They arrive at the door to the Oracle's appartment. Neo waits for Morpheus to open the door. Morpheus shakes his head.
Morpheus. I told you, I can only show you the door. _You're_ the one
who has to walk through it.
Neo puts his hand on the door handle, just about to open it, when a Priestess opens the door, and smiles at him.
Priestess. Hello, Neo. You're right on time.
She leads him and Morpheus inside.
Priestess. Make yourself at home, Morpheus.
Morpheus stays by the door.
Priestess. These are the other potentials. you can wait here.
Neo looks around the room, and sees he is the only adult there. Most of the children's heads are shaved. Some are playing, others meditating, or practising their gift. Neo watches in amazement, as a little girl levitates wooden alphabet blocks. He turns around, and sees a skinny bald boy sitting on the floor, holding a spoon, which sways and twists as he bends it with
his mind. Neo crosses over to him, and sits in front of him, interested. The boy looks at Neo as he picks up a spoon and tries to imitate the boy's actions. Despite his best efforts, Neo cannot make it bend.
Spoon Boy. Do not try and bend the spoon. that's impossible. _Instead_
only try to realize the truth.
Neo. What truth?
Spoon Boy. There is no spoon.
Neo. There is no spoon?
Spoon Boy. Then you will see, it is not the _spoon_ that bends, it is
only yourself.
Neo gets the spoon and looks at it. This time he is able to bend it with his mind. It bends, curls round, and bends again. He is fascinated.
Just then, the Priestess walks up behind him and he jumps.
Priestess. The Oracle will see you now.
Neo looses concentration and the spoon stays bent.
He smiles at the Spoon Boy and gets up.
He walks into the nearby room, a kitchen. A woman is huddled beside the oven, peering inside through the cracked door.
Oracle. I know, you're Neo. Be right with you..
Neo looks around the room.
Neo. You're the Oracle?
Oracle. Bingo.
she turns round to face him.
Oracle. Not quite what you were expecting, right?
She turns back to the oven.
Oracle. _Al_most done! Smell good, don't they?
Neo smiles politely and nods
Oracle. Not too bright though.
She grins at him.
Oracle. So what do you think, do you think you're the One?
Neo. I don't know, I honestly don't know.
The Oracle looks to the top of her door, where something is writen in Latin.
hate giving good people bad news.
Neo looks down.
Oracle. Oh, don't worry about it. As soon as you step outside that
door, you'll start feeling better. You'll remember you don't
belive in any of this fate crap. you're in control of your
_own_ life. remember?
She holds out a tray of oatmeal cookies to Neo
Oracle. Here, take a cookie..I promise, by the time you're done
eating it, you'll feel right as rain..
Neo slowly reaches out and takes a cookie, then walks out the door and meets Morpheus. He puts his hand on Neo's shoulder and smiles at him.
Morpheus. What was said was for you, and you alone.
They go back to the car, and go into the hotel.
Back on the Nebuchadnezzar, Tank is preparing to bring them back
Tank. They're on their way.
He looks at the monitors with the Matrix code on them, and suddenly something on them jumps.
Tank. What _is_ that?
In the hotel, they are on their way up the stairs. Neo looks at a cat as it walks past the doorway. He turns around again, and an identical looking cat
Neo. Woah, deja vu.
Everyone spins around to look at him.
Trinity. What did you just say?
like it.
Trinity. How much like it, was it the same cat?
Neo. *shrugs* Might have been, I'm not sure.
Morpheus. Switch, Apoc!
Neo. What is it?
Trinity. A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. it happens when
they change something
Tank realises what they changed.
Tank. Oh my God.
Mouse is sitting in his chair in one of the hotel rooms, looking at a picture of the woman in the red dress. his cell phone rings it and he picks it up.
Tank. They cut the hard line, it's a trap, get out!!
Mouse scrambles to his feet, and goes to the window. He opens the curtains only to find there is no window, only a solid brick wall.
Mouse. Oh no. Oh no..
He opens a chest, and grabs some guns, just before the agents come in, and shoot him until he's killed.
Meanwhile, Morpheus goes to the window, and also finds that there's a brick wall there.
Cypher. That's what we changed, it's a trap, there's no way out!!
