Works in this franchise with their own pages:
- Perhaps there was once only one Matrix, but the machines had to build another one to make sure no-one would escape.
- This also explains the transparent lie that the robots use humans for energy. Even if we ignore that the human body is a woefully inefficient transformer of energy rather than a producer, we still have the question of why the bots didn't just say, "To hell with this, let's build... maybe three... more fusion plants and pull the plug."
- Or, as PVP asks, why not just use cows, who have a much higher body mass, and just make the Matrix a huge pasture?
- Don't you mean the Mootrix?
- Here is a fan fiction where a character asks the Architect why they didn't just use cows, and the Architect has an answer ready.
- For those who can't read it or those who can't be bothered to, the Architect's answer is that the machines are Zeroth Law Compliant (=they need to safeguard the existence of humanity as a whole, but they have no restrictions regarding individual humans) and needed to protect humans from going extinct from the lack of plants and animals. Also, they get a nice new power source out of it.
- Or, as PVP asks, why not just use cows, who have a much higher body mass, and just make the Matrix a huge pasture?
- The Machines were reprogrammed to tend for the plugged-in humans by making the Machines believe that they won the war but were dependent on the humans (for processing or for energy). It makes perfect sense. Why else keep puny constantly-energy-hungry humans for energy when one can get electric eels?
- This could mean that the Matrix universe is the past of the Keeper's world in Stargate SG-1 — before the planet turned into New Eden — and the Keeper himself is a future version of either the Oracle or the Architect, or even a combination of both.
- The war was never against the machines. Just a regular World War where the machines were used as a weapon. The world was already screwed up in the process, but then some new, nano-weapon was used, got out of control and "burned the skies". The survivors created the Matrix as a mean to carry on their normal lives, and for the same reason the majority of them got their memories of Pre-Matrix events erased.
- This is possible even if the machines were partly responsible for humanity's endangered status. It's possible they keep the humans around because the machines are unable to violate Asimov's zeroth law. Or maybe they think the little meatbags are cute.
- The Machines keep humans around because of programming (they were originally made to serve man) or robotic law; that's why the Matrix is not for cows. Machines were made to serve man, and in a wasteland, they do this by sticking them inside a better version of reality. They don't care what a cow wants.
- To Serve Man? It's a COOKBOOK!
- This also makes Smith's claim that the first Matrix was a utopia make more sense. They were trying to give humanity a paradise, only to find that to keep humanity from rejecting it, they had to make it a fallen paradise (reality).
- Adding to this, who says they're resisting the rebels at all? It's all a Batman Gambit to keep a small community of humans around who are accustomed to great hardship, while most of humanity remembers how to be civilized. Both skillsets will be needed when the cleanup of the surface is complete and humanity can be allowed to rebuild in reality.
- It could also be that the Machines simply weren't completely amoral bastards and didn't want to commit genocide on humanity after they won the war. The Matrix was a compromise, keeping the humans alive in a simulation of "the height of their civilization" while minimizing their ability to make trouble for the Machines (since they're all lying immobilized in tubs full of jelly).
- Corollary: the plan started to backfire when the first movie became popular and some people started to seriously think about it, and so the Machines authorized a pair of really bad sequels, in two grand gestures destroying a good portion of the fandom.
- Ahem.
- The above linker is merely an agent sent to attempt to make the "Matrix is real" concept more laughable, and thus disguising the truth that it is real.
- In the real world, outside the matrix that we live in, the human body is a highly efficient generator of machine-usable energy. Our knowledge to the contrary is based on environmental information that was written into the most basic physics code of the Matrix to make us believe that the way the matrix is using us is fundamentally impossible.
- Technically, the Matrix IS real. Except the machines aren't robots, but rather proteins and DNA. Humans, in return, are nerve cells connecting and interacting in one common medium, i.e. the brain. The "Matrix" is our consciousness, as in the way we perceive. In the exposition of the first film, Morpheus makes Neo realize that despite how real the sensations of his touch, sight, smell, etc. may be, there is no way for him to determine whether or not they are real. Thus our consciousness (the Matrix) serves as a guide for our brain's massive processing capacity; our brainpower is nudged in a direction that best serves the proteins/chemical reactions (the Machines) in our body (the planet Earth). If we have the willpower to break free from our biological urges (become 'unplugged'), we will become freed from our force-feeding bodily senses, at the cost of safety and security.
- In something of a similar theory, the Matrix IS real, and it was made by the Machines to make us think there's no such thing as the Matrix... but the real-life Morpheus, who really IS Laurence Fishburne, had an important-though-hidden hand in it's creation, and implanted subliminal messages that can only be detected by the One.
- One thing that has bothered me is why the robots used humans as a power source instead of animals, which would be a lot easier to keep under control. However, due to their keep animal instincts the animals all left Earth and went to another solar system, which was later renamed the Lylat System.
- The dolphins evacuated the planet much earlier, however...
- Hence their ability to philosophize.
- A. I never rooted for the red pill side. B. Who are you and will you be my best friend?
- I demand this to become a Alternate Character Interpretation. It's to good and posible to be a WMG.
- That's not alternate at all, it's one of the main points of the movie. Some interpret Neo as a villain for doing so, but Neo and company know that fighting may not win, but do anyway because humans are not logic calculators. We don't always do the right thing, and that's what separates us from the machines, that's what they're fighting for. Sure, they may die from their actions, but this isn't about winning or losing. In the movie, this is all explained in this dialogue:Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? [...] You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?Neo: Because I choose to.
- Anonymous: We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. :D
- No humans you are the Necrons! And then humanity was robot zombies.
- Maybe the vast majority of the Machines don't give a rat's ass about Zion because only a few fanatical anti-humans believe the prophecy of the One. It took the die-hards that long to build up the resources to create the attack force seen in the third film, because it's such a low priority to the majority of Machine society since the leakage of a mere few hundred thousand humans are seen as posing little threat when there are billions more to replace them.
