May 18th, 2003, 08:50 AM
SPOILER
The Matrix is about layers of complexity, layers of choice. Here is what I think is truly behind the Matrix.
Zion is not a free city. It is another part of the Matrix. Our heroes in the first and second movies have never really left the Matrix. They just think they did. You can see this in the second movie when Neo holds up his hand and stops the sentinels after stating, "Something's different." He has finally awoken to the fact that "the real world", is not actually the real world after all. It is yet another computer simulation.
The old man, the architect, gave it away when he said that human existence was all about choice. Free will, in other words. The machines wanted to develop a way to control the humans, so they developed a system that gave humans the choice to be enslaved. As the architect pointed out, 99.9% of all humans accepted the choice. However, anomalies arose... 0.1% of humans didn't accept the choice of conforming to the Matrix. As the Oracle stated, the Matrix is simply one system built using a bunch of other systems. So, in order to control the 0.1% anomalies who rebel against the system, the architect reveals that they developed another control system - that is, the control system of "The One."
Also the architect states that the mathematical anomaly for "the One" is a program that they use to control. So essentially "The One" is a program in the simulation.
There were six "The One" predecessors before Neo. The architect matter of factly states this, and the French Merryl Lynch guy confirms it earlier in the movie when he repeatedly states that "your predecessors didn't kill me, and you won't either."
"The One" control system was designed to eliminate the 0.1% anomaly of all humans who choose not to accept the Matrix. How does the Matrix eliminate the 0.1% anomaly? - By providing them with another choice, the choice to live or the choice to die.
The architect points out that "The One" chooses thirty two people and then they all go and basically repopulate Zion. "The One" is set up to force a choice to accept going to Zion and repopulating it. Why? Because the machines destroy the existing Zion, and if "The One" doesn't go repopulate, then the human race will be extinct. So, The One for six straight times has chosen to "save" the human race. But, what The Ones have really chosen is continued bondage to the machines. They have bought into the whole control system.
Unfortunately, what the makers of the Matrix can't control is the fact that of the 0.1% anomaly from the original choice, there is yet another 0.1% anomaly. So, the entire system that the architect has built (the original Matrix plus the Zion Matrix) accounts for the choices that 99.99% of all humans will make. There is still an anomaly of .01%.
Why is there an anomaly? - Because of choice. Choice is what Neo is presented with when he stands before the architect. Does Neo save the existence of the human race and repopulate Zion? Or, does Neo choose to save his love Trinity? 99.99% of all people won't ever make that choice (either through not having the chance or through not making it), but Neo does.
This is why he realizes that something is different in the "real world." This is why he can stop the machines, the sentinels. Because it is just another system. And as we learned in the first movie, you are bound within the rules of the system only as long as you don't realize that you can bend or break them.
This is why the little orphan boy who bent the spoons in the first movie sends Neo a spoon message in the second movie. It is to remind Neo that it is not the spoon who bends, but himself. He must bend to see through what the Matrix truly is.
The Matrix is about choice.
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