The Matrix
Unfortunately, the Wachowski brothers sequels for The Matrix switched the term for the franchise from 'cool' to 'what?'. With so much dialogue involving choice, philosophy and machines, it was easy for one to lose interest.
But was their something deeper that we just weren't picking up?
Understanding The Matrix... Sequels
Since we are approaching the weekend I like to do a couple updates on cool and interesting stuff that recently has hit the net. One such thing is "The Matrix Explained," a collection of essays that take a deeper-than-deep look into both sequels for The Matrix.
The essays looks at various aspects to each film and points out that we may have overlooked a lot of the imagery that was presented to us.
The Oracle
ARCHITECT: If I am the Father of the Matrix, then she would undoubtedly be its Mother.
NEO: The Oracle.
Those two lines sum up a tremendous amount of the story. But what exactly is the Oracle the mother of? The Architect designed a perfect Matrix in versions 1.0 and 2.0, and both failed! He couldn't completely capture what it was to be human. It took another program to do that, one "less bound by the parameters of perfection." The answer came from an "intuitive" program. The Oracle. The part she contributed that he could not was Neo.
Very briefly, I want to detour to stamp out the idea that the Oracle is not the Mother. [Ed: This also has gone away since the time this essay was written. But back then, it was extremely common for people to put forth crazy ideas about this Mother business.] This is as much a wrong interpretation as the Matrix-in-a-Matrix theory is. Mostly, people want to believe that Persephone is the Mother. There are some good reasons why the Oracle is a better choice than Persephone. We can start with her name. The Wachowskis do not pick names at random. They didn't choose the name "Neo" by accident, and they surely did not choose the name "Persephone" just because it sounds neat. Persephone is not a mother figure in mythology. Not coincidentally, she is nothing like a mother figure in the movie either. I am not saying Persephone is an unimportant character, but she is definitely not the Mother. The Oracle on the other hand, portrayed so well by the late Gloria Foster, is every bit the mother figure. She gives Neo fresh-baked cookies when he first meets her, for Pete's sake. Who the else gives you fresh baked cookies other than your mother! OK, detour over.
Story arc
Here is a general arc summary so far:
01 is born.
01 wants to coexist with humanity, and offers such. This plays with Genesis perfectly. Remember, 01 is God. (I think that's profound.) Here's how Genesis gets into it, in the classical interpretation: there is a "simple good" and a "complex good" as described by C. S. Lewis. The simple good would be for humans to accept what God tells them and live accordingly. The complex good is that humans reject God, learn why they were wrong, and then come back to God in the end. The highlight is that complex good is more good than simple good. Nothing's more human than that, if you ask me. You have to disobey to produce the goodest good that comes from free choice.
Humanity rejects 01's offer of coexistence -- i.e., the complex cycle begins.
Humanity in its hubris thinks it can wipe out God by blackening the sky. Among metaphors in contemporary literature and film, there are few that can match this one for elegance and meaning. The sky is Heaven, and so this is an assault upon Heaven. Wow.
The assault on Heaven fails, and humanity is cast into the pit. Okay, metaphors aside, the humans lose a war against the machines and are subjugated.
Several iterations of the Matrix are tried, and finally one is devised that allows humans to grow (so they won't reject it). In large part, the machines don't understand the growth aspect of the Matrix and want to control it, to make the humans comply.
The Oracle, who helped design Matrix 3.0, ruminates on her creation for a while and realizes that it will eventually lead to humans that can transcend the Matrix. (In heroic fashion, whomever transcends the Matrix can bring that gift back to society and they all benefit from it.) She sees as well that this transcendence is necessary if machines are to evolve at all. In the complicated relationship between man and machine, she sees that humanity's evolution benefits both sides, and will help bring about machine evolution.
Neo 1.0 arrives on the scene, chooses rebirth for Zion, and the cycle begins again.
Neo 6.0 arrives on the scene, chooses Trinity, and begins the Revolution (i.e., the transition to a new world order). The choice is significant because trinity equals godhood. This is one of the most complex, meaningful themes I have ever encountered in a work of fiction. Humanity achieved "simple" godhood by creating beings in its own image. It will achieve "complex" godhood by reuniting with its estranged children. At the same time, so will machines.
The essays go on forever and take a hard look at just about every scene and every major character encountered in the films and finds a way to tie in either some type of abstract imagery or hard mythology.
If you are a fan of The Matrix films or just dig the mythology behind them, head over to 'The Matrix Explained'.
'Neo.... wake up Neo.'
Stay tuned for updates.
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