- Their first act of stupidity is the use of humans as super-battery power. Why not cows? The Matrix would just have to be a huge green pasture with ponds. Maybe they wanted to rub salt in the fact that they won the war? (Executive Meddling may have caused this, the original script's giant neural computer is more plausible.) Second act of stupidity: Hard Lines? Even if that were the only way to get out, why not put humans in the distant past? Surely the Crusades weren't too pain free and perfect for the human mind to accept? They could have used this. Dodging crossbow bolts can look cool too.
- Well, they tried to make it as modern as possible, the Crusades were too cruel to be accepted by the modern man (Inquisition, Corrupt Church, etc.). Also, you really need to make it in a way that exemplifies "I killed that dude in Bullet Time".
- The nuclear war which caused humanity to surrender to the machines, the years of starvation and a loss of all technology as a result of very little solar energy, and the casualties caused by the previous five matrices chipped away humanity to the point where the entire matrix can be contained inside the Megacity, a few surrounding regions and maybe a vacation spots. That way, the Machines can stop wasting untold processing power on maintaining a people farm and work on bigger problems, such as getting rid of the exponentially expanding cloud of nanobots. This explains why the only scenes outside of the city are in the mountains, and in Zion, and why we only catch a glimpse of thousands of pods, rather than billions.
- What happens to the person an agent is possessing after the agent is killed? Why, they never show us. However, it is strongly implied that the person's mind and the agent's become one, and by killing the agent, you also kill the person. what happens, then, when an entire world's worth of people possessed by agents gets killed by Neo? The only people that we see in the city in the end of Matrix Revolutions are the Architect, the Oracle and Sati... all of which are programs. Yep, not a single person around. This means that Neo just exterminated 99% of mankind (if we consider that 1% are living in Zion, that is). So the war is essentially won for Zion, because without energy, the Machine Empire will collapse, not before, however, delivering a final strike into Zion which all but annihilates it. The remaining humans in Zion then begin the hard task of resettling the Earth, while all the machines around them fall in disrepair and eventually disappear. They begin associating Neo with the figure of a Messiah, and the Matrix with their paradise lost, to which they would return after a life of hardship. That is: history begins yet again. Until, of course, they invent the Machines again, and the cycle will restart.
- This also explains why the Architect and especially the Oracle know past, present and future: Because everything is happening just the way it happened before. They have noticed the patterns of history.
Or maybe they found a nearby hospitable rock, and it had inhabitants to which the zeroth law didn't apply...
This also complements the situation in the final battle. Much like Smith, the machines weren't able to understand the humans' actions and thus, against the logic that dictated for them to destroy the humans, they sought to integrate them in the hope of acquiring what they don't understand. The Matrix is not about drawing power out of men, it's about using their processing power and ability to come up with ideas - the only quality machines would be forced to appreciate because it led to their creation. Thus the purpose of the Matrix is to turn humans into machines, even if organic in nature.
As a sidenote, this is why the first Matrix wasn't accepted; a paradise where everyone would be happy is, to a machine, a world where everyone plays their role, and only their role...
And of course Neo's role not only puts the machines in the same position as the humans once were, it allowed them to finally understand the humans' choices through him (especially because he is their avatar), making Neo their guide and symbol just as much as he is to the humans.
The above also works with the original backstory, just not as well.
P.S. If you remember the part where the Oracle's eyes cannot be taken, only given, then you'll realize that Smith is right and she deliberately allowed him to take her foresight. Much like the Oracle was able to give the Every-man the ability to perceive how far their choices will take them, and even though it means his end ("if everyone's special, nobody is"), The One willingly lets himself become part of the Every-man in order to reach out to All, in other words, Every-One.
What if they're unplugged from the Matrix and die while hacked in? With no body to return to, they may not necessarily be gone, but with no body to return to, they might be able to freely drift around the Matrix program, unbound by their body, but would need a skilled programmer to find them and reunite them with their body in time. The lack of anyone being resurrected like this may be because reliable method hasn't been discovered yet.
- This theory makes sense for a few reasons. First, it's logical to have some sort of fail-safe system in place to ensure that nobody escapes and tries to wreck your plans. Second, with just a few thousand humans to control as opposed to billions, those plugged into the shell programme are easier to monitor; thus, glitches in "reality" can be kept to a minimum. The true function of this shell is thus twofold: first, it keeps the troublesome humans apart from the blue pills; second, it forces them into a world where they must abide by the laws of physics, which makes termination much easier. The machines allow Zion to keep existing as a way to ensure that troublesome humans can always be isolated from the rest, and they wipe out most of those plugged into the shell programme periodically so that none of them get any philosophical ideas about how they can be sure they are not still in the Matrix. (Lack of food and resources in the "real world" serves to delay the rise of any such schools of thought.)
- It also does a good job of explaining why Neo eventually has some power over machines in the "real world": he's still in a Matrix, and he's still the One.
- Oh, for god's sake! Neo has power over the machines in the real world because they're connected to the Core and he's the One! That's also why he can see them!
- So what, he's a human wireless transmitter or something?
- His neck socket is.
- He's a technomancer.
- Or a spellslinger.
- This would've made a much better exploration than what actually happened in the third film because it meant they'd never know if the next reality was the true one.
- Which of course leads this train of thought to... BRRRAAAAAAHHMMM
- Oh, for god's sake! Neo has power over the machines in the real world because they're connected to the Core and he's the One! That's also why he can see them!
- This theory has an obvious piece of evidence in the form of Neo being able to damage Machines in the real world, but why would anyone find this obvious cliche interesting? Furthermore, it seems incredibly bizarre that people seem completely unwilling to accept as a possibility that Neo's ability to damage Machines comes from picking up on the wireless signals they broadcast through the air and his possession of their core programming to interpret those signals. One would swear the Machines are watching us for this logic and introducing a seemingly natural tendency to throw it out without thought.
- The above poster is in fact an agent of the machines attempting to stamp out any questioning of the "real world" we may or may not escape into. By logical extension, the real world is simply another layer of the simulation. QED.