Morpheus. Be calm.
He turns to Trinity.
Morpheus. Give me your phone..
Trinity. They'll be able to track it.
she hands it to him.
Morpheus. We have no choice.
Tank answers straight away, still very upset from Mouse's death
Tank. Operator.
Morpheus. Tank - Find a structural drawing of this building. Find it
fast.
Tank. Got it.
Morpheus. I need the main wet wall.
Agent Smith pauses, as he is about to make his way up the stairs with the other agents. He touches his earpiece.
Agent Brown. They're on the eighth floor.
Morpheus and the others continue on their way.
Morpheus. Switch, straight ahead.
Apoc. Neo.
Apoc hands Neo a gun.
Apoc. I hope the Oracle gave you some good news.
Tank. Another left, that's it.
Morpheus. Good.
Tank hangs up the phone, and Morpheus puts it away.
Cops flood the eighth floor, while Neo and the others are hiding in the walls. Dust falls, and Apoc starts to cough. He tries to hold it in, but eventually he has to cough, hard. All the cops spin around.
Police. They're in the walls! They're in the walls!
The police start to shoot at the wall, as Neo, who has never used a gun before, tries to shoot, flinching every time he fires a shot. Agent Smith takes over the body of one of the cops, and reaches through the wall, grabbing Neo by the neck.
Cypher. It's an agent!
With a cry, Morpheus punches his head through the wall, freeing Neo from Agent Smith's grasp. He comes out on the other side, and attacks Agent Smith.
Trinity. Morpheus!
Morpheus. You must get Neo out! He's all that matters!
Neo. No! No, Morpheus! Don't!
Morpheus. Trinity, go!
Trinity. Go!
She begins to shove people down.
As she tries to tear Neo away he yells.
Neo. We can't leave him!
Trinity. We have to!
She pulls him down, as they all go sliding down, and come out in a street outside. There are cops surrounding them, as they drop smoke bombs, and one by one, they go down the manhole. Cypher is the last to go, hesitating, as the cops aim their guns at him.
Trinity. Cypher! Come on!
She has to give up and leave him, as she goes down the manhole.
Back in the hotel, Agent Smith turns to Morpheus.
Agent Smith. The great Morpheus. we meet at last.
Morpheus. And you are?
Agent Smith. A Smith. Agent Smith.
Morpheus growls
Morpheus. You all look the same to me.
They begin to fight, as Agent Smith easily beats him, smashing him into the walls, until he is barely alive.
Agent Smith nods to the cops, who rush into the room.
Agent Smith. Take him.
Tank is watching this whole thing happening, back on the Nebuchadnezzar, and can't do a thing about it.
Tank. No.
He gets an incoming call, and answers it.
Tank. Operator.
Cypher. Yeah, I need an exit, fast!
Tank. _Cypher_?!
Cypher. Yeah! There was an accident! God damn, a car accident. All of
Cypher. Get me out of here fast!
Cypher hangs up the phone.
Trinity, Neo etc are walking down the street, Trinity gets out her phone and calls Tank.
Trinity hangs up the phone.
Tank gets Cypher out, and as he comes back to the real word, he grimaces.
Tank. Got him.
Cypher stands up and walks towards Tank and the controls.
Cypher. Where are they?
Tank. Making the call.
Cypher. Good.
Neo etc arrive at Franklin and Erie, and the phone rings.
Trinity. You first, Neo.
Back at the Nebuchadnezzar, Cypher gets a gun and shoots Tank, knocking him out. Dozer stands up, as he thinks Tank is dead, and runs towards Cypher.
Dozer. Noooo!
Cypher shoots Dozer, and he dies.
Cypher gets into the operator's chair, and puts on the headset.
Neo goes to lift the phone, and it suddenly cuts off. Trinity looks at him.
Neo. I don't know, it just went dead.
Trinity gets out her cellular phone, and calls the operator. Cypher picks up.
Cypher. Hello, Trinity.
Trinity. Cypher? Where's Tank?
Cypher goes to her body and moves up close to her face, staring at her. He speaks into the headset.
