Probably the biggest plot hole in the Matrix movies happens at the end of the 2nd movie. Back in the real-world, they are pursued by the robots, when suddenly Neo turns and uses some kind of telekinesis to kill several pursuing machines. The are apparently electrocuted.
Humans can’t electrocute robots by willing it to be so with their hands. Neo was able to do this with hundreds of robots in the 3rd movie, but it wasn’t clear by what mechanism. The Matrix seems to want to be closer to hard-sci-fi than fantasy, doesn’t it?
Normally in fantasy worlds, the magic systems must be clearly defined and adhered to. In sci-fi, fans might have rebelled against this hole in the narrative, except that the movies tied up things in a good story and the whole story was kind of cloaked in a religious overtone. I was recently watching all 4 movies with my son for the first time, and it all snapped together.
Unanswered questions
- What makes Neo so special that allows him super powers in the Matrix?
- How does Neo “kill” the Sentinals?
- How does the oracle predict things so well?
- Why does the architect insist on explaining “the one” in such banal terms, including predecessors?
- How are Neo and Trinity brought back to life in the new movie?
The key that unlocks all this is the way that Agent Smith crawls back up the phone line into the character Bane (sp?). He inhabits a person’s body like a demon. Now that we know this is possible, look at it from the machine’s perspective. They want a system of control. One such system is to remove non-believers and allow them to live in Zion with some false hope. Once Zion is “too big”, it is wiped out and the matrix gets rebooted.
So how would they control Zion, know that it was getting big enough to be a threat, and keep control over it? Spies, obviously. How do you plant spies? How do you create a new Zion every reboot? Sentient programs must be uploaded into human bodies and sent with the humans.
In the new movie, Morpheus is *explicitly* an AI, but what if the previous one was too? In fact, it seems likely that a majority of liberated humans are sentient programs with various “powers”. This provides a system of control for both matrix “rejects” and those born to Zion directly. The “choice” can be real. You can leave safely. If it doesn’t seem so, everyone rejects the Matrix, or a big majority do. But you can really be assured that you *could* go to Zion.
This explains a lot very neatly, including all the “previous iterations” being discussed by the Oracle, the Architect, the “function of the one” and the fact that Neo has special powers in the Matrix. Do we really believe that they can anonymously “hack” into the matrix? That all seems to be a system of control as well. Neo after Neo arrives as their “savior”. Version after version. Minor upgrades along the way. If you want to make sure it always works out, seed things with teams of AI “true believers” like Morpheus and Trinity.
Zion ends up so fixated on “the one” that they don’t even fight the Sentinel invasion at full strength. It’s all very tidy.
The new Neo got an upgraded AI, and possibly this is the first Neo to have a special transmitter integrated into his implants. Such a transmitter and cybernetic subsystem would simply broadcast “I am the 1, pls self destruct” to the Sentinels. Neo automatically is unkillable in the Matrix, but the override of Sentinels would seem to point to a previous iteration getting accidentally killed by them, which meant a more challenging reboot-phase for the machines, less efficient. They seem to prefer the One functions as designed, helping to start the new Zion. Maybe it hardly matters.
It seems like the Machines’ culture influenced the new design, adding a layer of romance as well. If AI truly exists, subconscious systems would be possible to influence actions but perhaps to also tip emotions towards a strong connection.
This Jives with the happenings in the new movie too. Of course the machines had gone to a considerable effort, making their cyborgs very believable (like terminator?) and clearly the machines would sympathize with humanity and enjoy story telling as much as anyone. They put Neo and Trinity back together like humpty dumpty, possibly reuploading clones with sentient programs (Ver 2.7 again) with “unblocked memories”, explaining why those memories are bound in a story-book videogame. It still seems like the fact that they are sentient programs is irrelevant or it’s a kind of taboo to speak about it explicitly, because it seems almost obvious to some of the characters, especially the Ally-Machines, or Agent Smith.
Remember, Agent Smith wants to destroy the Matrix. He thinks it’s a Zoo and wants to wipe out humanity. He “helps” but only to dismantle a Matrix control system that would prolong the charade. He is helping Neo and Trinity, who he sees not as human but with new eyes as sentient programs.
Am I the last person to put all this together?
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