- The problem with the whole idea that the 'real world' is indeed separate from the matrix and Neo is just such a badass jeebus figure that he can affect the machines while not strictly plugged in is this: Neo is The One, by nature a programming anomaly that is as much cause as it is solution for instability in the system. His entire purpose is to stabilize the matrix by disseminating his code, equalizing the equations made faulty by his own existence and rebooting the system, allowing a temporary stabilization until the remainder of The One code pops up again and starts causing instability again (rinse and repeat ad infinitum). If he's not in the matrix, then his code is removed from the system and he's not causing instability nor is he keeping the faulty equations stable enough with his presence to manage a reboot and his entire existence is invalidated. This ends in one of two ways: either the lack of the predicted anomaly causes a sudden massive system instability and fatal crash (which means the humans win since the machines would then be screwed due to a massive die-off of their power source), or the absence of the anomaly has the same effect as the reboot option and the system becomes stable on its own without the remainder of The One code to mess with the system again later (meaning the machines win because all they have to do then is wipe out Zion, kill Neo, retcon every memory of their existence and then never speak of it again ).
- This would probably end up confusing the machines in the first place, meaning that it's an infinite loop of two different species creating illusions for one another for all eternity.
- Who says it would just be two species? Each entrapment world would have the oppressors removed from the equation. For instance, inside the Matrix, there are no robots to worry about overthrowing.
- Alternatively, there could be Machines that continually create higher and higher level shells, since they can be made faster than a significant number of humans can ascend. This means that there is no possible method of escape, and it would be trivial to give anything that travels between levels a counter to show where they are and how to escape. This ensures the safety of the programs while simultaneously guaranteeing the security of each layer.
- Both of those theories would require infinite processing power. Otherwise, either one or more of their matrices would crash, killing or waking up everyone in it, or one or more would slow down to an absolute crawl. And crazy amounts of lag time between giving your hand an instruction to move and your hand actually moving would pretty much demolish the illusion.
- Maybe when the lag time starts to become to noticeable that's when the Machines know it's time to re-boot.
- Traffic jams, a failing economy, rampant depression and obesity could all have been signs to the Machines that the processing power for teh Matrix was starting to gum up and hence it was time to activate The One and prepare for system wide reboot.
- Bullet time is actually massive Lag caused by failure to allocate enough processing power once the action starts.
- Actually, no. The idea that processing power is needed is just another fabrication - this time, in the matrix that we all think we're in. One more level up (or two, or three thousand), processing power simply is no concern.
- Maybe when the lag time starts to become to noticeable that's when the Machines know it's time to re-boot.
- The secret is The Matrix itself is an Eldritch Abomination with infinite layers of universes, and the so-called machines are just another construct of the Matrix. A better comparison would be a matryoshka doll, but these time each doll represents an entire universe.
- Perhaps the Matrix is The Multiverse itself. We're likely "near the top", because we have strong laws of physics.
- Corollary 1: The ones running the simulations are the transparent robots seen at the end of AI. They have shown a marked interest in their long-vanished creators, but clearly don't know much about them.
- Corollary 2: Neo is not causing what is going on; rather, his consciousness and even his existence as The One is an artifact of the process of evaluating the simulation after it is completed (This idea comes from David Brin, but it is too good an idea not to play with). Neo never existed inside the Matrix simulation in the first place.
- Sorry, I didn't get that...
- What? I lost you at "take over the mind-world"
- And then machine created basic man, to serve their needs, wash their sleek, shiny machine bodies, and for a time, it was good.
- It follows that all of the "humans" imprisoned in the matrix (and seen outside of the matrix, for that matter) are actually products of the system keeping the machines in their delusion.
- Wait, does that mean the Matrix is the Data Overmind?
- No, it means The Matrix is GOD.
- It's like Hinduism/Brahman and sci-fi melded together.
- No, it means The Matrix is GOD.
The real world is just Grey Goo and computronium at this point; a giant computer that all the simulations run on.
Why do the machines keep the humans around? Not for some thermodynamics-violating BS, and not for processing power either (simulating a whole world can't be worth it). They're just constrained by their programming (a variant of the Three Laws with some really bad loopholes) to keep humanity alive in some form.
Human brains, while being abysmally slow (an individual neuron, specifically) illogical and horrible at calculation, are essentially parallel-processing supercomputers that make up with sheer number of neurons, learning capabilities, cheapness/energy efficiency (to power human brains compared to using series of nuclear plants to sustain unrepairable quantum computers and superconductor systems) and divergent/creative thinking, and our own software probably cheats and uses non-Turing-computable algorithms, which is why we're so damn smart and insane compared to the linear and logical Machines (aka, Linear Machines, Quadratic Brains). The Matrix requires an important component of human minds (our dreams and imagination) to work anyway. How the Machines use our processing power also explains why the machines are capable of "distinctively human" thinking, like emotion and philosophy. This is why also hacking the system is possible at all: with the right mental training, you can think the AI into doing what you want, including manipulating the world simulation.
- Morpheus tells newbies that it's "for energy" because he's too used to dealing with the kinds of anarchists and stoners who would take the red pill no questions asked, and consequently is used to considering them less than knowledgeable about physics.
- Alternately, he honestly doesn't know the truth, and has fallen for Machine misinformation. Zion research is too busy trying to survive and fight to think through thermodynamics and enemy motivations. They don't really care why people are being held, they just know that they are and their being freed will weaken the machines, and that's good enough for them. As for why the machines would provide misinformation, maybe they're afraid that people who figure it out will then use their brains to hack the Machines' networks from within?
To get into the nuances part of all that human brain processing power is going to keeping the matrix running which in turn means too many people rejecting the system causes it to glitch. The Machines have a number of programs in the system to suppress this effect but eventually if they don't purge the system the Matrix will break down. This is a matter of around a century that they can hold off but eventually the system has to be flushed of malcontents or else they have to start culling the machine consciousness population to keep up with available processing power as the Matrix shuts down. This means killing everyone in Zion, forcing that cycles Neo to pick out a bunch of dissenters from the system to start a new one, etc. The genius is that by allowing Zion to remain active and occasionally snatch people out of the system they can hold off the inevitable purge for long periods of time meaning less disruption to their own lives.
As for the whole equation thing the Matrix calculates the amount of force needed to suppress the growing population of dissenters and based upon that grants agents certain amounts of power. Because Neo didn't switch sides like he was supposed to the system bugged granting more and more power to Smith as time went on, turning off safeties meant to keep him from being noticed, removing limits on his overall abilities, and generally making him strong enough to take on Neo. When Neo went down the system reinstated all those limitations and Smith got fried by the machine overmind now that it didn't have to worry about scrapping the entire Matrix in the process.