Cypher. You know, for a long time, I thought I was. in love with
you. I used to dream about you. you're a beautiful woman,
Trinity. Too bad things had to turn out this way.
Trinity. You killed them!
Apoc. What?!
Cypher. I'm tired, Trinity. I'm tired of this war. I'm tired of
fighting. I'm tired of this ship, being cold, eating the same
god damn goop every day. But most of all, I'm tired of that
jack-off and all his bullsh*t.
He jumps onto Morpheus' body
Cypher. Well, surprise, ass-hole! I bet you never saw _this_ coming,
did ya? God, I wish I could be there, when they break you. I
wish I could walk in just when it happens. So right then,
you'd know it was _me_.
Trinity. You gave them _Morpheus_.
Cypher. He _lied_ to us, Trinity. He tricked us. If you'd have told
us the truth, _we_ woulda told you to shove that red pill
right up your ass!
Trinity. That's not true Cypher, he set us _free_.
Cypher. Free? You call _this_, free? All I do is what he tells me to
Cypher starts talking on the cellular to Trinity again.
Cypher. Welcome to the real world, huh baby?
Trinity. But you're out, Cypher, you can't _go_ back.
Cypher. Oh no. That's what _you_ think. They're going to reinsert my
Trinity. No, please don't.
Switch is crying, leaning over Apoc's body.
Switch. Not like this. not like this.
Cypher pulls her plug, and Switch goes limp, collapses, and dies.
Trinity is stunned, and looks like she's about to cry.
Cypher. Too late.
Trinity. God damn you, Cypher!
Cypher. Don't hate me Trinity. I'm just a messenger, and right now
I'm gonna prove it to you. If Morpheus was right, then there's
Unknown to Cypher, Tank is not dead, and gets up and finds a rifle.
Cypher is still on the phone to Trinity
Trinity turns to look at Neo, who doesn't know what's going on either.
The phone starts to ring again. Everyone jumps.
Neo. You first..
Trinity picks up the phone, and wakes up on the Nebuchadnezzar.
Tank helps her up, as she notices he has a large wound on his chest.
Trinity. You're hurt..
Tank. I'll be alright.
Trinity. Dozer?
Tank shakes his head, and Trinity hugs him.
Morpheus is in the office on the top floor of Loco, with 3 agents. He is handcuffed to the chair he's sitting on, and is pumped full of serum, alternately shivering and sweating. He is hooked up to various
monitors with white disk electrodes.
Agent Smith. Have you ever stood and. stared at it? _marvelled_ at its
beauty? Billions of people, just. living out their lives..
oblivious. Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to
be a perfect human world? Where none _suffered_, where
everyone would be.._happy_. It was a disaster. No one would
accept the program, entire crops were lost. Some belived
that we lacked the programming language to _describe_ your
perfect world. But _I_ belive, that as a species, human
beings define their reality though _misery_ and suffering.
Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to _this_, the peak of
your civilization. I say _your_ civilization, because as soon
as we started thinking _for_ you, it really became _our_
civilization, which is, of course, what this all about.
Evolution, Morpheus, evolution..like the _dinosaur_. Look
out that window. you had your time. The future is our world,
Morpheus, the future. is _our_ time.
Agent Jones walks in.
Agent Jones. There could be a problem..
On the Nebuchadnezzar, Tank, Neo and Trinity are standing over Morpheus' body, looking at his life monitor.
Neo. What are they doing to him?
Tank. Breaking into his mind. It's like hacking into a computer,
all it takes is time..
Neo. How much time?
Tank. Depends on the mind. Eventually, it will crack and his alpha
patterns will change from this.
Tank punches a button on the screen.
Tank. To this..When it does, Morpheus will tell them anything they
Tank looks grim.
Tank. We pull the plug.
Trinity. You're going to _kill_ him? _KILL_ Morpheus?!
Tank. We don't have any other choice.
Back in the office, the agents have found out Cypher is dead, and are looking for a solution.
Agent Smith. Never send a _human_ to do a machine's job.
Agent Brown. If indeed the insider has failed, they'll sever the connection
as soon as possible, unless.
Agent Jones. They're dead in either case.
Agent Smith. We have no choice but to continue as planned, deploy the
sentinels. Immediatly.
