The Matrix: Revealed

A spoiler-filled exploration of my problems with Revolutions, and my explanation of the ending.

If you’re reading this I assume you’ve seen the film, or don’t care if you find out what happens before seeing it.

My Big Problems

I’ve stated in my review that the biggest problem I have with Revolutions is that it strays from the people we care about for too much of the movie. For most of the film, we follow the battle going on in Zion. Then, at the conclusion, we flip back to Neo and Trinity. At Even though Zion becomes the focus of the movie, we don’t really see any resolution for the people in Zion, only for Neo and Trinity. That’s fine, but then they should have focused on the characters who do find resolution.

Morpheus is the name for the god of dreams. Morpheus has dedicated his life to waking people up from the Matrix. He’s also a proclaimer of The One, a role not unlike that of John the Baptist. He also has the role of a mentor to The One. By the end of Revolutions, these roles are all no longer necessary. I’m not saying I want him dead, but I am saying that his death would have made sense.

Trinity’s death, however, doesn’t make much sense to me. Neo saves her in the matrix in Reloaded, and her death at the end cheapens what I thought was a major plot point. Instead, Trinity dies in the equivalent of a car accident. Of course she doesn’t die until she’s had exactly the right amount of time to deliver a poorly written attempt at a heartfelt monologue.

Her death seems to me like nothing but an attempt by the Wachowski brothers to write her out of the big conclusion. Neo could have bargained with the machines to have her returned to Zion, where she could have told Morpheus that Neo sacrificed himself to save her and everyone else. If she was still alive, Neo’s sacrifice would have had even greater meaning – he would have been giving up even more. Or she could have jacked in to the Matrix with Neo, and Smith could have killed her, giving the final battle much more emotion.

But no. After largely ignoring Trinity and Neo for a big chunk of the movie, Trinity gets a cheap death and a cheesy goodbye monologue. I think focusing on the war in Zion severely hurt Revolutions, but if there’s one single scene and plot point that plays completely wrong, it’s Trinity’s death.

What About That Ending?

Neo = Jesus (sort of)
For all the occasional subtlety in the Matrix films, this one is pretty obvious. Neo sacrifices himself to save mankind. He dies with his arms spread open and his feet together. A cross of light forms from inside his body. Backing up a bit, after he learns what he must do, he withdraws to think about it (Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane). As Jesus was fully God and fully man, Neo is fully machine and fully man – that’s how he can first sense the machines and eventually see them, even though he’s been blinded. When he dies, as if to hammer the point home further, The Source declares, “It is done.”

How is Agent Smith defeated?
Some think that Neo let himself be copied (killed) so the machines would have access to Smith. However, that ignores that there were millions of other people plugged into The Matrix, so if that were true the machines could have deleted Smith without Neo’s help. Instead, I think the key comes in Neo’s conversation with The Oracle, who tells Neo that Smith is the other side of the Neo’s equation. This also explains why as Neo became stronger and stronger, so did Smith. Smith couldn’t exist without Neo also existing. Neo taking himself out of the equation means there can be no equation, so Smith must cease to exist as well. Neo’s sacrifice has strong Christian symbolism, but Smith’s death seems to draw from Taoism.

Why is the Oracle left in the Matrix before it reboots?
In Reloaded, people who are copied by Smith in the Matrix die in the real world. The Oracle wasn’t a person – she was a program. The destruction of Smith eliminated all his code from her programming, so she was restored in the end. That would also explain why a few minutes later we see Sati is still in the Matrix as it reboots. My guess is that before she was laying there, she was another Smith. After he was destroyed and purged from her code, she woke up to find she’d been laying on the ground, just as The Oracle was laying on the ground.

So the matrix is still around?
Apparently, though it doesn’t look like there are any people in it. Have they all been killed by Smith? Are the people in Zion the only humans left? Perhaps, although that isn’t stated. The Architect seems to imply that people are still connected, because he says people will be allowed to leave the matrix if they want to. In the first film, Morpheus says that mankind can never truly be free as long as the matrix exists. So much for that, I guess.

So what's changed?
The biggest change in this new matrix is that people now have choice. In the past versions of the matrix, nobody was supposed to have choice. Those who did choose to leave the matrix were the reason why The One was created – to patch the code in the matrix that malfunctioned when people found a way to exercise choice even though they weren’t supposed to even beware aware there was a choice. Further pushing the Biblical analogy, this new perfect version of the matrix is the seventh version. Seven is the biblical number of perfection.

What’s up with the sunrise?
I haven’t seen the Animatrix, but I have heard that there is information in these animated features that at least implies that there is no sunrise or sunset in the matrix. This is also supported by the Oracle’s surprised reaction to the sunrise. Sati has a purpose in the new matrix – she’s the program that controls the sunrise (and maybe sunset, though that’s never said). Notice how the sunrise kind of has some wild colors in it, like maybe a kid with some crayons had gone a little crazy with it.

There you have it.
I may be missing some things, and not everyone may agree with all of my interpretations. However, after doing quite a bit of reading, this is what makes sense to me. Feel free to come up with your own ideas.