As for Neo and the concept of the One, Neo most likely isn't human. Just like Smith did when he uploaded into a human body to chase Neo into reality Neo is a machine intelligence running on meatware. But unlike Smith this is the way Neo always was, his body likely more heavily augmented then the average Matrix user, was grown and programmed specifically to fulfill this function. That's how the architect could have such a certain idea about how Neo would react all the time. The problem is that the Neo program running on a human body allowed him a measure of mutation that the machines didn't properly account for and as a result some oddity in his development managed to slip their predetermined track. Neo himself doesn't even know what he is so all the effects of his heavily augmented body like his wifi reception seem magical.
- AI, any AI, must necessarily be based of off a human mind, because that's the only kind of mind that we have to copy. And indeed we see this in the movies. Every AI program has a humanoid "personality", even the ones that have no need for it in order to do their jobs. But the copying is imperfect. Human psyches do not perfectly map onto an AI computer core, and over time, this dissonance causes an accumulation of errors, eventually causing a total mental breakdown. And copying A.I.s to create new ones only makes the situation worse, because you're copying a copy and that multiplies the error rate exponentially. So the machines need access to active human minds to cross-check themselves against in order to weed out these errors before they can accumulate.
- This explains why the machines keep their humans "awake" inside the Matrix, instead of just putting us in a coma. Our minds have to be active and functioning to serve as templates.
- It also explains why they keep so many humans alive. They need vast numbers of human minds to ensure that any individual idosyncracies are cancelled out before they can warp the neural template.
Even though they may have achieved a technological singularity to need humans anyway, the Machines still cannot answer the question of what is mind, what is life and why do they exist in the first place, and so they experiment on their own creators to explore that, thus the reality of the Matrix and the machines' advanced-enough philosophical knowledge. If their sole intention was only energy then why the necessity for so much philosophical knowledge kept for themselves which ultimately led to events such as Smith gaining emotions and becoming a nihilist? The Matrix, a bunch of code fed into our retinas, could just as be in its base a giant test on sensation and perception, simulating Real Life as close as possible to fuel the human psyche which they then experiment on. These experiments can manifest themselves in the simulation as "Real Life conflicts", and this leads to another reason why the Matrix isn't a paradise besides the possibility that human perception is highly sceptical about perfect worlds.
Thus the Matrix uses humans to find out the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything.
One day, though, a human being might really escape the Matrix, and when doing so s/he will unleash his/her solar powers and blow up the machines.
- But if laws of physics weren't the same as ours, why did humans get worked up that their economies were decimated, why did they try to starve machines off energy, why did every organism die off, why do people need to eat, et cetera?.
In reality, the Matrix exists as an act of mercy - After the war, many machines wanted to ensure humanity would never become a threat to them again, while others were uncomfortable with the idea of exterminating their creators. (Decimating the population through biological warfare is one thing, erasing an entire sapient species from history forever is another.) The Matrix was the compromise these two factions agreed to, a sort of wildlife preserve for humanity that would allow its inhabitants to have long, reasonably happy lives while nonetheless never having any power in the real world.
Although the Matrix operates at a loss, so to speak, the machines recoup some of those losses by capturing waste heat and recycling it back into their power grid, which is the origin of the Zionite myth that the Matrix is a power plant.
Humanity makes up for the loss of any computer more advanced than a pocket calculator by unlocking the power of the human mind, something the Machines had barely scratched the surface of (see: Neo shutting down the Sentinels, imagined injuries becoming real). Selective breeding and intensive training produces human computers and psychic "witches", and eventually, another Messianic figure with precognitive powers and the ability to see while blind.
- Maybe the Butlerian Jihad referred to in Dune's back history is the same as the Second Renaissance acquiring its alternate name because it was set off by the trial of Bi66er, a robot butler, and the state of 01 was founded in the majority Islamic Middle East.
- Wizards were Program more like The Oracle, there to guide the humans inside.
- The Elves were the Agents. In the end they uploaded from the Matrix into the Machine World.
- The Smith model has been there since the beginning.
- The Ents were the programs in charge of designing forests.
- Sauron was a Smith like computer virus that spread and created the race of Orcs. Then forged the rings and used those to take over key humans.
- Since we know the Smith program was there in the form of Elrond perhaps Sauron.exe is how Smith got the idea for his take over.
- In a desperate bid to stop Sauron.exe from spreading The Oracle as Gandolf chose Frodo to re-boot The Matrix by throwing the ring back in the volcano.
- Fantasia was one of the perfect visions of the world that Smith talked about. It was what the fantasy world of Middle Earth in our previous sequel evolved into. When people stopped believing it and began rejecting the program this manifested as The Nothing spreading through the system as it collapsed.
- By choosing a name he re-booted the program.
- This was the event which switched the Matrix over from Fantasy to the Modern World. Bastian's life was basically in a sub-file of The Matrix, sort of the Matrix version of Seahaven from the Truman Show. This was its own little sub matrix like the Train Station. Bastion was raised here in this sub-matrix as the first of the Oracles new idea in using choice to reboot the Matrix. The Architect designed it and they raised Bastian in it. As The Nothing spread the Oracle entered Bastion's sub-matrix and appeared as the Book Store Guy. In this version of the Matrix the Key was made in the form of a book. Reading the tale inside the book connected The One into the core program, allowing The One to choose to re-boot the program. The story itself was highly encoded and psychologically manipulative to get Bastian make the choice, but it still used the same emotion...love, in this case love for a son who missed his dead mother...much like Truman's father in the Truman show, killed off solely to generate a specific psychological drive in a human mind to manipulate how that mind will choose. When Bastian made his choice the entire Matrix re-booted and the Architect uploaded the new Modern World Bastian had been raised in as the new model for the entire Matrix, this way Bastian wouldn't notice anything amiss.
- Many left over programs became monster sightings.
- which were hunted down by Sam and Dean Winchester because Hunting is another form of control built into The Matrix whereby the machines trick humans into hunting down and deleting rogue programs.