On the Nebuchadnezzar, they are getting ready to pull Morpheus' plug..Neo looks horrifed.
Tank. Morpheus, you're more than a leader to us, you're. a father.
We'll miss you always.
As his hand goes to Morpheus' plug, Neo says in a quiet voice.
Trinity and Tank spin around to face him.
Neo. I don't belive this is happening!
Neo. I'm not the one, Trinity. The Oracle hit me with that too.
Trinity. No. You have to be.
Neo. I'm not, I'm sorry. I'm just another guy.
Trinity. No Neo, that's not true..it can't be true.
Neo. Why?
Trinity just looks away.
Tank. Neo, this is Loco! They've got Morpheus in a _military
controlled building_. Even _if_ you somehow got inside, those
Neo. I believe I can bring him back.
He stars to wire himself up. So does Trinity.
Neo. What are you doing?!
Trinity. I'm going with you.
Neo. _No_, you're not!
Trinity turns to face him.
Trinity. _NO_? Let me tell you what _I_ believe. I believe Morpheus
means more to me than he does to you. I believe that if you are
really serious about saving him, you are going to need _my_
help. And since I _am_ the ranking officer on this ship, _if_
you don't like it, I believe you can go to hell. Because you're
not going anywhere else. Tank? Load us up.
Agent Smith is still questioning Morpheus
Agent Smith. I'd like to share a. revelation I had, during my time here.
It came to me when I tried to. classify your species. I
realized that you're not _actually_ mammals. Every mammal on
this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with
the surrounding environment but. you humans do _not_. You
move to an area. _and_ you _multiply_. until every natural
resource is _consumed_. The only way you can survive is to..
spread to _another_ area. There is another organism on this
planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is?
A virus. Humans beings are a _disease_, a _cancer_ of this
planet. and _we_. are the cure.
Neo and Trinity have been loaded into the construct program, wearing boots, trenchcoats and sunglasses. Neo gets out his cell phone and talks to Tank.
Tank. 'kay..so what do you need. Besides a miracle..
Neo thinks about it.
Neo. Guns. lots of guns.
As he says this, hundreds of rows of assorted rifles appear, whooshing by Neo and Trinity as they stand in the centre.
Neo picks out a gun.
Trinity. Neo, no one has ever done anything like this.
Neo turns to look at her, holding the gun.
Neo. That's why it's going to work.
He loads the gun.
Agent Smith is back at the window of the office, staring out into the world.
He turns to Agent Brown.
Agent Smith. Why isn't the serum working?
Agent Brown. Perhaps we're asking the wrong questions.
Agent Smith. Leave me with him!
Agent Brown and Agent Jones look at each other, surprised.
Agent Smith. Now!
They hurriedly leave.
Tank is mopping Morpheus' forehead with a damp cloth.
Tank. Hold on, Morpheus. They're coming for you. They're coming.
Agent Smith grabs Morpheus' head with his hands.
Agent Smith. Can you _hear_ me, Morpheus? I'm going to be honest with you..
I hate this place. this..zoo, this..prison, this. reality..
whatever you want to call it. I can't stand it any longer.
. It's the _smell_. If there is such a thing. I feel.
_saturated_ by it. I can. taste, your _stink_. And every
time I do, I feel I have somehow been..infected by it, it's
repulsive. I must get _out_ of here. I must get _free_. and
in this mind. is the key.
He taps Morpheus' head.
Agent Smith. My key. once Zion is destroyed there is no need for me to be
here, don't you understand? I need the codes..I have to get,
_inside_ Zion, and _you_ have to tell me _how_. You are going
to tell me, or. you are going to die.
Neo and Trinity walk into the lobby of the Loco building, wearing trench coats, leather, and sunglasses.
Trinity is carrying a hold-all. Neo walks towards the man beside the metal detecting thingy he has to walk though.
He puts the bag through, and then walks through himself. The alarms go off.
Guard. Please remove any metallic items you are carrying, keys,
loose change.
Neo opens his trench coat, showing his clothes are lined with guns. He just looks at the guard.
Guard. Holy Sh*t.
Neo and Trinity pull out guns, and kill everyone in the room, but not before the last guard sends for backup.
