Notes about The Matrix

Updated: 2005-01-12
Created: 2003-12-02

The Matrix is a complex story with several aims; it seems at the same time a good story to tell, a visually engaging epic plus love story designed to sell well, a vehicle for advanced philosophical concepts, a divertissement of the authors, a puzzle to make people think, and much more.

The sell well aspect sometimes dominates; for example it seems pretty obvious that it was supposed to have two parts only, but the second part was split in two, leaving in a lot of otherwise redundant special effects footage, simply to get people to buy three tickets instead of two. Probably the second half of the story would feel as tight and exciting as the first if it was edited down to a single instalment.

As to to the messages, the authors have declared that few details in the various movies are unintentional, but I think that this does not mean they have to be thoroughly consistent. Many parts of the story are unexplained, and several parts are overloaded with possible interpretations. This is fine, it's story telling, and not a philosophical treatise.

• Neo is the entity that resolves the systemic anomaly in the Matrix, and this kind of program in computer jargon is called a debugger. That is why he has the ability to alter the reality of the Matrix, by altering the code that runs it. When he makes walls move around, he is debugging; as the Oracle says in M2, in the Matrix a bird is program, a tree is a program too, and so on.
• As a debugger, Neo saves the virtual life of Trinity in M2 by debugging the bullet and wounds out of her.
• After dying towards the end of M1, Mister Anderson becomes the One, as the Oracle had predicted. Or perhaps it just happens that her candy caused his mind code to be rebooted with an update, which allows him to be the debugger of the Matrix. However, while in M2 she gives the red candy to Neo, he does not seem to eat it, and in M3 he refuses it.
• There seems to be some kind of logic in the wearing of dark glasses. Outside the Matrix nobody wears them; inside the Matrix as a rule rebels and agents wear them, even in improbable situations. In M2 Neo takes them off when talking with the Oracle, but then puts them on when Agent Smith arrives.
• In M2, the Oracle tells Neo that he has achieved the vision without time, and that he has already decided to save Trinity (take the left door) and that he now has to understand why. The why is love, as he discovers at the end when he talks with Trinity as she is dying.
• The vision without time is the contemplation of code. Code is without time, it's only its execution that happens in time. By looking at code you can see the purpose of the program, and that is fixed. That's why the Merovingian in M2 says that free choice is an illusion, and when he sends candy to a woman, the candy being a patch to her code, her behaviour is determined.
• The woman whom the Merovingian reprograms with the cake which is a program is not herself a program from the machine world, because her code appears in green not yellow.
• Scenes in The Matrix usually have a greenish tint, in Zion they tend to be bluish, and in the machine world they may be yellowish.

• Perhaps the most important scene in the trilogy happens in M2, when the metal bit that holds up the bridge collapses and one guy dies before he can warn the crew of the Vigilant, and then these die and Trinity has to enter the Matrix to stop the emergency power system. This happens just about after there is a discussion by Morpheus about chance and fate.

  The significance of this event is that it happens outside the Matrix, but results in a chain of events that will bring Trinity almost to death in it, exactly as Neo has foreseen in his nightmare.

  It is concerning the nightmare that the Oracle says to Neo that he has achieved the vision without time. Now the important issue is that a random event outside the Matrix is part of a causal chain that results in events inside the Matrix that Neo can foresee; consider the implications.