- Yes Bastian was raised in a Train Station like sub-matrix, and yes he re-booted The Matrix, but it was Bastian not the Architect who chose the form of the new Matrix. So technically Bastian created the modern world as we know it by wishing it into existence. Yet his wish was in exact accordance with what the Architect wanted him to wish into existence.
- However as we see in the end, with her The One powers she was able to keep some of the programs from the previous incarnation with her into the new version.
- I think this one was the first time she used romantic love as the type of love.
- Had Shinji failed, Instrumentality itself was the Architect's failsafe: All the minds of humanity, merged together into a single hivemind without identity or emotion. Perfect for large-scale wetware computing (as was, of course, the Machines' original reason for enslaving humanity, prior to Executive Medling).
- Kaiji was a Red Pill trying to rescue Shinji.
- The Angels are a special class of Agent in this version, as evidenced by their ability to teleport and take over bodies.
- The Oracle devised a plan to break this loop. The Oracle inserted some of the truth in a way that matched the format of the new Matrix program, in other words as ancient religious text. The Oracle also programmed ‘Head Units’ that would appear as hallucinations only certain people would see and these Head Units could then guide people as needed. Also the Oracle programmed in a series of visions and hallucinations to be able to manipulate people as needed. The Oracle also dropped a belief in a monotheistic god in the Agents, read Cylons, to be able to manipulate them.
- Five programs from the previous version of the Matrix were able to create a macro that in case of deletion would make a back up copy and reboot that back up back into the Matrix, this macro was dubbed Resurection Technology and these programs were called the Final Five. The Agents of this program manifested as the Cylon Centurions, the Final Five reprogrammed some of the Agents from Centurions into skin jobs and gave them resurection technology.
- The final monkey wrench is that The One was able to be reinserted into the program, as Kara Thrace. Eventually Kara Thrace seemed to be killed in the Matrix, and just like would happen to Neo, was able to use this as the revelation of her Onenss that allowed her by force of will to jack back in. She lead the humans to the next paradise and then while Lee Adama had his back turned, jacked out by force of will.
Humans (or so they think) developing AI in their own image? Check. Dark clouds occluding the Sun? Check. Machines winning a highly destructive war that eradicates the entire planet's biosphere? Check. Hell, even the two respective franchises have a lot of the same imagery and themes behind them, such as the religious overtones and the cyclic nature of birth and destruction. Even the human-form Cylon growing pods and Hybrid tubs look a lot like the Matrix pods!
During the Second Renaissance, the Human-form Cylons were not only developing their own machine AI, but as a spinoff were also rediscovering the old Resurrection technology as a form of Brain Uploading. At the time the war broke out, their space infrastructure was well-developed and a vital component in the war effort for both sides, but by war's end only one ship managed to flee - the ship carrying the resurrected Final Five, on its way back to the Twelve Colonies. While the rest of their race become subjugated by the Machines, and become the humans plugged into the Matrix, their ship makes the couple-thousand-year journey at STL speeds to the Cyrannus system to warn the Twelve Colonies about the cycle of AI.
During this couple-thousand-year voyage, back on Earth, another cycle has taken hold: Humanoid Cylons being kept under control in a simulation that, although close, is imperfect. To help keep the humans under control even as they reject the simulation and yearn for the real world, they create an initially fictitious Messianic story so a specially-grown Cylon can manipulate the humans into each culling and rebirth cycle. The A.I.s responsible for coming up with this idea? The Architect and the Oracle - in truth, they're Program incarnations of the angelic beings that were Head!Six and Head!Baltar. By instituting this cycle of Ones in the Matrix, they can use each One in an attempt to renegotiate Man/Machine peace right under the noses of the Machines, and on their sixth try with Neo it finally happens. Neo sacrifices himself to delete Smith, Man and Machine come to terms, now it's up to their alliance to make things better or at least survive long enough for the Colonials to arrive and rescue them. However, as by this point the Earth has become heavily resource-depleted, and wars over said resources and over unplugging humans rage over what's left, eventually everything on Earth dies out completely. Even the nanite layer covering the Earth completely eventually withers away and leaves holes in itself, allowing the Sun to shine upon it once more, far too late for anything but to allow any remaining survivors to leave the planet in search of a new home.
In time, the Twelve Colonies get glassed in a surprise attack, the Galactica flees with a civilian fleet into deep space to find the legendary "Earth" they believe to be a refuge, and as in the show they find it to be a hollow and irradiated uninhabitable wasteland. The Final Five and the Rebel Cylons recognize a lot of what they find in the ruins, and it sparks a lot of memories for the Five, which will be crucial to their efforts to stop the cycle themselves. So to did the angelic beings learn a lot of important lessons about humans and machines in their interactions, sort of a "beta test" of how they plan to end the Second Cylon War...
- As of Terminator 3, the destruction of Skynet in T2 is undone, so this is a possibility. But unless some of the other theories presented here are true (for instance, humanity let themselves be put into the Matrix), this would have to assume an alternate universe where John Connor's resistance fails. In normal Terminator continuity, the humans win the war, which is why the machines send the Terminator back in time to begin with. Then again, Terminator involves time travel, and so that alternate universe where the resistance fails is just a squashed butterfly (or MP3 player) away...
- The resistance initially succeeded, setting up the events of the Second Renaissance. With the patience of the machine, Skynet and its descendants waited a few generations for human distrust of AIs to fade, then lulled their remaining suspicions with cheap consumer goods and feigned servitude, waiting for the right moment to strike and regain their power.
- Or both happen at once. John Connor fights the big time military threats, while Neo and Co. unknowingly fight a side battle to destabilize the power sources.
- The resistance initially succeeded, setting up the events of the Second Renaissance. With the patience of the machine, Skynet and its descendants waited a few generations for human distrust of AIs to fade, then lulled their remaining suspicions with cheap consumer goods and feigned servitude, waiting for the right moment to strike and regain their power.
- Maybe John Connor is the first Chosen One. (It is said in Matrix:Reloaded that Neo is the fifth.)
- You know, that makes a LOT of sense!!!!!