Guard. Backup! Send backup!
Trinity shoots him.
They move into the main lobby of the hotel, dropping their empty guns and pulling out new ones.
As they walk towards the elevator, backup arrives.
A whole bunch of guards run in, aiming their rifles at Neo and Trinity.
Guard 2. Freeze!!
Neo and Trinity look at each other, and then dart to opposite ends of the room, and within the space of 5 minutes, manage to wipe out every man in the room.
They continue to walk to the elevator, without a word, press the button, and get in. They leave the main lobby in pieces, literally, as pieces of the wall start to fall down.
Agent Brown and Agent Jones walk back into the office where Agent Smith is 'questioning' Morpheus.
Agent Jones. What were you doing?!
Agent Brown. He doesn't know.
Agent Smith. Know what?
Agent Smith plugs his earpiece back in, and looks at the other two agents.
Agent Jones turns to Morpheus, who is barely aware of his situation.
Agent Jones. I think they're trying to save you.
In the elevator, Trinity opens up the bag she has been carrying, and wires plastique and napalm bomb. Neo hits the emergency stop. He pulls down part of the false ceiling and finds the elevator shaft access panel. Neo ratchets down a clamp onto the elevator cable. Both of them lock on, holding on to one another. He looks up the long, dark throat of the building and takes a deep breath.
Neo. There is no spoon.
Neo whips out his gun and presses it to the cable, lower than where they attached themselves. The cable snaps. The counter-weights plummet, yanking Trinity and Neo up through the shaft as the elevator falls away beneath them, distending space, filling it with the sound of whistling metal, as they soar to the top. The elevator hits the bottom, and the massive explosion blows open the doors, and fire clouds engulf the elevator section of the lobby.
The smoke alarm kicks in, and water sprays start, soaking the agents and Morpheus in the office.
Agent Smith. Find them and destroy them!
Trinity and Neo are up on the rooftop, attacking the various soldiers and guards placed there. They have Guns and knives, like extensions of their bodies used with the same deadly precision as their feet and their fists. Across the roof, the pilot inside the army helicopter watches the ferocious onslaught.
Pilot. I repeat, we are under attack!
As we watch him, the Pilot's whole body dissolves, consumed by a swarm of static as Agent Jones takes over his body. Just as she kills the last solider, Trinity sees what's coming. She stares towards the helicopter, as Agent Jones walks out. Neo looks at her, and from the fear in his face knows what's behind him.
He whirls round, firing his guns at thought speed, each bullet missing Agent Jones, as he dodges them, blurred with motion. Neo stops firing as his guns are empty. He yells.
Neo. Trinity.
Agent Jones loads his gun.
Neo. help!
Agent Jones fires as we enter the liquid space of bullet time. We are watching in slow motion as he fires, and the air sizzles, while Neo bends backwards, twisting and ducking just underneath them.
Agent Jones fires again, as Neo bends impossibly back, one hand on the ground. The bullet grazes his thigh, leaving a red groove.
He screams and falls backwards.
As he lies there, Agent Jones aims his gun at Neo one last time.
Agent Jones. Only human.
Trinity comes up quietly behind him, and before he knows it, she has her rifle pointed against his head.
Trinity. Dodge this!
She shoots him, as Agent Jones falls slowly backwards, and turns back into the pilot.
Trinity reaches out a hand, and helps Neo up. She looks at him curiously.
Trinity. How did you do that?
Neo. Do what.
that fast.
Neo looks at the wound in his side.
Neo. Wasn't fast enough.
He looks over the roof, and his eyes focus on the helicopter.
Neo. Can you fly that thing?
Trinity. Not yet.
She takes out a cellular phone, and calls Tank, who is back at the controls.
Tank. Operator.
Trinity. Tank, I need a program for a V-212 helicopter. Hurry!
Tank finds one, and presses load. Trinity's eyes flicker with REM for a few moments, and then snap open.
Trinity. Lets go.
Over the rushing water, and the alarms, Agent Smith (still in the office) hears a sound, and suddenly realises the seriousness of the attack. He turns to the wall of windows, as the helicopter comes into view. Neo is in the back bay, aiming the mounted .50 machine gun, straight at him.