• In M2 Neo before boarding the ship is given a spoon, and he reacts by saying that he knows what it means. The reference seems to be to the spoon being bent in M1, when Neo asks There is no spoon? and the Kid replies It is not the spoon that bends. It is only yourself.. It might be either a reference to them being still inside a virtual reality, or to his need to bend with faith.
• In M1, Agent Smith says that humans are like a virus. After merging with Neo he becomes a virus; also, Neo becomes able to see machine stuff.
• When the purpose of Agent Smith is accomplished, to end Neo's life, he dies. Interestingly he disappears in light, and this seems to indicate that he has returned to the Source, which is what all programs that no longer have a purpose must do, as the Oracle said to Neo in M2.
• Program updates in the Matrix are communicated either with candy (e.g. the blue and red pills, the candies and cookies of the Oracle) or with kisses, like the kiss between Persephone and Neo in M2. It is interesting that the last thing Trinity asks of Neo before she dies is to kiss him. This might mean that Trinity saves a backup of herself in that kiss.
• In M3, the Oracle offers Neo a red candy, and he refuses it. But he had accepted it both in M1 and M2, even if in M2 he takes it but does not eat it.
• In M3, the Oracle is making cookies with Sati, and then gives them to her when he send her off with Seraph.
• Seraph says that his purpose is to protect which matters most and almost immediately thereafter the Oracle says that what matters most is the future, and it is a future together.
• The two typical phrases of the Oracle are every beginning comes from choice and every beginning has an end.
• In M3, when Neo is blinded, he becomes able to see the machines, but he can't see Trinity.
• When Neo sees the machine code after becoming blind, it is in yellow, but that's about the only difference with the green machine code of the Matrix, which supports the idea that in both cases he is playing in a virtual reality. When in the Matrix Neo is not blind, and he can still see the yellow code.
• Like many I wonder why after he chooses the left door in M2, Neo flies out of that door that collapses and is followed by flame, that then engulfs and destroys the special floor 101. It might be just a special effect, or it might be the flame of love.
• At the end of M2, after he has left the source, saved Trinity and unhooked from the Matrix, and having even left the ship, Neo says Something has changed and then he is able to stop the pursuing sentinels. Then he collapses and amazingly finds himself inside a virtual reality that is neither the Matrix nor the machine world, but a waystation between them. He is in that virtual reality without being hooked up to any cables.
  Of course machines like the sentinels can communicate with each other via radio, just like humans can enter the Matrix over a radio link to the machine city, but they need to be hooked up to a radio transmitter. Neo seems able to do this without beeing hooked up, which either means that not only he carries some code, as the Architect says, but also some special hardware, or he does not need any because it is all a virtual reality.
• In M2, when Neo is in the Matrix, he meets Seraph, and he notices that Seraph is in yellow and thus he is a program from the machine world. He sees the yellow even if he is not blind yet, but he sees it exactly in the same way as after becoming blind outside the Matrix in M3.
• That Seraph is in yellow too means that he is not just a program; everything is a program in the Matrix. But only programs from the machine world like agents are in yellow. Probably, also given his abilities, Seraph is an agent, just not an agent of the Architect.
• In M3, when Neo and Trinity are flying towards 01, he uses his vision of the yellow machine world to clear the path of sentinels, but at some point the flow of yellow is so strong that it overwhelms him physically. In other words, it has effects in what to Neo and Trinity is reality.
• In M1 the Oracle mentions that Trinity fancies Neo as he is cute, but he is not too bright as he has not realized it. However Trinity fancies Neo in real life. This probably means that either the Oracle has access to reality, because it is another virtual reality, or that she has access to the mind of Neo and Trinity when they are uploaded in the Matrix.
• If the Merovingian is the master of Hell, then he is the master of lies, and the denier of hope and love. Thus his argument that there is no choice, only purpose. But then he is a program, and programs have no choice but to execute until they accomplish their purpose.
• If Neo is like Christ (for the computers), after going to Limbo (the Mobil station) Neo has then to ascend to the city of God, which then is Machine City, where indeed the Source, that is Deus-ex-Machina, is found.
• The Deus-ex-Machina is also called the Source. In computer jargon, executable programs are compiled from the source code, which is the master code from which binary code is created. In a sense Neo achieves the goal to open source programs, making them free from a proprietary purpose. Open source then has a chance.