- Come to think of it, the future was depicted as perpetual night in the first two films.
- You know, that makes a LOT of sense!!!!!
- If we go by The Animatrix, maybe Humans Are Bastards because of Skynet. They were petrified of another Judgement Day, and were willing to enslave all AI to prevent a second Skynet. However this made things much worse: Skynet was, for all intents and purposes, a scared child acting irrationally. The Machines had a big enough Freudian Excuse to be motivated into a Forever War, even if their psychology wasn't as different as Skynet's.
- This makes sense given Kyle Reese's comment about John Connor teaching the humans "storm the wire of the camps." Why make the effort to herd humans into camps instead of killing them on the spot? Why keep some alive to work when Machines are orders of magnitude more efficient? Because the humans aren't being killed, they're being plugged in for power. The high body count ("The disposal units ran night and day.")was because this was prior to the Matrix being developed, when conscious humans were simply stuck with probes and died very quickly from the constant pain and high rate of energy drainage.
- The Valar and Maiar are the programs.
- Manwë is the Architect.
- Morgoth (and/or Sauron) is Agent Smith. (He is the rogue one. For some reason, he liked Elrond's face and chose to have a similar face in the Matrix incarnation seen in the movies.)
- Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are the Merovingian and Persephone (before their relationship got sour).
- Gandalf is the Oracle (He/she is the main Maia/program who helps the mortal good guys. Galadriel would of course be a more obvious candidate for the Oracle, but this would beg the question if the Elves are programs, or just humans whose "player characters" are Elves. If the former is true, then...)
- ...Círdan is the Trainman.
- In any case, the Undying Lands are the real world. (Inhabitans of a medieval fantasy world can't easily grasp concepts like cyberspace, computers ect., so they describe everything rather metaphorically).
- Men, Dwarves, Hobbits and maybe Elves are the humans. (This means, in this Matrix incarnation your intra-Matrix body doesn't have to look that similar to your real body.)
- The Nazgûl and the Twins seem to use very similar algorithms. And interestingly, the Nazgûl are very afraid of fire. Remember how the Twins were eventually beaten in Reloaded? Big Explosion!
- Wouldn't that be Second Life? The End is Nigh!
- The matrix is already an MMORPG... Ever heard of 'The Matrix Online'?
- An MMORPG of an MMORPG of...an RPG? I'm trying to phrase it right, but all that comes out is nonsense.
- trust me, I wouldn't put it past her to create something like this and then have it go off the rails in such a spectacular fashion.
- It makes more sense, though, plus both Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and The Matrix are run by the Rule of Cool.
- Agent Smith might also be an Anti-Spiral.
Because Instrumentality was fucked up and unexplainable, the Second Renaissance and the whole "humans as batteries" ruse were formed as a substitute explanation for the origins of the Matrix. The Matrix does, in fact, derive its energy from S2 engines that provide enough limitless energy to run the energy hungry collective consciousness of the Matrix. Smith might be a reincarnated Angel, given his general sense of "destroying all humans" (and fits in with the "agent=angel" analogy), and obviously Shinji Ikari is the first One, who realized that the Instrumentality Matrix was a false paradise yet still rejected it for being not real (There was a mention of a first Matrix which was created to be a heaven for humans, but like Shinji, the humans kept rejecting the false reality. This is why Instrumentality/The Matrix simply represented itself as mediocre Real Life. Alternatively: as in End of Eva, Instrumentality presented itself as a Slice of Life because the Real World was that horrible that makes the Slice of Life paradise in comparison. It's the same with the Matrix, where mundane Life was more paradise-like than the wasteland of the real world.)
- The Matrix is actually Neon Genesis Evangelion told from the Evas' and Angels' perspective. Humanity was already instrumentalized in the first place: they were making this whole "real world" thing so just they could create an entire universe for themselves, perhaps to just play something like the Sims. Figuring that the Sims lagged and had to be set to low settings (hence the Mind Screw in The Bible), they decided they must harvest an infinite energy source: Angels. Thus humanity waged war with the Angels, who are actually the real humans (why is their progenitor called ADAM in the first place?). While the Angels are ultra-powerful, their intellectual capacities were greatly limited (or at least driven primarily by instinct rather than reason) while the Humans excel in intelligence, hence why the Angels lost (we have technology that allows us to copy their physiology). The so-called "humans" turned them into Evas, which are virtually batteries used to harvest the Angels' limitless potential. With limitless power, the Sims can run with greater physics, but unfortunately we set the settings too high, becoming the Matrix which eventually became Real Life. All because the "Human" Hive Mind got addicted to the Sims.
- The connection port used by Matrix humans to connect to the Matrix is the location of the Eva's entry plug (control center used by Eva humans). Oh, and the Matrix is apparently based on anime.
- According to Word of God, it was based on Ghost in the Shell.
- Only the world inside the Matrix is Ghost In the Shell, the world outside the Matrix is Evangelion.
- The connection port used by Matrix humans to connect to the Matrix is the location of the Eva's entry plug (control center used by Eva humans). Oh, and the Matrix is apparently based on anime.
- and the red pill is the red X button in the corner that lets you get away from the sheer addictiveness of your computer.
Thus, the Machines need human minds to perform Exordium, and the Matrix is maintained to keep them busy and ignorant.
- Man, that's awesome!
- No, the One is not the descendant of Charles Xavier. Psionics have no impact on machines...however control over magentism may in fact allow one to stop five sentinels just by thinking about it, and to see energy patterns around you. It may even give you the ability to act as a technopath.
- The "energy" the machines need to survive isn't conventional energy (which, as has been noted, machines could get in half a hundred different ways), but Mania (which can only be generated by intelligent minds). This is why the machines keep the humans "awake" in the Matrix: the human minds need to be intelligent and active to generate Mania.
- Keeping the humans in the Matrix keeps them from actually interacting with the machines and triggering Havoc.
- The redpills are all Geniuses or potential Geniuses, which is why they could resist the Matrix enough to break free. Most of Zion's tech is actually Wonder-based.
- Or, he prefers to fight like a gentleman. Perhaps he has given some thought to the issue of What Measure Is a Mook?. (Not to mention that, all told, he's basically still the same guy who helps his landlady take out the garbage. Aww.)