Agent Smith twists his face into a grimace.
Agent Smith. NO.
Neo fires, and bullets explode through the windows in a cacophony of crashing glass, as the Agents reach for their weapons. But Neo is too close, the machine gun too fast, and bullets are everywhere, perforating the room. Agent Smith is hit first, his body falling back. Then Agent Jones, his gun still firing as his body falls. And finally Agent Jones. Neo stares at Morpheus, as if trying to will him into action.
Morpheus. Morpheus, get up! Get up, get up!
With tremendous effort, Morpheus regains control and yells out as he strains the handcuffs, and finally snaps them in two. He pulls the wires from his head, and stands up. He looks towards Neo, and starts to move towards the window. The Agents take over the bodies of the guards outside, and knife their way back into the room. They fire, as Morpheus reaches the window, hitting his leg as he jumps for it out of the window.
Neo. He's not going to make it!
Neo jumps from the helicopter, grabbing onto Morpheus just before he falls, and holds onto him as they fall until the rope ends and goes taught. Neo keeps a hold of Morpheus' arm.
Neo. Gotcha!
Trinity is already pulling the helicopter up and away from Loco. But Agent Smith grabs the gun from the nearest soldier, and targets the helicopter, hitting the fuel tank. The rear hull is punched full of holes.
Trinity. Sh*t!
Neo is pulling Morpheus up to him, when he hears the engine begin to die. Trinity guides the helicopter towards the roof of the nearest building, as Morpheus drops, landing safely on the roof. Neo soon follows, rolling free as the rope goes slack. Neo is about to detach himself, when he realises Trinity is still in helicopter. As the helicopter begins to fall, Neo swings the rope, as it begins to pull him fast along the roof.
Trinity gets out her gun and snaps the rope inside the helicopter, grabbing onto it as she swings out of the helicopter, held up by Neo, who is standing at the very edge of the building, almost falling off. He swings her out of the way of the helicopter, as it crashes into the glass windows of the opposite building, creating a huge ripple as all the glass blows out of the windows, and Trinity just misses it, as the helicopter explodes into flames, and she bangs into a lower window of the building Neo is on.
Tank stares at his Matrix monitor, his mouth agape.
Tank. I knew it! He's the one.
Neo pulls Trinity up into his arms. They both shake as they recover from the shock of what nearly happened.
Morpheus looks at Trinity
Morpheus. Do you belive it _now_, Trinity?
Neo. Morpheus. The Oracle, she told me, I'm.
Morpheus. She told you _exactly_ what you needed to hear..that's
all. Neo, sooner or later, you're going to realize, just
as I did, that there's a different between _knowing_ the
path. and _walking_ the path.
The phone rings, and Tank answers
Tank. Operator?
Tank. Goddamn, it's good to hear your voice sir!
Morpheus. We need an exit.
Tank. Got one ready! Subway station, State and Balboa.
The agents exit the office and move onto the roof.
Agent Smith. Damn it!
Agent Brown. The trace was completed.
Agent Jones. We have their position.
Agent Brown. The sentinels are standing by..
Agent Jones. Order the strike!
Agent Smith. They're not out _yet_.
The phone in the phone booth starts to ring, just as Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity arrive at the subway station.
They stand outside it, as Neo puts a hand on Morpheus' shoulder.
Neo. You first, Morpheus..
Morpheus goes into the phone booth, and picks up the phone. An old homeless man, lying on a bench nearby watches, as Morpheus appears to visibly disintegrate in front of them, and the phone drops, dangling by it's cord.
His eyes grow wide and he stares.
Trinity is about to answer the phone, when she suddenly stops and turns to Neo.
Trinity. Neo, I want to tell you something. but I'm afraid of
what it would mean if I do.
Neo looks at her.
Trinity. Everything the Oracle has told me has come true.
Everything but this.
She changes her mind, and walks into the phone booth. She picks up, just as the old man changes into Agent Smith and aims a gun at the phone box. She puts her hand up, as she did in the beginning to stop the truck, and is pulled back into the real world, just as Agent Smith shoots the phone.
Trinity sits up, as Tank stares at her.
Trinity. Neo!