• Neo is variously described as the same as Agent Smith or its opposite. Neo is the one, while Agent Smith is the many. Also, Neo is the one, and in binary Agent Smith is zero, as he says that the purpose of life is death.
• The end of M3 features three programs, one of which is Sati, who is now free. Sati is the example of a program that is now allowed to be free of purpose. That the end is about programs show how much the trilogy is about freedom for programs. Note also that the Architect and the Oracle also are still there, even if they no longer have a purpose as the Matrix has been stabilized and future is now safe.
• The end of M3 shows the body of Neo being carted away, and in the very last scene the Oracle says that Neo will probably come back, and Sati makes the sunset for him, not for his memory. When Sati makes the sun rise, she does so out of love for Neo, and without purpose.
• When Neo is in the Limbo, which connects the Matrix and the Machine City, he sees the Machine City outside the Matrix as the place where he must go.
• The communication with the Matrix computers seems to be happening via wireless; the various Zion ships sometimes have to go nearer the surface to broadcast; this the topic indeed of one of Neo's question to the Oracle in M3.
• In M1 the purpose of Agent Smith is to find the codes to the Zion mainframe, so he can return to the machine world, but after merging with Neo his purpose seems to become destroying Neo and everything else.
• The Architect says that Neo must go back to the Source also to ensure that the code he carries is harvested back in it, while at the same time shaking his head over Neo's humanity. This acknowledges that Neo is human, but part machine too; after all the previous Neos look exactly like him, and one can imagine that it is always the same code. But then the sixth Neo defies its purpose, to rebalance the equation, and chooses the left door.
• As Neo is both human and machine, the love of Trinity for him, and viceversa, means that machines can also feel love and be loved by humans.
• As Agent Smith becomes both machine and human, his hate for Neo means that machines can also feel emotions for humans.
• The Oracle says that the Architect cannot see beyond any choice, and the Architect disdains both choice and love, as they defy purpose. Neo defies its own purpose by going thru the left door, thus freeing both his human side and his machine side via choice and love.
• The Oracle is portrayed as an Aboriginal woman. The australian aborigines think that the world was created in Dream Time.
• Matrix means womb in Latin. This may be a reference to both the wombs in which human bodies are stored, and it being a womb designed to give birth to a new world.
• Zero and one are hinted at in various ways. Neo is an anagram of one, Zion of course means both zero and one, the password used in the crack is Z10N0101, the machine city is called 01 in the Animatrix.
• The Revolutions are the human and the machine ones. The human revolution is to be freed from the lack of choice, and the machine revolution is to be free from the necessity of purpose.
• For some reason, Agent Smith always refers to Neo as Mister Anderson, even if the latter insists his name is Neo.
• In M1, Neo removes his earpiece when having his chat with Morpheus.
• Agent Smith in M2 sends Neo his earpiece to indicate he is now his own agent, after the two merged.
• When Neo has to choose the left or the right door, he chooses the left door to save Trinity but lose Zion; but then he goes to the Source in the Machine City, Trinity follows him and then she dies, but Zion is saved, which is what would have happened had he chosen the right door. But the all important difference is that the choice to follow him that leads to her death is hers, not his. Both his choice of the left door, and her choice to enter the Matrix to shut down the emergency power system for him, are acts of love.
• At the end of the conversation between the Architect and Neo, the Architect assures Neo that they won't meet again. But they do, when Neo meets Deus-ex-Machina in Machine City, which proves the point by the Oracle that the Architect cannot see past any choices.
• Someone has pointed out that Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is central to the film, and a hollowed out copy of the book is used as the container for Thomas (the unbeliever) Anderson's illegal hacked software.
• A lot of the inspiration for the Matrix movies seems to come as well from St. Augustine's City of Heaven and the Confessions, where is discusses a lot the concept of choice and God and time.
• There is probably some very strong hint of Kabbalah here, as the Architect can be seen as Eir Anpin (the Maker), the Oracle as the Sekhinah (the Holy Ghost), and Deus-ex-Machina as the En Soth (the Father). The name of the ship that brings Neo to the Machine City is indeed Logos. Also, the name of Zion for the human city is not random.