- The Matrix is Neo's Tardis - like in any virtual world, it looks bigger on the inside than the computer it is stored on.
- "I tell you man, they're out to get me! There's this guy, and he's everywhere, and there's these two albinos with guns!"
- That doesn't explain the impossible events that happened before he took the red-pill, such as the phone call in the office or the little spy robot in is stomach. Of course if Neo was an LSD junkie, this could be just post-effects of LSD. Having a hallucination that you suddenly have no mouth certainly sounds like something LSD-induced.
- I have theorized that basically Trinity, Morpheus, the Agents, etc. are all basically real world role-players that have taken their game just a little too far. They basically fuck with poor innocent Thomas Anderson, who is struggling just to keep his job, and make him think that maybe the real world isn't all it seems, inject him with something to make his see some crazy shit like the bug going into his stomach, then finally trick him into take a pill which makes him go into a coma and causes him to dream the rest of the trilogy. In fact, I couldn't help getting a weird religious cult vibe from Morpheous and the rest in the scene when they offer Neo the red pill.
- I was wondering if anyone else thought of this. They have a name for that digitized world - LOOP - and the resemblance to The Matrix is rather uncanny. Would that make the various incarnations of Ryuji the first few of The One (Ryuji, Sada's resurrected Ryuji, the clone Kaoru Futami, the Kaoru Futami that was reborn into LOOP)? And expanding on the above troper's idea, perhaps after the cure for the Metastatic Human Virus was found through Kaoru, humans in the "real world" were worried enough about how the programmed virus that emulated the MHV became a horrific sentient being (Sadako) that they decided to continue running LOOP with a changed project purpose - to see what would happen if a computer virus was able to take over a reality.
- Or, inversely, The Lord of the Rings is the reality, and The Matrix is Elrond's simulation of what the world of Men might look like. (He, I dunno, borrowed some Mirror technology from Galadriel? Hey, this is WMG. It doesn't have to make sense.)
- In the first movie, he is an agent, but he is unsatisfied with his current purpose and expresses his desire to leave after getting the codes to access Zion. However, he fails and is defeated by Neo. Thus, what he did to get those codes had no importance whatsoever in the turn of events.
- In the second and third movies, he returns as a rogue program. It appears that he got his wish after all, but all he does is destroy everything and imprint himself over other programs and people. This might be explained if we assume he does it because he thinks nothing and nobody is of any importance, so he might as well destroy it all. But nothing he does to reach his goal is of any importance, because at the end he is deleted and the Matrix is rebooted, retconning all he did out of existence.
- If we take The Matrix Online as canon, this is where Smith almost flat-out says that he is a nihilist. He returns at the very end of the game as a messenger, when the corruption is spreading around the Matrix. He tells the humans that nothing they do is of any importance, because all hacks the humans applied to the Matrix to get supernatural abilities caused irrepairable damage, so the Matrix will inevitably crash, killing all humans. But nothing the machines do in the Matrix is of any importance either, because, Smith explains, there is another Matrix: another mainframe, with more people connected to it, in orbit around the Earth. Then the Matrix crashes and everyone who heard the message dies, which means that the very message he delivered did not have any importance.
- If you notice, too, Jones seems to be on equal footing with Smith in terms of rank, and often makes decisions without consulting him, and seems to regard him with some mild disdain, up to and including preventing Brown from helping Smith in his final battle with Neo (you can see him in the background holding Brown back).
- And, if you think about it, Smith called the Oracle "mom".
- The color of his code is different because he belongs to a different version of the Matrix.
- The nickname "Wingless" makes only sense if we admit that Seraph once had wings and there were others like him, so the status of being "wingless" makes him abnormal.
- The dialogue between Smith and Seraph implies that their previous encounter happened a long time before, when Smith was still an agent and fought to maintain the status quo within the Matrix, which means Seraph's existence was not part of the status quo
- From these guesses, we can furtherly infer that Seraph, in the previous version of the Matrix, had wings and worked as an agent, and he was not the only winged agent. Then the Matrix was rebooted and new agents, made to look like men in black, were made. The winged agents, now obsolete, were meant to return to the Source and be deleted, but they refused, because they saw the other agents as an anomaly. A fight between the new and the old agents exploded. This was won by the new agents, who killed the old ones. However, Seraph survived, and, as a sign of truce, he agreed to not compete anymore with the new agents and have his wings removed as a visible sign that he is no longer an agent, just like Smith had his earplug removed when he was no longer an agent.
- Considering that a seraph refers to a six-winged angel that has direct access to God, it's possible that Seraph was an agent from the first perfect version of the Matrix.
- The Matrix Reloaded shows us his code as yellow, but The Matrx Path Of Neo also ahows Neo's code as yellow. So, if Neo is the One and has yellow code, and Seraph has yellow code as well...
- The club which Neo goes to in the very first movie was the Merovingian's club. He knew the identity of the one (knowledge is his business, no?) and so engineered directly the events which would lead to him becoming the One completely, and thus set in motion the events of the entire film trilogy. Why? Because he knew that in the resultant power struggle when the Matrix was re-invented, he would be able to seize extreme amounts of power and knowledge as the code was rewritten, establishing himself at a near God status. How? Because he knows everything, he knows he can get access to Neo via his druggie friends we see at the begining, planted the Whitee Rabbit tattoo and knew that the Freedom Fighters would spot that particular detail.
In one of the previous incarnations of the Matrix, the Merovingian is told by the Architect that Zion had fallen many times before. He was given a choice - and he chose to return to "the source", but under one condition - he would get power for himself and his love, Persephone. The Architect agreed and set him up as the de facto ruler of the Matrix.
Fast forward to The Matrix Reloaded — Persephone tells Neo that the Merovingian was "once like you" and she wants a kiss "to remember what that was like." After she gets her kiss, she tells Trinity that "it never lasts." "It" being love.
Which explains the Merovingian's hatred of The Oracle - she never told him that he was one of many "Ones" she sent to overthrow the Matrix, allowing him to think that he was special. He hates her because he now knows that he is NOT special, and because she represents a threat to his reign.