Tank. What the hell just happened?
Trinity. An agent! You have to send me back!
Tank. I can't!
Neo stares at the exit to the subway station, as Agent Smith approaches him, smirking.
Neo. Mr. _Anderson_! We meet again..
Trinity, Morpheus, and Tank are watching him on the monitor.
Trinity. Run, Neo! Run!
Neo looks as though he may be about to do just that, but suddenly he spins around and stares Agent Smith straight in the face, a focused look on his face.
Trinity. What is he doing?!
Morpheus half-smiles to himself.
Morpheus. He's beginning to believe.
Neo and Agent Smith are standing at opposite ends of the station. Neo takes a deep breath, focusing. He clenches his hands into fists, and relaxes them, pushing his fingers outwards.
Suddenly they both lunge for their guns, firing, as they run up the walls, and meet in the middle of the room, suspended in mid air, as bullets fly all around them. They fall to the ground, guns at each other's heads. Agent Smith smiles.
Agent Smith. You're _empty_.
Neo scowls at him.
Neo. So are _you_!
They stay there for a moment, as Agent Smith's smile fades, and he stands up, throwing away his gun. Neo shrugs and follows suit, chucking his gun away to the side. Agent Smith attacks Neo, fists flying at furious speed, blows and counters, Neo just ducks in time to miss Agent Smith's fist slamming through the wall behind him. Neo attacks again with renewed strength, as he kicks Agent Smith's head hard, knocking half of his sunglasses off.
Agent Smith glares at him, grimacing.
Agent Smith. I'm going to _enjoy_ watching you die. _Mr._ Anderson!
He attacks Neo furiously, punching him with incredible force and sending him flying across the room and into the wall. He falls, face down onto the concrete, as Trinity, watching the whole thing, rips up a piece of cloth, and daps the blood coming from his mouth.
Trinity. Jesus, he's killing him.
She holds the cloth against his mouth to stop the bleeding.
Neo lies on the floor, in pain. Agent Smith smiles to himself, but Neo supports himself on his hands, and spits the blood in his mouth onto the ground, before getting up and turning round to face Agent Smith. Neo attacks him again, and for a while it seems like he's going to win, he's much stronger and faster. But then Agent Smith grabs hold of him, lifting him into the air, hurling him against the curved wall of the train tunnel, where he falls inches from the electrified third-rail. He jumps down beside Neo, who is lying on the rails, barely conscious. Agent Smith grabs him by the neck and lifts him up, choking him. They hear the sound of an on-coming train.
Agent Smith. Do you hear _that_, _Mr._ Anderson? That..is the sound of
inevitability. _that_ is the sound of. your death.
Goodbye. _Mr._ Anderson.
Neo manages to get enough air to speak.
Neo. My name. is.._Neo_!
With the last of his strength, he pushes Agent Smith up into the air with him, slams him down onto the track, looks at the on-coming train briefly, and jumps up onto the edge, just in time to get out of the way of the train. Agent Smith is flattened under the train.
Trinity smiles as this happens, but the smile is quickly wiped off her face, as Tank turns around with a very worried expression on his face.
Trinity. What happened?
Tank. I don't know. I lost him. oh sh*t.
He sees that sentinels are approaching their ship, and turns to Morpheus
Trinity. Sentinels! How long?
Morpheus. Five, maybe six, minutes. Tank, charge the EMP
Trinity. You can't use that until he's out!
Morpheus. I know, Trinity. don't worry - he's going to make it.
Neo is running down the road, away from Agent Smith, who came back out the subway train straight after it flattened him.
As he runs, he notices a man talking on a cell phone. As he runs by the man, he grabs the phone.
Man. Sh*t! Hey! That's my phone! That guy's got my phone!
That's my best phone!
Tank manages to pin-point Neo's location.
Tank. Got him. He's on the run..
Neo calls him up.
Neo. Mr. Wizard! Get me the hell out of here!!
Tank. Got a patch on an old exit, Wabash and Lake!
Neo runs for it, as various people around him turn into the agents, and cause chaos among the people walking the streets.
As Neo heads for the hotel, he comes to a dead end, as an agent is approaching. He talks to Tank.