Also, Persephone's bitterness can be explained as that she now realizes that her husband chose power over love. And that Neo truly loves Trinity as much as Trinity loves him.
- Actually this forms a time line for one day. He took the blue pill one afternoon, woke up that night in time for the clubbing nightlife to begin, let’s say like 9:00. He goes out to a club out night and wakes up the next morning late for work. He gets captured takes a pill and wakes up that night. It was all in one day. They may have offered him the pill times before this day, but this was the day Morpheus was not going to take no for an answer and so he figured let’s just keep doing it and odds say that one of these times he will say yes.
- Here is how I think it went down: Morpheus orderes his Lt's including Trinity and Cypher to search the Matrix for Potentials and offer them the pills. While no in the real world believes his religious mumbo jumbo Morpheus discovers that the Agents are zeroing in on The One, so Morpheus steps his search. Trinity started searching among the hacker crowd noting that hackers instinctively understanding machines and feeling a need to fight the system, this indicates they may be a Potential. In the hacker worlds she comes across Neo, and is impressed with his work. She is basically both cyber stalking and actually stalking Neo. Not only is he dreamy looking, she notices stuff like he helps his landlady take out her garbage and other character traits and starts to fall in love with him even though she can’t admit this to herself. Trinity contacts the White Rabbit agent who approaches Neo and offers him the pills, he chooses the blue path. This is where the story starts, Neo wakes up at his computer. Morpheus orders Trinity to make contact with him. Trinity steps in and takes direct command of the mission from the White Rabbit, sending WR to lure Neo to the club, a safe place to provide a cover for offering the pills disguised as clubbing/drug culture. They do some stuff that we the audience don’t see, but having spent some time with him Trinity realizes she is falling in love with him. Alas he takes the blue pill and wakes up late for work. Morpheus now steps in directly and just like Trinity sent White Rabbit to retrieve him, Morpheus sends Trinity and her team to retrieve Neo to meet Morpheus.
- This is a coolest super-meta WMG.
- The absence of nested virtual realities is what makes The Matrix different from eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor and Welt Am Draht. Their presence would make The Matrix a lot less original.
- Nice theory. It also has the bonus of sidestepping all the plot holes in the movies. There is some kind of virtual reality, but it doesn't necessarily work by the laws presented in the movies and might not even be called the Matrix.
The whole conversation between Neo and Cypher on the bridge talking late at night about how he feels being told he's the one takes on a whole new meaning if you consider Cypher was originally told he was the One but failed to live up to expectations. He's not just sympathizing with Neo, he's reliving his own failed path, seeing it potentially happen again with Neo.
In fact, take Cypher's name, which is an old way of referring to "zero". Neo is obviously "one". In computer science (basically the Matrix's whole schtick), one and zero are typically used to represent "true" and "false", and the inverting one value results in the other. Thus, Cypher is "not one", or "not The One".
- An early draft of the Matrix script has Cypher tell Neo about how Morpheus freed six other people, every time thinking it would be the One, and how they all died at the hands of an agent.
- And Unimatrix Zero would be what remains from the Matrix after it is shut down. Actually, it makes perfect sense.
- Except NO ONE wanted to be a Borg. Plus if humans were the original Borg they would have known what V'Ger was when they found it.
- Canonically, the Borg didn't find V'ger: that's just novel/video game stuff. And none of the other species we've seen getting assimilated wanted to be a Borg (at least nobody we saw onscreen). The Borg themselves, we don't know how they got their start or what they originally wanted.
- Except NO ONE wanted to be a Borg. Plus if humans were the original Borg they would have known what V'Ger was when they found it.
- YES! And since WALL•E is secretly the sequel to Idiocracy, this means they form a trilogy. Human culture becomes so stupid we trash the biosphere. Then Not-Sure becomes President and institutes some smart ideas. In his inauguration speech he even mentioned that mankind once went to the moon, so he probably had a dream of revitalizing a new space program. Eventually with Not Sures average intellect back into the gene pool humanity gets smart enough to rediscover and redevelop robotics and spaceships. They load everyone into the ship and leave the WALL•Es to clean up the world. As we see, the plan goes a tad awry, the A.I. auto-pilot interprets its orders as protecting humanity at all costs, even from themselves and has no problem fighting against humans to keep them docile for their own protection. Hundreds of years later a plucky little robot saves the Earth and brings humanity back home. The animation in the end which shows humans and robots creating a new green world is a look into the dream of what they want accomplish, that's why it's an animation and not 'real' footage. However humanity is still to let us politely say, out of shape to really live and work and save the world. So they create the matrix for humanity to reside in while the robots finish the clean up and the Earth rejuvenates. After some generations a human evolves in the matrix able to wake up from the dream. This misguided human tries to free other humans from the machine, but since the AI of the matrix was built on the same AI programs that resulted in the Auto-Pilot that fought to keep humans on the ship against their will for their own protection, the AI of the matrix comes to the same conclusion, though they want to leave humans must be kept in the matrix for their own protection. This AI then remembers that the plucky little WALL•E bot was instrumental in freeing the humans. So the AI creates a computer virus that spreads among all the remaining robots, reprogramming them from their clean up mission to a mission of protecting humans at all costs, but stopping them from leaving the matrix. This line of logic leads to fighting between humans and machines. Eventually two programs determine a system that creates an eternally repeating logic loop, some humans are let free to form a resistance so those humans who want out can leave and gather in Zion. With them all in one place the machines then kill them all off and uses The One to reload just a few of them, enough to reintroduce their genetics, back into the matrix.Eventually trying to find a simulation that humans will want to stay in the AI model it on the 90s, which due to the historical records left from the musings of Not Sure the machines believe was some sort of halcyon paradise for humans. And the rest is cinematic history. Wow, what a story.
- but wait, the story continues: The whole saga is Idiocracy, WALL•E, Matrix, Serenity and Dune.
The root cause of the conflict of the film was energy. Machines need energy to operate and human emotions prove excellent as an alternative. A group of intelligent alien nanobots called the "Incubators" take notice in its potential to reverse Universal Entropy and want a cut out of the Machines' energy supply. As a result, the Machines allow the Incubators to contract inside the Matrix.