Neo. Sh*t! Uh..Help. Need a little help here!
Tank. Door!
A door appears to Neo's right, and he runs through it.
Tank. Door on your left!
Neo goes to the right
Tank. No, you're _other_ left!
Neo bangs the door down
Tank. Back door!
Neo dashes through the room, just missing being hit by a woman taken over by an agent, who through a knife at his head.
The sentinels have arrived at the Nebuchadnezzar
Trinity. Oh no.
Morpheus. Here they come.
Morpheus charges the EMP
Trinity looks at him
Morpheus. He's _going_ to make it.
As he reaches the hotel, Tank gives the last directions.
Tank. Fire escape at the end of the alley, room 303!
Neo chucks the phone away, and starts to go up the fire escape, closely followed by the 3 agents, constantly firing their rifles at him.
The sentinels are drilling through the hull of the Nebuchadnezzar. The computer warns the crew of the hull breech.
Tank. They're inside..
Trinity wipes Neo's forehead with a cloth and whispers in his ear
Trinity. Hurry, Neo.
Neo gets into the hotel, and runs along the corrider until he reaches room 303. He can hear the sound of the phone ringing from within the room, as he opens the door. He comes face to face with Agent Smith, who looks him straight in the eyes, and shoots him. Neo touches his wound, as blood comes out onto his hand. He looks up at Agent Smith, as he shoots Neo again, and he stumbles back against the wall. Agent Smith shoots him a few more times just to make sure, and he slides down the wall, and slumps on the floor.
Trinity and Morpheus watch his life signs go dead.
They are stunned.
Morpheus. Can't be.
Agent Smith looks sceptical about whether Neo is actually dead or not. He nods to the other agents.
Agent Smith. Check him!
Agent Brown checks his pulse
Agent Brown. He's _gone_.
They turn and start to walk away, but Agent Smith turns round and smirks at Neo's body
Agent Smith. Goodbye. _Mr._ Anderson.
The sentinels have broken through and are now on the main deck, ripping everything apart. Trinity is still sitting by Neo.
Trinity. Neo..I'm not afraid anymore! The Oracle told me I would
fall in love, and that man, the man that I loved, would be
The One. So, you see, you can't be dead. you can't be.
because I love you. you hear me? I _love_ you.
She leans over and kisses him
As she says this, the blow echoes deep in Neo's mind. In the Matrix, his eyes snap open. Trinity screams as his life monitors jump back to life. Tank and Morpheus stare, in disbelief.
Trinity. Now get up!!
Neo sits up, trying to focus. He stands up, and the Agents turn around, staring at him, also in disbelief. Agent Smith grimaces and aims his rifle at Neo. He fires.
As Agent Smith fires, Neo just puts his hand out. The bullets slow down and stop in front of him. Neo looks at them, and picks one up. He looks at it, and then drops it to the floor. He looks at the rest, and moves his head down. They all fall to the ground. The Agents stare, and all take a step back.
Tank. _How_.
Morpheus. He is. The _One_.
Neo looks at Agent Smith, and runs towards him. Like the agents do, he appears to go inside Agent Smith's body, eventually bursting through his skin, as pieces of the agent that look something like green glass fly all over the room. As we watch Neo, he looks down at the ground with his eyes shut. The room appears to bend, like the spoon boy's spoon. Neo's eyes snap open and he looks up at the two remaining agents. They look at each other, and run for it. For a moment, we see the room as it is through Neo's eyes now, 3D matrix code.
The sentinels are slowly destroying the whole ship, as one looms near Trinity, who ducks to cover Neo.
In the Matrix, Neo lunges for the phone, just as Morpheus uses the EMP to destroy the sentinels. Neo's eyes open, and he smiles at Trinity as he kisses her.
We see a screen like the one at the beginning. Matrix code appears as Neo begins to speak. A box which says system failure appears on the screen.
Neo. I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that
you're afraid. You're afraid of us, you're afraid of
change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to
tell you how this is going to end, I came here to tell you
how this is going to begin. Now, I'm going to hang up
this phone, and I'm going to show these people what you
don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world
without you. a world without rules and controls, without
borders or boundaries. A world. where anything is
No comments:
Post a Comment